Meeting of the Parliament 09 December 2025
They are illegal on pavements, but they are actually legal on roads. If you look at the “Highway Code”, which I have looked at carefully, you will see that they can go wherever a bicycle can go, and bicycles are legal on our roads. Of course, bicycles are in the same boat—you do not need a licence to have an ordinary bike. I ask the member simply to look at that.
However, I absolutely do not dispute that they are a menace, not just because of their speed but because of the way that they are driven. Much depends on defensive driving by motorists to evade them when they are weaving in and out of traffic. The riders deliberately make themselves menacing—macho, if you like—by being dressed in black. That adds another problem: apart from all the other problems, you cannot see them.
Most of the time—and sometimes for other cyclists—it is almost impossible to see them until you are just about upon them, quite apart from the weaving in and out. Even a cyclist, under the “Highway Code”, is supposed to have a front light and, at the back, not just a reflector light but a red flashing light so that they can be seen. Many of the e-bikes do not have that. I would start, therefore, with simple, practical things such as licensing and so on, and enforcing the requirements in the “Highway Code”.
Obviously policing helps, but I have concerns about that approach. Again, I make the point that it might be all right in town centres, but you will come across these vehicles when you are driving along the Portobello Road or coming through Holyrood park, and you cannot expect police to be on patrol all the time. The vehicles are not just there; they are delivering for various food chains and so on, so we have to consider the issue everywhere.
I will be interested to hear what the minister has to say about how the police are tackling the issue, but I would also like to know whether the Scottish Government is in conversation with the UK Government—this is not a hostile point, or a matter of what is or is not devolved—about how we can strengthen the requirements for the owners of these vehicles to have a licence; to be registered, taxed and insured; and to have an MOT, which every one of us with a vehicle needs to have. That would be a start.