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The Scottish Government is committed to enhancing safety across Scotland’s road network.

The Road Safety Framework to 2030 sets out a vision for Scotland to have the best road safety performance in the world by 2030. This contains mode and user specific targets focussed on our priority areas, including pedestrians and cyclists.

The Scottish Government has allocated a record £36m for road safety investment in the 2024/25 financial year. This includes £10m for the Road Safety Improvement Fund to support local authorities reduce casualty and risk on the local road network, and over £4m to support the delivery of projects aimed at reducing pedestrian and cyclist casualties.

To further protect vulnerable road users, a national behaviour change campaign will launch in March 2025, encouraging all road users to recognise the road is a shared space. Additionally, a dedicated stakeholder group has been established to monitor risks, identify emerging trends, and develop measures to address specific safety concerns for pedestrians and cyclists.

These measures reflect the Scottish Government’s ongoing commitment to making Scotland’s roads safer for everyone.

The £1.73 bn forecast export sales relates to details provided by Scottish Enterprise (SE) in the results against key performance measures section of its 2023-24 annual report. The figure is based on accumulated evidenced export sales forecasts directly from companies, reflecting their expectations of future sales over the next three year as a result of support they have received from SE.

The Scottish Government routinely monitors and evaluates the effectiveness of export support in Scotland, and in November 2023 it published an independent report by Aston University on export support and promotion in Scotland, which included analysis of SE’s export sales forecasts. The evaluation was retrospective and therefore encompassed SE’s forecast export sales for the period up to 2021. A follow up evaluation is currently being planned and will continue to include SE’s forecast export sales.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information.

This information is held by Police Scotland.

This is an operational matter for Police Scotland. I have asked Police Scotland to write to you on this matter.

Data on collisions which cause injury and take place on the road network, including adjacent pavements and cycle lanes, is collected by Police Scotland as part of the GB-wide dataset known as STATS19.

Within STATS19, vehicles involved in injury road collisions can be recorded as ‘bicycle’ or ‘electric motorcycle’. However, there is currently no systematic way of determining which of these vehicles would be described as illegal e-bikes.

Data on collisions which cause injury and take place on the road network, including adjacent pavements and cycle lanes, is collected by Police Scotland as part of the GB-wide dataset known as STATS19.

Within STATS19, vehicles involved in injury road collisions can be recorded as ‘bicycle’ or ‘electric motorcycle’. However, there is currently no systematic way of determining which of these vehicles would be described as illegal e-bikes.

This information is not held by the Scottish Government. When local authority trading standards services find products that are non-compliant with the relevant product safety legislation this should be input into the Product Safety Database. This is operated by the UK Government’s Office of Product Safety and Standards.

Enforcement of traffic offences, including the illegal use of e-scooters and electric bikes, is an operational matter for Police Scotland, with oversight provided by the Scottish Police Authority which operates independently of Scottish Ministers.

The Scottish Government fully supports Police Scotland and its partners in dealing with the misuse of such vehicles. Local policing teams are ideally placed to identify where the misuse of such vehicles is causing distress to the public and ensure that those areas can be prioritised to prevent future incidents.

Police Scotland issued communications before Christmas, reminding people to consider the legal implications when purchasing an electric scooter or e-scooters. It urged people to be cautious when buying electric bikes or e-scooters reminding the public that some models may not be permitted for use on public roads and that anyone found riding a non-compliant e-bike or e-scooter on a public road will likely have it seized by officers, with a significant cost to the owner. It highlighted that further information on the use of electric bikes is available at: .

The Scottish Government maintains contact with the UK Government on the shared challenge of tackling illegal e-bikes. The Scottish Government has noted the work undertaken by the UK Government through its Defence and Security Accelerator to undertake research on technology to tackle e-scooter and e-bike enabled crime, including technology to bring these vehicles to a controlled stop in a manner which does not pose a significant risk to the rider, the public or police officers.

This information is not collected by the Scottish Government but The Scottish Government’s Community Safety Policy team has recently received one piece of correspondence concerning a collision involving an e-bike in the Aberdeen area.

Officials are working collaboratively with the UK Government to understand potential legislative change in this area.