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Crime and Policing Bill

I will speak to my Amendments 341A to 341D, 342A to 342F, 346A, 346B and 498A, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord McColl, the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, and the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, for adding their names to some of those amendments.

In 2015, 444 pedestrians were injured by cyclists. In 2024, this had increased to 603. Of those, the number of seriously injured rose from 97 to 181, and 25 of the casualties died. These numbers are based on police reporting, so it is clear that they are a minimum. They do not include incidents where the police did not attend a collision or incidents where pedestrians either did not need immediate medical treatment or later attended their GP or a hospital setting without telling the police.

Every day, particularly in our large towns and cities such as London, we see cyclists ignoring traffic regulations and putting people at risk, particularly pedestrians who have a disability or a lack of mobility, even when those same people are using pedestrian crossings. At night many cyclists are not displaying lights, wear dark clothing and ride dark cycles, and pedestrians and other road users just cannot see them.

I do not believe that cyclists are a group of people who are more criminal than the rest of society or than any other road users. However, they are less accountable than people who drive buses and cars, and general deterrence theory does not work for them. General deterrence theory claims that the risk of detection is the most effective deterrent to crime. Drivers of motor

cars, lorries and buses know that there is a good chance that their behaviour will be noticed and probably investigated because they will be identified.

This identification process has allowed major strategic road safety measures to take effect. First, the licensing of drivers has allowed drivers to be prohibited from driving by the suspension of their licence. The introduction of automated cameras monitoring traffic speed and regulation has produced mass enforcement at dangerous locations to enhance police enforcement, which had proved inadequate, given the rise in the number of vehicles on the road and the miles of roads available. But these two measures are not available against cyclists. They have no licence or registration mark. This means that not only does the technology not work against them, but they cannot be identified for other road users, and they have no identification mark to offer for an investigator to identify them after they have behaved badly.

My amendments are all designed to remedy that situation. The Government usually respond to my proposals in a few predictable ways. First, they say that the health benefits of cycling outweigh the regulatory costs. I propose that at least 603 people in 2024 would not agree. How can the blatant disregard of our laws, intended to keep us safe, be allowed for cyclists, and why does their right to a healthy life trump the rights of pedestrians to feel safe?

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The second thing that the Government have said before, and have been saying for at least 18 months, is that they are going to produce a road safety strategy in the summer, which will help. We are now in the cold winter, and I am afraid we still have not seen the road safety strategy. More importantly, nothing has been done to encourage cyclists to behave and to keep us all safe.

The last thing the Government usually say—we often hear it here, and we have perhaps heard it a little today—is that we just need the police to enforce the existing law. I agree, but I have already pointed out that most of the deterrence mechanism detection methods do not work for cyclists. There is good work by the enforcement agencies—that is, the police. The best example I have found is in the City of London Police, where Sergeant Stu Ford is leading his small team of cyclists in combating road cyclists. I went out with them, and they are having an effect. On the morning when I went with them, we walked just a few yards out of the police station to set up a morning check in the City. There were cyclists ignoring pedestrian crossings and red lights, and moving dangerously through pedestrians, despite the fact that they were outside a police station and there were six or seven uniformed officers on cycles, on the road and on the pavement. I do not believe that enforcement alone will cut it, but it clearly has to be part of the solution.

My amendments are all about the prevention of casualties and dangerous situations by holding cyclists to account for their bad behaviour. Amendments 341A to 341D and 342A to 342F propose that, when a cyclist commits a road traffic offence and they have a driving licence, penalty points should be added to their driving licence for the offence committed on a

cycle, and then, should they achieve enough points, they may be banned from driving where that is appropriate. You could say that that was unfair, given that there are those who do not hold a driving licence. However, 75% of the adult population hold a licence and, of those who do not, many are trying to get one or have ceased driving because of infirmity. Surely the health benefits to pedestrians of such a penalty-point system outweigh the risks involved. In any case, the removal of careless cyclists from driving a motor vehicle is a positive road safety advantage.

Amendments 346A and 498A ask the Government to register cycles and e-bikes in order that they display a registration mark, allowing both witnesses and technological monitoring to identify the rider of the cycle. This would, of course, have costs—costs that the user should pay, just as car drivers do. The costs of registration are relatively low, particularly considering that many e-bikes and top-range cycles cost many thousands of pounds, sometimes in excess of £10,000.

Amendment 346B is about e-bikes. As the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, has mentioned, e-bikes cannot exceed certain limits. They should not be capable of travelling quicker than 15.5 miles per hour or have a power output in excess of 250 watts, and they should have pedals that propel them. Many e-bikes, by simple modifications, ignore all three of those. At the moment, it is implied that, if they ignore those criteria, they could therefore become a motor vehicle, with all the necessary regulation, including insurance, and a rider could then be prosecuted not just for breaching the e-bike rules but for it being a motor vehicle and them breaching all the motor vehicle rules. The City of London has used this rule extensively, but surely this should be not an implied definition but an explicit one, so that when an e-bike breaches the criteria it immediately becomes treated as a motor vehicle.

I was to have a further amendment on a topic that has been mentioned—trying to get insurance for cycles—but I was advised by the clerks, who I respect, that that would be out of scope of the Bill. I do not quite understand that. This is a crime and police Bill and traffic offences on the road are criminal offences, some being so serious that people may be imprisoned or have their licence removed.

Insurance is a benefit for two reasons. The victim of negligent riding may be compensated in a way they presently cannot be. More importantly, insurers manage risk: they make drivers who are more dangerous, and likely to lead to more payouts, pay higher premiums. In that way, they incentivise all of us to reduce the likelihood of a collision or someone getting hurt. Both in absolute terms and as a crime prevention measure in a Bill where the Government argue for extra cycling offences, I struggle to see why an amendment on insurance is out of scope. I accept that the ruling was made, but I would like to come back to it at some stage on Report. I would like to understand better why what I see as a road safety measure cannot be considered within this Bill. And the Government might want to respond to explain why the 603 people who I mentioned earlier are unable to seek an insurance payout as compensation from the person who injured them.