Grant Shapps’ plans to regulate cycling labelled ‘absurd’ and ‘unworkable’

• Transport secretary Grant Shapps wants to apply speed limits to cyclists. 
• He also suggested there would need to be a review of insurance and enforcement.
• Government previously ruled out proposals to regulate cycling.

Transport secretary Grant Shapps is facing a backlash from the cycling community and MPs after suggesting that speed limits should apply to cyclists and therefore registration plates and insurance would need to be considered.

Currently, the Highway Code and Road Traffic Act speed limits only apply to motor vehicles and their drivers. However, Shapps told the Daily Mail that he wants the rules to be extended to cyclists too.

He said: “I absolutely propose extending speed limit restrictions to cyclists as well.

“Particularly where you've got 20mph limits on increasing numbers of roads, cyclists can easily exceed those, so I want to make speed limits apply to cyclists.”

He continued: “That obviously does then lead you into the question of, ‘Well, how are you going to recognise the cyclist, do you need registration plates and insurance and that sort of thing’.

“So I'm proposing there should be a review of insurance and how you actually track cyclists who do break the laws."

He previously told the newspaper that he wants to see a new law of causing death by dangerous cycling included in the Transport Bill, which is due before Parliament in the autumn.

Shapps’ latest comments have caused outrage among the cycling community, while shadow secretary of state for transport Louise Haigh said on Twitter that “sticking number plates on 20 million bicycles” was “utterly absurd”. 

"Costs and complexity outweigh the benefits"

Duncan Dollimore, Cycling UK’s head of campaigns, pointed out that proposals to regulate cycling have been “repeatedly dismissed by successive governments”.

In 2018 the Government looked at mandatory insurance, registration and licensing as part of a cycling and walking safety review, which concluded that “the costs and complexity of introducing such a system would significantly outweigh the benefits”.

This was reiterated by Baroness Vere, parliamentary under secretary of state at the Department for Transport (DfT), in November last year.

Dollimore said the latest proposals are “impractical and unworkable”. 

“Every country which has tried to implement such ideas has soon realised their costly mistake,” he said. 

“As cost of living ramps up, we’re seeing more people turning to cycling to meet their local transport needs. Rather than proposing expensive barriers to cycling more – both to the exchequer and the individual – we need this Government to encourage people to cycle more, not less.”

President of the AA Edmund King agreed, calling it a “retrograde step”. 

“It is in the interests of all road-users, and indeed our environment, that as a society we encourage more use of active travel, such as walking and cycling, and also the transition to zero emission vehicles,” he said. 

“Introducing more barriers to slow the take-up of safe cycling would be a retrograde step. What we really need is better infrastructure for cycling so that some of the present day issues on the roads are removed. Most adult cyclists are also drivers and many drivers are also cyclists and therefore more should be done to encourage harmony on the roads.”

Contrary to what Shapps told the Daily Mail this week, in a separate interview with The Times, published yesterday (17 August 2022), he said: "I'm not attracted to the bureaucracy of registration plates. That would go too far."

He also said that he is “a keen cyclist” and “very proud of the big expansion in the number of miles being cycled”. 

HonestJohn.co.uk contacted the DfT for clarification. 

A DfT spokesperson said: “We want cycling to be the natural first choice for shorter journeys, helping to improve air quality and health while reducing congestion on our roads. We have set an ambitious vision that by 2030, half of all journeys in towns and cities are cycled or walked.

“Like all road users, cyclists have a duty to behave in a safe and responsible manner and follow the rules of the road. While there are no plans to introduce registration plates on bicycles, we continue to look at how we can improve road safety across all forms of transport and we are considering bringing forward legislation to introduce new offences around dangerous cycling.”