Angela Rayner has vowed to “crush the bikes” – saying Labour would crack down on illegal off-road dirt bikes and quad bikes that cause misery for families.
Speaking at an event near Glasgow alongside Scottish Labour Leader Anas Sarwar, Ms Rayner promised illegal motorbikes would be “within 48 hours crushed, under a Labour government.”
Labour’s Scottish and UK battle buses met up for the first time during the campaign, at a rally in the car park of Hamilton Academical FC’s ground. They took the stage to Taylor Swift’s “Change” – a favourite of Keir Starmer which has become the unofficial anthem of the campaign.
“These off road bikes that shouldn’t be on the road,” Ms Rayner said. “And I saw this in my own constituency, where I had a young 17 year old lad that was on one of these bikes, and it crashed into a wall. The bike landed on his head and not life changing injuries to himself .” She said the bikes also create a “huge amount of anti-social behaviour.”
Under current rules, police can’t destroy seized bikes – instead auctioning them off. They often find their way back into the hands of the original owners.
“The next Labour government, instead of these bikes going back on our streets, will be crushed within 48 hours,” Ms Rayner said. “We’re very clear that we’ve got to get these off road bikes off the streets, and that’s what we’ll deliver on it. It does cause major problems, but it’s also incredibly risky for those on the bikes and for the general public who potentially could come into contact with them. So they shouldn’t be on the road. They’re illegal. And we’re going to make sure we do something about it. So they’re not back on the road again.”
Asked whether Taylor Swift’s ‘Change’ would be for 2024 what ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ was for 1997, Ms Rayner said: “For us change is what we desperately want to see across the UK. And Keir is a converted Swiftie. “I think now he knows more about Taylor Swift than I do, it’s fair to say. But the serious message in that is that we need to have that change and we’ll only get that change if people vote for it on the 4th of July. “