Member

Amendment 346B is about e-bikes. As the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, has mentioned, e-bikes cannot exceed certain limits. They should not be capable of travelling quicker than 15.5 miles per hour or have a power output in excess of 250 watts, and they should have pedals that propel them. Many e-bikes, by simple modifications, ignore all three of those. At the moment, it is implied that, if they ignore those criteria, they could therefore become a motor vehicle, with all the necessary regulation, including insurance, and a rider could then be prosecuted not just for breaching the e-bike rules but for it being a motor vehicle and them breaching all the motor vehicle rules. The City of London has used this rule extensively, but surely this should be not an implied definition but an explicit one, so that when an e-bike breaches the criteria it immediately becomes treated as a motor vehicle.