On Monday, the scientist and Labour peer Robert Winston is to formally ask a question in the House of Lords about what assessments ministers have made “for requiring adults riding bicycles in city centres to have a licence and third-party insurance”.

Below is the entirely imagined response I would like the government to make to him.



Dear Robert

You ask what assessments we’ve made for obliging cyclists to have licences and insurance. The brief answer is: none whatsoever. Nor do we have any plans to do so. In fact, if you hadn’t asked this question it’s entirely possible we wouldn’t have even given it a moment’s thought in all 2019.

Why? Again, the short answer is this: it’s an utterly silly, pointless thing to suggest, as evidenced by the fact that more or less no countries or territories anywhere in the world require cyclists to be licensed, or to have mandatory insurance. It tends to only ever be fringe voices with a wider, somewhat murky grudge against cycling in general. I note that you have previously made some slightly suspect claims about cycle lanes causing extra pollution – I do hope you’re not one of those people.

I suppose it’s only fair if I explain why licensing and insurance for cyclists is such a non-issue. It’s pretty simple: such plans would achieve pretty much nothing, while causing significant problems. More widely, any sensible, rational government will do everything in its power to get more people cycling, not to put pointless bureaucratic obstacles in their way.

Let’s just take one example, that most relevant to you as a doctor: public heath. As I’m sure you know, one of the many negative effects of a nation where the great majority of even short, one-person trips are made by car is an NHS likely to collapse before too long under the strain caring for an ageing, increasingly sedentary and overweight population. Inactive living is central to this – it’s estimated to cause more than 5m early deaths a year worldwide, and even a fairly brief daily bike commute can have near-miraculous benefits for people’s health.

And then of course there’s pollution, a major crisis of both health and social justice, which a study last week suggested kills more people than smoking.

There’s almost too many positive benefits of getting more people on bikes to list – safer, quieter, more socially connected towns and cities, less impact on climate change. And it’s a fair bet that imposing sudden restrictions on cyclists would depress the number of riders. Why would you want to do that?

And how would such rules even work? Would the licensing and insurance be just for adults, or also children? If the former, what about teenagers – would they suddenly have to carry ID on the ride to school to prove they are under 18? How would the system even be enforced – would it also require bikes to be registered with number plates?

Finally – and this is perhaps the clincher – what would you hope to achieve by this? If you believe licensing transport users stops wrongdoing, can I point you to the statistics showing 86% of drivers speed on 20mph roads, and how a third admit to using handheld phones at the wheel. And on insurance, there’s the small matter of how even with laws mandating it there’s an estimated 1 million uninsured drivers on the road.

The other hugely important part of this is that when people break laws on a bike, yes, they can be irritating and even intimidating, but they very, very rarely kill or seriously injure other people. Of the 1,800 or so people killed every year on the UK’s roads, between zero and two typically tend to be killed because they were hit by cyclists. It’s not because cyclists are uniquely virtuous, it’s just the very different impacts involved in being struck by a 100kg bike-and-rider combination travelling at 15mph, or a 1,500kg SUV doing 35mph.

So, to summarise: your mooted plan would be to introduce a hugely convoluted new administrative scheme that would most likely have limited effect on the behaviour of an averagely law-abiding group of transport users who very rarely harm others, and have a huge net positive impact on the nation, while putting people off from this type of transport.

I’m afraid I just don’t get it.