E-scooters: Trials

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Tuesday 1st April 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, there may be no question of letting it drift, but the Government are letting it drift until May 2026, with the prospect of legislation no doubt in the second half of 2026 or early 2027—who knows, we might be into a general election before we get to anything. This is all a distraction from the real experience of e-scooters, because the trials that will be examined are highly artificial constructs where particular areas and locations are designated for legal use of specific hired scooters, which are usually clunky and highly coloured. Examining the evidence from the trials will tell one almost nothing about the real experience of the use of e-scooters by private individuals. Is it not time that the Government simply got on and legislated for both standards of behaviour and technical standards, such as on batteries?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

Gosh—I do not much care to be lectured about drift by somebody who represents a party that did an experiment in 2021, published some results in 2022 and then did nothing. In any event, these things are becoming part of life, whether we like it or not and whether they are brightly coloured or not. The point at issue is to discover how they are used—rental trials in various towns and cities are as good a way of finding out as any—and then to work out what the legislation should say. It is a challenge for anybody, including the noble Lord opposite, to work out what the right standards are from the variety of regimes in the 21 European countries. We shall work that out carefully.