Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]
Wednesday 8th November 2023
(5 months, 3 weeks ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Automated Vehicles Bill [HL] 2023-24 Read Hansard Text
Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]
Tuesday 28th November 2023
(5 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Automated Vehicles Bill [HL] 2023-24 Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Davies of Gower
That the Bill be now read a second time.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Lord Davies of Gower) (Con)
My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lady Vere of Norbiton, I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time. Self-driving vehicles offer an unprecedented opportunity to improve the safety and connectivity of our road network. Unencumbered by fatigue, distraction, frustration or intoxication, and built from the ground up to obey the rules of the road, self-driving vehicles could one day far exceed the standards of even the safest human drivers.
With 88% of road incidents currently involving human error, the potential for these technologies to reduce injury and save lives is plain to see. Self-driving vehicles could also improve connectivity across the country, opening up new options for travel and connecting people to amenities, jobs and education. Indeed, it is those currently at greatest risk of isolation—the elderly, those with disabilities and our rural communities—who could see the greatest benefit from some of these new technologies.
The international self-driving market has vast growth potential. Playing to our strengths in research and innovation, and with a robust regulatory system in place, the UK could capture as much as £42 billion of that market by 2035. Thanks to close collaboration between government, industry and academia over the last decade, we are already well on our way. We have worked with developers to launch trials across the UK, including self-driving bus services in Edinburgh and self-driving heavy goods vehicles in Sunderland. These trials are taking place with safety drivers on board, and they provide proof of concept for a technology that is coming into maturity.
We have also worked to set a clear direction of travel for the sector. We were an early mover, in 2015 launching a code of practice for trialling self-driving vehicles on public roads. In 2018 Parliament passed the Automated and Electric Vehicles Act, ensuring that there is a clear and direct route to compensation for any harm caused by a vehicle when driving itself. In August last year, we published the Connected & Automated Mobility 2025 paper, setting out the Government’s vision for bringing the benefits of self-driving vehicles to the UK.
As the technology continues to mature, and trials look to advance beyond the need for safety drivers, we need to ensure that the UK stays ahead of the curve. We must support the deployment of self-driving vehicles with a comprehensive legal framework, one that can deliver high standards of safety, ensure clear accountability and win the confidence of both the public and the sector. This Bill provides that comprehensive legal framework.
At present, responsibility for safe and legal driving rests solely with the human driver. This is the case even when they employ one of the many advanced driver assistance features currently available on the market, such as adaptive cruise control, automatic parking or automatic emergency braking. When these features advance beyond mere assistance, and truly self-driving technology becomes a reality, it will no longer be reasonable to hold the human driver responsible for the vehicle’s behaviour.
To address this fundamental change, the Bill will, for the first time, provide for corporate entities to assume responsibility for how self-driving vehicles behave, underpinned by a robust framework of safety standards, monitoring and enforcement. This legislation implements the recommendations of a four-year review by the Law Commission of England and Wales and the Scottish Law Commission. Their joint report draws on countless hours of expert legal analysis and three rounds of public consultation yielding hundreds of responses. I am grateful to the commissioners for their work, and for providing such a robust set of foundations for this Bill.
I move on to the main measures of the Bill, beginning with the issue that I know, rightly, will be at the forefront of noble Lords’ minds. Safety will be baked into every facet of this new regime from the very beginning. Only vehicles that meet the self-driving test will be authorised as self-driving. To satisfy this test, they will need to meet rigorous standards and be capable of driving safely and legally without human intervention. The test will be informed by a statement of safety principles, published by government following consultation and setting out the behaviours that self-driving vehicles should be expected to achieve. We intend that these safety principles will be drafted in line with the Government’s safety ambition: that self-driving vehicles should meet an equivalent level of safety to that of a careful and competent human driver. Perhaps regrettably, I should stress that this is in fact a much higher standard than that of the average driver on UK roads.
A new authorisation scheme will supplement the existing vehicle approval process and apply the self- driving test. The scheme will guarantee that there is an authorised self-driving entity, or ASDE, associated with every self-driving feature deployed in vehicles on our roads. The ASDE, likely a corporate entity such as the manufacturer or software developer, will assume responsibility for how the vehicle drives when the self- driving feature is activated. Once authorised, the vehicle and the ASDE will be subject to ongoing safety monitoring under the in-use regulatory scheme. Any safety-critical changes to the self-driving feature will require reauthorisation.
The Bill distinguishes between two types of self-driving features: those that can complete an entire journey in self-driving mode and those that can complete only part of a journey, thus requiring the option of handing back control to a human driver in certain contexts. In the latter case, while the vehicle is driving itself, the driver assumes a new role, which we call the user-in-charge. The Bill shields the user-in-charge from prosecution for offences relating to the driving task. The user-in-charge remains responsible for other elements not relating to the driving task, such as roadworthiness and insurance. Naturally, they are required to resume control if directed to by the vehicle, subject to being given sufficient time to regain awareness.
On no-user-in-charge, or NUIC, some features will allow the vehicle to complete an entire journey without needing the option of handing back to a human. These features will not require a user-in-charge. People in the vehicle, if indeed there are any at all, would all simply be considered passengers while the self-driving vehicle is activated. We refer to these as no-user-in-charge features.
The Bill creates a new legal entity for these circumstances: a licensed no-user-in-charge operator, also known as a NUIC operator. The NUIC operator will be comparable to a fleet operator; responsible for overseeing the vehicle and responding to incidents such as breakdowns. As always, the ASDE retains responsibility for how the vehicle drives.
The Bill includes a strict obligation on both these new entities, ASDEs and NUIC operators, to disclose safety data as part of in-use regulation, with criminal penalties for managers if they fail to comply. The Bill also grants powers to investigate incidents and issue regulatory sanctions. We will be able to direct entities to take certain actions to prevent future incidents, to issue compensation to those impacted or to pay fines. The Secretary of State will have unilateral power to suspend or alter any self-driving authorisation rapidly, if necessary to protect public safety. The Bill also contains measures to allow for safety investigations to be undertaken by independent statutory inspectors. These inspectors’ reports will not apportion blame or liability, but instead will make recommendations to improve safety in the sector as a whole. Together, the individual elements of the safety framework—approval, authorisation, in-use regulation, operator licensing and incident investigation—will form a safety feedback loop so that learning and improvement is baked in.
The Bill represents a major step in creating a full legal framework for self-driving vehicles, but it is not the only step. As with any new technology, we must regulate alongside its growth, building in the right checks and balances and the flexibility to respond to new developments and new use cases. The Bill will be followed by consultations and secondary legislation on the core elements that I have outlined. The statement of safety principles will be subject to parliamentary scrutiny, as will the authorisation and approval requirements and the in-use regulation scheme.
All the secondary legislative elements that make up the cohesive whole will be consulted on following Royal Assent, bringing in the views of the public, industry and academia. They will be delivered through secondary legislation or statutory guidance, which can be developed over time and subsequently amended as the technology evolves. Policy scoping notes relating to elements of the secondary legislation programme have been published, and I encourage noble Lords to review them ahead of Committee. I am also happy to arrange in-depth briefings as required.
Before I conclude, I would like to clarify the extent of the Bill. The scope of the Law Commission’s review was
“self-driving regulation in relation to road vehicles”.
Therefore, the Bill does not deal with other forms of self-driving technology, such as drones, aircraft or sea-craft. The Bill will extend to Great Britain. Self-driving vehicles which are authorised under the new regime can be authorised to use their self-driving features only in England, Wales and Scotland. While there is no explicit legal prohibition on their use if they cross the border into Northern Ireland, they would be operating without the clarity of legal responsibility that the Bill will provide. Operation with a safety driver or in conventional, human-driven mode will still be possible.
I conclude by highlighting again the opportunities here, for they are threefold. The first is road safety. Over 1,500 people are killed on our roads each year; each one a tragic loss felt so keenly by friends and family. There is now an opportunity to start to reduce that loss. The Bill is explicit that our safety principles must be framed with a view to improving road safety, and our safety ambition goes beyond this, setting a standard well above that of the average human driver.
The second opportunity is connectivity. Self-driving vehicles could significantly improve the efficiency of passenger and freight traffic on our roads while offering new travel options to those most at risk of isolation.
Finally, there is the economic opportunity. Recent years have seen astonishing leaps forward in the UK’s homegrown self-driving vehicle sector. The Law Commission’s thorough and detailed review of this subject lasted four years. In that same period, the UK self-driving sector generated £475 million of direct investment and created 1,500 new jobs. With the Law Commission’s work as its foundation, this legislation will deliver the vital legal clarity that the UK needs to retain its position at the global vanguard of this new technology. I beg to move.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome the introduction of this long-awaited Bill to regulate self-driving vehicles. It introduces a legal framework to enable this developing technology in the UK, building on the insurance measures for automated cars in the Automated and Electric Vehicles Act 2018 and policies set out in the August 2022 paper.
Unfortunately, this Bill is not enough to give the public or industry confidence in the emerging technology. Its bare-bones regulations allow driverless cars on our roads, set minimum standards and make manufacturers responsible, but it fails properly to prepare for the transition period when some vehicles will be automated and others not. The Government need to prepare for the transition with a plan to monitor and prepare for the rollout, to give industry the certainty that it needs to invest and the public the confidence that they will be safe on our roads.
I am also concerned that the Bill offers no protection for the jobs that could be lost during the transition, which is why these Benches will call on the Government to engage with trade unions and workers to make sure that automation creates jobs rather than loses them. What assessment have the Government made of how many new jobs could be created in the self-driving vehicle industry? What preliminary discussions has the Minister had with trade unions about the rollout?
There are also missed opportunities in this Bill. Throughout its passage, I hope the House will consider potential loopholes in the legislation. For example, why does it not cover autonomous robots such as personal delivery devices? To turn briefly to the marketing restrictions, can the Minister explain what instances have led to these clauses? Are misleading marketing practices for self-driving vehicles commonplace here in the UK or elsewhere in the world?
I move to the liability clauses. The Bill outlines a provision for an independent inspector who is able to investigate collisions and incidents involving automated vehicles to assess what technology may need to be improved but not to indicate blame or cause. However, given that the Bill outlines specific legal accountability depending on whether the driver or automated vehicle is in control in order to assign cause, does the Minister believe that the inspector should have a similar, though non-legally binding, power to independently report to Parliament on the effect and safety of automated vehicles on Britain’s roads?
I turn to the clauses highlighting the differences between user-in-charge vehicles, which require a legal and fit driver to assume vehicle control for parts of a journey, and non-user-in-charge vehicles, which can operate entirely autonomously for an entire journey. The Minister will know that non-user-in-charge vehicles do not require a legal and fit driver to be in the vehicle at any point during the journey. Will he therefore outline the safety regulations should a non-user-in-charge vehicle suffer a fault during a journey, given that there may be no legal and fit driver present to assume control of the vehicle?
The passage of this Bill will have the support of these Benches, but I hope the Minister will work constructively with Members from across the House to address any deficiencies or shortcomings. Autonomous vehicles present an exciting opportunity, which, if properly utilised and regulated by this Government, could create a safer and more prosperous way of living. Unfortunately, the transition and the rollout of this technology could also pose serious challenges to public safety and jobs.
Only vehicles which are safe for drivers, passengers and pedestrians should be allowed on our roads. Ministers must review all available evidence to ensure this remains the case. I finish by urging the Minister again to take steps to guarantee that the introduction of autonomous vehicles brings decent new jobs here in the UK. Automation has an incredible potential to make our lives simpler and more prosperous. However, if not properly managed and regulated, it could create greater risks than opportunities.
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD)
My Lords, I declare my interest, as a member of my family works in the vehicle connectivity sector, but I have no financial interests. I have migrated to this Bill from my usual territory of financial services, business and intellectual property, and it is those aspects which I will mainly cover.
At present, there is a thriving ecosystem in the automated and connected vehicle sectors, including small and innovative businesses, especially on the software side, and whose protection and income streams are based on intellectual property and data. While I understand and appreciate the work that has been done by the Law Commissions and the legal framework in the Bill, I have questions about its impact on that ecosystem for small businesses in particular, and for the preservation of intellectual property rights and rights to monetise data.
My concern is heightened by the already prevalent tendency to default to big-name providers, including large overseas technology companies winning government contracts. There is already an unlevel playing field caused by “play safe” selection of dominant companies, and that dominance is further reinforced by the acquisition of data for themselves when they are selected for important UK projects. Government has a role to play here if it wants to emerge with any UK champions. That includes government having the expertise to analyse bids from less obvious sources, and without forcing commercial disclosures of a type not normally sought from large entities. I have also noted the announcement that the Government may be amending the National Security and Investment Act regarding mergers and acquisitions, which may also further benefit big-name companies from abroad.
Turning to the Bill, I wonder how the present ecosystem will be affected by the conditions surrounding the new regulated entities. This is a point where information requirements could force disclosures or distort contracts, essentially stripping supply chain companies of their commercial, IP and data exploitation opportunities. It would be unfortunate for smaller companies to be forced into a choice between ultimate liability and massive insurance costs, or contract and licensing provisions that leverage away their own data exploitation possibilities.
I now turn more specifically to insurance. At the commercial level, the London market is well placed to develop cover for the UK and elsewhere, so I noted with interest that the Government announced a consultation on captives: that is, an insurance company which is a wholly owned subsidiary providing insurance to its non-insurance parent company or companies. Somewhat ironically, London has the best experts for this underwriting, but we do not have any captives within the UK. Captives might be attractive for the automated vehicle sector, with their associated commercial considerations, including as a part of providing “good financial standing”. However, will the UK regulator, the Prudential Regulation Authority, take exception to the monoline nature of captives and make life difficult? Has the Minister any information in that regard, and have there been cross-departmental discussions?
The other insurance aspect is for the consumer, with a particular point of interest being when a driver becomes liable after a transition from automated driving. Naturally, insurance companies are interested in data on those transitions, including how many times those instances happen and in what circumstances and where, as well as driving patterns and so on. That is commercially useful to insurance companies for the purposes of assessing risk, getting the prices right and ascertaining whether someone is liable, and who. My question is: should they get it all for free? Some insurance companies are already involved in funding developments; others are not. Should their positions be the same? Over time, information will derive naturally from actual claims, but, more generally, this is an area where the entitlement to benefit from or monetise data resides elsewhere.
Some of this kind of information may also be delved into for other investigatory purposes, including authorisation and licensing. For the consumer, there is the dangling threat of insurance companies having to analyse whether the response at handover was what a competent driver would do.
Putting a simple time limit for the liability switch is making light of a difficult situation. Fighter pilots are trained in handovers—and I doubt that they are doing crosswords in the meanwhile; but that is the position envisaged in the documents I have read. I have spent a lot of time being driven around, rather than driving, as a safety precaution. Many times, I have looked up from reading a brief to wonder where on earth I was and felt quite disoriented—and that was in a constituency I was supposed to know and was representing. Regrettably, we will need statistics before we know the interval after handover that is fair to compare with a competent driver in ordinary circumstances—even if we can define that—because it will be different on a straight road with no manoeuvring expected, compared with a much more complex layout or circumstances when the AV cannot cope any more. Potentially, this puts a lot of uncertainty on the consumer, as well as insurance companies, and there may be a role for a levy and compensation model around the transitions, at least initially.
Clause 14 allows access to data for insurance purposes, but it is not clear to me whether that is intended to be free, so perhaps the Minister could shed some light on that. Already, there is lobbying to make the wording mandatory. That is relevant because provisions in the Bill acknowledge commercial rights—in this context, Clause 42(7), which applies to the whole of Part 1 —but that does not protect commercial rights where the disclosure and use by third parties is considered necessary. Clause 14 already seems to imply that information disclosure to insurers and others may be necessary—regulations might make it so—and the industry lobby wants to make it so in the Bill. Either route to mandating puts it outside the commercial harm provision in subsection (7). That needs more examination, and I suggest something along the lines of fair and reasonable compensation for the commercial use of information.
Finally, I have some interest in proof of safety and proof of concept, as it takes a vast amount of data to prove statistically that something is safer than something that exists already. Road fatality in the UK is 5 per billion miles driven. If you were to compare that with, say, a statistically significant number, you might have to look at the number of driven miles per 50 deaths. However, that would be 10 billion miles driven, which could be 100,000 AVs driving 10,000 miles, or 10,000 AVs driving 100,000 miles. That is an awful lot of miles, and we only have about 100 to 500 vehicles that could do that, so that converts to 20 to 100 years, depending on which end we are at.
I am interested to know how we are going to get this kind of mileage done. Will it be all in the UK? Will we accept evidence from other countries? Will it be for each AV, because why should you have your statistics marred by a bad apple? If we are going to accept evidence from other countries, can we be sure that it will be from similar driving conditions? A lot more could be discussed around that, but it is a very big statistical job to prove that something is safer than something else.
I recognise that the Bill is the start of constructing a framework and not the end, so I look forward to exploring its effects and some of the things that I have raised further at Committee stage.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth (Con)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness and particularly to hear some of her insights on the insurance industry. I congratulate my noble friend on his appointment to the Front Bench in the transport portfolio; we go back a long way, and I am delighted that he is in this role. I declare my interests as set out in the register.
I am very supportive of this legislation. It is excellent and very necessary. AI and automated vehicles present great positive opportunities for our country and for the people who live here, including workers. Properly grabbed, it should mean an increase in the number of jobs in the United Kingdom and this is what the legislation is all about. For the individual, it is the opportunity for people being transported to enhance relaxation in a vehicle or to work in a vehicle while it is being driven. Properly handled, it will improve road safety, with fewer accidents. I know that is something we will want to look at as the legislation passes through your Lordships’ House.
I do not want to go into any detail on particular provisions at Second Reading but just to talk about the general principles of the legislation. It will allow non-drivers, older drivers, partially sighted drivers and blind people the freedom to be driven. It will allow freight to be transported at non-peak hours more easily. Properly handled, it will reduce carbon emissions. It will reduce the need for roadside assistance for accidents. It will lead to lower insurance premiums for vehicle owners who are being driven. This is the golden inheritance we will have if we tackle this legislation in the right way. Of course, I appreciate that the devil will be in the detail, but this legislation is important.
Moving away from the individual, there will be massive possibilities for the UK economy, as well as for other countries which will necessarily be our competitors such as the US, Israel, China and those in Europe. No doubt, there will also be the facility for co-operation, and I wonder whether my noble friend will be able to indicate whether there have been discussions with other countries. I had the opportunity of corresponding with John Aquino of Cruise in Silicon Valley—I think Silicon Valley is where there has been the most progress—to hear about some of the insights there and the possibilities. He has told me of work happening in our own country—Wayve AI in Cambridge and London in particular.
Since 2015, the Government have funded the new Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles and I would be keen to hear from my noble friend what the budget is and what work has been done. Work is being done as we speak on ensuring that we grapple with these opportunities. It is a government body with scientific and technological expertise, and it would be good to hear from my noble friend what precisely it is doing and, as I say, about the budget and what liaison there is with other countries.
The Government deserve enormous credit for this legislation. It is important. We will need a budget and it will be good to hear how that works out. I realise that this is essentially reserved legislation, but it is important that we liaise with Wales and Scotland and, where appropriate, Northern Ireland—I appreciate that it is outside the legislation, but no doubt it would want to know how things could be developed there too. I am also keen to hear about that.
Passenger transport is obviously a particular challenge. My noble friend mentioned what is already happening in Edinburgh, and it would be good to hear about that experience. I appreciate that drones and waterborne vehicles are outside the scope of the legislation, but there is obviously work to be done there as well, so it might be good to hear what the Government propose in the long term in those areas, while noting that they are not subject to this legislation.
Safety must be paramount in the legislation—it goes without saying that that is the most important thing—and no doubt we will be looking at that in detail as it passes through your Lordships’ House. I would also be keen to look at the sanctions, both criminal and civil, and what existing legislation we would want to make use of and how that works in with this.
In concluding, I think the Government deserve credit and I trust that we will all get behind this legislation and improve it as it passes through your Lordships’ House.
Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)
My Lords, I support the Bill. It is right that as a nation we should signal our acceptance of this technology, even if it is not quite yet oven-ready or mature enough to be properly rolled out. We are a nation whose future will depend on our ability to adapt and harness new technologies, so we must signal to the entrepreneurial businesses of the world that we are open for such business. “Come and build here” is the message we are giving, and I thoroughly approve.
I also support this Bill in my capacity as an occasional spokesman for both rural Britain and an ever-greener Britain. It will help to improve connectivity and reduce the isolation of the rural elderly, while ensuring that all generations have better access to training, work and leisure. Initially, my thinking went along the lines of each parish having a self-drive vehicle for use by its parishioners, but then I realised that you would not need to do that; you would just need two or three privately owned self-drive cars which could be rented out to parishioners to go to the hospital, shops or even the local evening football training—all cars properly licensed, of course.
Elon Musk believes that not only will self-driving cars be 10 times safer than manual cars but they will, in his words, develop “massive fleet learning”. He also believes that, bearing in mind that we use our car for less than 10% of our waking hours—I am surprised it is that much—just by tapping a button, we will be able to add our car to, say, the Uber 2 fleet and have it earn income for us when we are at work or on vacation. In my case, of course, that would mean I would have to remove my golf clubs from the boot, not to mention the rubbish that always seems to accumulate in my car, but maybe it will be worth it.
Going back to village transport, I fear that it is unlikely that at present the Uber fleet—either manual or self-drive—will be available in most rural villages, but the existence of self-drive vehicles within a community will mean that Mrs Smith, who owns such a car, will be able to lend it out to her neighbours without having to drive it herself or having to worry about the driving skills of old Mr Jones going to the hospital, or even young Master Jones going to football training. As a result, connectivity in rural areas will be dramatically improved—and, believe me, after the lack of housing, the lack of public transport to shops, health services, leisure and even jobs is one of the most serious shortcomings of current rural living if your income happens to be in the lowest quartile.
I have to admit, and I apologise for it, that I was not able to attend the various briefing meetings that have been held in anticipation of this Bill, so I may have missed something, but I have one or two minor concerns that I do not think are touched on in the Bill. They probably fall into the category of ancillary legislation, which the Minister mentioned. As I said, they are not serious concerns, but I hope they are worth mentioning.
For instance, we might have to change the Highway Code and even the law to stop jaywalkers. In certain self-driving vehicle trials in Italy, people tended to walk out in front of automatic vehicles and behave irresponsibly—to challenge them, as it were. I am not sure what that says about the average Italian pedestrian or their current expectation of Italian driving abilities, but my point is that when we have self-drive cars on our roads, it may be that, as in the USA and Switzerland for instance, UK pedestrians should be able to walk across urban roads—I stress urban—only at certain points and when permitted. We do not want early accidents undermining the success of self-drive vehicles— I speak as an inveterate jaywalker.
On the other hand, on the assumption that all AVs will have permanently functioning all-round cameras and even black boxes, people will soon learn. Everything around a self-drive car will be recorded. You might even think twice about smacking your child near a self-drive car.
One other aspect occurred to me. I do not expect an answer as it is probably again an ancillary matter, but there are times when one is driving along and the police wave you down to tell you that there has been an incident of some sort and that you will have to wait or find another route. Clearly, a self-drive car will have no problem either waiting or finding an alternative route, but how will the policeman communicate with a self-drive car and how will the self-drive car know that this is a policeman and not some random joker, trouble- maker or car thief? As I said, neither of my concerns represents an insurmountable problem.
Finally, I have an extra reason to support this Bill. It is the hope that it will encourage the development of the same self-drive technology in other fields, off the road. I realise that the noble Lord has excluded these from the umbrella of this Bill, but I want to state them anyway. I have long had this vision of all farming in the world, particularly on smallholdings in sub-Saharan Africa, being carried out by myriad small, connected and automated tractors—CATs, I call them—about the size of a garden tractor or smaller. They are beginning to be developed. These CATs, I hope, will soon be nurturing the crop in their field carefully, day and night, using their own artificial intelligence and awareness of the weather forecasts, with only the minimal use of sprays and fertilisers, to produce a crop without the need for the farmers themselves to be expensively trained, because that expensive training is in sub-Saharan Africa the major blockage to optimal food production.
The other area for AVs is on the high seas. Rolls-Royce is on record as saying that a greater use of autonomous marine vessels could save the global marine industry up to £80 billion per annum in potential reductions to capital costs, manning costs and fuel costs. However, all that is in the future and, as the Minister said, not particularly relevant to this Bill, even if the technology implicit in the Bill is what is going to make it happen. So I conclude by repeating that I thoroughly approve of the Bill and I look forward to us all ironing out the inevitable potential problems as we take it forward.
Lord Borwick (Con)
My Lords, I first declare my interest as an officer of the APPG for Self-Driving Vehicles and a business lifetime spent in the vehicle industry. I am also the father of a son who has learning difficulties and could, like many disabled people, certainly benefit from these vehicles. I have also been the chairman of the Greenwich trial technical committee. I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, that the pedestrian schoolchildren in that trial who thought it would be useful to leap out in front of an autonomous vehicle to see whether it stopped tried it two or three times and found that it did stop. After that, they found the whole experience extremely boring and stopped taunting the vehicle in this way—so in fact it was perfectly safe.
This is an enabling Bill, to enable what I hope is a great industry. We cannot be certain about the future, of course, but we can be fairly certain about the present. The present state of cars cannot be optimum. They are driven badly by humans who get bored, smoke, chat or argue with their family, get drunk and certainly produce urban pollution by accelerating too fast and braking too hard. Computers will be better drivers because they have more varied input than humans, and much better ability to concentrate on the problems. The question of the moment is: when did you last enjoy driving? Was it when there was less traffic and when there were fewer bicycles and bus lanes? Would we enjoy driving more in an autonomous vehicle? This Bill is quite wide in its power to demand information. The danger is only that too much information is delivered. If the department gets terabytes of data following an accident, will it realistically be able to cope?
There are people working on digital commentary systems, which tell the listener what is being observed and why the vehicle is doing something. The systems are analogous to the way of teaching a young driver to improve by getting them to comment on their driving decisions. How much useful information comes out will depend on the detailed decision process, but it certainly can be considered. The alternative is that, following an accident, somebody issues terabytes of data and we are no further forward in working out how to stop other vehicles with other systems repeating the accident. That happens now, because human drivers are very fallible in remembering their own faults. In general, the sooner we can get this Bill into law, the better.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, it gives me pleasure to take part in this debate and I declare an interest as a member of the all-party AV group. I am also grateful for so many members of the industry who came and briefed us last week. We also need to thank the House of Lords Library, which has produced a comprehensive summary of the issues, and of course the Law Commission, which has spent four years looking at it. I think it is a really good Bill and it is going to help us a lot, as many noble Lords have told us.
It will be good for the concept of who is in charge. I like this idea of a user-in-charge; that is a really important issue. But, given the fact that the Bill has, I think, 77 clauses, it is going to take some studying when we get to Committee. One of the issues is going to be, as one or two noble Lords have said, the question of interfaces between when you are on automatic mode, if I can call it that; when you are not on that; where you are when it happens and who else gets involved, or should not do. The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, talked about the importance of having some self-drive capability, especially in the country, and he is absolutely right. To some extent, we could be using scooters or electric bikes—self-drive cars probably have a benefit of being more weather-resistant than my electric scooter, my electric bike or anything else—but the idea of individual transport is something we seem to have talked about a lot at the moment. It has to be good for everyone, efficient, convenient and a good investment.
I would like to spend a few minutes talking about safety. As the Minister said in his excellent introduction, safety is very important. But, like all things that are mechanical, when they come into contact with pedestrians, cyclists or other non-motorised users, the safety debate gets a little bit unfair. The AVs will probably be better than humans at avoiding collisions with other motor vehicles, but when it comes to humans on the road, or cyclists or whatever, there are a few questions we need to address. I was impressed by the background briefing that noble Lords will have received for the King’s Speech quite recently, which set out the requirements that came from the Law Commission:
“Only vehicles that can drive themselves safely and can follow all road traffic rules without the need for a human to monitor or control the vehicle … will be classified as self-driving and allowed on our roads”.
It carries on to say:
“Companies will have to meet safety requirements from the point a vehicle is introduced onto our roads or face new sanctions and penalties”.
We then come to the definition of what is safe: what are the safety principles that the Minister mentioned? We are told that road safety in Great Britain is better as a result of the use of authorised automatic vehicles on roads than it would otherwise be. I challenge that. This country’s road safety record is a lot worse than many other countries’. I am sure we will go into this in Committee. It is worse than Sweden, which had a target about 10 years ago of not having any road deaths at all in a year. It has not got there, but it is still better than us.
We have to get this safety rule better defined somehow. I am sure I shall have some amendments when we come to it. It is also a question of where we do it. If one is driving up a motorway, or your vehicle is, that is probably quite a good place to start the trial because there would be no pedestrians or cyclists, we hope, on the motorway. I expect that is one of the things that went quite well in the United States until recently. But when you get to narrow roads—maybe in the village that the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, mentioned; I do not know—or to towns and cities, it will get much more difficult. I will not read out my definition of safety now because that will come in Committee, but we can do a great deal better and have a target of making our road safety even better than it is at the moment.
On regulation, or how this will be policed and enforced, I recall proposing an amendment to some transport Bill a long time ago that suggested that the Office of Rail and Road should be responsible for road safety as well as rail safety. It does a good job on rail safety, as we all know, but it is not allowed to do much on road safety because that is thought to be the role of either the Department for Transport or the police. The ORR has a technical expertise that is well worth looking at. It would be quite nice if we had a consistent structure between these various transport modes—I include air as well as rail, road and sea—so that we have a safety regulator and, separately, an accident investigation branch that also does a blame-free investigation. We have a lot to learn, and it would be really good to bring in a bit of consistency.
Finally, I ask the Minister how this Bill and what we aim to do compares with what has happened on the continent in France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain or wherever. Are we ahead or behind? If I want to drive my car to France, will it work on AV mode there or do we have a long way to go? I look forward to his comments and to this Bill’s passage through the House.
The Earl of Lytton (CB)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, particularly because it was he who encouraged me to take part in this debate. I acknowledge that self-driving vehicles are an exciting technology, with considerable advantages and implications for distribution, deliveries, and public and personal transport. It is partly the reason why 5G rollout is an object of government policy. To get ahead of that, we obviously need legislation and a framework for the future. I commend the all-party parliamentary group on its work and on setting out a very useful shopping list of criteria. I found that most helpful.
Any policy in this area must consistently apply core principles or it will fail, which is why Part 1 of the Bill is so important. But before the Government get too misty-eyed over the seductive technology and the benefits claimed by protagonists, I just suggest a slight reality check. This is also in the hope that someone will tell me that there are answers to all my reservations.
First, there are some claims made for AVs that I respectfully challenge. One is that AV technology is greener. It transpires on closer examination that this is largely hypothecated on the use of battery electric vehicles, a development that already exists and is not intrinsic to self-driving vehicles. Another is that it might be expected to reduce congestion. On that, too, I am not entirely convinced. Even in a fully digitised, connected and traffic management-ordered world, and even if the numbers of vehicles are reduced, peaks of congestion, unplanned events, inadequate capacity and progressive devotion of urban road space to other priorities are likely to persist. However, the idea of instantly directing approaching vehicles away from traffic incidents would be extremely welcome and, I am sure, benefit emergency services. That said, if the traffic jam-avoiding algorithms of some of the more hyperactive satnav systems are any indication—and I have used a few—significant additional road miles by way of diversions through previously quiet residential streets may be one rather negative outcome.
The AVs that replace conventional vehicles may also be on the road for longer hours, so there are numerous other factors to be considered before some of the claims are entirely credible to me. Safety, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, seems to be at least partly a factor of road design as opposed to the intrinsic error of the human.
Secondly, I believe it is an acknowledged fact that for an extended period of time—possibly several decades —there will be AVs with artificial intelligence and smart sensors, and conventional vehicles driven by fallible mortals, all sharing the same space. This was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe. This requires an artificial intelligence that can cope with the irrational. I am a driver—that is the only interest I need to declare for this purpose—and I can usually tell whether a motorist in front of me or in another lane is distracted, looking for a destination, diffident or nervous, likely to cut in or pull out with little warning, or just plain aggressive. However, if I live long enough to be a driver faced with general AV use, I would like a visual warning of the fact so that I can make due allowance. Maybe a little flashing light could do that job for me.
Thirdly, there is the technology itself, which—leaving the matter of 5G rollout to one side—still has some way to go, in my view. I drive a vehicle that has certain automated assistance functions; noble Lords will be familiar with these. It has an automatic braking system that I cannot disable. A bit like a flighty horse, it is liable to screech to a halt for a plastic bag blowing across the road in front, an uneven roadside kerb or even pedestrian railings on a bend. It is only a matter of time before another driver goes into the back of me because of this. It also warns me fairly frequently that this function has become inoperative due to external conditions. It did not react to a deer that crossed the road immediately in front of me on the A24 the other night, which I hit a glancing blow.
The lane change warning is, however, something I can disable; it takes the form of a rather unnerving wobble in the steering that could, of course, mean other things to an experienced driver. On satnav, I frequently find that the speed limit, road priorities or even roads and junctions themselves have not been updated, despite a recent software download. Sometimes the system does not even know where I am, for admittedly short but potentially critical periods—there is one junction on the M25 that is like that. I predict that it will be some considerable time before the communications network is robust and comprehensive enough and has adequate reserve capacity—emergency capacity in particular —for general AV use. For a while, I suspect that greater differentials will arise between those areas where AVs can be used successfully and those where they cannot. We should not be blind to that.
Of course, there is the issue of suitability, to which Clause 1(3) of the Bill refers in terms of vehicle credentials. It should also take account of the road environment in which these vehicles operate, which is often of very variable quality. AVs may operate successfully somewhere such as Milton Keynes, for instance, on a coherently designed and well-constructed street layout. But get to, say, the rural West Country, an area that I part-time share with the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, and it is a rather different matter.
So, even without erased road markings; signage hidden behind vegetation or too dirty to read; the odd failed traffic light; roads with hidden potholes, anything but conventional width and—my noble friend Lord Cameron will understand when I say this—with or without large farm vehicle usage on narrow lanes; and no 5G or indeed any G at all, there are potential limits to where AVs may be safely used, apart from the general competency of the vehicle itself. I do not see this expressed clearly in Part 1.
While on that subject, I note a peculiarity in the definition of a road, which in 2021 was the subject of a legal case on the Isle of Wight and caused me to contemplate private roads where Street View does not penetrate and which may have novel street finishes, furniture, strange demarcation and so on. Two recent road schemes on public roads near my home are clearly defective. One is affected by appalling visibility for traffic approaching from the right, and the other is a new staggered junction of such appalling geometry that you cannot negotiate it without seriously cutting the corner. That does not matter if you are in smart car, but it does if you are in a delivery truck.
I entirely take the point made in an email I received from the cycling lobby that its members, plus, of course, the elderly on scooters, pedestrians, pets, deer, foxes, badgers and preferably hedgehogs, need to be recognisable by this evolving technology.
I have a particular worry, which has been expressed by other noble Lords, about this hybrid driver in control who is none the less able to allow automation to take over, subject to immediate human intervention where necessary. I sense this may become a commonplace halfway house, which is why I mention it when other noble Lords have also done so. I am not a behavioural scientist, but I wonder how quickly human attention returns to effective and possibly emergency reaction if, given conventional distractions inside or outside the vehicle, focus has wandered elsewhere once automation takes over. Avoiding danger is often a matter of intuitive prediction and behavioural clues, not always achieved in the last resort by sensors suddenly deciding they are going to apply the brakes.
Finally, a cautionary tale. In a previous attempt to improve highway capacity and safety, the Government invested in—noble Lords will know this—smart motorways. But, seemingly in an effort to reduce costs, they decided to omit the safety camera system designed to detect vehicles stopped in the slow lane—with tragic consequences. I am no longer happy simply to allow a Government driven by the politics of presentation and the balancing of finances, possibly in priority over safety, a completely free hand in such matters. I want an entity with comprehensive focus, independence, status and determination, equivalent to something like the Health and Safety Executive, to have oversight of how this technology is rolled out. I am not clear that the Bill adequately deals with that.
Therefore, while welcoming AV technology and the necessity of this Bill, I do not see it as addressing all essential aspects; and there are a lot of caveats to this, with critical elements left to subsequent regulation. I simply suggest proceeding with some caution lest we act in haste only to repent at leisure.
Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)
My Lords, I welcome the Bill, and it is a pleasure to take part in this Second Reading debate. In doing so, I declare my technology interest as adviser to Boston Ltd. I congratulate the Law Commission on its excellent work on the Bill. It has done a significant suite of work across many new technologies and delivered Bills, commentary and reports to Parliament of excellent quality; long may that continue. It enables us to have better initial legislation and a sense of the depth and breadth of the issues involved when we try to make optimum use of and deploy all the new technologies we currently have in our human hands.
I would like to touch on five principles: safety, transparency, accessibility, public engagement and power usage. First, on safety, it seems a useful discipline that, before embarking on any programme of automation or autonomous delivery, we should consider what can be done to improve the current situation. The Government state that the overriding objective here is better, safer journeys. What can currently be done with what we currently have?
When he winds up our debate, I would welcome comments from my noble friend the Minister on a number of examples. First, e-scooters: what do they add to better, safer journeys? What do they add to a healthier population? They certainly do not take cars out of the mix for the kind of journeys they do. What is the Government’s current position on further e-scooter experiments? What role do they think e-scooters play in a multiple, accessible, safe, healthy transport ecosystem?
There has been an extraordinary spike since Covid of cars and vehicles shooting red lights, even those on pedestrian crossings. Does my noble friend agree that, with very minimal technology investment—the cameras may well be there on many of these crossings and lights—government and local authorities should look to those cameras and that evidence to clamp down on and put an end to cars shooting red lights, as though red has suddenly become a soft amber simply to sail through? Can he confirm that, in major cities, these crossings are all likely to be currently monitored through the main transport control centres, such as Palestra in London?
Nothing is achieved by a planning folly to take away all road markings, all crossings, all traffic lights, all signage, and put cars and pedestrians, tankers and toddlers in a so-called “shared space”. What is the Government’s position on existing shared-space schemes? How are they helping to deliver the rightly set out overriding objective of safer, better, more accessible journeys?
The Minister stated in his introduction—and it is in the notes to the Bill—that autonomous vehicles “will not be distracted”. That is certainly true if one considers distraction from a human perspective, but what about all the things that can easily confuse, make the system not work as intended and have tragic consequences, as has sometimes been seen in other jurisdictions?
What have the Government made of the evidence from experiments from around the world? I will draw on one example, from California, where it was reported in evidence that 40 incidents of autonomous vehicles interfering with emergency services vehicles had been recorded. Does my noble friend the Minister think this a high or low number? What are the consequences? What analysis have the Government made of that evidence and how has that fed into the Bill before us? In short, what is the Government’s safety ambition for autonomous vehicles? In no sense do I advocate this or even suggest it, but to put it at its most extreme, if it was evidentially proven that autonomous vehicles with no user in charge were significantly safer than human drivers, would the Government move to ban human driving? I merely put the question as it seems a logical conclusion to the arguments set out in much of the Bill’s documentation.
Turning to transparency, will the data gathered in all these experiments be available? Will it be open for third parties to analyse, consider and look at? Transparency is critical if we are to have increasing engagement, comfort and confidence in these new technologies. Will the Government look to have accredited third-party professionals to review, opine on and accredit these systems—the systems much more than the vehicles themselves?
The Bill sets out that there will be an ongoing review of the vehicles, but it should be more a review of the vehicles, the software and the technologies. How regular is that review to be? For it to be optimal, it needs to be done in real time and second by second. What learnings have the Government taken from other industries, such as the airline industry, including the approach that Rolls-Royce takes with its sensational Trent engines?
On accessibility and inclusion, can my noble friend the Minister confirm that all development in this AV space will be inclusive by design? If it is, that will resolve so many of the issues of access and equality which will otherwise impact later down the track. Again, what learnings have been taken from many of the rollouts, not least in San Francisco, when it comes to accessibility? To what extent and in what way have disabled people been involved in the experiments in this country? What plans do the Government have to ensure that disabled people are involved—indeed, that the whole diversity of people are involved through every level and stage of this experimentation, development and deployment?
Building on that point of broader public engagement, I say that if we are to achieve the optimum outcomes from any of these new technologies, public engagement is absolutely critical. We have seen examples from the past where public engagement has been good: the technology has been taken on and largely melts into the background. It just becomes a positive part of our everyday lives—and indeed, vice versa. What has been done so far by the Government to have meaningful public engagement across the country when it comes to autonomous vehicles? What is the plan to further push for what is, from my point of view, dramatically increased public engagement to ensure that we take people, at every stage, on all these autonomous journeys?
On power usage, what analysis have the Government undertaken on the impact on the grid? It is clear that this is going to be part of the electrification of our transport provision, but how is that going to roll out? We can currently achieve all our mobility needs with but 15% of the existing fleet. How will the Government ensure that bringing autonomous vehicles on stream will not simply add more vehicles to the road, causing more congestion and difficulties? What is the plan to ensure that there is substitution and multiple usage of AVs, rather than this simply being additive?
Alongside that, where do the Government see the power source for this coming from? Where will that energy come from since, as has already been noted, electric vehicles are only as green as the fuel that powers them? Do we currently have the resources that we need and a plan for long-duration energy storage? When it comes to the batteries in vehicles, do we have resilience of supply? Where are we prepared to look to develop the battery technologies from? Are we looking to still have some potential UK sovereign battery production?
I welcome the Bill but, like all Bills, it will benefit from some work. If we can have something, by the time the Bill leaves us, which really moves us forward in terms of better and smarter journeys—more accessible and more inclusive journeys—who would not want to get on board?
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, not just because of his general thought-provoking comments but specifically those around accessibility. I have been able to cut a couple of paragraphs I was going to start with.
I declare my past interest as a member of the Select Committee on the Equality Act and its impact on disabled people, which included assessing PSV transport regulations for safe and effective travel for disabled people. It must be right that the future of sustainable motoring lies with autonomous vehicles. The Bill, despite many of the issues raised so far, is a welcome first step to addressing how driving will change and what regulations will be needed to ensure that people—passengers and pedestrians—are safe. I will focus on just two specific interests that concern me.
The first is data protection, and I am very grateful for the comments made by my noble friend Lady Bowles earlier. I want to go into a very specific area. In Chapter 3 in Part 1, the Bill sets out the collection and sharing of information in relation to autonomous vehicles. While it is important that data is collected to understand how services and vehicles operate, what protections for personal data are proposed to ensure that any data collected is ring-fenced and can be used only by the relevant parties in a pseudonymised form?
The nature of the data collection of automated vehicles—whether PSVs or not—means that a far wider range of organisations would have legitimate access to that data. However, the collection of this data will be much more detailed than current systems. I cite Uber as an example; the company, the driver and the passenger who has booked the ride all share data between them. But that is not as much as is proposed in this Bill. There is a significant amount of data that will be shared for learning about how automated vehicles will work.
One of the points I am interested in is whether the Government would have access to that data. Would that also be ring-fenced specifically for transport purposes and not made available to either other departments or public bodies? For example, the Home Secretary and the police have asked in three Bills recently, that I am aware of, for access to personal confidential data—health data and other data—of individuals. Through amendment we have managed to ring-fence that to real need of it, rather than just the automatic right to collect it. That ought to be considered in this Bill too. Will organisations collecting the data be permitted to sell on some or all of it for commercial purposes? If so, will there be safe- guards to ensure that none of the identifiable individual data will be sold, other than through pseudonymised or truly anonymised formats?
My second issue relates to disabled and vulnerable passengers and people. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, was right to say that the Bill is an opportunity for disabled travellers, but there are also concerns, some of which the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, outlined. The Bill rightly talks about the importance of the safety of passengers in an automated vehicle. By disabled and vulnerable people, I mean the full range of those who, like myself, use a wheelchair, through to an elderly person who may need assistance or just a handle in the right place in the vehicle or more safety getting in and out when there is not anybody to assist them. Will the designs of all automated vehicles address the needs of disabled and vulnerable passengers?
It is very difficult and expensive to get an electric wheelchair accessible vehicle—WAV—at the moment, mainly because the automotive companies put the large batteries at exactly where the adjustments would be made to install a ramp and securing services for a wheelchair. If the Bill is heralding a new approach to building vehicles, accessibility needs to be built in right from the start and not by exception—by the norm. That way, disabled people will not have to pay over the odds for journeys that others just take for granted.
I will give an example from another sector. Habinteg, the housing charity, has costed up designing a house for a lifetime, rather than it having to be adapted as people get older. We are living in a society where that demographic change is happening rapidly. The initial cost is minute, but, thereafter, the facility of all homes built that way means that people do not have to move into other places or spend tens of thousands of pounds on the most basic things.
This brings me on to my second area of concern. Clause 83 disapplies taxis, private hire vehicles and bus legislation. The Explanatory Notes say that this is
“insofar as a permit holder is providing an automated passenger service in areas and vehicle types specified in the permit”.
My concern is that much of the disability equality regulations in transport might be covered by that exemption. I understand that there needs to be a different approach to regulation for automated vehicles, but can the Minister tell me how disabled passengers will be able to retain their rights under law to safe and effective travel?
I will give an example to illustrate that point. The PSV regulations give bus drivers the power to enforce the priority of wheelchair users over children’s buggies or even people who refuse to move out of the wheelchair space. That is the only place that this is held, so, if PSV regulations are disapplied, how will we ensure that disabled passengers will have the right to use spaces that they have now?
In Clause 93, in Part 6, there is a discussion about real-time traffic information for automated vehicles, including bus lanes, roadworks and diversions. The Explanatory Notes say that this information would also be available to other electronic equipment used by vehicles on roads. But this raises the issue of a disabled passenger—they could be visually impaired, in a wheelchair or just very frail—who suddenly finds that their PSV automated vehicle has been diverted and, without a human driver, they do not know where to get on or off. Believe me, it is hard enough when buses are suddenly diverted and you have to work out where you are going and whether the new drop-off space is on a pavement wide enough—but the drivers are there and able to be helpful. Without a driver, what would happen?
The Select Committee on the Equality Act 2010 and Disability report, The Equality Act 2010: The Impact on Disabled People, commented on the street scenes that the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, referred to, and on how disabled pedestrians—especially but not only those with visual impairment—struggle with very little separation between road and pavement. Clause 93 of this Bill covers the provision and also covers street scenes. How will automated vehicles, both PSV and private, be programmed to watch out for disabled pedestrians who may not be able to see? This is a different point from that of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, about jaywalkers: I am talking about people who may not be able to see and may not get the information that an automated vehicle is approaching them.
Here I will briefly quote the 2015 report from the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, Accidents by Design. At the end, he said that
“there is an urgent need for an immediate moratorium on shared space until there is more and better evidence about the impact of shared space schemes, including an improved … record of accident data and a better understanding of the consequences of people literally designed out of these spaces”.
That is relevant not just to today’s shared spaces but to the Bill as a whole. It would be a real missed opportunity not to include safe disabled provision by design for a new age of automated vehicles.
I hope the Minister will be able to answer my questions, but I also wonder whether he might be prepared to meet with me, the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, and a couple of disability organisations to ensure the consideration—which he outlined—of the rights and needs of disabled people, so that they are not left out of legislation, planning and building in the future.
Lord Naseby (Con)
My Lords, I am sure that I speak for all colleagues in the Chamber when I say that this debate has been enhanced by the contributions of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and my noble friend Lord Holmes. The area that they have covered is so important.
I want to record in Hansard that today is an auspicious day for British transport, because today a jet took off from London airport using synthetic fuel to fly to the States. That is a huge achievement of the United Kingdom, and our development, our work and our taxpayers’ money has brought that about. I would like to record that in the context of this particular Bill.
Some 60 years ago-plus, I was a fast jet pilot. In those days, safety was absolutely paramount. If you were at the controls on your own, flying at anything up to 40,000 feet at a speed of up to 0.82 mach, you had to know what was happening; there was only one person who made the decision, with plenty of instruments reflecting the actions you were taking.
When I was preparing for the Bill, I was reminded of three fatal crashes that have occurred thanks to automation. I am sure that colleagues will remember them. There was the Boeing 737 MAX 8, in October 2018, when 189 people were killed, with the two pilots totally unable to do anything to stop the automation and the stall that followed. In March 2019, on the same aircraft—not the same one, but the same model—157 people were killed. What went wrong? It was failure of software. We fight with software all the time, but failure of software when you have passengers has been proven to be very difficult.
I had a look at the French one in the Caribbean, because I knew it was different from the Boeing example. The situation there was a weather condition. The flight was on 1 June 2019, as the plane headed towards a thunderstorm. The pitot head froze—the instrument on the front of the aircraft that measures the speed and height of the aircraft. The net result was that the instrument recorded inaccurately what the status of the aircraft was, the aircraft stalled and all the passengers were killed. So that is where I am coming from in relation to this Bill, where safety is stated to be at its core.
Let us leave the airline world and go on to the implications for drivers. The lessons learned from those aircraft crashes are, first, that drivers must be trained. It is quite a challenge—and we know that there is a whole variety of abilities of those driving on the road today. I do not know the answer to that question, other than that it is a question that has to be asked.
Then there are what they call “uncommanded activations”: software that suddenly says something to you when you have not put it into a programme, or you did not think you had, and you have to decide what to do. That is the partial one that is a challenge. Then there are the potential alerts: if you are half in control, or not in control, are those alerts recognised? Fourthly, as I have already indicated, there are weather conditions, which change dramatically in our country. There was heavy frost in Bedfordshire the day before yesterday, and all the instruments on the car had to be cleaned. On the car that I drove here today, I had to clean the camera for reversing. So weather conditions do affect things.
We also know, from the very good briefing from the Library, the history from California at this point in time. We need to recognise that the States are way ahead of us: they have been doing it that much longer. They have had these vehicles going around San Francisco, but in one paragraph the head of firefighting services says that
“driverless cars had interfered with emergency services 40 times since … 2020”.
Then there is another paragraph about San Francisco, which is very relevant—any of us who have been to San Francisco will know that it is all up hill and down dale. There are examples of where
“the cars have run red lights, crashed into a bus, blocked pedestrian crossings and cycle lanes and caused traffic jams”,
et cetera. I give a final quote:
“The California Department of Motor Vehicles states that as of 10 November 2023 it had received 673 autonomous vehicle collision reports”.
Well, if safety is primary to this legislation, that is not a very good start, is it?
Now I turn to the Bill itself. I will not go through the varying stages that have been discussed already, but seven years have gone by—quite a long time—before we get around to this Bill. Here we are after seven years, and the fact of the matter is that we as a country have fallen behind. We were in the vanguard seven years ago; we are not in the vanguard any more but in the guard’s van, almost, in terms of technical development, et cetera. We ought to make sure that we know what other people have done so far before we start spending a lot of government money just mirroring tests that others have done. I believe that is a very important point. I would like to know from my noble friend, not necessarily this evening but in writing, how much the taxpayer has already spent on this project.
What about the context for authorised automated vehicles? Who ensures that those vehicles actually stick to the restrictions that some of them have apparently been given? If the restriction is the motorway, who will ensure that it sticks to the motorway? I do not know the answer. What is the estimated cost of updating the digital information across the whole road network in GB? We talk about that and it was in my noble friend’s opening statement that this all applies to GB, but we certainly do not have that digital information at this point in time.
What work is being done on the current driving test? I have a granddaughter who is studying the Highway Code and everything else, having driving lessons. At what point will that age group, those young people, be brought in, so that at least the Highway Code is brought up to date? For me, Clause 2 at the moment is really pie in the sky. It says:
“The principles must be framed with a view to securing that road safety in Great Britain will be better as a result of the use of authorised automated vehicles on roads”.
Well, what did I see on the way down this morning? I do not know exactly how many cars there are on the road, but it cannot be far short of 1 million. Then there are hundreds of lorries and possibly millions of cyclists, few of whom know what the Highway Code is. One has only to see what happens out the front here. They do not stop at that pedestrian crossing with the red light; they just cycle right through it. Then there are the delivery bikes with very creative motorcyclists who weave in and out. Then there are the scooters. Believe it or not, in Bedfordshire, the week before last, the driver who is taking me back tonight said to me, “You won’t believe this, Michael, but a motorised skateboard overtook me the other day in a 20 mph zone”. I said, “God, I don’t believe it”, and Barry said, “Not just that: further up, he picks up a passenger and comes back the other way”. These are not even licensed, but they are very dangerous. I do not know where all this fits in.
Finally, there is the question of potholes, as even the Prime Minister admits. I do not know whether AI can work out whether there is a pothole underneath a big puddle, but it is a problem. Weather conditions and potholes affect driveability and, as we know, driving skills vary. In my judgment, for once, we should learn from others. My repeated request to His Majesty’s Government is that, before we spend too much money on it, we find out what Germany, Sweden and particularly the United States have been doing, and pull that together—then we might have the basis of a Bill.
This is a 100-clause Bill—I note this to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley—and we have to get the framework there but, just for once, we should be strong-minded. I was in business for years. We should stick to the jobs that we are good at: synthetic fuels for aviation, hydrogen and electric vehicles, as mentioned. We have plenty of work to do there. I am sceptical about the need for the Bill at this time. We are not in the vanguard. If safety really is the core, we should proceed very measuredly.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, in following the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, I will start by reflecting on some of the safety issues he raised and pick up in particular a phrase the Minister used in his introductory speech—that the introduction of self-driving cars could mean that the lack of human error saves lives.
Automation does not remove human error. It simply changes the potential site of it from an individual vehicle to a programming system, an algorithm and the control system applied to many vehicles. There is the potential for one error to be multiplied many times, with disastrous impacts. It also allows individual actions, possibly malevolent ones, to produce mass effects. A number of noble Lords referred to what has happened with people running around with traffic cones in San Francisco. We are speaking just a couple of weeks after the National Cyber Security Centre produced its seventh annual review, noting that the UK’s critical infrastructure is at grave risk. By relying on this single system, or multiple systems, we are potentially creating a much higher critical safety risk and a resilience risk.
This morning I was talking about climate adaptation and resilience with the National Trust. We need to look at all this in terms of our systems. If we rely on these systems and keep using them for years, what will happen to the skills of drivers should we suddenly need individual people to take to the road and control vehicles? What happens, as we have seen in San Francisco, if they all suddenly stop working or decide to assemble in one place? What does that do to the functioning of our society?
I was going to start with the Bonn climate talks, COP 23, in 2017. I recall a state of near panic among members of the climate community because it was thought that we could see self-driving HGVs all over the place any day soon. That could have massive climate impacts as they now spend a large amount of their time parked up because their drivers need rest periods and there is limited availability of drivers. If you put self-driving into the equation, you potentially massively increase the climate impacts. That was 2017, and there is actually much less fear now.
I begin my contribution today by making a call for realism and an understanding of what this Bill is actually about and the environment in which it arrives. I have already challenged the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, when she was wearing the Treasury hat. A government spokesperson briefed the Telegraph that this Bill would mean that we could see self-driving vehicles on our roads by 2026,
“if they were proved safe”.
When I challenged her, the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, being the skilled operator that she is, agreed that yes, if they were proved safe, this would be possible. Well, I might run a two-hour marathon if I were 30 years younger and had entirely different genetics, but that is not the world that we live in. I am asking for an acknowledgement of the realism of the situation as we conduct our debate going forward on this Bill.
I start with a potential positive impact if we were to see self-driving vehicles, even operating in small areas in controlled circumstances—which I think is a far more likely possibility. One study I looked at noted that, for self-driving vehicles to operate effectively:
“Roads may need to be kept free of small debris”
and “uneven” surfaces smoothed. A number of noble Lords have already referred to the current state of our roads. Let us imagine that we are going to go ahead with self-driving autonomous vehicles. Just think about what our roads might look like for the rest of us to enjoy. However, I ask for a little realism here. Do we actually have the capacity—the financial, human skills or machinery capacity—to deliver roads entirely free of debris and uneven surfaces? I rather doubt it.
This raises an important point, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, that I want to highlight and which we will come to in the detail of our later debate: we need to think about statistics and data. The road conditions in the US, France and Australia are very different from here. Can we extrapolate figures on safety from there and apply them here? If we cannot, how do we get figures at scale in the UK? That is a terribly important point.
I am not sure that anyone has directly referred to this, but it is worth noting the issue of safety. The Transport Select Committee has looked at this in some detail and I think we are going to have large debates on this at a later stage. Is the careful and competent human driver the right test to be applying? Improved safety is not a given in the real circumstances of our roads. As the RAC Foundation has said:
“When we put our lives in the hands of automated machinery, we expect it to perform to the highest standards of safety”.
That is an expectation that people have. We know that human beings make mistakes, and we know that, as pedestrians, cyclists and other drivers, we make allowances for other peoples’ mistakes. However, we are not necessarily going to apply the same criteria to autonomous vehicles.
This debate has moved as we have progressed through. A number of the early speeches were very much focused on the positive opportunities seen in autonomous vehicles. The noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, was one of those people. However, I want to address some policy points about the environmental risks of self-driving or autonomous cars.
If as a result of such cars we see more vehicles on our roads and more and longer journeys, we could see increased emissions. I think most of us assume that these will be electric vehicles, but about half of the PM2.5—small particulate matter pollution from vehicles —comes from brakes and tyres. Autonomous vehicles still have brakes and tyres. There are the congestion issues; there is also the noise and the sheer disruption caused by vehicles moving around our roads.
There is some real data on this from partially autonomous vehicles. In 2019, a study in California found that the owners of partially autonomous vehicles were taking them on longer journeys, particularly at weekends. That makes sense when you think about it: you can put your feet up, play a computer game, read or have a sleep, and so you decide that you are going to take a long weekend trip to the other end of the UK. If lots of people do that, it has a real and significant environmental and social impact.
There is another risk. Let us imagine the situation with the theatre up the road, when lots of people have an autonomous vehicle. It costs heaps to park in the city but, as you do not need to park an autonomous vehicle, they decide to get their cars to drive them to the theatre and then send them home again. They then call their car when they want to leave in the evening. Can noble Lords think about what Charing Cross Road might look like under those circumstances? What kind of chaos would it cause and what might it do to the buses?
I turn to an issue that no one has raised but which is really important, because we need to look at many areas beyond autonomous vehicles. There is a temptation to think of the cloud and algorithms as being immaterial and that things that happen out there in the cloud have no real-world, physical consequences. Actually, we can thank researchers from MIT—Sudhakar et al, in an article published in the IEEE Micro journal—for calculating, using and processing the data and algorithms to find out what the environmental cost could be. I hope that noble Lords will forgive me for putting in some large numbers.
Data centres now produce 0.3% of global climate change emissions; that is the same as Argentina. The MIT study shows that, if the world introduced a billion autonomous vehicles, the demand for energy for those data centres would double. It adds that
“if an autonomous vehicle has 10 deep neural networks processing images from 10 cameras, and … drives for one hour a day, it will make 21.6 million inferences each day. One billion vehicles would make 21.6 quadrillion inferences. To put that into perspective, all of Facebook’s data centers … make a few trillion inferences each day … 1 quadrillion is 1,000 trillion”.
Take the numbers away and that is a huge demand for energy, computing power and all the technology, computers and databases, so where will we find the capacity in the world to deliver that? We still have children in Africa who do not have a lightbulb to do their homework at night and areas of India that need the most basic levels of infrastructure. We need to look at all this in that policy context.
I will bring up two more points. The noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, made a really disturbing suggestion: we might have to bring in anti-jaywalking laws to allow for autonomous vehicles. What are our economy and society for? Are we here to serve the needs of people or are we here to service the machines? That is a question that the noble Lord’s point raises.
The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, raised an important issue that might be seen as explicitly excluded from the scope of the Bill: delivery vehicles and drones. They are examples of autonomous systems that may not use the roads but that multinational companies see as replacing human beings in delivering goods while using lots of our public spaces, including the air and pavements. Can the Minister tell us now or by letter later—I understand that it might not be in his briefing—what the Government’s thinking is about ensuring the regulation of those?
Finally, that brings me to reinforce the point about the need for this all to be inclusive by design, made by both the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and the noble Lord, Lord Holmes. We need to think about how our streets, pavements and airspace work for people, not for the benefits of multinational companies and their machines.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak after the noble Baroness. Before I come to my main remarks, I have a question for my noble friend the Minister arising from something he said in his introduction. He referred to the scope of the Bill covering England, Scotland and Wales and said that if these vehicles crossed the border into Northern Ireland, they would not benefit from its provisions. I wanted to ask him what border he was referring to, because as far as vehicle regulation is concerned, there is, as I understand it, no border and Northern Ireland is subject to the vehicle regulations in operation in this country. Was it a slip of the tongue or an implication that autonomous vehicles if introduced into Northern Ireland would be subject to the undemocratically made laws of the European Union—undemocratic, that is, as far as their application to Northern Ireland is concerned, whose people, of course, have no say in the legislature which will be making those laws? I would be grateful for his elucidation on that. I am perfectly happy to accept that it was a slip of the tongue and that would end the whole matter, but there may be something behind it he would like to reveal.
On the Bill itself, the substance of my remarks is that this is a piece of work from the Law Commission and is, in essence, to do with warranty, liability and insurance, which is why I thought I would have very little to say which was germane to the text. However, I find that most noble Lords have had very little to say about those issues and we have wandered—I think very properly and inevitably—into a broader debate about the desirability of automated vehicles and their consequences for other road users.
I have great interest in that because during much of my life I have been involved in urban design. I am particularly interested in the urban consequences— I am less interested in what happens on motorways—and how our cities are shaped. I have to admit—I would be in the naughty corner, no doubt, for this—that I have been a great advocate for and implementer of shared spaces, which I would characterise in very different language to that used by my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton.
Let me offer a few thoughts to add to this pile of imponderables that the Bill has given rise to this afternoon. As I say, most of them relate to the way in which cities work. First, I accept on the basis of my experience of railways that it is likely that these vehicles will be safer than those driven by a human. Anyone who doubts this would not get on a Victoria line train, for example; they would take the Piccadilly line on every occasion. The Victoria line train is driven by computers; the Piccadilly line train is driven—currently, sadly, because there is not enough money—by a human being. But which one arrives with a minute interval between each train, safely, every time? Which is the one that can carry those people because of that frequency, that huge capacity, on the Victoria line and which has a three or four-minute interval between trains because the driver cannot stop as safely as the computer-driven trains?
It is worth saying—with every possible respect to my noble friend Lord Naseby—that the comparison with aviation is not appropriate. Rail safety is based on the principle that if something is missing, if something goes wrong or if something is not quite right in the system, the train comes to a stop. The system stops. The electricity is cut off. That cannot possibly be the basis of aviation safety. If something goes missing, you cannot just stop the plane at 30,000 feet and say: “We are going to work out what has gone wrong”. Aviation safety is all about building in all the safety measures from the outset before the plane ever takes off and making sure that they are working. It is a totally different approach. I am assuming that automated vehicles would operate similarly to the rail principle; that is, if something was missing and they could not see something, they would stop. This might cause inconvenience—as indeed it causes inconvenience if a train on the Victoria line stops and people have to work out what has gone wrong—but it is at least a safety measure and a relatively reliable one.
I am very concerned about the point made about the consequences for streetscapes of jaywalking made by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, and to some extent referred to by my noble friend Lord Borwick. We have spent years trying to take railings out of cities and allowing people to cross streets in a more natural, human sort of way—to move away from the Le Corbusier dystopia that arose from separating vehicles and pedestrians at every level. It was a perpetual Barbican vision of our cities. We have moved away from that, and people who want to see it in operation can go to places such as Piccadilly. Only a few years ago, it was a one-way motorway with barriers all along it, and it has been returned to a calm and more attractive street running two ways without all those barriers and so forth.
As the noble Lord rightly pointed out, the very fact that you can walk in front of an automated vehicle, confident that it will stop, means that the manufacturers will quickly say, “We can’t be having that. We will have to have the barriers back. We’re going to have to have designated crossing places for pedestrians, and we will have to have laws that stop them walking out in front of the cars”. That risk balance will have changed. I do not walk out in front of cars generally when they are moving, because I worry that they may hit me, but if I know for a certainty they will stop, what is to prevent me? I will just cross the road. As my noble friend Lord Borwick said, if you are a six year-old, the fun may go out of it after three attempts, but that is not my circumstance. I am not doing it for fun, I am doing it to cross the road, and I shall do it exactly as I want. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, was right to make that point.
The next thing I want to say is about congestion and the consequences for public transport. We are talking about automated vehicles as if they are going to be private possessions. Of course, there is an alternative vision where automated vehicles are communally or corporately owned. They are pods, and they do not belong to you. You summon them like an Uber and they arrive, take you somewhere and then park, vanish or find another passenger somewhere. That is an alternative model. Let us imagine 80 of those lined up nose to tail, very safely moving along Piccadilly from Hyde Park Corner up to Piccadilly Circus, each containing an individual passenger—and bang close to each other because it will be very safe, for the reasons I explained. It will be 80 passengers moving up Piccadilly. What is the difference between that and a bus? A bus takes 80 passengers from one end of Piccadilly to another. I know noble Lords will say, “Ah, but these pods, when they get to Piccadilly Circus, they can split off and all go in different directions. They can take you to your office, the hairdresser or wherever you want to go in that vicinity”. That illustrates what automated vehicles are really addressing, which is the last-mile problem rather than the main trunk problem of transport. It is to get that last mile from the hub that you want a vehicle to be available to take you, but not necessarily all the way along the journey. Why would we be encouraged to do that, given both the effects on congestion and the possible consequence of a collapse in demand—not a total collapse—for public transport?
Finally, what will happen to traffic lights and why are we still investing in them? I think it is public knowledge—I know it to be true—that Transport for London is planning to spend a very large amount upgrading its extremely comprehensive traffic light system that it has rolled out over the years, which still depends on the SCOOT software technology that has been in use for at least 20 years and possibly longer. It is thinking of spending a large amount of money upgrading them, but why will anyone ever need traffic lights? Automated vehicles do not need them. They are there for people such as me to look at something terrestrial in front of them, and see that it is green, red, orange or whatever. If their motion is dependent on their sensing where other vehicles are, together with communication with a satellite at the same time, they will not need traffic lights. What will happen to traffic lights?
I am against traffic lights on the whole. They are a complete misery, of course—we all know that. However, they have some uses—for example, helping people to cross the roads at junctions. What are the consequences for that and for the money that we are still spending, even today, on upgrading our traffic light system if we are moving over to an automated vehicle system?
I am speaking quite late in the debate and there are one or two very interesting speakers to follow. I have a feeling that my noble friend the Minister will not be able to deal with all the questions that we have put to him. I look forward to a more detailed response in writing to some of them, although he may be able to answer the Northern Ireland one. A lot might arise in Committee that I did not expect and there may be amendments that test the scope of the Bill a little. I look forward to them.
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and the very entertaining speech from the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and to speak to your Lordships with a real sense of optimism over the Bill. In doing so, I declare an interest: my wife works for Amazon. Neither of us has any privileged information on operations in this sector but I suspect that Amazon, along with many others, will be taking a keen interest in the passage of the Bill.
I am really excited about the Bill. I have no expert knowledge in the field, but the Bill will profoundly affect us all. We are all passengers and pedestrians, and most of us are drivers, cyclists and users of online shopping websites. As we have heard, the Government have forecast that the automated vehicle sector could capture up to £42 billion by 2035. In this, they might be being cautious. It is also a good news story that as a nation we are so strong in this sector, the UK being a global thought leader on regulating AVs, according to Oxa.
We have already heard that we need to act quickly to avoid falling behind countries that have got off the starting grid quicker than us. We are looking at a landscape where, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, much of the on and off-road logistics and road passenger transport could be automated, particularly in rural areas, with a big impact on agriculture, mining and defence as well. The utopian dream is that the automatic vehicles blend seamlessly with our traffic systems, safely and efficiently working to reduce pollution, road rage and accidents, and allowing skilled workers to be deployed elsewhere. Obviously, the dystopian view is of robot vehicles crashing into each other and causing gridlock and mass unemployment while AI systems take over a post-apocalyptic dying planet. The main difficulty for the Bill is that it is trying to legislate for so much that we do not yet understand. I think that it does a pretty good job of it.
I would like some help from the Minister in clarifying a few questions that I have on the Bill. I am a lay man, so I apologise if my questions seem obvious to everyone else. I am a teacher and I always tell my students never to be afraid to ask a question if you do not understand, because I can guarantee that there are always at least two others in the room who do not know the answer either. I hope that one of them here is not the Minister.
Like many others, my paramount concern about the Bill is safety. Although the Minister said that it is baked in, the suspicion is that cyclists and pedestrians would disproportionately bear the brunt of casualties from the initial trials of the vehicles. In this I share Cycling UK’s concern that the safety bar is too low in that the definition of safety for a vehicle that travels autonomously is “acceptable” rather than “high”, and the definition of it travelling legally is if it travels at a “very low risk” of committing a traffic infraction. Therefore, tightening up the safety element of this is vital. However, I am not sure that the idea of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, to ban jaywalkers quite works. I am an inveterate jaywalker and I will fight him on that one—although I have to say, from my daily observations from the top deck of buses in the City, that my fellow cyclists could help themselves by not running so many red lights.
My other big concern is actually who is in charge of the vehicle. The concept of a user-in-charge seems to be the very worst of all worlds, as mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Lytton. Having a driver in the cab who may be called on at any time seems to have all the risks and costs of traditional driving with very little benefit. We are surely aiming at no-user-in-charge, but here things get complicated for the lay man.
What is an authorised self-driving entity, who will be responsible for the way that the vehicle drives and meeting other regulatory obligations? Each authorised automated vehicle must have one. Every ASDE is an entity but it is not made clear, at least to me, what that is. The licensed operator is described as being similar to a bus operator, but the nuts and bolts of who controls what and how are not spelled out. Are fleets of vehicles going to be controlled by one person like a minicab company and, if so, what checks are being made on the person’s or team’s competence, state of mind and health to do such a vital job? Are they going to be more like air traffic controllers, in which case how are they to be trained and examined? Will they be subject to random alcohol and drugs tests? Will they need medicals? Perhaps the Minister can shed some light.
The purpose of a safety inspector is to identify, improve the understanding of, and reduce the risk of automated vehicle incidents through conducting a safety investigation. The Marine Accident Investigation Branch is cited as an example, but I am led to believe that bus operators, certainly in London, investigate their own incidents. Is the plan to get bus operators in line with train and air operators, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, alluded to?
Self-driving vehicles need an accurate and up-to-date understanding of the road and to know the legal parameters of the network. Traffic regulation orders will be provided via a common publication platform. Is this feasible? Will it be available for other services, so that an Uber driver, for instance, can at last navigate the low-traffic neighbourhoods of Hackney to get me to my house?
I realise that with automation comes the fear of unemployment, although the APPG on Self-driving Vehicles claims that AVs will create over 38,000 new green jobs—but that is a subject for another day. I am excited by the future the Bill could lead us to. Overall, it is very logical and well thought-out, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s comments on my various points.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, I do not have any problems in principle with the Bill at all, but I look forward greatly to Committee, given all the speeches I have listened to—we will have a lively time of it. My contributions will be on vehicle identification. Number plates clearly will not do, as there are millions of infractions. Lots of cars drive around with no MoT or insurance, and some are completely untraceable; we cannot rely on that system when it comes to automated vehicles. Automated vehicles need a different kind of identification anyway; they need to communicate a lot, they will need to include that identity in their communication and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, said, we cannot let that system be hacked—that will need to be baked into the hardware. Therefore, you will need a set of international standards.
I emphasise to my noble friend the importance of being in the lead on international standards—it really gives you a grip on an industry. Look at what has happened in telecommunications. When I was young, we had GEC and Plessey and we were top of the world. We have lost that now, and one of the reasons we did not manage to hold on to even a bit of it is that we let the whole business of standards slip. The work we were doing on standards in this country was no longer thought important, no longer given emphasis, and therefore people in this country really did not have a grip on what was going on and where the industry was moving. Standards are absolutely the core of this and we really should put effort into the standards that are going to be embedded in automated vehicles, for they are many and they are really important, and identification is very much one of them.
As the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, said, interaction with the police—my noble friend Lord Naseby expanded that to the emergency services generally—will rely a lot on communication. Policemen must have a way of talking to an automated vehicle, and the automated vehicle will want to make sure that that person is a policeman. This is a two-way system; at the base of it are standards. It is really important that the Government get this right.
I also hope to make sure during the Bill’s passage that, where we have a system of automated vehicles for general hire, the information on what vehicles are where and what they will cost is available universally to customers. We should not get into a system where people are confined to the particular operators they may have the app for. They ought to have access to universal information.
Data will be important. As my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond said, we need to have access to all the data so that we can understand what is going on and make sure that we are into a self-improving system and not developing areas of dystopia. At the same time, we have commercial confidentiality and value in the data; its governance will be really important.
In the short term most of these vehicles will charge at a depot, but that will not last. They will want to use public charging stations, so we have to look ahead. We have to be part of developing a standard for how an automated vehicle can charge any old where. Then we will have to start putting those charging stations in well ahead of demand. Again, it is about thinking ahead and standards.
I will delight the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, by saying that we ought to look at automated vehicles on rail. Looking at what is happening on the periphery of the network—the sort of place I live—having a train every half an hour is not an efficient use of a dedicated corridor. If we had automated vehicles running in the same space, they could run when people wanted them to. They could just be there: you would get on when you arrived at the station, and it would stop at the station you want it to stop at. You would start to get a much more efficient system of transporting, using a space we already have and which is free of humans and cyclists. It is much easier to program for. I am not saying that it would do on the core network, but it would absolutely do on the peripheral network. It would be a really efficient way of reviving redundant rail lines, because you would not even need to install rails; you could just use ordinary wheels and tyres, and what remains of the railbed would carry a road very cheaply, as long as you were not running heavy trucks on it.
I am really concerned about the systems for reporting on the condition of the vehicle being effective and quick, and resulting in it being taken off the road and maintained speedily. It is not clear to me how the Bill will work in that area.
I listened carefully to what the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, said about road design, AVs being able to signal to others that they are AVs, and safe roads. We ought to be able to license AV to go just on the roads that are safe for them to use, not the ones where we know they will run into difficulties. I do not doubt that the noble Earl will table amendments on all these aspects. I shall be there to take a close interest in them.
The aspects of safety mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles of Berkhamsted, and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, were absolutely on point. If we are to define safety, which has such a crucial place in this Bill, it has to be an effective and practical definition. We really have to understand how it works. The current wording is just too indefinite and imprecise. Does it effectively rule these out for 10 years, or does it allow anything? It is just not clear at the moment. Insurance will obviously be an important area; people such as cyclists and pedestrians who do not carry their own insurance need an easy, quick way of getting compensated when they are hurt by an AV. We need to keep the sort of model we have for being injured by a vehicle at the moment, and make sure that it applies to an AV in all circumstances.
Noble Lords will not be surprised that I will be pursuing the general question of automated vehicles and Eastbourne. People have talked about AVs in the middle of London; I do not think that is the best place to start with them. Somewhere like Eastbourne, where public transport does not work, you can use AVs to make public transport happen. We should be able to move away from being the town with the highest proportion of short vehicle journeys to one that is much more reliant on public transport, because automated vehicles should make that economic. We can also start to look after tourists much better, getting them out to the neighbouring attractions and around the countryside, and enabling bicycling and disabled access and other things, which are really difficult to do with current systems. It is the opportunities that I see, not the disadvantages of cluttering up Piccadilly, and which I really hope to pursue in Committee.
Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to take part in my first Second Reading debate, and to follow my noble friend Lord Lucas. I was not going to mention it, but he raised the issue of standards, which is critical, although we should never let a standard stand in the way of innovation. I take that lesson from my time in industry. A long time ago, when we were working on the platform to deliver the Oyster card, a European standard was going to come through on how contactless technology could work. There was a debate about whether we should wait for that standard. Most people were saying that we should, as it would allow interoperability across Europe. I had other thoughts: that it could take a significant amount of time and delay the programme. We pushed through and used our standard. At the end of the day, if we had waited, we could have been waiting the best part of a decade for that standard to be ratified—something to consider as we look at standards and the speed of innovation.
As I say, it is a great pleasure to take part in this debate. I acknowledge my interests, particularly as a board member of techUK and a senior executive at Atos. My noble friend Lord Moylan and I share many transport-related interests from our time at City Hall and working with TfL, and I will echo a number of the comments that he made. The immense amount of work that I acknowledge the Law Commission has put in over the last four years is demonstrated by the quality of the Bill, but it does focus on legislation and is quite narrow on some things. That is why we meander across to other areas such as usage, and maybe even more so the commercialisation of the technology.
To balance things out, I did take note of other reports, such as the excellent report by the APPG for Self-Driving Vehicles, The economic, environmental, and safety benefits of self-driving vehicles, techUK’s consultation with industry and what it sees as opportunities, and Innovate UK’s report on connected and automated mobility. All of these look at innovation and opportunity in particular, alongside the need for safety.
I will take noble Lords back a little bit to an early point in my career in 2008, when I first drove an electric vehicle in San Francisco, in California, which has been mentioned a few times in this debate. I was there and driving it because it was new technology, because of the obvious issue of sustainability, and because it was exciting. We saw then the potential of this technology. It was undefined—I think they were still using laptop batteries stuck together in the boots of these cars, the early Tesla Roadsters—but there was such potential.
That was the point when we realised at City Hall in London that we would establish the London Electric Vehicle Partnership to look at the potential of this new technology—not just through the prism of legislation, but we would identify challenges in collaboration with industry, policymakers and manufacturers, so that we could understand the challenges, the operational designs that would be required, the infrastructure requirements and the potential commercial models that would be appropriate. It would still take time for this to come to the fore, but some of what we see in the adoption of electric vehicles in the UK was based way back then in our collaborative approach with industry and how we developed policy. In the deliberations on the Bill we should work extensively with industry around its developments and thoughts, as well as internationally on how use cases have been developed for automated vehicles.
I would like to highlight various comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, about some of the challenges that may occur. This is not an either/or solution as technology moves forward and we move towards a digital society. I can be a slight use case here. I have one car now whereas, with two children and a wife, we may have had two cars in years gone by. I can honestly say that my second car is an Uber because I have moved to that flexible mode of technology and it provides an element in the multimodal mix that I use. Travelling to various parts, I will potentially walk to a metro station, then take an Uber at the other end and take a bus when possible. We are looking at the maturity of the mix and where these automated vehicles could play in the mix and, I hope, not add to the vehicle fleet but become part of it and reduce the need for people to own their own vehicles.
I feel great confidence in the technology. The reason I say that, to be fair, is that the technology is already here. It is being used and tested. We quite rightly have a focus on the safety element and how we will ensure that we can convince the public that this is safe to use. That is the priority because safety leads to confidence, confidence leads to adoption, and that will be the success. That will lead to other areas of innovation because the tip of the iceberg is what this technology will do to the transport mix and to general industries across the board.
My noble friend Lord Moylan mentioned pods. What will they become? Here I would like to make an analogy with the smartphone. We can think of these automated vehicles as the equivalent of where the smartphone has now taken what used to be a phone. There will be apps and different commercial ways of using them. All kinds of services will be developed that we possibly cannot even imagine right now, but they will benefit personal mobility as well as public mobility; safety, inclusivity and sustainability will be increased. They are all within our grasp through the development of this technology. Let us not forget that if we look at mobile phone technology, we saw acceleration in the ability to ensure connectivity and avoid bugs in the system, but when we look at that technology, on which life almost depends, we do not find those difficulties as much as we thought.
I am hugely supportive of the Bill, if noble Lords could not tell already. I look forward to taking part in Committee. There are many lessons for us to learn. I ask the Minister that we look at how EV operating models have developed because—my noble friend Lord Lucas highlighted this—there will be much synergy between electric vehicles, the usage of electric vehicle technology and automated vehicles. It remains unsaid whether they will be together as a technology. They may still be separated, but the win for us will be when the technologies merge and therefore their operating models will have some alignment.
Finally, on use cases around non-user involvement with the technology, we need to look at separating this more from the user-included technology approach. There will be more use cases around the non-user approach than the user approach. When reading the Bill, I thought that part was something we could look at separating further and digging into more; I look forward to doing that in Committee.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, this has been a really excellent debate. I start by making clear that I welcome the Bill, especially since, as the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, pointed out, other countries have been getting ahead of us on this issue. The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, expressed concern that Northern Ireland would obey the same rules as the Republic of Ireland because they were EU rules but, actually, the international context is heaps bigger than that. This is all in a massive international context.
So the Bill is welcome. It is based, of course, on the work of the Law Commissions, which have provided firm legal foundations. As others have said, there is huge economic significance in the successful rollout of automated vehicles. For that to happen, and be successful, we need high levels of public trust and confidence in safety. Hopefully, once we have in due course persuaded the Minister to accept some of our amendments, we will have a robust legal and safety framework that clarifies responsibility for self-driving vehicles, establishes new safety requirements and an inspection and reporting system, and provides confidence in data ownership and security. Those issues have been raised time and again in this debate.
If this works properly, AVs should greatly increase the safety on our roads, but there are plenty of issues along the way in the transitional phases, many of which have been raised here today. The experience in San Francisco, California is very relevant in this respect because it points out that, even in a city with much wider, straighter roads that are basically in a heaps better state than British roads, there can be considerable, and unforeseen, obstacles.
In Britain we have very crowded, mainly poorly maintained roads. That will intensify the issues. There will be many decades when AVs share the road with traditional human drivers. There have been problems in San Francisco with that. Emergency services have been impeded because AVs do not yet have human sensitivity. If we hear a siren or see a blue light somewhere, a long way away, we can all anticipate that it will be something we have to deal with; we will have to get out of the way. It seems clear that AVs in San Francisco have not yet quite got to that point.
Much of the Bill is taken up with issues of legal responsibility—for example, at what I call the handover point between the automated driving and the human driver. The Bill is complex and technical. It introduces a whole new lexicon, which is hardly consumer friendly. It might be designed to provide legal certainty but it does not enhance driver understanding. The Government need to consider what needs to be done to ensure that, in due course, drivers understand the legal points involved, especially in relation to insurance.
There are implications in all this for us during the long transition period, leading up to that point in the future when all vehicles will be automated. I want to point out two aspects: there will be some AVs driving among human drivers from the near future onwards; there will also be vehicles that are partially automated, as many are already. The noble Earl, Lord Lytton, recounted some stories that had a resonance with me as the owner of a car that I regard as more complex than the one I had before, because it tries to do things for me that I think I can do okay on my own. I sometimes think that nowadays you need a driver and a co-driver to handle the technology. The serious point about it is that this halfway house in many cars now exists and we are dealing with it on a day-to-day basis.
For the revolution to happen we need, first, a giant database of all the road signs and regulations in every part of the UK. This in itself is a massive task, because the Government have been moving away from absolute direction to local authorities on road signs. I will give the House one example: in 2016, the specifications for the signs for a ford were removed, so that any old sign will do for telling a driver that there is a ford coming up. I happen to know about this. I put a proposal to reinstate the regulations on fords into a Private Member’s Bill ballot, but I did not get anywhere with it. The point is that, for safety reasons, there are good arguments for having proper, regulated sizes for those signs.
The Government have also recently removed some of the pressure on local authorities to introduce regulations to make it safer for walking and cycling. This “We are the driver’s friend” rhetoric means that there will be fewer regulations that encourage walking and cycling, so the Government are going to have to turn their rhetoric on its head to encourage local authorities to take part in this giant gathering of data. It will of course involve a cost to local authorities, and I notice that there is no financial impact on them included in this.
I referred to a giant database, but it is not just about local authorities. All AVs and the cars that already exist with some self-driving features, such as those that park themselves, are all of course collecting data on us every time we drive them. This in itself has privacy implications, personal safety implications and national security implications. It poses questions on anonymisation of data, on the rights of individuals in respect of personal data, on the retention of data and the disclosure of personal data to insurers. I am sure there are some other things as well that I have not thought of.
My noble friend Lady Bowles concentrated on the implications of data control in the industry and the danger of dominance by big companies. She alerted us to the complex issues in the insurance industry and those associated with access to commercially useful data. My noble friend Lady Brinton also raised concerns about the protection of personal data and the issue of sale of data. Both the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, and my noble friend Lady Brinton raised potential problems for disabled people and the need to build disability access into regulations from the start. These issues are not apparently tackled in the Bill, along with issues associated with human behaviour—for example, the difference between the fastest among us to respond to a call to hand over from automatic driving to human driving and the slowest. Those slowest may have been paying full attention but just respond slightly more slowly.
We need to think about another issue: if you regularly use a car that fully drives itself, you will get out of the habit of driving. Will there be a requirement for drivers to have refresher courses on driving if they have not done it for the last month or year because their car has done it for them? I think this will crop up.
We will in due course want to press the Minister on the rather confusing division of responsibilities between various government agencies, as listed in the Government’s proposals.
Finally, I want to deal with the Minister’s introduction, which referred to trial schemes. There is a giant leap from those very limited trial schemes to the transition period. Make no mistake, we are in the foothills of a massive revolution; we are in the foothills of a change in which we will lose many types of jobs that involve driving. There will be a complete revolution, I believe, in public transport and in ownership of vehicles. For public confidence to be maintained during this revolution, we need the Government to invest in the new skills that will be needed—there will be lots of new skills needed —and the training for them.
We have had a division between the enthusiasts, the realists and the doubters. I look forward to our debate on amendments.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
My Lords, I first make it clear that the Opposition—the Labour Party—support the principle of this measure, although as we have seen in this debate, there is a wide-ranging set of issues that arises, which I dare say that the civil servants who have been listening will be busily examining over the coming days. We are looking forward to a somewhat extended Committee stage, if some of these issues are judged within the scope of the Bill. It will also be a very entertaining one if we continue to have contributions such as those from the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, and some of the other noble Lords who have spoken.
Why do we support the Bill? It is because we desperately need to move forward in this country to try to raise our rate of economic growth. One of the most obvious ways of doing this is by harnessing, through successful commercial exploitation, the advances in science and technology for which we, as a country, are renowned. So this is part of a big agenda that is crucial to our future prosperity.
We do have a real problem. I will put this in a non-party-political way. In the John Major and Tony Blair premierships, from 1991 to 2007, national productivity rose by 27%. Since 2007, it has risen by 1.7%. So we have a dramatic growth problem. I suppose this is a subset of the artificial intelligence revolution, which we have to be part of if we are going to succeed as a country. My friend and colleague in the other place, Peter Kyle, who is now in charge of innovation and research—whatever that new department is called—sees this question of how we mobilise these technological advances for growth as one of the great progressive causes of our time.
In some respects, the Government have gone about this in the right way, in trying to establish a partnership body through injecting public money in partnership with academic expertise, scientists, engineers and corporations. I share the view of the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, that this should not exclude the smaller innovators, but I also very much share the view of my colleague, my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe, that any partnership work should involve the trade unions. As someone said, this will have enormous consequences for jobs in the future and we must involve the trade unions from an early stage.
The Bill is legal and technical, and it is necessary, but of course it is not the whole answer—it is not a policy framework for autonomous vehicles. Reading it, I thought that, if only we had a magic wand and could bring automated vehicles into play overnight, getting rid of all that we have now, the Bill would be a perfect example of how to regulate that. But we are not in that situation: we in fact face decades of hybridity, or a mixed system—however you want to describe it—and that is the immediate regulatory task.
I will pick the Minister up on one point he made early in his remarks. He mentioned that the safety benefits of automated vehicles were “plain to see”. Well, they might be in this idealised future that we might get to some time, but are they “plain to see” in this hybrid world, which will be the real world of the next 20 or 30 years?
There are lots of issues about what safety standards we set. If we have a significant number of accidents, it will put back the development of these technologies in a very rapid way. I picked up an article in the Financial Times—a great authority—by a Mr Richard Waters, describing what had happened in California, where the regulators have actually halted operations at Cruise, the General Motors driverless car division, because of accidents in California. We do not want to get ourselves into that situation, so we have to move forward in a way that will prevent that kind of eventuality—and there are lots of issues in that regard.
The insurance and legal questions around what happens when a so-called “transition demand” occurs are very complicated. There is the issue that the House of Commons Transport Committee raised in a very good report: what happens to the driving skills of drivers who become gradually reliant on automated systems? How do we keep their driving skills up to date? What sort of test should you have to pass to be a driver who part-relies on automation but is then capable of taking control in an emergency? I know that some people talk about 10 seconds but, if you are doing your emails or talking on the phone to an important colleague, would you be capable of doing this in 10 seconds? I do not know. There seem to be a lot of issues here.
Of course, there are other issues, not just to do with the car, the systems and the driver but to do with the networks within which these vehicles will run. Failings in digital connectivity is the obvious one. I have just finished 10 years on Cumbria County Council and, if someone had told us that we had to spend millions of pounds on the database of our road system, I would have had lots of Conservative councillors getting up and saying, “You’re not wasting your money on all of that—what about the potholes?” We would have a real problem with local authority finance in what strikes me as potentially a very costly exercise.
Then there is the question of regulation of the agencies in the Department for Transport that will have to put these systems in place. There is the question of skills: will the people in the agencies have the right skills to do the job properly? We all know that what will happen is that the brightest and most capable people will be employed by the companies, which will have the sources of expertise. So there are lots of issues that we need to face.
We need an effective system of regulation, and we have to think about how that is going to work. We do not want a system of regulation that holds things back —the man with a red flag who has to walk in front of the vehicle. We have to avoid that kind of regulation. Equally, we have to approach it from the point that people will expect that this new technology will produce not just the status quo in safety but a real advance, with fewer accidents, fewer deaths and fewer life-changing injuries.
The key is to develop a regulatory system that is rapidly adaptable. That is an easy thing to say, but when we think about regulation and the way it works—or the way I have observed it working in Britain in many different forms—we see that it is not very adaptable. We have great crises that result in regulatory reviews; they come up with long reports that make lots of recommendations and then those reports lie on people’s shelves and do not get acted on. We have to be more flexible and adaptable than we have been. Regulation is a good thing, but it has to be flexible and adaptable. We have to get away from the mindset of, “As little regulation as possible is what is good for the country”. We have to have good regulation, not bad regulation, and if we do, we may be able to take advantage of the great opportunities that these technological advances offer.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords for their very thoughtful, indeed fascinating, contributions on the Bill. I will attempt to respond to as many questions and concerns as possible and where I have not been able to, I will certainly follow up in writing.
Let me begin, once again, with safety. The noble Lords, Lord Berkeley and Lord Hampton, my noble friends Lord Holmes of Richmond and Lord Lucas, and others have rightly highlighted the debate about the exact safety standard to which self-driving vehicles should be held. As my noble friend Lord Borwick rightly pointed out, the long-term safety benefits of these vehicles could be truly vast. However, they will not be realised if the public lose confidence early on, or if an unnecessarily high threshold is imposed from the outset. A careful balance must therefore be struck. We believe that the careful and competent driver standard in our safety ambition strikes that balance most appropriately. As I have said, this standard is considerably higher than that of the average driver on UK roads. It is the highest of the three standards on which the Law Commission consulted and the same one to which human drivers are held.
By setting out the statement of safety principles in statutory guidance, informed by this safety ambition, we will be able to raise standards over time as the technology improves or as public expectations change. This approach is in line with the Law Commission’s recommendations. My noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond asked how and when we would review the safety of self-driving vehicles. The Bill sets out a flexible, future-proof framework that can be adapted and updated in line with technological developments. While we do not believe that it would be appropriate to specify time periods for review in the Bill, we of course recognise the importance of transparency and regular reporting. Clause 38 therefore creates a general monitoring duty, requiring the Secretary of State to publish an annual report on the performance of self-driving vehicles and how this aligns with safety standards.
This leads me to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, on whether this framework will work in a world with a mix of self-driving and manual vehicles. The Law Commission’s recommendations, accepted by the Government, set out a framework that is designed to work for a mix of traffic where self-driving vehicles will share the road with conventional human drivers and vulnerable road users. Similarly, in response to my noble friend Lord Naseby’s question in this area, self-driving vehicles will need to be able to safely operate using existing infrastructure, and we therefore do not anticipate any immediate changes in current provision or practices. To satisfy the self-driving test, vehicles must drive safely and legally in accordance with road rules and conditions which apply to everyone.
In response to my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond asking whether the Government would ban human-driven vehicles if self-driving vehicles were found to be much safer, we reiterate the point that nothing in the Bill seeks to restrict any existing road users exercising their right to use roads or other public places.
The noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, raised the possibility of jaywalking laws restricting pedestrians from crossing roads except at pedestrian crossings. In response, I point to the law commissions’ analysis that to restrict the freedom of movement of pedestrians due to the insufficiencies in automated vehicle functionalities does not appear justified at this time.
The noble Baronesses, Lady Randerson and Lady Bowles, raised the issue of cybersecurity. Vehicles with automated systems will be subject to detailed technical cybersecurity assessment as part of the well-established type approval process. The DfT co-chairs the UN group that developed the new international regulations for vehicle cybersecurity. Separately, the DfT runs its own cyber safety and assurance programme for self-driving vehicles, working closely with the National Cyber Security Centre, other government departments and our international partners. This has included developing a bespoke cyber training programme for technical staff, supported by the NCSC.
I turn to the pertinent issue of accessibility, as raised by my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond and the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Bennett. The granting of self-driving authorisations will be subject to the public sector equality duty, and the Government intend to make equality impact assessments part of the authorisation process. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, raised concerns that, by disapplying existing taxi, private hire and bus legislation, important accessibility protections may not apply. Clause 87 requires that automated passenger permits could be granted only with a view to improving the understanding of how these services can be provided and designed for older and disabled passengers. Service providers will also need to report back on lessons learned.
I turn to some of the specifics of how we expect these vehicles to operate. The noble Baronesses, Lady Bowles and Lady Randerson, the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, and others asked about the transition demand, particularly how we will ensure that users are given sufficient time to safely resume control. The Bill requires that transition periods be long enough for the user-in-charge to resume control, including any time required to regain situational awareness and prepare themselves. Transition demands will use a combination of visual, acoustic and haptic warnings. The exact time required will vary significantly by use case and is therefore not set out in the Bill. Authorisation will assess whether a self-driving feature’s transition demand is of sufficient duration and whether it issues appropriate cues given the context. This may also be assessed as part of vehicle type approval.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, and others asked about the interaction between self-driving vehicles and the insurance industry and how we will ensure that insurers have access to appropriate data. Following a road incident, a claimant would notify the insurer. The insurer would need access to data recorded by the vehicle to determine in the first instance how the claim will be handled. The Secretary of State will have the power to create provision in secondary legislation for the vehicle to record and retain data to determine liabilities and ensure that the insurer has access to that data.
The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, asked how the framework would deal with a breakdown or other incident occurring to a no-user-in-charge vehicle, given that there may be no human present in the vehicle at the time. Every no-user-in-charge vehicle will be overseen by a licensed no-user-in-charge operator. These operators will be responsible for responding to incidents such as breakdowns. We will be able to set detailed conditions as part of the operator licensing, ensuring that they have the right capabilities in place to respond to such incidents.
The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, asked about issues with self-driving vehicles crossing international borders. Given that domestic regulations on these technologies are still in their infancy, there are as yet no international agreements governing vehicles passing from one jurisdiction to another. We have been engaging with our international partners to develop guidelines on the use of these vehicles and to encourage consistency in domestic approaches.
In the interim, we anticipate that vehicles will be designed to de-activate any self-driving features when outside their intended domain of operation. We would also have the power to require this through authorisation conditions if necessary. Communication about authorisation for the use of self-driving will make it clear that it applies only to Great Britain. We will monitor rules in other countries to determine what messages should be provided for users of authorised vehicles who intend to use them outside Great Britain.
Similarly, my noble friend Lord Moylan and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, raised the issue of vehicles passing into Northern Ireland. The core provisions of the Bill do not extend to Northern Ireland, in line with the Road Traffic Act 1988, which extends to Great Britain only. Northern Ireland has its own traffic laws. Accordingly, the authorisation for use of self-driving does not extend to Northern Ireland, and in the absence of specific rules on use there, the vehicle would be treated as conventional and the driver would be liable for its behaviour. Throughout the review, led by the Law Commission, and the development of the Bill, we have kept the Northern Ireland Executive briefed on our plans.
The noble Lords, Lord Tunnicliffe and Lord Liddle, asked about jobs and growth. We believe that the self-driving sector could create more than 38,000 new, well-paid jobs up and down the country by 2035. The UK’s being a leader in self-driving technology will attract inward investment and commercial opportunities, as mentioned by my noble friend Lord Ranger. These new jobs could range from the design and manufacture of vehicles to overseeing safe and secure passenger operations.
Turning briefly to address questions of scope, the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, mentioned so-called “pavement bots”. The Bill is designed to cover all road vehicles. While the legal definition of roads includes the pavement, the use of vehicles on pavements is limited through the Highway Act 1835. Any future changes to regulations regarding pavement use would need to be balanced with the need to maintain safety and accessibility for other road users. We are funding research to better understand the opportunities and risks associated with this technology.
My noble friend Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth asked about the Government’s plans for industries out of scope of this Bill, such as the aircraft industry. I assure my noble friend that the UK’s strategic vision is to maximise the benefits of automated air and maritime technologies, as well as road technologies. We will publish the Future of Flight action plan, which will set out the strategic direction for the aviation industry, developed through the Future of Flight Industry Group.
On data, the noble Baronesses, Lady Bowles and Lady Brinton, and my noble friend Lord Borwick, correctly pointed out that large quantities of data will be created and used to enable self-driving. Data may need to be shared to ensure that safety is maintained and operations such as insurance continue to function efficiently. However, data must remain properly protected. Self-driving vehicles will be subject to existing data protection laws in the UK. Our proposed Bill does not alter that, so manufacturers and government will have to ensure that data is protected. The Bill allows data to be requested for the monitoring of self-driving vehicle safety and the investigation of incidents. As the noble Baroness mentioned, the Secretary of State may make regulations authorising the sharing with other persons of the information gathered. Those regulations will be subject to consultation and considered in the House. It will be an offence for persons to share data or use it for other purposes unless authorised by those regulations. However, the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, pointed out the provisions under Clause 42(7) are very wide. We will reflect further on her comments to ensure that the right balance of safety, commercial interests and personal data protection is maintained.
The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, asked about the rationale behind the misleading marketing offences in the Bill. The inclusion of these offences was specifically recommended by the Law Commission, as it felt that the current law would leave some gaps in protection. For example, the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 apply only if a customer makes a transactional decision such as buying a car. This is too narrow and leaves a gap, as the risk of misunderstanding a vehicle’s self-driving capability is not confined to the purchase alone. It could include, for example, borrowing the vehicle from a friend.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and other noble Lords have pointed out, it is vital that we build and maintain public consent for this new technology. In 2022 the Department for Transport funded an award-winning and unprecedented study called the Great Self-Driving Exploration. It was explicitly designed to allow people from all walks of life to engage with self-driving vehicles, understand how they might affect their lives, address the existing transport challenges and determine whether it would be a good thing. The learning from this research is being used to develop future engagement plans, which are being developed with trialling organisations, industry, academia and road safety groups, including through the government-led AV-DRiVE group.
The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, raised the question of how the Government will administer this new framework. We intend that the delivery of these new processes will rest with the Department for Transport’s executive agencies, in line with other existing responsibilities for conventional vehicles. We expect the Vehicle Certification Agency to assume responsibility for the initial authorisation process. The authorisation of self-driving vehicles will, in many cases, use vehicle type approval to support assessments of safety. As the UK’s designated type approval authority, the VCA is well placed to carry out this new function.
We expect the Driver & Vehicle Standards Agency to be responsible for the NUIC operator licensing and enforcement. The DVSA is already responsible for licensing for passenger service vehicles and freight operators, and it has existing powers for stopping and testing vehicles. The in-use regulatory system applies across both authorisation and operator licensing and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, pointed out, it will require close co-operation between the agencies.
On the question of capacity and capability raised by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, the roles of the VCA and the DVSA are being developed as part of our ongoing safety assurance programme. We are working with the VCA and external partners to begin to put in place the right skills, facilities and processes to deliver this new regime. That has included developing existing staff and creating new roles to cover critical areas such as cybersecurity, simulation and machine learning; establishing new facilities in Bristol and the Midlands focused on assessing complex electronic systems; and conducting research into potential assessment methodologies. Similarly, the DVSA has established a dedicated team to consider the new processes that may be necessary to support NUIC operator licensing and in-use regulation.
My noble friend Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth asked a question on the budget for the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles. The centre is a special policy directorate working across the Department for Transport and the Department for Business and Trade. At the last spending review, the CCAV received £100 million covering a three-year period to 2025. Of that funding, £66 million was for research into and development of the commercialisation of the technology, and £34 million was to fund the research and evidence required to develop the regulatory framework, including funding for capability building in the motoring agencies. The work the CCAV does is not just limited to funding.
My noble friend Lord Bourne also asked about what international engagement has taken place. UK officials take part in key international and UN programmes, including the Global Forum for Road Traffic Safety and the World Forum for Harmonization of Vehicle Regulations. As noble Lords would expect, UK officials also regularly engage bilaterally with counterparts in other nations developing legislation and standards in this space.
I am conscious of the time and apologise if I have not been able to address all the questions raised by noble Lords; I stand ready to provide further detailed briefings to noble Lords where required. I will check the record to see what has been missed and will address that in writing. We have heard a healthy mix of views today, and there is general consensus that utmost care and attention will be necessary if we are to build a system that can capture the benefits of self-driving vehicles while winning the confidence of the public, which is absolutely essential. I am therefore extremely grateful for all noble Lords’ insightful contributions, which I look forward to discussing further as we move to Committee.
Lord Davies of Gower
That the bill be committed to a Grand Committee, and that it be an instruction to the Grand Committee that they consider the bill in the following order:
Clauses 1 to 37, Schedule 1, Clauses 38 to 45, Schedule 2, Clauses 46 to 54, Schedule 3, Clauses 55 to 66, Schedule 4, Clauses 67 to 81, Schedule 5, Clauses 82 to 84, Schedule 6, Clauses 85 to 100, Title.
Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]
Wednesday 10th January 2024
(3 months, 2 weeks ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Automated Vehicles Bill [HL] 2023-24 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 1-I(b) Amendment for Committee (Supplementary to the Marshalled List) - (10 Jan 2024)
“(3A) Vehicle testing must include substantial real testing on roads in the United Kingdom in addition to simulation testing.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would probe the intention with regard to real as well as simulation testing for UK road situations.
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD)
My Lords, I think that this is the first time I have had an Amendment 1, but, in any event, it gives me pleasure to start the Committee stage of the Bill. For the purposes of Committee, I declare my interest, in that a family member works in the vehicle connectivity sector, but I have no financial interests.
I have three amendments in this group: Amendment 1, and Amendments 20 and 27, which are the same text appearing in different clauses. Amendment 1 is very much a “does what it says on the tin” amendment, and states that vehicle testing must include substantial real testing on roads as well as simulation testing for UK road situations. As well as for initial licensing, this may also have relevance when vehicles licensed in other countries are brought here, especially when driving on different sides of the road and road signs are differently placed. I was prompted to put in this rather obvious statement because among the various things that I read in the documents it was pointed out that simulation testing for UK road situations would be allowed—and I can accept its usefulness as an element when converting from well-proven automation on roads in other countries, for example. However, what I cannot accept is simulation on its own being sufficient, and I wish to ensure that that is not the case.
A further reason for this amendment is that I am aware of how, in the US, there have been issues moving from one city location to another, because of different road widths, despite those having been simulated. Noble Lords who do transport all the time can probably identify what I have read, but I am sure that moving from Los Angeles to the UK would have even more issues, including, for example, more narrow, ancient, humpback or bendy traffic bridges without traffic lights where it is possible only to go one way at a time.
Despite having come up with amendments, I take the approach across this legislation that I understand it is an enabling framework and will not contain detail and, further, that with consultations and so on, a broadly sensible approach will result. Nevertheless, when we have been given documents that explain current thinking and direction, they also explain that they are not fixed promises—presumably because there is still quite a lot of work to do and we do not yet know what the priorities will be. From looking at other amendments generally, it seems that other noble Lords also think we need a few more fixed promises on things that we can be certain will not be left out, and therefore seek to have them in the Bill. For me, real UK road testing, rather than only simulations, is one of them. Obviously, within that, I would expect the road testing to apply to the roads on which the vehicles will be licensed for automated use: on motorways for motorway driving, in towns for town driving, and country lanes with single-lane passing places—if you are lucky—for country lane driving. Will the Minister confirm that this will be the approach, and can we have assurance by some text in the Bill?
My other two amendments, Amendments 20 and 27, relate to adding insurance and captive insurance into the provisions that establish the financial soundness of an authorised self-driving entity. The Law Commission referenced insurance as being able to provide part of the financial soundness, and I would like to see that included, rather than it being thought an additional measure on top of everything else.
I also raised the issue of captives with the Minister at Second Reading, and I thank him for his reply. In the Bill, I would like to see captives acknowledged alongside mainstream insurance as an acceptable form of insurance in the context of ASDE financial stability. Call me cynical or pedantic, or probably both, but I have had too much involvement in financial services and insurance not to think that it needs specific elaboration to ensure that captives, as well as independent insurance, can be considered as an element of the financial stability package.
As I said, I found insurance mentioned in the Law Commission documents as a possible part of the financial stability assurance, so can the Minister say whether there was any specific reason for not following suit and not mentioning it in the Bill? If there were no specific reasons, will the Minister be inclined to recognise my warning, as there might be quibbling if it is not specified? I beg to move.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, I have a number of amendments in this group. I begin by asking my noble friend the Minister to encourage his team to get me a reply to what I call my Eastbourne email. I hope to use that as a means of understanding exactly where the Government find themselves with a practical example of an early-stage project. It would be helpful to have that by the second day in Committee. If I have already received it, I have missed it, so I would be grateful to him for pointing that out to me.
What binds the amendments in this group together is, first, that I do not expect these things to appear in the Bill because I think that they are covered. But they are covered in a way that does not make it clear what the Government will actually do, so I hope to draw out of them some information on what their intentions are.
Secondly, the amendments encourage the Government to take the standards-setting process seriously. I have some long experience observing the telecommunications industry. That has faded from my early days in the City, when we were one of the dominant world players, to now, when we are nothing. Part of that decay has been because we let standards-setting slip. If you want to be a place where a new technology is establishing itself and where companies want to come and be part of what you are doing, being part of the standards-setting is absolutely key. You have to assign good people to it—people who will be internationally respected for their views and insights in the industry—and give them the time to make a really serious contribution to the process. It is then independent of what is happening in the UK; they become part of the wavefront of what is happening, because the whole standards-setting process involves understanding the way things are going, what is happening and who is doing what. That information then flows back into the structures in the UK, and you get a local understanding of where the opportunities are and how the UK might take advantage of them.
If we had had that with telecommunications, we would not be in the dire state we are in now. We started with huge advantages, but they have all gone. Here we are with a new industry and a very clear need for international standards, so we absolutely must take that seriously and put our backs into being part of that process.
I will pick up on the individual amendments. The vehicle identification system—the way in which vehicles will say, “Hi, this is me”—will clearly be electronic. The whole business of using number plates has broken down, and there are 10 million or so unauthorised vehicles on British roads, for all sorts of reasons—vehicles that are just not known to the DVLA, are not taxed and have strings of outstanding parking tickets. Nobody knows whether a number plate they see is real or cloned. We do not need this happening in a new industry, where it will be really important to establish exactly which vehicle was doing what and at which time. It has to be an electronic system, it has to be something that is embedded in hardware, and it absolutely has to be consistent internationally. A vehicle coming over from the continent has to use the same system. This is an example of something that we have to develop and a direction we have to go in, and we absolutely have to be part of setting that standard.
Amendment 15 looks at the question of a passenger alarm. If you are in a vehicle that is travelling totally autonomously and something is wrong and you want to raise the alarm, how do you do it? What is the system? What should you expect to find in the vehicle? Are we going to restrict travelling to people who happen to have mobile phones on them at the time? I hope not. What is the system to be? Again, we ought to be part of establishing international standards, because we want to be able to admit vehicles to the UK. This should be about not just our own domestic expectations; there should be something running internationally.
We want vehicles to be able to communicate where they are and, if they are part of some kind of lending, taxi or other scheme, whether they are available. Again, this needs to be done in a standard way, so that different owners and manufacturers are all sending this information out in a consistent way, and on the back of it can be built the sort of systems consumers will need to know whether or not an autonomous vehicle is available to them. We should not reach a block or allow this to become balkanised, with different companies owning little bits; the information available to consumers ought to be clearly available to everybody.
Amendment 17 looks at the process of reporting on the condition of vehicles, as there are various bits of the Bill that make it clear that automated vehicles are expected to be well maintained. If a vehicle detects that it is not in the state that it ought to be in, that needs to be reported. It needs to be reported not just internally to the system but in a way that makes that information, and the fact that it was reported, available to investigating authorities. Again, we need a standard for that, and it needs to be an international one.
Amendment 18 looks at the question of waymarkers: how a vehicle knows exactly where it is in a relatively autonomous landscape. Are we going to be totally reliant on the navigation satellites working or are we going to have a more ground-based reference system? Some manufacturers clearly think that they will have within their vehicles an image of the routes that they are taking and that the vehicles will recognise where they are. That is a darned hard thing to do on some motorways—you just do not know which bit you are on, or indeed which country you are in: “Am I in Germany or am I still in the UK?” There is a system on motorways where, in the physical sense, you can look at the waymarkers—if you are not travelling too fast—and see where you are; if you break down, it allows you to read the sign and say what distance from it you are. Are we thinking of building that into automated vehicles?
Lastly, how will vehicles communicate with the emergency services, whether it is a fire engine coming up from behind asking the vehicle to pull over and let it through or a policeman standing at the edge of the road, waving down the vehicle to stop? How will that be achieved? Again, we will want there to be an international standard; we do not want to find that vehicles coming in from abroad are unable to speak English. There has to be a common system in there somewhere. However, we absolutely want it to happen—we do not want our police to be powerless and for the automated vehicles to sail past them because they do not understand a hand wave. There has to be some communication system. There are lots of options, but we have to specify it.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, in principle I support the amendments in this group. Noble Lords who have tabled them have given us some pretty concerning views on what might happen when things go wrong. It all boils down to the fact that there needs to be proper standards, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said, and proper testing of those standards in real life, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, said. My worry is that government has a habit of cutting corners on these things, saying, “It’s going to be all right on the night”.
Looking at the number of cars, 4x4s and other vehicles on the road in this country, and adding the trucks which go all over Europe, if not further, one wonders what kind of standard approach will be developed. It cannot be done just by the British Government or their agencies; it has to be done on a worldwide basis. If we do not have the right standards, we will have no means of checking, when these things are tested on the road, whether they comply with the standards. We had this discussion two or three weeks ago, before Christmas, on the pedicabs Bill and batteries catching fire. It is the same issue here; we probably have the same type of batteries, although maybe just a bit bigger. There has to be a standard, not just for the batteries and other components but for how the whole thing works together. I hope the Minister can tell us how this will work in real life.
As we know, many regulations will be introduced to tell us the detail we have not had today. How many such vehicles that come here, for whatever reason, are not registered in this country? Will they be able to take part in this electric vehicle trial or will they be told that they have to have a driver? If they have to have a driver, somebody will say that that is anti-competitive, and they will take us to a European court of some description because we are keeping foreign drivers—if we can call them foreign—at a disadvantage.
All these questions need answering, as well as the fundamental question of what the backup is when there is a failure—whether it is the satellites, the GPS or whatever else. What will happen when it fails? I am sure the Minister has many good answers to these questions, which I shall enjoy listening to. If he cannot answer them, perhaps we can have another long letter—his are very helpful—explaining what might happen with all these things. We are coming to Report, so this will be our last opportunity to question him. I very much look forward to his comments and I support these amendments in this group.
Baroness Brown of Cambridge (CB)
My Lords, I will make a comment on Amendment 1, but perhaps also a more general comment on some of the amendments in this group and the next. I absolutely recognise that these automated driving systems need to be accepted by the public, and I see that many of the amendments look to do that by increasing the emphasis on ensuring safety. I am sure that we are all hugely sympathetic to that, so I am very sympathetic to the motivation for many of the amendments—but we need to be a bit careful. This is a new area of technology—it is still developing, of course—and there may be some unintended consequences of some of the changes that people are proposing.
In talking about this, I will briefly refer to some recent research by Konstantinos Mattas and his colleagues from the European Joint Research Centre in Ispra in Italy. For example, in Amendment 1 we are asked to include a phrase about
“substantial real testing on roads”.
I think we really need to explore the value of this. Human drivers have a frequency of fatal crashes of one every 3.4 million hours, which would imply continuous driving for 380 years. To demonstrate that automated vehicles are safer than humans, you would need to run 100 automated vehicles for 24 hours a day for 225 years. Of course, if you change the software or the hardware, you might well need to repeat tests of this length. We need to recognise the challenge of demonstrating safety by long periods of testing on roads. The vehicles will have to be significantly unsafe for a realistic period of testing to start to show up the problems.
I cannot support Amendment 1, even though I hugely sympathise with it, because it is an apparently simple ask but I do not think it is likely to deliver the benefits intended. Unfortunately, it could be counterproductive, so I think the wording of the Bill as it stands is preferable to the proposal in Amendment 1.
Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 55C in my name in this group and apologise to the noble Baroness who moved the initial amendment. I was just sitting down when she started to speak, so I apologise for not being fully in my seat. I declare my technology interest as adviser to Boston Ltd.
What we are talking about here with autonomous vehicles is really mobility enabled through technology. My Amendment 55C seeks to take some of the themes that have already been spoken to, not least by my noble friend Lord Lucas: the sense of how technologies are able to interact and communicate with one another—what we call interoperability. Interoperability should be a golden thread running through many sections, because it is critical to the success of these technologies.
There are extraordinary economic, environmental, decongestion and safety benefits to potentially be gained through the mass deployment of automated autonomous vehicles, but they will be gained only if the systems are interoperable with one other, so all the vehicles can speak to one another and to the transport control centres and emergency services control centres. Only through having that key golden thread of inter- operability will we enable the economic, environmental, social, safety and accessibility benefits. That is what my Amendment 55C is all about, and I look forward to my noble friend the Minister responding in due course.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, I am pleased to take part in this debate, first to support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady Bowles. I will also speak to Amendments 22 and 43 in my name.
My noble friend has raised some important issues about the adequacy of simulation as a way of establishing the safety of automated vehicles. Cycling UK, in its briefing to some of us, has raised similar issues in the context of the more vulnerable road users. Experience in the USA—very definite real-life experience, especially in San Francisco—has revealed that there is no substitute for real-life testing and that permission to operate on real roads can be given too easily.
We all know that how we drive is based on the skills we have learned and the experience we have developed as human beings. I have no doubt that a vehicle driving itself will in some ways be a lot less vulnerable than we are to feeling sleepy, losing concentration and so on. But it is a very complex thing to simulate and build something that, for example, notices that the gentleman ahead, who has a white stick, will therefore be blind or very poorly sighted. It is difficult for a simulation to tell the difference between the hesitation by the side of the road of an elderly person who is looking anxiously around and that of someone who is hesitating because they are reading their phone at the same time, or to notice that someone who has just stepped off the pavement is a teenager who was having a joke with his mates 10 seconds before and may not be concentrating. These are all things that we notice every day and make a judgment on; we see potential issues that we may have to take into account.
I am sure that simulating all that can be done, but it is the real-life, real-road experience that needs to be taken into account—the subtle messages. It is difficult to imagine a road system much more complex than that in the UK, with its bendy roads that are heavily trafficked and a high number of pedestrians. I was recently in the USA, where I was immediately struck, as I looked down from the air, by the regularity of the grid system. When I got into towns and cities, I was struck by the very low number of pedestrians in the streets compared with Britain. We have a much more complex and unpredictable set of circumstances.
My Amendment 22 refers to the checks and permissions that will be required before foreign vehicles are allowed on UK roads. Foreign vehicles drive on our roads all the time, but it will be much more complex in future. At the moment, we rely on the fact that foreign vehicles have had permission in their own country and are deemed to be satisfactory for their own country, and that the driver, if they have come from abroad, will be adapting—some much better than others, obviously. We rely on that awareness and adaptation. The cars, vehicles, vans and HGVs concerned will have to download a whole new lot of software, because every perception of the vehicle—all the distance, width and so on—will have to be done from a different point of view. They will have to download the map of the whole UK that these vehicles will operate on. Some of our road signs are different from those in other countries, so awareness of them will be a more complex issue.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
My Lords, since this is the start of Committee, I reiterate the support on this side of the House for the principles of the Bill, and we want to facilitate innovation as much as possible in a safe and secure way—by God, our economy needs innovation if we are going to get out of the rut of stagnation that we have seen in the last period, which has been too long. There is a consensus behind this measure. The important things that we have to debate are not in this group of amendments but on the questions of safety, which we are addressing next, and on how the Government go about what will be an evolving process of regulation and consult widely at all stages.
On the specifics, these amendments are all probing in their nature: we are not being very specific about how we want to change the Bill, but we are very interested in what the Minister has to say about the issues raised. That is a good reason for putting down the amendments. I will comment on what others have proposed, then on a couple of things that we have proposed.
I agree completely with the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, about the importance of standards-setting. His example of mobile phones is an area where Britain was able to put itself in the lead and to work to get European regulation in line with what we wanted. As a result, we initially had a very successful industry. I fear that that is not happening in the case of automated vehicles. Someone referred to how we were already behind France and Germany—I think that the briefing we received from techUK said that we were three or four years behind not just the United States, where we know there have been a lot of advances in this area in particular states, but France and Germany. That is a serious concern. The Government should consider seriously all the detailed points that the noble Lord made. There will probably be an argument that they should not be in legislation; none the less, this is our opportunity as a House to say what issues we think the regulation has to take into account. That is a good thing about what the noble Lord has proposed.
I have to say that, when I listened to the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, talking about the need for real testing rather than relying on simulation testing, I thought, “Gosh, this is spot on here—absolutely right”. But of course, that shows the depth of my ignorance of the subject, because I thought that the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, with all her scientific expertise, countered that argument very well. Of course, the truth is that we will have to rely on simulation in large part, though we should do as much real-time testing as we can and as is realistic.
I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, on the importance of interoperability. I hope the Government will take that into account in their future regulatory policy.
In terms of the amendments in my name, Amendment 13 is on the question of foreign manufacturers, as it were, and our attitude to them. I gathered from the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, outside, that it is poorly drafted. I am sure that is right, but what we are trying to do here is raise an issue of concern. We cannot find ourselves in a position that, just because something has been approved in one country that has approved the specifications of its manufacturers, this automatically transfers into the UK. I think that would be dangerous.
I think there are also some national security arguments in this area, given the reliance on the systems on artificial intelligence. I have been reading a lot in newspapers recently about how Chinese electric vehicles are poised to take over the European market and are in a very strong position. What would happen if we thought that Chinese automated vehicles were in such a position in a few years’ time? Would we be very relaxed about that, or would we be anxious that a wider range of considerations should be taken into account? I suggest the latter.
I turn to Amendment 26. I think it is essential that we have a public record of all authorisations, and as much information as possible that people can query. On Amendment 28, to put it in simple terms, as I see it, we have these no-user-in-charge operators. Of course, I am sure the scheme of regulation that the Law Commission devised is sound in legal terms, after they put so much effort into it. However, what is the kind of MoT that these no-user-in-charge people will have to satisfy every year? What guarantees do the people who are running the automated vehicles have to show to prove that they are continuing to keep these vehicles in the state in which they were sold originally? With those comments, I look forward to a reply from the Minister.
Lord Borwick (Con)
My Lords, I will quickly come in to comment on the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, while first referring to my interests in the register, which I referred to in more depth at Second Reading. The comment I made, which was mentioned so generously by the noble Lord, is that his Amendment 13 talks about a “specified manufacturer”. However, there are two different ways of making an automated vehicle. One is to make it from scratch—something that Tesla does. The second is to adapt somebody else’s vehicle, as Waymo, Wayve, Oxa and other automated vehicle people do. Because the word “manufacturer” is defined in type approval legislation, I believe that those companies are not called “manufacturers” because they are adapting somebody else’s vehicle. So there is a problem in using the words “specified manufacturer” for those who are adapting other vehicles. This is all part of the immense complexity of this subject and it is not surprising that it would be easy for an amendment to fall into the wrong section if we were not very careful about it.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Lord Davies of Gower) (Con)
My Lords, I am very grateful to colleagues across the House for their contributions this afternoon and for the discussions that we have had on the Bill in recent weeks. The amendments in this first group relate to the assessments we will apply both to vehicles and the corporate entities that operate and take responsibility for them.
I will begin with Amendments 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19, all tabled by my noble friend Lord Lucas. I whole- heartedly agree with the points that he and the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, raised about the importance of standard setting. Indeed, we are already well established in the key international fora on these issues and are funding the British Standards Institution to help develop industry best practice. However, as always, a balance must be struck between the benefits of leading the way and the risks of acting prematurely. I absolutely acknowledge what my noble friend says about the intention of these amendments. None the less, taken at face value, these amendments risk creating an inflexible system that could hamper, rather than enhance, the UK’s international influence in this industry.
I will take each amendment in turn. On Amendment 14, it is the Government’s view that the number plate remains fit for purpose and that mandating an alternative, as yet unproven, technology would be of little value without significant investment in the corresponding roadside monitoring equipment. On Amendment 15, our policy scoping notes already set out our intention to consider passenger communication as a component of operator licensing. We believe that this is the right place to specify these types of requirements. On Amendment 16, Clause 12 requires that licensed operators oversee their vehicles and respond to issues that may arise. This means that the ability to monitor location is already implicitly required. The requirement to indicate availability is confined to automated passenger services. It is therefore disproportionate to apply it to all self-driving vehicles.
Moving on, we believe that the intent of Amendment 17 is already provided for. In order to satisfy the self-driving test, Clause 1 requires that vehicles be capable of operating safely and legally. A vehicle that was able to enter self-driving mode while aware of a safety-critical fault, such as a sensor failure, would not satisfy the self-driving test and would not be authorised.
Turning to Amendment 18, self-driving vehicles must be capable of operating using the road infrastructure as it exists today. This will necessitate the ability to recognise the range of signs currently found on our roads. Adapting road signs or developing other way-markers to accommodate self-driving vehicles is therefore, in our opinion, unnecessary.
Finally, we believe that Amendment 19 is already largely addressed by the stopping powers provision in Clause 57. I hope this also addresses the point raised by my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond. I will finish on this section by assuring my noble friend Lord Lucas that we will get a prompt response to his email regarding the Eastbourne scheme.
I turn now to my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond’s Amendment 55C. The benefits of harmonisation must be considered carefully against the impact on innovation, costs and cybersecurity. A harmonised interoperability standard will be lengthy and complex to negotiate. Doing so quickly risks picking the wrong technologies and falling behind.
Amendment 28, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, risks confusing the role of the no-user-in-charge operator with that of the authorised self-driving entity or ASDE. Before a self-driving feature can be authorised, the ASDE must demonstrate the technology can deal safely with faults by executing a minimum-risk manoeuvre and bringing the vehicle to a safe stop. We would not wish to undermine this key ASDE responsibility by suggesting that a no-user-in-charge operator can compensate for inadequate design in the technology. Operators will of course be subject the ongoing requirements of their licences. We will have broad powers to ensure these are followed.
Moving on to Amendment 13, I reassure the Committee that all manufacturers will be subject to the same high expectations and robust requirements, regardless of who they are. To arbitrarily constrain the pool of manufacturers which can be authorised would risk stifling innovation. Our focus is rightly on ensuring that corporate entities meet the appropriate standards of competence, repute, financial standing and technical capability. The powers in Clauses 6 and 91 already make ample provision to set such standards. On the point the noble Lord raised about national security, such issues could be taken into account in a consideration of the good repute requirement.
On Amendment 26, Clause 10 already requires that the register of authorisations be made public. In line with standard practice for official government publications, I can confirm that this will be done online. The amendment is therefore unnecessary.
Turning to Amendment 43 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, we intend to explore technical solutions to ensure that automated vehicles cannot operate unless they can do so safely. For example, we could require a vehicle to check it has the latest software update before the self-driving feature can be engaged. Such provisions are possible under the powers of the Bill. Due to the technical nature of such requirements and the continued development of the technology, this is best achieved through secondary legislation. We also have the safeguard that, where an authorised-self driving entity ceases to assume responsibility for the vehicle, the vehicle’s authorisation would be withdrawn. In such a case, standard consumer protections would apply. On the specific question of responsibility for safety- critical updates, this sits with the authorised self-driving entity as the body accountable for a vehicle’s safety.
This brings me to the noble Baroness’s Amendment 22. I am conscious that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, also touched upon this issue. The Bill does not prevent foreign vehicles from being authorised as self-driving in the UK. However, they will naturally need to demonstrate that they are capable of operating safely and legally on our roads. Requirements to be overseen by an appropriate authorised self-driving entity and licensed operator will also apply as usual. Any non-authorised feature would be classed as driver assistance. The driver could therefore be charged with motoring offences if they divert their attention from the road. Of course, appropriate information will need to be provided at the border. We are working with international partners to develop guidelines to facilitate automated vehicles passing from one jurisdiction to another, including as part of the relevant UN expert group. In the interim, we expect other jurisdictions to apply similar safeguards as we intend to, for example, that vehicles’ systems be designed to deactivate outside of their authorised geographic area. I hope this offers the noble Baroness a sufficient explanation of the position.
On Amendment 1, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles of Berkhamsted, the Government agree that real-world testing will play an important role in ensuring the safety of self-driving vehicles. That is why we are already funding real-world trials here in the UK. Setting requirements for real-world testing through the powers in Clauses 5 and 91 will allow these requirements to evolve alongside the standards they assess. Regarding the “substantial” amount, I would also add that it is ultimately the quality of testing that matters, rather than the quantity. This point was made very well by the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Cambridge. For example, 100 hours of rush-hour driving is likely to be more revealing than 1,000 hours of navigating empty streets. Again, these nuances are best captured in secondary legislation.
Moving finally to the noble Baroness’s Amendments 20 and 27, the Bill leaves flexibility for financial standing to be demonstrated through insurance cover—a model we refer to in our policy scoping notes. While I believe it would be too specific to make a reference on the face of the Bill, it will be appropriate to expand on this issue as part of authorisation and licensing requirements. I will welcome the noble Baroness’s expertise if she wishes to make representations at that stage. Lastly, I can confirm the Government’s wider consultation on insurance captives is due to be published in the spring. On that basis, I hope the noble Baroness will be prepared to withdraw her amendment.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, I was struck by my noble friend’s answer on Amendment 43. Is he saying that, should one of the small innovative companies we have in the UK go bust, anybody who has bought their product will immediately find it is valueless because they are no longer allowed to use it? That would seem a considerable disincentive to buy kit from small British companies.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
I am sorry if the noble Lord took that view of it, but that was not my intention.
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his responses. At this stage, of course, everything is probing. I possibly still entertain a hope that we can have some little light-touch mentions that are not overbearing somewhere in the text. Maybe we will return to some of these issues on Report.
There are one or two things other noble Lords have said that I would like to touch on. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, mentioned connectedness. We are falling into a bit of a trap if we start talking about the connectedness of automated vehicles, because the big prize is the connectedness of all vehicles—those which are driven and those which are automated. That is where the real benefits to traffic management and the economic benefits reside. That is a much bigger scheme of interconnectedness, and we are doing ourselves a disfavour by almost sidelining the connectedness and connected car issues as if they are something small and of less importance than the big goal of automated vehicles. In the near term, connectedness is a lot more relevant and moves into what is happening with automated vehicles. We should try to think of it as more of a whole.
I am aware on the simulation aspects, which were addressed, and that we cannot have millions of hours of road driving. Simulations are important and it is an iterative process between simulated tests and road tests. I am perhaps reassured that that is what is in mind. I still do not like the vision that, sometime in the future, it might happen that there are absolutely no road tests—even small ones. Maybe it is wrong to try to insert “substantial”, implying that—this is not what I intended—it would be more than the simulated tests. I still think there should be a significant amount in there for a very long time into the future.
The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, said that his main interest is safety. Certainty is quite fundamental to safety. There is lots more to get to, so I will not say any more now. With the notion that I might return with this in a gentler form on Report, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Tunnicliffe
“(5A) For the purposes of subsection (5), an individual must be in the driving seat of the vehicle.”Member’s explanatory statement
This is to probe the meaning of individual in subsection (5).
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, I will also speak to the rest of the amendments in this group. I think someone suggested that this was the safety group; I agree and see it as pivotal to the Bill. Although we all support the idea of this being a vigorous and enthusiastic area of activity, it is not the role of this legislation to tell us how to do it. What is important is what we are seeking to achieve. I will in this group mostly be talking about how and what should be achieved rather more than how one achieves it.
First, Amendment 2 could not be more purely probing, because it reveals that neither my noble friend Lord Liddle nor I are able to understand the particular subsection that this refers to. The whole issue of whether there is a driver and what that driver does is complex. It is perfectly easy to understand the situation, and where the quality of design and management of the vehicle do not need human intervention under any circumstances. It is easy to understand a situation in which the level of intervention by the driver is not as comprehensive as in a conventional vehicle by the extent of automation. However, we have this difficult concept whereby for periods of an operation, the human being in the vehicle is a pure passenger and does not have to be alert to the environment. Then we envisage a situation in which that is no longer possible—there is in the legislation something about an interim period where the person is notified that they now have to become the driver. We have difficulty identifying the specifications as to where that person is—whether they should be in the driving seat. The concept of the driving seat needs clarifying—presumably there would be a concept called controls. I am sorry that we have not understood it but I should be grateful if the Minister could explain that, and I should be happy if he cannot do so now and can send a letter. I am sure that he has it right; it is just that we have been unable to understand it.
I now move, broadly speaking, into the safety part of the Bill. Amendments 3, 4, 5 and 7 say that the target should be safer than the target in the Bill. Do not lose sight of the fact that there is a target in the Bill, which is no worse than where we are now. In other words, the new vehicles being introduced to the fleet must be safer by 1% or 2%, or 70%; it is not defined. I share the enthusiasm to have the target safer than that, and I will come back to that.
Amendment 6 touches on an area that is referred to in many places in the paperwork and so on as diversity and equity. It is touched upon in the report from the law commissions. They say it better than I could, so I will quote paragraph 4.59 in the Law Commission and Scottish Law Commission’s report:
“Many consultees stressed to us that AVs should not cause greater risks to particular groups of road users, even if they were to save lives overall. During the course of this project, we have received responses from those representing vulnerable road users, including pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists and horse riders. They emphasised that AVs must be trained to be safe around all current road users: existing groups should not be subject to greater risks than they are now. We would expect this to be reflected within the published safety standard”.
That is an extremely important concept. It is, curiously enough, a concept we rarely follow in transport. We are usually willing to disadvantage part of our society for the greater benefit of the rest. We can have no greater example than that of HS2, but virtually any transport scheme or introduction of innovation will have winners and losers. This principle says there should be no losers. I should be interested as to the extent to which the Government accept the concept of no losers.
Amendment 7 touches on the wider issue of the importance of where can these vehicles operate and where do the rules relating to them operate? As far as I know, one has driverless vehicles called farm machinery these days—or they seem to be from the pictures on “Countryfile”, because people are reading Farmers Weekly and not looking where the harvester is going. There has to be a clear definition of where these rules apply. However, both issues need to be addressed.
I turn to the crucial issue of safety itself, which is in my Amendment 9. I did not find the structure of the Bill particularly convenient. I read the Bill the first time as saying in Clause 1 that there shall be a safety standard—it says other things as well but it introduces “safety” at some point—and that Clause 2 sets out what that standard should be. It is confusing, but we would like to particularly centre on my Amendment 9 on this issue. That works on the basis that you read Clause 1 to say there should be a standard, and you use Clause 2 as the mechanism by which you come to that standard. The whole issue of standard is discussed by the law commissions—I cannot get used to saying it in the plural but it was two commissions working together, the English and Scottish commissions. Their report at page 56, paragraph 4.10, sets out the three options as to what the standards should be:
“Option A: as safe as a competent and careful human driver; … Option B: as safe as a human driver who does not cause a fault accident; … Option C: overall, safer than the average human driver”.
One would have hoped that, after three rounds of consultation between November 2018 and March 2021, involving 350 meetings with individuals and organisations, and analysis of over 400 written responses, we would have an answer.
In fact, the answer is in paragraph 4.55, where, after three years’ consultation, it says:
“Ultimately, the decision over how safe an AV should be while it is driving itself depends on whether the remaining risks are acceptable to the public. This is essentially a political question, best taken by ministers. Ministers need to set a policy which can then be interpreted and applied by regulators with the support of experts, as part of the authorisation and monitoring processes”.
So it is down to Ministers, and I hope that by implication means politicians. Which are we going to pick? If you pick one of those standards, the rest is a matter of process. They might sound vague, but they are not that vague.
The most successful safety legislation in this country, the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, has a very simple objective: to reduce risk to as low as is reasonably practicable. In areas where it has been applied it has worked very well. It has had a tremendous impact on safety in construction, manufacture and so on. What is the golden objective that we should seek here?
We have option B, which was
“as safe as a human driver who does not cause a fault accident”.
I find that very difficult to interpret anyway. The Government in this Bill have chosen option C:
“overall, safer than the average human driver”.
That in my view means that there is no aspiration to improve road safety. It says that it must be greater than but the hard line, with people spending lots of money, doing the development and making the software and so on, would look for the hard point, and the hard point is that it merely has to be better than the average human driver.
As is pointed out elsewhere in the literature, the average human driver is not necessarily careful and may not be that competent. We are hopeful that the driving test makes sure that every driver is competent but, from our personal experience, are we sure that is universal? What is particularly important, which is brought out somewhere in the commission’s report, is that the average driver includes the
“distracted, drowsy, drunk … or disqualified”.
That is average—it includes all those people. There are the competent and careful human drivers, but that is but part of the universe out of which you take the average.
Therefore, I strongly recommend, as my amendment says, that we should go for the
“careful and competent human driver”.
That would be a significant improvement on today’s standards. It would be a real road safety improvement, and it would be capable of developing tests from that objective. Every proposal that the Government brought forward would be subject to that general test.
It also passes what I call the “toddler test”. We should not lose sight of the fact that these vehicles are going to kill people, not because they are intrinsically dangerous, but moving about on roads is dangerous. It is not very dangerous in the United Kingdom, thank God, but we want to improve it, and there will be deaths. When the first toddler dies by being run down by one of these vehicles, in this modern age you have to have a process about what you say to the mother. I believe that if you say that it would have occurred even with a careful and competent driver, you could at least say that it is not because of the automation. It is because it was a genuine accident, as far as there is such a concept to any extent.
I have knowledge of what it is like to kill people, because I ran a railway. It was quite a big railway, and it used to kill two or three people a year. It was actually a one in billion chance because we carried that many passengers, but you still have to be able to face the public, the television cameras and so on and say, “This is what we spent on it. This is how our safety plans work, and so on. These were our targets, and this is how we set about them”. I believe that that test
“competent and careful human driver”
is the right test, and we should put it in the Bill.
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD)
My Lords, I have two amendments in this group, which add to the safety principles. Amendment 7 would add “road environs” to Clause 2(2) so it reads that
“The principles must be framed with a view to securing that road”
and road environs
“safety in Great Britain will be better”.
I had two broad points in mind—one that it is relevant what happens next to the road, on pavements, driveways or anywhere else that a vehicle might stray if navigation goes wrong. It would be relevant, for example, if a consequence of some event meant that the vehicle swerved off road instead of stopping. The swerve might be safer for the road, but the vehicle might hit people not on the road, so it would not be safer for the road environs. I accept that the general standard is to stop not swerve, but that was an easy example to give. It is an obvious point, but something relating to the environs needs inclusion and the statistics that are analysed need to take those kinds of things into account.
I happened to come across a paper today—it was actually published yesterday—entitled Unreliable Pedestrian Detection and Driver Alerting in Intelligent Vehicles, by Professor Mary L Cummings, a senior member of the IEEE and a professor of mechanical engineering, electrical and computer engineering and computer science at George Mason University, and Ben Bauchwitz from Duke University. They have done some testing to try to detect pedestrians and, as the title might indicate, it did not work out all that well. Among the suggestions are that
“intelligent vehicles … detected the pedestrian earlier if there were no established lane lines, suggesting that in well-marked areas, typically the case for established crossings, pedestrians may be at increased risk”
because of the road markings. Obviously, these are all kinds of things that we have to take into account: it just shows that we have to look at what is happening in the whole environment.
There are other things that are going on in, around and among roads that are not part of whatever connected systems are developed, whether it is pedestrians, cyclists, animals that can be ridden or animals in the wild. Of course, we have plenty of such roads, where sheep graze in the Dales and ponies in the New Forest: they are not going to be part of the connected systems, so we need to be sure that the actions of those are taken into account. Less picturesque than those but omnipresent—I flagged them in my reasons—are delivery vehicles. Delivery vehicles already have a big and frequently annoying effect on roads. I doubt that I am the only person who has experienced near misses caused by bad or inconsiderate driving, or an inability to see the road ahead due to dangerous stopping by delivery vehicles, and there is no doubt that the tight scheduling of drivers bears some of the blame for that. Of course, we are hoping that automated driving will be more observant of legalities, but several noble Lords mentioned delivery vehicles at Second Reading. There are papers that explain how little robots are going to be coming up your drive, so what is the situation there? What testing will there be with delivery vehicles that are going to be partly on the road and partly going into private driveways?
An interesting point here is that, when I submitted my amendment, my explanatory statement had to be truncated to remove reference to private driveways because that was out of scope. It seems to me that the Bill is only about public highways, but we cannot get away from the fact that private driveways and private roads are pretty abundant, so what is the legal situation there going to be? Because that is out of scope, is it abandoned? Presumably, regulations cannot be being made, and I cannot help feeling that this is a little bit of a hole. The closest I could get to it was by “road and road environs”, which at least seemed to pass the sniff test in the Bill Office. Thus, in connection with both these amendments, my question to the Minister is: how much will testing and licensing take account of effects that are beyond the highway? What is actually included within the “highway” definition, so far as the Bill is concerned, and what is left out?
I have quite a lot of interaction with the highway, because I live with one going all the way up alongside me, and it is quite remarkable, from time to time, what the local authority thinks is part of the highway but is actually a 130 year-old ancient hedge that they wanted to chop down. Anyway, the corollary to all this is that, if testing and authorisation is done only in the context of highways and what happens there, what is the legal framework for these private and residential roads and driveways? If they are left out, are we going to have something in addition?
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, this is a very interesting and incredibly important group of amendments. My noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe’s introduction was masterful in setting out all the problems. Before I comment on them, however, I would like to comment on a remark by the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, just now about which bits of the country, whether they are highways or not, are covered by this legislation. A few years ago, it was nothing personal but I had to investigate whether somebody who was driving a vehicle under the influence of alcohol on an unmade road—in other words, a private road—could be guilty of drink-driving offences. The answer was that they would not be guilty of just about anything apart from drink-driving, because of course that comes under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act, which covers a much wider scope in this country than roads. It is worth asking the Minister what would happen if someone in control of these vehicles was actually found to be under the influence. Under what legislation would they be prosecuted, if they were liable?
The question of safety, as noble Lords have said, is fundamental. What worries me is that the Bill defines safety as meaning only
“to an acceptably safe standard”.
Acceptable to whom? What about the risk? Is there an acceptably low risk of committing a traffic infraction? Again, acceptable to whom? I am very concerned about the need, in all this legislation, to achieve a step change in road safety for all people who are affected by vehicles or what happens. At present, the risks of death or injury on our roads are significantly higher than for life in general or, indeed, on other transport networks, such as rail. Pedestrians and people who cycle —we have debated scooters before—bear a disproportionately higher risk of injury. If we add in children, old people and people with disabilities, who are particularly vulnerable, this is something that we do not really seem to take very seriously.
One issue that came up in a debate on the last group of amendments, which the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, raised, quite rightly, was the question of testing on the road, but it is a question of “Which roads?”. Most people think that the first location for testing these vehicles will be on a motorway, because there are no pedestrians—or there should not be any pedestrians or cyclists there—and that is quite simple, really. But then, when we drill down, apart from motorways or dual carriageways, what other groups of roads would one have to test these vehicles on? It becomes very much more difficult and very subjective. I do not have an answer to this, but I am absolutely certain that the noble Baroness is right to say that it needs doing, and in a comprehensive way across all the different types of roads and tracks, in the countryside as well as in the towns. I am not quite sure where we are going to end up, because the amendments in this group on safety are fundamental. I do not have a detailed preference for which ones, but I am absolutely certain that we need to tighten up the definition of road safety to something that is not just acceptable but very acceptable, to a high standard, safely and legally.
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 3, 5 and 8 in my name. I thank the Minister very much for the very informative meeting we had, and the Society of Motor Manufacturers was very helpful on any questions he could not answer on technicalities. That and a trip round the streets of King’s Cross in an automated vehicle thanks to Wayve—which was actually remarkably boring, which is what they tell me it is supposed to be—have put my technical questions to one side.
My concerns and my amendments, rather like those from the noble Lords, Lord Berkeley and Lord Tunnicliffe, are all about safety. The Minister said, as I recall, that safety would be the cornerstone of this Bill and, if we lose the confidence of the public—who are very concerned about safety—we are going to run into trouble and, as the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, said, there are going to be bumps in the road. If we lose confidence, people are going to lose confidence in the whole concept.
In the meeting, the Government said that, if we set safety standards too high, it will deter manufacturers and companies from coming into the market. But, at the moment, if raising these standards is deterring companies, maybe these companies should not be entering the market anyway and should not be involved in the development of automated vehicles.
Like the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, I think that cyclists will bear a disproportionate brunt of any casualties. As the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, said, they will be the “losers” in this whole equation. I turned to Cycling UK for some amendments, which seem to beef up the safety standards. Amendment 3 says
“leave out ‘an acceptably safe standard’ and insert ‘a high standard of safety’”.
That does not strike me as rocket science. In the same way, Amendment 5 says
“leave out ‘an acceptably’ and insert ‘a very’”
to make
“a very low risk of committing a traffic infraction”.
That is very similar to Amendment 4 from the noble Lord, Lord Liddle.
Amendment 8 says that, instead of “better”, the Bill should state that road safety would be
“significantly better for all road users”.
To me, this seems self-explanatory and would mean that safety truly is in the heart of the Bill. This seems like common sense to me and I look forward to the Minister’s answers.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, who has done sterling work in contributing to this Bill. I apologise for the fact that I have not managed until today to fully engage with Committee stage. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, who raised a crucial issue which, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said, really does not seem to be covered here.
I want to take a specific example here of the tragic case—which is far too common—of small children, toddlers up to the age of about seven, being killed on domestic driveways by human drivers. A report from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents which was supported by the Department for Transport shows that, since 2001, 34 children have been killed in domestic driveways, nearly always in their own home. There have been 19 deaths since 2008. In 22 of those cases, the child was killed by a reversing vehicle.
Here we have circumstances where—one would assume—usually competent and careful human drivers were not able to make allowance for what was happening around them. If we are going to think about automated vehicles, we need to think very hard about circumstances where we are not on the road but are in situations where vulnerable people, or animals for that matter, are not going to behave in manners that follow some logical kind of algorithm. That is not how the world works and, if we are going to have automated vehicles, we have to allow for circumstances like that.
I will pick up a point that the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and a number of others made. Whether we have this Bill or not, and whether we have automated vehicles or not, we should be aiming to do vastly better than we do now on road safety. In the most recent figures we have, in 2022 there were 1,711 fatalities and nearly 30,000 when you put the “killed” and “seriously injured” figures together. That was five fatalities per billion vehicle miles travelled. That sounds like a big number, but the figure is up 2% on the last time we had a year like it, which was 2019, the pre-Covid year. So, on the metric we should be counting, we are heading in the wrong direction.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, I think that, of the amendments we have before us, Amendment 8, which says
“significantly better for all road users”
is probably the best one; we have a number of ranges before us. Again, I am not sure that this would get past the Table Office, but I believe, and the Green Party very strongly believes, that the Government should be adopting a policy known as Vision Zero. It is the idea that we should have the goal of no deaths or serious injuries on our roads. We know that humans will make mistakes, that pedestrians will make mistakes and that there will be children, animals and all sorts of things. We have to design everything to reduce the risk to as close to zero as we can possibly manage. I do not know whether we could write Vision Zero into this Bill. I can foresee the wrestle we might have with the Table Office now, but I think that
“significantly better for all road users”
at least takes us in the right kind of direction.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, I thank Cycling UK for its excellent briefing. We often talk about cyclists as vulnerable road users and this briefing is from Cycling UK, but the most vulnerable road users are pedestrians, particularly young people and, increasingly, older pedestrians who on average tend to move more slowly and are more vulnerable in all sorts of ways. In recent years we have seen a real increase in the dangers to older pedestrians, such as in changes made a few years ago to traffic lights in London that had disastrous, hideous impacts on them. Amendment 8 refers to “all road users”; a lot of the discussion at Second Reading was about interactions between two motorised vehicles, but we have to make sure that we think about all the other interactions as well. We need a great deal more work and thought on this Bill, particularly this element of it.
The Earl of Lytton (CB)
My Lords, this may be the only contribution I make to this part of the Bill, but I wish to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and other noble Lords because this business of safety in Clause 2 seems to be the most pivotal thing in the entire Bill. As the noble Lord said, the public are looking to us to make sure that it is enshrined here.
One thing the noble Lord did not mention is the claim that these automated vehicles will be materially safer than the human-driven equivalent. It is therefore right that it is not “no worse than” or even “as good as”; it has to be “materially better than”. Otherwise, we simply should not go there. As this Bill paves the way for what will have to come through a lot of secondary legislation, that is vital to get across at this juncture. If we do not agree it today, I hope we will at some other stage on the Bill.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, made a really important point about road safety in the debate on the previous group of amendments and elaborated on it in the debate on this group with her Amendment 7. Clause 2(2) says:
“The principles must be framed with a view to securing that road safety in Great Britain will be better as a result of the use of authorised automated vehicles”.
That is a low aspiration. In my view, it needs to be considerably better. The noble Baroness said that she wanted to include private drive entrances, but they were declared out of scope by the clerks. I encourage her to persist. In my profession as a chartered surveyor, over many years I have helped people with their property boundaries, and one point that often comes up is where the private property ends and the highway starts. The customary arrangement is that between the blacktop—the adopted surface—and the front of the property boundary there is usually a verge or sometimes a pavement. Over it, the private driveway has what is known in the cant of the trade as a crossover. It is still part of the public highway, although it may be maintainable by the householder. That is an important distinction. The noble Baroness might go back to the clerks and say, “I want something that deals with crossovers”. I obviously do not wish to make a legal pronouncement, and I certainly defer to the views of the clerks, but that has been my understanding over many years of the principle behind the interface between the highway and private property.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, I dare say the noble Earl, Lord Lytton, will be pleased to know that I have amendments later that relate to the need to improve things such as the quality of road surfaces for all this to work smoothly.
As several contributors have emphasised, this group points to the limitations in the narrowness of the Bill’s scope. My noble friend Lady Bowles’s amendments address the limitation to public roads and highways, rather than to the marginal areas. The problems of this limitation have been addressed by organisations representing cyclists, for example, and other more vulnerable road users, as well as organisations already engaged in the automated delivery sector. If you think about it, when you have a product delivered to your home by a drone, in most cases that drone is required at the last point to leave the highway or pavement and go on to private land.
This is important. As a nation we are very concerned about road safety and prize it very highly. Although there have not been many improvements to road safety in the past 10 or 15 years, we have previously been very proud of an improving record on safety, and public expectations remain there. If you think about the process of accidents and injuries on the roads, many injuries, and much physical damage to buildings, are caused by accidents that take place off the highway, when a swerving vehicle hits a boundary fence or a house, for example. Those who have spoken, including the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, have referred to the high number of injuries to children. This will be at the forefront of public concern in judging automated vehicles.
My noble friend also referred to the coexistence of traditional vehicles and automated vehicles. For possibly two decades we will have a hybrid system, so any expectations have to take that into account.
I turn now to the amendments to which I added my name, which are amendments in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Hampton and Lord Liddle. The Law Commission reports emphasised that the public have high expectations of road safety. They used the point that there is strong support among the public for criminalising those who do not drive safely, and they transferred that concept into the situation in relation to support for automated vehicles. The experience in San Francisco illustrates the dramatic impact of accidents involving automated vehicles on support for them and trust in them. There is support for the progress of these vehicles, and the concept of them, across the Chamber. Therefore, it is so important that the Bill gets the approach right.
I support several amendments in this group, all of which are aimed at raising safety standards. The definition of safety must be more ambitious than that set out in this Bill. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents gave evidence to the Transport Committee in the other place and made it absolutely clear that the expectation has to be much better than just improving on average. It must be more ambitious. It must be an improvement in safety across the board, not just an “on average” approach to it.
I am well aware that there are international definitions of safety in this context, and I am sure the Minister will explain where the Government’s definition sits within those international expectations. To my mind, an acceptable standard is just not adequate, because you could have a situation in which the average safety has improved but, when you look at the detail, all the improvement lies in the reduction in motorway accidents, and to offset that there is an increase in accidents involving cyclists, pedestrians, older people or disabled people. It could be the more vulnerable road users who are badly impacted, so I am interested in the Government’s concepts in relation to this, and how they intend to approach this issue in detail.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
My Lords, as has already been mentioned, this group relates to the standard of safety to which we will hold self-driving vehicles. Clause 1 establishes the concept of the self-driving test: the basic principle that a vehicle must be capable of travelling safely and legally to be authorised as self-driving. With Clause 2, we then establish that the application of the self-driving test is to be informed by a statement of safety principles. The Government will be obliged to develop those principles in consultation with relevant stakeholders and to lay the statement before Parliament before any self-driving vehicles can be authorised. Noble Lords will recall that this approach—in which the safety standard is established in statutory guidance—was recommended by the Law Commission. I also recognise the desire to see a standard articulated in the Bill. That is the rationale behind the safety backstop in Clause 2(2), which states that the safety principles
“must be framed with a view to securing that road safety in Great Britain will be better”
due to the use of self-driving vehicles.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
I am not sure I heard the Minister. Did he say that, of the three tests that the Low Commission proposed, the Government’s test of “better than average” was the highest standard?
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
What I said was that, naturally, I believe our ambition is the right one. As the noble Lord himself touched on, it is the highest of the three standards consulted on by the Law Commission. It gives a straightforward—
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
I am sorry to interrupt, but the Law Commission, in the next paragraphs, says that the “competent and careful driver” test is the highest standard, not the Government’s aspiration of at least on average. We can leave it for now, and the Minister can write to me with an apology, or I can write to him with an apology, if one of us is wrong.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
With respect to the noble Lord, I think there is a misunderstanding here and he thinks that we have picked the average. Perhaps we can clarify that with him at a later date.
To continue, it gives a straightforward, publicly understandable indication of the level of safety that the Government are looking to achieve through the more formal mechanisms we are establishing in the Bill. However, to incorporate this language as proposed would, once again, override the principle established by the Law Commission—in other words, that the appropriate level of safety is ultimately determined by public acceptance of the risk, and that the safety standard should be set out in statutory guidance. That then allows the standard to be evolved as necessary on the basis of consultation.
I add that the wording of the amendment would appear to require a standard even higher than that of the safety ambition. While I know that this is well-intended, we must also be mindful of the risk of stifling genuine near-term safety improvements by setting an unnecessarily stringent target early on.
Amendment 12, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, looks to make the statement of safety principles subject to the affirmative procedure. While we acknowledge the arguments that he puts forward, it is the Government’s view that the Highway Code remains the most salient precedent for the safety principles. It follows that a negative procedure, comparable to that applied to the Highway Code, is most appropriate in this instance.
Turning to Amendment 8, the use of the phrase “significantly better” is, again, open to interpretation and risks introducing ambiguity. More pertinently, the second part of the amendment, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, looks to ensure that improvements in road safety apply to all road users. The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles of Berkhamsted, also look to explore a similar point in Amendments 6 and 7. I can confirm that, just as in the Highway Code, the current reference to road safety already applies to all road users. Similarly, it is established that “road” encompasses pavements and similar areas; road safety is therefore not strictly confined to incidents occurring on the carriageway itself.
On the specific comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles of Berkhamsted, all vehicles subject to authorisation as self-driving vehicles must be intended or adapted for use on roads. Although private driveways are mostly out of scope, the authorisation can recognise use in places other than roads, as referenced in Clause 4(4). The use of vehicles on private land is covered by other legislation.
Returning to the issue of equality and fairness, I can confirm that it will of course be explicitly considered during the development of the statement of safety principles. The granting of self-driving authorisations will also be subject to the public sector equality duty, and we intend to make an assessment of fair outcomes part of the authorisation process. I believe that the remainder of Amendment 6 is already provided for by Clause 1, which specifies that the assessment of a vehicle against the self-driving test must refer to
“the location and circumstances of … intended travel”.
A further reference in Clause 2 is therefore unnecessary.
On Amendment 10, we already envisage that the statement of safety principles will reflect the simultaneous presence of both self-driving and conventional vehicles. Indeed, this is implicit in the requirement set out in Clause 1(3). However, we also wish to preserve flexibility for the principles to cover scenarios where only automated vehicles are present. The amendment would preclude that option.
On Amendment 2, in the spirit of the initial comments by the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, I begin by offering a brief clarification. His comments slightly confused the concepts of a no-user-in-charge vehicle and a user- in-charge vehicle. A no-user-in-charge vehicle can complete a whole journey in self-driving mode, and any human in the vehicle is merely a passenger; it will never need to hand back control. A user-in-charge vehicle can complete only part of a journey in self-driving mode, so a human will be expected to take control of the vehicle to complete the journey. The Bill requires that this person be in the vehicle and in a position to assume control; for virtually all current use cases, that will mean being in the driving seat. However, there may be some future use cases and designs—perhaps in larger vehicles, such as buses—where control could be exercised from multiple places within the vehicle.
The amendment, as drafted, would allow for human-controlled vehicles to be considered autonomous, provided that the human did not sit in the driving seat. One of the key concepts of the Bill is that liability should be transferred away from the human driver when a self-driving feature is engaged. It would clearly be inappropriate to do that in a situation where a human still exercised control over the vehicle, regardless of their physical location.
Finally, I will briefly address the question from the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, about drivers under the influence. The Bill is clear that the user-in-charge immunity does not extend to the condition of the driver. The person acting as the user in charge in a vehicle could therefore be prosecuted for being under the influence in the same way as a conventional driver. This makes sense, considering their responsibility to resume control if directed to. As I have said, when a no-user-in-charge vehicle is driving itself, everyone in the vehicle is considered simply a passenger. Just as for passengers in conventional vehicles, there is no requirement that those individuals be in a fit state to drive. On that basis, I respectfully hope that the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, will see fit to withdraw Amendment 2.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
I thank the Minister for his response. I shall read it with enormous care. Perhaps we will have to meet in order to achieve a common view. With that, all that formality requires is for me to beg leave to withdraw Amendment 2.
Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]
Wednesday 10th January 2024
(3 months, 2 weeks ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Automated Vehicles Bill [HL] 2023-24 Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 1-I(b) Amendment for Committee (Supplementary to the Marshalled List) - (10 Jan 2024)
Lord Liddle
Member's explanatory statement
This is to probe consultation provisions.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
My Lords, the amendments I am speaking to are basically about the process of external scrutiny and oversight of what the department is doing. In the previous discussion, we had a perfect illustration of why this is necessary, because the Minister said, “No—you can’t put the critical issue of safety in the legislation. It’s got to be left to the department”. That is what he was saying. Is that what we want in the public interest? Does it satisfy the concerns that people have?
I speak as a supporter of automated vehicles, but I believe that if we do not exercise the highest standards of safety in their introduction, we will get a public backlash which will put all this back for years. I say to the Minister: if he is so adamant that he is not prepared to accept my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe’s amendment on safety standards, how is it also logical for him to reject all the amendments in this group, which are designed to improve stakeholder involvement and ensure that there is the widest possible consensus about what changes are to be proposed?
All the amendments in this group that are in my name are basically on this theme. Again, it is not the detail of the wording that matters at this stage—I am sure there are errors and faults in that—but the principle. Are the Government prepared to accept the principle that there should be widespread stakeholder involvement in this evolving issue of what regulation is necessary? As we know, there will not be a sudden change to automated vehicles. It is going to be a long process of evolution and change, as I think one of the noble Baronesses here said. We are going to have hybridity for a long time, so we have to face these questions of how we adjust our regulation in the light of experience.
The first amendment I put down was on the business of the statement of safety principles. The Government, unless they accept my amendment, are not even prepared to recognise the point in their legislation that there should be representative consultation on what the safety standards should be before they table them. That seems to be fundamental, so I am moving that as Amendment 11 and then speaking to the others.
On Amendment 33, we have the case that there will be reports, but there is absolutely no provision that they will be laid before, and provide an opportunity for discussion in, Parliament. Is that not pretty fundamental?
Amendment 49—let me find this part of the Bill; I do not want to mislead the Committee—would come after Clause 93. Its principal proposal is for the establishment of an advisory council, which would bring together stakeholders and people who are relevant to this debate. At one end, it would include trade unions, because if you are talking about automated delivery vehicles and automated bus services—that may be one of the first areas where automated vehicles will be used fully—then you have to carry the representatives of working people with you. It is only right that trade unions and employers should be involved.
When we are talking about an advisory council, these things cannot just be driven by the industry and the producer interest. We have to look at the views of people such as cyclists. Cyclists are probably more at risk in a hybrid situation, alongside pedestrians, than any other group. The cycling association has thought about this quite hard and has quite sensible views, so I would like to think that the department was institutionally obliged to consult it and take its views into account.
That is the very valid point of this group of amendments. I would like to hear from the Minister why he cannot accept them, because it seems self-evident that if we are not prepared to put things in law which require high safety standards, then we will have to find some other mechanism by which the public can be reassured.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, I want to make a brief intervention on this group of amendments. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, for raising the important issue of an advisory council. The disabled community talks about the importance of co-production right from the start to make sure that there is not consultation at the end when it is really too late to do things. I hope that the Minister will take that on board. The Government have finally begun to understand the importance of co-production with disabled people. You can never have just one representative and it is important to understand all the issues. But as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, said, that also applies to other users, so an advisory council is going to have to cover a fairly broad range of interests. As the Minister reminds us continually during the course of the Bill, we are in new territory and design is inevitably going to have to change, so I hope that he will support these amendments.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I will intervene very briefly and apologise for being late. I support my noble friend Lord Liddle in his comments on Amendment 49 and the need for an advisory council. We have come across this before in many other Bills and Ministers always seem to say, “We don’t want to list those people who might be on it, because they might change”. I just draw the Committee’s attention to the news, which I think came yesterday or today, about the new board for Channel 4. The comment was made that the only person who had any experience in diversity had been rejected. Whether it was because of that or because she was female we do not know, but everybody else—except for one—was a white male. The Government may say these things, but they do not always appear to do it.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, to which I have added my name. I added my name because, as a member of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, and a previous member of the Common Frameworks Scrutiny Committee, I am used to looking at what different departments consider to be proper consultation. This Government have a very poor record on recognising what is really inclusive consultation. I cannot think of a topic with a broader range of organisations to which the Government should be offering consultation than safety on roads. Almost everyone in our nation uses the roads in one way or another and has the right to a viewpoint and to have it considered.
It is probably a very little-known fact that the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee keeps a record of the progress of individual departments on issues such as this. The Department for Transport does not have a wonderful record on consultation and reporting. Consultation cannot be only with the organisations, for example, producing the automated vehicles. It has to be with a whole range of organisations representing people who use the roads and directly with the people who use the roads themselves. I support the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, in his views.
Amendment 55, which is in my name, would require the Secretary of State from time to time to review the rules for driving tests to ensure that the public can safely drive both automated and non-automated vehicles in places where there are many automated vehicles on the road. It would also allow the Secretary of State to update the rules on driving tests. It is blindingly obvious to me that, over time, people’s driving skills will wither and die if no effort is made at keeping them refreshed.
This is an issue that the Transport Committee of the House of Commons addressed directly in paragraph 63 of its report:
“Greater automation will reduce time spent driving. Over time drivers may become less practised and therefore less skilled. Conversely, the demands on drivers will grow as they will be called upon to retake control of vehicles in challenging circumstances with little notice. The Government should set out a strategy for the future of human driving in a world of self-driving vehicles. This should include possible changes to driving tests and a plan to ensure that all drivers fully understand self-driving vehicles and both acquire and maintain the necessary skills for taking control of a vehicle in all circumstances”.
Looking at the circumstances in which you would retake control of a vehicle, it seems it would be when it has become too complex for the automated vehicle to cope. You would be sitting there, quite relaxed, and suddenly you would be in an emergency situation. That requires new and different skills and a new and different approach. It is essential that the Government look at the driving test and the issue of refreshing skills. This is going to be possibly most acute as an issue for older drivers and for young and inexperienced drivers. Skills can become stale very quickly.
The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, has one approach to this in Amendment 47; I have a slightly more urgent approach in Amendment 55. The principle of the two amendments is the same. The issue needs to be looked at and it needs to be looked at now, so that everyone is prepared for when this situation comes into existence—which people tell us could be in the next few years.
I urge the Minister to give us a positive response on the issue of consultation and to reassure us that the Government are considering the issue of skills.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Lord Davies of Gower) (Con)
My Lords, the amendments in this group concern external oversight of the operation of the self-driving regulatory framework. This includes duties to report and consult.
On the opening remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, it is a mischaracterisation to suggest that the issue of safety is simply being left to the department, and I said nothing of the sort. Indeed, it is on the face of the Bill that the statement of safety principles is to be developed in consultation with stakeholders—a point I will return to shortly—and subject to proportionate parliamentary scrutiny.
Turning to the noble Lord’s Amendments 11, 46, and 49, the Government are clear that we will consult with representative organisations on the proposed use of the Bill’s powers before they are used. Following government best practice, we anticipate this will bring in the views of the public, academia, trade unions and other representative bodies for affected groups. Notwithstanding the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, it remains the case that this is a particularly uncertain policy area with a rapidly developing industry, and any statutory list of consultees risks falling out of date rapidly. Additionally, I note the consultation that has already taken place as part of the Law Commissions’ four-year review, which included road safety groups, trade unions and businesses. Many of the concerns raised during this process have already been reflected in the Bill. Examples include the introduction of the incident investigation function and the embedding of accessibility into the automated passenger service permitting process. On Amendment 49 specifically, we also believe an external advisory council of the type proposed would risk duplicating the vital functions of the statutory inspectors conducting independent safety investigations.
On Amendment 55D, an extensive public engagement programme has already been conducted over the course of the many years spent developing this legislation. That work is not stopping. For example, in 2022 we funded an unprecedented study called The Great Self-Driving Exploration. This award-winning public engagement exercise was explicitly designed to allow people from all walks of life to understand and give their views on how self-driving vehicles might affect their lives. The learning from this research is being used to develop future engagement plans, including ones that will inform our programme of secondary legislation. We also run the AV-DRIVE group, which focuses on how we can all engage consistently about self-driving vehicles. The group brings together vehicle manufacturers, software developers, vehicle leasing representatives, insurers, road safety groups and others. Work to date has focused on education, communication and building public understanding of the technology. This will also be supported by Pave UK, a new resource hub and education group launching this spring, with government support. I hope this offers my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond sufficient reassurance.
Amendments 32 and 33 look to attach additional requirements to the general monitoring duty set out in Clause 38. This clause requires that reports be published on the performance of authorised automated vehicles, including assessments of the extent to which this performance is consistent with the statement of safety principles. Since the principles are required to be framed with a view to securing an improvement in road safety, any assessment against them is already an assessment of safety. The exact format of these reports is yet to be determined and will likely vary depending on the number and types of relevant deployments in any given year. However, I can confirm they are expected to include some fleet-level reporting on safety incidents. Finally, the existing publication requirement in subsection (3) will ensure that reports are available for all interested parties, including parliamentary colleagues. For these reasons, Amendments 32 and 33 are unnecessary.
I turn now to Amendment 30. Clause 43 specifies that authorisation and licensing fees may be determined by any costs incurred, or likely to be incurred, in connection with any function under Part 1 of the Bill. This includes the cost of controlling data collected through information notices. Part of these fees may therefore be used in relation to this function. However, to require separate reporting on these specific costs could add an additional administrative burden and therefore additional costs to the in-use regulatory scheme. It would therefore be disproportionate.
On Amendments 47 and 55, the Government recognise the importance of keeping driver skills up to date in a self-driving world. However, this needs to be done on an ongoing basis rather than to arbitrary reporting cycles. The foundations of that work are already well under way. We have commissioned research on how authorised self-driving entities can best educate those who use their vehicles, and we expect appropriate user training and support to form part of authorisation requirements. We have already updated the Highway Code to explain the difference between driver assistance and self-driving. Just as satnav use is now part of the driving test, driver training will continue to evolve with the arrival of new technology. For example, the Driver & Vehicle Standards Agency is already drawing on research from the RAC which proposes the new CHAT procedure, thereby teaching users of self-driving vehicles to “Check”, “Assess” and then “Take over” control.
I hope that this goes some way to reassuring the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, that these issues are at the forefront of the Government’s mind and will continue to be tackled on an ongoing basis over the coming months, years and even decades. In answer to the noble Baroness’s specific point, a user-in-charge is not expected to retake control at a moment’s notice. There are safeguards in place in the Bill to promote safe transition, including requiring multisensory alerts and sufficient time to resume control. Vehicles must also be capable of dealing safely with situations where the user-in-charge fails to resume control.
In conclusion, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, see fit to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
I return to the point the noble Lord made about taking over control and not taking over at a moment’s notice. From what I have read, 10 seconds seems to be the period specified for taking over control. Is that the Government’s accepted view? What research have the Government used in order to home in on that particular period, because 10 seconds is actually a fairly short period in which to get oneself from relaxed to fully in control of emergency situation mode.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
The noble Baroness makes a fair point. I cannot give her an absolute answer on that one, but it is something I will certainly look into and come back to her on.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
My Lords, I agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said about the 10-second question. We need more explanation of that.
I would make three points. I did not detect in what the Minister said any great sympathy for the amendments that I have put down—for three reasons. First, the Government seem to want to minimise future parliamentary involvement in this question of what the safety standards are as well as involvement in being able to discuss reports on the progress of the rollout of automated vehicles. That is point one: Parliament should be involved, and there is no reason why that should not be in the Bill.
Secondly, with automated vehicles there are clear implications for existing, well-established industrial sectors—buses, lorries and delivery vehicles—where many people are employed. It may be that there will continue to be new jobs in these areas; that is generally the experience of technological change, and it may get rid of the labour shortages that exist in some of these areas. That may well be true, but why not try to take the trade unions with you, as well as the employers, when you discuss the regulation of these things? That seems to me to be self-evident.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
I am grateful for the point that the noble Lord makes, but I come back to the point that the Government are very clear that we will consult representative organisations on the proposed use of the Bill’s powers before they come into force. The noble Lord seems to imply that these bodies are not onside. As I have said previously, we anticipate that we will bring in the views of academia, trade unions and other representative bodies, so I do not really accept what the noble Lord says.
Baroness Brinton
“(6) A person may not be an authorised self-driving entity unless they meet the following requirements—(a) they have obtained a certificate of compliance with data protection legislation from the Information Commissioner’s Office for their policy in regard to the handling of personal data,(b) their policy in regard to the handling of personal data clearly outlines who has ownership of any personal data collected, including after the ownership of a vehicle has ended, and(c) they are a signatory to an industry code of conduct under the UK General Data Protection Regulation.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to probe a number of concerns around data protection and ownership and seeks to prevent authorisation of companies as self-driving entities unless robust personal data practices are in place.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, we move to a group that looks at data protection issues, which were covered at Second Reading. In this group, I have Amendment 21, the Clause 42 stand part notice and Amendments 35 and 36. I have found the Information Commissioner’s Office response to the joint consultation from the Law Commission and the Scottish Law Commission on automated vehicles, dated March 2021, extremely helpful. That response set out the legislative landscape and said, in paragraph 6:
“The consultation refers to Directive 2002/58/EC, known as the ePrivacy directive (‘ePD’), however, reference should be given instead to PECR, which is the UK law that gives effect to the ePD … Section 17.54 notes that the legislator ‘clearly did not have AVs … in mind’ when the Directive was enacted, and that ‘At the time, the typical terminal equipment was a telephone handset’ … Therefore, care must be taken when interpreting the legislation, so that its underlying rationale, and technology neutral approach is fully understood and any proposals accord with its objectives. The ICO has produced guidance”
on this. It is saying that GDPR rules are clearly not enough on their own.
I was grateful at Second Reading for the Minister’s clear response on the protection of personal data— I may disagree with what he said but I was grateful for the clarity of the response. He said:
“However, data must remain properly protected. Self-driving vehicles will be subject to existing data protection laws in the UK. Our proposed Bill does not alter that, so manufacturers and government will have to ensure that data is protected”.—[Official Report, 28/11/23; col. 1072.]
I remain concerned that the Bill, especially Clause 42, sets out a very high level, a top level, of legislation—whether primary or secondary, of which we know nothing yet—by which information will be protected, but it does not put in place the mechanisms by which individual people could rest assured that their personal data was being appropriately protected. The ICO further commented on personal data in its response to the Law Commission, at paragraph 12:
“Automated vehicles pose particular challenges in relation to personal data, as often they will process the personal data of several individuals: owners, drivers, passengers and even pedestrians. If the personal data of these users is processed inappropriately, there is a heightened risk of intrusion into individuals’ work and private lives. The Government and technology providers should therefore adopt a data protection by design and default approach, ensuring that privacy protections are built into the design and development of automated vehicles”.
To return to the Bill, Clause 42(4) sets out the offence of breaching data protection, but then Clause 42(5) gives a very wide range of defences, which is, frankly, quite worrying. It says:
“But it is a defence to prove that—(a) the person from whom the information was obtained as described in subsection (1) consented to the disclosure or use, or (b) the recipient reasonably believed that the disclosure or use was lawful”.
I have been trying to think through what this might mean in practice. Let us say that you call an AV—it could be yours; it could be a neighbourhood vehicle; it could be a taxi; it could even be getting on a bus—and when you call it, it will ask you, probably in your app, to confirm the terms and conditions. We all do this every day when we go online; we just tick “Yes”, but do we know what the operating licence holder might be doing with our personal data? Worse, the licence holder or a future recipient of that data, somebody else in the chain of information, might think that disclosure was lawful. Amendment 21 sets out the baseline good practice for any organisation that is dealing with personal data, especially data that the individual is not necessarily aware of.
I want to give the Committee an example I experienced when a number of people and organisations were involved in handling personal data. My dentist—please do not laugh; it is relevant—requires patients to sign online, before they are seen every time, that they are content with their personal, medical and other personal data being held, so that the surgery can better look after patients, with an assurance that it will be held appropriately. That is fine. A couple of years ago, the regular online form changed, and after page one I was asked to sign a different set of Ts and Cs from a specialist data processing company. I clicked through, read the 17-odd pages and discovered that in the small print this multibillion-dollar company wanted my permission to be able to pass my data, medical and personal, on to other interested parties in its group and for other associated services. This included insurance companies, providers of healthcare and pharmaceuticals. I was not happy.
When I raised it with the dental surgery, it was really shocked. It had not clocked the detail because it had not clicked through two or three times, as I had to do, and it dealt with it straightaway, but I am making a point: we are not expecting a single authorised organisation to process all the data. There will be many different tracks coming down the line, and the problem here was that this was an American company using American law, not GDPR. The defence in Clause 42(5) would have succeeded, because one would have automatically ticked on the Ts and Cs thing on the app. That is one of the reasons that, at Second Reading, I probed on protection for data. I hope that my amendments will strengthen what the Government are planning to do.
Amendment 21 sets out the criteria that would have to be met before a person or a body would be permitted to be authorised as a self-driving entity. First, they must
“have obtained a certificate of compliance with data protection legislation”
from the ICO for their policy of handling of personal data. Secondly, their policy relating to handling personal data of clients, passengers et cetera must clearly outline
“who has ownership of any personal data collected, including after the ownership of a vehicle has ended”.
Thirdly, they must be
“a signatory to an industry code of conduct under the UK General Data Protection Regulation”.
Because I remain concerned about Clause 42, I have laid that it should not stand part, partly as a probing issue to get the issues out and bring a response from the Minister. I hope the Minister can provide the Committee with stronger reassurance than that given at Second Reading, given the 10 pages of response from the ICO to the Law Commission consultation.
I have two further amendments in this group. In every debate so far—and in meetings with the Minister—the Government have made it plain that the Bill is charting new territories and new technologies that not one other country has yet managed to do. Much of the focus on the Bill is understandably on vehicles, but the other element of newer and untested technology is how data will be used. We know just from the advances in AI over the last few months, let alone year, how fast it changes. Amendment 35 sets out for an annual report to Parliament on the use of personal data in relation to automated vehicles. This way, when the sector responds it can see how many breaches there are and how new technology as yet unseen and unknown—not even thought of—will affect individuals. Equally importantly, we will be able to see trends in data collection so that Governments and Parliament can consider whether further legislation is needed to further regulate the collection of data. Amendment 36 sets out the requirement for the Secretary of State to consult with the ICO in relation to the collection of personal data prior to the Secretary of State making any regulations in relation to personal data collection.
I know that the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, made the point about the Secretary of State making these decisions, and I just want to add at this point that this Government have had a habit of pushing an enormous amount of information into secondary legislation. I think we all understand that some of it needs to be there but, particularly with new technologies and new areas, Parliament is very concerned about giving permission for things that are not yet even understood, let alone explicit.
I also want to add that I support the other amendments in this group from my noble friend Lady Bowles and from the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, all of which strengthen the protections needed for a technology that will have even more access to people’s personal data than we know now, whether it is commercial or third-party data. All the amendments in this group are following the ICO’s principal concern.
I say again that AVs pose a risk to individual rights if they have insufficient control over their data and their data protection rights. The ICO says that data systems for AVs should have a data protection system by a design and default approach. After all, it is a new technology.
I really look forward to hearing the Minister’s response. I beg to move.
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD)
My Lords, I have four amendments in this group. I am looking more at the commercial interest side of things, partly because “information” is a very broad word that can mean all kinds of things. My Amendment 29 adds to the end of Clause 14 that information sharing
“must respect rights of ownership and privacy, including with a view to compensation in respect of any commercial rights”.
I will talk more on compensation in connection with later amendments as well, but there is a significant issue here.
Under Clause 14, authorisation requirements may state that there has to be information sharing with the Secretary of State, public authorities and private businesses. Clause 14(4) says that the purpose of the shared information must be disclosed, which is fair enough as far as it goes, but says nothing about privacy or commercial rights. Further, the information may not belong to the body being authorised. It may belong to individuals. Even in an anonymised state, it may belong to others than the authorised entity. I accept that there may be instances where sharing is needed—accidents and failures come immediately to mind—but there will still need to be ways to make sure that neither individual nor commercial rights are undermined.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, I support the amendments in the names of my noble friends Lady Brinton and Lady Bowles. I start by emphasising the importance and strength of the Information Commissioner’s Office’s response to the Law Commissions’ report. Amendment 36 is therefore essential because it involves the ICO in setting the rules and standards.
It seems to me that the issues are twofold: first, the issue of the protection of personal privacy and personal data, and, secondly, the issue of national security. On national security, these vehicles will have an entire knowledge of every part of the UK and the details of the traffic arrangements for the whole of the UK. Can you imagine the impact on the economy of a major cyberattack that could paralyse traffic over a considerable area? I am trying to avoid the idea of some kind of updated version of “The Italian Job”. Any kind of hacking into the system would have national security implications.
Turning to personal privacy, I will pose a couple of simple examples. Imagine that I own a car and I sell it to someone else. The car has collected my data; it knows where I visit on a daily and regular basis. Whose data is it when I sell the car to someone else? The data is an essential part of the operation of that car. It has learnt its way around my city using my favourite routes; it has amended how it operates according to my preferences. At what point does that data cease to be mine and start to belong to the car or its manufacturer? Do I have a right to say, “Wipe it, start afresh and reinstall”? If that is the case, there is the whole issue of public awareness to be tackled.
My second example is of a taxi company. I hire a taxi, so the company concerned therefore knows where I picked it up and where I left it. Does that data belong to the taxi company or to me? I realise that a taxi company now has data on things such as this, but it is in a very much less systematic way.
Turning to whether Clause 42 should stand part, I will quote a couple of sentences from the clause. It says:
“The Secretary of State may make regulations authorising the recipient to … use the information for a purpose other than the purpose for which it was obtained”.
That is a pretty bald phrase and therefore pretty risky. It adds:
“It is an offence for the recipient to … disclose the information … except as authorised by regulations under subsection (3) or any other enactment”.
That is remarkably broad. It also says that
“it is a defence to prove that … the recipient reasonably believed that the disclosure or use was lawful”.
That is a very weak position. It seems to me that in neither respect does the Bill adhere to data protection norms. I urge the Minister to take it back and look at tightening up the data protection aspects of the Bill, in relation to both data protection for the individual and, as my noble friend Lady Bowles emphasised, the commercial aspects of the rights to data.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, we on these Benches have no amendments in this group, largely because the area is so complex and we cannot rustle up anybody bright enough to understand it—I wish I had got a good lawyer. Hence, I would like to thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Bowles, Lady Brinton and Lady Randerson, for making the subject so interesting and explicit. The closest I got to this area was trying to read the whole Bill, which I staggered through over Christmas. I kept coming across these various little phrases, including the one about such a weak defence for giving away my data. I really feel that the three Baronesses have a very strong point. I look to the Government not to dismiss it because they were told to give no points away but to take it back and discuss with the noble Baronesses how this Bill can be improved. It is a horrible precedent to see data handled so loosely and in such a cavalier manner.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
My Lords, once again I thank noble Lords for their contributions. I begin with Amendments 29, 34 and 42, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles of Berkhamsted. The protection of personal and commercial data is of course a critical issue and one that requires careful consideration. On Amendments 34 and 42, all information collected and shared under Clauses 42 and 88 is subject to restrictions on unauthorised use, breach of which constitutes an offence. Where personal data is collected, this is also subject to data protection legislation. This information can be disclosed or used only for the purposes specified in the regulations made under each respective clause.
As set out in our policy scoping notes, this is a novel policy area, and it is not yet known exactly how information may need to be used or shared. However, as the examples in the notes illustrate, this is likely to be for public interest purposes such as road safety or improved passenger services. On the basis that information sharing will be proportionate and in the public interest, a requirement to pay commercial compensation would be inappropriate.
To further support data protection, the Government will be considering the recommendations by the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation, in its report Responsible Innovation in Self-Driving Vehicles. These include a recommendation to work with the Information Commissioner’s Office to issue guidance on how data protection obligations apply to self-driving vehicles.
On Amendment 29, all information required to be shared under Clause 14 will be subject to the requirements and safeguards of data protection legislation. The Bill does not change these protections. This information will be used for regulatory purposes to ensure the safe and legal operation of self-driving vehicles. It will also be used to determine criminal and civil liabilities associated with the use of these vehicles. Again, these purposes are proportionate and in the public interest. Businesses will be aware of the regulatory requirements for information sharing prior to seeking authorisation or licensing, and the information will be subject to these obligations from the outset. There would therefore be no expectation that it could be treated as commercially confidential information which holds a market value.
I turn to Amendment 31. The department does not notify entities when using information obtained under an investigation and used in the public interest— for example, to improve road safety. In the case of Clause 22(2), the information would be used for
“any of the investigative purposes in relation to any regulated body”.
These purposes aim to ensure the continued safe and legal operation of self-driving vehicles, and are therefore in the public interest.
The amendment would place an additional administrative burden on the Secretary of State that brought minimal benefit to the regulated body in question, as the investigative purpose would continue none the less. In the case of a regulatory issue being identified, the body would be notified by the appropriate regulatory action, such as a compliance notice. This would then allow the regulated body to challenge the use of information by representations under paragraph 5 of Schedule 1.
On Amendment 21, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, I recognise that she made a characteristically incisive series of detailed points on these issues. I will be happy to meet with her, in addition to the separate meeting we have scheduled on accessibility, to have a fuller discussion on her questions, and I extend the same invitation to other noble Lords.
We believe it is right that the protection of personal data will be considered alongside the detailed development of authorisation requirements—it is an important issue. These requirements will be set out in secondary legislation and will be subject to consultation and impact assessment. The schemes referred to in the amendment are industry led and therefore not within the control of government. There is therefore a risk that they would not achieve the intended result.
On Amendment 35, it is the role of the Information Commissioner’s Office to regulate on data protection issues. The ICO has an existing obligation to report annually to Parliament on the commissioner’s activities. Any report by the Department for Transport would risk duplicating this work. The Department for Transport is also not the data controller for information collected by regulated bodies, which means that such reporting would be inappropriate. Further, the Secretary of State already has a duty under Article 36(4) of the UK GDPR to consult the ICO on proposals for legislative measures. Amendment 36 therefore duplicates an existing requirement.
On Amendment 55B, the Information Commissioner’s Office is the independent regulator responsible for upholding information rights in the public interest. Given its role as a whole-economy regulator, it would be unnecessary and duplicative to establish a separate third-party body, with the same expertise, to oversee the use of personal data by self-driving vehicles.
I turn to the proposal that Clause 42 be removed. Clause 42 contains provisions that constrain the use and disclosure of information obtained through the regulatory framework. The removal of these provisions would open up the possibility of personal data being processed in a much wider manner, such as for reasons of “legitimate interest”. This would amount to a weakening of the data protections in the Bill.
On the points raised about national security, whole-life cyber resilience will be tested as part of the approval processes. The UK has co-chaired the UNECE group developing standards in this area, and government is working with colleagues in the National Cyber Security Centre and the National Protective Security Authority on these issues.
Finally, on the point regarding the protection of personal data when selling a vehicle, in cases where manufacturers and supporting services store data outside the vehicle, all relevant data protections will need to be met. If a vehicle user has given access rights and connections to personal information, it is the responsibility of the user to delete the data from the vehicle. Indeed, this is the same approach as that applied to devices such as mobile phones, which contain similarly large quantities of sensitive data. I ask noble Lords not to press their amendments on this.
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD)
Can I just clarify something? I accept what the Minister says. In most cases there may be a public interest provision and there are not statutory protections on the information that the public interests can win. But where there are—I will take the statutory protection of a patent—that is essentially exerting a Crown user provision with no compensation, which would offend against international treaties.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
I thank the noble Baroness for that. She raised a number of important points that I have perhaps not addressed fully, and I would be very happy to go back and write to her comprehensively on a couple of them.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
Will the Minister copy that to those who have been involved in the debate?
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
I omitted to say that I will copy in all those noble Lords.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, I thank all the contributors to this debate. We are delighted that others have been so supportive of our amendments, which cover a considerable range of data protection issues. I am grateful to the Minister for his response and thank him, because, yes, I think a meeting is particularly important. He said in response to my noble friend Lady Bowles’s first amendment that the Government are not yet sure how data will be used or shared. That is the reason that the ICO is so clear that there needs to be extra provision, because otherwise, if everyone just assumes that it will be the way we have always used GDPR, we—being the Government and the public—are going to come a cropper pretty quickly, not least because technology has changed, is changing and will change again so fast. I hope that, as we have our meeting and progress towards Report, the Government will seriously consider following the ICO’s advice and make very clear, designed-by-default arrangements for this sector, which will be like none that we have seen so far. With that, I withdraw my amendment.
Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]
Monday 15th January 2024
(3 months, 1 week ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Automated Vehicles Bill [HL] 2023-24 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 1-II Second marshalled list for Committee - (11 Jan 2024)
Baroness Randerson
“Commencement of sections 5 and 6: review of road infrastructure(1) Before making regulations commencing sections 5 and 6 of this Act, the Secretary of State must undertake a review to identify how widespread issues with the condition of the roads might impact the safe operation of automated vehicles.(2) The review must also outline a strategy for improving road infrastructure in locations where this would put the safe operation of automated vehicles at risk and must make a recommendation as to whether a body should be established to design the improvements required.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require the Government to review the impact of road infrastructure and the potential impact of poor road quality on automated vehicles, before commencing and making authorisations under sections 5 and 6.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, I have Amendments 23, 24, 54, 58 and 60 in this group. Amendment 23 calls on the Government to review the current state of road infrastructure. Amendment 24 asks for a similar review of the gaps in the telecommunications network. In both cases, those reviews should be done before commencing and making authorisations under Clauses 5 and 6. The reasoning behind this is simple: in the current state of our infrastructure, automated vehicles will simply not work.
First, let us look at the state of our highways. The current neglected, ramshackle state of our highways will not provide the reliable and consistent signals on which AVs will depend. Everything from road services to white lines to battered signage obscured by foliage will have to be transformed; there will have to be a revolution. I have a couple of thoughts. When I am in London, I stay in an area that was redeveloped with a modern road layout designed about 20 years ago. On the surface, it is ideal for automated vehicles: the roads are much wider and straighter than the average roads, and modern in concept. It would be potentially perfect except that, since it was created 20 years ago, no one has maintained it. When I go out of the door to cross the road, I cross at what I always regard as a notional zebra crossing: the stripes disappeared long ago. People in the area know that it is there, but it no longer has stripes. It is a big job to deal with that basic, regular wear and tear across the UK, because it is well beyond the resources of local government and it must be done on a similar timescale across local government boundaries, because automated vehicles will, in many cases, not be stopping at the local boundary.
I have a second thought, from experience. There has been a real revolution lately in the state of French roads; it has happened over about the last five to seven years. There has been widespread improvement in road surfaces, and traffic calming and safety measures have been widely introduced. It is an example that it can be done, and done quickly. I have no idea how much money France spent, but it obviously cost a great deal.
Another issue I want to raise in this respect is the issue of consistency in traffic signs. There are some problems with that. I will give the example of warning signs about fords. Back in 2016, the Government decided to deregulate the signs warning that there is a ford ahead, so the local authority no longer has to provide a sign of a specified size, design or siting.
I am aware of this issue, which I have raised here on several occasions, because of the tragic case of a young woman who drowned after failing to notice a small, badly sited warning sign on a dark country road in heavy rain. I know about this case because the coroner’s report drew attention to the need for the standardisation of signs. I have no idea whether ford sign deregulation was a one-off or whether other road signs were deregulated around the same time, but they will all have to be similar or within a range recognised by automated vehicles; otherwise, the whole thing will not work.
Therefore, there needs to be a major financial commitment. I recognise that automated vehicles will start with limited services in limited areas—probably city centres or motorways—but quite soon this country-wide revolution will be needed, and so will need to be financed. I acknowledge the importance of the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, asking where the money for this necessary revolution will come from, as it is a key strategic issue.
Similarly, Amendment 24 deals with current gaps in the telecommunications network, mainly, although not exclusively, in rural areas. When I am not in the House of Lords, I live a mile from the city centre of Cardiff, where there is a very poor mobile network. It would certainly not be strong, regular and reliable enough for automated vehicles. It is obviously dangerous to have gaps in the network—it might be personally dangerous to be driving through the countryside and find yourself marooned, but probably even more dangerous if there were a gap on major roads.
The Transport Select Committee in the other place took evidence on this, noting the “significance” of the current gaps, and the SMMT and others have made representations to us on the importance of this. The Government’s shared rural network project aims at 95% 4G coverage by at least one operator by 2025, but that leaves a 5% gap, which is worrying. In its report, the committee noted the key co-ordinating role of the Government in this, so I would be interested to hear what the Minister sees that co-ordinating role being, beyond this 95% aim.
Amendment 54, and Amendments 58 and 60, which are consequential, relate to personal delivery services, which we raised last week. As was noted then, we have hit a snag with the very tight scope of the Bill. Ironically, the one aspect of the Bill that is already up and running, with trials and regular services, is excluded from its scope. Those running these services are urging the Government to take action to support their businesses.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, I have a couple of amendments in this group, but I will start by talking about Amendment 51 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Liddle. If he wants to come in ahead of me and take precedence on it, he is welcome to do so. No? I thank him.
Last time, I talked about what I referred to as my Eastbourne letter. Since then, I have had a courteous non-reply. It seems to me that the Government are really lacking energy on this. They are not making speed; they are not forging ahead; they are not looking for opportunities in the way I would hope. What the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, has just said about delivery vehicles is typical of that, as is their inability to give me an idea of how a particular operation might be tackled by automated vehicles. What are they looking at? Where are they taking this industry? Are they a Government who are in the lead or just sitting back and waiting for things to happen? Currently, they are giving me the second impression. I hope I am wrong, but nothing I have heard in our previous session, today or in the letter has given me any comfort on that.
I very much support Amendment 51 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Liddle. Let us pin down the Government on this matter and get them to produce a very useful strategy in six months’ time, so that we know what they intend to do and we get some energy and direction, rather than just the gentle, permissive Bill we have at the moment.
I have two amendments in this group, Amendments 44 and 45. The former looks forward to the point where automated vehicles become standard. In the early days, there will be a little fleet, and whenever it needs recharging, it will trundle back to its base. But that is not the way of operating any large-scale automated vehicle rollout; they have to be able to charge at ordinary, public charging points. If that is to be possible, we have to start thinking about the problem now. There is no point putting in a whole network of charging points, which we are making reasonable progress on, if none is usable by automated vehicles. We have to remember that, under our intentions, these charging points will be used by automated vehicles in five or 10 years hence. What does that look like, and what are we asking for? This comes back to the point I made last time about international standards: what do we expect to be available for an automated vehicle to hook into a roadside charging point? It does not carry a credit card with it—at least not in the ordinary way. These problems have to be addressed, solved and agreed internationally early and then incorporated into the rules and regulations we have for the charging point rollout. The point of my Amendment 44 is to give the Government power to specify how the charging point rollout should be made accessible to automated vehicles. They should commit to do at least that in the Bill, and then we can push them to do it speedily.
My second amendment is about using automated vehicles on railway track. There are two railways—particularly in relation to the Beeching railways—that we might want to revive. They will start off as routes that people are not used to using and where there is no existing train service—we are not trying to divert trains down them, by and large. Why do we not want to consider using the best available technology and run a service which runs every minute, rather than every hour, and that stops at the stations that the people in the vehicles want to stop? There are all sorts of other things that could come from using automated vehicles. From the point of view of automated vehicles, you are dealing with an environment where there are no people—but maybe the occasional cow. It is therefore a much less problematic environment to run an automated vehicle service than a public road. Where we are looking at reviving railways, or looking at a low-use branch service that we would like to make much better, we ought to look at automated vehicles as an alternative. The point of my Amendment 45 is to make sure that the Government have the power to do that, should they ever have the opportunity. I very much look forward to the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, proposing his amendment.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
My Lords, we have had two very interesting and productive contributions from the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. The noble Lord has, in essence, put his finger on a real point about whether the Bill is satisfactory. On our side of the House, we want to promote innovation: that is what the country needs. The country needs new ideas and new things that will work and will be commercially successful. An innovation policy is not just a matter of making regulations for something that somebody has already had an idea about that might work—which, I think, is the case with the classic automated vehicle—it is also about considering how the technology that we are on the threshold of developing can be applied more widely in a way that leads to great human benefit and advance. Our probing amendments—and they are very much probing amendments—are on the theme of how wide the scope of the Bill is and whether the issues have been thought through as a genuine innovation policy for the country.
My two amendments, Amendments 51 and 56, are really about what is in the scope of the Bill. Are we regulating for delivery robots or not and, if we are, have we thought about how this framework might be different from the automated vehicle framework and how it would be the same? This is a very serious issue, and you can think of lots of social benefits from a widespread rollout of delivery robots. On Amendment 51, have we thought about these questions in terms of public transport, as against the automated car? What special arrangements do we have to make for public transport, if any, and where? These are speculative amendments, but I think they are raising fundamental points about whether this Bill is going to be a great leap forward for us or not.
The other aspect which we are concerned about is the infrastructure element. What changes in infrastructure will be necessary? Have the Government done work on that? Have they thought about where roads need to be redesigned and how the sensing systems of artificial intelligence will work on our infrastructure? I can see quite a lot of potential costs in this, but I do not want the cost to be a barrier to innovation. I want the Government to have thought in advance about how you deal with the question of what changes in infrastructure are necessary. I do not want a repeat, if I can say it plainly, of what I think has been the pretty chaotic rollout of charging points for battery vehicles. We need a plan. Is the Bill giving us a plan or a road map for these developments? With those comments, I commend our amendments and look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)
My Lords, forgive me for intervening before the Minister responds, but the word “rural” in Amendments 51 and Amendment 61 attracted my attention, as you might expect. As I said in my Second Reading speech—and following up on what the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, has just been talking about, the Government have to make a plan, because the SDVs could make a huge difference to rural life, if the rules allow it. I do not expect Uber 2—or whatever you want to call a fleet of for-hire self-drive vehicles—to make an impact. It is not going to come into the countryside, in the same way as Uber 1 has not come into the countryside. It is not economically viable for any fleet of hire vehicles to do so. As I see it, for rural purposes, it is most likely going to be a solution whereby, if it is a big market town, there may be a car available as a self-drive vehicle or, if it is a small rural village, it will probably be a private vehicle either for hire or for free by use of the local community and all its different members.
We will need the Government to enable it to happen. That is really the point that everyone has been making: the Government have to think about it. Can a private citizen allow their SDV to be used by others, either for hire or for free? How easy will it be for private citizens to rent out an SDV locally? As I understand it, the insurance is likely to be covered by the motor manufacturer, but would that insurance cover the situation that I am describing, where an SDV will have a multi-purpose role in a small rural village? I hope that the Government will think about these things.
Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con)
My Lords, I want to make a few brief points on what we have discussed today and what I have read in the Bill previously. It is seen as a very legally descriptive Bill. Some of the challenges and questions that we are raising in our conversations are around use cases, applications and geography, including how this will shape the future in terms of not just mobility but society. These are quite large concepts for us.
My recommendation to the Minister and the Government is that different phases and parts of the Bill addressing specific use cases and their applications may evolve as we go forward, be they about where automated vehicles may be used in railways, rural life, emergencies or the as yet innovative opportunity for such vehicles in commercial applications. In a previous debate on the Bill, I spoke about how we should potentially view automated vehicles as the equivalent of a smartphone, as compared with the mobile phones that we had originally. A smartphone is no longer just a phone; it enables us to do so many other things. These vehicles have the opportunity to become so many other things that we probably cannot define them to the nth degree yet; it is therefore difficult for the Bill to work against that. However, if we can start to scope out additional use cases and see how they would affect the legislation, that may be the way to go.
Let me make a point or two about the points that have been made, for example about the challenges around road signage and automated vehicles. We are already stepping towards an environment where sensors and smart vehicles acknowledge the changes that happen on the road and the speeds on the road around us. This will be another phase of that evolution. Funding for that is a good question; we should discuss in more detail where we will look at providers, digital technology suppliers and the other opportunities that they will provide from that kind of implementation of technology.
We should look at making sure that charging points are integral and standard for usage with automated vehicles as well. I helped the then Mayor of London set up the London electric vehicle partnership in 2008, when we first looked at electric vehicles. We knew that there would be a challenge around standards and charging but we did not allow those challenges to hold us back. We need to think about agile development, failing fast, and enabling trialling and testing to continue so that we do not slow things down as we look for overall international agreement on some of these things. It is a challenge to make sure that we get momentum, which I think we are all looking for.
Perhaps we can identify the use cases that we are highlighting more specifically, then look at how the Bill can address them in its future versions.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I shall be brief. It has been an interesting debate on this group of amendments because we have started talking about infrastructure separately from what goes on it. That is an important issue to look at because, whether in terms of the comments that I remember the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, making at Second Reading about the benefits of living in the countryside or the comments of other noble Lords who have mentioned the need for proper infrastructure, the key to this—it was in the press at the weekend, I think—is that the infrastructure mapping must be accurate. Who is going to do it?
The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, suggesting putting it on an old railway line. The old railway line is on the maps already, but can you drive down it safely? Is it a guided bus rail, which is another form of getting around? Not only do all these things need to be kept up to date but somebody needs to be responsible for ensuring that they are up to date and for what happens if they are not. I am sure that this is all on Minister’s mind for when he responds, but there is further work to be done here.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Lord Davies of Gower) (Con)
My Lords, I thank your Lordships for the many contributions to this interesting debate. I will try to address the issues that have been raised.
These amendments concern the integration of self-driving vehicles into the existing transport system, particularly the extent to which each may need to adapt to accommodate the other. I begin by clarifying a key point. Self-driving vehicles must be capable of operating safely and legally using the infrastructure as it exists today. There can be no expectation on the part of developers that our roads will change in some way to accommodate their vehicles. Nor do we consider such changes to be necessary for safe deployment.
Vehicles will need to be able to cope safely with issues such as wear and tear, road closures and variation in signage that are found across our road network. This also extends to digital infrastructure. Self-driving vehicles can make use of services such as data connectivity, GPS and digitised traffic regulation orders, but like humans they will need to be able to maintain safety in the event that these services are unavailable. Those which cannot do this would not be authorised.
Government and local authorities have duties to manage and maintain their road networks for the benefit of all users. Over time, local authorities may choose to adapt their networks to leverage the wider benefits from self-driving vehicles. This might include, for example, investing in information systems that can communicate directly with vehicles. However, this is a long-term view. Considering that we are still in the early stages of the deployment of this new technology, it would be premature to anticipate what such changes could look like. Our guiding principle remains that self-driving vehicles must adapt to our roads, not the other way around.
This brings me to Amendments 37 and 50, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle. These probe our plans for adapting the road network to accommodate self-driving vehicles, including how this will be funded. For the reasons that I have set out, the deployment of self-driving vehicles does not require any adaptations of our physical or digital infrastructure. This means that there are no associated costs and that the noble Lord’s amendments are therefore unnecessary. It means that the infrastructure reviews proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, in Amendments 23 and 24, are also unnecessary, along with consequential Amendments 58 and 60. However, in relation to the noble Baroness’s comments on the condition of the road network, I note that the Government have recently announced the biggest-ever funding uplift for local road improvements, with £8.3 billion of funding to resurface over 5,000 miles of roads across England.
Amendments 51 and 61 call for strategies to be published on the application of self- driving vehicles in rural areas. The Government have already published their comprehensive vision for the future of self-driving technology in the UK, Connected & Automated Mobility 2025. As part of that vision, the policy paper considers the opportunities for self-driving technology to improve public transport and to enhance mobility in rural areas. Furthermore, in October last year, we published the Future of Transport rural innovation guidance, providing local authorities with advice and support to embrace technologies such as self-driving vehicles in rural areas. To publish further strategies would risk duplicating this existing work. On the specific point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, about public transport, our investment in trials such as CAVForth in Scotland and Harlander in Belfast demonstrates clearly that our commitment extends well beyond private use of self-driving vehicles.
On Amendment 48, Clause 47(4)(b) specifically states that the user-in-charge immunity does not extend to the qualifications of the driver. The requirement to hold a valid driving licence therefore continues to apply to the user-in-charge, even while the self-driving feature is active. This is necessary as they may be required to resume control of the vehicle in response to a transition demand.
In a no-user-in-charge vehicle, there is never a requirement for a qualified person to assume control. While a no-user-in-charge feature is active, any person in the vehicle is simply considered a passenger and will not need to hold a driving licence.
Driving licence categories will continue to apply to self-driving vehicles as they do to conventional ones—for example, by weight and number of seats. It would be premature to consider new categories of driving licence at this stage, but it would be possible in the future under the Road Traffic Act. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, feels that this clarifies the position sufficiently.
Amendment 44 concerns the interaction between self-driving vehicles and ChargePoint infrastructure. Self-driving vehicles are not yet on our roads and the technology for automated charging is still very much in its infancy. However, we will continue to monitor the future direction of the technology. Should developments demonstrate a need for regulation in this space, we will consider next steps on consultation. The Government are focusing our current intervention on areas where an accelerated pace of rollout is most needed, such as high-powered chargers on the strategic road network and for local street charging.
Amendments 54 and 56 refer to delivery robot vehicles and devices. It is the Government’s view that the Bill already contains the necessary legislation to regulate the safety of all self-driving road vehicles. In line with Clause 94, any mechanically propelled vehicle intended or adapted to be used on the road is already within the scope of the Bill.
As I have said previously, the definition of a “road” extends beyond the carriageway itself. For example, it includes the pavement. Delivery robots and devices that meet these criteria would therefore be in scope. However, to pass the self-driving test, they must drive legally and comply with all relevant regulations. This includes construction and use regulations, and restrictions on pavement use by motor vehicles. Any future changes to regulations on pavement use would need to be balanced with the need to maintain safety and accessibility for other road users. All in-scope vehicles will be subject to the monitoring, assessment and reporting requirements set out in Clause 38. This makes additional reporting requirements unnecessary.
I know that my noble friend Lord Lucas, who tabled Amendment 45, is a long-standing advocate for this particular use case. Although it sits outside the regulatory framework that we are proposing, which is concerned only with roads and other public places, I reassure him of our interest in its potential. We are one of the first countries to explore the business case for self-driving mass transit on segregated routes, with 10 feasibility studies under way backed by £1.5 million in government funding. We are already looking at how regulatory requirements could be overseen for segregated routes. Work is under way with the Office of Rail and Road and the Health and Safety Executive to establish a firm footing for the kind of deployment that my noble friend is interested in. While the technical regulations being developed in support of the Bill may be a useful guide for these “off-road” applications, the frameworks are distinct.
I hope, as a result of what I have said, that the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, sees fit to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response. This has been a good debate, with some important points raised. It is a good example of us trying to think positively, outside the box, about the important issues that this new technology will raise for us all. I just pick one raised by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, which is the potential to benefit rural areas. I fear that they will probably be the last areas to benefit, unless there is a proper plan. That is the sort of thing we should rightly be doing here at this stage of the Bill. However, having listened carefully to the Minister, I will look very carefully at Hansard, because he said some interesting but worrying things.
Baroness Randerson
“Commencement of sections 5 and 6: review of the MOT regime(1) Before making regulations commencing sections 5 and 6 of this Act, the Secretary of State must undertake a review of whether the MOT regime is fit for purpose in light of the changes to the regulation of automated vehicles introduced by this Act.(2) The review must in particular assess whether an MOT adequately covers the testing of both mechanical and software components of an automated vehicle.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would require the Government to review the current MOT regime before commencing and making authorisations under sections 5 and 6.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, I have Amendments 25, 55E and 59 in this group. Amendments 25 and 59 are associated. They make a simple and obvious point about thinking more outside the box and trying to predict the future.
Consequent on the revolution in vehicle operation, there will, of course, be a need for the modernisation of MoTs to include much more emphasis on software. It will be essential for owners and operators to download updates on a regular basis. If this is not done, the vehicle will either progressively or suddenly become less safe, or probably cease to operate. Last week, I tested the issue of what happens when someone writes software and then the company goes bust, and who is then responsible for carrying on with the software.
There is a major issue here about the modernisation of MoTs. Compared with internal combustion engine vehicles, there will be far less danger of automated vehicles having mechanical failures or deterioration, because there are far fewer mechanical parts to go wrong or to wear out, so the whole emphasis of the MoT and other tests will change and it stands to reason that it is essential to train people with the IT skills required to deal with that change. That is not currently happening in sufficient numbers. The vacancy rate in jobs of this nature within this industry is 7%—twice the average for the sector as a whole.
Amendment 55E asks the Government to develop a workforce strategy to ensure that we have a workforce with the right skills. There is bound to be concern, as automated vehicles become more common and as they replace services that currently operate with human drivers, that automated buses, taxis and delivery vehicles are taking away existing jobs. It is therefore very important that the Government maximise the opportunities for new jobs, too. The Government’s own research estimates that 38,000 new jobs can be provided as a result of this technology and, indeed, updating and maintaining IT. That is possibly an underestimate, but the Government need to prepare now for the highly skilled and well-paid jobs that will potentially come as a result of this technology.
The point of my amendments is simply to probe the Government’s plans to make sure that they are fully prepared and are looking at reviewing the MoT, because many modern cars are halfway there at the moment and need to have that annual look at whether their IT and software are up to date and fully functioning. We also need to have the people to make sure that that can be done. I beg to move.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 37A. Before I start, I will comment on the noble Baroness’s introduction to her Amendment 25. What she proposes is extremely important. My amendment seeks to go a bit further, rightly or wrongly.
Given the issues we have talked about during the passage of this Bill so far, the issue of changes in technology is really quite serious. Obviously, we do not understand many of them, but we hope that the Government do, and I am sure that they do. I am quite keen to probe the idea of an independent body to keep an eye on safety, health and safety at work and other issues which come up in the course of this Bill. I think the noble Baroness’s Amendment 25 is a good start, but it is a wish to see the Government marking their own homework. That is better than not having any marking at all, but I think there is a long way to go before we can get anything that we can totally trust about what is going on—without getting into the Post Office, Horizon and things like that.
I asked to have a discussion with the Office of Rail and Road, as it has been called for the best part of 10 years. It is an independent body with statutory functions to supervise and comment on the safety and performance of rail and, more recently, it has had a similar but smaller role in respect of roads, in particular monitoring the performance of National Highways. I think most people believe that it performs its regulatory function pretty well. There are many other regulators that we are not going to raise today, but they all have one thing in common: they are all independent of government. Now I know that Ministers can sack the chair of these organisations and do things, but the independence is there.
They have regulatory powers as well. I shall quote one example of what the ORR has been doing on the motorway network. It is quite complicated, but it started off with the Department for Transport asking the ORR to carry out an evidence stocktake to gather the facts on the safety of smart motorways. Then the Secretary of State increased that and said that he wanted some quality assurance of the data and the evidence underpinning the conclusions arrived at with regard to lane rentals. This is the Government asking an independent regulator for its opinion. I think it is really good that the Government have done this. There were then a number of discussions with the House of Commons Transport Committee and the ORR provided its first report, Quality Assurance of All Lane Running Motorway Data. National Highways then used this data to assess smart motorway safety and demonstrate to stakeholders, the public and the Government that the conclusions drawn from the analysis were appropriate and robust.
The Transport Committee in the House of Commons has done quite a lot of work on it. Its conclusion in a report published in December 2023, in a second assessment, was that the ORR’s annual independent reporting
“has provided better transparency in relation to safety on the strategic road network and smart motorways and helped to drive performance improvements”—
which the report then discusses.
Noble Lords will know of the fuss about smart motorways, with lots of debates about their safety and so on. It is interesting that the Transport Committee concluded that, over a number of years, Governments, National Highways and its predecessors had
“underestimated the scale of safety measures needed effectively and reliably to mitigate the risks associated with the permanent removal of the hard shoulder”
from these motorways, and had
“failed to deliver safety improvements … in a timely fashion”.
I do not want to criticise the Government for doing this; they were trying to save money and increase the amount of traffic on the motorway, et cetera. My point is that here were the Government, rightly, asking an independent regulator for its opinion, and then passing it to the Transport Committee, which concluded:
“The Department should make the introduction of changes to the design and operation of the Strategic Road Network depend on a formal health and safety assessment by the Office of Rail and Road”.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, I very much hope that the Government will look at Amendment 25, in the context not only of this Bill but of whether the MoT test needs updating anyway in these respects. More and more aspects of automation are coming into cars. We heard last time how cars can be frightened of bags blowing in the road or reluctant to change lanes when asked as a result of automated features; doubtless, more will come in. Such features are having a noticeable effect on the way that a car behaves on the road. We ought to test to make sure that they are operating properly. I do not see any trace of that in the MoT as it is. We should be aware of the need to move.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, I will speak briefly to each of the amendments in this group, a lot of which have what I call a “motherhood” characteristic. In other words, they are self-evidently sensible things to do; the debate is whether these ideas are properly caught by the language or whether, indeed, they need to be on the face of the Bill. Therefore, I would like the Minister to try to answer in two ways: first, whether he essentially disagrees with the concept in the amendment and, secondly, if he agrees with it, why we should not have it in the Bill.
I start with Amendment 25; I believe Amendment 59 is consequential to it. This is an entirely reasonable amendment. It is difficult to believe that the standards expected and the areas considered will be identical—or even largely identical—to the present MoT regime, and therefore I think a review is entirely sensible.
Similarly, my noble friend Lord Berkeley has made a good point in Amendment 37A—and, as I read it, Amendment 57A is consequential—that the Office of Rail and Road could make a singular contribution. The ORR’s problem is that it has the responsibilities of a railway inspectorate on the one hand and, potentially, of a road inspectorate with particular reference to this area. The problem, particularly on the railways, is that there is often not enough business to keep such teams properly employed. The skills required are very similar. It could be a merger of two teams or learning from each other—there are all sorts of things that one can think of when it comes to drawing the rail and road people into the way that the various investigatory and rule-setting powers would work. As I said, Amendment 57A is consequential.
My noble friend Lord Liddle has three amendments in this group. I shall speak particularly to Amendments 40 and 41. I did not find these the easiest to read because the whole problem of taking a statement and then adapting it to a new meaning is not without its hazards. I will quote the appropriate subsections from Clause 61. Subsection (1) says:
“The main purpose of the role of inspector is that of identifying, improving understanding of, and reducing the risks of harm arising from the use of authorised automated vehicles on roads in Great Britain”.
That is then conditioned by subsection (2):
“It is no part of that purpose to establish blame or liability on the part of any person in relation to a particular incident”.
That is a no-fault environment in which many people would agree you get a better result out of the inspection of events. However, we feel that we need to take that further. Amendment 40 would add, at the end of the wording in subsection (2),
“unless the investigation concludes that a failure in the technology of an automated vehicle is at fault”.
That would give it a specific requirement to bring out and invite the inspector to say, “It was the technology that caused this accident”. We think it important that they are able to specify that the technology was at fault.
Clause 68(1) says:
“An inspector must report any findings of an investigation to the Secretary of State”.
In a sense, that implies that this is pretty routine stuff and it only needs to go to the Secretary of State. We believe that because of the complexity, and the obvious desire of the people who have looked at this at some length that parliamentarians should be involved with the evolution of this, there should be a caveat to that. Amendment 41 proposes to add
“who must lay this report before Parliament should the investigation find a technological failure of an automated vehicle to be the cause, or one of the causes, of an incident”.
So the situation would be that the Secretary of State received all reports where the technology had not been found at fault, but where the technology had been found at fault, that would be reported to Parliament.
In Amendment 55E, the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, has asked for a workforce strategy. This is classic. The whole of the UK, frankly, calls for a workforce strategy, and over and over again you see decisions being made without regard to the workforce capability. There is a good case for this particular role, but the Government should grasp the proper use of workforce strategies in managing our society. We think of the problems of doing something as being about physical things, such as factories, but over and over again it is the limitation of skills. Any activity is as much about the skill of the people working with it—it is particularly interesting to look at this in the military—as it is about the kit they are using to deliver it. We should be thinking more and more in these terms. I do not know whether this is one of the launch areas, but bringing it up in the Bill was a good thing.
Finally, Amendment 56A from my noble friend Lord Liddle, as stated in the explanatory statement, is
“to probe the difference between ‘automated,’ ‘autonomous,’ ‘autonomously’ and ‘self-driving’”.
There is an unwritten rule that, when writing standards, you never use synonyms. The moment you use synonyms you ask people to start trying to define the difference. If you have a good, simple concept, it should have one label in any regulation. It makes the writing very boring, because there is so much repetition, but it makes it unambiguous. I am afraid that this document is somewhat ambiguous because of the various terms that it uses for the same concept.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their contributions. The amendments in this group concern the day-to-day operation of the regulatory framework.
Amendment 40, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, refers specifically to incidents in which the technology of a self-driving vehicle is at fault. In such a situation, it would be for the in-use regulatory scheme to determine whether regulatory sanctions were appropriate. Criminal penalties would also apply if the authorised self-driving entity had failed to disclose relevant safety information. Separately, a statutory inspector may also conduct an independent safety investigation. The statutory inspector is then responsible for publicly reporting on safety lessons and making recommendations for improvement. These reports would include the failure in vehicle technology and any other causation factors.
The amendment therefore confuses the role of a statutory inspector with that of the in-use regulatory scheme and the police. In doing so, it inadvertently contravenes a long-standing fundamental principle in incident investigation: learning, not blaming. In developing the inspector role, we have been guided by international standards, best practice and precedent, including that established by our own exceptional existing transport accident investigation branches. All three of these branches conduct no-blame investigations.
I have similar concerns that his Amendment 41 also risks departing from established precedent in safety investigation. An inspector must be able to report neutrally and factually without being influenced, directly or indirectly, by any person or organisation. Historically, this has extended even to Parliament. Indeed, none of the reports published by the existing air, maritime, and rail accident investigation branches are required to be laid before Parliament. However, I am happy to reassure the noble Lord that it is absolutely the Government’s intention to make all the inspector’s reports, findings and associated recommendations publicly available on GOV.UK, as is the case for the existing branches.
I confirm that specific testing for self-driving vehicles will be considered for inclusion in the MoT. Naturally, this will need to be an evolutionary process, developed in line with the introduction of the technology. The MoT will continue to play an important role in ensuring the ongoing maintenance and roadworthiness of the vehicle. However, we will not depend on it to ensure that self-driving vehicles drive safely. Authorisation places the obligation on the authorised self-driving entity to ensure that its vehicles continue to satisfy the self-driving test. The Bill grants powers to set requirements, secure information and issue sanctions as necessary to ensure that this is done. The review proposed in Amendments 25 and 59 could therefore unnecessarily delay the implementation of Bill.
On the noble Baroness’s specific question, in the event of an authorised self-driving entity ceasing trading, safety must be the priority. It would not be right for a vehicle to drive itself without someone taking responsibility for how it behaves. Given that this market is still emerging, there is much that we do not know about future ownership models and what consumer protections will therefore be needed. However, I can confirm that the important issue of the handling of ASDEs’ insolvency will be considered, following consultation, as part of establishing financial and good-repute requirements for authorisation.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
I asked the Minister whether he would be prepared to meet me, one or two colleagues and perhaps the regulator, the Office of Rail and Road, so that we can understand a little more what he has said. I am very interested in his response, but it would be very helpful if we could have a meeting before Report.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response and thank all those who have taken part in this short debate. I want to pick out a couple of things. One is about the urgency of the reform of the MoT, a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, which stands in a bit of contrast to the Minister’s point. I am delighted that the Minister has acknowledged that there is a need to reform the MoT, but I believe that he used the word “evolutionary”. Evolution can move very slowly. One point that has come across from noble Lords across the Committee is that current vehicles are part of the way there and have a whole system of software that needs attention in an MoT. I hope that the Minister will take away the fact that those changes need to be worked on with some urgency and that we need changes to the MoT in the near future.
Very good points have been made about the need for skills strategies, and to make the best of innovation by having the skills that will be needed. I thank all noble Lords who have taken part and withdraw my amendment.
Lord Holmes of Richmond
“Statement of accessibility principles(1) The Secretary of State must prepare a statement of the principles that they propose to apply in assessing, for the purposes of this Part, whether an automated vehicle meets the required level of accessibility.(2) The principles must make provision for the accessibility of—(a) physical features and structures of the automated vehicle,(b) computer and software systems used in the automated vehicle, and(c) where relevant, booking platforms and other interactive digital services and systems used prior to, during and after using an automated vehicle, including through underpinning such services and systems with mechanisms to allow human intervention if required.(3) In preparing the statement under subsection (1), the Secretary of State must consult such persons they consider appropriate, in particular disabled people.(4) The statement under subsection (1) should include consideration of the accessibility of infrastructure with which automated vehicles must interact, such as pavements, kerbs, drop off and parking points.”
Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to open this debate on this group of amendments. In doing so, I declare my interest as an adviser to Boston Ltd. I shall speak to Amendment 26A, which I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, for co-signing. I look forward to hearing about the other amendments in this group, which I shall not trespass on at this time.
Automated vehicles are either accessible, or they should not be pursued. They have such potential to enable mobility through technology, transforming people’s lives, be they older people, disabled people or any member of our society. If accessibility is not the golden thread that runs through all their development and deployment, this project should not proceed any further.
We see in Clause 87 a couple of mentions of disabled people and older people. It is good to see that, but Clause 87 is not specific or sufficient. Without greater detail in the Bill, inevitably we will have potentially many elements of the user experience which simply will not be accessible, and there is precious little point in having 70% of the end-to-end experience accessible if 30% is not. That needs to run through all elements: not just the AV itself but everything involved in that user experience of engaging with an automated vehicle. That is why my Amendment 26A proposes a statement of accessibility principles which will run through and set out in the Bill, in detail, what is required to enable an accessible experience for all users.
As has been said, the vehicle itself, the physical features, must be accessible. All onboard systems must be accessible, but also the booking platforms and all the physical infrastructure that the AV needs to interact with, such as kerbs and drop-off points, must be accessible; otherwise, the experience will be unable to be seen as accessible. It can be rendered useless if just one of those elements is not accessible. We need to see a statement of accessibility principles set out in the Bill; it needs to be understood as an end-to-end accessible experience for users; and we need to see disabled people involved in the development and deployment of this whole AV enterprise. I believe that by having all these elements in the Bill, we will have much greater opportunity to enable an accessible experience for all.
It is clear that we need to have backstops. If the onboard system fails, if the booking system fails, if any element fails, by technical glitch or for want of accessibility, there needs to be a human in the loop, the potential for human intervention, so that a disabled person, an older person or, indeed, any person is not left, potentially, in a vehicle with a failed onboard system and no back-up, both for safety but also just for knowing where you are—the vital information to enable you to have an accessible experience in that AV.
We have spent many decades putting right inaccessible buildings, infrastructure and public realm that was built and conceived of long before accessibility, inclusion and inclusive by design were even considered, let alone deployed. That is still a work in progress, but we need to be absolutely certain that we are not potentially building new systems, vehicles and infrastructure that are inaccessible by design. We cannot start creating new steps—new barriers to access—in cyberspace and across the whole AV experience. We will get this right if we see it as a user experience, end-to-end, every beat point with a golden thread of accessibility ensuring that AVs can be enabling, emancipating and a positive experience for all users. I beg to move.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, I declare my past interest as a member of the Select Committee on the Equality Act and its impact on disabled people, which included assessing PSV transport regulations for safe and effective travel for disabled people. Once again, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, and to have been able to sign his Amendment 26A. I have three amendments in this group, also signed by my noble friend Lady Randerson.
I want to pick up the point the noble Lord made when he talked about not just disabled people, but the elderly and frail in our society. If you include all of those, we are talking about more than one in four of the population. This is not something that affects a few people; it is a major, really important part of automated vehicles, increasingly so as we become an elderly society, because it is less likely that people will be able to make their own journeys. One reason why so many disabled people cannot travel around is because they do not have access to the right vehicles.
On this group, I want to refer to the Minister’s response at Second Reading, when the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, and I raised accessibility just not being visible in this Bill, neither generally nor in Clause 83. From the Dispatch Box, the Minister said:
“The granting of self-driving authorisations will be subject to the public sector equality duty, and the Government intend to make equality impact assessments part of the authorisation process”.—[Official Report, 28/11/23; col. 1070.]
The granting of self-driving authorisations being issued by a regulatory body would mean that the grantee has to follow the PSED, providing that it is supervised by a state regulatory body and providing a public service, so he is no doubt correct that PSVs would be able to follow it. I would hope that the provision of public sector AVs would fall within scope but, as we have discussed, there are many other parties to the running of an AV, some of which may not appear to be party to the PSED or realise that they are required to obey it.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and to agree with everything they said. In offering support to all the amendments in this group, I will make a couple of additional points.
First, to follow on from debates on previous groups today, it is obvious that, given the general state of our roads and infrastructure, if we are to see automated vehicles operating in the foreseeable future, that will be in only very limited and controlled circumstances—probably in newly constructed areas—and they are likely to be public transport. A great deal of our debates on this Bill have focused on private individuals having their own cars whizzing around, but public transport systems are most likely to be the first affected. We need to see the provision of access by design included as part of that.
Secondly, it deserves to be noted that, for the past year, the Transport Committee has been holding hearings on the accessibility of what we have now. These have exposed insufficient accessibility right across the transport sector, particularly in the need to update regulations to accommodate modern travel methods and equipment. As the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said, we are starting from scratch and could get it right from the beginning, so we should absolutely aim to do so. She spoke about relying on the public sector equality duty when it is so clearly failing; we have not heard the final conclusions of the Transport Committee, but a report out last month from the disabled people’s organisation Transport for All titled Are We There Yet?—to spoil the ending, the answer is definitely “No”—surveyed more than 500 disabled people in England on the journeys they had made in 2021 and 2022.
The report found that disabled people make far fewer journeys than non-disabled people—an average of 5.84 a week, which is one-third of the national average across the community. Those disabled people said they would like to make twice as many journeys every week, but lack of accessibility was preventing them doing so and being able to fully participate in our society, in the way that they would like. Finally, the report noted that nearly half of the respondents
“thought that the accessibility of transport and streets”
would worsen in the next 10 years, while only 28% thought it would improve. Your Lordships’ House has a duty and an opportunity to show that it is possible to make things better instead of letting them continue to deteriorate.
Lord Borwick (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest, as I have been involved in accessibility to modern taxis and other public transport over many years. I entirely agree with most of the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and my noble friend Lord Holmes. However, with their amendments, I am not sure that we are heading in the right direction. It is clear from Clause 87 that those clauses intending to make the vehicle more accessible are heading in the right direction, but the noble Baroness believes they do not go far enough.
I am not sure that adding an extra automated vehicle accessibility standards panel, as in Amendment 53, would do anything other than delay everything in practice. By the time that such a panel is formed and educated to the standard of familiarity that we all hold with the Bill—or most of us do—I am not sure that it would do anything but delay the whole Bill, when we are already behind others. Although I very much hope that we could be at the forefront both of the existence of automated vehicles and of accessibility, we are of course two years behind other countries in Europe. We have got to catch up. I hope that we can alter Clause 87 to achieve what the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and I would like to see, rather than add a completely new panel on top.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
I very gently challenge the noble Lord on his contribution. The problem is that, if there is no chance to rethink, for example, the design of some of the vehicles or the structures that go with it—including architectural software structures in apps—it will be too late. We will end up in the position that we have now found ourselves in on the railways; five years ago, we were expecting to have level access at every single railway station in the country to remove the need for ramps. Unfortunately, because there was no work done at that time, rolling stock was bought that did not conform with other rolling stock—let alone platforms—and it was delayed until 2023. It has now been delayed until 2035.
If we do not tackle this right at the start, it will prevent disabled people using these vehicles, because they will not be involved in the process. Just like trying to get hold of wheelchair-accessible cars, it will be almost impossible to find accessibility works for disabled people in AVs.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, first, I am very sympathetic to the whole problem of access. Secondly, I recognise it is very complex and defer to the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, in the detailed knowledge that they display in these two amendments.
Broadly speaking, I would like to see these amendments encapsulated in the Bill. The key question, however—which I invite both the noble Lord and noble Baroness to answer—is whether the two concepts contained in these amendments are mutually compatible or are in any way in conflict. If they are not, I support the general direction of these amendments and hope that there is recognition of the latest point made by the noble Baroness: you can expect a much more optimal solution if you adopt a clear direction on this difficult issue at the start, rather than trying to bolt it on afterwards.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, I will take up the last point made by the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe. You have to start on the right footing immediately. One theme that has run through the amendments to this Bill is that those of us putting forward probing amendments are not doing so in the spirit of wanting to delay anything. I would argue that the purpose of these amendments—the detail may not be ideal; but this is the probing stage—is so integral to getting it right that you must accept that there might be a delay.
This whole project could be seriously delayed by bad publicity, adverse reporting and so on. If one in four people are looking to this brave new world of public transport, which was going to open things up for people with disabilities, and they discover that they cannot get on the new buses or into the new taxis, that will be the sort of really bad publicity that will set this revolution back by a considerable period of time.
I add one little example to those already provided by my noble friend Lady Brinton. I have 30% of normal hearing. I have found a number of times that the requirement to have both audio and visual announcements is not carried out in practice: they either have one or the other. An audio announcement on its own is no use to me at all. It shuts bus journeys off to me in areas where I am not familiar with the stops and layout of the town. If we apply that principle to people in wheelchairs and people with serious sight loss, large parts of the huge potential benefits of this new technology will be unavailable to an increasingly large section of the population. With an older population, this percentage will only get bigger.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, has made the point that she can speak twice in Committee. I invite her to speak for a third time to confirm that the two amendments are mutually compatible.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
I suspect that between Committee and Report, the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, and I will discuss this in detail. We might even try to do it at the meeting with the Minister.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
I once again thank noble Lords for their contributions in this group. Self-driving vehicles present an opportunity to radically improve the accessibility of transport. In particular, automated passenger services could help open up new transport links in areas where accessible services are currently limited. As colleagues rightly point out, however, it will take work to get this right. Indeed, I remind the House of the Law Commissions’ comments on this subject; they said:
“there is much that is not known about how passenger services will operate in the absence of a driver. The immediate need is to collect more evidence and gain more experience, particularly on issues such as accessibility and safeguarding”.
The Government have taken that on board. We are undertaking research to improve our understanding of the current driver duties, so that we may better design requirements to ensure journeys are accessible. Further, applicants for passenger permits will not only be required to show how they are designing services to meet the needs of older and disabled people but obliged to publish reports on how those needs are being met in practice. That is in addition to the requirements under the public sector equality duty, to which I referred in our earlier debate.
On Amendments 53 and 57, we recognise the importance of co-designing the development of self-driving vehicles with disabled people. In our policy paper Connected & Automated Mobility 2025, we committed to setting up an accessibility advisory panel before we launch the passenger permitting regime. The panel will advise on the granting of permits and assist in the development of national minimum accessibility standards. Although we have chosen to do that through non-statutory means, such a body is in line with the principle underpinning the Law Commissions’ recommendation.
The Government already have a statutory adviser on transport accessibility in the form of the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee. The committee has an established role in providing independent advice to the department. It provided feedback as part of the Law Commissions’ review, and its expertise will be brought to bear alongside the advisory panel. Creating further statutory roles risks duplication; I do not wish to see additional complexity added at the expense of a material improvement in outcomes. By contrast, the flexibility offered by a non-statutory solution enables a tailored response that can adapt quickly to the rapid evolution of policy in this area.
I turn to the proposal for a “statement of accessibility principles” put forward by my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond. I absolutely recognise the points he raised and the intent of his amendment, and I reassure him that the measures in the Bill already provide scope to consider accessibility at every stage. As I said during our last debate, the Government will require anyone seeking authorisation to submit an assessment of fair outcomes. As well as considering accessibility for people with different needs, the assessments will cover data biases. Applicants will be required to include plans for how they will avoid their vehicles unfairly discriminating against particular groups, as was recommended by the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation.
My noble friend’s amendment highlights the importance of adopting a whole-journey approach when reviewing accessibility. In his very apt words, there must be a “golden thread” running from the physical vehicle design to the booking system, the integration with public transport, the support offered by operators and beyond. Indeed, the respective roles of each of those elements will likely change considerably as the technology develops and as users become more confident. That is why we look to address those important issues in Part 5 of the Bill as part of the automated passenger services provisions. These provisions allow us to set specific requirements covering the whole-passenger experience, rather than splitting them across the authorisation and operator licensing processes. As I said, accessibility is a mandatory consideration in setting those requirements.
We have already indicated in our policy scoping notes that equality and fairness are likely to be included as part of the statement of safety principles. Therefore, a second set of accessibility principles may create overlap. However, I hope that this offers my noble friend some reassurance that the intent of his amendment is already being considered.
Finally, I turn to the proposal that Clause 83 be removed. Clause 83 disapplies existing taxi, private hire and bus legislation to vehicles operating under an automated passenger services permit. The application of existing public transport legislation to self-driving vehicles is complex and uncertain. While it will remain possible for providers to be regulated under these regimes, as was the case for the CAVForth bus project in Scotland, relying on this alone could leave gaps in regulation. This in turn could lead to unintended consequences and hamper the development of the automated passenger services industry. Therefore, the Law Commissions recommended offering a separate bespoke scheme, creating a clear and lawful route for service providers to become licensed. As well as bringing clarity, this has allowed us to create a modern, flexible framework, specifically designed to help grow our understanding of how automated passenger services can best support people with disabilities. The Government want public transport to be available to all. The intention of Clause 83 has never been to undermine that goal. Its purpose is simply to avoid the ambiguity and potential overlap in how current passenger licensing laws might apply to service providers.
In conclusion, I respectfully ask my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond to withdraw his Amendment 26A. I look forward to discussing these issues further with him and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, in the coming days.
Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)
I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this important debate, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. I thank my noble friend the Minister for his response.
The reality is that the current measures on accessibility in the Bill are not specific and are insufficient. To my noble friend Lord Borwick, I say that it is entirely possible that we could add to Clause 87 to make it specific to and sufficient for that purpose; I will certainly get my drafting pen out between Committee and Report.
I look forward to the meeting with the Minister to cover these issues. It is essential that we get them right at this stage. I will give an example of what happens if we do not. For many years, and potentially still, there have been stations on our network that are described as fully accessible; they are marked as “fully accessible” stations on the overall map of the network, be it in London or nationally. Indeed, they are: if you arrive at the stations, they have wide gates; if you have access needs or are a wheelchair user, they have audio announcements; and if you happen to be visually impaired or blind, they have lifts that enable passengers to access the platform. They are fully accessible stations—but you cannot board the train when it arrives. That is why it is critical to look at the golden thread of accessibility for the end-to-end experience. Just one small step, be it even tiny, can trip up the whole process of enabling an accessible experience.
The Bill needs to be beefed up on accessibility, otherwise it will be a game of catch-up and missed opportunities. The Minister said in winding up that there is “scope” for that, but scope is not actuality. He said that there is potential and opportunity, but opportunity is not inevitability. We have the opportunity in the Bill not to slow anything down. Through the input of disabled people from the outset, we can actually speed up the process and have free consultation from them—although everybody who is part of the co-production should, rightly, be paid and supported.
More needs to be done between Committee and Report. The opportunity that accessible automated vehicles provide cannot be left to go the way of other transport developments over the previous 200 years. We will certainly return to this between Committee and Report, potentially with some specific amendments on Report, but for the moment I beg to withdraw my Amendment 26A.
Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]
Monday 15th January 2024
(3 months, 1 week ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Automated Vehicles Bill [HL] 2023-24 Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 1-II Second marshalled list for Committee - (11 Jan 2024)
Lord Liddle
Member’s explanatory statement
This is a consequential amendment on Lord Liddle’s other amendment to insert a new clause entitled “Liability of insurers”.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
My Lords, from a discussion of the critical world situation, we move to discuss insurance questions under automated vehicles—such is the breadth of the House of Lords.
In moving Amendment 38 and speaking to the other amendments in this group, we on this side of the House are not pretending that we are insurance experts. We are not, but we do think it is a very striking omission from the Bill that there appears to be no reference to insurance, at least in any detailed way. I think this is puzzling. There are already arguments from the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers that the advent of automated features in driving cars has led to insurance uncertainties, the obvious example being that if one puts one’s car on cruise control on the assumption that it has an automatic braking system and the automatic braking system does not work, who is liable? Is it still the driver, or the people who manufactured the system, or the motor manufacturer who installed it? I think these questions will multiply as we move towards a world of automated vehicles.
This was brought home to me when the Minister kindly wrote to us—I am not sure I have the piece of paper here—about the time that you are allowed when you are given a warning that you have to take control of the vehicle. The department has not made up its mind. It wants to try to work out how this might vary in different circumstances; that is what I understand the department’s position to be.
This strikes me as highlighting what I think will become a significant issue: if an accident occurs in this period, where you are given a warning and you have to do something to control the car, there will be tremendous disputes about who was actually in charge and liable at the time. This at least has to be addressed. If it is not addressed in the content of the Bill, we have to know that the department has a solution to this issue.
That, in summary, is what the amendments I have put down are about. I am not sure that they are technically in order, and I doubt very much whether they would be in the final version of the Bill, but we are asking the Government here to take away this issue, think about it and come up with something when the Bill comes back to us on Report. With that, I move the amendment in my name.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, I added my name to one of the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, because I was struck by the briefing that we received from the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, to which the noble Lord has just referred. Other people who have been in correspondence with us have highlighted the fact that non-motorised road users, such as cyclists and pedestrians—one can think of many others; horse riders, for example—are already physically the most vulnerable on any road. Their vulnerability will be compounded in future by their legal disadvantage in relation to insurance unless this Bill is very clear.
This is not like a vehicle-to-vehicle accident. If my vehicle hits your vehicle, in normal circumstances we will be insured. The situation is dealt with by lawyers acting for insurance companies, which operate via clear rules. Because of the information they hold, automated vehicles should make things clearer. They will have recorded the information showing exactly what has happened; we will no longer rely on individual drivers’ responses.
However, when a vehicle hits a pedestrian, that pedestrian would not normally be insured as a pedestrian and would undoubtedly be unaware of their legal situation and, in most circumstances, of their legal rights. They could be in a position where they are too young or too badly injured, for instance, to be able to take the appropriate action at the time. So it is very important that this Bill is absolutely clear about the situation.
The Association of Personal Injury Lawyers raised the specific issue of Section 2 of the 2018 Act, which allows people who are injured by an automated vehicle when it is driving itself to make a claim against the driver’s insurance. This provision is now included here. If the Bill is passed, this section will apply to automated vehicles if they are travelling while an authorised automation feature of the vehicle is engaged.
Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in this group of amendments. As has been rightly stated, it covers a serious and significant aspect of the Bill under consideration.
I will speak to my Amendment 55A, which, quite simply, goes to the question around the provision of data to establish liability in the event of an AV being involved in an accident. What we know from the whole question of automated vehicles is that they are simultaneously both extraordinary producers of, and consumers of, data. There are so many data issues, which need to be considered right through every element of the Bill in front of us.
When it comes to the swift understanding, investigation and attribution of liability in the event of an accident, it is clearly critical for all of that data to be understood by the parties who require it in the establishment of liability for the accident. Amendment 55A simply asks the Secretary of State to review the current situation and to produce guidance to bring clarity, certainty and whatever is required to avoid delay, distress and any other negative elements that would be occasioned if the wrong approach were taken in the event of an automated vehicle being involved in an accident where there was an inability to gain the right access to the data and to quickly and efficiently establish liability. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Lord Davies of Gower) (Con)
My Lords, once again I am grateful for the contributions in this group. One of the central functions of the Bill is to clarify how liability is to be handled in a world of self-driving vehicles. This is a complex area and I reiterate my thanks to the Law Commissions for their many years of work developing the approaches that we are discussing today. I am grateful also to noble Lords for their insightful contributions and scrutiny on this critical issue.
Amendment 55G, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, would require a study to be conducted on human reactions to transition demands. Before I address that proposal, I will respond to his specific point about how liability applies during the transition period. The Bill is explicit that the authorised self-driving entity remains responsible for the behaviour of the vehicle until the transition period expires. After that period, liability shifts to the driver. However, it is a misconception to imagine that manual control will simply be forced on the driver at the end of that period. Clause 7(3)(e) mandates that vehicles be capable of dealing safely with a situation in which the user-in-charge fails to assume control. In other words, although legal responsibility shifts back to the driver once the transition period expires, the vehicle is still required to bring itself to a safe stop without their intervention. A vehicle that was unable to do that would not be authorised.
On the amendment itself, there is already a considerable body of evidence on response times to transition demands, particularly using simulators. Much of that underpins the international automated lane keeping systems regulation to which I referred earlier. There are a number of additional research projects in this space already in development across the Department for Transport and its agencies. For example, one such project looks to explore what activities a user-in-charge can safely perform while their vehicle is driving itself. This is a question that will also require ongoing monitoring and evaluation over time. We will be able to mandate information sharing from authorised self-driving entities to further expand this evidence base as the technology develops.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
I am not trying to be difficult, but I did not quite understand the point the Minister made about the ASDE still being liable. Let us hypothesise a simple situation. A vehicle is being driven autonomously. A warning is given so the driver takes control, but he is unable to stop the vehicle in time from crashing into a motorcyclist or whatever. The driver is in control—is it clear that he is not liable? Does the Minister see what I mean? I think you can have a situation where you are required to take control but it is too challenging a situation for you to do what is necessary, and you get involved in an accident. Are you then liable? I just do not understand. I am not clear what the position is.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
I am grateful to the noble Lord for bringing up that point. I think the Bill specifically protects the driver from being put in an impossible position by the handover, but I might go away and get proper clarification instead of standing here and—while not guessing—giving my opinion.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
That is fine with me. Perhaps, in the meeting we are going to have, we can discuss this question so that someone who actually understands it properly can explain it to us.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
That will be a challenge.
I will pick up from where I left off. We will be able to mandate information sharing from authorised self-driving entities to further expand this evidence base as the technology develops. Such issues may also be considered and reviewed as part of the general monitoring duty under Clause 38. For those reasons, I believe the amendment is unnecessary.
On Amendment 55A, tabled by my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond, he is right that swift and reliable access to vehicle data will be central to correctly apportioning liability—a point also raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson. As our policy scoping notes set out, we intend to develop regulatory requirements covering data recording, retention and access, in line with the Law Commissions’ recommendations. Ensuring that those are appropriate and proportionate will require careful consultation and impact assessment. The approach proposed by the amendment is unlikely to allow for that and therefore will not adequately address the issue.
Amendment 55F calls for the Government to lay a Statement on who is responsible for insuring and maintaining authorised automated vehicles. The Road Traffic Act 1988 makes it an offence to use or permit the use of a vehicle without appropriate insurance or in a dangerous state. The offence therefore applies to the driver, and potentially to others who enable the use of the vehicle. Clause 49 is clear that the user-in-charge is to be considered a driver for all purposes other than those relating to how the vehicle behaves. The responsibility for roadworthiness and insurance therefore sits with the user-in-charge, just as it does with a conventional driver. Self-driving vehicles that do not require a user-in-charge must be overseen by a no-user-in-charge operator. These operators may own and oversee fleets of vehicles, meaning that they would be responsible for maintenance and insurance. Alternatively, they may simply offer an oversight and incident response service for privately owned vehicles. In this case, it is more appropriate that those responsibilities sit with the owner. Where the responsibilities sit will therefore depend on the business model, and that will be clarified by the Government as part of each operator’s licensing conditions as necessary.
Amendment 55H calls for a Statement on the information that will be published to support the underwriting of self-driving vehicle insurance. Under the Automated and Electric Vehicles Act, self-driving vehicles require policies where the insurer has first-instance liability when the vehicle is driving itself. The insurer is then able to recover against the person responsible, which may be the authorised self-driving entity, following an incident. The Government will establish a public register of self-driving vehicle authorisations, including a list of authorised self-driving entities. The Driver & Vehicle Licensing Agency vehicle registration database will then identify which vehicles have been authorised as self-driving. That will provide clarity about which vehicles require a self-driving insurance policy. While we feel that this information will be sufficient to ensure that vehicles are fit for underwriting purposes, we recognise that further data could support the more accurate pricing of risk. My officials have begun discussions with insurers about what could be needed, and this dialogue will continue as the secondary legislation is developed. I trust that clarifies the position, and I hope the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, agrees that Amendments 55F and 55H are not needed.
With Amendments 38 and 52, the noble Lord looks to remove the need for the victim of an incident to prove that an automated vehicle was driving itself in order to make a claim for compensation. There is no such need to begin with. Where a conventional driver-operated vehicle is involved in a collision, the victim has a claim against the at-fault driver. In practice, either the victim or the driver will contact the relevant insurer for the vehicle, who will then investigate the claim to establish fault and issue compensation appropriately. This approach is long-established and set out in law. It generally works well, and it is not the function of the Bill to change it. The Automated and Electric Vehicles Act assigns the insurer first-instance liability in incidents caused by an automated vehicle that is driving itself. That means the victim is able to claim compensation from the relevant insurer whether there is an at-fault driver or whether the vehicle was in self-driving mode. A claim can be made in either case. The insurer can then determine whether that claim is covered by the conventional third-party insurance or the self-driving vehicle insurance. As I have set out, we will be setting authorisation requirements mandating certain forms of data logging. This information will help the processing of claims.
On Amendment 39, it would be inappropriate to apply a presumption of liability inconsistently across different road users. That could even encourage risk-taking behaviour and ultimately compromise road safety. I recognise the wider point that the noble Lord is making about the safety of other road users. In our earlier discussion about accessibility, I referred to some of the measures we will use to avoid specific groups being placed at a disadvantage by the introduction of self-driving vehicles. For example, we will look to include principles of equality and fairness in the statement of safety principles and will take steps to prevent data biases. These will also apply to vulnerable road users.
In conclusion, I respectfully ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
I am happy to withdraw the amendment on the understanding that we have a further conversation about it.
Lord Moylan
“(7) Regulations under this section may not be made until the Secretary of State has launched a public consultation for updating the Manual for Streets to take into account the consequences for streetscapes of the introduction of automated vehicles, particularly in urban areas.”
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I realise we are coming to the end of Committee, so I shall endeavour to be fairly brief, but the subject I raise by way of these two amendments is quite important. Generally, this is a good Bill at a technical level, but it assumes that automated vehicles are going ahead and will be deployed. In fact, there has been little debate with the public about what the consequences of this might be for our streetscapes and the urban landscape in which we live. There has been a failure on the Government’s part, in a sense, to sell to and explain to the public what I call the look and feel of automated vehicles, as opposed to the technical matters dealt with in the Bill.
If I may say so, it was a mistake of the Government when they published their policy document on this subject last year not to have brought it to the Floor of the House for debate at some point, so that noble Lords could have commented on what they thought the consequences might be. An illustration of that failure is the debate we had earlier on accessibility. The fact is that disabled people—and the rest of us—simply do not know what the Bill will mean for them in practice. They ask questions of my noble friend the Minister and get very exiguous answers, which do not satisfy them as to what their experience will be when these vehicles are deployed. That is true in other realms as well.
My Amendments 62 and 63 simply probe these questions. This may not be a long debate, but it is important to raise them. Amendment 62 relates specifically to the Manual for Streets, which is to do with how our streets are designed. Amendment 63 is broader and takes account of the operation of the streets, how they function and the legislation that covers that. To a certain extent, the Manual for Streets and design sit within the broader operation, but I have separated them out because there are two different questions.
It is worth saying that, when the Manual for Streets was published in 2007 and its complementary second part published in 2010, it was widely welcomed by people who were interested in this area. It has been due for an update for quite a long time, and I believe that a contract was let two or three years ago to one of the chartered institutes in order to prepare a draft. But, as far as I know—my noble friend will correct me if I am wrong—it has never been republished, and we are still waiting, years on. I do not understand why. Before I go further, I ask my noble friend to give us an indication of when the revised version of the Manual for Streets might be published. Will it take account of any of the consequences for the design of streets that might arise from the introduction of automated vehicles?
I was involved in quite innovative and imaginative—I hope—streetscape design ideas for some 15 years, as the deputy leader of a London borough council and with personal responsibility for that area, as deputy chairman of Transport for London, and during the whole of that time as chairman of Urban Design London, which I helped to found nearly 20 years ago. We were trying to achieve the removal of clutter—particularly guard-rails along pavements—the scrapping of one-way highways through the centre of London, like Piccadilly, and their reversion to more natural two-way streets, and the promotion of shared space. In short, we were trying to humanise the urban experience, which is what we are trying to achieve. How will those ambitions be affected by the introduction of automated vehicles?
The Government have a clear and robust but fundamentally unconvincing response to this, saying that there will be no changes: that automated vehicles will simply have to respond to what exists and, if they do not work with that, they will not be allowed on the road. As I understand it, that is the Government’s position, but this is unconvincing. Take guard-rails as an example. We know that automated vehicles will be designed so that, as far as possible, if somebody steps out in front of them or if a cyclist goes across their path, they will automatically detect the obstruction ahead of them and stop. That exposes the entire urban network of automated vehicles to frivolous activity on the part of people who want to stop them and bring the whole thing to an end, if they choose to do that.
I cannot believe that, with the amount of money that is likely to be required as an investment from the private sector in automated vehicles, manufacturers will not, at some point, turn up at the department, saying, “This can’t go on. We can’t be putting up with all this. We’re not going to invest in a network that can be brought to a stop on this basis. We demand the reintroduction of guard-rails. Let us have designated pedestrian crossing points on the streets that everyone will have to move to”. Potentially, for the first time in England, this would criminalise jaywalking, so that people could be fined for crossing the road. That is naturally what they will ask for.
At that point, I find it difficult to believe that the Government will turn around and say, “No”. They will have taken the bait: they will have sold the idea that there are millions of green jobs—or blue jobs, or whatever we want to call them—in all of this, and that the investment is good for Britain and so forth. We will have put in place the Bill’s legislative, technical and insurance-based risk-management apparatus, much of which is sensible—I know there are detailed questions about its operation, but, fundamentally, I think everyone in the House agrees that this is a necessary component. But it puts the cart before the horse; it puts the framework in place before we know what it will look like when it is deployed. I gave that one example of guard-rails, but I could multiply this; in the interest of time, I will stop with that one example.
However, these are important questions, and I feel fundamentally dissatisfied—not with the content of the Bill and what it is trying to achieve but with the Government’s approach to it, which seems to pre-empt discussion about who benefits from this, its purpose and the attractions we will find in it, allowing us to debate that when the Bill effectively excludes it. My amendments simply open up a brief moment at the very end of Committee—I realise that people are understandably thinking of further obligations in the course of the evening and may not want to debate this at great length, but these are important questions. Any contribution would be helpful, but a response from the Minister that is a little more than what has been said before—and a little more convincing than what has been said before—would be very helpful.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
The noble Lord has assured us that this is a probing amendment, and I am convinced he is not expecting many answers from me. I give way to the Minister.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
I am grateful to my noble friend for tabling these amendments and for sharing his perspectives on these issues. I will begin by briefly addressing his point about public understanding and properly communicating what he refers to as the “look and feel” of a world with self-driving vehicles.
In previous debates, I have referred to The Great Self-Driving Exploration. This ground-breaking study was specifically designed to allow people from all walks of life to understand more about self-driving vehicles and to comment on whether they felt their introduction would be beneficial. This is just one example of the work we have been doing in this space.
Amendment 63 looks to require that a statement be made on the necessary changes to highways legislation that may arise from the use of self-driving vehicles. As I set out earlier this afternoon, the Bill does not require changes to our roads, nor are changes considered necessary for the safe deployment of self-driving vehicles. The Bill already sets out the legislative changes that we believe are necessary to enable their use. Local authorities are responsible for managing their road networks, and the existing legislative framework provides them with a wide range of powers to regulate traffic. It also places duties on them to ensure that they do so effectively, for the benefit of all road users. We believe that this existing framework is sufficient to enable them to regulate traffic, including self-driving vehicles, appropriately. Highways legislation is a complex area of law, covering a wide range of powers, duties and responsibilities. For many parts of the Bill, a statement of the kind proposed in the amendment would be irrelevant and would cause unnecessary delay in implementing the new regulatory framework.
My noble friend’s Amendment 62 calls for a consultation on updating the Manual for Streets to take into account the introduction of self-driving vehicles. As I have made clear, self-driving vehicles must adapt to our roads, not the other way round. We would therefore not expect significant changes to the Manual for Streets to be necessary. As was pointed out, the manual was first published in 2007 and updated in 2010. The department is working on bringing together and updating both manuals, which will be published in due course. I will ensure that my noble friend is updated on the progress of this.
Local authorities are responsible for the design and management of their roads, and for setting their own design standards. We have long encouraged them to use the principles in the Manual for Streets in doing so. The department produces a wide range of technical advice documents on aspects of street design and traffic management, of which the manual is just one. There is no statutory consultation requirement for the Manual for Streets, so imposing such a requirement in this case would be unnecessary. However, in line with good practice, key stakeholders have been involved in its development.
Tying the commencement of the Bill to the production of the manual would appear disproportionate, considering there is relatively little overlap between the two. It would therefore cause unnecessary delay in implementing the framework for self-driving vehicles. While I recognise that I may not have been able to provide my noble friend with all the answers that he was looking for, I hope that these explanations have none the less been helpful and go so some way to allowing him to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, my noble friend has not actually provided the answers to any of the questions that I raised, but I am not wholly surprised by that. I shall say only that it is indeed part of the purpose of the proposals to cause delay to the implementation of the Bill while we work out what we are trying to achieve. My noble friend has acutely put his finger on that point—so we are at odds on that.
However, given the lateness of the hour and the fact that I do not think that further debate would be fruitful in eliciting helpful responses from my noble friend, I ask the Committee’s leave to withdraw the amendment.
Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]
Tuesday 6th February 2024
(2 months, 3 weeks ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Automated Vehicles Bill [HL] 2023-24 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 1-R-I(a) Manuscript amendments for Report (Supplementary to the Marshalled List) - (6 Feb 2024)
17:36 - Division on Amendment 28 - Ayes: 200 / Noes: 204 - Amendment 28 disagreed.
Lord Berkeley
“(7) For the purposes of this Part, a vehicle that travels autonomously does so “safely and legally” if a human driver, who drove in the same manner while undertaking a practical test of driving skills and behaviour in accordance with the Motor Vehicles (Driving Licences) Regulations 1999, would pass that test with no faults recorded by the examiner.(7A) The Secretary of State may by statutory instrument replace the definition of “safely and legally” in subsection (7) with a quantified measure of the risk per mile travelled of relevant incidents as defined in section 39, taking account of data gathered through the performance of the duties mentioned in sections 38 (general monitoring duty) and 39 (duty with respect to incidents with potential regulatory consequences).”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment replaces the definition of “safely and legally” for the purpose of the self-driving test with a requirement that an autonomous vehicle should drive to a standard such that a human would pass the test with no faults recorded. It also allows for this definition to be replaced once suitable data becomes available as a result of sections 38 and 39.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, these amendments are all about road safety. Of course, it is a very important subject, which we discussed at length at Committee. Many of the comments made by noble Lords will have been reflected in what I am about to say and in what the Minister said. The Minister has some amendments and I have a couple of amendments in this grouping.
We are all struggling to come up with a definition of “road safety”—which will probably stand for many years—that will enable us to avoid the fear that automatic vehicles will by definition be less safe because they will run into more people. It is a very difficult and challenging subject. My view, and I am very grateful to Cycling UK and other groups for helping with this work, is that we need a step change in road safety. The risks of death or injury on our roads are significantly higher than for life in general, or indeed for other types of transport networks, such as rail. Particularly, pedestrians, people who cycle and other non-motorised road users bear a disproportionate brunt of this risk. I think that this will be a worry all the way through.
I was very interested to hear from Cycling UK and the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety that they tried to follow up the work the Law Commission did in this regard—and did it very well. They came up with two options for trying to improve the definition. The first defined the standard required in terms of what would be required for a human driver to pass a driving test with no faults recorded by the examiner. The second was to quantify the risk of a collision or traffic infraction, possibly per something like 1 billion kilometres travelled.
I came to the conclusion that the first one was probably better, which is what is in my Amendment 1. This says basically that the vehicle should be driven—remotely, but driven—
“in the same manner while undertaking a practical test of driving skills and behaviour in accordance with the Motor Vehicles (Driving Licences) Regulations 1999, would pass that test with no faults”.
I think that is quite a good one. It would allow the Secretary of State to change it by statutory instrument if he or she thought that was a good idea.
The Minister will speak to his amendment, which I think is an improvement. It is a question of having a debate on these things. Although I do not think we will finish it today, I hope we can make some progress on the right way forward to make sure that road safety is not reduced; in other words, it needs to be improved.
There are two other amendments that go with this. First, Amendment 2 in my name relates to the types of locations or circumstances where these criteria are met. It is very different being on a motorway from being on a road in a congested town or in the countryside, and it is important that the principles that are applied should have the option of being different for each one.
Secondly, Amendment 4 says simply that we should aim for something a lot better than “better”. Whether
“significantly better for all road users”
is the right wording is something that we can debate. I think “significantly” is important, and it is really important that it applies to all road users, which includes pedestrians, cyclists, children, older people, disabled people, and so on.
With that short introduction to the road safety issue in the Bill, I beg to move.
Lord Borwick (Con)
My Lords, I repeat the declarations of interest that I have made in the past.
I applaud the principles behind the suggestions made by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. However, there is a difficulty in coming up with new regulations that are different from elsewhere in the world, and I am afraid that “significantly” falls into that trap. It would make it a lot harder for international companies to work out exactly what was meant by these words. There is no established case law on these matters.
We all know that there are problems with existing human drivers, and we should expect that all autonomous vehicles turn out to be dramatically better than human beings. We should not look for circumstances where humans monitor computers but rather the other way around; computers will be better than humans at this. A lot of people suggest that car insurance will actually reduce when the number of autonomous vehicles increases. So I am afraid that I can only applaud the amendment produced by my noble friend the Minister and reject those proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley.
Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)
I hope the House will forgive me, but these various amendments on safety prompt me to ask the Minister about something that has not featured much in our discussions: the issue of hacking into self-driving vehicles—SDVs. It was touched on peripherally during the debate on data protection in Committee but not really highlighted as a major safety concern, which is why I thought I would bring it up now.
I sat on the House’s Science and Technology Committee when it produced its report on automated vehicles some five or six years ago—I am afraid the doldrums of Covid blur my account of time. I remember that during that committee’s investigation, we spent some time discussing in detail the question of hacking into these vehicles, and I felt it only right that it should feature in our discussions on safety today.
We all know how easy it is for someone, or some group of someones, to hack into our computers from a distance, and it could be a criminals or, worse, an enemy state. Why should it not be the same with an SDV? I raised this subject with Waymo and others, but I have to say that I was not convinced by its assurances that it could not happen. We all know that both at Microsoft and here in Parliament it takes a team of experts, sometimes working around the clock, to keep all our devices free from hackers, and an SDV will just be another device.
I was going to bring this matter up when the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, who is not in his place, had an excellent amendment on the obvious necessity for our emergency services to be able to talk to or even control SDVs in certain circumstances. Sadly, however, I could not be here on the 10 January. I was going to say that if it is too easy for a policeman, an ambulance driver or a fireman to get sufficient access to control an SDV, I feel sure that it will not be impossible for someone with malicious intent to get hold of whatever device or code that makes this possible. Could it be that stealing a car will become easier, and that a suicide bomber will now no longer need to commit suicide but just hack into someone else’s car or an SDV for hire and drive it into a crowd or the gates of Parliament, for example? Or maybe you could commit murder by getting control of a car and driving it into your intended victim. It is also entirely possible that no one would know who had done it, because it had been done from a considerable distance—maybe from the other side of the world.
I do not know whether any of your Lordships have seen a series called “Vigil”, one of these television thriller fictions, in which an armed remote-control drone was captured remotely and used to create death, destruction and mayhem on British soil. However, no one knew who was controlling it, which was the essence of the whodunnit plot. Incidentally, it turned out that it was being controlled all the way from the Middle East. I am afraid my thoughts leapt—rather melodramatically, I admit—from that fiction to the reality of what we are trying to achieve here with the Bill.
I am sure there are technical solutions to all these issues, and the whiz-kids on either side of the good-versus-evil divide will continuously compete with one other to win the war of control. It occurred to me, for instance, that perhaps all policemen should be issued with a zapper that brings to a dead halt any SDV that appears to be behaving dangerously. That may be too drastic a solution but, believe me, we will need some solution. My point is that we are entering a brave new world, and we need to properly think through all the problems we are going to encounter. We particularly need to ensure that SDVs become an accepted and safe reality.
I did not want our debate on the safety of these vehicles or the future to pass without a serious commitment from government to being always on the alert to controlling or at least minimising this safety problem. Therefore, by way of a question, I would like reassurance from the Minister that before companies can be licensed to produce SDVs, there will be checks, monitoring and even the holding of emergency real-life exercises with the police to test against what they would do if a dangerous hacker got control of a vehicle.
Will the Government commit to ongoing vigilance over the licensing process, the manufacturers, the operators, the car hire companies, the taxi services and the so-called Uber 2s, and so on, to minimise the dangers from malicious hackers? I realise, of course, that all this vigilance will not eradicate the danger of hacking into such self-driving devices. It is clear that we are unlikely to ever see the end of people trying to get into our other devices, our banking services and the like, but I hope that ongoing vigilance will at least minimise this particular safety risk.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, following on from the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, I remind the House that I raised national security and people hacking into the system at Second Reading. Group 5 today deals with data protection issues; careful control of data is one way in which to make it more difficult for outside forces to hack into it. However, if you present a complete picture of every road and road sign in Britain to people who are able to drive around the UK, then you are opening a very big picture to the world. There will be people who want to take advantage of that in a way which could be hugely damaging.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for his amendments. We had a vigorous debate in Committee about issues of safety. I do not know whether the definition produced in government Amendment 3 is absolutely the last word on the topic, but the Government have moved a long way. I thank the Minister for that amendment, which is an advance and improvement on the original. As the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, said, we need to take into account issues associated with international definitions. Government Amendment 7 is also important as a step forward, because it gives this House an important role at a key point when that statement of safety principles is issued.
The Minister will be pleased to know that I took his advice and went to visit Wayve in King’s Cross. Wayve is a local company which is developing a driverless car—an automated vehicle. I went for quite a long drive around the streets of King’s Cross and can report that I found it surprisingly relaxing. I did not expect to be relaxed but I was. I mention this because one key point was made to me during that drive, as we overtook a cyclist very carefully. The key point was that these cars will always be programmed to drive legally; that is a great deal better than you and me as, from time to time, we lapse from the highest standards. Some people out there drive in a way which does not follow the law—they wilfully drive too fast or inconsiderately, and so on.
Another point was made to me, because during that drive, first, we had a very indecisive elderly lady wondering whether she was going to cross at a zebra crossing and, secondly, we had that cyclist. Of course, those users are always going to be there, because even when we have totally driverless cars, which will be decades on, we are still going to have human nature intervening, so this is a very complex issue.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for his contribution. I also thank the Minister for the steps forward that we have made in improving the definition and the role of this House in the statement of safety principles.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, I think this group has two subgroups. There is the subgroup of amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Davies, and my noble friend Lord Berkeley’s subgroup. I am afraid to tell my noble friend that we will support the Davies subgroup and not the Berkeley subgroup.
There are many reasons for this, ending with a very pragmatic one. First, the proposals from the noble Lord, Lord Davies, are structurally sound as they separate the roles of Clause 1 and Clause 2. Clause 1, as it will stand after these amendments, in essence says, among other things, that there shall be a safety standard. The clause is headed “Basic concepts”. Clause 2 attempts to address what that safety standard shall be.
We believe that government Amendment 3 is right. It is a very sound definition of “safe enough”. It is built around the well-crafted concept of
“careful and competent human drivers”.
It is today’s standard at its best. It is today’s standard after, as is set out in the commissioners’ report, eliminating the distracted, the drowsy, the drunk, the drugged and the disqualified. It is a high standard but not an infinite standard. It recognises that there has to be a limitation, otherwise the whole pursuit of a standard that is not defined becomes impossible.
It passes what I consider to be the death test. One of these vehicles is going to kill somebody. It is inevitable; the sheer volume of events will mean that something will go wrong. It is at that moment that you have to be able to respond to public opinion, have a standard that is easy for people to understand and defend it. I know this because I have been in that position when running a railway. The 1974 Act that applies to railways demands a standard: that the risk is as low as reasonably practical. It is one of the most brilliant pieces of legislation ever passed. Its impact on safety in this country has been enormous. Its impact on construction and railways, and its crossover impact on nuclear, have served this country well. I believe that this standard, which involves being as safe as a careful and competent driver, is the natural equivalent.
I also note that the law commissions produced three answers. Since they took three years or something to come to these three answers, it seems a pretty good idea to pick one of them. They were options A, B and C. Option C is, in my view, clearly rejected by these amendments. That option was to be
“overall, safer than the average human driver”.
The average human driver includes this wonderful list of distracted, drowsy, drunk, drugged and disqualified drivers. The world is a better place for eliminating them. Option B was
“as safe as a human driver who does not cause a fault accident”.
That is so ill defined that even the law commissions gave up on it. Option A is this one:
“as safe as a competent and careful human driver”.
It passes that test in a way that, when the experts set about turning this into regulations, I believe it will be feasible for them to achieve.
We also support government Amendment 7, which is a compromise. It ensures that Parliament—the importance of Parliament is very much brought out in the supporting documentation—has a positive involvement with the initial statement of safety principles. It also assures us that there will be a negative involvement with subsequent revisions. That is a balance, and we can support that.
I am afraid that government Amendments 3 and 7 have a rather unique advantage that we should not ignore: the name on them is the Minister’s, that of the noble Lord, Lord Davies. But, with the greatest respect to him, if you rub out “Lord Davies” and look under that name, you see “His Majesty’s Government”. Their majority in the other place means that these two amendments will become law—a piece of law that will guide this industry well.
I turn to an issue that is not so directly involved but needs to be there to tidy things up: the principles relating to equality and fairness. What does this mean in this environment? This too is set out in the law commissions’ report. In essence it means that an autonomous vehicle does not come at the expense of any particular group of road users. The policy scoping notes say:
“Government is likely to include a safety principle relating to equality and fairness”.
That is not there at the moment, but I am delighted to be advised by the Minister that this will be changed from “likely to include” to “will include”. This emphasis is particularly important for pedestrians, who must not be sacrificed to achieve the introduction of automated vehicles.
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, I will speak in support of Amendments 1 and 4 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. We dealt with safety a lot in Committee, and it is paramount. This is the most important part of the Bill. I became an enthusiast about automated vehicles because I turned up to a briefing. Most people you talk to are ambivalent at best, and there is a sort of dystopian “Blade Runner” worry about faceless terminator drones.
Safety needs to be beyond reproach when bad things happen. As the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, said, bad things will happen—deaths will happen. We need to be able to face people and say that we did the best we possibly could. The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, said this needs to be easy to understand and define; that is absolutely right, but it needs to be equivalent to, or better than, a driver who does the best in a driving test. That does not sound too high to me.
Amendment 4 mentions “significantly” improving road safety. The noble Lord, Lord Borwick, said that we should expect all autonomous vehicles to be better than human drivers, but what if they are not? We need to hold them to account. This would make the whole thing easier to sell to a sceptical public, as opposed to the government amendment. I am not a lawyer, but I do not see why trying to make things significantly better would deter players from joining the market. The industry will spend money on this only when it sees a momentum shift in public opinion, which is why safety is so important and why these amendments are so important.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Lord Davies of Gower) (Con)
My Lords, we begin once again with the question of safety. I am grateful to colleagues across the House for their constructive engagement on this issue. The Government’s position remains that the safety standard is best articulated in statutory guidance, with the benefit of consultation. This is the most appropriate way of assessing the public’s attitude to risk, which in turn is the only objective answer to the question of “How safe is safe enough?”. This rationale was set out by the law commissions and is not one from which we intend to deviate.
Nevertheless, I have reflected on our discussions in recent weeks and recognise the strength of feeling on this subject. This is a novel area, with an uncertain future. It is therefore reasonable that Parliament should expect to set the parameters within which the safety standard will be defined. To that end, I have tabled government Amendments 3 and 7. This will establish the “careful and competent driver” standard as the minimum level of road safety that the statement of safety principles should look to achieve—in effect, cementing our safety ambition into law. It will also guarantee a substantive debate in Parliament on the first iteration of those principles.
As I have said previously, the “careful and competent” standard is considerably higher than that of the average driver. This means the objective of a significant improvement in road safety is now baked in from the beginning. Further, I recognise the desire to clarify that this improvement in safety applies to all road users. I can therefore confirm that the statement of safety principles will include an explicit principle on equality and fairness. This could include, for example, a declaration that overall safety benefits should not come at the expense of any particular group of road users. Further detail could then specify that training datasets must be representative of different sectors of society. The exact framing will of course be shaped by consultation.
More broadly, I reiterate the point I made in Committee that references in the Bill to “road safety” do indeed already apply to all road users. This is also the case in existing road safety legislation, where offences such as dangerous driving are concerned with the safety of all road users; this includes, but is not limited to, pedestrians, cyclists, horse riders, motorcyclists and disabled people.
For these reasons, I believe the intent of Amendment 4 is now provided for. Indeed, our proposed Amendment 3 achieves this without the ambiguity created by relative terms such as “significantly better”.
Regarding Amendment 2, Clause 1(3) already establishes that safety is to be assessed in relation to location and circumstances. The safety considerations and appropriate assessment methodologies will vary depending on the location, circumstances, use case and road users in question. It is more appropriate that these details be defined in approval and authorisation requirements, rather than the statement of safety principles.
The first part of Amendment 1 would effectively apply a minimum safety standard equivalent to that of a novice human driver who has just passed their test. The practical limitations of human driving tests constrain the monitoring and assessment of each new driver’s performance to a short time window. These limitations do not apply to self-driving vehicles. We can assess performance in multitudes of situations, including rare ones, and across thousands of miles of driving. We therefore believe safety is best assessed by a combination of real-world, track and virtual testing.
More pertinently, the amendment looks to redefine the phrase “safely and legally” in purely statistical terms. Doing so would contradict the law commissions’ basic principle that these concepts are ultimately defined by public acceptance and public confidence. As I said at the outset, we do not believe it wise to deviate from this principle. I hope that, with the additional assurances of government Amendments 3 and 7, the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, will agree with me on that point.
Before I conclude, I will briefly address the security point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington. Cyber and national security sit at the very heart of our plans to bring self-driving vehicles to UK roads. Vehicles with automatic systems will be subject to detailed technical cybersecurity assessment as part of the well-established type approval process. This will include assessment to ensure vehicles continue to be cyber resilient throughout their lifetime. Before a company can be authorised as a self-driving entity, it must meet requirements relating to good repute, which will include consideration for cybersecurity. We will, of course, be working with the police and the security services to enable this.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate. It has been a very interesting series of contributions on the subject of safety, which we will go on debating for a very long time. The Minister, as we know, has moved and made improvements. I will study carefully what he said in his response, because I detect some further studies that may come in future guidance, or something like that. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Davies of Gower
(a) authorised automated vehicles will achieve a level of safety equivalent to, or higher than, that of careful and competent human drivers, andMember’s explanatory statement
This amendment embodies the standard of a careful and competent driver in the statement of safety principles that will guide the operation of the automated vehicle authorisation scheme.
Lord Berkeley
Member's explanatory statement
This would require the Secretary of State, when preparing a statement of safety principles, to consult representatives of road user groups and other groups whose safety or other interests may be affected by the application of those principles.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, this is a group that somebody has decided to call “operations”, which is fine. I have two short amendments in this group. Amendment 5 relates to the consultation requirements. Your Lordships regularly debate the question of who should be consulted and on what basis. My worry here is that the Government are suggesting that the right definition of who should be consulted are those whom the Secretary of State thinks fit. It would be more appropriate to have wording, as I suggest in the amendment, to make sure that it includes not only road users but other groups whose safety
“may be affected by the application of the principles.”
There is a worry here, which also comes out in my Amendment 34 in this group, about the weighting of persuasion and the weighting of firepower, or whatever one likes to call it, between the average uninsured road user—who might be a pedestrian or a cyclist, or perhaps eventually a scooter rider—and the companies that have invested a large amount of money in setting up the systems that the vehicles are using. Whether the pedestrians or cyclists should or should not be insured is another matter for debate, but the fact remains that most of them are not insured at the moment. If something goes wrong, there will be a tendency for Ministers to say, “Well, we need to hear the opinion of the company”, and somehow that will be given more weight than the opinion of those who might be affected. I hope I am wrong there, but it happens in other walks of life that occasionally your Lordships debate. For me, it is right, through Amendment 5, to look at the groups whose safety or other interests might be affected by this.
I turn to Amendment 34, which is much the same. If there is an accident or incident—whatever we want to call it—between a pedestrian and an insured AV, who decides who is at fault, if there is any fault? The vehicle will have insurance and the insurance company will work hard to make sure that its client is given the right advice and that it supports them where necessary. The amendment suggests that, if there was nobody in the vehicle,
“it will be assumed for the purpose of this section that the authorised automated vehicle caused the accident unless proved otherwise”.
That is very radical, but we do not have a better solution. If we do not have something that recognises the lack of balance between a pedestrian or an uninsured cyclist and an AV being driven legally with the right insurance behind it, we will have trouble in the future. I am not sure that this is the solution—I look forward to noble Lords’ comments on it—but something must redress the balance between what we might call the little person on the street and the big companies investing a lot of money in this. They will want to make sure that they look after their clients, if we can call them that. I beg to move.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
My Lords, we have a great deal of sympathy with the points that my noble friend Lord Berkeley made, particularly on his Amendment 34 dealing with insurance. That is a very complicated question; people have written to me about it, and I have difficulty understanding it, to be quite honest. The Government should give further thought to the question that Amendment 34 asks, for when the Bill goes to the Commons. We do not intend to press this in any way now, but it matters and deserves further consideration by Ministers.
Having said that, I turn to the amendments in my name. We will not press Amendment 9 to a vote, but it concerns another issue about which we hope the Government will have a good think before the Bill is presented to the Commons. We have been approached by people in the business of delivery robots that use pavements, and there is legal confusion. Because a pavement is legally defined as part of the road, this question is within the scope of the Bill; yet, clearly, the regulation of vehicles that primarily use the pavement must be different from those that use the roads. We think of the obvious case of mobility scooters, which are mainly intended to be used on pavements.
Amendment 9 does not direct anything. It gives the Government the power to make regulations about delivery robots which are designed to use pavements. This is not a trivial issue. There is a lot of potential in the delivery robot principle. It deals with the final mile from where the lorry drops off its load to how the parcel gets to the individual dwelling. Doing this with electric robots has the potential to make a big contribution to our net-zero commitments, rather than it being done by diesel vans as happens at the moment. This is an important question which we would like the Government to think about.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, the amendments in this group deal mainly with consultation. Given that the Bill is a framework in large part, with the detail still to be developed, ensuring that the right people are consulted is obviously a key issue.
The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, referred to various groups that might be part of this advisory council. It is clearly essential that other road users and those who will be affected by automated vehicles—cyclists, disabled people and so on, as well as the trade unions—are consulted. We would pick out the emergency services, too; it is absolutely essential that they are included in the group of people to be consulted.
There is an element of overlap with Amendment 10 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, which I have signed. It suggests that various powers be given to the Office of Rail and Road. Before I signed the amendment, I looked at the scope of the ORR’s powers; indeed, I spoke to ORR to see whether it felt it was an organisation that could take on this role. The issue is that, currently, the Bill is much too vague. It is far too unspecific about how the Government will consult and how they will develop and impose the regulations. Later in our debates, we will come on to Amendment 10 and I am sure that, at that point, the noble Lord will explain our thinking behind that.
In Amendment 6 the Minister has provided some detail, but it is not specific enough. Amendment 28 is much more precise. I want to mention Amendment 9, which I have signed, along with the noble Lord, Lord Liddle. I signed it because I remain concerned at the very narrow scope of this Bill. It is ironic that this Bill is looking ahead so far, trying to second-guess how things will develop, but it does not have the scope to allow us to deal with applications of automation that exist now and are a potential problem now. Indeed, those engaged in that sort of activity are keen for a legal framework within which they can operate safely.
I have mentioned in this Chamber before the ongoing activities of Starship, and when I visited Wayve I was shown a vehicle that is being used to trial automated deliveries in partnership with Asda. This is not something that we can look at in the future; we should be looking at now. I urge the Minister to talk to his colleagues in the other place and in the Department for Transport with a view to bringing forward the kind of precision we need on these issues.
Lord Borwick (Con)
My Lords, the only comment I will make is on Amendment 34 from the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. In the event of an accident, the conventional problem the police face is competing descriptions honestly held by two different people about what actually happened: “I did this; he did that”. The thing about an autonomous vehicle accident is that there will be at least half a dozen cameras recording every factor in the accident, as there have been in the various accidents that have taken place in San Francisco. There will be far more information in the event of an accident involving an autonomous vehicle. So to suggest that it is automatically assumed that the authorised automated vehicle caused the accident unless proved otherwise is moving the burden of proof completely on to the autonomous vehicle. I think this is a very bad idea, because the press will immediately assume—backed up by this amendment —that it is the fault of the autonomous vehicle when the facts will be available on the television cameras. So I really think that it is a thoroughly dangerous new suggestion to assume the guilt of an autonomous vehicle because it is autonomous.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
My Lords, this group covers the general functioning and underlying mechanics of the regulatory framework. It includes government Amendments 11, 25 and 26, which correct minor and technical drafting issues. It also includes government Amendment 33, which applies the affirmative procedure to regulations setting the maximum penalties that can be levied against regulated bodies. Following careful reflection, we agree with the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee that it would be inappropriate to leave these regulations entirely to the negative procedure. I am grateful to the Committee for its considered recommendations and hope that this provides sufficient reassurance.
I will begin with the subject of consultation. I know that there have been calls for specific groups to be named in the Bill. Government Amendment 6 therefore creates an explicit obligation to consult the three groups with the greatest interest in the safe operation of the system: road users, road safety groups and businesses in the industry. However, this list is not exhaustive. It is the Government’s intention to ensure that anyone who feels that they are affected can feed into the development of the statement of safety principles. The consultation will be public and therefore open to all, including trade unions.
Amendment 5 looks to include
“other groups whose safety or other interests may be affected by the application of the principles”.
As drafted, this would add little to the existing requirement in Clause 2 to consult representative organisations. Amendment 28, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, instead proposes an overarching advisory council. The requirements he proposes are very broad, explicitly mandating representation from, at the very least, 11 different groups and sub-groups. The noble Lord proposes that the council advise and review evidence from government, as well as reporting regularly to Parliament on
“any related matters relevant to … self-driving vehicles and associated public policy”.
This is an extremely wide remit which could not be carried out by a group of this size without extensive co-ordination, expert input and supporting staff, which would create unnecessary bureaucracy and carry additional administrative costs. I completely understand the noble Lord’s interest in ensuring appropriate independent scrutiny of the regulatory framework. However, in the Government’s view, this is a role for Parliament and the statutory inspectors, both of which are free to consult any group they deem necessary in carrying out their respective functions.
Turning to Amendment 34, the Bill does not look to change the insurance provisions set out in the Automated and Electric Vehicles Act. The Law Commission considered the Act and concluded that it would be premature to change its application now. It determined that change need be considered only if real-world use-cases encounter challenges in settling claims. However, I recognise the points noble Lords have made and assure them that we are working closely with the insurance industry to anticipate potential issues of this kind. My colleague, Mr Browne, is due to meet with the Association of British Insurers imminently as part of this engagement.
The amendment would apply a presumption of liability to authorised automated vehicles regardless of whether the self-driving feature was active at the time of the incident. This would be disproportionate and potentially unfair. Consider, for example, the implications for a human driver who uses their vehicle without ever activating its self-driving features. Further, such a change could lead to risk-taking behaviour. We would not wish to encourage the perception that the safety of self-driving vehicles somehow reduces obligations on other road users.
Moving, finally, to Amendment 9, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, the Long Title of the Bill states that it is to regulate the use of self-driving road vehicles on roads and in other public places. To be clear, this means that driveways and other non-road locations to which the public have access are already within the scope of the Bill. Pavements are also covered, as they are included in the definition of “roads”. Clause 4(4) also creates the flexibility to regulate use-cases in which a road vehicle uses both public roads and private land. Therefore, as drafted, the amendment would have little to no effect.
However, I recognise the broader point being made about pavement use and accessibility. Ensuring that pedestrians and other vulnerable road users have safe and accessible spaces, including the pavement, is essential to road safety. That is why there are existing restrictions on the use of road vehicles in these spaces. This question goes well beyond the safety of self-driving technologies. It was therefore not considered by the Law Commission, and any potential future changes would need to be subject to careful consultation.
I therefore ask the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, to withdraw Amendment 5.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken on this group. I was particularly interested in the comments on my Amendment 34, which I thought would bring some interesting views. I said that I did not think it was a solution, but I am pleased that the Minister is at least looking at this issue with the insurance industry, because there has to be a solution that everybody accepts.
I am particularly grateful to my noble friend, who may or may not divide the House on his amendment on not a supervisory board but a consultation board. I think it is a rather good idea. It is separate from my Amendments 9A and 9B, which I will speak to in a later group, but I certainly support my noble friend’s amendment. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 5.
Lord Davies of Gower
“(3A) Those organisations must include organisations appearing to the Secretary of State to represent—(a) the interests of businesses involved, or likely to be involved, in the manufacture or operation of mechanically propelled road vehicles designed to travel autonomously,(b) the interests of road users, and(c) the cause of road safety.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment provides details of the types of organisation that will have to be consulted on the statement of safety principles.
“(5) The statement takes effect if both Houses of Parliament resolve that it should.(6) The Secretary of State may revise or replace the statement that has effect under this section; and subsections (2) to (4) apply to a revision or replacement.(7) A revision or replacement takes effect at the end of the period of 40 days beginning with the day on which it is laid, unless either House resolves before then that it should not.(8) For the purposes of subsection (7)—(a) where a revision or replacement is laid before each House on different days, the later day is to be taken to be the day on which it was laid before both Houses, and(b) in counting any period of 40 days, no account is to be taken of any time during which Parliament is dissolved or prorogued or during which both Houses are adjourned for more than four days.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment imposes a positive requirement for both Houses to approve the proposed statement of safety principles, instead of the current power to prevent it from taking effect (which will however still apply to any subsequent revision or replacement).
Lord Holmes of Richmond
“Statement of accessibility principles(1) The Secretary of State must prepare a statement of the principles that they propose to apply in assessing, for the purposes of this Part, whether an automated vehicle meets the required level of accessibility. (2) The principles must make provision for the accessibility of—(a) physical features and structures of the automated vehicle,(b) computer and software systems used in the automated vehicle, and(c) where relevant, booking platforms and other interactive digital services and systems used prior to, during and after using an automated vehicle, including through underpinning such services and systems with mechanisms to allow human intervention if required.(3) In preparing the statement under subsection (1), the Secretary of State must consult such persons they consider appropriate, in particular disabled people.(4) The statement under subsection (1) should include consideration of the accessibility of infrastructure with which automated vehicles must interact, such as pavements, kerbs, drop off and parking points.”
Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak to this group of amendments. In doing so, I declare my interests as set out in the register, not least my technology interest as an adviser to Boston Limited. In moving Amendment 8 I will also speak to Amendments 18 to 24 and 27. I thank all noble Lords who have shown an interest in these amendments, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, who has put her name to all of them.
I will briefly take a step back. The major difficulty with the tone and tenor of this Bill on accessibility is that it takes a particularly utilitarian view—the greatest good for the greatest number. In this instance, accessibility is not even in the vehicle’s back seat. Similarly, it suggests that a disabled person should wait, and let innovation take its course and come to them. This is not only unacceptable but not pro-innovation. The whole point of accessibility, inclusive by design from the outset, is that it does not only enable and empower disabled people; it enables, empowers and benefits all people.
Similarly, there is a hint throughout the Bill that regulation is, again, anti-innovation. It can be—we have all seen examples of that—but in no sense is that inevitable just because it is regulation. Right-sized regulation can, indeed must, be pro-innovation. Plenty of good examples in our recent past, from various sectors, prove that.
Amendment 8 in my name is a resubmission of one of my major amendments from Committee. We heard in the previous group about the statement of safety principles. It seems perfectly logical, indeed thoroughly positive, to have a statement of accessibility principles in the Bill. If the Minister is unable to accept this amendment in its current form, will he commit, when he winds up, to the principles set out in this statement of accessibility?
Amendments 18 to 20, in various ways, ensure the accessibility of the vehicles themselves, in various parts of the Bill as drafted. Amendment 21 would require that disabled people be consulted on the granting of permits. This could be structured in such a way that disabled people would not need to be consulted at the micro level, on every permit; a structure could be put in place to ensure meaningful and effective consultation of disabled people throughout that high-level process.
Amendment 22 seeks to move a “may” to a “will”, to guarantee the intent of the Bill. Again, “may” is obviously conditional, and this would show, in a small example, the sense that this is wider than the voluntary or advisory “may”. It is an important amendment—changing to “will” would guarantee this sense. Similarly, Amendment 23 would assure this level of accessibility throughout.
Amendment 24, on the reporting requirement, seeks a minor but important change to the Bill. As currently drafted, the Bill sets out reporting requirements for those involved in automated vehicles. This amendment simply suggests that the first of these reports should be published before any of these vehicles are deployed—a small but important change.
Finally, Amendment 27 would put an obligation on the Secretary of State to commission and pay due regard to research around all elements of accessibility, including the vehicle, software systems and platforms, to ensure not just that the vehicle is accessible but that the whole experience and system are accessible and inclusive by design.
We are talking not only about inclusive by design but about a set of amendments that would make a real, material difference, not just to disabled people but to all users. Are they necessary? Just look at the situation we are currently in, with accessibility and inclusive design not being present at the beginning of the whole process of the development of automated vehicles. This is a clear indicator of the necessity of these amendments. Inclusion and innovation are important, but, more than that, inclusion for innovation is the thread that we should see shining through so many of our statutes: inclusion for innovation and not just for business. We must make it all our business. That is what these amendments are about. I beg to move.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, for his work in setting out such an effective group of amendments on this topic. I also thank the Minister for the very helpful round-table meeting we had a few days ago, in which we went through in detail many of the concerns that I, the noble Lord and others had.
I will not repeat the detail of the amendments that the noble Lord has outlined. I start from a slightly different perspective. When we started debating the Bill, back at Second Reading, the Minister told us that we did not need to worry about this because the regulatory authorities would be required to obey the public sector equality duty. I pointed out that the House of Lords Select Committee on disability was very concerned that there are holes in the PSED that the Government said they would look at two years ago and have not as yet, and so to rely on that would give us real cause for concern.
The Equality Act refers to “reasonable adjustments”, and it was prayed in aid that there can always be reasonable adjustments. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, is in his place. I am reminded of his Private Member’s Bill—which I think he called the “10 kilogram cement bag” Private Member’s Bill. It would have made lots of small shops accessible to disabled people, particularly those in wheelchairs. That is a “reasonable adjustment”, but we are not in that position. We are talking about the technology of the future. It is really important to acknowledge that the millions of disabled people—over 10 million, or even more if you count the elderly—will require automated vehicles that take account of the full range of disability. To not start designing that in from the very start would be a short-sighted approach.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, I support all the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond on disabled access, except Amendment 8. I should say that I added my name to the amendments, but belatedly. I think my name is on them in the online list but not in the printed listed today.
I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, that I think my disabled access Bill is number 14 or 15 in the Private Members’ ballot yet again. It is a simple little measure that says that if a step is less than 12 inches, it should have a ramp for disabled access. Of course, it will not get anywhere; the equality department will block it, as it has blocked it every single time, because it no longer gives a damn about disabled people.
On automated vehicles generally, I am afraid that I trust no one on their safety—not the manufacturers and not the Department for Transport. The only person I trust on them is Jeremy Clarkson. I remember when he said to the chief of Audi, who was boasting about his new automated vehicle, “If you sit in the back, let your vehicle drive the Bolivian highway of death and come out the other side, then I’ll buy one”. That is my view on automated vehicles.
However, my concern today is about automated vehicles for hire as cabs. I have never used Uber in my life. I believe it is a disreputable company which does not pay its drivers properly. Its untrained drivers do not have a clue where they are going, and, if I may say so carefully, many seem to be recent arrivals in this country; they cannot find their way to the end of the street without a satnav, and then they stop wherever the satnav tells them to stop or pick up, such as on zebra crossings or in the middle of the road—the dropped kerb that wheelchair users use is one of their favourites. My main concern is that if black cabs in London, or converted Peugeots or Fiat Doblòs in the rest of the country, are wiped out by Uber’s Toyota Priuses, we in wheelchairs will never get a cab again. I do not rate Uber Access as credible if you want to hire a car this decade.
Has my noble friend the Minister heard of the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee? It is part of his department. I have in my hand a piece of paper produced by the department. It says that taxi services must be fully accessible for all disabled persons. It calls for WAVs—wheelchair accessible vehicles—for all, and commends London cabs, 100% of which are wheelchair accessible. It goes on to say that, in the country as a whole, only 58% of taxies are wheelchair accessible vehicles, as are only 2% of private hire vehicles. I shall quote verbatim one paragraph from the department’s wheelchair accessible committee:
“Concerningly, the situation seems to be deteriorating. The launch of Uber and other app-based systems for booking PHVs has resulted in an increase of over 4% in the number of licensed vehicles. But they are nearly all PHVs and, in London, there has been a reduction in the number of licensed taxis which has resulted in an overall fall in the number of WAVs on the road”.
That is what will happen throughout the country if the Government permit all automated vehicles to become PHVs or taxis without building in a wheelchair accessible requirement.
Just look at the chaos in California and San Francisco in particular. Have noble Lords seen on the news a single wheelchair accessible cab there among the thousands of lovely dinky cars, such as Ford Focuses and Toyota Priuses? The Prius and the Focus are marvellous little town cars—great runabouts—but I cannot get my dodgy legs in the back of them, even when I am not trying to get a wheelchair into them.
I say to my noble friend that I do not support Amendment 8. I hope he will not push it, because it would apply to all cars and that is wrong. People must have the right to buy any vehicle they choose, even if you cannot swing a cat in the back of it. Before Cats Protection issues a fatwa, let me make it clear that I am referring to the cat-o’-nine-tails, not pussycats.
I hope the Government will insist that any new automated taxis are wheelchair accessible. If they make that clear in law now, vehicle manufacturers will design them—not that there is much to design; it has already been done. The new London black cabs are absolutely fantastic. They have excellent wheelchair ramps, there is lots of space and, for the first time, they seem to have added springs to them. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Borwick on making that happen. So we can just stick the automated computer thingy on to those cabs, or the converted Peugeots I found in other parts of the country. The Peugeot Tepee, they are calling it—what a ghastly name that is. There are Mercedes Vitos, Citroën Berlingos and Fiat Doblòs. All have wheelchair access. So with automated vehicles it is a simple matter of sticking a computer thing on to the vehicles that are there already. I do not want the Government saying, “Oh, this is going to be disproportionate cost and it is a burden on the industry”. It is not.
We were slowly getting more and more wheelchair-accessible vehicles across the country. The Government must ensure that the new technology of automated vehicles does not set that into reverse, as is likely to happen unless some of these amendments are made—but not Amendment 8.
Lord Bradshaw (LD)
My Lords, perhaps I might add a word for the very large number of people who are not in wheelchairs but who depend, like I do, on a stick. When pavements are so awful in this country, they need a lot of consideration. They walk around at their peril, often due to the irresponsible use of scooters, which are insufficiently regulated by the department.
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 8, 18 to 20, and 27, in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, to which I have added my name. In Committee, I was struck by the powerful speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, and particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, whom we have often heard in your Lordships’ House talking so powerfully about her lived experiences.
This is not a once-in-a-generation nor a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but it is a new, unique opportunity for disabled people to be front and centre of the development of a transport system. A great friend of mine is blind and when we first met, he had a clunky old phone with Braille on it. As soon as the iPhone came out, he had a phone with perfect accessibility built in. There was nothing new there. He has the same iPhone as everybody else. It just has the features to work for him, and I think this is what we can do with automated vehicles.
Elderly or disabled people, who have never dreamed of owning a car, can now look to the near future and see that this is a possibility—but only if they are included in all stages. As a design and technology teacher, I am all over inclusive design. This is not a bolt-on. The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, said he wanted this bolted on to existing stuff, I want this designed from the ground up. It is a unique—and I mean unique—opportunity to give disabled people a level playing field. It must not be squandered. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Borwick (Con)
My Lords, while I support the general principle of these comments—indeed, I personally made great changes to the taxi industry to get there—the particular circumstances that enabled me to do that a long time ago were very unusual.
The current situation with autonomous vehicles is that there are many manufacturers that are converting existing vehicles. They cannot change their donor vehicles to make them accessible for disabled people, however desirable that might be. Tesla, Waymo, Cruise, Wayve, Oxa and, indeed, Mercedes are all working on autonomous vehicles, but they are not likely or able to change their vehicles to make them accessible because they must be accessible from the original design. Automotive history goes back 120 or even 150 years. We are not able to change existing vehicles, however desirable that is.
What these clauses would do is stop disabled people being helped by autonomous vehicles coming along. I am thinking particularly of people disabled by a severe learning difficulty who would not be able to learn to drive, or safely drive, a normal vehicle who would not be able to drive as a passenger. I am afraid the clauses would prevent these manufacturers from coming into this market. They would rather go to a market where they could use their existing vehicles than make the changes.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, for outlining the current commercial position, but there are models of vehicle currently on the market that can be used for wheelchairs. I fail to understand why, if an entire nation’s rules say that that is the model that has to be followed, manufacturers would not swiftly follow suit. There might be a transition period—does he understand that?—but all the images that we see of autonomous vehicles in the future show a completely different style from even 10 years ago, let alone 100 years ago. Would he agree with that?
Lord Borwick (Con)
I agree with the noble Baroness, but the question for a manufacturer is whether or not to come into the British market. That is the trouble, as I see it. Much as it would be desirable that they redesigned their vehicles, or indeed designed them from the very beginning to be accessible, the reality is that we are talking about regulating a future market based on an existing product. I find it a great shame that that is the position we are in, but that is where we are.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, frequently during the passage of the Bill we have all discussed the fact that the entire Bill is regulating for the future. It seems that it is acceptable to regulate for the future of everything —except disability access and proper accessibility.
Lord Borwick (Con)
I find it distressing to disagree with the noble Baroness, but I am talking about the reality of the position. Even though I wish the world were different, I cannot agree that we can regulate to make it different in this one Bill.
I thank my noble friend Lord Blencathra for his comments. I am afraid I left the London taxi business a long time ago so I am not actually responsible for the current vehicles, but still I thank him. They are better in all respects than the ones I produced, which are still in business.
It is distressing that so few taxis around the country outside London are not accessible; the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, had her own problems in Watford, as I understand it. It would be so much easier to organise that all taxis all over the country were as wheelchair accessible as the ones in London. I would find that a much more useful use of our time than making these amendments, much as I support the general principle behind them.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, because I think he underestimates the market that will be created. I do not for one minute think that EU countries with high social standards, for example, or the United States of America, will not have a reasonably sized market of people who are elderly and disabled, and that there will not be a demand for vehicles of this sort. The vehicles will be created, and the market will be there as well as here. We are talking about enlarging the market. Instead of diminishing the market, so that it is only for people who are physically able-bodied, we are enlarging it to include a lot of other people, who will be very dependent on vehicles of this sort.
We are gazing into the future. It will not be fundamental if we get some aspects of this wrong, because we will be able to put it right in future legislation. But if we get this aspect of the Bill wrong, it will prove very costly to change course on the design of vehicles, which will have been conceived and built the wrong way. We will then face costs of adjustment as well as huge social costs, because we will have a generation of people who are stuck at home rather than being able to use vehicles as they should be able to.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, I will not take up the House’s time. We have nothing to add to this debate, although it has been very interesting. I have to deliver our judgment, which is that we are pretty sympathetic to this group. Much will depend on what the Minister says, and the extent to which he is able to give assurances may cause our view to change, but we are broadly sympathetic and will listen carefully to the response of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
I thank noble Lords for their contributions to this debate, particularly those who joined me for a detailed discussion following Committee.
The Government want all parts of society, including those with disabilities, to be able to reap the benefits of self-driving technology; I see no disagreement between us on that point. The question at hand is not one of ambition but rather the most appropriate form and timing of intervention.
It bears repeating that we are all dealing with an industry in its infancy. It is not clear what kinds of services will ultimately come forward, and therefore what kind of accessibility provisions are appropriate. What is clear, however, is that if we try to compensate for that uncertainty with unnecessarily broad requirements, the greatest risk is that the industry simply does not develop at all.
If we want self-driving technology to serve the needs of disabled people, we must have a viable self-driving industry in the first place. That is why we have anchored our approach in the recommendations put forward by the law commissions. Their central conclusion on this issue was that our focus should be on gathering evidence and gaining experience. On their recommendation we have built reporting on accessibility into the new passenger permit scheme and have committed to using this learning to develop national accessibility standards for permits. Although we will do so in a more flexible, non-statutory form, it is on their recommendation that we are establishing an accessibility advisory panel to inform that process. We will of course also draw on the deep and hugely valuable expertise of our existing statutory Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee.
Alongside this, the Government will continue to support the development of accessible self-driving vehicle designs. This investment has already helped five separate projects to deploy accessible vehicles, and there will be further opportunities as part of our £150 million CAM pathfinder fund, announced last year.
Beginning with Amendment 8, the authorisation process exists to ensure that self-driving vehicles operate safely. It is not designed to regulate the physical construction of vehicles. Indeed, as my noble friend Lord Borwick points out, most developers are currently working to incorporate self-driving systems into existing, mass-produced models, not creating new vehicles from scratch.
Lord Scriven (LD)
That is not actually what is happening in the marketplace. General Motors has developed the Wayve vehicle, which is now being used in San Francisco. If the regulation is there, the market is already ready and large companies such as General Motors are already making the provision.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
I hear what the noble Lord says and am not going to argue with him on that at this point. Where there are overlaps between safety and accessibility, for example in the training of human detection systems, these will be addressed as part of the statement of safety principles. Beyond this, accessibility provisions are best made at the service level, of which vehicle design is just one part.
That is why our approach focuses on understanding how services can best be delivered for disabled users, which can then inform standard permit requirements. As drafted, the amendment would also apply these accessibility principles to any vehicle authorised as self-driving. That would include everything from private cars to vans, HGVs and even tractors. This would be disproportionate and out of step with the way we regulate conventional vehicle designs.
While Amendments 18 and 20 focus on passenger service provision, they could impose design requirements that are simply too sweeping to be workable. Requiring that every automated passenger service vehicle be “accessible to disabled people” would likely require adaptions, including full wheelchair accessibility. Imposing this requirement on the full self-driving passenger service fleet would be disproportionate, and not something we require of conventional taxis and private hire vehicles. This would make the UK market unviable, to the detriment of all users, including those with disabilities. As colleagues have noted, the needs of disabled people are broad and diverse. I note that even vehicles that claim to be 100% wheelchair accessible frequently cannot accommodate the full range of motorised and larger chairs.
Amendment 19 looks to apply the accessibility requirements of existing taxi, private hire and public service vehicle legislation to the passenger permitting scheme. This would not have the desired effect, as these requirements are largely imposed on the human driver. Furthermore, novel automated services may not fit neatly into these traditional modal schemes. Indeed, this is the very challenge that the law commissions were looking to tackle when they recommended the approach we are now taking. Nevertheless, I recognise the points that my noble friend makes and undertake to reflect on how we can best align our standard permitting conditions with the spirit of the Equality Act. These will also reflect the Bill’s specific requirements to consider the needs of older and disabled people before any permit can be issued.
I turn now to some details of the permitting system. Amendment 22 places an unnecessarily high burden on issuing authorities to guarantee that permits enable learning and improve understanding. The Bill already requires that authorities consider the likelihood of this. A more stringent standard would be impractical and add little value. Applicants will naturally be required to provide evidence of their plans for accessibility reporting as part of their permit application. Pre-deployment reports of the kind proposed by Amendment 24 would therefore be redundant.
The reporting process is outcome focused, requiring providers to explain what they are doing to meet the needs of disabled users. Vehicle accessibility could naturally be one of the many inputs that help to do this. I contend that a separate reference, as proposed by Amendment 23, is therefore also unnecessary.
Amendment 21 would require that relevant disability groups be consulted before each permit was issued. Consultation with such groups will naturally form part of developing the national minimum standards for permits. To require separate consultation for each individual permit would be excessively onerous and there would be considerable ambiguity as to which groups would be relevant in each case. Both these issues could severely inhibit the growth of new services.
Amendment 27 would require the Government to annually commission and pay due regard to research on self-driving vehicles’ accessibility. I have already described some of the work that we are undertaking in this space, which will of course continue. However, the wording of this requirement is too general to be effectively implemented and enforced.
I wholly appreciate the strength of feeling on these issues. By explaining the position taken by the Government and the law commissions, I hope that I have been able to offer at least some assurances.
Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate, and the Minister and his officials for their engagement between Committee and Report.
I will take a couple of points that my noble friend Lord Borwick raised as I entirely understand where he is coming from. The difficulty is that, if one is talking about logic, everything that currently is in place would need to necessarily remain as it is until it ceases to be, and then we could start again in terms of accessibility and inclusion. The Palace of Westminster is not perfect, but it is pretty accessible. Changes were made and compromises had to be given—and it is a grade 1 listed palace.
I say to all the businesses currently involved in this that I see the argument that the choice of vehicle—described as a donor vehicle—has not been able to be made accessible. One would assume that all the systems, software and platforms used, as they have been built from scratch, are fully accessible to blind, learning disabled and older people—indeed all people whose needs must be catered for. If those platforms and software systems are not accessible, that tells rather a large truth about what we are considering.
It is desperately disappointing that we find ourselves in this situation, when the promise of automated vehicles is accessible mobility for all, enabled through human-led technology. It is pretty clear that we are not quite there yet. I hope there will be greater changes and much more thought and reflection, potentially between Report and Third Reading. There is so much that needs to be done on access and inclusion. It is hard for me to make this decision but, having considered this deeply, sadly I find myself in the position of withdrawing my amendment at this stage.
Lord Berkeley
“(2A) The Office of Rail and Road must comply with every reasonable requirement of the Secretary of State—(a) to provide information or advice in relation to arrangements for monitoring and assessing the general performance of authorised automated vehicles on roads and other public places in Great Britain;(b) to provide information or advice about a matter relevant to the general performance of authorised automated vehicles on roads and other public places in Great Britain;(c) otherwise to provide the Secretary of State with assistance in relation to a matter that is connected with such a function or activity or is relevant to those purposes.”
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 9A and 9B, which are in my name—these are manuscript amendments—as well as Amendment 10. I will explain to noble Lords why I felt the need to table this manuscript amendment. I apologise; I hope noble Lords have copies of it. The amendment came out like this because of an unfortunate timing issue: I was able to meet the Minister only yesterday. I am grateful to him for sparing the time, with his officials, to talk about the structure of bodies operating, supervising, developing, et cetera this whole system, and about my amendment in Committee on the Office of Rail and Road. Amendments 9A and 9B resulted from that meeting, because I was accompanied by the chief executive of the Office of Rail and Road, John Larkinson. I am grateful for the Minister sparing his time, with half a dozen of his officials, who were probably responsible for all the different elements of the Bill. In jest, I asked them whether they ever talk to each other, and they said, “Yes, we do”—and I am sure they do. It was a very useful meeting.
Lord Naseby (Con)
My Lords, I only spoke at Second Reading and was unable to take part in Committee. I think the House knows that I come from the world of aviation and, in terms of aviation, there is some similarity in the context that the noble Lord has covered this afternoon.
This is frontier technology. It happens to be on the ground, but those of us who have flown for Her Majesty’s Forces or flown privately can still take a great interest, in particular, in aviation. There is a need for those who are knowledgeable and not biased and are able to take time. One of the great problems in our society at the moment is time. When I look at what the Department for Trade and the Department for Transport are having to do, there may well be an argument for another body that is knowledgeable about what has been happening in the past and where things are going.
I thank the noble Lord opposite, and I hope my noble friend on the Front Bench will recognise that we are not having a Division on this—I assume—but that there ought to be further discussions on whether this is something we should look at more closely.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, I added my name to Amendment 10, which relates to the ORR, because there are too many loose ends in the Bill in terms of the powers being granted to the Secretary of State and it is not specified where it goes after that.
We are dealing with some issues that are very closely aligned with those in Amendment 28: how the Government exercise the considerable power that they will have in relation to the development of this market.
To be totally frank, we do not need Department for Transport micromanagement. What we need is an independent body, with dedicated expertise, that will operate with safety considerations actually at the fore, because the development of this market will be badly compromised if there are huge safety issues that arise. It is important—really essential—that the development of this technology is rolled out with safety at its heart. As the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, stated, the CAA is an excellent example. It can be replicated by expanding the role of the ORR to take this under its wing and by looking closely at what the ORR does at the moment. It has the foundations that we need for something that can be developed pretty rapidly. I say to the Minister that I hope that the Government take this seriously and give it consideration. If it is not possible to give precision by Third Reading, hopefully it might be possible to do so by the time the Bill reaches the other place.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Berkeley for raising these issues. I am afraid that my consideration of these things comes to the conclusion that it is a mess. There are various bodies in the Department for Transport that have various responsibilities in various other forms of transport. There is the road safety investigation branch; I cannot for the life of me see why we are going to have a road safety investigation branch. If we are, I am not quite clear in my mind how that will add value. Some clarification from the Minister would be welcome. We probably need a sensible internal review in the Department for Transport to see to what extent we need all these bodies or whether they have sufficient common themes to be brought together, thereby bringing together the expertise. All in all, I think this is a challenge for the Government, and I hope they rise to it.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
I am very grateful to the noble Lord for taking the time to meet me yesterday to discuss these issues in more detail. I absolutely agree with him on the importance of independent input into the system, and I have already touched on where the Government see these key functions lying. As the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, mentioned, this is central to the purpose of the independent statutory inspectors, whose role is established in Part 3, Chapter 2 of the Bill. They will have complete independence and all the necessary powers to investigate incidents involving self-driving vehicles and make public recommendations to improve the safety of the system. They are functionally the same as their marine, air and rail equivalents. All these bodies are part of the department, but nonetheless maintain their independence.
Separately, the Government will continue to be held to account in Parliament on their administration of the self-driving system—both at the Dispatch Box and by the Transport Select Committee. Indeed, government Amendment 7 will enable even greater scrutiny in this House of the first iteration of our statement of safety principles. Finally, we will continue to receive independent advice from our expert advisory panel, featuring representatives from the RAC Foundation, the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee, and a selection of academics and engineers.
I will begin with Amendments 12 to 17, which look to change the role and purpose of the statutory inspectors to cover vehicle technologies that were never designed to meet the self-driving test. Our focus in this piece of legislation is on delivering the recommendations of the law commissions. Recommendation 32 of their report specifically calls for independent incident investigation to form part of the self-driving vehicle safety framework.
Our view is therefore that the inspectors’ role should be focused explicitly on incidents involving self-driving vehicles. This will require specific skills and expertise, and close working with the other arms of the self-driving safety framework. I recognise the noble Lord’s desire to see the remit expanded. While I fear that we disagree on that point, I assure him that the Bill permits flexibility to make sure that edge cases are not excluded. For example, the inspectors’ powers extend to vehicles that have at any point been authorised as self-driving, including those that, for whatever reason, have had their authorisation revoked or otherwise called into question. Further, provided an incident involves at least one self-driving vehicle, inspectors will be able to investigate all vehicles involved, self-driving or otherwise.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
Before the Minister sits down, will he do me a personal favour and put me out of my agony? What has happened to the road safety investigation branch?
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
I am not sure that I completely understand, so I am unable to give an answer. As far as I understand, it still exists.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate and for the support I have received from many colleagues. My noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe hit the nail on the head when he said that because so many different organisations are getting involved in this, it might be confusing. I will leave aside the road safety investigation branch he just mentioned.
There is benefit in reflecting on what everybody has said today. I hope the Minister will be prepared for some of us to meet him in the near future—although probably not before Third Reading—to look at the overall structure, taking into account the words I used earlier: impartiality, independence, transparency and assurance. I am not trying to suggest that any of the existing activities being done very well by the department should be taken over, but it might be very useful to have something independent for a venture as new as this. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Davies of Gower
(a) on summary conviction in England and Wales, to a fine;(b) on summary conviction in Scotland, to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum;(c) on conviction on indictment, to a fine.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment clarifies that a fine for an offence under clause 42(4) imposed in summary proceedings in Scotland may not exceed the maximum fine generally available in such proceedings.
Lord Davies of Gower
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment corrects a drafting mistake, enabling the devolved administrations to make regulations about information-sharing in relation to passenger services within their competence.
(a) on summary conviction in England and Wales, to a fine;(b) on summary conviction in Scotland, to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum;(c) on conviction on indictment, to a fine.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment clarifies that a fine for an offence under clause 88(6) imposed in summary proceedings in Scotland may not exceed the maximum fine generally available in such proceedings.
Lord Liddle
“Advisory Council(1) Within six months of the passing of this Act the Secretary of State must establish a council to advise on the implementation of this Act, and the roll out of self-driving vehicles.(2) The Advisory Council must include organisations appearing to the Secretary of State to represent—(a) the interests of road users, including drivers, pedestrians and cyclists;(b) the cause of road safety;(c) the cause of accessibility, and the impact of the roll out of self-driving vehicles on disabled road users;(e) trade unions and the interests of relevant employees including delivery providers and public transport workers;(f) the interests of businesses involved, or likely to be involved in, the manufacture, operation and insurance of mechanically propelled road vehicles designed to travel autonomously;(g) the police and other emergency services;(h) highway authorities.(3) The Secretary of State must designate a relevant officer of the Department to send reports to the Advisory Council on the roll out of self driving vehicles and any issues of public policy that arise. (4) The Advisory Council must report regularly to Parliament on the advice it has provided, and any related matters relevant to the roll out of self driving vehicles and associated public policy.”
Lord Liddle (Lab)
My Lords, I beg to move Amendment 28 on the establishment of a statutory advisory council, which would enable better progress with self-driving vehicles and automated vehicles than not having it. I would like to test the opinion of the House.
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to change a presumption that a provision relating to information disclosure does not contravene data protection legislation into an active requirement that it should not.
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD)
My Lords, I have tabled four amendments which constitute this group. There are two interacting issues: public interest and commercial interest. It is clear that where safety, human lives or participation are at risk, that has to win over commercial interest. This is what we are dealing with in these amendments. I have made some suggestions because I do not really understand what the legislation is saying. Instead of a speech, and because my voice is dodgy, I am just going to read out the subsection and explain what I do not understand.
Clause 95(2) says:
“The provision does not require or authorise any disclosure, obtaining or use of information that … contravenes data protection”
or is prohibited under something to do with the Investigatory Powers Act. What does “the provision does not” mean? I have changed it to say that the provision —which would come forward from regulations—“must” not authorise things that would contravene data protection legislation. This might be similar to what we used to call a “notwithstanding” clause—notwithstanding what the provision says, it actually means something else, or it does not mean what it says. I think it would be better if it said “must”.
If it is a contravening provision—a notwithstanding type—meaning that the regulation might say one thing but that thing is not allowed because it is forbidden in another piece of legislation, at what point does this come to light in the request for information? Is the requester of the information obliged to make it clear: “Oh well, we do not need this bit”, or does the person who is requested to give the information have to plead: “Oh, I do not have to answer that”? I do not know the answer to those questions. I do not know whether this is a notwithstanding clause or whether the constraint will be clear at the point at which the evidence or information is being sought. I wait to hear what the Minister tells me it means.
Amendment 30 would add intellectual property rights to the list of legislation which must not be contravened. As Clause 95 deals quite a lot with commercial rights and the use of data and things that can be asked for under investigatory powers, why can we not put in intellectual property rights, which is another part of the family, if you like? I am still having some interesting discussions with the officials as to whether or not it is needed. I think it is, they think it is not. Maybe we can get some clarity by Third Reading. That is the basis of my second amendment.
My third amendment is to Clause 95(3), which says:
“But the provision is to be taken into account in determining whether the disclosure, obtaining or use of information would contravene the data protection legislation”.
I do not quite know what it means when a provision starts with “But”. It might be another notwithstanding—in which case this is a notwithstanding clause on a notwithstanding clause. I am not quite sure where two notwithstandings leave us.
Does this mean that the provision can have in it new things that it then deems can be taken into account? Is it without limit or does it regard a provision that is cast within an obligation there might be under some other legislation, as there is in data protection legislation —that is, you can have new reasons in the public interest as to why something might be needed? Does the constraint apply or not? From what it says here, I cannot tell. It looks to me as if a provision can be made and then taken into account when interpreting it. I just do not see how that works.
I cannot construe this any better than I have attempted to do—and I am not quite a beginner in construing legal things. I may wish to test the opinion of the House on this clause because it is really quite confusing. If it verges on that broader side, we would be better off without it. Provisions can be made in the public interest under all kinds of legislation; you can do it under data legislation and intellectual property legislation. There are times when the public interest will prevail. So I do not see why we need this clause there at all.
My final amendment simply suggests that Clause 95, which is titled “Disclosure of information: interaction with external constraints”, should be inserted into the list at the start of Clause 96, which is headed “Crown application” and says that the provisions in Sections 42, 73 and 88 “bind the Crown”. To some extent, Clause 95 is mainly relevant to Sections 42, 73 and 88; it therefore seemed logical to me that it should also be listed in Clause 96.
This is not the grand speech that I was going to make, it is just why I cannot understand what is written here. What I think about it will now depend entirely on what the Minister is able to tell me—in particular, about these clauses, which may or may not be “notwithstanding” clauses. I beg to move.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
My Lords, these are important issues that the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, has raised. She has, with her characteristic acuity, asked lots of penetrating questions about what the proposed legislation actually means. For the part of the Official Opposition, we will listen carefully to what the Minister says in reply but, if we are not satisfied, we will support the noble Baroness in her testing of the opinion of the House.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
My Lords, I begin by briefly clarifying a point that I made earlier in response to a question from the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, which I am afraid I did not hear correctly. I should have responded by saying that the right legislative vehicle for the Road Safety Investigation Branch remains under consideration.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, for her insightful and challenging remarks. I reiterate that we take the protection of personal data and intellectual property very seriously. I can confirm that the Bill does not seek to replace or change existing legislation on either personal data protection or intellectual property rights. The Bill does not enable us to contravene this legislation, whether domestic or under treaty obligations. Indeed, this would be beyond the scope of the Bill, which is confined to creating an effective safety framework for self-driving vehicles.
Although that may necessitate the use and sharing of information, this will not be done indiscriminately. We will do so only for specified public interest purposes because safety and security must come first. These purposes would be considered and developed with stakeholders. They would be subject to consultation and would be laid in the House before coming into force. This will provide multiple opportunities for input to, and scrutiny of, the proposals. Indeed, we are required by law to consult the Information Commissioner’s Office if our regulations permit or require the sharing or use of personal data.
As colleagues have highlighted today and in our meetings, it is not just the application of the law that is important but the understanding of it. That is why we are consulting the ICO in the development of specific guidance for the self-driving vehicle industry; that guidance will support the interpretation and understanding of existing personal data protection legislation in an industry-specific context. I hope that this provides some reassurance before I turn to the amendments.
On Amendment 29, the noble Baroness is right to understand Clause 95(2) as a clarifying clause or a “notwithstanding” provision, as she has referred to it. I am advised that the correct legislative form is to use “does” rather than “must”, but the effect is the same. The clause ensures that the Bill is consistent with data protection legislation, and is written using standard drafting. Its effect is that recipients of information must continue to ensure that their processing complies with data protection legislation and the Investigatory Powers Act 2016. The clause provides confirmation that these obligations continue to apply to provisions made in or under the Bill.
To be clear, the Bill does not change existing data protection legislation. However, the UK general data protection regulations do allow new purposes for the processing of personal data to be set out in law. This law must meet an objective of public interest and be proportionate to the legitimate aim pursued.
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD)
I thank the Minister for his explanations. I am a little further forward, in that I understand Clause 95(2). I am not sure that I agree with what he said would be the effect of adding “intellectual property” to a new paragraph (c), but, for now, I am prepared to continue conversations with officials so that, between us, we can thrash out whether we understand one another on the point, or, if I am right, the Minister would have an opportunity to do something about it. I think we both want it to be right, it is just that I have different interpretations there.
I think the Minister said about Clause 95(3) that, where it says the provision itself
“has to be taken into account”,
it will be a provision that is subject to the constraints under the GDPR, and so would have to fulfil the tests in the GDPR, if I have understood that correctly. The Minister is nodding. Therefore, it is not a free-for-all, and new ones cannot be invented without that anchor. In general, I am satisfied with that. I am sure that, maybe, this will have a little more investigation as the Bill goes further in the other place, just to make sure that is the correct interpretation. On that basis, I will withdraw the amendment.
Lord Davies of Gower
“(5) The following regulations are subject to the affirmative procedure—(a) regulations under section 36(9),(b) regulations under section 50 that amend an Act, an Act of the Scottish Parliament or an Act of Senedd Cymru, and(c) regulations under paragraph 2(7) of Schedule 6;and all other regulations are subject to the negative procedure.(6) The effect of regulations being subject to the affirmative procedure is—(a) in the case of regulations made by the Secretary of State, that the statutory instrument containing the regulations may not be made unless a draft of it has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament;(b) in the case of regulations made by the Welsh Ministers, that the statutory instrument containing the regulations may not be made unless a draft of it has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, Senedd Cyrmu;(c) in the case of regulations made by the Scottish Ministers, the effect provided by section 29 of the Interpretation and Legislative Reform (Scotland) Act 2010).(7) The effect of regulations being subject to the negative procedure is—(a) in the case of regulations made by the Secretary of State, that the statutory instrument containing the regulations is (unless it also contains regulations subject to the affirmative procedure) subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament;(b) in the case of regulations made by the Welsh Ministers, that the statutory instrument containing the regulations is (unless it also contains regulations subject to the affirmative procedure) subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of Senedd Cyrmu;(c) in the case of regulations made by the Scottish Ministers, the effect provided by section 28 of the Interpretation and Legislative Reform (Scotland) Act 2010.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment means that regulations setting the maximum monetary penalties under the automated vehicle authorisation scheme and the passenger service permitting scheme will be subject to the affirmative procedure.
Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]
Monday 19th February 2024
(2 months, 1 week ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Automated Vehicles Bill [HL] 2023-24 Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 1-R-I(a) Manuscript amendments for Report (Supplementary to the Marshalled List) - (6 Feb 2024)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Lord Davies of Gower) (Con)
My Lords, before I begin, I will briefly update the House on our engagement with the devolved Administrations. In line with the Sewel convention, the Government are seeking legislative consent Motions from the devolved legislatures of Scotland and Wales. The legislative consent Motion process is engaged for Scotland and Wales in relation to automated passenger services and the powers under Clause 40 to require reports from the police and local authorities. The Welsh Government laid their legislative consent memorandum in November. I am grateful for their constructive engagement to date. The Scottish Government laid an initial memorandum in December and we are awaiting a supplementary memorandum, outlining their recommendation on consent, later this month. UK government officials are working closely with their Scottish counterparts to clarify questions and provide support. The devolved Governments are rightly taking a close interest in this legislation, and we will continue to work constructively with them to progress the consent process.
Lord Naseby (Con)
My Lords, I will make a short speech, conditioned by my being a former pilot with experience of Boeing, probably the most sophisticated company in the world on unmanned aircraft. The net result so far has been that 346 people died recently, although, thankfully, nobody died in the Alaska experience. Given that situation, although this Bill is supposedly about safety on the roads, we need to take great care; I recognise that we need a framework here, but I hope my noble friend will listen to what the noble Lord suggested earlier in the debate and have the Office of Rail and Road help oversee this Bill as it is implemented in relation to vehicles on the road.
Lord Moylan (Con)
I briefly congratulate my noble friend the Minister on bringing this useful, modest and largely technical Bill to its completion. The Government have expressed optimism that the arrival of automated vehicles in large numbers on our roads is going to have no effect whatever on how the rest of the road system and other road users operate. It is the principle on which the Bill is based but, to me, it seems to be credible only in the somewhat artificial reality of your Lordships’ House.
My noble friend the Minister and his department still need to address a worry many of us have. He has stated that nothing will change—that facilities for pedestrians, for example, will not be affected—with the arrival of these vehicles, but it is clear that is not wholly credible. The people who have invested in automated vehicles will find that pedestrians and other road users are obstacles to the rollout of their plans, and they will then turn up at the ministry and say, “We have spent all this money, so now you have to do something to make it work for us”. At that point, officials will roll over, Ministers will wave their hands and the money will decide what the policy is. All of this will happen without a parliamentary debate considering the effect of the vehicles and what they mean for road users, especially in urban environments. I hope my noble friend the Minister will find an opportunity to allow us, and the public, a debate about what the vision of our cities is when automated vehicles are operating in large numbers as the Bill makes provision for.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, in line with the usual courtesies of the House, I thank the Minister and his team, all of whom were exceptionally helpful and willing to give their time and expertise in some useful meetings with myself and my Liberal Democrat colleagues. I also thank my noble friends Lady Brinton and Lady Bowles, supported by Sarah Pughe in our Whips’ office, for their work. Finally, I thank noble Lords across the House: there was exceptional co-operation in improving the Bill, and one of the outcomes was the amendment of the Minister which clarified the statement of safety principles.
The Bill was a logical progression from 2018, and I would predict that this second Bill will be followed, I am sure, by a third Bill to try and get this right. There are still unanswered questions, and I will briefly list them. There needs to be a fresh look at the legislative framework affecting delivery vehicles that are already on our streets. Those who operate them are concerned about lacunas in the legislation.
We are also particularly concerned about the issue of disabled access, which is where my noble friend Lady Brinton worked closely with the noble Lord, Lord Holmes. As the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, said,
“the promise of automated vehicles is accessible mobility for all”.— [Official Report, 6/2/24; col. 1585]
It is, therefore, deeply disappointing that the concept of disabled access—from the physical space of the vehicle to the software that drives it—is not to be built in from the start. It always costs more to adapt things later, and I believe this is yet another missed opportunity.
Finally, it is a great pity that the vote on the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, was lost so narrowly. It was just the kind of thing an advisory council could provide a sense of direction on. I hope the Minister will reflect on the need for certainty on the future structure of appropriate bodies to provide advice and regulation.
We remain concerned, in particular, about data protection in respect of the Bill, which is predicated on a future conglomeration of personal and commercial data, and data associated with the security of the state. It will come together in an unprecedented way. It would enable a massive intrusion of personal privacy, but in its entirety would offer massive power to a malign foreign power or even to a clever, meddling, individual hacker. Although it is well intentioned, the Bill hardly starts to tackle the dangers of that accumulation of data.
Having said all that, I thank the Minister again for his co-operation, assistance and leadership on the Bill.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
I join other noble Lords in thanking the Minister for the time he spent explaining things on the Bill. I support everything that has been said in this very short debate. I am also sad that the advisory committee did not get voted through. My idea of having an independent regulator was the same thing.
The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, made the most important point—that behind the technology for this will be very large companies with enormous balance sheets. When equipment starts operating on the road, if the Government and Parliament have to consider how to balance the interests of those companies with disabled people, cyclists, or pedestrians, it will be very hard to do that and resist the pressure from these big companies without some kind of independent scrutiny. As other noble Lords have said, we look forward to the next Bill with interest.
Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con)
My Lords, I echo the thanks to my noble friend the Minister and his team for all the work they have done on the Bill. I also echo the thoughts that this is just one Bill. We are on a journey with this technology and these vehicles, and where it will be going.
I would like to address some of the comments that have been made from all sides of the House, because I hear the fear, worry and concern, as technology takes a giant leap forward. We worry about the implications for the world as we see it now. However, the world changes and adjusts. I understand the questions the noble Baroness had about data, its ownership, its power and the responsibility. When we launched the Oyster card in London in 2003, the first time data would be captured en masse—tracking peoples’ individual movements—I remember similar challenges being made as to what we would do with it.
We have come a long way in 20-plus years. We understand a lot more about the power of data and how it can be used for the benefit of people, as much as the challenge there is to keep it safe. I hope that will be echoed in the usage of data with these vehicles.
Additionally, I hear the voice of my noble friend Lord Moylan. We worked together many a year ago at TfL, bringing in implementations. Back then, there was a significant challenge to another change we were implementing. We were told pedestrians would be vulnerable; we were told accessibility would be reduced; we were told safety would be jeopardised. What was the change we were bringing in? It was bicycles: the cycle hire scheme for London. There are always challenges to bringing in new schemes. They are always seen as having many problems on safety and security, and vulnerabilities. As I say, this is in the context of the world as we see it, not maybe as we can amend it and make it better.
This is the journey. There will be more Bills, and we will scrutinise further the use-cases and the opportunities that this technology will bring, for the benefit of designing the future with safety in mind, I hope.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister and his team for their co-operation on the Bill. I thank my co-spokesman, my noble friend Lord Liddle, and Grace Wright, our researcher.
When I wrote these few lines down, I was full of unbridled optimism for the Bill—but I had better come back a bit. I am sorry that the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, have not been satisfied; they were good and proper concerns, but I am sure that they will be properly considered.
Proceedings on the Bill have been very much the House of Lords at its best, and that was very much facilitated by the Minister. Like the Lib Dems, we had several meetings with him, and issues were generally treated on their merits. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, is not more reassured by the changes we made to the safety standard. I believe that the safety standard that is now in the Bill is a good one that regulators will be able to work with and that is robust enough to stand up to enterprises with a great deal of money. I, for one at least, say that we have a better Bill of which this House can be proud.
Lord Davies of Gower (Con)
My Lords, it is nearly three months since the Bill had its Second Reading in this House. I am hugely grateful to colleagues on all sides for the very detailed scrutiny and challenge that they have provided over that period, as has already been alluded to. I heard what noble Lords have said.
The Bill has seen real benefit from the open and positive manner in which the opposition Front Benches have engaged. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Liddle and Lord Tunnicliffe, for the series of constructive discussions we have held on safety and other matters. In particular, the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, brings with him many decades of experience in the world of transport safety, and I am pleased that we have been able to draw on that during the Bill’s passage. I am grateful too to the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, for her contributions, both in the Chamber and in our separate meetings. I also thank those who joined me for our two round-table sessions on data and accessibility, particularly the noble Baronesses, Lady Bowles and Lady Brinton, and my noble friends Lord Holmes and Lord Borwick.
I am also grateful to the teams at Wayve and Oxa, which have been so accommodating in welcoming me and colleagues across the House to experience self-driving technology in action. For those who have not yet had the chance, I can tell them that riding in one of these vehicles is simultaneously astonishing and—for want of a better phrase—reassuringly dull.
I am sure that colleagues will join me in thanking the countless policy officials and legal experts standing behind this piece of legislation. I am very grateful to the Bill team: Josh Kossoff, Marty Zekas, Dani Heard, Fran Gilmore and John Latham. My thanks also go to the policy leads Jenny Laber and Catherine Lovell; to Sam Cook, our drafter; and to Adam Lawless and Sean McGarry in my private office.
Finally, I pay tribute, one last time, to the Law Commission of England and Wales and the Scottish Law Commission. Their painstaking review is the foundation on which this legislation is built, and we have felt the benefit of their expertise throughout our debates. In particular, I thank the review’s lead lawyer, Jessica Uguccioni. The Bill receiving its Third Reading today is, in no small part, the product of more than half a decade of her work.
At Second Reading, I spoke of the potential benefits of bringing self-driving technology to our roads: safety, connectivity and new economic opportunity. Thanks to the careful and considered scrutiny of this House, the Bill now moves to the other place all the better able to make those benefits a reality.
Automated Vehicles Bill [Lords]
Tuesday 5th March 2024
(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Automated Vehicles Bill [HL] 2023-24 Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 1-R-I(a) Manuscript amendments for Report (Supplementary to the Marshalled List) - (6 Feb 2024)
The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Mark Harper)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
As hon. Members know, most journeys take place on our roads. About 86% are made by cars, taxis and vans, but in the over 100 years since the invention of the car, despite our vehicles becoming better, safer and now cleaner, one aspect of driving has remained constant: the driver has always controlled the vehicle. In future, things may be different. For all or part of a driver’s journey, self-driving vehicles will free them from that responsibility, improving the lives of the millions of people who are unable to drive; boosting connectivity for rural communities across the country; transforming freight, be it long haul or last mile; and above all, making our roads safer.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)
As the Secretary of State knows, insurance premiums have been going through the roof recently—the costs are astronomical. What impact does he expect automated vehicles to have on insurance premiums?
Mr Harper
If the hon. Gentleman will allow me to make a little progress, I will speak about how one centrepiece of the Bill and of our approach is the safety not just of the automated vehicle and its occupants but of other road users, particularly vulnerable road users. I will come on to that point; if the hon. Gentleman does not feel that I have covered it, he should feel free to intervene again.
We are on the cusp of a transport revolution, and Britain is very much at the wheel of that decision. British companies are developing the self-driving technology; British lawyers are developing the robust new legal frameworks that are being used; and British parliamentarians in this House and the other place can now agree regulation widely seen as among the most comprehensive in the world. The goal is clear: we want to make this country the natural home for the self-driving vehicle industry, and this Bill is the next stop on that journey.
Ben Everitt (Milton Keynes North) (Con)
It will not surprise my right hon. Friend that I am speaking up for Milton Keynes on this subject. This is a huge global opportunity for Britain, worth £350 billion, and Milton Keynes is often the testbed of this technology. It is a beautiful, vibrant city that is going places—except perhaps in the eyes of the producers of last night’s “EastEnders”—so does he agree that when we get this technology, we will be able to roll it out because we have tested it in places such as Milton Keynes?
Mr Harper
I thank my hon. Friend for speaking powerfully for his constituency. He is right: those developing this technology will want to roll it out carefully and thoughtfully, and they will want to do that in specific places in the United Kingdom. He has just made a powerful bid for Milton Keynes to be at the centre of that.
Gearing Britain up for a self-driving future has been the work of years. In 2015, our world-leading code of practice enabled self-driving vehicle trials in the UK. We passed the Automated and Electric Vehicles Act 2018, which codified insurance in this area for the first time and recognised the importance of that, as the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) said earlier. In that same year, we kicked off a Law Commissions review on a legal and safety framework for self-driving vehicles—
Mr Harper
Let me just set out what that review did, then I will take an intervention from the hon. Gentleman, who is an esteemed member of the Select Committee. It convened legal minds from across the country, launched three rounds of public consultation, sifted through hundreds of written responses and produced more than 70 recommendations, which now underpin this legislation.
Grahame Morris
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. These are really important points, as is the clarification sought by the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr on insurance liability. Can I ask the Secretary of State about the arrangements for the compensation of victims of any collisions that are caused by uninsured automated vehicles? He mentioned the Automated and Electric Vehicles Act 2018, but that legislation does not mention this point. This Bill represents an opportunity to address that. Will the Secretary of State set out how we are going to do that, or are we missing an opportunity?
Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman is right to raise that point. We have arrangements in place for vehicles with human drivers who are uninsured, and we are working with the Motor Insurers’ Bureau on the arrangements that will be in place. I would envisage analogous arrangements for self-driving vehicles that are uninsured, to make sure that if they are involved in accidents, any victims of those accidents are able to receive reimbursement in the same way as happens now for the victim of an uninsured driver. We already have arrangements, and I would envisage analogous arrangements. We are already having those conversations, but if the hon. Gentleman has more to say on that, either today or in Committee, I will be delighted to hear from him—
Grahame Morris
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for that clarification, but this is a whole new world where we will be relying on AI, software and so on. How would an insurer prove that a vehicle was being driven autonomously rather than by a driver? Under the provisions of the Bill, would the insurer have access to the data so that they could analyse it and see whether an individual was in charge of a vehicle or whether it was being driven autonomously?
Mr Harper
I will come on to that in my speech, but I will answer the hon. Gentleman’s specific questions. From the point of view of any person needing to make a claim, the insurer will be liable whether the vehicle is in self-driving mode or the user is in charge. What happens subsequently, regarding whether the manufacturer, the software provider or whoever has to pony up the money, is a matter for the insurer to argue about with them. That will not impact the victim, who will be paid by the insurer.
On the hon. Gentleman’s important point about data, we discussed this last week when I met a roundtable of those involved in the industry, including road safety campaigners and those in the insurance industry. The Bill will ensure that the data can be shared, and the insurance industry is keen for that to happen so that it can properly price the risk. I will say more about this when I talk about the safety framework, but there is a real opportunity here because most road traffic collisions are caused at least in part by human error. The track record of self-driving vehicles shows that this is an opportunity to improve road safety, which is important not just for those who use vehicles but for other road users. There is a balance to strike here. We need to capture that benefit but also ensure that we do not leave anyone exposed without protection, as the hon. Gentleman rightly set out.
Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)
On the point the Secretary of State has just been discussing, presumably the details of all journeys undertaken by automated vehicles will be recorded. Where will that data be stored, and who will have access to it? Could someone access that information for non-driving reasons—for example, someone involved in divorce proceedings or an employer in an employment tribunal?
Mr Harper
My right hon. Friend should note that data for these purposes will be protected in the usual way. Data has to be used for the purposes for which it was gathered. There are legal processes for who has access to it, as well as those we will set out specifically for driving purposes. The other things he mentioned will be governed by the usual laws that govern the use of data. I do not want to dwell on those specifics, but they are already covered by existing data protection legislation for the devices that people have in vehicles to monitor their progress or for mobile phones.
I would like to start with safety. Anyone stepping into a self-driving vehicle will reasonably ask: “Can this car consistently drive safety? Will the law protect me if there is an accident? Is the manufacturer regulated and can they be held to account?” Under this legislation, the answer to each of those questions will be yes. The Bill has been built on a bedrock of safety, protecting not just the driver inside the car but road users outside the vehicle.
As I mentioned in answer to the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris), I chaired a roundtable with road safety groups last week and explained how we are holding self-driving vehicles to a higher safety standard than the average human driver, guided by principles we will soon consult on; how these vehicles must meet rigorous technical requirements before rolling off production lines and being authorised for our roads; and how we will tackle misleading marketing, with new offences for companies that seek to blur the line between true self-driving and driver assistance.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
That gets to the nub of the point. Because these vehicles are going to be automated, they will be governed by an algorithm written by a human being somewhere remote from where an accident might occur. How do we determine whether the primary purpose of that algorithm is to protect the person in the car or someone outside the car, such as a pedestrian or a child crossing the road? How does the algorithm make a choice in those circumstances?
Mr Harper
We will consult on the statement of safety principles, which will set out the governing principles of the legislation. On the specifics, this will be about making sure that the manufacturers—those who create the software and those who put the cars together—have rigorous processes for testing and decision-making. Those systems will have to be authorised to be used in our cars, and it will be important to look at their data and their track records. As I say, in real-world situations where these vehicles are being used—for example, in California—the evidence suggests that they have a very good safety record that is much better than that of human drivers. There is a big opportunity here to have a safer road environment, not just for the users of the vehicles but for other road users.
I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has had the opportunity to ride in a self-driving vehicle, but the data they collect of their surroundings is interesting. My personal observation is that the space they give when passing a cyclist, for example, is a lot more generous than that I have seen many human drivers give. Of course, those parameters are going to be set and regulated, and people will have to be assured that the vehicles are safe before they are on the road. Ultimately, the manufacturer will be legally responsible if they turn out not to be.
Clive Efford
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way a second time. I agree entirely that, overall, roads will be safer with automated vehicles, but there will still be accidents. My question was specifically about where there is an accident and there is a choice to be made about protecting the person inside the car and injuring someone outside the car. How do we determine what takes priority in those circumstances?
Mr Harper
We will consult on the safety principles, but with some of this stuff we have to look at the way the vehicles make decisions. We cannot possibly legislate for every single set of circumstances. In the same way, when there is a collision involving a vehicle with a human driver, the driver will make the best decision they can in the specific circumstances. Sometimes those situations lead to legal conflict and then people have to make a judgment. We cannot legislate for every single one of those circumstances in advance. What we can do is make sure there are robust systems that make good decisions based on the best data, and then look at the track record. We will also set up a regulatory system whereby any accident involving an automated vehicle will be properly investigated.
The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. It is essential with this legislation that we earn the public’s trust and win their confidence. That is one of the reasons why we have been so clear, and why we accepted the amendments in the other place, about putting safety at the forefront of the Bill. If people are not persuaded of that, this technology will not make much progress.
Several hon. Members rose—
Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)
The Secretary of State is taking a safety-first approach to this legislation, and that seems to be the will of the House. I have used a driverless vehicle operated by Waymo, a driverless Uber-style service in the United States. He will know that those vehicles have more cameras—more eyes—looking in more directions more of the time than it would be possible to achieve even with 100 drivers sitting in a single vehicle. My concern is whether, in his effort to put safety first, he is compromising the potential for economic growth. In America, most of the force for change with automated vehicles is being driven by the leading global technology companies. What discussions has he had with those companies in preparation for the Bill? How comfortable are they with the Government’s approach?
Mr Harper
I have discussed the legislation with a number of those companies—both UK companies and those in the US—and I am pleased to assure my hon. Friend and the House that they too recognise that safety is incredibly important. They all understand that they have to be able to operate within a legal framework set by legislators who are ultimately accountable to the public, and that they have to take the public with them. As ever with these things, whatever the track record of existing vehicles and drivers, because this is new technology, people will be sceptical about it, and anything that goes wrong will have a brighter light shone on it. The industry is very aware of that and, I think, very happy to work with us on those issues.
Several hon. Members rose—
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I will be honest, Mr Deputy Speaker: I am not very technically minded. I like the idea of a manual car with five or six gears and reverse. In the rural community that I live in, I am very happy with that. I have a bit of hesitation about automated vehicles. Thinking about young drivers—this is really important, because the Secretary of State mentioned blurred lines—we have to make sure that everyone who learns to drive has full capacity to drive any vehicle, and does not think they can get into an automated vehicle and just sit there and do nothing. It is really important that everyone is subject to the same rules. Can he confirm for anyone who thinks that in future they will be able just to sit in the back of the car that that is not the case, and that they will have to learn to drive in the way that we all have over the years?
Mr Harper
I will come to that in a second—it will become clear in the next section of my speech—but I can tell the hon. Gentleman that the Bill is about giving people choices. If people want, as many will, to carry on driving their existing vehicles in the traditional way, that is absolutely fine and no one is going to try to stop them. To be very clear, the hon. Gentleman can carry on driving for as long as he wants to and is safe to, and no one is going to try to stop him. Certainly, I am not going to try—I wouldn’t dare.
On the legal concerns—this will address the point about the driving test, too—the Bill redefines our legal relationship with road transport. As soon as someone turns on a self-driving feature, legal responsibility for how the car drives will transfer to an authorised self-driving entity, or ASDE—not a very catchy acronym, admittedly, but that is what they are called. That could be a manufacturer or a software developer but, crucially, it will not be the human driver, who will assume a new status. As a user in charge, they will still need to ensure that the car is roadworthy, and they will need to reassume control if necessary. That answers the hon. Gentleman’s question: someone will still need to be in possession of a full driving licence and able to reassume control of the vehicle if required, but they will be protected by law from any offences while the car is driving itself.
Some journeys, either in private cars or on self-driving transport, will be fully automated, and a human will never need to take control; they will be, in essence, a passenger. My hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) mentioned the example of Waymo cars in the US. Those are operated as taxis, with no driver present, and the human is never expected to take control; it is classed as a “no user in charge” journey. In those circumstances, someone would not need a driving licence, because they would never be expected to drive the car, in the same way we are not expected to drive a taxi or private hire vehicle. Those legal concepts will have a seismic impact.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
This is the future, and it is both quite exciting and quite scary. We have to get our heads around it and make sure that we get this right. On what the Secretary of State has just been describing, is it basically the difference between someone taking a taxi and driving their own car? If there is an accident in a taxi, the taxi company is responsible, not the passenger.
Mr Harper
If someone is using a vehicle for a “no user in charge” journey for which they are, in effect, the passenger and there is an accident, it will be totally the responsibility, in all circumstances, of the person operating the vehicle. Where someone who is driving the car for part of the time switches on the self-driving features and something happens while those features are activated, that will be not their responsibility but that of the manufacturer or the software developer. If someone is in control of the vehicle and the self-driving features are not activated, they retain responsibility.
One of the things that we will have to do is educate people about the difference, and we are being clear to manufacturers that there is a big difference between a self-driving feature and driver assistance. Under driver assistance, the driver is still fully legally responsible for the vehicle, but with some technological help; when the self-driving features are activated, they no longer have legal responsibility.
Wera Hobhouse
Is there not potential for a legal conflict between a driver who says, “I was in self-driving mode,” and a company that says, “No, it was switched off”? Does the Secretary of State see that it might be very difficult to establish what happened in such circumstances?
Mr Harper
Potentially, but that is exactly why the earlier question about data is very important. These vehicles generate a huge amount of data and one part of the authorisation process will be making sure that that data is properly managed and there is proper access to it by the investigators of any potential accident and the insurance industry to establish exactly what has happened in such circumstances.
Iain Stewart
I want to build on the question from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) about the situation where a driver is in control of the car at some point and at other points the car is autonomous. That will presumably result in drivers becoming less experienced, as they will not accumulate as much knowledge and experience of driving. When the automated features switch off and the driver needs to take control, those will be potentially immediate and challenging circumstances. Is my right hon. Friend assured that the driving test and refresher courses will give drivers sufficient capacity to take over in those circumstances?
Mr Harper
My hon. Friend raises a good point. I am very comfortable with the driving test; it continues to be updated to make sure drivers are familiar with features such as satnavs, and the new technology will be added. The wider question about how often drivers drive and how experienced they are of course arises now. Someone can take a driving test and not drive very much but occasionally hire a vehicle, and we hold them to the same standard as those who drive day in and day out; they are still responsible. There might in these circumstances be a question about whether it would be sensible for people to take refresher courses and do further training, and we will want to monitor that and determine whether we should legislate for it or issue guidance. It is an interesting point for us to keep an eye on.
As well as the legal issues, making driving more convenient in this way also makes it potentially much more accessible, by for example giving those who cannot drive at the moment, such as the 340,000 people registered blind or partially sighted, new options to travel independently, opening doors to economic and social opportunities that have thus far remained closed. Interestingly, in the United States, where this technology has been rolled out earliest, it is those groups who have been most vocal in arguing for the technology, because it changes their lives for the better and opens up their opportunities.
The third area is learning and enforcement. This technology will get stronger, smarter and safer over time. The safety data will be collected by the vehicle, monitored by its operator and scrutinised by a Government regulator, which means we can take enforcement action when things go wrong or through sanctions and suspensions if a company withholds data. The Bill also includes measures to investigate incidents independently and ensure that lessons are learned. I have spoken about the context behind the Bill and addressed some of the key components and will turn now to some of the benefits self-driving vehicles will bring.
Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)
This is an exciting Bill about an exciting future. I have listened carefully to what my right hon. Friend has said about who will ultimately be responsible if there is an accident. My understanding is it will always be the manufacturer and will never be the person who owns the car. In my constituency, as in many others, large numbers of people like modifying their cars and I am sure when autonomous vehicles are introduced people will want to modify those as well. They might change them in ways that ultimately slightly limit or diminish some of the safety features put in when the car was built, so who will be ultimately responsible in such circumstances? People may make modifications without knowing the implications, potentially, for diminishing the safety of the car. Will the manufacturer still be responsible when the car is modified, or will it be the owner?
Mr Harper
My hon. Friend raises a very important point that we must make sure is covered. Clearly, if people make modifications that alter the functioning of the self-driving features of the vehicle, we would either have to say that that was not acceptable or they would have to accept that the vehicle was no longer self-driving. There would need to be rules. The vehicle will go through an authorisation process to go on the road, and there will be things that people will be allowed to change and things that they will not. I suspect that manufacturers will be very clear that they will no longer be responsible for a self-driving vehicle if someone has modified it. As long as that is clear, that is fine, but people will have to accept that, as cars become more technological with more technology built into them, the days of being able to tinker around with them under the bonnet and alter things will be long past if we want that technological stuff to kick in.
Alexander Stafford
My question was not just about modification that may change the safety of the car but about any modification. If someone who owns an iPhone changes the screen, it is no longer under manufacturer warranty even though that does not affect how it works. If someone has modified their car and it does not affect a safety feature but there is then an accident, will the manufacturer be able to say that the car has been modified and that, even though the safety features are unchanged, it is therefore no longer its responsibility? Will the liability pass to the owner if the manufacturer decides it has nothing to do with it?
Mr Harper
These cars will have to be authorised by the regulator to go on the road, but my hon. Friend makes the good point that, as part of that process, what the user of the vehicle can and cannot do needs to be clear. I suspect there will be very limited things that they could do without affecting the operation of the vehicle, but it is good to put on the record that in the information provided by both the manufacturer and the regulator we must be clear about what the user of the vehicle can and cannot do to ensure it can be driven safely.
Despite Britain having some of the safest roads in the world, the levels of serious injury and road deaths remain too high. That could soon change. If we can eliminate driver error, which is involved in 88% of road collisions, we could get to the point where self- driving vehicles are a game changer for road safety: they do not drink and drive, they do not get stressed or distracted, they do not speed, get tired, bend the rules of the road or push their luck.
Self-driving vehicles will save lives and we cannot ignore the economic impact either. According to industry estimates, 40% of new cars will by 2035 have some self-driving capability. This is a growing global market, Britain’s share of which could be worth £42 billion and generate 38,000 skilled jobs in areas ranging from cyber-security to AI, and thanks to Government support, our self-driving vehicle industry is not only thriving but recognised the world over.
Grahame Morris
I thank the Secretary of State for his reassurances about safety. I do not think it is all one-sided, because another aspect of safety is cyber-safety, which we do not need to worry about with a traditional car. Automated vehicles are extremely vulnerable to cyber-attacks from hackers and potentially from terrorists, especially as the software and technology age. What are the Government going to do? Are they going to commit to establishing the necessary regulations to ensure cyber-security for automated vehicles is robust and that protections continue over the lifetime of the vehicle?
Mr Harper
The simple answer is, yes, we are going to do that. The hon. Gentleman is right to raise cyber-security as an issue, and it is of course an issue today, because many cars today have electronic features from keyless entry to navigation systems. Existing cars are vulnerable to being hacked. Cyber-security is important and we and the industry are working with the National Cyber Security Centre. I agree that cyber-security will be very important, but it already is important.
Clive Efford
I agree with what the Secretary of State said about tinkering and that nullifying any insurance, but we have also just experienced the Horizon scandal, where the manufacturers themselves had access to the technology. What security do drivers have from the designers of the software governing these cars covering their own backs?
Mr Harper
One of the things we will have in place is a duty of candour. We will also set up a regulatory process with investigations of every self-driving vehicle involved in an incident. Importantly, manufacturers will be legally obliged to have that duty of candour to disclose the information, so that these issues can be got to the bottom of. The hon. Member raises a specific case that I will not comment on, and there will no doubt be learnings from that case, but the regulatory approach we are setting up will deal with the issue he just raised.
Mr Harper
Let me make a bit of progress; I want to try to get to a conclusion, because others wish to speak, but I will try to get back to my right hon. Friend in a sec.
In 2019, Google’s Waymo made the UK its first European engineering hub for self-driving technologies. Bosch and ZF, among others, are investing in the UK, drawn by our highly skilled workforce. CAM Testbed UK, a unique cluster of five facilities between London and the west midlands, has received £200 million of Government and industry funding, and we have put £66 million into scaling up self-driving mobility ideas, from buses in Scotland to HGVs in Sunderland, with a further £150 million announced as part of our advanced manufacturing plan. We do not want to lose momentum, and we want to make sure that we push the industry to realise the full benefits of this technology. I hope that the Bill brings certainty to investors, clarity to manufacturers, confidence to the public and demonstrates Britain’s strongest commitment yet to a self-driving future. Before I conclude, I will take an intervention from my right hon. Friend.
Sir Greg Knight
The Secretary of State has been generous in giving way. Just to clarify the point, there could be circumstances where a vehicle is in fully auto mode, but the owner bears some responsibility. For example, if an automated vehicle is on full auto and is involved in an accident, but it is then discovered that all the tyres are without tread, surely in those circumstances the owner would bear some blame.
Mr Harper
I set out at the beginning that in circumstances where a user is in charge—where they are not purely a passenger with a company providing a taxi or private hire service—and the vehicle is in self-driving mode, the manufacturer or software provider is responsible for the conduct of the vehicle, but the user in charge is responsible for such things as the physical condition of the vehicle and the tyres, and they retain that responsibility. The balance of which of those things caused the accident will be determined in exactly the same way as currently.
In conclusion, as I think the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) set out, self-driving vehicles will provoke excitement from some and nerves from others, but for most of us, it is a combination of the two. Clearly it is an opportunity, but there are some risks. I know that first-hand, not only having visited California-based Waymo and ridden in one of its self-driving vehicles, but having done a journey from my departmental office to this House in a self-driving vehicle designed by the British company Wayve. It was interesting, as it went expertly through busy streets and responded quickly to things. It was a rainy day and a lot of people were darting in and out of the traffic—probably not sensibly—but the car responded safely. I realised the enormous potential of this technology, not just as a growing economic sector, but for a future where transport is safer, more convenient and more accessible. This Bill is a crucial step towards that future, and I take great pleasure in commending it to the House.
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
Let me start by confirming Labour’s support for the legislation and the principle behind it. Automated vehicle technology, once the preserve of science fiction, is advancing at pace. Fully autonomous vehicles are already being tested on our roads by world-leading UK companies. The progress they have made is truly something to behold. Continuing that progress and getting this technology and the safety standards around it right are so important. It has huge implications for road safety, vehicle accessibility and our economy, so Labour agrees that it is vital we have a proper regulatory framework in place to ensure these technologies are introduced in a safe and accessible way that contributes positively to our economy.
On that basis, we welcome the Bill and its efforts to set safety principles for these vehicles and clear rules around marketing to stop consumers being misled about the autonomous capability of the vehicles being sold to them. However, there is still room to go further and to ensure that these vehicles’ introduction is a public good and not in any way a destructive force. A few months ago, I also visited Wayve in King’s Cross, a UK company doing pioneering work to develop autonomous technology for vehicles, which it is already testing on our roads. It is an experience, sitting in a vehicle with no driver, no controls and no clue which direction it will go in next, and I admit that I wondered, as I was being whisked about central London in all sorts of directions without any input or control from me, if that was not how the Secretary of State felt sitting around the Cabinet table most weeks.
Turning to the safety benefits of autonomous vehicles, it has been estimated that road collisions cost our economy as much as £43.2 billion in 2022 and that 85% of road crashes involve an element of human error. Automated vehicles can play a huge role in reducing human error, avoiding tragic accidents and helping to reduce the burden on the state in the process. The need to do more to tackle these deaths and injuries on our roads cannot be overstated. The last Labour Government cut road fatalities by almost 50% while in office, but there has been only an 8% reduction since 2010.
The Bill comes to us in a vastly improved state from the other place, thanks to pressure from my Labour colleagues there. As a result of their efforts, the Bill explicitly targets a safety standard for autonomous vehicles equivalent to or higher than a careful and competent human driver, as it rightly should. The statement of safety principles that the Secretary of State must make following the passage of the Bill will now also be subject to proper parliamentary scrutiny. That is important progress, and we are grateful for the Government accepting those important amendments.
Grahame Morris
We are addressing important safety and regulation issues, but does my hon. Friend share my concerns about potential job losses? Almost a million people are employed in the logistics sector, including drivers, delivery drivers and so on. I know the Bill is not concerned with alternative employment, but I see the effects of deindustrialisation in my area. Does she share my concerns about the potential job losses if this legislation is not done in a sensible way?
Louise Haigh
It is typical of my hon. Friend to raise such an important and pertinent point. I will come to it shortly in my speech.
It is a shame that much of the important work still to do on this safety regime will be set out further down the line, rather than being debated today in the Chamber. We will look closely at the detail when it comes to see how the standard is defined in practice, and I welcome any insight from the Government today to reassure colleagues on that. For instance, what level of fault will be allowed for an autonomous vehicle compared with a standard practical driving test, if any at all?
This technology does not just offer potential road safety benefits. It is estimated that disabled people in the UK take around 38% fewer trips than non-disabled people. Automated vehicles could help address that gap by unlocking a world of opportunity for those who cannot or struggle to drive and for those held back from that opportunity by the inaccessibility of too much of our public transport network. Securing those benefits will mean ensuring that access to these vehicles is not limited just to the extremely wealthy, and that the interests of disabled people, who are currently five times more likely to be injured by a vehicle than non-disabled pedestrians, are at the heart of the development of these technologies from the very start. I would welcome the Secretary of State setting out how he will ensure that disabled people and disability-led groups will be properly consulted as these vehicles are introduced to our roads.
Jim Shannon
I suppose, if I am being honest, that I am a bit of a sceptic in this matter. I am not a petrolhead, by the way, but many of my constituents love their cars, love their vehicles, and love the opportunity to work under the bonnet. I am always conscious that we may see a move towards automated vehicles all across the country, irrespective of what people think. Is it the shadow Minister’s intention to ensure that people will always have choice? If she does, that is the right way.
Louise Haigh
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and remain impressed that he has something to say on this issue, as on so many others. It will of course remain the case that should people wish to drive their cars, they will be free and able to do so. I think it will be a long time—indeed, the industry has predicted it will be several decades—before the number of automated vehicles outstrips the number of vehicles with drivers on our roads.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) mentioned, there is one major area that the Bill does not address, and which we have not considered in any meaningful capacity, which is the potential impact on jobs from automated vehicles. As a South Yorkshire MP, I am all too familiar with the economic impacts of deindustrialisation. Far too many towns and cities across the north have already suffered enough from lost livelihoods, with the social fabric of their communities ripped apart as a new economic model left them behind. We simply cannot afford to make those same mistakes again.
That is why Labour has been clear that artificial intelligence and automation must be harnessed as a public good—one that delivers social benefits, grows the economy and supports jobs rather than destroying them. That is why, during its passage through the other place, my Labour colleagues attempted to amend the Bill to establish an advisory council that would ensure the Government consult on the introduction of these vehicles with not only industry representatives and road safety experts, but trade unions. The Government opposed that amendment. From the way this Government have politicised the ongoing industrial dispute on our railways and Ministers’ failure to even sit down with union representatives, we have already seen just how important it is to have proper engagement with workforce representatives, as well as just how far this Government will go to avoid doing it.
I would welcome an explanation from the Secretary of State as to why he is so opposed to the idea of speaking to experts and trade union representatives about the introduction of such sensitive and consequential technology. Will he also say what steps he will take to ensure this technology creates jobs, rather than destroying them, especially in the areas of the country where low-paid work dominates? It is in exactly those areas, which still feel the ravages of deindustrialisation, that jobs in driving, warehousing and logistics dominate—all jobs that face the highest risks from automation. Unless the Government are prepared to play an active role in how we transition our economy, it is exactly those areas, like my constituency in South Yorkshire, that will be hit all over again.
I have talked a lot about what the Bill is, Mr Deputy Speaker, but allow me a minute to talk about what it is not. As the Secretary of State well knows, his Government have promised us all sorts of transport legislation over the years that they have failed to make parliamentary time for. This Bill is not his long-promised rail reform. It is not legislation to properly regulate e-scooters, e-bikes or drones, to set minimum standards for taxis, to extend franchising for buses, or to strengthen the powers of the Civil Aviation Authority—legislation that has been promised time and again by this Government, without any intention of actually delivering it.
I will close by pointing out the irony that the one major piece of transport legislation in this parliamentary Session is a Bill on driverless cars brought forward by a driverless Government who are running out of road.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)
I call the Chairman of the Transport Committee.
Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to be able to contribute to this debate. I should flag that the Transport Committee conducted an extensive inquiry on self-driving vehicles and published our report on the subject last year. Our principal recommendation was to bring forward legislation to give the industry and investors the certainty to continue their work. We are very pleased indeed that the Government have taken on board our central recommendation and brought forward this Bill. We commend the Law Commission for the background work it did to provide the legal underpinning.
Hopefully there will be sufficient time for the Bill to reach the statute book before we get to the general election. Had it not been brought forward, there was a real danger of a missed opportunity. The UK has been a leading player in the development of this global technology, but there is no certainty that that would continue. One message we heard loud and clear from the sector was that it needs the regulatory framework and that certainty to allow further investment to take place, so we are, as I say, very pleased that that is happening. To give some idea of the scale, figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders estimate that by 2040, the annual economic impact to the country will be £66 billion. My fellow Select Committee member, the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris), raised legitimate concerns about the risk to jobs from this new technology, but there is an upside: 12,000 new direct jobs in automotive manufacturing, and more than 300,000 additional jobs in the wider economy, again using SMMT figures. There are economic opportunities —job opportunities—provided by this new technology.
It is always difficult to adjust to change in the economy. I often use the analogy that a few decades ago, lots of people were employed in manufacturing typewriters; now there is hardly anyone in that industry, but other job opportunities arose. That will also be the case in this sector. He is not in his place now, but I echo the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) that the city of Milton Keynes has been at the forefront of the research and development and the testing of this technology in the UK, and long may that continue.
As other speakers have said, the advantages are not just economic; this technology also widens the accessibility of transport for many people who are, for various reasons, inhibited at the moment. That wider social value may be more difficult to quantify in monetary terms, but will be increasingly valuable. More generally, this technology will widen the transport choices available. Self-driving vehicles will replace some journeys made purely by car, but will also be part of an integral transport system where a self-driving vehicle may pick up people from a railway station, bus station or airport to complete their journeys. There are many, many upsides to this legislation.
I want to highlight a few other concerns we had during our inquiry, some of which the Government have already addressed. The first is on safety. We very much welcome the amendments put forward by the Government in the other place to introduce a more certain and wider definition of safety; we set out concerns in our report that the broad definition of a self-driving vehicle as being as safe as a
“competent and careful human driver”
was just a bit too vague and weak. The amendments that have been brought forward in the Lords to ensure proper consultation not just with the industry, but more widely with road safety stakeholders, are very welcome, while the change in the parliamentary procedure from a negative to an affirmative resolution will give it greater clarity. We very much welcome that.
I will raise two particular safety issues. One, which I mentioned in my intervention on the Secretary of State, is the need to ensure that drivers have the relevant level of skill and experience to intervene when the technology requires them to do so. As I said, those instances will obviously be immediate and often in challenging conditions, and will require skills over and above the general driving competencies and knowledge as to what a driver ought to do in those circumstances. I do not think it is necessarily something to include in the Bill, but, as the Government look at the consultation on safety, I strongly urge them to look at what changes to the driving test may be appropriate, and even at wider encouragement for everyone to have refresher courses. I think most drivers—me included—would be terrified at the prospect of resitting our driving test, as we have probably built up many bad habits over the years. There is, perhaps, a wider point about ensuring that drivers remain competent, but this new technology does introduce specific new circumstances that need to considered.
The second safety-related issue is about ensuring that MOT tests are up to date so that they properly capture all safety-critical technology. In the future, cameras, sensors, software and other technology will be as safety-critical as tyres, brakes and other mechanical parts that are currently assessed. Again, I urge the Government to look ahead and perhaps redefine what is encapsulated by the MOT.
Related to that is a concern raised with me by smaller garages about ensuring that they still have a fair chance of carrying out MOTs. As the technology becomes ever more sophisticated, there is a risk that the original equipment manufacturers will have a monopoly on maintaining software and related equipment and that only their garages will be able to carry out such work. There a wider point—this is not just about self-driving vehicles—about ensuring that the full spectrum of operators in the car repair and maintenance sector has fair access to doing that work.
I will also raise two points related to insurance. My friend and colleague from the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Easington—he is no longer in his place—mentioned data sharing. I welcome the fact that data sharing is referenced in the Bill and that its scope will be set out in secondary legislation. It is important for the insurance industry to be able to capture the full picture of driver behaviour and the behaviour of vehicles in this new world. That will not be limited to collisions, where the insurers will need to know what happened; there will be other injuries for which data must be available—say, a self-driving vehicle may brake suddenly, which results in a whiplash injury or related concerns. As a probing suggestion, is there a case for putting in the Bill a requirement for consultation with the insurance industry on the concept of data sharing, similar to the one that Government have set out for the setting of safety parameters? I will leave that with my hon. Friends on the Front Bench to consider.
The second insurance concern was raised by the Motor Insurers’ Bureau about where we have what might be called a “black swan” event, with a significant co-ordinated cyber-attack that instructs many vehicles simultaneously to behave in a way that could cause mass public injury. The instruction might be to drive at high speed and turn sharp right into a crowded pedestrian area. The concern is that, as things stand, the absence of a mutualisation of risk could lead to such a level of claims that it would bankrupt the car insurance sector.
In property, there is an equivalent backstop to cover the event of such terrorist activity. Some thought needs to be given to that. Again, it probably goes wider than purely self-driving vehicles, because, as the Secretary of State mentioned, the technology is often already embedded in cars and could be hacked by a malevolent actor. The insurance industry is concerned about that, and I urge the Government to consider that perhaps not necessarily in the Bill but as part of wider reform.
Notwithstanding those concerns and questions, this is a welcome Bill with huge upsides economically and socially. As the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) put it succinctly, it is an exciting new world, but for many people it is a scary new world, and we have a duty to bring the public with us.
There are many areas where transport is already automated and people accept it and are quite relaxed about it. They will get on a get on a docklands light railway train, which is automated, and aircraft flights are now 95% automated. In Milton Keynes, we have delivery robots going along the pavement and no one bats an eyelid about them. But as we see with smart motorways, if the public are not convinced about the safety of new technology, they will not accept it.
We all have a duty to make sure that the regulations ensure the safety of the drivers and the passengers as well as the wider roads-using and pavement-using public. The upsides are enormous, but we must bring people with us. I commend the Government for bringing forward the Bill, which is incredibly important, and I look forward to seeing it on the statute book.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), the Chair of the Transport Committee, on which I serve alongside him. He made many good points and I agree with much of what he said. We still have good questions about the Bill on technical details and insurance among other things, which we will undoubtedly cover in great detail in Committee. His final point about bringing the public with us is key. During the Select Committee’s inquiry, which was referenced by the Chair, I brought that up several times with the witnesses. As the Chair said, we accept things like the DLR, but that is fixed transport; this is very different. Obviously, as we have seen with smart motorways, the public may not buy it unless we and the industry are robust in what we are selling them.
Before I start, I must be honest about my own thoughts and preconceptions about autonomous or automated vehicles, as we are calling them in the Bill. The kid and science fiction fan inside me looks forward to the transport of tomorrow, with futuristic cars like those in films such as “I, Robot”, “Minority Report” and “Blade Runner”—although it must to be said that with their current policies the Government are doing their level best to deliver the bleak and dystopian future from “Blade Runner”. “Back to the Future” told us that that we would have flying cars by 2015, but perhaps “The Jetsons” was more accurate with its version of 2062.
Growing up, my favourite had to be “Knight Rider”, where David Hasselhoff played—[Interruption.] Yes, I am showing my age. Well, “The Jetsons” is from 1962, so hopefully that was on repeat when I was watching it. In “Knight Rider”, Michael Knight very much played second fiddle to KITT the car.
In truth, I am not the best passenger in a car. I prefer being in control, no matter how suboptimal that might be for my passengers. I also like driving. As a family, we have been driving electric for three years to reduce our carbon footprint. I also use public transport and active travel a lot more than I used to, but I enjoy driving and would not want my car to drive itself, although I do enjoy the driver aids seen in most modern cars. I hope we never quite get to the point where automation becomes compulsory, but I suspect that will be a debate for MPs a couple of generations and more from now.
This issue and the Bill sound exciting, but the truth is that the Bill is technical and dry—it is less Michael Knight, more Michael Howard. Its Committee may not be a barn burner, but none the less it will be important. That is because the Bill is absolutely necessary—indeed, we could say it is long overdue—and will put in place much-needed regulation to focus and develop this technology and ultimately enable its full commercialisation and public roll-out.
As you might hear me saying from time to time, Mr Deputy Speaker, Scotland has been taking the lead on autonomous vehicles for some time now. The Forth bridge has been home to one of the main pilots of autonomous vehicles for passenger services, with the CAVForth project operating since last summer. Buses built just up the road by Alexander Dennis in Camelon are taking thousands of passengers a week over the bridge and into Edinburgh. It is a groundbreaking and world-leading trial, which could help revolutionise public transport in the long term. I cannot resist saying that it would not have been possible had the Scottish Government listened to the naysayers just over a decade ago and dropped construction of the Queensferry crossing. We now have the Forth bridge operational for public transport, with private vehicles transferred to the new crossing. Those trials can happen in the best possible environment, with the result that thousands of passengers are crossing the Forth every week on an autonomous bus.
Like Labour’s shadow Minister, I welcome the Bill, although with some reservations. Ultimately, it represents a chance to be ahead of the curve and get the appropriate legislative framework in place before problems arise. It allows that framework to change things when the future does not deliver what it is supposed to. Motoring is a highly regulated area of life, and rightly so, given that we are dealing with machines capable of wiping out multiple lives with barely a scratch on them.
It was mentioned earlier in the debate, although perhaps from a different viewpoint, that we have seen in the US that problems arise when there is a lack of regulation and proper legislative oversight of the industry. Since there is virtually no national oversight, those issues and the regulatory frameworks have been dealt with at state level. We saw the dangers of such lax regulation with the suspension and collapse of Cruise in four different states. Just weeks after getting approval for full operation of its autonomous taxi service in San Francisco, a slew of incidents and accidents led it to withdraw all its vehicles from service.
The day after the Transport Committee was treated to a trip around London in autonomous vehicles, with drivers in the driver’s seat ready to take over, a friend of mine posted clips of his journey in a Cruise taxi in San Francisco. I am not sure I would have been as willing at that point to do the same without a driver ready to take over, because later investigations showed that the cars had difficulty identifying children as pedestrians and risked hitting them. In a statement to The Intercept website, it said:
“its vehicles sometimes temporarily lost track of children on the side of the road.”
That is exactly the type of thing we need to stop here before it happens. We support the approach of legislating before those vehicles are on the road. We do not want to follow the United States into a wild west of autonomy, where it takes multiple incidents or corporate whistleblowers to ensure intervention from the state. That intervention must be built into the entire regulatory process from beginning to end.
I also want corporate responsibility to be built into the regulatory framework. As we have seen with the law on corporate manslaughter, although the legislation may talk a good game, the reality is that prosecutions are few and far between, and those who should be held accountable for actions carried out under their watch are instead allowed to walk away. I do not want that to happen to the operators of autonomous vehicles that are proven to be at fault, particularly in incidents where people are harmed or even killed. I would welcome some reassurance from the Minister that where negligence or fault is established, those ultimately responsible are held to account through the criminal law.
Like Labour’s shadow Minister, we welcome the changes made in the Lords to guarantee that autonomous vehicles achieve equivalent or higher safety standards than human drivers. That only seems right, and it would be a retrograde step if this much-vaunted technology delivered worse results and worse safety than we have now. I ought to be clear that, despite my personal misgivings, I have every confidence that, in the end, automated vehicles will prove to be safer.
This area crosses legal jurisdictions. As the Minister mentioned, much of the Bill results from joint working between the Law Commissions of England and Wales and of Scotland, which may at times have been a tricky needle to thread. Throughout, the Scottish Government have been keen to work alongside the UK Government to ensure that the Bill is fit for purpose not just for today’s environment, but to anticipate future developments.
I am happy that, for the most part—highly unusually, it has to be said—there has been constructive working and pragmatic engagement. I say “for the most part” because, unfortunately, the Scottish Government’s representations on clause 50 have so far been ignored. Clause 50 is hugely problematic because it gives the UK Government the power to amend Acts of the Scottish Parliament in areas that are fully devolved, with no recourse to this place or to Holyrood. As it stands, there will be nothing to stop the Secretary of State laying a statutory instrument containing regulations that are counter to Acts passed at Holyrood, where the UK Government regulations would override the Scottish Parliament’s Act.
That is simple disrespect for devolution and for the devolved institutions, and it has happened despite the Scottish Government engaging with the UK Government to find a way forward on clause 50 that respects Scotland’s Parliament as well as this place. There is no objection to having in place a provision to allow existing legislation to be updated to account for autonomous vehicles and the implications on traffic laws and the highway code, but it is simply not on for the Secretary of State to grab that power from the existing devolved powers that rest with Holyrood, rather than accept that Scotland has a different legal framework and work within that reality.
Like so many folk across Scotland, I am sick and tired of the arrogance of this Government when it comes to devolution. There is still time for the Secretary of State and his officials to sit down with their counterparts in Edinburgh and iron out a solution, particularly given the good working relationship on much of the Bill. I urge him to make that happen, and not have the UK turn this Bill into another constitutional punchbag.
We would also like a clear strategy from the Government on the societal and economic consequences of a move towards automation in the transport sector. As the Chair of Select Committee, the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), said, these new technologies will create new and novel jobs, but there are 2.7 million jobs in the logistics sector in the UK, and not one of those positions will be unaffected; they will be either lost or changed as a result of this new technology. There are around 400,000 taxi and private hire drivers in the UK. If we end up with autonomous taxis, how many of those drivers will remain in jobs 50 years from now? What will their jobs be in 50 years’ time?
The UK has an unfortunate track record of managing technological change and its impact on the employment market. As the Labour shadow Minister said, deindustrialisation destroyed countless communities across these isles, particularly in Scotland and in swathes of the north of England, in part because there was no plan and no thought put into how to deal with and support that transition. The Tories caused untold long-term damage by essentially abandoning sectors such as manufacturing altogether, in favour of putting all the UK’s eggs in the services basket. We are seeing the same thing happen now with the move to green technology, although thankfully in Scotland we have a Government committed to a fair transition.
Automation is a much bigger issue than the matters we are talking about today. In many ways, it is time to have a public conversation about what this means for society as a whole. Change always comes with positives and trade-offs. An assumption that the public will simply consent and welcome automation without that conversation is potentially gravely misplaced. The Government must acknowledge those issues and be prepared to support sectors and communities if the changes that the Bill envisages come to pass.
It has taken longer than anticipated by many for automated vehicles to get to this point, but we cannot assume that the advances in technology will continue at the current pace. The pace may increase quickly, and the implications will be with us before we know it. Those implications of automation for our society more generally are serious and deep rooted, and they need a serious response.
We broadly welcome the Bill, but it is incumbent upon the Secretary of State and his Government to fix clause 50 and engage in real dialogue with the Scottish Government in order to help both parties. It is incumbent upon Ministers to explain their approach to the wider societal and economic implications of these measures. I look forward to positive responses on those issues as the Bill moves through its stages.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. One of the first things I did when I arrived in this place was to sit on the Bill Committee on the Automated and Electric Vehicles Act 2018. Here we are, all these years on, and the technology is making significant improvements. I would like to outline what I see as the important benefits of this legislation, and some of the safety and security issues. I will make the case for why these technologies should be developed further. But an advisory council is paramount, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) mentioned, because a wide range of voices must be heard before this legislation is implemented.
The automotive sector is the jewel in the UK’s manufacturing crown. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders estimates that its total turnover in the UK economy is £78 billion, with £16 billion of added value. The industry’s transition and development are all about the automated connected electric and shared vehicles—the ACES vehicles—which are the future. As has been said, what they bring is very exciting, but there are also concerns. They are a rapidly developing technology. We must ensure that the UK automotive industry has a prime role in its development. According to the SMMT, it is estimated that autonomous vehicles could create a market worth £42 billion by 2035 and potentially provide 38,000 new jobs.
Importantly, autonomous vehicles make roads safer—I believe that and I think most in the industry would say it; and we heard it, too, from the Secretary of State in his opening remarks—not just for occupants but for pedestrians and cyclists, provided the right sort of technologies are deployed. I have personally seen that they remove the opportunity for human error, which causes 88% of road traffic accidents. Indeed, research from the SMMT states that if automated vehicles were deployed in substantial numbers, some 4,000 lives could be saved and 60,000 serious accidents prevented between now and 2040. I will come to the benefits of that not just in terms of lives, but what that means for the economy.
Autonomous vehicles can improve connectivity in areas where our public transport is failing passengers. With the depopulation of rural areas, we can see how challenging that issue can be, including for older people and disabled people more generally. Other countries, including states in the EU, and most states in the United States, are all moving forward with their own autonomous vehicle frameworks, so the United Kingdom cannot afford to fall behind in an industry that could be worth £750 billion globally by 2035. That is why the legislation is so important. The UK automotive industry needs to be at the forefront of this rapidly developing technology and we need the legislation to provide the framework to support it.
Like the Secretary of State and the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley, I have experienced driverless vehicles. I was fortunate enough to try it in the Jaguar I-Pace and the technology is incredibly impressive. Although we had a driver at the wheel for safety and security, just seeing the screens and all the information feeds determining the passage, speed and direction of the vehicle was extraordinary. This work is not just being done in silicon valley, but around the world by great organisations. I am particularly proud to have as a neighbour WMG, University of Warwick—the Warwick Manufacturing Group—developing these technologies, but we also have companies such as Oxa at the forefront of developing this work.
I said I wanted to talk about safety. As I articulated with the numbers I mentioned earlier, we will see a significant reduction in the number of accidents, and in the number of those killed and seriously injured. In 2018-19 I tried to introduce legislation called Rowan’s law. If you will forgive me, Mr Deputy Speaker, I will remind the House that seven-year-old Rowan Fitzgerald was killed on a bus in Coventry because the driver fell asleep at the wheel. He had been driving more than 70 hours a week for three weeks. Rowan and another passenger were killed in the incident. It is my belief that, with certain assistive technologies we are discussing, that would not have happened.
While the technology is being developed and rolled out, we must ensure that public safety is at the forefront of the Bill. The insurance giant Axa, based on 2022 data, calculated that accidents in the UK cost the UK economy £42 billion in lost productivity and wider loss. There was also a cost to the NHS of £2.4 billion. That is why I commend the work by my Labour colleagues in the other place in pushing the Government to concede on two key safety points. I welcome the Government’s concession to put the highest standard of safety on the face of the Bill.
To introduce automated vehicles successfully and safely in the UK, we need to bring all the public with us on the journey. Whether as drivers or as those sharing the roads with AVs, the public need accurate knowledge of any new transport technology so that they know how to engage with it safely. It cannot be acceptable for manufacturers to mislead or over-promise. Equally, manufacturers will benefit from being held to a fair standard. We therefore need strong, fair and enforceable standards. Improving and strengthening safety communication and messages on AVs should be the top priority before we fully deploy AVs on the roads. Communication and messages about AV safety must be written and delivered in a clear and accessible manner. Technical knowledge must be translated into language that everyone in society can understand. False and misleading AV advertising should be regulated to avoid miscommunication. For example, driver-assistance systems should not claim to be self-driving systems. We need an objective national safety threshold definition for the safe deployment of AVs. There is evidently still work to be done on the implementation of the legislation to ensure that safety remains at the forefront of the Bill.
The implementation of the Bill should be supported by an advisory council, which would advise on its implementation and on the roll-out of self-driving vehicles. It would include trade union representation, emergency vehicles, disabled groups, manufacturers, highway authorities and other road users, such as pedestrians and cyclists. It is a shame that the amendment that would establish such a group was voted down. I am pleased that we passed amendment 5, which would ensure representatives of road user groups are consulted when preparing the statement of safety principles. I would like that expanded to include the membership of the advisory group, and to put that on the face of the Bill.
On security, I have concerns, particularly on insurance, that have been aired across the House. Having listened to manufacturers in recent weeks about security challenges and the amount of vehicle theft across the country, I am satisfied they are doing their utmost to provide vehicle security. There are, however, many out there who are seeking to steal vehicles for export. The simple truth is that whatever technologies manufacturers come up with, they be overridden, especially by organised crime. That must be a real fear for the future. My hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) mentioned the unfolding Horizon scandal, the role of the tech company and the cover-up it was alleged to have been involved in. What does that mean for the development of vehicle technology? More generally, we have seen the challenges that authorities face when trying to impose regulation on tech companies. Just this morning we read about Apple facing a fine from the EU of, I think, €1.6 billion. A central concern must be the extent of the control given to big tech, and the transparency that policymakers such as Governments, as well as other authorities, will be able to demand of it.
When the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) mentioned MOTs, I was thinking precisely the same as him. At present many elements are not covered by MOTs, and I wonder how it can be ensured that a vehicle is valid, legitimate and roadworthy when so much of the brain power of that vehicle is driven by new technologies. All MOT centres will have to be geared to keep up with technological development to ensure that these vehicles are roadworthy and have fully up-to-date software.
As I said earlier, these developments will have a huge impact on the economy and jobs. Other Members have asked what they will mean for operators in the logistics sector and, for instance, taxi drivers. I urge the Government to adopt our proposal for the establishment of an advisory council to hear from trade union representatives and take on board their thoughts, and, indeed, I suggest that a requirement for trade union representation should be included in the Bill. Other Members have also mentioned the concerns raised by industry, such as who will be responsible for software updates. How will a victim of a crash involving an automated vehicle be able to prove whether the vehicle was driving autonomously? Perhaps the Minister could clarify those points, and confirm that insurers will have appropriate access to data to deal with claims of this kind.
Without doubt, the future lies in automated, connected, electric and shared vehicles, and it is important that the UK has the necessary legislative framework not only for manufacturers but for the development of these technologies. The automotive industry contributes an estimated £3 billion to UK research and development and is one of our greatest strengths, so we must ensure that we have the legislation to provide for that. In the short term, the benefits of the Bill will be largely in assistive technology—data and mapping technologies, for instance—to make vehicles much safer for their occupants and for others. I welcome those safety benefits and the potential opportunities for the UK automotive industry, but, as I have said, there are real concerns about future security.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
The Liberal Democrats welcome the Bill because it takes the first step towards the creation of a framework within which automated vehicles can operate safely. The future of sustainable travel lies in such vehicles, and the UK now has a good opportunity to join the growing number of countries that are embracing this new technology. The tech sector in the UK is particularly strong, and the Bill should give confidence to investors if we are to develop a self-driving vehicle industry and take full advantage of its potential. A large part of that potential relates to road safety: there are still too many road accident victims, and I believe that automated vehicles can contribute significantly to reducing that number if we get this right. The Bill also has the potential to help us reach net zero. We may need to question, and reduce, individual car ownership in future if we want to hit our net zero targets, and automated vehicles may help us to do that.
However, the potential of this industry will only be realised if there is a high level of public confidence in the protections that the Bill gives to public safety—particularly the safety of other road users such as cyclists and pedestrians, who are more at risk than motorists. There is clearly scope for improving the safety of our roads, given that nearly 90% of traffic accidents are caused by human error. Many of the accidents that involve more vulnerable road users, such as cyclists, result from driver impairment or from drivers’ disobeying traffic laws.
Evidence emerging from trials of AVs in San Francisco relating to overall safety improvements is encouraging, but a report of just one thing going wrong will set back efforts to secure public confidence in the safety of these vehicles. It will be important to set out very clearly the scope of any trials in the UK. We may receive reassurances from the industry that the technology is being improved continuously, but we must set out our expectations of what the trials can and cannot achieve. No technology will ever be 100% safe. If there is an interaction between technology and the human being sitting in the car, there is the potential to override the system. The nature of that interaction is almost a philosophical question, which has not been entirely resolved today, but the Minister has been generous in allowing us to raise our concerns.
During the San Francisco trials, issues arose relating to AVs’ hindering emergency vehicles and stopping in cycle lanes, and those need to be addressed. Of course some issues are to be expected in trials, but a repetition of those incidents will damage public trust. People must be confident they will not be repeated on UK streets, and that will require a robust legal and safety framework which will also cover our trials.
The Liberal Democrats welcome the Government’s concession in changing the standard of safety for AV drivers so that they will have to meet or exceed the level of safety of careful and competent human drivers. The implications of that for driving tests have already been mentioned, and it is important for that discussion to continue. The Bill gives us a chance to improve the safety of our road networks for the long term, and we should see this as an opportunity to improve accessibility and safety for the public rather than just maintaining current standards.
Automated vehicles also require adequate infrastructure to support them. The poor state of UK roads has led to the highest number of pothole-related call-outs for the RAC in the last five years. Assurances must be given that improvements in road surfaces will be made before the roll-out of AVs. Will minimum standards for road quality be set for their use, and will local authorities be given the additional resources they will require in order to meet them?
Older and more vulnerable people are more reliant on taxis and private hire cars, a great benefit of which is a driver who can help them with access. The benefits of increased affordability that AVs may bring must not come at the cost of reduced access for disabled and vulnerable users, who will also require assurances about access on automated public transport if it is to be completely unstaffed. We have not talked enough about the human input into this brave new world of automated vehicles and about whether, for instance, someone will be available to assist a disabled person using such a vehicle.
Another area of concern, which has also been mentioned today, is the attention given to data protection in the Bill. It is of course essential that AVs can take in data for machine learning algorithms, which enable them to improve the way in which they navigate. However, a large number of parties will inevitably have access to the data. It will include personal information, including people’s faces. The overlap between commercial and personal data creates issues with access and storage. When data is shared between parties, including private companies, can we be sure that people’s personal data is not being monetised for commercial gain? The Government have not yet given adequate assurances that personal information will be protected.
What about insurance? Insurers have said that the data from AVs must be readily available to establish liability, but drivers must feel confident about how their data is managed. How the data is stored must be open and transparent, and it must be held independently. Establishing a clear path of accountability is essential for public confidence. Cyclists and pedestrians who do not hold personal insurance should receive fair and swift compensation when they are victims of an accident. Further assurance is needed that insurance companies will receive adequate guidance for such claims.
The Liberal Democrats welcome the Bill, but I urge Ministers to carefully review how it will impact on access for disabled and vulnerable transport users. I also encourage the Government to look further at data protection regulation. We must see this Bill as the beginning of a framework, not the end.
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
The hon. Member is giving a list of things that are absent from the Bill. In my constituency we have autonomous delivery robots, which are currently on pilot; they are not regulated at all in the UK. Is this not another area that the Bill should regulate, in addition to the issues she has raised?
Wera Hobhouse
We always try to solve other problems with Bills in front of us, so we have to be a bit careful not to hang something on this Bill that actually goes into other areas, but new technologies create new challenges for all of us. For example, there are safety issues with such deliveries, but that probably requires a separate Bill. However, it is important that the Government make sure that we have adequate regulation of new technologies.
As I said at the beginning of my speech, there are many exciting opportunities for technological change, and we must embrace them. If we do not, other countries will go ahead, and then we will have them anyway. We must take the public with us, understand the risks and make sure that the huge potential of AVs is seen for what it is, but we must avoid unintended consequences that will lead to the public not coming with us, so let us get this right. It is a great opportunity, and let us make sure that we minimise the risks.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
I did not intend to give a speech in this debate—I just wanted to intervene— but as there were so few of us contributing, I thought I would make a short contribution at the end. I am grateful to you for allowing me to do so, Mr Deputy Speaker.
I accept that the time has come for this technology. As somebody who worked in the transport industry for many years prior to becoming a Member of Parliament, I accept that we cannot stand in the way of this technology and that, overall, our road network will be safer with the advance of autonomous vehicles. None the less, there will be occasions when accidents occur, and we have to accept that we will be legislating for how vehicles respond in those circumstances. At the moment, if an accident happens, it happens in real time and people behind the wheels of the vehicles make real-time decisions to try to minimise the impact. However, automated vehicles will have to be programmed in advance to respond in a particular way in certain circumstances—we cannot get away from that. The fact is that the people designing the algorithms will be doing so remotely and well in advance of any accident happening.
Who is the primary person to consider when an accident takes place? Is it the person or persons in the vehicle, or is it the pedestrian? Is it a child, if someone is identified as being a child? Is it people standing at a bus stop on the side of the road? I will come to that soon when I share the concerns of one of my constituents who came to see me not about autonomous vehicles, but about an accident at a bus stop. These things have to be considered and accounted for when drawing up the algorithms that control automated cars—we cannot get away from that. Who will the algorithm protect in such circumstances? That is one of the challenges that came up when autonomous vehicles were being tested in Greenwich. When someone moved a chair and put it in front of the vehicle, the vehicle did not identify it. If it had been a child, the vehicle would have run them over.
We have to accept that we are going into no man’s land by advancing with this technology. We will need to scrutinise its use, which is why it is right that we are looking to set up a panel that will have oversight of this area and advise the Secretary of State. I accept what the Secretary of State has said: if somebody tinkers with the software, clearly they put themselves outside of their insurance policy and will be liable for any accident that occurs as a consequence. However, both I and my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) have mentioned the Horizon scandal. At the heart of that scandal was Fujitsu, which tried to hide the glitches in its software. We cannot run away from the fact that there is a distinct possibility that something like that could happen when we have automated vehicles that are controlled by software. We must have the ability to scrutinise that and to ensure that people can have confidence in what companies say about the software they develop for automated vehicles.
We are told that we will have these vehicles for 20 to 30 years in co-existence with driven vehicles. What is going to happen when accidents occur? I am sure we will be told, as we were told in 2018 with the Automated and Electric Vehicles Act, that insurance companies will pay up, that these matters will be sorted out later and that they have anticipated every circumstance. We hear that time and again with legislation, but its practical application is where we really find out what is going on. When a driven vehicle has a collision with an autonomous vehicle, will the assumption be that the autonomous vehicle is always right, that the driven vehicle must be wrong and that the accident must be due to human error? I am sure I will be told that we have allowed for that in the legislation, but I am also sure that once it is applied on the roads, this will become a big area of contention.
Wera Hobhouse
I am listening very carefully to the hon. Gentleman, and I am thinking about the aviation industry. Aeroplanes are very complicated technologies, yet aviation is one of the safest forms of travel, because each accident is investigated carefully to avoid a similar catastrophe. Does he think that similar structures for investigating accidents should be put in place as a safety mechanism?
Clive Efford
Scrutiny of accidents is going to be important, because we will learn a lot. We can improve safety with this technology—there is no question about that. The question is about the moral argument when accidents do happen and how we choose how vehicles should behave in those circumstances.
A constituent has come to me about a tragic case of a child being killed at a bus stop. A lorry lost control and swerved into the bus stop, and the child could not escape the vehicle and was crushed. It is an absolutely tragic story. My constituent came to see me about designing bus stops to make them safer for people standing at the roadside. Having lost her child in such tragic circumstances, I commend her for her consideration in wanting to improve the situation for others. As it is rolled out, this technology could prevent vehicles from colliding with roadside structures such as bus stops, so I accept that it can improve safety. This is an example of where we might be able to meet my constituent’s desire to improve safety in such circumstances.
This technology will need a great deal of scrutiny. We will learn a lot from the application of this legislation as more and more automated vehicles enter our road network, and an advisory council to consider all aspects of the technology is absolutely necessary.
Clause 2 says that the Secretary of State must consult, but the list is very limited and puts businesses, including those that design the vehicles and draw up the algorithms, in prime position above road user representatives and other concerned individuals. The list needs to be much wider, and there needs to be a statutory body to provide oversight. We are on a steep learning curve and we will learn as we go. I accept that we cannot stand in the way of progress, but we must accept that there are serious safety questions that require answers. An advisory council of the kind that has been recommended is absolutely necessary.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
I thank all Members who have taken part in this debate.
Self-driving vehicles offer an enormous opportunity to this country, with the potential to create a market worth £42 billion by 2035, to create 38,000 new jobs and to improve road safety and connectivity in the long term for all road users. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) said, Labour welcomes and supports the broad principles of the Bill. I pay tribute to the detailed work carried out over four years by the Law Commission to give us confidence about the framework before us.
The UK was leading the charge on self-driving technology in 2018, but since then, China, the US, France and Germany have overtaken us. The Opposition want to encourage innovation in this sector to bring economic and job opportunities to the UK, and to return the UK to its leading role in the development of this technology. Labour’s industrial strategy will do that, as part of our approach to improving the UK’s prospects.
Automated vehicles could remove transport-related obstacles for those living in remote rural communities, those living with a disability and older people by reaching those who are denied access to public transport.
Crucially, automated vehicles have the potential to improve road safety for all. Eighty-eight per cent of road collisions are a result of human error. Research by Axa suggests that 3,900 deaths and 60,000 serious road traffic collisions could be prevented between last year, when it carried out the research, and 2040 through the deployment of automated vehicles. It forecast an 85% reduction in road incidents through the introduction of AV technology, which would in turn benefit the NHS to the tune of £2.3 billion a year in reduced medical and ambulance costs. However, this all requires a proper transition and roll-out from the Government.
I mentioned the importance of safety improvements, and I am pleased that the Government have accepted the need for higher standards in the Bill. My Labour colleagues Lord Tunnicliffe and Lord Liddle deserve particular credit for their work in this crucial area. The Government amendment that referred to “careful and competent” drivers sends a very clear indication to industry, and it rightly puts the highest standard of safety in the Bill. I am also glad that the Government agree that secondary legislation should be considered under the affirmative procedure. The regulations that follow from the Bill should be subject to proper scrutiny over the years as the technology is developed.
A number of concerns that were raised in the Lords remain to be addressed in Committee. The impact on the transport workforce will be crucial in any transition to automation, which is why trade unions have a key part to play. Working with industry and the unions is a key part of a successful industrial strategy, and the unions have much to offer in advising on how to find alternative employment for their members and in ensuring that the economic benefits of new technologies are available to workers, as well as to investors and consumers.
As the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley, said, we have already seen what happens when this Government do not engage with union representatives. We must learn the lessons from deindustrialisation to avoid repeating its mistakes, which have contributed to growing inequality across our country.
We also want to see people with disabilities, pedestrians, cyclists, businesses, emergency services and highway authorities included in the development of this technology. My hon. Friends the Members for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) and for Eltham (Clive Efford) both highlighted the importance of setting up an advisory committee, and I hope they will join me in Committee to revisit this important aspect that should be added to what has already been amended in the Lords.
This brings me to accessibility. This Bill’s framework provides a unique opportunity to support people with disabilities from the outset by, for example, including consultation with disabled road users on the statement of safety principles. In 2019, the Government published their “Future of mobility: urban strategy” which highlighted that one of the potential benefits of supporting self-driving vehicles is making travel more accessible to disabled and older people. The Government know that the Bill should specifically include people with disabilities and older people. It was therefore disappointing that they did not accept Labour’s amendments in the Lords.
I said earlier that the introduction of automated vehicles brings an opportunity to improve safety for all road users, not least pedestrians and cyclists. The Transport Committee’s September 2023 report on self-driving vehicles argues that the introduction of self-driving vehicles
“should not impose new responsibilities on other road users and pedestrians”.
Will the Minister confirm whether he accepts that principle?
Speaking of areas of uncertainty in the Bill, there are other examples of a lack of clarity, which is something that the insurance industry will require. I know that much of this will be addressed in secondary legislation. Access to data is essential to ensuring that the insurance model does not break down on issues such as responsibility for software updates, on liability during transition from automated to “user in charge” and on the Motor Insurers Bureau dealing with cases of uninsured vehicles. Additionally, clarity is required for those injured by an automated vehicle, as they currently have to prove that automated features were engaged in order to claim compensation. My hon. Friend the Member for Eltham made a reasonable point about who will be responsible in the event of an incident and how this can be covered in legislation.
The Transport Committee highlighted the insurance industry’s concerns in its recent report on self-driving vehicles. Uncertainty, and the possibility of endless legal disputes if access to data is not available, risks increasing insurance costs for consumers and deterring growth in the market for automated vehicles, so I look forward to delving further into these questions with the Minister in Committee.
The Bill rightly addresses concerns about false marketing of automated vehicles that have not been authorised. The Government must work with industry to ensure there is a clear communication strategy during the transition to automated vehicles. We have seen what happens when communication is negative, through the approach in the media to the transition to electric vehicles. Whether deliberate or otherwise, the messaging from some, not just in the media, but in government, including the Prime Minister, has delayed the time at which many people will benefit from cheaper private cars, at a cost of £13 billion to drivers. I hope that Ministers will not repeat the same damaging approach in their messaging on the switch to automated vehicles.
Labour welcomes this Bill as it moves through the House. The benefits of automated vehicles are there for all to see, for our economy, through the creation of new jobs and, crucially, through improved road safety and connectivity. There is a good degree of consensus on the implementation of the legislation. If Labour is given the opportunity to serve after the election, with us in the driving seat, we will power ahead and ensure that Britain really can lead on this exciting new technology.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Anthony Browne)
I thank everyone who has contributed to this incredibly enjoyable debate. It is always enjoyable when there is a remarkable degree of consensus across the House. I note that Labour, the Scottish National party and the Liberal Democrats all support this legislation. There was a large degree of consensus on the various issues, with almost everyone who spoke agreeing that this legislation could and should lead to safer roads. We all want to reduce the number of accidents, injuries and deaths on the road.
Various Members from different parts of the country talked about the autonomous vehicle work going on in their constituencies: the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) talked about CAVForth in Scotland; the Chair of the Transport Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), talked about the work in Milton Keynes; and the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) talked about the benefits in Warwick. Various Members also mentioned Wayve in north London, and I know that companies in my constituency are working on this. Getting this industry right really is an example of levelling up. There was also a large degree of consensus that we need to make sure that this technology works for the benefit of vulnerable users. One of the major reasons for it is that it offers huge opportunities for people who are blind, frail and so on and cannot drive.
Lots of useful questions and points were raised. I spent a huge amount of time nodding in violent agreement with what Members from the various Opposition parties were saying, such was the consensus. Many of the points have been covered in the Bill, which I will go through in detail. Various Members mentioned the need for proper accident investigation. We completely agree on that, because it is vital that whenever a self-driving vehicle is involved in an accident, we need to know why the accident happened and whether, for example, it was a result of the software or the algorithm going wrong. We need to learn from any accidents. This is an evolution; we are not going to get the perfect result and this is going to evolve over the coming years and decades. The importance of accident investigation is why we provide in the Bill for an incident investigation function similar to those in other sectors, such as aviation, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse). The Secretary of State will have the power to appoint independent accident investigators, who will find out the root cause and make sure that we all learn the lessons.
Matt Western
I just want to understand this better, because I might have missed something. Is that technology, in essence, like a black box that would be fitted within a vehicle, which those investigators could then access?
Anthony Browne
Absolutely, the accident investigators will have the power to get access to the software and technology so that we understand what went wrong. That is a crucial part of this; we need to understand technically what the cause of any accident is. That is very different from a police investigation into an accident, where they are trying to attribute blame to X, Y or Z but do not need to understand the root cause.
Let me turn to some of the most detailed comments. The shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh), said that the Opposition support this legislation. She talked about the importance of jobs and getting that aspect right. Most speakers talked about the benefits for jobs, with the self-driving sector creating as many as 38,000 new jobs by 2035. A range of new jobs will arise out of this, not just in the companies making self-driving technology, but with conductors on automated services, for example. She worried about the job losses that were coming, as did various other Opposition Members, but they are getting ahead of themselves; those sort of impacts will be a very long way down the line and this is an evolution in the coming years and decades. It is definitely worth thinking about the issue. The SNP spokesman, the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North, asked what will happen to jobs in 50 years’ time, but it is not the purpose of this Bill to deal with the situation in 50 years’ time.
Accessibility is clearly a major issue and we completely agree on it. The Government want to ensure that all parts of society, including people with disabilities, can reap the benefits of self-driving technology. That is why we have anchored our approach in the recommendations put forward by the Law Commissions in their inquiry. Their central conclusion was that our focus should be on gathering evidence and gaining experience, and making sure that this works for disabled people and vulnerable users. The Bill requires that the authority granting a passenger permit must consider how the service will lead to improvement in understanding accessibility. Service providers will then be required to publish regular reports on how they are meeting the needs of disabled and vulnerable users. We are also following the Law Commissions’ recommendation in establishing an accessibility advisory panel to inform the development of national accessibility standards. The Department for Transport already has a statutory disabled users advisory panel.
My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South, the Chair of the Select Committee, raised a large number of points. He made comments about “careful and competent driver” being too weak as a definition. It is an ambition rather than a detail, and that takes us to the whole point about the statement of safety principles. The ambition of making sure that a driver is safe, careful and competent is in the Bill, but the detail of exactly what that means will come through in the statement of safety principles, on which we will consult widely.
The Secretary of State and I had a meeting with a wide range of user groups last week—road user groups, road safety groups and people from the Royal National Institute of Blind People were at the roundtable. We committed to working with them as we go forward on putting together that statement of safety principles. We have also committed in the Bill to consulting a range of different groups, including road user groups, and that could include trade unions. We would very much like to hear from them if they have contributions to make on the different aspects of safety that we will be sorting out. As this is an evolving technology, a lot of what is in the Bill is high level and quite a lot of statutory instruments will fall from it; it is necessary to be flexible. Consulting on developing those SIs will take until 2026, so there is a long time to get a lot of the details right.
My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South also said that he wanted to make sure that drivers have the right level of skills and do not forget how to drive. People being deskilled is a long way off, but he asks the right question and the Government will keep under review whether we need to do anything on that. He also made the point about making sure that MOT tests are kept up to date. We have consulted on the future of those tests, and we will be monitoring that and making sure that they are kept up to date. Most Members, including my hon. Friend, raised the valid point about data and the insurance industry. Thatcham Research, which does the driving safety work for the insurance industry, was at the roundtable that we had last week, and we committed to working with them in the future. They need to know exactly what data they can get access to at the time of an accident. The powers for that are in the Bill. It will be critical to understand whether the vehicle was in self-driving mode at the time—the “no user in charge” mode—or whether a human was driving, as well as the cause of the accident. That point has been well made, but those issues are already addressed in the Bill.
Various hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South, talked about the need to take the public with us; I agree. It is good to debate the subject here and good that there is a political consensus. We will be doing lots of consultation on the subject going forward and will invite everyone’s input. The Government recently launched PAVE, Partners for Automated Vehicle Education. I launched the initiative at the RAC Club a couple of weeks ago and it is supported by the Government. It aims to educate the public about self-driving cars and promote debate about that transport revolution.
The spokesperson for the SNP, the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North, made many very good points. I am not usually in such agreement with the SNP on Government policy. We absolutely need to take the public with us. He asked whether it would be compulsory to have an autonomous vehicle, as he wants to carry on driving. I can confirm to the House that the Government have no plans to ban driving—not now, not ever. He will be entitled to carry on driving if he wishes. Self-driving cars are entirely voluntary.
The hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members raised points about international incidents, including problems with state-level rules in the US and problems that Cruise had in San Francisco. I agree that we need to learn lessons from all the international incidents and that we need strong, clear rules. The whole point of the legislation is to clearly define the legal and regulatory structure, so that we avoid the bad stuff and so that we can learn, improve the system and bring in changes as we need them.
Gavin Newlands
As I alluded to, the Scottish Government have been more than willing to work with the UK Government on the Bill. In fact, they are in complete agreement on many aspects of the Bill, but does the Minister accept that clause 50 is an overstep by the Government yet again? They are overruling legislation defined in the Scottish Parliament, given that Scotland has a separate legal framework.
Anthony Browne
I reassure the hon. Member that we have been in contact with Scottish Government officials about the Bill over many months, including on this issue, and there has been an exchange of letters. The power in clause 50 is limited to making regulations changing or clarifying whether, how or in what circumstances a relevant enactment applies to the user in charge of a vehicle, a concept that the UK Government consider to be reserved. The power can amend devolved enactments only to this limited extent. It cannot be used to amend enactments more broadly or for any other purpose. I am happy to meet the hon. Member if he wants to discuss that further.
On international rules, many hon. Members mentioned the Horizon scandal and whether big tech companies can be trusted. They mentioned the fine Apple has just received from the EU. Those are valid concerns. It is imperative that we go on the journey of developing the technology together, so that there is trust between the Government, the regulators, the public and the companies themselves. That is why we have introduced a duty of candour, legally requiring senior management of the companies to be up front with the Government about any technical problems or changes that could impact safety. We take this so seriously that it is subject to criminal sanctions, including prison sentences of up to 14 years if senior management are completely deceptive about what is happening. The work has to be carried out on the basis of openness. This is not a new idea—we have the same legislation in other industries, such as the pharmaceutical industry, where we need a similar duty of candour about the safety of drugs. We take the issue very seriously.
The Opposition spokespeople and the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington talked about the need for an advisory council. We have committed to consulting on the statement of safety principles, and most of the issues we have discussed are included in that statement. The legislation also includes a duty of monitoring. The Secretary of State will have a legal duty to monitor the development of self-driving autonomous vehicles, including safety issues, and to write a report that every year.
Most of the other issues have been covered already. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!] Hon. Members are very keen to conclude the debate. The hon. Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), who is no longer in his place, said that the legislation should cover delivery robots. I agree with the hon. Member for Bath that this legislation does not provide the time or the place for that. There are many different issues concerning delivery robots that do not fit within the scope of this Bill.
Finally, the hon. Member for Eltham, who was not originally going to speak but decided to give a speech, said we should ensure that all road users benefit from the legislation. There is no algorithm that decides to run over cyclists or children. The whole point of these vehicles is to make roads safer. That will come out through the consultation on the statement of safety principles, but we are already committed to fairness between all road users being at the centre of those principles. Safety has to be for all road users, not just the people within the vehicle.
The debate has been positive and constructive, with a lot of well made points. I look forward to going through the Bill in Committee where we can discuss issues in more detail. With that, I commend the Bill to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time.
Automated Vehicles Bill [Lords]: Programme
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),
That the following provisions shall apply to the Automated Vehicles Bill [Lords]:
Committal
(1) The Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.
Proceedings in Public Bill Committee
(2) Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Thursday 18 April 2024.
(3) The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.
Proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading
(4) Proceedings on Consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are commenced.
(5) Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.
(6) Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading.
Other proceedings
(7) Any other proceedings on the Bill may be programmed.—(Anthony Browne.)
Question agreed to.
Automated Vehicles Bill [Lords]: Money
King’s recommendation signified.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a)),
That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Automated Vehicles Bill [Lords], it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any expenditure incurred under or by virtue of the Act by the Secretary of State.—(Anthony Browne.)
Question agreed to.
Automated Vehicles Bill [Lords]: Ways and Means
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a)),
That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Automated Vehicles Bill [Lords], it is expedient to authorise:
(1) the charging of fees under the Act; and
(2) the payment of sums into the Consolidated Fund.—(Anthony Browne.)
Question agreed to.
Business of the House (Today)
Ordered,
That at this day’s sitting, the Speaker shall put the Questions necessary to dispose of proceedings on
(1) the Motion in the name of Secretary Kemi Badenoch relating to the Shared Parental Leave and Pay (Bereavement) Bill: Instruction not later than 45 minutes after the commencement of proceedings on the Motion for this Order, and
(2) the Motion in the name of Secretary James Cleverly relating to British Citizenship (Northern Ireland) Bill: Instruction not later than 45 minutes after the commencement of proceedings on that Motion;
such Questions shall include the Questions on any Amendments selected by the Speaker which may then be moved; proceedings on those Motions may continue, though opposed, after the moment of interruption; and Standing Order No. 41A (Deferred divisions) shall not apply to those motions or to the motion in the name of Nigel Huddleston relating to High Streets (Designation, Review and Improvement Plan) Bill: Money.—(Penny Mordaunt.)
Automated Vehicles Bill [ Lords ] (Second sitting)
Tuesday 19th March 2024
(1 month, 1 week ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Automated Vehicles Bill [HL] 2023-24 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 19 March 2024 - (19 Mar 2024)
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 10 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chair
Before I call Gavin Newlands, who was in the middle of moving amendment 9 when the Committee adjourned this morning, I remind the Committee that with this we are discussing the following:
Amendment 7, in clause 50, page 33, line 22, at end insert—
“(4) The Secretary of State must obtain and lay before Parliament the written consent of the Scottish Government to make regulations under this section which amend—
(a) an Act of the Scottish Parliament,
(b) any instrument made under an Act of the Scottish Parliament.
(5) The Secretary of State must obtain and lay before Parliament the written consent of the Welsh Government to make regulations under this section which amend—
(a) an Act or Measure of Senedd Cymru,
(b) any instrument made under an Act or Measure of Senedd Cymru.”
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to obtain the consent of devolved governments before exercising the Clause 50 power in relation to devolved legislation.
Amendment 8, in clause 50, page 33, line 22, at end insert—
“(4) The Scottish Government may, by regulations, make provision for the purpose of changing or clarifying whether, how or in what circumstances an Act of the Scottish Parliament or any instrument made under an Act of the Scottish Parliament applies to the user-in-charge of a vehicle.
(5) The Welsh Government may, by regulations, make provision for the purpose of changing or clarifying whether, how or in what circumstances an Act or Measure of Senedd Cymru or any instrument made under an Act or Measure of Senedd Cymru applies to the user-in-charge of a vehicle.”
This amendment would extend the Clause 50 power to ministers of the devolved administrations.
Clause stand part.
Gavin Newlands
Thank you, Sir George. You say “in the middle”—I had barely started my remarks. [Laughter.] Thankfully, despite the rude interruption of Question Time and lunch, I have been able to add to them, including some quotes from the Cabinet Secretary for Transport. I thank my Transport Committee colleague, the hon. Member for Easington, for his help with that.
I was talking about working across borders, which undoubtedly makes good sense on issues like this, but as it stands clause 50 is not working across borders. It will mean government by diktat and by statutory instrument, rather than the democratic procedures that have been in place for nearly a quarter of a century.
I mentioned earlier that the UK Government have moved the goalposts on this issue. The policy scoping notes clearly state:
“Any future proposals to amend existing primary legislation will be subject to consultation with representative organisations before being laid before both Houses of Parliament (and/or the Senedd Cymru and Scottish Parliament, insofar as the regulations amend any act of the Senedd Cymru or the Scottish Parliament respectively).”
But the UK Government’s delegated powers memorandum states:
“The affirmative procedure will ensure that Parliament (as well as the Scottish Parliament and Senedd Cymru, where Scottish or Welsh legislation is amended) can closely scrutinise any regulations changing or clarifying how existing primary legislation applies to the user-in-charge.”
Obviously, there is no provision for scrutiny by the Scottish Parliament in the final Bill, but, as I said, the prior commitment means that it is not the SNP or rogue Scottish Government officials pushing the envelope and insisting on consultation and consent; rather, it is the UK Government reneging on their commitment to do so.
The Cabinet Secretary for Transport made it clear at the Scottish Parliament’s Net Zero, Energy and Transport Committee just this morning, as I have alluded to a number of times, that there are
“things that relate to offences under devolved legislation and offences that would be part of devolved areas, these are the areas that the provision would allow the UK Government to legislate on or make provision for in the future… we think it’s a genuine issue of concern.”
I would welcome the Minister addressing those concerns and committing to meeting the Cabinet Secretary for Transport at Holyrood to ensure that the broad co-operation on the rest of the Bill is continued in the wording of clause 50. When he responds, perhaps he could list the Acts that relate to transport in Scotland that might be impacted.
Amendment 9 would ensure that the term “relevant enactment” cannot apply to
“an instrument made under an Act of the Scottish Parliament”,
“an Act or Measure of Senedd Cymru”
or
“an instrument made under an Act or Measure of Senedd Cymru”.
In doing so, it removes the Secretary of State’s power to unilaterally amend Scottish primary legislation in respect of automated vehicles. Amendment 7 would require the Secretary of State to obtain the consent of devolved Governments before exercising the clause 50 power in relation to devolved legislation. Amendment 8 would extend the clause 50 power to Ministers of the devolved Administrations.
I will not bore the Committee by reading them out, but our amendments seek to remove this Henry VIII power entirely as it relates to Scottish or Welsh legislation, to add a requirement to seek a legislative consent motion from Holyrood or the Senedd, or to extend the same powers to the appropriate Scottish and Welsh Ministers. If this Government truly were looking to work in co-operation, they surely should not have a problem agreeing to look at this issue, but thus far they have shown no real inclination or desire to compromise on this fundamental point. I urge the Minister to accept the amendments in my name—or one of them, at least —and respect devolution and the elected Governments of Scotland and Wales and our judgment in making laws that best suit our countries.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
It is a real delight to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Sir George. I rise briefly to support what the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North said about the important role of the devolved Administrations. He referenced the role of the Scottish Law Commission—and indeed the Law Commissions from all the nations of the United Kingdom —and its important work in producing this framework for the introduction of automated vehicles. He is quite right that the principle of consent on devolved competencies applies in this legislation, and I am very pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Easington read out the relevant reference in the explanatory notes. The Government would not normally legislate on matters of devolved competence without that consent, and for that reason I think that the three amendments tabled by hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North deserve support. We will vote with him if he chooses to go for a Division.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Anthony Browne)
Before I come to the amendments, I want to set out some of the background of clause 50 and why we think it is significant. This is all about the user in charge, which is a new legal concept that did not exist when existing traffic laws were drafted. Those laws come in a wide variety of formats and language, from traffic regulation orders to motorway regulations. The power in clause 50 can be used to clarify what is and is not the responsibility of the user in charge in particular enactments—what the user in charge, when a vehicle is in self-driving mode, is responsible for. That is vital to support clear public understanding of the division of responsibility and to make adjustments based on experiences from real-world deployments.
Clause 50 will also allow us to respond to technological changes; as self-driving technology improves, it may become appropriate to shift greater responsibility away from the user in charge. For example, in future, vehicles may be better placed to assess their own roadworthiness than the human in the driving seat. Crucially, the clause does not provide carte blanche for the Government to alter traffic legislation generally. It can only affect the scope of the responsibility of the user in charge, and it is limited to them.
That brings me to the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North. I want to say at the outset that I completely respect devolution and the role of the devolved Administrations, and there is nothing in this legislation that is meant to change that balance at all. As he knows, there have been quite a lot of talks at the official level. I have had an exchange of letters with the Cabinet Secretary for Transport and, to answer the hon. Gentleman’s question, I am very happy to meet and discuss a way forward—hopefully there will be one.
The Government consider the user-in-charge immunity to be a reserved matter. That is because the Bill gets it authority from the Road Traffic Act 1988, and that is expressly reserved under the Scotland Act 1998. Clause 50 will predominantly affect the application of reserved traffic offences. There is a limited range of devolved legislation in this area, and the immunity will have only minor incidental impact on that legislation—it is very incidental.
More generally, public understanding and confidence will be key to realising the benefits of self-driving vehicles. It is vital that we have clarity and consistency across Great Britain about how these vehicles can be used and what individual responsibilities there are. I am interested to know the position of the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North and the Scottish Government on that. We think that the first recommendation of the Scottish Law Commission, and of the Law Commission for England and Wales, was that as the public would not be able to understand different and partial immunities based on distinctions between devolved and reserved laws in different parts of the country, there should be the same rules for user-in-charge immunity when crossing the border from Scotland to England, so that drivers do not unintentionally break a law as they do so.
Gavin Newlands
The Minister is making a point that is central to the Government’s argument, but we have devolution. We already have different rules in Scotland, such as on blood alcohol levels in drink-driving. The clause could perhaps lead to different tiers of parking fines or bus lane infringements between automated and regular cars, because the Scottish Government saw fit to have a different level of fine for a regularly driven car, as opposed to a user in charge. That is a fairly minor example, but there are a number where there could be differences across the UK without co-operation. It already happens.
Anthony Browne
Absolutely, and that is why there is some devolved legislation in this area, but we think it is important that, when someone is using a self-driving car in user-in-charge mode, they do not unintentionally break the law by crossing from one side of the border to the other because there are different applications of the law just within the user-in-charge mode.
Gavin Newlands
To go back to my example of the different drink-driving rules, there could be somebody in a pub just south of the border whose route home takes him across the border into Scotland. He could be within the law with 70 mg of blood in his alcohol—no, the other way around; that is another board game entirely! He could be within the law with 70 mg of alcohol in his blood south of the border but, by driving over the border, he would be driving illegally in Scotland. That inconsistency already exists, so I do not understand why the Minister wants to fix the problem in this legislation and on this specific issue. Devolution is there for a reason.
Anthony Browne
As I said, this was discussed at considerable length by the Scottish Law Commission and the Law Commission of England and Wales. They thought that understanding of user-in-charge mode and immunity would be very difficult to get across to the public if the rules varied as they drove around Great Britain. The Government agree that it is good to have consistency on these rules. The interaction on devolved matters is incidental and very limited. It is only about immunity for the user-in-charge mode; it does not apply to anything else, such as the volume of alcohol in someone’s blood as they drive across the border. We think it would create confusion and that would be detrimental to all.
Ultimately, we absolutely respect devolution. We do not support the amendments, because we think they would cause confusion and detriment, but I am very happy to meet both the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North—I said that on Second Reading; unfortunately, we did not manage to arrange a meeting before Committee stage—and the Cabinet Secretary for Transport so that we can work out a way forward.
Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir George. I wonder if the Minister can clarify something, because it is not just on the Opposition side of the Committee that there are concerns about the use of delegated powers by the Secretary of State. Indeed, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee produced a report that identified clause 50 as an example of a Henry VIII power, so is it unreasonable to seek an assurance from the Minister? I served on the High Speed Rail (Crewe - Manchester) Bill Committee with Mr Vickers, who chaired this morning’s sitting, and we regularly sought assurances or undertakings. There is a difference. A statutory undertaking would probably be in the Bill about a particular action, but the Minister gave an assurance to my colleague the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North earlier that there would be the necessary consultations with the devolved Administrations. In what circumstances would these powers be used in the event that there was no agreement about a particular measure in relation to the user in charge?
Anthony Browne
On the first part of the hon. Gentleman’s question, the reason for these powers is that there are thousands of different traffic offences, and they are all designed for cars with a human driver who is responsible. In moving to user-in-charge mode, we are making sure that the user in charge has immunity of some form, because it is the software that is in control of the car, not them. If we did not do it this way, we would have to change thousands of pieces of legislation. That simply would not be possible, and it would not be possible to go ahead with user-in-charge-mode immunity.
Grahame Morris
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way again; it is important to clarify this. That seems absolutely reasonable, but why can he and his Department not have these discussions with their counterparts in the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Executive in advance? Why does the measure have to be imposed as a Henry VIII power and then subsequently consulted on? That is not consultation, is it? I do not know what to call it. It is an—
Anthony Browne
As I said at the beginning, we think the question of the user-in-charge immunity—and this is all it is about—is a reserved matter under the Scotland Act 1998. That is our position and our legal advice— I have been through this with lawyers a few times. We respect devolution and do not want to create any changes to the balance there. The hon. Member for Easington asked why we had not talked to the Scottish Government, but we have. Officials have had lots of talks, I have had exchanges of letters, and I have already given a commitment that I am very happy to meet the Cabinet Secretary for Transport to go through this in more detail.
Gavin Newlands
Essentially, the Minister is asking the Scottish Government and the Welsh Senedd to trust the Government. Over the last few years, the trust between this Government and the Scottish Parliament has been eroded, with multiple challenges by the UK Government to devolved legislation. I have all the respect in the world for the Minister, but is it not unfortunate that, given we are talking about respect for devolution, we could not get a meeting on the clause 50 issue before we got to Committee stage? It was supposed to be set for Thursday, but here we are on Tuesday afternoon disposing of the clause anyway. It is unfortunate that we could not get that meeting, which does not bode well for respect for devolution.
Anthony Browne
I am sorry we have not managed to get that meeting in. We will get it in the diary.
Anthony Browne
It is definitely an undertaking. I will not bore the Committee with my diary details, but take it as read that we will get that in.
I am absolutely not asking the Committee to just trust me and the Government, or whoever is in my or the Secretary of State’s position in the future, but it is clear from the clause that the power is reserved purely to the user-in-charge immunity, which is part of this Bill and, as a result, we think is a reserved matter.
As I said—I am just repeating myself—I am very happy to meet the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North and the Cabinet Secretary for Transport to look for a way forward, but we do not support the amendments as they stand.
Gavin Newlands
I am grateful for the Minister’s response. I am not overly surprised by much he has said. I look forward to that meeting. I am grateful for Labour’s support on this issue. I will not press amendments 7 and 8 to a vote, but I will seek one on amendment 9.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 15, in clause 61, page 44, line 2, leave out from the third “of” to the end of line 4 and insert “—
(a) identifying, improving understanding of, and reducing the risks of harm arising from the use of authorised automated vehicles on roads in Great Britain; and
(b) assessing the accessibility of automated vehicles authorised under section 3.”
This amendment would extend the purpose of automated vehicle inspectors to include assessment of automated vehicle accessibility.
Clauses 61 and 72 stand part.
Simon Lightwood (Wakefield) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir George. Amendment 15, which I tabled with my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central, seeks to make a specific obligation on inspectors to ensure that they assess the accessibility of automated vehicles when investigating incidents. Part 3, chapter 2 sets out the role of inspectors to identify, improve the understanding of and reduce the risks of harm arising from the use of authorised automated vehicles. Currently, clause 62 states that the incident can be
“not of a kind specified in regulations made by the Secretary of State”,
suggesting that inspectors have discretion to investigate a wide range of incidents. The amendment would ensure consistency of inspectors in assessing the accessibility of a vehicle.
Gaining information on the accessibility of AVs is intrinsic to improving the understanding of and reducing the risks of harm involving AVs for disabled users and other disabled road users. We believe AVs present a fantastic opportunity for disabled people, so we must ensure that it is fully realised and grasped. Disabled people currently take 38% fewer journeys than non-disabled people.
Anthony Browne
I will mention the role of the investigators before commenting on the amendment. Clause 60 introduces the concept of investigation of incidents by statutory inspectors, which will allow for the creation of independent capability to investigate incidents involving authorised automated vehicles. The clause requires the Secretary of State to appoint at least one person to be an inspector of automated vehicle incidents. Clause 61 then states that the role of those inspectors is
“identifying, improving understanding of, and reducing the risks of harm arising from the use of”
self-driving vehicles in Great Britain.
Like the existing UK transport investigation branches for air and maritime, the inspectors will conduct safety investigations into incidents involving at least one authorised self-driving vehicle. It will not be their role to apportion blame or liability; instead, they will draw on all the available evidence to publish reports and recommendations that ultimately improve the safety of self-driving vehicles, in line with recommendation 32 of the Law Commission’s report. I stress that their role is analogous to those in other sectors such as air and maritime.
That brings me to amendment 15. I should say at the outset that we are very committed to ensuring maximum accessibility for different user groups—that is part of the reason for introducing this legislation to start with. Many of the points that need to be made are in clause 82, to which the Opposition have tabled an amendment. I will address those questions in more detail when we come on to that clause.
I recognise the importance of accessibility, but I do not believe that the amendment is necessary, or that this is the right place to ensure greater accessibility. While inspectors will identify the causes of incidents, which could include issues around the accessibility of the vehicle, it is not their purpose to replace vehicle safety inspections or to ensure that vehicle safety is in line with accessibility requirements. Safety investigation is a long-standing practice, both in the UK and internationally, and under no circumstances would we wish to break precedent by adding to an inspector’s role in such a way.
Grahame Morris
I seek clarification on a couple of issues in support of my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield. I am not sure whether the Minister gave us this assurance in his remarks, so can he confirm whether the inspectorate will in due course become part of the road safety investigation branch that the Government committed to setting up in June 2022, when the Law Commission first looked into this, to prevent future incidents and make our roads safer?
Clearly, this is an evolving technology; this morning, the hon. Member for Copeland mentioned advanced driver assistance systems such as adaptive cruise control, lane-changing features and parking assist, which assist the driver but do not enable the vehicle to drive itself. Those features are in effect earlier versions of this evolving technology, which we believe will lead to autonomous self-driving vehicles. While those ADAS features are not automated, it is essential, in any investigation following an accident, that potential pitfalls—I can think of a number, particularly in parking—are identified at an early stage, in case it is a software or system failure that could be corrected. Can the Minister tell the Committee whether the inspectorate will look at accidents involving advanced driver assistance systems, as well as self-driving vehicles, at this stage?
The Chair
Before I bring in the mover of the amendment, does the Minister wish to respond?
Anthony Browne
I will respond very quickly to a number of points. The difference between a self-driving car or automated vehicle and a vehicle that is not is specified right at the beginning of clause 1. This legislation is all about self-driving cars: it is not about all the other variants on driverless systems. As I stated, the independent inspection regime that we are setting up—we call it a capability—is just for where one self-driving, automated vehicle is involved, not for other forms. This is not the right place to legislate for a road safety inspection branch, whatever the arguments for and against that are. We say in the legislation that we call it a capability because the organisational structure is not set out in the legislation and needs to be decided in the future.
Gavin Newlands
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way and for his dexterity in doing so. In terms of how the legislation will work, with the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and other pan-UK inspection regimes, any offences are reported to the relevant police force. If inspectors found any evidence of issues that needed reporting, would it be reported to the Procurator Fiscal if it was in Scotland? How will that operate on the ground in terms of enforcement?
Anthony Browne
As I said at the beginning, the role of the inspectors is not to assign liability, blame or whatever else; it is to find out what actually happened in detail to ensure that it does not happen again. On the hon. Gentleman’s specific question, I do not think that that has been decided, but I will write to him.
Simon Lightwood
It is important that disability is considered at every possible opportunity. This technology has the capacity to increase the number of journeys for disabled individuals, but getting it wrong could force that to go in the opposite direction. However, I will not press my amendment to a vote.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 60 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 61 to 66 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 4 agreed to.
Clauses 67 to 81 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 5 agreed to.
Clause 82
Power to grant permits
Simon Lightwood
I beg to move amendment 10, in clause 82, page 58, line 11, at end insert—
“(5A) A permit may only be granted if the service meets all relevant standards issued by the appropriate national authority relating to the provision of information to users in an accessible format through regulations.”
This amendment would require automated vehicles to meet relevant accessibility standards before being granted a permit to provide automated passenger services.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clause stand part.
Clauses 83 and 84 stand part.
Schedule 6.
Simon Lightwood
The amendment would require automated vehicles to meet certain standards of accessibility, specifically in respect of the provision of information to users in vehicles, before being granted a permit to provide automated passenger services. The amendment sets out that this will take place by way of regulations to require a threshold of standards for the purposes of accessibility.
How the technology covered by the Bill will develop and be used over time is a great unknown, and it is vital that accessibility exists for disabled people so that they can benefit from it too. Disabled people are mentioned only in clause 87, which lacks detail. We need clear and consistent accessibility standards for the technology so that, for instance, those with sight loss can still utilise it.
As I mentioned, we currently have a substantial gap in our transport network, with 38% fewer trips taken by disabled people compared with those without disabilities. We are clear that disability and advocacy groups must be consulted from the very beginning, and that makes an advisory council even more vital. Guide Dogs is clear that AVs can unlock independence for those with sight loss, but vehicles must be safe when it comes to interacting with pedestrians and passengers.
Grahame Morris
I want to reinforce those points to the Minister. He is a reasonable person and I am sure he gets this, given that we have raised the issues of access and the rights of people with disabilities on several occasions now.
I remind the Minister—I am sure he remembers—that the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association ran a successful campaign to contact many MPs about the value of talking buses. I did an exercise in which I wore a blindfold. It is incredible—I thought I knew the route, but I struggled without that aid. There are other examples. We should not overlook the need to ensure that people with sight loss are catered for in the provisions on this new and exciting technology.
Anthony Browne
Before I address the amendment, I will set out a bit of background. The existing law on taxi, private hire and public service vehicle licensing is predicated on having a professional driver in the vehicle, which makes the application of the current licensing laws to automated passenger services complex and uncertain. Recognising this uncertainty, the Law Commissions recommended the creation of an alternative, bespoke permitting system for passenger services.
Holders of valid automated passenger service permits will, then, not be subject to existing taxi, private hire and public service vehicle law when operating within the terms of their permit. Permits will be issued by the appropriate national authorities: the Secretary of State in England and relevant Ministers in devolved Administrations. The Bill therefore provides broad flexibility over the terms of passenger permits to ensure that we can respond appropriately.
That brings me to the hon. Member for Wakefield’s amendment. The permit system already allows us to mandate that such information be provided to users in accessible formats. That power is already there and we have already committed—I know the hon. Gentleman will come to this in a moment—to having an advisory council of accessibility and disabled groups for public service vehicles and taxis. Crucially, as permit conditions can be specific to the service in question, the existing system operates in a way that is more flexible than the approach proposed in the amendment. For example, the provision for bus-like services could be very different from that for taxi-like services. We want to retain that flexibility.
The amendment is not necessary because the power is already there. We already have a consultation on an advisory board for disabled and accessibility groups. Part of the reason for the legislation is that it improves accessibility for a whole range of different user groups, and we are committed to doing that.
Simon Lightwood
It is disappointing that the Government are once again not grasping this. There are real opportunities here for disabled people, but also real risks that the technology could pose for disabled people in their interactions with the environment. To be clear, the amendment does not advocate that AVs become public service vehicles. Our aim is that they vehicles should be accessible to use if they have that use case. Nevertheless, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 82 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 83 and 84 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 6 agreed to.
Clause 85
Consent requirement for services resembling taxis or private hire vehicles
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to consider the following:
Clauses 86 and 87 stand part.
New clause 2—Accessibility information for passengers in automated vehicles—
“After section 181D of the Equality Act 2010, insert—
‘Chapter 2B
AUTOMATED VEHICLES PROVIDING AUTOMATED PASSENGER SERVICES
181E Information for passengers in automated passenger services
(1) The Secretary of State may, for the purpose of facilitating travel by disabled persons, make regulations requiring providers or operators of automated passenger services to make available information about a service to persons travelling on the service.
(2) The regulations may make provision about—
(a) the descriptions of information that are to be made available;
(b) how information is to be made available.
(3) The regulations may, in particular, require a provider or operator of an automated passenger service to make available information of a prescribed description about—
(a) the name or other designation of the service;
(b) the direction of travel;
(c) stopping places;
(d) diversions;
(e) connecting local services.
(4) The regulations may, in particular—
(a) specify when information of a prescribed description is to be made available;
(b) specify how information of a prescribed description is to be made available, including requiring information to be both announced and displayed;
(c) specify standards for the provision of information, including standards based on an announcement being audible or a display being visible to a person of a prescribed description in a prescribed location;
(d) specify forms of communication that are not to be regarded as satisfying a requirement to make information available.
(5) Regulations under this section may make different provision—
(a) as respects different descriptions of vehicle;
(b) as respects the same description of vehicle in different circumstances.
(6) Before making regulations under this section, the Secretary of State must consult—
(a) the Welsh Ministers;
(b) the Scottish Ministers.’”
This new clause mirrors existing provisions in the Equality Act 2010 relating to the provision of information in accessible formats to bus passengers, and applies them to automated passenger services.
Simon Lightwood
New clause 2, tabled in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central, sets out that the accessible format of AVs being used as public transport will be set out in regulations. That would bring AVs in line with section 17 of the Bus Services Act 2017. It is similar to amendment 10 but has a wider scope. The requirement to consult with Welsh and Scottish Ministers would increase the transparency of the regulations to allow for proper scrutiny.
As I mentioned in the previous debate, we do not know what this technology is going to be used for or exactly how it is going to develop. We need to ensure that it will be accessible to disabled people no matter what the use case. Again, as I mentioned when speaking to amendment 10, disabled people are mentioned only in clause 87. That makes the Bill nowhere near clear or detailed enough.
For people with sight loss who use passenger services, both identifying and reaching a vehicle at the start of a journey and leaving it and making their way to a destination at the end of a journey can be difficult, even with a human driver to assist. It is important to reiterate that, as with amendment 10, there needs to be a clear and consistent standard for AVs when they are used as public transport, to make their location clear to passengers with sight loss when they make a pick-up—for example, with an audible signal. They should also be equipped to provide clear directions to get a passenger from a vehicle to their destination. During the journey there may be instances when a passenger needs to give further input to the automated driving system or remote operator. For instance, if a vehicle is delayed or diverted, a passenger may be asked whether they wish to continue their journey or stop at an alternative destination. The information must be presented in an accessible format that does not require the visual cues of a map or sight of the situation outside a vehicle to respond to.
As I mentioned when speaking to amendment 10, the UK currently has a 38% accessibility transport gap, which means that disabled people as defined under the Equality Act 2010 take 38% fewer trips than those without disabilities. That is linked to the point about disability groups being embedded in the process and consulted from the start, not only in respect of the statement of safety principles but throughout the Bill’s implementation and the establishment of an advisory council.
Grahame Morris
I rise to speak to clause 85 and new clause 2. My understanding of the explanatory notes in respect of clause 85 is that automated passenger services that resemble a taxi would have to obtain a relevant local taxi licence. I hope that that is correct.
Grahame Morris
I agree with that; I do not have a problem with it. However, one of the issues raised this morning, which the Minister indicated was outside the scope of the Bill but in hand, related to licensing schemes for non-road vehicles such as delivery robots. I believe they operate in the Minister’s local area, and they certainly operate in Milton Keynes. They are very popular, but we are talking about people with disabilities. As the robots are more widely deployed, there is a risk of them causing obstruction or injury if the Government do not address the issue. I know that is outside the scope of the Bill, but I want to flag it, because it is one of the issues that disability groups including the Royal National Institute of Blind People have raised with us.
There are several different scenarios in relation to new clause 2 in which autonomous vehicles can be used—from operating similarly to a taxi, which is what clause 85 is about, to operating a shared service such as a bus. In both cases, information concerning delays or diversions, when the passengers may wish to continue journeys or stop at alternative destinations, must be presented in an accessible format. On that, I support my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield, who made precisely the same points.
Normally there are a number of assessments with the explanatory notes. Has there been a disability impact assessment of the Bill’s implications? Have I missed that? Is this another occasion on which the Minister might indulge the Committee with an undertaking or an assurance that the issues relating to providing information to passengers, particularly those with disabilities and sight impairment, have not been forgotten by Government? Does he agree that people with disabilities should not be disadvantaged or excluded from this exciting new technology?
Anthony Browne
I reiterate what I said earlier: accessibility is incredibly important. That is the whole point of this legislation and why it contains clause 87. We already have the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee, which we consult on these matters. We have agreed to set up an accessibility panel of groups for automated passenger services. We have already met some disability groups—Guide Dogs UK was consulted by the Law Commission during the development of the legislation—so groups representing disabled people have been and will continue to be heavily involved.
Our concern is to ensure that we do not create a system that is too rigid, with inappropriate requirements that do not actually work in the best interests of people with accessibility needs. As the hon. Member for Wakefield said, we do not know quite how the commercial offerings will evolve, which is why we need to ensure that we are flexible. That is why the Law Commission stated explicitly that our focus at this stage should be on gathering evidence and facilitating learning.
Clause 87 requires that the accessibility needs of older and disabled passengers must be considered before a permit is issued by the permitting authorities. It also requires that specific consideration be given to whether the service is likely to improve the understanding of how to meet the needs of older and disabled users. Permit holders are then required to publish reports on the steps taken to provide accessible services. All this information will feed back into permit conditions, allowing us to set the right accessibility requirements in the right context for the benefit of learning from real-world use cases.
Gavin Newlands
I do not know the answer to this, so it is not some attempt at a “gotcha” question. In addition to any regular service running in the UK that the regulations would seek to cover, there is the CAVForth bus over the Forth road bridge between Fife and Edinburgh. Does the Minister know whether the service and the information available on board would meet the criteria under subsections (3) and (4) of the new clause? I do not expect the Minister to know the full answer at this time, but I would be interested to know what level of information we are currently giving on that pilot service. If he does not have the answer, will he write to us?
Anthony Browne
I understand that there is actually a bus captain on CAVForth—a person who can deal directly with passengers and help them. That is part of the point I was making about being flexible, as we do not know how self-driving buses or taxis will operate. Self-driving taxis would not have a human being in them, so their disability requirements would clearly be different from those for taxis with people in them. We are on a learning curve about the best way to make all automated services accessible for people, which is why we have focused on gathering evidence and requiring accessibility to be included in permitting systems, but are not trying to set in stone, in primary legislation, exactly what those accessibility requirements should be. I do not know the specific requirements of CAVForth off the top of my head, but I can write to the hon. Gentleman on that point.
New clause 2 is unnecessary: pretty much all the provisions are in there and it is too rigid. We need to have a more flexible approach to ensure that the provision is optimal for disabled passengers and right for their needs in the different use cases.
Simon Lightwood
It is a great shame that the Government have, on three occasions now, failed to grasp the opportunities presented by our amendments to fully realise the potential of AV vehicles and to mitigate the risks presented to disabled people. At the appropriate time, we will wish to push new clause 2 to a vote.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 85 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 86 to 92 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 93
Provision of information about traffic regulation measures
Anthony Browne
I beg to move amendment 2, in clause 93, page 67, line 17, at end insert
“for an area in England”.
This amendment is consequential on Amendment 3.
Anthony Browne
One of the Bill’s provisions is about the digitisation of traffic regulation orders. I will not speak to that power, other than to say that the Bill gives the power to the Secretary of State to do that in England. Consultation with Ministers in the Welsh Government has confirmed that they would like similar powers. These minor amendments grant Welsh Ministers those powers. The amendments are entirely uncontroversial.
Amendment 2 agreed to.
Amendments made: 3, in clause 93, page 67, line 17, at end insert—
“(1A) The Welsh Ministers may by regulations make provision requiring a traffic regulation authority to provide prescribed information about a relevant traffic regulation measure for an area in Wales.”.
This amendment extends the power in clause 93 to the Welsh Ministers in relation to traffic regulation measures in Wales.
Amendment 4, in clause 93, page 67, line 20, leave out
“for an area in England”.
This amendment is consequential on Amendment 3.
Amendment 5, in clause 93, page 67, line 34, leave out “Secretary of State” and insert “person making them”.—(Anthony Browne.)
This amendment is consequential on Amendment 3.
Question proposed, That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.
Grahame Morris
My understanding is that the clause empowers the Secretary of State to require traffic regulation authorities to digitise traffic regulation orders and notices. The Minister explained this morning why that was so important, and it is set out in the supporting documentation. It is obviously vital for automated vehicles to be able to follow traffic rules, but this measure will have much wider benefits—for sat navs, for example, and for the ability of highway authorities to manage the signage and markings essential for communicating the regulations, such as temporary lane closures, road markings and changes to existing regulations.
Could the Minister explain one aspect? We discussed it just after lunch. The provision will not extend to Scotland and Wales, so how will it work when automated vehicles drive across the border? Can he guarantee that drivers will be informed, by some method, of the most up-to-date traffic regulations, so that they do not inadvertently break the law?
Anthony Browne
The legislation gives power to the Secretary of State to require the digitisation; the exact method of digitisation will be through a digital platform that the Department for Transport is currently building. I think we would all agree with the hon. Member that it should be as widely available as possible, to bring maximum benefits to all types of road users, not just self-driving cars. I believe the Government have spoken about that before. The amendments we just agreed extend the powers to Wales. I can write to the hon. Member about the situation in Scotland.
Gavin Newlands
You have pre-empted my effort to get to my feet, Sir George. Essentially, the power is devolved to local authorities in Scotland. I have no doubt that, unlike with clause 50, there will be co-operation across and between the Governments on this issue. Hopefully, driving across the border will be seamless when it comes to data—in fact, information will probably be better when the border is crossed. Perhaps the issue is not covered because a devolved function is involved, although that does not usually stop the Government from trying. I am sure it will all work out in the end.
Anthony Browne
I have nothing to add. I commend the clause to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 93, as amended, accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 94 to 99 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 100
Short title
Amendment made: 6, in clause 100, page 71, line 20, leave out subsection (2).—(Anthony Browne.)
This amendment removes the privilege amendment made in the Lords.
Clause 100, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
New Clause 1
Advisory Council
“(1) Within six months of the passing of this Act the Secretary of State must establish a council to advise on the implementation of this Act and on the introduction of automated vehicles.
(2) The Advisory Council must consist of members appearing to the Secretary of State to represent—
(a) the interests of road users, including drivers, pedestrians and cyclists;
(b) the cause of road safety;
(c) the study of road safety;
(d) the cause of accessibility, and the impact of the introduction of automated vehicles on disabled people;
(e) trade unions, including Scottish and Welsh trade union representatives;
(f) the interests of relevant employees including delivery providers, those involved or likely to be involved in the manufacture of automated vehicles, emergency service workers, and public transport workers;
(g) businesses involved, or likely to be involved in, the manufacture, operation and insurance of automated vehicles;
(h) the emergency services, including Scottish and Welsh emergency services;
(i) highway authorities, including Scottish and Welsh highway authorities; and
(j) any other issues, causes or organisations as the Secretary of State sees fit.
(3) The Advisory Council must include nominated representatives of the Scottish Government and the Welsh Government.
(4) The Secretary of State must designate a relevant officer of the Department to send reports to the Advisory Council on the introduction of automated vehicles and any issues of public policy that arise.
(5) The Advisory Council must report regularly to—
(a) Parliament,
(b) the Scottish Parliament,
(c) Senedd Cymru
on the advice it has provided to the Secretary of State, and on any other related matters relevant to the roll out of automated vehicles and associated public policy.”—(Gavin Newlands.)
This new clause would require the Government to establish an advisory council, made up of specified representatives, on the implementation of this Act and on the introduction of automated vehicles.
Brought up, and read the First time.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to consider new clause 3—Establishment of an Advisory Council—
“(1) The Secretary of State must, within six months of the passing of this Act, establish a council to advise on the implementation of this Act, with a focus on learning lessons from any accidents involving automated vehicles.
(2) The Advisory Council must include representatives from—
(a) consumer groups;
(b) organisations representing drivers;
(c) road safety experts;
(d) relevant businesses such as automobile manufacturers, vehicle insurance providers and providers of delivery and public transport services;
(e) trade unions;
(f) the police and other emergency services;
(g) highway authorities;
(h) groups representing people with disabilities; and
(i) groups representing other road users, including pedestrians and cyclists.
(3) The Secretary of State must designate a relevant officer of the Department to send reports to the Advisory Council on the roll out of self driving vehicles and any issues of public policy that arise.
(4) The Advisory Council must report regularly to Parliament on the advice it has provided, and any related matters relevant to the roll out of self driving vehicles and associated public policy.”
Gavin Newlands
Thank goodness I am prepared, because never in my wildest dreams did I think that we would get on to new clauses today. I rise to speak to new clause 1. I should say that it is my daughter’s birthday today. She said, “Daddy, all I want for my birthday is for you to get the Government to accept your new clause in Committee.” How could they refuse? This is the Minister’s last chance to do that for me. To be honest, she is 14 and has not called me daddy for about a decade; she will kill me for saying that just now. But this is the last chance. I never understand it when Ministers agree wholeheartedly with an amendment then refuse to accept it. I mean no offence to the current Minister—I have sat on God knows how many Bill Committees over the years, and I do not understand why that happens in every Bill Committee I have ever sat on.
I return to new clause 1 before you call me to order, Sir George. I pay tribute to Lord Liddle for moving a version of the new clause in the House of Lords on Report. I equally support new clause 3, which is obviously very similar and which the Labour Front Bencher will speak to in a moment. The only real difference between the two new clauses is that there is no real reference to the devolved institutions in the Labour version, but there is in ours. However, I will certainly support new clause 3 if it goes to a vote.
Our new clause seeks to maintain a broad principle, enshrining an advisory council in statute while expanding the range of organisations to be included in the council to the devolved Administrations and ensuring that Scottish and Welsh trade unions and emergency services are part of it as well.
As has been mentioned a number of times, and as I said on Second Reading, the changes that could be unleashed by the large-scale deployment of automated vehicles are immense. Entire industries and sectors stand to be completely transformed, perhaps not in the short term but certainly in the medium and long term. Logistics and haulage, personal transport, public transport, personal delivery services—the list is almost endless. Automated vehicles may well be a massively positive force for good in society, improving safety and quality of life for us all.
However, there will be a potentially difficult transition period for many in our society, and we need to take a much more proactive approach to that. Those employed in those industries are undoubtedly best placed to analyse and comment on how new technologies will impact on their jobs and their sector. They need to be involved in the process from the start, because they are involved in the sectors now. Too often in the past, innovation and scientific progress have been shorthand for workers being dumped on the scrapheap by the million, with no collective working to shape the future of their industries. That cannot be allowed to happen with automated vehicles and the changes that they will bring to our society.
If we are serious about ensuring that the benefits of automation are spread across society, that means giving workers’ representatives a real voice in the future of the technology and how best and most appropriately to deploy it over the coming years. It also means ensuring that every stakeholder is round the table, not at the whim of whichever Minister occupies the hot seat. A right should be outlined in legislation, and new clause 3 and my new clause 1 would do that.
We do not want a situation where developing technology and its regulation are subject to capture by the industry’s vested interests alone. These technologies, if fully rolled out, could completely transform the society we live in today into something virtually unrecognisable, at least in the longer term. We need voices from across the spectrum challenging the Government and policy makers —and also the industry, on the real-world implications of its innovations, not just the wonder of the technology itself.
Bill Esterson
I agree with the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North—or maybe it was his daughter who I was agreeing with; I was not entirely clear. I wish her a happy 14th birthday.
New clause 3, which I am speaking to, calls for the establishment of an advisory council. A Division on a very similar amendment in the Lords was narrowly lost. I accept the point made by the hon. Member about the benefits of the additional reference to the devolved Administrations in his new clause.
New clause 3 is largely about why this legislation matters so much and why it is so important that through it we are as successful as possible in predicting the impact of the new technology’s evolution. In doing that, it is essential that the benefits are enjoyed by all in society, not just by a few; the hon. Member made that point in passing. When I say all, I mean workers, those with disabilities and older people. We must minimise the risk of liability in the event of incidents that necessitate insurance claims, and we must ensure that safety is delivered as widely as possible. That is why an advisory council would be such a valuable addition to the legislation.
We saw for generations what happened with deindustrialisation in this country. That came at different times across the country, but very many people were affected and continue to be affected—their areas, their communities and their life chances were badly impacted. Prizes to be won through this legislation include avoiding the damage done by deindustrialisation while ensuring that all groups impacted by this exciting new technology benefit from it and that we gain the maximum and widest-possible economic benefits from it. Having an advisory council that has the breadth of experience to give the Government support on all those areas is highly desirable.
In the Lords, the Government said that such a council was not necessary. The Minister has reiterated today that consultation will be important to him, and I do not doubt that, but there are advantages to formalising the set-up of an advisory council so that particular interests do not come to the fore. We want innovation and enterprise; we want to attract the investment that ensures, as the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders estimates, the creation of 342,000 jobs—I think I quoted a slightly lower figure earlier—12,250 of which will be in automotive manufacturing. We need to ensure that those jobs are delivered, that we have an upskilled workforce and that new jobs are created, not lost, through this change in industry, to replace the jobs that will go.
We need to ensure that disability groups are embedded from the start. This is an issue across the wider Transport brief. We said on Second Reading that it was regrettable that we had not seen a transport Bill to address some of these wider points. With this new clause, we have an opportunity to address some of the challenges in what is an exciting and potentially significant development over the coming years.
The stakeholders all make the point that wider statutory engagement is desirable. The TUC states that job transition is its primary concern, and that embedding the principle of creating good new jobs is really important at this stage, before we know exactly how the technology will develop. Having that principle in the Bill is very important.
Much of the detail will come out in secondary legislation, so ensuring that the trade unions have a seat at the table and a voice from the start is really important. The point about disability and accessibility is made by Guide Dogs. The point about transport more widely is made by Transport for All.
I hope that the Minister will give this point the attention it deserves in his response. He and his colleagues have noted how the technology is developing and will continue to change. I put it to him that there is no reason to limit the consultation with the trade unions or the other groups that are set out in our new clause 3, and indeed in SNP new clause 1. The Minister says he is keen to engage with the trade unions and is looking forward to an early meeting. A very good way of showing his intent would be to agree to new clause 3 this afternoon.
Nine sub-groups are listed in subsection (2) of new clause 3—consumer groups; organisations representing drivers; road safety experts; relevant businesses; vehicle insurance providers and providers of delivery and public transport services; trade unions; the police and other emergency services; highway authorities; groups representing people with disabilities; and groups representing other road users, including pedestrians and cyclists. Which of those nine sub-groups would the Minister want to leave out of consultation? If he agrees that all of them should be included, why not put it in the Bill? Why not set up an advisory council as part of primary legislation?
Anthony Browne
I am really glad that the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North was joking about his daughter’s birthday, because I would hate to be a source of big disappointment on her birthday. I know how important 14th birthdays are. He made an interesting point. How come, in all the Bill Committees that he has been to, people agree about what they want but disagree on the actual amendments? We want as much accessibility as possible for self-driving cars as well—we share that ambition—and we want as much safety as well, but we have our own ways that we have worked out are the best ways to get that. That is what we stick to. We make amendments when we think there is something that is genuinely better.
As a newish Member to this House, I make another observation. I have only been here while my party has been in government. It has struck me how many Opposition amendments basically tell the Government what to do. I understand that that comes from a frustration that they are not in government. That can change at elections—hopefully it will not, but that does happen. If you want to tell the Government what to do, you need to win an election.
Grahame Morris
I am trying to be helpful and would just remind the Minister that this is not a unique problem. In 2012, the then Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, paused the Government’s Health and Social Care Bill and rejected all the Labour and Opposition amendments in the Public Bill Committee, on which I served, and then brought back 1,000 amendments to his own Bill, many of which were Opposition amendments recycled. I am not suggesting that we should pause this Bill, but there is always the opportunity on Report to incorporate some of the suggestions that have been made.
Anthony Browne
There is always an opportunity. Andrew Lansley is a good friend of mine, and my predecessor as MP for South Cambridgeshire.
I agree with the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North in the ambition as regards consultation. It is unbelievably important that we consult with all affected stakeholders. We talked earlier about the importance of bringing the public with us. Naturally, there are concerns and scepticism about this, and lots of people are wondering how this new, unknown and evolving technology will affect them, their safety and so on. It is therefore important that we consult as much as possible. That is why we have been consulting endlessly. The Law Commission, in three years’ work, consulted an incredibly wide group of people, including many of those from unions and disabled groups that have already been mentioned. I and the Secretary of State have also had quite a few roundtables and engagement with a wide group of people, including some disability groups and road user groups already.
I was just counting the number of different routes we have for engagement. I have a list and I am afraid I will go through it. First, the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles, which is the Government entity that is driving this agenda and the Bill, has an expert advisory panel with a wide range of experts that have been feeding into it. In the legislation, we have committed on the statement of safety principles to consult road users, road safety groups and industry. We have also agreed to have an advisory panel on accessibility as we develop the standards on accessibility for passenger services and taxi services.
We already have a statutory consultation body, the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee, which will be involved with consultation on the matter, with a particular view to accessibility and disabled groups. In the legislation, we have the general monitoring duty, so once a year the Secretary of State will now have a legal requirement to publish a report on how the statement of safety principles has been rolled out, its impact and how it is all going. Also, just to make sure we are learning lessons, we are setting up the incident investigation capacity to learn the lessons from every incident.
I have counted at least six different ways in which we are engaging and learning lessons from this as we go forward. That is on top of all the informal consultation, and a lot of the statutory instruments that come out of this will involve consultations over the next two years. There will be many different public consultations and opportunities to put into this. Indeed, my fear is that there will be death by consultation, in that people will get fed up with the number of consultations that are part of this.
I completely understand the desire of the Opposition parties to set up, on top of that, another statutory advisory council, but given all the consultation that we have done, are doing and will do as we go through this, we do not think it adds much to the sum of knowledge that we have on the subject. Coming back to the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North, it is important that we share the ambition of engagement, but we think we have a lot already and the amendments do not add anything.
Gavin Newlands
Given that it is half-past 3 on the first day of the Committee, to take up some more time I will press new clause 1 to a vote. In all seriousness, we should press new clause 1 to a vote. Whether colleagues want to press new clause 3 is entirely up to them, but the issue will certainly come through on Report.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Bill Esterson
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
In the previous debate, the Minister was saying that the Opposition should just accept that they are not here to make legislation.
Bill Esterson
I paraphrase—that was a potential interpretation of it. I would love him to clarify that this is not what he said.
Anthony Browne
To clarify, in case there was any misunderstanding of what I was saying, it is clearly the role of the Opposition to try to influence and make legislation, just as it is the Government’s. My observation was merely that a lot of Opposition amendments, and this stretches across all different debates, are basically instructions to Government of what they think Government should do, as opposed to legislation for people to control behaviours outside of Government. That is born out of frustration by the fact that they are not in government, and it is completely understandable, but there is another solution to that.
Bill Esterson
Funny he should mention that! Call the date and we will be ready, if he can persuade the Prime Minister—2 May is still available. I was quite grateful for the answer because it showed a desire to have an early general election.
Bill Esterson
Anyway, I will turn to new clause 5. In the Automated and Electric Vehicles Act 2018, there was a commitment on liability to the protection of victims and their ability to make a claim, if they are the victim of an incident with a self-driving vehicle. New clause 5 addresses the problem in the Act that, before they know whether they can prove liability, the question arises of whether they will have to prove it. If there is an incident in which somebody is hurt or killed, the question arises of whether it will automatically be accepted that an automated vehicle is designated as having been in self-driving mode. That is a potential problem if insurers insist that such proof be presented.
That point was made in 2017 by the then Transport Minister, the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), on Second Reading of the 2018 Act. He referred to the potential for claims, where there is a lack of clarity on whether a vehicle was in self-driving mode, to be
“time-consuming and expensive, undermining the quick and easy access to compensation that is a cornerstone of our insurance system. Not tackling this problem risks jeopardising consumer protection and undermining the automotive industry’s competitiveness.”—[Official Report, 23 October 2017; Vol. 630, c. 73.]
I think the right hon. Gentleman made a very good point, and we share his concern that I have just reiterated, which has yet to be addressed. I would be very grateful if the Minister could respond on how potential victims will be able to make claims in a timely fashion, and overcome the risk that they will have to prove that the vehicle was in self-driving mode.
The Association of Personal Injury Lawyers has raised a number of circumstances where that problem could arise, and I am sure that it has raised them with the Minister as well. I would be grateful if he could address the issue of a pedestrian, who would normally be insured, being unaware of their legal situation, perhaps because they are too young or too badly injured. In section 2 of the 2018 Act, people injured by an AV when it is driving are allowed to make a claim against the driver’s insurance, but to benefit from that provision, injured people will need to know and prove that an automated feature was engaged when the incident occurred. That is the nub of the problem that the APIL has identified: it could be very difficult or downright impossible for someone to do that. That could lead to additional investigations, requiring complex legal claims and delaying the paying out of compensation, which undermines the whole point of section 2 of the 2018 Act.
Lord Liddle pointed out in the Lords that the Department does not appear to have made its mind up about how long it takes a driver to take back control in a UIC vehicle. There is also the whole issue around transition, which my hon. Friend the Member for Easington touched on in relation to one of the earlier amendments. I would be grateful if the Minister would address that issue and set out exactly how he sees the Government ensuring that there is certainty for potential victims, given the uncertainty that his predecessor, the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings, identified seven years ago and that the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers has drawn to our attention.
Anthony Browne
I thank the shadow Minister for his comments, because it is obviously important to make sure that there is clear liability in this area, and it is set out in the Bill.
I will just come back to the point about the Automated and Electric Vehicles Act 2018, which has been mentioned and which is the source of some of the questioning. There is a distinction between causation and fault, and in the UK people tend to claim insurance on the basis of fault, like somebody has done something wrong, and not on the basis of causation, or what actually happened.
The reason for the 2018 Act is that it was thought, quite rightly, that if somebody is in an accident with an automated vehicle, it is very difficult for them to prove whether the software and all the stuff that goes on was at fault, or that something was going wrong. Therefore, the 2018 Act created a strict liability when a vehicle is in self-driving mode. When a vehicle is not in self-driving mode and there is a human driving it, there is exactly the same liability as we have at the moment. There is no intention in any of the legislation to change that. Regarding the point that the shadow Minister makes, which was a valid one, we clearly do not want individual victims to have to try to work out whether a vehicle was in self-driving mode or not. They will claim in the normal way against the insurer of the vehicle.
If the vehicle was in self-driving mode and that was at fault, the insurer of the vehicle can claim the insurance from the authorised self-driving entity. That will be a settlement between the insurance companies; it will not affect the victim’s ability to claim. The system is designed in such a way as to make sure that the victim gets any payment due to them as quickly as possible.
That is also why we have the sharing of information, which we discussed earlier, because it is really important for the various insurance companies to know whether, at the time of the accident, the vehicle was in self-driving mode or not, in order to ascertain whether the liability should be with the ASDE or with the driver. If they do not know what mode the vehicle was in, they cannot do that.
If this new clause were added to the Bill, we would have the unusual situation whereby a car with a self-driving function that might never be used is subject to strict liability insurance claims and a car that does not have a self-driving function is subject to the normal liabilities that we have at the moment. We would have the bizarre situation that a pedestrian could be better off if they were in an accident with a car with a self-driving function that is never used than if they were in an accident with a conventionally driven car. It would be very difficult to explain that sort of discrepancy and give any rational justification for it. Again, this is one of those things where we agree with the ambition, but we think that it is already covered.
Bill Esterson
Two questions follow from what the Minister says. First, how does somebody prove that a vehicle was in self-driving mode where it has the option to switch between self-driving and user in charge? Secondly, what is its definition during transition? I accept that those are difficult questions, but I would be grateful for the Minister’s answers. There is a related point about data access. What are his proposals to ensure that data is available from the operator and from the vehicle, notwithstanding the fact that they are not collecting personal information and that this process is purely about data that is relevant to an incident?
Anthony Browne
The point I was trying to make is that the victim—the pedestrian, or whoever it is—does not have to prove whether the vehicle was in self-driving mode or not. It will be for the insurer of the car and the insurer of the ASDE to work that out. If the car was in self-driving mode, then the ASDE would be liable, and it would claim against its insurance. If the car was not in self-driving mode, it would be the normal driver’s insurance, because there is still the legal requirement for the car to be insured like it is at the moment. The victim would not need to show what mode it was in.
Bill Esterson
I am grateful to the Minister for confirming that the vehicle does not have to be in self-driving mode, and that a potential victim does not have to prove whether it was. I am concerned about why we have people related to the insurance industry advising that this is yet to be cleared up. A similar point came up in the House of Lords. This remains a bit of a concern.
Anthony Browne
This is a complex and technical issue. As part of my extended engagement, I mentioned earlier that I have a roundtable coming up with the insurance industry about AVs and electric vehicles. I will happily write to the shadow Minister afterwards to clarify these points in black and white, and whether there are any issues resulting from that.
The Chair
Order. The hon. Gentleman cannot intervene on an intervention. Bill Esterson is speaking.
Bill Esterson
I think my hon. Friend the Member for Easington wishes to intervene.
Grahame Morris
I was wondering about scenarios that the Minister could seek some clarification on in his roundtable meeting next week. It is my understanding that if an uninsured driver driving a conventional vehicle was in a collision with another conventional vehicle, the Motor Insurers’ Bureau would be tasked by the Government to make the payout in respect of the uninsured driver. What would happen if an uninsured driver—I am directing this question to my hon. Friend, of course—was in a collision with an automated vehicle? Is that something the Minister might be able to answer?
Bill Esterson
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that because the Motor Insurers’ Bureau raised exactly that concern with me. I would love the Minister to answer it.
Anthony Browne
I am very happy to answer. This issue has indeed been raised with me and the Department, and I can confirm that the Department is in negotiations with the Motor Insurers’ Bureau about exactly this point. We have a difference of opinion with the Motor Insurers’ Bureau because it thinks this requires an amendment, and that is why it has been lobbying about this legislation. We think there are ways that we can cover this point without primary legislation, so it does not actually need an amendment. It is one of those examples, as raised by the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North, where we agree on the outcome—we agree that we need to close this loophole—but we think we can do it in a different way, without primary legislation.
Bill Esterson
I am grateful for those answers. I suggest that this might be something we can debate a little further on Report. The Minister will perhaps be in a slightly different position then, with some of the information he has had from the industry, as will I. That might be a good place to take this next. As he rightly says, we are setting the framework with this legislation. There are elements of it that are very difficult to pin down now, and we have to do the best we can. Report stage is a further opportunity.
With those thoughts, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
Anthony Browne
On a point of order, Sir George. I thank everyone involved in the preparations for the Committee—the Clerks; the officials, who have been working incredibly hard; and you, Sir George—and I thank all the members of the Committee for spending their time here going through the Bill. It is delightful to have something on which there is consensus across the House on the broad direction of travel, if not on every single item.
Bill Esterson
Further to that point of order, Sir George. I thank you and Mr Vickers for chairing our sessions. I think this Committee is possibly unique in the history of Parliament in that the Chairs, between them, have possibly spoken for longer than Members in moving through the agenda—in a thoroughly appropriate way, I hasten to add. It is a pleasure to have my predecessor in the Chair for a Committee such as this; I took about half of my constituency from you in 2010, Sir George.
I add my thanks to the Clerks, the officials and the Law Commission for their work and for getting us to this stage. We have set the framework for an important future piece of legislation. Birthday wishes to the 14-year-old daughter of the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North, too. I thank all Members for their contributions today and on Second Reading, and I look forward to Report.
Gavin Newlands
Further to that point of order, Sir George. On behalf of my daughter and me, I thank all members of the Committee and the Minister. I look forward to engaging with him further on clause 50 as we move through this process—that is my hope, anyway. I thank all hon. Members; Mr Vickers and you, Sir George, for your chairship; the Clerks for their assistance in drafting amendments; Hansard, and the Doorkeepers. I also thank the hon. Member for Easington for allowing me to move a section of my speech on clause 50 beyond the 11.25 am barrier this morning. With that consensus and positivity, which is unusual in these quarters of the House, I will conclude.
The Chair
I conclude by thanking the Clerks, Hansard and everybody concerned. I thank members of the Committee, who, in my brief time in the Chair, have been good-humoured and orderly.
Bill, as amended, to be reported.
Automated Vehicles Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)
Tuesday 19th March 2024
(1 month, 1 week ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Automated Vehicles Bill [HL] 2023-24 Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 19 March 2024 - (19 Mar 2024)
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 5 / Noes: 10 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chair
I have a few preliminary announcements. Members should send their speaking notes to hansardnotes@parliament.uk. Please switch electronic devices to silent. I remind Members that tea and coffee are not allowed during sittings.
We will first consider the programme motion on the amendment paper. We will then consider a motion to enable the reporting of written evidence for publication.
Ordered,
That—
1. the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 9.25 am on Tuesday 19 March) meet—
(a) at 2.00 pm on Tuesday 19 March;
(b) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 21 March;
(c) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Tuesday 16 April;
(d) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 18 April;
2. proceedings on consideration of the Bill in Committee shall be taken in the following order: Clauses 1 to 37; Schedule 1; Clauses 38 to 45; Schedule 2; Clauses 46 to 54; Schedule 3; Clauses 55 to 66; Schedule 4; Clauses 67 to 81; Schedule 5; Clauses 82 to 84; Schedule 6; Clauses 85 to 100; new Clauses; new Schedules; remaining proceedings on the Bill;
3. the proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 5.00 pm on Thursday 18 April. —(Anthony Browne.)
Resolved,
That, subject to the discretion of the Chair, any written evidence received by the Committee shall be reported to the House for publication.—(Anthony Browne.)
The Chair
We will now begin line-by-line consideration of the Bill. The selection and grouping list for today’s sitting is available in the room. It shows how the clauses and selected amendments have been grouped for debate. Amendments grouped together are generally on the same or similar issues. Please note that the decisions on amendments do not take place in the order in which they are debated, but in the order that they appear on the amendment paper. The selection and grouping list shows the order of debates. Decisions on each amendment and on whether each clause should stand part of the Bill are taken when we come to the relevant clause.
A Member who has put their name to the lead amendment in a group is called first. Other Members are then free to catch my eye to speak on all or any of the amendments in the group. A Member may speak more than once in a single debate. At the end of a debate on a group of amendments, I shall call the Member who moved the lead amendment again. Before they sit down, they will need to indicate whether they wish to withdraw the amendment or seek a decision. If any Member wishes to press any other amendment in a group to a vote, they will need to let me know in advance.
Clause 1
Basic concepts
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 19, in clause 1, page 2, line 6, leave out “an acceptably safe standard” and insert—
“a high standard of safety”.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 20, in clause 1, page 2, line 7, leave out “an acceptably” and insert “a very”.
This amendment is intended to probe the meaning of “acceptably” with regards to the risk of automated vehicles committing traffic infractions.
Clause stand part.
Bill Esterson
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Vickers, for our consideration of this Bill, which I think it is fair to say has broad, cross-party parliamentary support. It will be encouraging over the next however many hours we are in Committee to look at the potential to strengthen it.
There is huge potential for the economy in the safe transition to automated vehicles, but it is important that we recognise that this remains a largely undeveloped technology and we are trying to predict what will happen in the future. In our deliberations, it will be important that we try to set the strongest possible framework for what is likely to be needed. The detailed work of the Law Commission gives us a good start, and what we have been presented with from the Lords improves on that work.
Amendments 19 and 20 in my name relate to the critical area of safety: they seek to set in primary legislation the strongest possible safety standards. They would amend the standard of safety from “acceptably safe” to “high”, and amend the definition of “legally” to refer to “very low risk” rather than “acceptably low risk”. That is important because we are trying to anticipate what might happen and to minimise the risks and potential problems.
When similar amendments were debated in the Lords, the Government’s response was that such
“phrases…are open to…interpretation.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 10 January 2024; Vol. 835, c. 63.]
It occurs to me to ask: if things are open to interpretation, who is going to decide? Invariably, that will mean going to the courts. We are trying to minimise the potential for that to happen.
The Government were quite happy to accept the amendment to the phrase “careful and competent driver” —we very much welcome that, which will reduce the number of things that are open to interpretation—so I wonder why they were not prepared in the Lords to accept amendments similar to these. Perhaps the Minister will answer that question in his response.
“Careful and competent” itself was only established in case law; it is not in statute. That is being left to the courts as well, and is open to further interpretation. We will return to that point with later amendments, because we are trying to minimise the risks of leaving things open to interpretation. This is a good example of where an advisory council, which was the subject of much debate in the Lords, could make recommendations to address the uncertainties that exist in legislating for the unknown, in the way that we are invariably having to do with primary legislation for technology that is yet to be developed.
I would be grateful for the Minister’s response on these points. The amendments attempt to reduce the risks of leaving things open to interpretation. We want the highest possible standards set out as early as possible to enable this technology to be developed as safely as possible.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
It is pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Vickers. I thought it would be helpful for the Committee to start with some good news. The SNP and Scottish Government are generally supportive of the Bill and I will not seek to detain the Committee over the course of however many days we debate it with superfluous speeches, reading out explanatory notes and so on, until we get to clause 50, which I will get my teeth into—I am sure the Minister will be aware of that. However, I reserve the right to intervene in support of any of Labour’s amendments, which I am doing now, or indeed when I think the Minister is talking cobblers, which hopefully he will not be doing.
That is the good news. With that, I very much look forward to the Minister’s answer about what actually is acceptably safe.
Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)
I rise to ask a short question to the Minister and to support my Front-Bench colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central.
I have the pleasure and privilege of serving on the Transport Committee, along with the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North. To reinforce the point that my hon. Friend made, there is broad, cross-party support for the concept, but the widely held assumption that self-driving vehicles will prove safer than human drivers is not a given.
Having looked at the whole issue in some detail, the Select Committee produced an excellent report, which I recommend to members of this Committee. It was published on 15 September last year, and one of its conclusions is:
“Optimistic predictions are often based on widespread self-driving vehicle usage that is decades away, or assertions about human error that ignore other risks”—
for example, changing weather conditions. It continued:
“Safety must remain the Government’s overriding priority as self-driving vehicles encounter real-world complexity. Given this, we question the Government’s proposed ambition that self-driving vehicles must be as safe as a competent and careful human driver.”
The Committee felt that that was
“too weak and too vague”
and called on the Government to
“set a clearer, more stretching threshold.”
I will come back to this in my contribution on clause stand part, but I just wanted to put that to the Minister and to reinforce the points made by the Opposition Front Benchers.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Anthony Browne)
I thank the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Sefton Central, for his comments at the beginning. I agree that there has been a large amount of cross-party support for the Bill, as was shown on Second Reading, and I appreciate the work done in the House of Lords to strengthen it. When we come to the clauses on which there is agreement, I will try to move as rapidly as possible so that we can spend more time on the clauses to which amendments are proposed.
The shadow Minister set out that the Bill is quite unusual because we are legislating for an industry that does not exist. Things are moving rapidly, but fully self-driving cars may be decades away, as the hon. Member for Easington said. However, we need to prepare for that now and try to think of all the different future scenarios.
Before coming to the amendments, I want to put something on the record about clause 1, because it is fundamental in setting out the concepts underpinning the Bill. It defines what it means for a vehicle to travel autonomously—in other words, without human-controlled monitoring with a view to safety-critical interventions. It establishes that that can be achieved through a vehicle having one or more self-driving features, and that those features can be specific to locations and circumstances. For example, it may have a motorway chauffeur feature that can drive the vehicle only on dual carriageways, or an urban delivery feature that operates in a specific geographic area.
More significantly, the clause introduces the self-driving test—the principle that there is a threshold of safe and legal operation above which the vehicle can be considered legally self-driving. That will be set out in more detail in the statement of safety principles introduced by clause 2, which we will come to shortly. We all share the ambition that automated vehicles should be as safe as possible; that is why in the Lords we inserted the statement that they should be as safe as a “careful and competent” human driver.
Before I deal with the amendments, I want to refer to the points that the hon. Member for Easington made. As I am sure he knows, I have read the Select Committee’s report, which is very good and insightful. Eighty-eight per cent of collisions—we are not meant to say “accidents” —involve some form of human error, whether people are speeding, not paying attention, distracted by the kids in the back, looking at their phone, angry or drunk. Self-driving vehicles do not do that. A careful and competent driver will have a far lower rate of accidents than an average human driver.
Grahame Morris
I am familiar with the statistics, and the Minister is absolutely correct, but I think we have to stretch our minds and think of scenarios that a competent human driver can reasonably anticipate. An example would be anticipating the movements of a blind or partially sighted person. We know that a blind person, because it is part of their training, tends to stick to the kerbs and corners. I am not convinced as yet that autonomous vehicles have the algorithms or knowledge to differentiate, so we have to set the bar—the standard—as high as possible.
Anthony Browne
I thank the hon. Member for that comment. I think he is right to say that autonomous vehicles at the moment probably cannot distinguish between blind or partially sighted pedestrians and ones who are not, but what we are setting out in the Bill is the statement of safety principles in the abstract, with the ambition that automated vehicles are as safe as a careful and competent driver. What that means will be set out as a result of detailed consultation with—as we now set out in the Bill—road users, road safety groups and the industry. Concerns about whether a self-driving vehicle can interpret whether a pedestrian is blind or not would come in at that level of detail, rather than in the ambition that we have here.
Robin Millar (Aberconwy) (Con)
Does the Minister agree that the Bill is not trying to solve all the challenges or deal with all the problems that we know come with autonomous vehicles or artificial intelligence, but is trying to create a framework within which those problems can be tackled effectively and safely?
Anthony Browne
My hon. Friend is spot on; that is the entire point. We are creating a framework with a lot of flexibility in it because, as various Members have noted, this is moving technology. If we look back in 20 years’ time to where we are now, we will say, “Oh, that was very basic.” Things will change: technology will change; our understanding of the technology will change; and our understanding of how humans interact with the technology will change. That is why it is really important, as my hon. Friend said, that we keep the legislation flexible so that we can advance it.
Simon Lightwood (Wakefield) (Lab/Co-op)
I wonder whether the Minister has considered whether it would be better to start with a stricter level of safety and then, as we get used to the technology and understand its limitations, perhaps look to reduce it to the levels that are proposed.
Anthony Browne
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that comment. The Law Commission, whose work feeds into all this, recommended three standards of safety, and we have chosen the highest. There is a risk that, if we set the bar far too high, it will be impossible for the industry to develop in the first place. There is a balance that needs to be struck.
Robin Millar
I thank the Minister for giving way again; he is being generous with his time. Does he agree that it is easy to ban stuff, and that an over-regulatory approach is anathema to the development of the kinds of solutions that we are hoping will address these issues in due course?
Anthony Browne
I agree with my hon. Friend. It is very easy for Governments to ban things, but we need to nurture the industry so that it grows, because there are huge opportunities to reduce road fatalities and injuries overall, and to improve road safety overall, if we get this right. Indeed, that is the overriding reason why we are interested in this area: it is not about making it more convenient for different groups of people, or whatever; it is about improving road safety. There are arguments about accessibility and about economic growth, but it is road safety that is really important. If we get it wrong by banning the technology or making it too difficult, we will miss opportunities to improve road safety.
Shailesh Vara (North West Cambridgeshire) (Con)
Does the Minister also agree that, if we were to ban the technology, with the direction that it is going globally, other countries would lead the way? We would miss out on the opportunity to have more jobs, more innovation and more finance coming to this country because we would have allowed other countries to progress with the technology while we were stifling it.
Anthony Browne
Absolutely. Clearly, this is an industry that is developing globally, and we want to be part of that. I think that we all recognise that there are huge economic opportunities here, as well as opportunities for improving road safety. There is a risk that, if we set the standard far too high right at the beginning, the industry will not be able to develop and we will lose out to countries that are more flexible in their approach.
Anthony Browne
I will, although I am conscious that I need to make headway at some point.
Grahame Morris
I am grateful. That is quite an important point about regulation and not banning things, but can we just be cognisant of what has happened recently where we have taken a more laissez-faire attitude, such as in relation to pedicabs or the electric cycles that are littering the pavements?
Grahame Morris
Nobody wants to ban them completely, but if we had taken a harder line at the outset on the framework in which they operate, many of those problems could have been avoided. That is all that we on the Opposition Benches are saying.
Anthony Browne
I thank the hon. Member for his comments, and I appreciate the support that there is in the Committee for the regulation of pedicabs. The problem with pedicabs was that there was no regulation; it was a free-for-all, basically. That is indeed why we are legislating here to create a regulatory framework. It is really quite detailed legislation that builds on at least three years’ work by the Law Commission of England and Wales and by the Scottish Law Commission. I absolutely agree that we need regulation, but it is a question of getting the balance exactly right.
Bill Esterson
We have had an unexpectedly wide debate on the first group of amendments. I welcome the contributions by hon. Members. I am sure that all our debates will be similarly robust.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Easington for explaining what we are trying to do. Red herrings were being put forward: no one is trying to ban automated vehicles by saying that we should have the highest possible safety standards. I hope that Government Members might reconsider the way in which they framed their interventions.
Bill Esterson
I hope that the hon. Member for Aberconwy will agree with me that we want the highest possible safety standards.
Robin Millar
I am happy to clarify my remarks. The reference to banning stuff is actually a euphemism for an over-regulatory approach.
Bill Esterson
I am going to look up the word “ban” a bit later and see whether “euphemism” appears next to it. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for clearing that up. As I said in my opening remarks, the Government rightly accepted the phrase “careful and competent” in the Bill in the Lords. It is about putting a clear statement of intent in the regulations on the importance of safety in a so-far undeveloped technology. The comments by my hon. Friend the Member for Easington on the current concerns about where technology has reached were well made. What we want to do is remove the fear, risk and elements of concern.
On the point made by the right hon. Member for North West Cambridgeshire, absolutely, we want to make the most of this technology for economic purposes. The figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders demonstrate that there will be something like 300,000 jobs between now and 2040, and £66 billion added to GDP. We very much want to make the most of those opportunities.
I suggest that having strong safety principles and the safest industry in the world is one of the ways in which we achieve exactly that goal. Having credibility, and the reputation for developing technology that is usable anywhere and is very safe, will be part of delivering the economic benefits. The expression, “careful and competent”, is not defined in statute; it is subject only to case law. The phrases “very low risk” and “a high standard of safety” are not defined. I completely accept those points. What is important is that we set out the intention in this legislation for the courts, which may well have to adjudicate at some point. That is why these amendments were important. I have listened to what the Minister said, and at this stage I do not feel that there is merit in pushing the amendments to a vote. However, I hope that he and other Members will take on board the fact that we are trying to set out our intention with as strong an opposition as possible in this framework legislation—yes, for secondary legislation, whenever that comes, but also for the courts, if they have to adjudicate. I will happily not press the two amendments in this group.
Grahame Morris
Forgive me, Mr Vickers—are we having the clause stand part debate now? May I contribute to that?
Grahame Morris
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I had the great pleasure of your company on the High Speed Rail (Crewe - Manchester) Bill Committee.
There are a couple of key issues in the Bill, and safety is one of them. Of course, the other major element is insurance liability. I think it is reasonable to discuss that and consider the implications. I do not want to regurgitate the explanatory notes, but clause 1 would establish a self-driving test and make provision for the Government to classify a vehicle with features that meet the test as an autonomous vehicle. The clause states that a vehicle would satisfy the self-driving test if it has at least one feature that would
“allow it to travel autonomously”.
The Minister described some of those features: motorway driving and parking features, and others.
Importantly, to travel autonomously, a vehicle would be required to do so “safely”—
“to an acceptably safe standard”—
and “legally”—
“with an acceptably low risk of committing a traffic infraction.”
The Minister referred to the Law Commissions for England and for Scotland, explained how the definition was arrived at, and cited the 75 recommendations and so on. However, the Opposition and many organisations believe that we must hold autonomous vehicles to the highest level of safety standards because it is important to gain the confidence of the public so that they can feel comfortable interacting with them.
I thank the Transport Committee Clerks and organisers who arranged for a number of Committee members to have a ride in an autonomous vehicle with Wayve yesterday. I have been fortunate to do that on a couple of occasions with the Transport Committee, and there are obvious signs of improvement. However, it is a confidence issue—for safety reasons, there was a driver there who could intervene, and we only did a little circuit from Whitehall over Westminster bridge past St Thomas’s and Lambeth Palace, and back past Parliament Square. Even though there was no intervention from the safety driver, there is the issue of how someone would feel if there was no driver present. It is psychological— one must have the confidence to do that.
I was in an autonomous bus quite recently with the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North. It is a confidence issue. One cannot underestimate the public’s willingness to engage with this technology if that confidence is not there. Part of the argument we are making with amendments 19 and 20 is to try to ensure that we have the highest possible level of public confidence and trust.
As I mentioned earlier, the Transport Committee’s findings were published in its report on self-driving vehicles on 15 September. The Committee expressed concern about the assumption that self-driving vehicles will automatically be safer than human drivers. We said that that is not a given. Rigorous safety measures must be an overriding priority for self-driving vehicles as they are faced with the complexities and unpredictable nature of real-world driving.
I draw the Minister’s attention to the definitions of “safety” and “legally” in clause 1(7)(a) and (b), which I have just mentioned. They define “safety” as only
“to an acceptably safe standard”,
while “legally” means
“with an acceptably low risk of committing a traffic infraction.”
The Opposition and many organisations do not believe that those provide adequate protections for drivers, passengers and pedestrians, and they are unlikely to achieve the improvement in road safety that the introduction of AV technology could deliver. I support amendments 19 and 20, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central and Labour spokespeople, which propose to
“leave out ‘an acceptably safe standard’ and insert ‘a high standard of safety’”,
as well as
“leave out ‘an acceptably’ and insert ‘a very’”,
when referring to the low level of a traffic infraction. I would like to add that that is a position supported by Cycling UK, as stated in the written evidence submitted to the Committee.
While we accept that self-driving vehicles could potentially reduce casualties—we learned yesterday and in previous examples that the traffic management systems do not allow those vehicles to speed, so there would be less speeding than with human drivers—there are others factors to consider. During the Transport Committee inquiry which led to the “Self-driving vehicles” report, Becky Guy from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents told us that, while many collisions involve human error, there were often other contributory factors. That was a view shared by the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, which said that accidents attributable to humans are often caused by poor road and vehicle design and difficult driving conditions, such as rapidly changing weather conditions. Therefore, we cannot rely on the omittance of human error to improve the safety of our roads. We must hold AVs to a high standard of safety with a very low risk of committing a traffic infraction by supporting amendments 19 and 20. Without those amendments, there is a risk that the safety standards for AVs will not be strong enough.
Anthony Browne
As I set out in my response to the hon. Member for Sefton Central, when he was making the case for the amendments, there is not a sufficient appreciation of the word, “acceptable”. I know that in English it can sound a bit vague, but it means what is acceptable for the public and Parliament as expressed through the statement of safety principles. I completely agree with the point made by the hon. Member for Easington that we need to bring the public with us and it is about confidence—absolutely.
Trudy Harrison (Copeland) (Con)
Would it be helpful to set out how we have already embraced elements of self-driving in transport? For example, I doubt there will be a driver in this place who does not rely on anti-lock braking systems when using their car. Self-parking is now quite common and autopilot is used when we are flying across the skies. Driverless trains are in operation, as are Starship robots. There are already elements of self-driving provisions on our roads that we have come to accept. I think it would be helpful if the Minister could perhaps set out how the sensory equipment in those vehicles—the lidar, the radar and the sonar—is so much more powerful than the human eye and other aspects of human sensory facilities. In addition, perhaps he could set out that human error is often the cause of accidents in this country.
Anthony Browne
I agree that technologies are evolving all over the place in lots of different modes of transport, and we are at the beginning of a revolution. I think that self-driving cars are probably a different order of magnitude.
Anthony Browne
Yes, as the hon. Member for Easington said, that is slightly different, but the technologies are related. Self-driving cars are of a different order of consideration because there is literally no human there and the cars may travel at speed, so we absolutely have to ensure that they are as safe as possible.
Bill Esterson
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 2
Statement of safety principles
Bill Esterson
I beg to move amendment 21, in clause 2, page 2, line 15, at end insert
“and, if so, the locations, types of location or circumstances in which those criteria are met.
(1A) The principles must set out how the Secretary of State will assess the potential safety impacts on different types of road user when assessing the locations, types of location or circumstances in which a vehicle is capable of travelling autonomously and safely, having particular regard to the safety of those road users who might be most at risk.”
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 11, in clause 2, page 2, line 19, after “safety” insert
“and the safety of pedestrians”.
Amendment 22, in clause 2, page 2, line 19, leave out “better” and insert
“significantly better for all road users”.
Amendment 18, in clause 2, page 2, line 20, at end insert—
“(2A) The statement must include the Government’s intended definition of “careful and competent human drivers”.”
This amendment would require the Government to publish a definition of “careful and competent human drivers” as part of the statement of safety principles.
Bill Esterson
We now come to the statement of safety principles. We have tabled three amendments in this group to strengthen the support that we anticipate will be beneficial when secondary legislation is introduced, and to give confidence not just to the courts, but to consumers and investors so that they can make the most of the economic opportunity. This is a similar point to the one we made in the debate on clause 1.
The Government described similar amendments tabled in the Lords as “ambiguous”—they said that the amendments to clause 1 were open to interpretation. I simply make the point that they were content to accept the change to “careful and competent” despite the fact that that is not set out in statute, so why strengthen safety in that way but not in this one?
These amendments have the backing of Cycling UK, which my hon. Friend the Member for Easington mentioned, and for similar reasons. Cycling UK says that we need
“a step-change in road safety”,
not just a marginal improvement. It continues:
“a slight improvement in overall road safety could actually mask a worsening in safety for pedestrians, cycle users and other non-motorised road users, providing this is offset…by an improvement in safety for motor vehicle occupants. We do not believe this is acceptable.”
I agree that there has to be an improvement for all road users. A similar point applies to all four amendments in this group.
We need the definition to avoid reliance on the ambiguity to which the Government themselves refer. We are trying to strengthen the definition with these amendments. Amendment 18, which requires the publication of a definition of “careful and competent human drivers” to address exactly that concern about the lack of precedent and the reliance on case law, has the support not just of the groups that I have mentioned but of the Road Safety Foundation and the SMMT, the industry body.
“Careful and competent” was first used in the Road Traffic Act 1988, but it was not defined. Currently, it can be judged only against case law, so at this stage we want to tighten up these areas, not because we want to make things more difficult, but because we are trying to anticipate as far as possible what is to come, and we want to create the strongest possible framework as we finalise the primary legislation. I look forward to the Minister’s response on these matters, and I commend the four amendments that I tabled with my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield.
Grahame Morris
I want to support my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central. As the Minister alluded to in a previous debate, clause 2 requires the Secretary of State to lay a statement of safety principles before Parliament, having consulted the relevant autonomous vehicle manufacturers, road users and safety groups first.
I recognise that the principles will be developed following the passage of the Bill, as the Minister said, but it is apparent that clear direction is needed for those principles in the primary legislation. It is also important that the safety principles are subject to frequent review—I think the Minister said that will happen—and consultation as the technology and roll-out of AVs is expanded over the coming years. The statement of safety principles must be clear, rigorous and informed by the needs of all road users and pedestrians, especially disabled people.
Gavin Newlands
I thank my friend from the Transport Committee for giving way. On that point, was he as concerned as I was in the debate on the previous clause when the Minister said that we do not want to make the safety regulations over-onerous at the outset of the industry in case we allow it to take off elsewhere rather than the UK? That is a bit of a warning sign for me.
Grahame Morris
I am inclined to agree, and I think it is a bit of a red herring as well. Language is important. I know the Minister said that “acceptable” has a legal meaning according to the Law Commission, but the point I was trying to make in the previous debate is that this is all about public confidence and perception, and what is acceptable to you, Mr Vickers, may not be acceptable to someone else.
We have to ensure that standards are as high as possible. It is certainly not anyone’s intention on the Opposition side to put off investment or scare it away; the potential is enormous. What we are trying to do is ensure that the legislative framework is not so prescriptive that it has a negative effect, but that it sets a standard that can be emulated by the rest of the world. I know we will come back to standards, European comparators and so on, so I will press on.
Clause (2)(2)(a) establishes a safety ambition that self-driving vehicles should be expected to
“achieve a level of safety equivalent to, or higher than, that of careful and competent human drivers”.
We heard that in the debate on clause 1. In my view, that safety ambition lacks clarity, and I ask that we clarify the meaning of a careful and competent driver in the Bill. “Careful and competent” is difficult to adjudicate, and the comparison should be made with a driver who is supported by existing assisted systems, fitted as standard to new vehicles. The assessment of automated vehicle safety must take into consideration all road users and how they will interact when engaging with AVs, especially if they operate in ways that would be considered unconventional when compared with a human driver.
I do not know whether you have been following some of the international events, Mr Vickers, such as the AV trials in Australia. The computer programming and the autonomous control systems are programmed to anticipate various scenarios, including how a pedestrian or another road user, such as a cyclist, will react. What defeated the trial in Australia was the unpredictable nature of kangaroos crossing the highway, because they do not cross in a straight line, but zig-zag and bounce about, which caused all manner of problems with the response of the AVs. We have to anticipate scenarios such as that and set the standards and framework accordingly.
The safety ambition needs to take into consideration both incident frequency and incident severity when assessing safety performance. There needs to be a clearly defined capability and operational constraint for systems, to ensure that users understand their roles and responsibilities when using or owning an automated vehicle. That is especially important in evolving technologies where there are transitions between the automated driving systems and the user in charge—the hon. Member for Copeland mentioned driver assistance systems—but also as new technologies develop and users are increasingly removed from the driving task.
We must also consider disabled people. Autonomous vehicle systems must be developed with an understanding of pedestrians with sight loss and their needs, which may differ from those of sighted people. As I mentioned earlier, people with sight loss will move around the built environment differently and use building lines, kerbs and tactile pavements for navigation. The increasing number of non-standard road layouts could present challenges to automated vehicles in inaccessible environments such as shared spaces and roadway. Floating bus stops, for example, may cause all sorts of problems, being away from the pavement across a cycle lane.
The movement of pedestrians with sight loss may prove especially difficult for autonomous vehicles to predict. That is why I, like various groups representing people with disabilities, including the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association and the Royal National Institute of Blind People, believe that the consultation process on the safety principles must be strengthened. As this is a recent technology that could develop in different ways, it is sensible to review the principles in the medium term to determine their effectiveness. I think the Minister has indicated that he is going to do that.
Amendment 21 stipulates that the principles must set out the assessment of the safety impact of AVs on different types of road users in different types of locations where the vehicle is travelling, which would be a reasoned improvement to the Bill. I am disappointed that Lords amendment 28, which was tabled by the noble Lord Liddle and would have created an advisory council, was defeated by the Government. It is disappointing that the Government did not accept that amendment as the Government proposals in amendment 5 really do not go far enough, even though they do ensure some level of consultation. I will leave it at that.
Anthony Browne
I thank the hon. Members for Sefton Central and for Easington for their contributions.
Clause 2 does indeed relate to the statement of safety principles. I do not know whether the hon. Member for Easington was suggesting that we include in primary legislation a requirement for kangaroo-detection technologies in cars. I have not been to Easington recently, so I do not know how many kangaroos they have there. I jest; the hon. Gentleman made a lot of very sensible points, although they are not for this stage of the process but for the statement of safety principles. The level of detail he was talking about will come at that stage. As I have said before, and as is in the legislation, we will consult with road user groups and road safety groups. We have already done so, and we committed to them to carry on that process.
I want to make it clear that we think the amendments are unnecessary because they are, in effect, already in the legislation. We share the ambition completely: autonomous vehicles should obviously be safer for all road users, and particularly for vulnerable road users, including partially sighted pedestrians, cyclists, equestrians and so on. However, that is actually already clear in the legislation. As with the highway code, references to road safety already legally apply to all road users, including the groups that I mentioned. The Government have already committed in the policy scoping notes that the statement of safety principles should be fair and equal and apply to all road users so that some are not advantaged at the expense of others. We have already committed to that.
Bill Esterson
I welcome the support for and analysis of the amendments from my hon. Friend the Member for Easington. I wondered whether we were missing something about kangaroos in Easington.
Bill Esterson
I am glad he has now clarified that. He is right that we have to anticipate perhaps not kangaroos but—
Bill Esterson
He is giving me other examples from a sedentary position. He is right to raise the concern.
The Minister said that the points are accepted by the Government, which I welcome, but if they are accepted, why are they not in the Bill? However, he has said that in Committee, so that will have to be sufficient for now.
I will come back to what he said about the definition of “careful and competent”. Given that we have case law and that the definition was first used in 1988 in the Road Traffic Act, as he says, I would think it possible to have a definition now against which future secondary legislation and decision making in the event of road traffic incidents could be judged. I do not understand why he has not made that clearer. As a result, I will not press amendments 21, 11 or 22 to a vote, but will test the opinion of the Committee on amendment 18. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment proposed: 18, in clause 2, page 2, line 20, at end insert—
“(2A) The statement must include the Government’s intended definition of ‘careful and competent human drivers’.”—(Bill Esterson.)
This amendment would require the Government to publish a definition of “careful and competent human drivers” as part of the statement of safety principles.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Bill Esterson
I beg to move amendment 12, in clause 2, page 2, line 21, after “must” insert “—
(a) hold a public consultation on a draft statement;
(b) ”.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 13, in clause 2, page 2, line 21, leave out from “consult” to end of line 22 and insert
“representatives of road user groups and other groups whose safety or other interests may be affected by the application of the principles.”
This amendment is designed to probe the consultation provisions.
Amendment 14, in clause 2, page 3, line 6, at end insert—
“(9A) The statement must be reviewed and subject to the same consultation as outlined in subsection (3)—
(a) after being in force for five years;
(b) every five years thereafter.”
Clause stand part.
Bill Esterson
With this series of amendments we are keen to probe the consultation on the development of the statement of safety principles. It is a very important part of the legislation and I am pleased that the Government accepted the principle of publishing the statement of safety principles at the outset. However, the technology will continue to evolve, so it seems clear that the statement of safety principles should be subject to review and public consultation at a decent interval. Our amendments are designed to ensure that there is a sensible, five-year timeframe for each of the reviews by Parliament and that the work is carried on in the public domain. The Government have said that that will happen informally, but we believe it important to have it confirmed in the legislation so that there is a guarantee.
The Government say they anticipate consulting a wider group than those they have previously mentioned. They said publicly in the House of Lords that that group will include members of the public, academia, trade unions and other representative bodies. We would like commitments on all those points, to which we will return with some of our other amendments. The Minister in the Lords said that
“it remains the case that this is a particularly uncertain policy area with a rapidly developing industry”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 10 January 2024; Vol. 835, c. 81.]
Does that not highlight the need for ongoing consultation, parliamentary scrutiny and an ongoing review of the statement of safety principles? Putting that on the face of the Bill is the way to guarantee that it happens.
Grahame Morris
I rise to speak in support of the amendment. May I ask questions of the Minister, and back up the arguments of my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central, my colleague on the Opposition Front Bench? We are talking about safety principles. In an earlier debate he mentioned the advisory committee. I know we are not debating them yet, but I have been looking at some of the new clauses. It has been suggested that on the advisory council there are: representatives from consumer groups; organisations representing drivers; road safety experts; relevant businesses, such as automobile manufacturers; vehicle insurance providers, because that is a key issue; providers of delivery and public transport services; the trade unions, because it is possible that many individuals will be displaced or that there are issues around deployment; the police and other emergency services; highway authorities, because there is the issue of the digitalisation of the data for autonomous vehicles; groups representing people with disabilities; and groups representing other road users, such as cyclists and pedestrians.
If the safety principles are to operate, it is important that we get this right. The Minister has said that it is a moveable feast, and that the Government will set the ambition but the standards would be amended—presumably improved—as time goes on. I do not want to sound like a broken record, but when the Transport Committee was looking at that aspect of the proposals we received evidence from a number of witnesses, including the motor manufacturers.
David Wong from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders had concerns, when looking at safety principles, about the definition of “competent and careful”. Many organisations are not confident that that is precise enough. David Wong stressed that his organisation agreed with the terms and the ambition. Professor Siddartha Khastgir from the University of Warwick said it would be difficult to translate the
“abstract concept into something that can be implemented by engineering”.
A number of the witnesses that the Committee heard thought that the Government’s ambition was too lax, and that a more stretching target should be set. That is quite interesting. We were talking about perception, and Ed Houghton from DG Cities told the Committee that when researching public attitudes to self-driving vehicles, he asked participants, “How much safer does it need to be for you to want to use autonomous vehicles over the long term?” People said that it needed to be twice as safe, or 10 times as safe, for them to use it. That is the level of expectation that consumers have, and we should recognise it. It has to be the best that it can be before they will be able to trust it and buy into it.
Safety has to be at the heart of the Bill if the public are to trust the technology and enable the UK to become a world leader in AV technology.
Anthony Browne
Clause 2 relates to the statement of safety principles, which we have previously discussed. I will not go over that again, other than to reiterate that a lot of the issues that are being discussed now and in the various roundtables that we have had with road safety groups and so on are valid issues, but they are issues that need to be addressed as we get into the detail of the statement of safety principles.
On amendments 12 and 13 about consultation, we have already committed to consulting with road users, road safety groups, and businesses in the industry. The statement of safety principles will be subject to public consultation. We fully expect that the wide-ranging views of the public, businesses, academia and other representative bodies will be able to feed into that consultation.
Grahame Morris
Can the Minister give some clarification on the composition of the advisory committee, or is that still a matter that the Government are considering?
Anthony Browne
We have committed within the legislation to consult with road users, road safety groups and businesses in the industry—and others will be able to feed in. We did not want to be more specific about exactly which groups, because they change over time; they merge, they close down, and new ones open up. We did not want to bind our hands and say that it must be exactly those groups, but they are broad, representative groups.
We are in full agreement that we have to take the public with us. It would be wrong for the Government to proceed in a way that did not bring road safety groups with us. The ambition here is to make roads safer. It is in the Bill that AV should be safer than the average human driver and will improve road safety. That is the whole point of the legislation.
Robin Millar
The Minister makes a good point about the importance of talking to members of the public, but of course one of the main drivers—if the Committee will forgive the pun—for change and the introduction of autonomous vehicles is industry, and the use of vehicles in very specific spaces, such as quarries, farms and such. A lot of effort is going into developing the intelligence and the decision-making capability of machines in that space. Has the Minister also consulted with the bodies that might represent drivers affected by such vehicles, such as trade unions?
Anthony Browne
I am very happy to discuss this with trade unions; I have not done so yet. I agree that it is important for all those affected to input into the process. That is primarily road users, as they are the ones most directly affected.
Grahame Morris
Could the Minister give a little more clarification on the composition of the advisory committee? Will highways authorities be represented? I know the Minister said that over time more organisations would be involved, but given that the digitalisation of the information will be key and there are issues about that, it would seem sensible to have them represented on the committee.
Anthony Browne
I am happy to give a commitment that I will consult with highways authorities, but we are not going to move beyond road user groups, road safety groups and businesses in the industry as the statutory consultees, with the full expectation that the full range of groups that are interested in this issue will be able to have input. As I have said, the statement of safety principles will be subject to public consultation.
The hon. Gentleman mentions highways authorities. The Department for Transport talks at every level almost every single day with highways authorities about almost every single issue. They are well versed in all this. This will be subject to public consultation, so I am not sure what amendments 12 and 13 would add.
On amendment 14, I have said that I would be amazed if a future Government did not review this, because the technology is changing. It is highly unlikely that we will get this right first time and that it will never be changed, but I do not think it is right to bind the hands of a future Government on the timing of the review, and the need to conduct one every five years. We might find that there are lots of problems earlier on and want to review things beforehand, or that everything is going amazingly well in five or 10 years—if we complete the review every five years—and everyone is very happy with it, and then we would be doing a formal review of something that everyone was happy with. It is far better not to bind the hands of future Governments.
There is also a requirement within the legislation for a duty of monitoring by the Secretary of State on the application of the statement of safety principles. That will be published every year.
Robin Millar
Yesterday, I and several other hon. Members had the opportunity to go in autonomous vehicles around parts of Westminster. The point was made that the system the cars use is a learning system, in contrast to some systems that have been used in other countries, which are rules-based. The point of having a review at a fixed point in time is not to see whether the rules that are written today still work in five years, because we are talking about systems that have the ability to learn well in advance of any review.
Anthony Browne
I agree totally with my hon. Friend. As somebody who is very interested in artificial intelligence and who has also gone round in the Wayve car, but around Kings Cross, I was very impressed at the way that the vehicle is learning as it goes along. I asked whether it recognised speed bumps, and it learned that itself; drivers slow down for speed bumps and the AI learned that was something it needed to do.
This is clearly going to change a lot. I have been around Government long enough—not very long, but long enough—to know that it is not good governance to bind the hand of future Governments with precise requirements to do this at this time and that at that time. When the time comes, it could be completely inappropriate. It is far better to trust whoever the future Government are that if there is a need for a review, they will conduct a review. It is unimaginable that they would not.
A monitoring duty is imposed on the Secretary of State to follow how closely the statement of safety principles is working and whether any issues arise. I really do not think we need to set out a five-year review clause that may not be appropriate.
Bill Esterson
Holding a review is not binding the hands of any future Government. Setting a timeframe on it is definitely not binding their hands; it is actually just putting in a sensible provision for the future. My understanding of the way that the legislature operates is that one cannot bind the hands of a future Government anyway.
Anthony Browne
The Government would then have to pass primary legislation in order to not do a review. If we end up in a situation where everyone is happy with the statement of safety principles—I think this will be a very long way away, I have to say—we would have officials coming to the Minister at the time, whoever that was, saying, “We have to do a review of the statement of safety principles, even though everyone’s completely happy with it, because it is in primary legislation and we’re not allowed to break the law.” Yes, absolutely, we could pass a new piece of primary legislation at some point in the future saying, “We don’t need to do a review,” but why create that work? Why bind a future Government?
Bill Esterson
Well, I think that a review that says, “Everything is going very well, Minister,” is not something to be worried about, but there we are.
Anthony Browne
Reviews do take a lot of work. They are done properly; they are not done on the back of an envelope. A whole process has to be set up. It requires a lot of work from civil servants and a lot of input from wider stakeholders. It is unimaginable that there will not be various reviews in future, because the technology will be moving on, as we have discussed, but doing a review of something where there is wide acceptance that there is no need for a review—as has happened in other areas of my responsibility—creates a lot of work for no end benefit. It is not good legislating to set down in primary legislation that a future Government must do that.
Bill Esterson
Well, it is an interesting view. I think “every five years” is far from onerous.
Turning to some of the other points made in the debate, we have deliberately left a wide definition in amendment 13, where we use,
“representatives of road user groups and other groups whose safety or other interests may be affected by the application of the principles.”
That is not setting in stone exactly which organisations should be part of the consultation; it is important that we all recognise that. As time goes on, the nature— the exact identity—of those groups will change, and our amendment very much reflects the realities. I was concerned that the Minister had not discussed the legislation with the trade unions, which I think he said. I hope that he rectifies that very quickly. The TUC, I am sure, will be very happy to talk to him, and Unite the union is another one.
Anthony Browne
In this role I have talked to unions about many different things, although not about this legislation yet. However, the Law Commission, in its three-year review of the legislation, did consult directly with the unions, and they have had input into all of this legislation that we have taken forward.
Bill Esterson
Okay. I hope that the Minister will rectify that apparent omission promptly. As I say, amendment 14 is not binding the hands of Government at all. Holding a review is an important part of the future process, and I hope that the Government will reflect on that. The Minister said that the Government intend to hold reviews; I just do not understand why he is not prepared to put that into the legislation. However, on this occasion I will accept the Minister’s word on that. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 3
Power to authorise
Simon Lightwood
I beg to move amendment 25, in clause 3, page 3, line 17, at end insert—
“(1A) An automated vehicle may be authorised for use in non-road public locations under subsection (1) as long as the Secretary of State is satisfied that the authorisation will not impact the accessibility of the locations to existing users, including pedestrians.”
This amendment would enable the Secretary of State to authorise vehicles such as for use in public places other than roads (such as automated mobility scooters and delivery robots on pavements, for example) as long as the impact on accessibility has been considered.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clause stand part.
Clause 4 stand part.
Amendment 17, in clause 5, page 4, line 24, at end insert—
“(5) An authorisation requirement may require purchasers of relevant vehicles to be provided with a demonstration of any authorised automated features under section 4 at the point of sale.”
This amendment would mean that sellers of automated vehicles may be required, under the terms of their authorisation requirement, to demonstrate automated features to potential purchasers.
Clause 5 stand part.
Amendment 16, in clause 6, page 5, line 10, at end insert—
“(6) Authorisation requirements must include a requirement for authorised self-driving entities to publish an equality impact assessment.”
This amendment would require authorised self-driving entities to publish equality impact assessments, reporting on the potential impact of their vehicles on, for example, those with protected characteristics and other road users.
Clauses 6 to 9 stand part.
Amendment 24, in clause 94, page 68, line 20, at end insert—
“or a delivery robot vehicle.”
This amendment would add delivery robots to the definition of ”authorised automated vehicle”.
New clause 4—User-in-charge: reaction times—
“Within two years of the passing of this Act, the Secretary of State must commission, and lay before Parliament a report of, a study into the reaction times of users-in-charge of automated vehicles when receiving an instruction to take full control of an automated vehicle and their ability to react safely to the relevant situation.”
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to commission a study into the ability of users-in-charge of automated vehicles to retake control of a vehicle when necessary.
Simon Lightwood
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. Amendment 25 seeks clarity on whether the authorisation of pavement robot vehicles can be within the scope of the Bill, and ensures that the safety of other road users is not negatively affected.
The amendment questions whether the Bill includes regulation for delivery robots. It is an opportunity for colleagues to consider whether we have thought about how the framework might be different from that for the automated vehicle framework and how it would be the same. This could well be a key missed opportunity in the Bill, and investment could be taken elsewhere if we lose out on economic gains because of the grey areas and lack of clarity. Pavement use is a grey area because the robots contain motors and a pavement is legally defined as part of the road. This question is within the Bill’s scope, yet clearly the regulation of vehicles that primarily use the pavement must be different from the regulation for those that use roads.
Pavement robots need clear regulation—for example, to ensure that they do not negatively affect disabled people, or that they are regulated only on pavements that are wide enough. Asda and Wayve have an ongoing trial of delivery services, and Starship already serves communities in Milton Keynes, Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire and West Yorkshire—in fact, I have visited a site in the Wakefield constituency. The DFT plans to conduct research on pavement use, but if primary legislation is needed to enact what comes from the findings the issue may remain unresolved for years, meaning that the UK will continue to fall behind other nations and lose critical investment opportunities.
As I have seen in my Wakefield constituency, there is a lot of potential in the principle of delivery robots. They deal with the final mile from where the lorry drops off its load to when the parcel gets to the individual dwelling. I find them particularly good for people in my constituency who are socially isolated. Using electric robots for that last mile rather than diesel vans, as often happens currently, has the potential to make a big contribution to our net zero commitments.
Starship has called for the regulation of the sector, because the lack of regulation has the potential to impact on investment decisions. In fact, Leeds City Council and Cambridge City Council did a survey that showed between 75% and 93% approval of the service provided by Starship Technologies. Between the Lords Minister and the Commons Minister there seem to be some crossed wires as to whether robot delivery vehicles are within the Bill’s scope, so some clarity on that would be good.
Amendments 17 and 16 and new clause 4 aim to improve transparency on the impact of AVs, to ensure that the public are properly informed and to increase Parliamentary scrutiny. Amendment 17 would mean that the sellers of automated vehicles might be required to demonstrate how each of the automated features were engaged and disengaged. That is critical in terms of transparency. Amendment 16 would require authorised self-driving entities to publish an equality impact assessment to assess the impact on other road users—including, crucially, disabled people.
New clause 4 would require the Secretary of State to commission a study on the transition period in respect of users in charge, to be laid before Parliament. The insurance company AXA has said that there is still debate over how long it would take for a user in charge not only to take back control but to understand their surroundings, fully re-engage with the driving task and react safely to an obstacle that the self-driving vehicle was incapable of dealing with.
Overall, the amendments and new clause 4 would provide greater transparency and reassurance to consumers, which I am sure Members will agree is crucial, and nowhere more so than in respect of the safety of AVs for all road users. In chapter 5.7 of its report, the Law Commission states that equality impact assessments must be published, but there is no reference to such assessments anywhere in the Bill. There is, then, a need for clarity on transition demands. The policy scoping notes, and the Minister on the Floor of the House, committed to equity of impacts, so why is that not on the face of the Bill, given that the Minister knows how important it is? I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Grahame Morris
I want to make a few points in support of my Front-Bench colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield. As he rightly said, clause 3 would enable the Government to authorise a vehicle as an automated vehicle if it met the self-driving test and if other authorisation requirements were met. That is both a safety and an insurance issue, so it is fundamental to what the Bill is intended to achieve.
Anthony Browne
I am grateful for the contributions of Opposition Members. As the hon. Member for Wakefield said, a couple of amendments are about delivery bots. I declare an interest: Starship operates in my constituency, in the town of Cambourne. It is incredibly popular, and I love seeing the robots tootling about the pavements; they are the subject of much local interest and fascination.
Anthony Browne
I do not know whether they have names. The hon. Gentleman has stumped me there, but it is a good idea.
As the hon. Member for Wakefield recognised in his comments, the legislation already covers pavements—the definition of roads or highways covers pavements, driveways and so on, including other accessible public areas. That could be used for the regulation of pavement bots, if desired.
I agree that there is a grey area, but the issue opens up many other issues outside the scope of the Bill: how we regulate the use of pavements, or what sort of vehicles we want or do not want on them. At the moment, mobility scooters or vehicles are allowed on the pavement, with a maximum speed of, I think, 4 mph. Such vehicles involve a whole range of issues to do with what pedestrians might expect or not on pavements, which should be subject to carefully thought-through legislation.
The issue with the delivery bots is that they are not regulated as road vehicles—they do not have licence plates and are not subject to any of the requirements made of road vehicles—so there is a risk that they would be caught by legislation that most people would think inappropriate. That raises so many issues, but they are outside the scope of the Bill. We will have to address them in some other way. I agree that there is a grey area, but this is not the way to deal with it.
Bill Esterson
The Minister points out that the bots are unregulated. What are the Government’s plans, if any, to regulate to address the anomaly? It is pretty implicit in what he says that there is a need for regulation. When and where will it happen? If not here, where?
Anthony Browne
I will write to the shadow Minister.
On amendment 17, the hon. Member for Wakefield mentioned the requirement for sellers of self-driving vehicles to demonstrate features to prospective buyers. The legislation includes requirements to communicate with end users. There is a requirement on ASDEs—I do not think that we have mentioned authorised self-driving entities yet. ASDEs are authorised to sell the technology for self-driving cars, and they will be required to communicate with end users.
There are multiple troubles with requiring someone selling a vehicle to demonstrate to the person buying it. One issue is that the person buying a vehicle will often not be the person using it, and what matters is the demonstration to the user. Imagine someone buying a vehicle on behalf of a car club, for example, or a private sale: someone selling their car might not be qualified to give demonstrations of the technology to someone else. It is far more appropriate for the ASDE, whose technology it is, to do that. As I said, the Bill already requires ASDEs to communicate with end users about how the technology works. That covers this issue. Amendment 17 would have too many unintended consequences.
Grahame Morris
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way; he is being generous. If the ASDE in North America, say, is doing the sale and the updates remotely, will the legislation still be binding and apply to it and its liabilities? I am thinking of the insurance risk.
Anthony Browne
It absolutely would. To be authorised, the ASDE is required to be competent and financially sound. Clearly, the legislation needs to be binding on the ASDE wherever it is, or we could not regulate or authorise it.
New clause 4 is about transition demands, as we call them, although I do not think the hon. Member for Wakefield used that term in the new clause. It is important to get the right timing for transition demands. The Bill already requires a robust approach to ensuring that the user in charge—the transition demand relates to the user-in-charge feature; it goes back to them taking control from the self-driving feature—can respond safely to a transition demand and that they are aware of their responsibilities. As the hon. Member mentioned, we are already doing research on this fast-moving area, but ultimately what transition demand is appropriate depends on the use case: it might be different for someone driving on the motorway compared with someone doing some urban driving or operating a taxi or delivery vehicle.
How the transition demand works should be set out in the authorisation of the ASDE. Again, we are getting more and more data on the matter, and research is being done. It needs to be flexible because it depends on the individual case, so I do not think there is a need to set out in law that there should be research on it. Essentially, the new clause is unnecessary.
Simon Lightwood
Clearly, the only way we can have absolute clarity on the robot issue is to put it in the Bill and reference the inclusion of delivery vehicles specifically. There is potentially a mistake in terms of getting in the way of future investment and economic gains because of the grey area that continues to exist. We have had no clarity from the Government on when they may look at the issue further.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Easington for his comments regarding the insurance industry. Again, the amendments were there to give that transparency and clarity to that industry and to disabled groups. I will not be pushing any of the amendments to a vote. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 3 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 4 to 9 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 10
Register of authorisations
Bill Esterson
I beg to move amendment 23, in clause 10, page 7, line 21, at end insert—
“(1A) The register referred to in subsection (1) must be made available online.”
This amendment would mean that the register of automated vehicle registrations is available online.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clause stand part.
Clause 11 stand part.
Bill Esterson
Amendment 23 requires that a register of automated vehicle registrations is available online. The Government have to maintain a public register, but there is no commitment to its being online. The reason for the amendment comes from the insurance industry. As AXA puts it, the insurance industry requires clarity on the information that will be published to ensure that it is fit for purpose for insurance underwriting purposes. That matters because delays in accessing data could lead to long and expensive cases and an increase in insurance premiums.
I am sure that we are only too aware of how much motor insurance premiums have gone up in this country in the past few years; anything we could do to minimise the risk of that happening with new technology must be a good idea. I would be grateful to hear the Minister’s response to the request, which comes directly from the insurance industry, to try to avoid such delays by having a register that gives them access to information as quickly as possible.
Anthony Browne
I confirm that we will not put the register just on bits of paper and lock them in a cupboard somewhere. It is a reasonable request that the register should be online. I confirm that, in line with the usual expectations around official Government documents, we will manage the register online, so the amendment is unnecessary.
Bill Esterson
I am pleased to hear that the register will be online. It is a shame; the Minister so nearly got there at the end by saying that he accepted the amendment—and then he did not. We will have to take his word for it, but it is a bit odd for him to say that it will be available online but that he is not prepared to put that in writing. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Anthony Browne
We are making such fantastic progress; I thought I ought to speak on some of the clauses, for the record.
Clause 24 is about the duty of candour requirement on regulated bodies, such as the ASDEs and the no-user-in-charge operators, to provide accurate information to Government. The issue is particularly important because it has been raised with me in many different environments and has been a concern in other jurisdictions. If we are to get the technology right, it is essential that we learn from the process. However, that can happen only if the companies in the industry are completely open with the Government and investigators with the information they have. If they see anything going wrong, they should be completely frank and open about it. That has not always happened in other countries and it has caused problems.
The duty of candour is not new—there are similar things in the pharmaceutical industry—but it is incredibly important that the companies developing the new technology know the expectations on them to be completely open and frank with the public. That is the only way we will have improvements and advance the technology.
Grahame Morris
This is an important part of the Bill. Is the Minister in a position to share with us the discussions with the insurance industry? It is a key issue that, if a vehicle is autonomous and is being driven in autonomous mode, the liability presumably rests not with the passenger or the driver but with the provider—the manufacturer and the software provider. The Transport Committee met a number of industry representatives, who flagged to us the difficulty of quantifying the risk, as well as the need for candour in identifying whether the issue is systems failure or driver error because the driver intervened with the system. Is the Minister in a position to enlighten us?
Anthony Browne
The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point; indeed, I have met representatives of the insurance industry about it. There are two points about the Bill that are relevant. One is that it creates the powers to set up independent investigators. Whenever there is an incident or a collision, they will investigate what the cause was and what the lessons to be learned from it are. That is a really important process in terms of improving the technology and ensuring that things that go wrong do not happen again.
The hon. Gentleman made a valid point on insurance. If there is an accident, the insurance industry first needs to know if the vehicle was in self-driving mode and who is liable. Is it the ASDE or the driver? Secondly, it needs to know what actually went wrong. There are therefore provisions in the Bill to require the regulated entities—the ASDE or the no-user-in-charge operator—to provide data to third parties such as insurance companies. Obviously, we protect the data privacy of individuals, and nothing in this legislation changes the data protection rules. However, the point is absolutely valid: we need to ensure that the data is available to investigators and insurance companies.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 24 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 25 to 27 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 28
Warrants for entry, search and seizure
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Anthony Browne
I will make a brief point about the clauses, because they will be a source of concern for many people. It is therefore good to put on the record that the clauses give the investigators and authorities powers not just to do thorough investigations of data, as we just talked about, but to enter and search premises to take away materials and so on. We must ensure that we have full powers to really understand what has gone wrong, if and when something goes wrong, so these clauses ensure that the investigators have all the powers they could possibly need to do that.
Grahame Morris
The vital point was made on Second Reading that there should be proper investigations —I am sure the insurance industry would be vociferous about this—where the owner or operator of a vehicle has carried out modifications or not maintained the vehicle adequately—it may be tyre wear or brake pad removal. Even though it is an autonomous vehicle and is not being driven by a human driver, the human owner has responsibility for maintaining it in a roadworthy condition. Presumably, if that was the cause of the accident, the investigators would be able to determine that and apportion blame and liability.
Anthony Browne
Again, the hon. Gentleman makes a lot of very valid points based on his time on the Transport Committee. Cars that have the no-user-in-charge feature must have a licensed operator, and the form and details of the licence will depend on exactly how the vehicle operates and its use case. For a fleet of taxis of the type that Waymo has in America, the NUICO—the no-user-in-charge operator—will be responsible for the maintenance of the vehicles, including the tyre wear and the brake pads, and for ensuring they have not been tampered with.
If it is an individual driver with their own car—this is a long, long way down the line, and I do not think anyone expects this to happen in the next few years—it might be reasonable to expect them to be responsible for the tyre wear and the maintenance. If they make any modifications that nullify the action of the self-driving feature, they would have liability for that. We would not expect the no-user-in-charge operator to be responsible for the day-to-day maintenance of the car, but they would be responsible if something goes wrong when the vehicle is in no-user-in-charge mode.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 28 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 29 to 37 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 1 agreed to.
Clause 38
General monitoring duty
Bill Esterson
I beg to move amendment 26, in clause 38, page 25, line 35, at end insert—
“(3A) A report published under subsection (3) must be laid before both Houses of Parliament.”
This amendment would require reports containing the Secretary of State’s conclusions on the monitoring and assessment of automated vehicle performance to be laid before both Houses of Parliament.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Clause stand part.
Clause 39 stand part.
Government amendment 1.
Clause 40 stand part.
Bill Esterson
This amendment requires that the reports containing the Secretary of State’s conclusions on the monitoring and assessment of automated vehicle performance be laid before both Houses. It addresses the points about insurance and operator responsibility that my hon. Friend the Member for Easington made in relation to an earlier clause. We need a guarantee that those running automated vehicles are continuing to keep the vehicles in the state that they were in and are maintaining and updating them appropriately.
We are pleased to say that, in the Lords, the Government changed the statement of safety principles from being subject to the affirmative procedure to being subject to the negative one to improve accountability to Parliament, and we ask that something similar be done to increase parliamentary scrutiny of the monitoring and assessment of automated vehicle performance.
Anthony Browne
The Secretary of State commits in the clause to monitor, and to publish annually their assessment of, the application of the statement of safety principles. Everyone who is interested in it will have access to it, including parliamentarians, so, again, the amendment is unnecessary.
Bill Esterson
I accept the Minister’s assurance that, although he is not going to follow the affirmative principle, he is going to make the assessment available to us. With that, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Gavin Newlands
I beg to move amendment 9, in clause 50, page 33, line 18, after “that – ” insert—
“(za) is not an Act of the Scottish Parliament;
(zb) is not an instrument made under an Act of the Scottish Parliament;
(zc) is not an Act or Measure of Senedd Cymru;
(zd) is not an instrument made under an Act or Measure of Senedd Cymru;”
This amendment would mean that the Secretary of State could not amend legislation of the devolved administrations for the purposes of changing or clarifying traffic legislation in respect of automated vehicles.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 7, in clause 50, page 33, line 22, at end insert—
“(4) The Secretary of State must obtain and lay before Parliament the written consent of the Scottish Government to make regulations under this section which amend—
(a) an Act of the Scottish Parliament,
(b) any instrument made under an Act of the Scottish Parliament.
(5) The Secretary of State must obtain and lay before Parliament the written consent of the Welsh Government to make regulations under this section which amend—
(a) an Act or Measure of Senedd Cymru,
(b) any instrument made under an Act or Measure of Senedd Cymru.”
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to obtain the consent of devolved governments before exercising the Clause 50 power in relation to devolved legislation.
Amendment 8, in clause 50, page 33, line 22, at end insert—
“(4) The Scottish Government may, by regulations, make provision for the purpose of changing or clarifying whether, how or in what circumstances an Act of the Scottish Parliament or any instrument made under an Act of the Scottish Parliament applies to the user-in-charge of a vehicle.
(5) The Welsh Government may, by regulations, make provision for the purpose of changing or clarifying whether, how or in what circumstances an Act or Measure of Senedd Cymru or any instrument made under an Act or Measure of Senedd Cymru applies to the user-in-charge of a vehicle.”
This amendment would extend the Clause 50 power to ministers of the devolved administrations.
Clause stand part.
Gavin Newlands
It is safe to say, Mr Vickers, that I was not expecting us to get to clause 50—[Laughter.] Luckily, I have a speech that I prepared earlier. The Cabinet Secretary for Transport in the Scottish Government and the operations manager of Transport Scotland are giving evidence on this very issue in the Scottish Parliament this morning. If I can pad this out until 11.25 am, I will be able to bring some quotes to the Committee before we leave our deliberations on the amendments and clause 50.
I rise to speak to amendments 9, 7 and 8 in my name and those of my colleagues in Plaid Cymru. As I mentioned on Second Reading and briefly at the start of the sitting —it is very unusual for me or anyone else from the SNP to stand up during the deliberations on any Bill to say this—the devolved Administrations have for the most part worked happily with the UK Government on getting this Bill right for everyone across these isles, in line with the co-operative working between the Scottish Law Commission and the Law Commission of England and Wales over the past couple of years. So it is disappointing, to say the least, that the UK Government appear to have ditched that view when drafting clause 50.
The devolved powers that are properly the preserve of the Scottish Parliament are quite clear, yet this clause would unilaterally overturn that settled state and instead place the Scottish Parliament and Government under the auspices of the Secretary of State for Transport and his or her colleagues. Since devolution and the reconvening of the Scottish Parliament in 1999, it has been agreed among all parties that consent is required from Holyrood when the UK Government seek to legislate in devolved areas.
Grahame Morris
This is an interesting point. There are a number of Bills whose provisions apply only to England or to England and Wales, and I have always thought there was an anomaly in terms of territorial extent and application. If someone is driving an autonomous vehicle, it seems slightly bizarre to have a different regulatory regime if they go over the border into Scotland or Wales. However, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and on page 12 of the explanatory notes I have highlighted in green the part that says:
“There is a convention that Westminster will not normally legislate with regard to matters that are within the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament, Senedd Cymru or the Northern Ireland Assembly without the consent of the legislature concerned.”
I am interested to hear the hon. Gentleman say that there has not been that consultation.
Gavin Newlands
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. Of course, if there is any diversion between the regulations, the Scottish regulations will be better than any brought forward by DFT. I joke, but the Scottish Government—and presumably the Welsh Senedd—have been in discussions about this for a long time. In fact, the issues the Scottish Government have with clause 50 were recognised by the UK Government themselves. I say that not just because of the facts the hon. Gentleman pointed out in the explanatory notes, but because the Government themselves have said that clause 50 will require legislative consent. This is not the Scottish Government being uppity; the UK Government themselves have said that legislative consent would be required, but they have now ditched that approach and seek to implement clause 50 without seeking any legislative consent from the Scottish Parliament.
What has happened says so much about the Government’s approach to devolution in recent years and completely overturns that principle of devolution. Either we have devolution or we do not—it is not for the Government to pick and choose which parts of legislation devolution is applied to. Devolution should apply in those areas that are not listed in the Scotland Act 1998. It is simple as that, yet the Government seem to want to change the rules and move the goalposts at will to stymie devolution at almost every turn. They snatch power from a democratically elected Parliament and Government and give it to a Minister of the UK Government, who it is fair to say currently have zero mandate in Scotland. That may change come a future election, but at this point this Government have no real mandate in Scotland, and yet they seek to override the will of the elected Parliament of Scotland.
The amendments in my name and those of Plaid Cymru colleagues would remedy that democratic deficit by placing a statutory obligation on the Secretary of State to obtain consent from the Scottish Parliament and/or the Senedd before legislating in areas that are not properly theirs to legislate in. The Scottish Government have made it clear throughout the consultation and drafting process that working across borders on issues such as this—as alluded to by the hon. Member for Easington, who serves with me on the Transport Committee—is undoubtedly good sense, benefiting the automated vehicle sector and ultimately all consumers across these isles.
Grahame Morris
The hon. Gentleman’s contribution is completely valid. I am slightly perplexed by this issue, so I will be interested in what the Minister has to say about the Government’s consultations with the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Senedd and the Northern Ireland Assembly, for that matter. For the system to work, we need to bear in mind the key point about digitalising traffic regulation orders. What will happen? People will drive from England into Scotland and vice versa, but the Bill gives the Secretary of State the power to make regulations to require traffic regulation orders to be provided by traffic regulation authorities—