Clause 69 - Contraventions subject to civil enforcement
Traffic Management Bill
2:30 pm
Mr Hugh Bayley (City of York, Labour)
I apologise to you, Miss Begg, to the Minister and to members of the Committee that I will have to leave early to attend my daughter's school parents evening. I sincerely hope that this will be a short debate and that I will be here long enough to hear the Minister's response. I find myself in the deeply embarrassing position of having to agree with what the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Mr. Marsden) said about cyclists. I fully support civil enforcement of both parking and moving traffic offences in bus lanes and pedestrian areas. It will mean that those areas will be used as intended. I am sorry that the Conservative party seeks to delete civil enforcement from the Bill. There will be less rigorous enforcement if the arrangements are not changed.
It is a good thing that there will be enforcement of both parking and moving traffic offences in bus lanes and pedestrian areas. Enforcement is less clear in relation to cycle lanes, cycle gaps and other on-road provision for cyclists. Subsection (2)(d) refers to moving traffic contraventions and they are listed in part 4 of schedule 7. Why does not the Minister also include in the Bill the civil enforcement of parking offences in cycle lanes and other cyclists' areas of roads? As someone who cycles quite a bit, I believe that it is dangerous when someone parks in a cycle lane to the side of the road, because cyclists are forced to ride out in traffic that may be travelling at a considerable speed. It impedes the traffic, leading to congestion, and deters cyclists from cycling in busy areas. If they, like me, are fortunate enough to have a car as well as bicycle, many will use the car instead. I would like to hear the Minister's response to the idea of broadening the scope of the Bill to deal with parking in cycle lanes.
On moving traffic contraventions, the Minister has kindly provided us with a multicoloured list of traffic signals that are covered by part 4 of schedule 7. In my experience, it is the first time that we have had a colour document in a Standing Committee, and I congratulate the Minister on an impressive innovation.