Lola McEvoy

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire) for bringing this important debate to Westminster Hall. On 16 May 2025, just before 1 pm, 86-year-old Gloria Stephenson was walking her daughter’s dog using a zebra crossing when she was hit by an 18-year-old riding a Sur-Ron e-bike. Gloria died at the scene. My constituent Julie Francis lost her mother that day. She has a petition for more police funding and has been a vocal campaigner for more action to get these bikes off the road. In September, I brought her to Parliament to meet the Policing Minister. Julie’s ask of us all is simple: “Don’t let my mother’s death be in vain.” The rise of e-bikes and e-scooters in Darlington is a major problem. It is obvious from the cross-section of representation in the Chamber that we are not alone. The balaclava-wearing men tearing through our town and deliberately intimidating everyone else, on and off the road, are a visible degradation of our collective social contract. They are literally running amuck, Minister, and my constituents and I have had enough. “Ban them” is the most tempered call from residents, and the most appropriate for a parliamentary debate; many have suggested other measures, which I will not go into now. But the truth is that they are banned; it is already illegal to ride these dirt bikes, motocross bikes and e-scooters on our roads. Durham police are doing a great job of seizing and crushing them—I attended a scrapyard recently and crushed 70 of them with the police—but aside from that, they do not have the powers alone to tackle the problem. One reason why this issue has become so prolific is that it requires a multi-Department approach. Will the Minister review the dirt bike licensing regime, because it is clearly ineffective? In the north-east, we have 34 licensed Sur-Ron bikes; I saw more than that crushed two weeks ago. Will he consider mirroring the gun licensing regulation to enforce stricter requirements for legitimate UK purchases, increasing the penalty for driving dirt bikes without a licence, and banning the sale of e-scooters entirely in our high-street retailers? Will he bring together a cross-Department taskforce to regulate the import of these dangerous kits and, ultimately, get these illegal bikes off our streets?