Viscount Hailsham (Con)

My Lords, I have a lot of sympathy with Amendments 346C and 481. I start from the premise of not seeking further reviews, but I am a bicyclist. I bicycle very regularly in London; I did so this very morning from King’s Cross to here on an electric bike, and that is my new usual means of transport when I come from Lincolnshire. I think, in fact, that there are two quite distinct problems that need to be addressed. One is the simple behaviour of bicyclists on the road. There are already many regulations that apply, such as not to ride on pavements, to have batteries of an appropriate kind, to comply with traffic signs and all that. One thing that one sees all the time is an extraordinary denial of the law by riders. That is a matter of enforcement. I think it is very difficult to enforce, because, frankly, the police have better things to do with their time. I have some sympathy with that view. That is one discrete problem. A much more worrying problem, which has been alluded to by my noble friends Lord Blencathra and Lord Shinkwin, is about the relationship between the delivery companies and the delivery riders. That relationship is worth looking into carefully. It is right to inquire about the following: what is the nature of the employment; by whom are the bicycles provided; what steps are taken to ensure that the riders comply with the law; and where does the liability to pay compensation arise? If the riders are regular employees, the ordinary principles of vicarious liability arise; if they are sort of independent contractors, presumably the delivery companies are not liable to pay compensation. These are the sorts of questions that I think could sensibly be addressed by either the Department for Transport or the Home Office. I am not sure I want to see a review of a formal kind, as it takes a very long time, but I do think that there are issues seriously to be addressed about the relationship between the riders and the delivery companies. With regard to Amendment 416K, tabled by my noble friend Lord Blencathra, while again I have sympathy with the point that he is seeking to make, I cannot support what he is proposing, for two reasons. The first is a technical one: if you look at his amendment, the liabilities ultimately on the company arise out of the bad and dangerous driving of the rider. On any ordinary view, the company itself is not directly responsible for the criminal act of the rider, so we would be taking a vicarious liability rather too far, in my opinion. Secondly, and quite differently—and I say this with some diffidence in the presence of the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe—there are no circumstances in which I would give the police the power to levy an unlimited fine. We have had far too many anxieties about the police—on occasion, the noble Lord himself has identified some—and, for the sake of preserving civil liberties, there is no way that this House should do that.