Road Safety Bill [HL]

I do not think that is a source of amusement. She was quite frightened to start with but she asked me to tell the Committee—she is very sorry that she cannot be here tonight—that by the end of her trial she was rather taken by the device. A few other noble Lords tried it as well. It is a great shame that officials in the Department for Transport have not tried it and neither have Ministers, but it is there. It is useful for some people. I prefer a bicycle because it gets weight off and I get some exercise, but it is a useful device. It is rather like a motorised scooter and probably rather more convenient. As the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, said, the device is illegal because no one can work out where it should be used. If it had wings it would probably fly, but then the civil aviation Act would not apply to it. It is important, for if the Government do nothing, they become a bit like King Canute. This thing is here, and being used by Italian police for chasing people. This morning, one of the people who had this machine said that he regularly uses it to cycle through Hyde Park, on going to work every day. He was stopped for riding it on the cycle track by a policeman who was driving a police car. That was all right; the policeman can do anything he likes. Yet this poor man, who was not hurting anybody, gets stopped. I do not think he was arrested, but it is pretty stupid. So my message to my noble friend is: can we please take this seriously? It has arrived. I do not know whether it should be on the road, the pavement or the cycle track. There will be all kinds of representations from people, but we have to try to fit it into our transport system so that it can be used safely, along with everything else. I urge the Minister to get moving on this, so that people do not start getting arrested for using it, which will look awfully stupid for the British Government.