Asked by: Earl Russell (Liberal Democrat - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that all cars sold in the UK meet appropriate anti-theft standards and are adequately protected from relay attacks.
Answered by Lord Davies of Gower - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
All passenger cars placed on the UK market need to be Type Approved. This process ensures compliance with requirements for anti-theft and car alarm systems.
The Government is protecting vehicles from relay attacks through provisions in the Criminal Justice Bill. The Bill will create new offences to enable prosecution of those who possess, make, adapt, supply, or offer to supply electronic devices; where there are reasonable grounds to suspect those devices will be used for the purposes of vehicle theft.
Asked by: Earl Russell (Liberal Democrat - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to monitor and ensure that the National Highways meets its legal duty to ensure its land is kept clear of litter under sections 89(1) and (2) of the Environmental Protection Act 1990.
Answered by Lord Davies of Gower - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
National Highways is monitored against a litter performance indicator as part of the Road Investment Strategy (RIS2). This requires them to report on the percentage of the Strategic Road Network (SRN) where litter is graded at B or above under the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs' Litter Code of Practice. National Highways performance on this metric is reported to the Office for Road and Rail and published annually.
National Highways consider litter to be a very serious problem. It is harmful to the environment, damaging to their reputation, and upsets their customers. It also creates a risk to the substantial number of people who collect it, and uses resources that could instead be better used to improve the road network.
Asked by: Earl Russell (Liberal Democrat - Excepted Hereditary)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask His Majesty's Government what progress they have made in achieving their target for motorway stations to have six rapid or ultra-rapid chargers by the end of 2023; and when they expect this to be achieved.
Answered by Lord Davies of Gower - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Department has recently collected updated chargepoint numbers for the end of 2023 from motorway service area operators (MSAOs). There are now 800 open-access (can be used with any electric vehicle) rapid (50kW) and ultra-rapid (150Kw+) chargepoints at motorway service areas (MSAs) in England.
More than 565 chargepoints are ultra-rapid. This is a substantial increase of over 300 extra ultra-rapid chargers at MSAs in the last year.
56 of the 114 MSA sites now have at least six ultra-rapid open access chargepoints. Government is working closely with the distribution network operators, MSAOs, chargepoint operators and other key stakeholders in industry on wider challenges to chargepoint rollout and overcoming barriers at those sites that still need to reach their baseline provision.
One of the challenges faced by some is the cost of the grid upgrades. To address this, the £70m Rapid Charging Fund pilot, launched in December 2023, will help support MSA sites with the cost of the grid connections where it is currently not commercially viable, investing alongside the private sector.