Electric Scooter Trials and Traffic Signs (Coronavirus) Regulations and General Directions 2020

“I think we have a British antisocial behaviour issue across the country … We haven’t seen this level of antisocial behaviour in any other market. We have had great experience of it but the volume of it in the UK was quite surprising.”

He said that people were riding the scooters on the pavement and had a disregard for the law. If the company trying to get us to use these killing machines says that, we should stop this experiment until we have proper control of them.

If the Government are determined to push ahead, these regulations must be changed to reduce the weight to no more than 25 kilos and the speed limited to 10 miles per hour. Even then, these scooters are still silent killing machines when driven on the pavement. Therefore, the Government must copy Voi and insist on number plates, or some sort of numbering system, so that cameras can identify them. There is then a slight chance of enforcement.

We see cyclists blatantly riding over zebra crossings with pedestrians on them and through red lights, and there is no enforcement. There must be strict enforcement for these e-scooters. People will dump hired machines anywhere but will safely park their own dearly bought scooter. The policy there is wrong, too.

I do not know how Paris has got it so wrong with scooters, given that it and Strasbourg—which I also visit regularly—are so civilised about cycling. There is not a single helmet or bit of Lycra in sight. People ride upright with the handlebars higher than the seats. They can ride on the pavements and I feel perfectly safe among them. What a contrast with London, where you can see nothing but Lycra-clad bums in the air as wannabe Bradley Wigginses mow you down on the crossing at 1 Millbank.

If the Government persist with introducing this measure, I hope that an instruction is given to every police force in this country to enforce the law. There should be none of this nonsense of engage, explain, encourage, pat on the head, sympathise or bend the knee. If the police turn a blind eye to enforcement, I hope that they will ignore me when I use my stick to get one of the scooters off the pavement or when I chuck an abandoned one from the pavement under the wheels of a 30-tonne lorry. I say to the police: do your duty and enforce the law, or the law will be brought into disrepute with every other law. They should do their duty or we will see the same anarchy as in Paris.

In conclusion, while I welcome the use of e-scooters, I believe that tighter legislation needs to be introduced to protect users as well as pedestrians, and to set a minimum standard for the manufacture of these scooters.

I conclude with a story. I know that many noble Lords are quite old and may think this is something for young people, but I have a quote from YorkMix about a man called Tom—he will not give his other name—who travels

“around York illegally on an e-scooter”

and enjoys it. It is much better than an electric wheelchair. He carries on riding

“Because it helps him stay active”,

after being locked down for three months because of coronavirus. I encourage the Government to carry on with the trial to encourage people to use scooters safely and responsibly. Do not give up.

I understand that the argument to set the power limit at 500 watts is to help e-scooters climb hills and inclines, particularly when carrying heavier riders, but I am wary of the speed limit of 15.5 mph, which seems high. Given that the Government have decided to set the maximum weight at 55 kilograms, that amounts to genuinely dangerous collisions when they do inevitably happen. The original position, as I understand it, was to set the weight limit at 35 kilograms but this changed following arguments that the lower limit would preclude designs with heavier batteries. I hope that the 55 kilograms can be reduced as technology improves and batteries get smaller, but to encourage manufacturers to make this a priority, I encourage the Government to make provision for the upper weight limit to be reviewed on an ongoing basis once the trial has concluded.

I urge the Government to take on board my concerns and those of other noble Lords before more permanent arrangements are put in place. I also hope that policymakers are listening in Northern Ireland, where e-scooters are still not allowed on public highways but could make an appreciable difference before long.

Bicycle helmets are essential, as a previous speaker mentioned, and, as we have seen in these trials, we need to ID users. It seems that many of the problems have been with people who are not responsible drivers, and with some who are underage getting access to electric scooters. In the longer term, these scooters may be like drones; when the technology is ready, we can then start to bring them into wider use. As a nation, we perhaps need to encourage the manufacturers to look at the possibility of making the scooters stop when they encounter an obstacle, the ability of a person to geotag them so that they cannot go to places they should not, or the use of fingerprinting or other ID systems so that they literally cannot be used other than by the authorised user. Perhaps the way the scooter renter or user drives on pavements should affect their insurance, or their ability to use these vehicles. Ultimately, however, electric vehicles may over time become safer than existing vehicles, as in the way they allow the rider to accelerate away from red lights.

In conclusion, we must balance the risks with the potential to innovate and be ahead. I ask the Minister: what is the plan to do this in a careful and staged way?

I also draw the attention of the House to the concern felt by the ABI, representing the insurance industry, about the lack of requirement for insurance.

Lessons from abroad indicate significant costs to local authorities in clearing up abandoned scooters and regulating the rental process. Will the local authorities that hold these trials be provided with any finance?

Who will enforce the requirement to have at least a provisional licence? If you are caught by the police doing something illegal on an electric bike, will the fact that you have a licence mean that you will get points on it? That is the kind of clarity I seek.

I draw the Minister’s attention to the Doppler schemes; they have been a particular cause of problems because of the method by which the scooters are recharged. They rely on people doing casual work, going around picking up the scooters and recharging them in their own homes; they are paid according to the number they recharge. The effect of this rather casual approach has been that scooters abandoned in difficult places get left there, unrecharged. So I urge the Minister to make sure there is a proper way of docking these vehicles.

One government response quoted by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee referred to making legal other micro mobility vehicles. Can the Minister please explain what other vehicles the Government have in mind?

Studies show that generally scooters are used much more as leisure vehicles and for short distances. Have the Government taken this into account? The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee raised the lack of clarity about the Government’s purpose. It is being done under the Covid umbrella; the Government say that they see this as an important alternative form of transport.

How many trial areas do the Government envisage? The press has mentioned 50. What is the timescale for the rollout? There will be some places where scooters will share space with pedestrians, so what about the rules of the pavement? Who will give way to whom?

How will the Government evaluate each of these trial schemes, and will the Minister undertake to publish a full evaluation and let us debate it here?

The noble Lord, Lord St. John of Bletso, mentioned technical standards. We work with each rental operator to satisfy ourselves that the technical conditions we require have been met, and out requirements are based on the world-leading German regulations.

The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, mentioned lights, which we do require on our trial scooters. We consulted on the use of helmets, and the majority of those who responded agreed that cycle helmets should be recommended and not mandated. Given that in trials these scooters have a maximum speed of 15.5 mph, we recommend that an e-scooter user wears a cycle helmet, as we do for bikes and e-bikes, but this will be subject to review after the trials end.

We believe that e-scooters offer many potential benefits. They are a greener form of transport than private cars, and if people use them for journeys normally undertaken by a private car, we will see a decrease in congestion and in air pollution. However, we acknowledge that there are risks surrounding the safe use of these scooters, as many noble Lords have highlighted. We have looked at their introduction in other countries. In countries where e-scooters are allowed on the road in an unregulated way there have been difficulties, including a rapid increase in the number of e-scooters, discarded scooters causing a hazard for pedestrians—as noted by my noble friend Lord Blencathra—and scooters being used in, frankly, unsafe ways. Some lessons have been learned and there are many successful examples of operators and cities working together to ensure that excellent services are provided. None the less, e-scooters are a new type of vehicle, and it is important to stress that the evidence around their potential benefits and risks is limited and inconclusive, hence we need time-limited and location-specific trials.

Currently there are trials in six areas: Tees Valley, Milton Keynes, the West Midlands, Staffordshire, Norwich and Northamptonshire. Ministers have approved trials in 11 further areas, and there may be more in the pipeline, because in each of these areas we look very closely at the local authority and work very closely with it. Each local authority has volunteered to take part and is fully involved in selecting which e-scooter operator it wants to work with. Also, a local authority can decide how many e-scooters it wants to allow in its area. The scooters are branded and individually identifiable. This allows the local police force to trace riders when needed, and to differentiate them from privately owned scooters—a concern of the noble Lord, Lord Rogan.

My noble friend Lord Wei mentioned local authorities defining the areas for use. He is right; this is exactly what happens. The local authority decides where it is safe for e-scooters to be ridden, including in cycle lanes, and is required to engage with the local police force and accessibility groups in designing its proposals and to work with them to resolve any issues. To date, no concerns have been raised about the capacity of cycle lanes during the trials. The cost to the Government and local authorities of running e-scooter trials is low.

The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, mentioned funding. Local authorities hosting trials can use a small proportion of the £250 million active travel fund to make the necessary changes. However, this funding is capped at a total of £5 million overall, not per trial. The Government are running the central monitoring and evaluation contract to assess the trials and to further reduce costs. They have given support to local areas in designing their proposals through a series of weekly online meetings.

Let me be clear. The regulations being discussed today apply only to e-scooters used as part of the trial, arranged between a rental authority and the local public authority. They do not extend to privately owned e-scooters, which are where we have many of the bad apples. E-scooters are not allowed on the pavement during trials or at any other time. A trial e-scooter may be used in a cycle lane but not on the motorway. E-scooter users who commit an offence can be fined up to £300 and, to answer the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, have six points put on their driving licence. The Government are publishing details of the trial areas on GOV.UK as each trial begins. We anticipate that most trials will be live by mid-October. The trials will run for 12 months but we will keep this under review based on the evidence that we gather. They are trials in the truest sense of the word, to see what works and what does not work. Nothing is being taken off the table. The national evaluation of trials will be undertaken by third-party contractors managed by the department and the results are likely to be published towards the autumn of 2021 when we have robust data.

I have ridden an e-scooter and it is great fun. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, that she should have a go too. In all seriousness, I sense the issue here is not that most noble Lords are against progress in micromobility but that they want to get the implementation right. That is what we are focused on. I am extremely grateful for the input of all noble Lords today. These deliberations will be taken into account as we consider the future of e-scooters.