My Lords, this has been a very significant debate. My contribution to this group is Amendment 48, which I will come to in a moment.
I point out that this is a rapidly evolving scenario. When complaints were first made about pedicabs in London, just after the turn of the century, there were no e-bikes. It is therefore a huge mistake for the Government to have limited the scope of this legislation, which is written so tightly that it cannot be expanded to take in new technology. I agree wholeheartedly with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, about the missed opportunity of having two random transport Bills and a lack of joined-up thinking on these issues.
At Second Reading, we had an impassioned debate, led in part by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, who is not here today, about the urgent need to deal with the much more widespread problems of e-scooters and e-bikes that noble Lords have talked about—their danger both to users, who are mostly young, especially with e-scooters, and to pedestrians. I commend to the Minister the report on this issue of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety. I declare an interest as an officer of that group.
The rising death and injury toll has been mentioned by others. There is a prevalence of head injuries because of the centre of gravity of e-scooters, which is different from that of ordinary push bikes. There is a complete inconsistency and lack of joined-up thinking in the Minister and his Government’s thinking on this, given the existence of electric pedicabs.
The noble Lords, Lord Blencathra and Lord Hunt, and I all tried, without success, to expand the scope of this Bill. Amendment 48 is my pale imitation of other bolder attempts to do this that were rejected. The reference in my amendment to the need for a review in 12 months is my effort to ask the Government to bring this back in 12 months’ time and expand it, in the interests of a broader outlook.
Many noble Lords across the House raised issues around safety, which the Government have said is at the heart of the case for the Bill. As my noble friends Lord Storey and Lord Foster referred to, it is about the safety both of those operating the pedicabs and of the batteries. Also mentioned this afternoon was the safety of e-bikes in terms of their stopping distance—they are often modified to be able to go faster than they were originally designed to do. We must bear in mind that, if you add the extra weight of passengers and a cab at the back, their stopping distance is often very poor. They are therefore dangerous.
The noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, rightly and justifiably drew attention to the dangers and risks associated with yet another extension to the so-called
trials on e-bikes. This Christmas, thousands more e-scooters and e-bikes will be bought. Unsafe practices are becoming so entrenched: riding without helmets, for example, and there are many other issues. These unsafe practices will be impossible to reverse suddenly through regulation in a couple of years’ time, so I support all noble Lords who have spoken on this group of amendments.