E-scooters: Insurance

Question

15:19:00

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government what discussions they have had with the insurance sector about the cost of illegally operated e-scooters.

I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. In doing so, I refer to the Private Member’s Bill that I have before the House on road accident offences caused by bikes, e-bikes and e-scooters.

The Government regularly speak to the Motor Insurers’ Bureau and insurers as we develop our policy on e-scooters. This includes discussions about personal injury and property damage costs being covered by motorists, through the Motor Insurers’ Bureau’s uninsured drivers agreement, where an illegal e-scooter is at fault in a collision, ensuring that victims are fairly compensated. The e-scooters in the department’s rental trials, managed by the relevant local transport authorities, are covered by insurance.

I thank the Minister for his Answer. He will be aware that the cost that all motorists pay for the losses of all victims of uninsured vehicles, including illegal scooters, is £530 million. How do the Government intend to close this gap, where there is no insurance offered by the market for illegally operated e-scooters and other such vehicles?

The noble Baroness is rightly persistent on this subject and, as she knows, I have offered to meet her on it. The previous Government commenced trials but did not develop or introduce legislation. We recognise the depth of public concern and are actively considering next steps. In the meantime, the vast majority of MIB claims related to e-scooters are of less than £50,000, so are likely to be a small proportion of the £530 million that she mentioned.

My Lords, e-scooters are incredibly quiet and therefore dangerous on pavements. What action are the Government taking to prevent e-scooters being used on pavements?

The use of e-scooters needs legislation to regulate it. This is a question which I have answered in the House before and which no doubt will continue to come up until we produce draft legislation. The issues are complex. Noble Lords will know that I have replied to the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, putting in the Library a résumé of the legislation applying in all European countries, where there are vast differences in where you can use them, whether you should have a helmet, whether there is an age limit, whether they should be registered and whether they should be insured. We are working hard through those issues. They are not easy to solve, but the noble Baroness is right that determining what can be used on pavements and what is safe in a world where people with disabilities are, rightly, very worried about this, is very important.

My Lords, even when things are made legal, they can be abused. There must be enforcement. E-bikes are supposed to travel at a maximum of 15.5 miles per hour and not be throttled up to that speed. Yet around us all the time we see employees, in effect, of multinational companies delivering our groceries and our takeaways being exploited on illegal and uninsured vehicles. Will the Government take that into account when considering any regime for e-scooters?

My noble friend is absolutely right. The speed limit of 15.5 miles per hour determines the point at which an electric bicycle, capable of more speed than that, is a vehicle that needs to be licensed. The enforcement of the law is a matter for chief police officers, but we are considering what we can do in this area. I recognise as much as everybody else in this House that these alleged bicycles travelling at 25 or 30 miles per hour silently, and with the logos of quite major companies on the back of their riders’ rucksacks, represent a significant challenge to the legal use of the roads system.

My Lords, the noble Baroness is quite correct to ask the Question about illegal e-scooters, but, likewise, cyclists, who seem to have an ever-expanding space on our roads, do not pay road tax or insurance. Do the Government have any plans to look at that issue?

I do not recall whether the noble Baroness was one of the speakers in the debate that we had before Christmas on this subject. There are significant challenges with putting forward legislation about the licensing and insurance of bicycles. We want to encourage the safe and sensible use of bicycles, because active travel is good for the health of the nation. We will consider that further in the road safety strategy, but not to the extent that it deters people from cycling.

My Lords, the Government came to power promising to do better than their predecessor. There is a perfectly respectable libertarian argument, I suppose, that you should not have any regulation of e-scooters and e-bikes, and that, irrespective of product safety, they should be allowed to go where they want at whatever speed they want. People might want to make that argument. It seems to me that that is, in practice, now the Government’s position. There is no regulation, there has been no regulation for a long time, there is no regulation coming and there is very little enforcement. I pay credit to the police forces that do occasionally take enforcement. Will the Government just be honest and say that they are happy with that position and intend to let it run?

Well, I refer the noble Lord to my answer to a very similar question he asked me on 1 April. I said to him then that I did not much care to be lectured about drift by somebody who represents a party that did an experiment in 2021, published some results in 2022 and then did nothing, and that remains the case today.

My Lords, we currently have a perfect storm with e-scooters. There has already been reference to the fact that there is no need to register them, it is illegal to use them on public roads and pavements, and there is no registration when you buy the e-scooter either. Would the first step for this not be to ensure that, when somebody buys an e-scooter —because you are supposed to have a driver’s licence, provisional or full—they have to give their driving licence details, which would then be logged with that particular e-scooter?

I very much respect the noble Baroness’s view about the safety of these things, particularly from the point of view of anybody with a mobility difficulty or disability. But this is only one of the things that needs to be contemplated carefully in introducing legislation, simply because the legislation has to work in practice. We are learning some things from the controlled trials that the department has sponsored—the noble Baroness will know that the e-scooters concerned are identifiable in a way that those purchased from retailers are not. We also have to be realistic about what we can expect retailers to do in these circumstances. We are, as I said, deeply considering this. I know it is an issue of great concern to this House; it is the subject on which I have answered questions most frequently since I came here. We are working hard at it, but it is a difficult area and the rules we put in place have to have some chance of being enforced in a way that controls behaviour.

My Lords, I fear that the Minister will have even more questions. I have just managed to secure an Oral Question on 10 June about exactly this issue. I wonder whether, in between, he would be interested in visiting the City of London cycle enforcement group, which has come up with some quite creative ways of getting people points on their driving licences. They are able to spot, as the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, mentioned, where vehicles have been adapted to exceed 15 miles per hour either by pressing a button that maintains the power consistently or merely by the size of the motor on these vehicles. It begs the question of why other forces are not able to have the same enforcement rigour that the City of London has managed. He might want to visit and see how the group is doing it.

I am pleased to know that I shall have to answer further questions on this in June. In the meantime, I am absolutely delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, has raised this issue. It is very important to publicise the good work of the City of London Police, and he is absolutely right that it is very encouraging to discover that, as a result of people riding what are in fact illegal motor vehicles, they can have their licence endorsed or, if they do not have one, the points will be put on it whenever they get one. I will try to go to see them, but I know exactly what he is talking about. It is a great model and I would encourage other chief police officers—I hope that he, with his previous connections, will too—to go and witness it, and then do the same. We also know that these things are being used for crime of various sorts. In fact, the reason why the City of London Police is cracking down on it is mobile phone theft, in particular. It is a very effective enforcement methodology.