Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Ben Obese-Jecty

Report stage
Wednesday 18th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

My hon. Friend is right, and I hope the Government will respond to that. However, she will forgive me if I focus on the essence of new clause 5, which is e-bikes.

The definition of a legal e-bike is one that uses pedals and also uses electricity to assist the cyclist. All the other ones are illegal. This brings me to the problem that, if this measure is going to go through into law, as it will, will the Government press the police to start arresting and prosecuting not only the people who deliberately use e-bikes for nefarious purposes but more importantly, those who just cycle dangerously on footpaths? E-bikes are now more dangerous than bicycles in the sense that they are e-bicycles and therefore get up to higher speeds. Even though the speeds are supposed to be governed, they are still higher than most cyclists will get up to in the normal act of pedalling their way to work.

[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend and I had a discussion about this earlier. On the subject of illegal e-bikes, does he agree that we need to clamp down on the illegal conversion kits that are readily accessible online which allow an ordinary bicycle to be converted to do anything up to 30 or 40 mph? I tabled a written question about that, and the Government said that it was for the Office for Product Safety and Standards and local authority trading standards to enforce that, but could the Government do more to crack down on it?

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

It is funny that my hon. Friend raises that point, because I was just about to get on to it. I am glad he has pinched my speech, but we are on the same side, so let me thank him for getting ahead of me.

I reinforce that point: the Government now need to decide whether to do something about that issue in the other place. All non-bicycle electricity-supported cycles are legal, but all the others are either illegal or have to be used on the road and therefore have to qualify for road use, which means in many cases taking instruction and passing a test, or treating the e-bike like a car or a motorcycle. The problem is that most people do not know that. They are either ignorant of it or they deliberately do not care, and they can buy these illegal bikes in lots of legal shops in the UK. It seems bizarre that we are allowing people to buy these bikes—many are not bikes; they could be boards or all sorts of contraptions—and they then think they are able to use them. Most people do not check up on the highway code or the law; they just get on and use them. They are deeply dangerous to themselves, but also to other road users. I would press the Government to look at this again in the other place—it is too late to do it here—to see whether there is some way in which selling these things to people without proper licences could be made illegal.