London Local Authorities and Transport for London (No. 2) Bill [Lords]

It is a pleasure to follow the Minister, who I am surprised was so brief, because this is an important piece of legislation. As he said, his Department and the Government generally are still looking at the detail of it, because they have not had sufficient time to do so hitherto—as the Bill was first brought forward only in 2008. They are therefore pleading with the House tonight, ““Please give us a bit more time for further detailed consideration,”” and then, when the Bill goes into the Opposed Bill Committee, they will be able to decide exactly what they want. Given that the Bill's sponsor, our hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), whom I congratulate on having been given the accolade and responsibility for taking it through the House, has already said that he will seek in Committee to withdraw clause 17, which relates to pedicabs, and given that the Minister himself referred to the prospect of the Law Commission carrying out a review, it seems that if the Bill takes the normal course of such legislation, it will, when it leaves Committee and returns to the House, no longer contain any provisions relating to pedicabs. That is why I begin my main remarks by referring to the pedicabs issue, which raises an enormous amount of interest in London. I have to admit that I have never travelled in one, but I am conscious of the fact that they are among the most environmentally friendly forms of transport—even more so than electrically propelled motor vehicles, which are also dealt with in the Bill. I note from the evidence that the pedicab industry has produced that most pedicab drivers are self-employed entrepreneurs serving the interests of the people of London and now, as we have heard, of other parts of the country. They have developed a business that meets the needs of the public, and done so totally outside the sphere of regulation, except that pedicabs are propelled by bicycles, which are subject to regulation under the Road Traffic Act 1991 and the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984. Pedicabs themselves are not subject to any specific regulation, but this Bill, when it was brought forward, contained definitions of pedicabs which were offensive to everybody: offensive to the taxi trade, to the pedicab industry and, probably, to the people of London—if they applied their minds to the matter. I note that it is now proposed that the pedicab industry should engage in self-regulation and that the promoters of the Bill are making specific arrangements with the pedicab industry to encourage that approach. However, is that consistent with what has taken place before? The hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) was particularly brief in his remarks.