
On 22nd May, the same day that the next general election was announced, PACTS President, Barry Sheerman MP also brought his last debate to the Parliament in which he has served for 45 years. The Westminster Debate was called to address e-scooter deaths and serious injuries, and the ongoing use of illegal, unregulated e-scooters.
Barry presented the case that, due to the Government’s lack of promotion of existing regulations, people have been harmed unnecessarily. He highlighted that sales extend to children’s sized e-scooters and explained the ease with which these can be purchased. A measure of unregulated use is the number of people, including children, known to have been injured outside the rental trial areas. PACTS research has brought to light the extent of under reporting of these casualties.
Judith Cummins MP for Bradford South, Kevin Newlands MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire North and Simon Lightfoot MP for Wakefield and Labour Shadow Minister for local transport also spoke. Together they called for greater clarity and certainty of regulations from the Government.
Shadow Minister Simon Lightfoot MP, explained that he was “extremely keen to hear the Minister’s response to PACTS’ recommendation that the DFT must urgently improve data collection to address the issue. Without firm data collection on the impact of safety, how can the Government honestly believe that they will be able to enact regulations—if they ever do—that put pedestrian and rider safety first?”

The Minister Anthony Browne MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for technology, acknowledged that all road deaths are absolutely tragic. Explaining that e-scooters are not harmless toys, but motor vehicles, he encouraged police forces to enforce the law.
Acknowledging the difference between rental and private e-scooters he announced that a second evaluation of UK rental trials is to be carried out. “Basically, we are abiding by all the regulations, and officials met PACTS just last month. We are improving police data collection. We are improving the trial data collection and are about to launch a second evaluation of the data from the e-scooter trials. It is incredibly important that we get the best information from those trials.”
This reflects one of PACTS key recommendations for the Government: The most must be made of the rental trials to robustly gather data (we welcome the second evaluation), and in the wider context of the mobility evolution, the DfT and DoHSC must work together to align their coding and open up a means for gathering and sharing records. Greater clarity and certainty is required to address the issues, and PACTS will continue engaging with the DfT officials to promote our recommendations for regulations for e-scooters, as we await further legislation.
Ending the debate, Minister Anthony Browne MP, remarked that: “I understand that during my speech a general election has been called on 4 July. If that is true, I can guarantee that we will not get any legislation in before the general election. Whoever wins the general election will have to do the legislating, but they will have the support of the officials at the Department for Transport and will get all the information that I have about the need for legislation.”
Whichever government is formed in July, one thing is clear: legislation of e-scooters is outstanding, and overdue.