Seòmar agus comataidhean

I do not quite know how to react. That went a wee bit too far in praising me, but I will take it.

The Arniston club has a home at Gore Glen pavilion and an astro facility at Arniston park. Next, I hope that we will see boys and girls teams running right through the youth age groups.

Football is not just about the Hampdens, roaring full on a Saturday, but about local parks that are bursting with excitable teams and youngsters. There are more than 160,000 grass-roots players across the country. Most of them are under 18—all dreaming, playing, learning, and building the future of the game.

The Scotland team is an inspiration to those youngsters and—I say this to Mr Whittle—as a sports agnostic, I wish the Scotland team and our ambassadors, the tartan army, well.

They are illegal on pavements, but they are actually legal on roads. If you look at the “Highway Code”, which I have looked at carefully, you will see that they can go wherever a bicycle can go, and bicycles are legal on our roads. Of course, bicycles are in the same boat—you do not need a licence to have an ordinary bike. I ask the member simply to look at that.

However, I absolutely do not dispute that they are a menace, not just because of their speed but because of the way that they are driven. Much depends on defensive driving by motorists to evade them when they are weaving in and out of traffic. The riders deliberately make themselves menacing—macho, if you like—by being dressed in black. That adds another problem: apart from all the other problems, you cannot see them.

Most of the time—and sometimes for other cyclists—it is almost impossible to see them until you are just about upon them, quite apart from the weaving in and out. Even a cyclist, under the “Highway Code”, is supposed to have a front light and, at the back, not just a reflector light but a red flashing light so that they can be seen. Many of the e-bikes do not have that. I would start, therefore, with simple, practical things such as licensing and so on, and enforcing the requirements in the “Highway Code”.

Obviously policing helps, but I have concerns about that approach. Again, I make the point that it might be all right in town centres, but you will come across these vehicles when you are driving along the Portobello Road or coming through Holyrood park, and you cannot expect police to be on patrol all the time. The vehicles are not just there; they are delivering for various food chains and so on, so we have to consider the issue everywhere.

I will be interested to hear what the minister has to say about how the police are tackling the issue, but I would also like to know whether the Scottish Government is in conversation with the UK Government—this is not a hostile point, or a matter of what is or is not devolved—about how we can strengthen the requirements for the owners of these vehicles to have a licence; to be registered, taxed and insured; and to have an MOT, which every one of us with a vehicle needs to have. That would be a start.

I might have misheard, but I think that the minister referred to off-road vehicles. E-bikes are, of course, on-road forms of transport.

I was not going to contribute, but I have managed to get some free time this evening and it is a very important debate. I agree with much that Sue Webber said, but I will start with the “Highway Code”, which is UK wide. If you look up e-bikes, it says that you do not need a licence, and the bike does not need to be registered, taxed or insured—presumably, along with all that, it does not need to have an MOT.

We start from that position. If we had a registration or licensing system and addressed all the other issues such as insurance, we would be starting with a sound grounding, rather than simply saying that we need more police.

Yes, I will take the intervention, although I was about to sit down.

I might have misheard Michael Marra, but I thought that I heard him show a certain degree of sympathy for my proposition that e-bikes should be licensed, registered, taxed and insured. As well as allowing users to be traced, that would act as a deterrent in relation to the way in which some users behave.

My concern relates to the member suggesting that more visible police—or more police on the beat, as we might say—is somehow a solution. I propose to him that it is not much of a solution, because these kinds of people will simply get on their mobile phones and say, “There’s police about there,” and evade them. That happens in all circumstances; it just moves the problem somewhere else.

Yes, I appreciate that there are restrictions in the definition of a e-bike, and limitations on speed, but we know that the riders break those.

All of that would be part of it. If a rider was licensed, we would simply remove their licence, as we would do with anybody else who uses our roads if they were abusing the highway code and causing accidents and so on. We should consider that aspect as well. I am not completely opposed to policing in urban areas and pedestrian centres where there may be particular issues. However, with regard to general road usage, I would like to see these vehicles have to fulfil the requirements under the UK “Highway Code”, including the requirement for licensing.

I know that the member is keen to have clarity in the chamber. I was speaking about e-bikes; I did not mention e-scooters. The fact is that what I said about e-bikes is the case. Although an e-bike is defined as being limited to speeds of no more than 15mph, we know that many such bikes can be adapted. The safest approach is to require the same kind of rules for e-bikes as we require for motorists’ vehicles.

I am afraid that the member has chosen to have a very short debate about what she calls an emergency, so I am going to continue.

The Scottish Government has introduced a 21.5 per cent increase in the independent living fund, which provides crucial support to disabled persons to enable them to live fulfilling and independent lives. The Government has increased the voluntary sector short breaks fund by 62.5 per cent to £13 million, giving short-break support for adults and young carers. It is expanding hospital at home services. We have free personal care and no prescription charges, neither of which is available in England. That is all preventative spend—and I should also point out that there is no resident doctors strike here.

Against that, we have Westminster’s hostile approach to immigration, which, as has been mentioned already, could spell disaster for Scotland’s care sector. According to Scottish Care’s latest workforce survey, from May 2025, international staff make up at least 26 per cent of the current care workforce, and international workers make up more than 90 per cent of the workforce at some organisations. More than 6,800 of those workers are on visas, and they would be directly affected by proposed changes to UK immigration policy by the current Labour Government.

It is all about funding, migration and the economy, and nobody on the Opposition benches wants to attribute any of those issues to the difficulties facing the public sector throughout Scotland and in other parts of the UK.