Lower Thames Crossing: Development Consent

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Monday 29th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

I recognise that this is a very important project. It will be of great advantage to many people, both north and south of the Thames.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, is this not a classic case of how the planning system in Britain is fundamentally broken? It started in 2009 and we do not have a decision by 2024. How can it make sense to have spent hundreds of millions of pounds on a project when the Government have not actually given the final go-ahead?

In the 1930s, when Herbert Morrison faced opposition to the plans for Waterloo Bridge, he described the Conservatives as “Mr Dilly, Mr Dally and Mr Can’t”. Is that not the case with this Government—dilly, dally, can’t?

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

That is a wonderful history lesson; I am most grateful to the noble Lord. The majority of decisions made by my department and applications for development consent orders have been issued within the three-month statutory deadline that starts from receipt of the recommendation report. That will hopefully be the case with this.

Transport System: Failings

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

I congratulate my noble friend Lord Snape on introducing this debate in his own informed and inimitable way, and join those who have paid tribute to him for his contribution over many decades to the transport debate in this country. I also thank former Secretaries of State for contributing to this debate and I particularly endorse the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord McLaughlin, about my noble friend Lord Hendy, who unfortunately is not able to contribute to this debate; it would have been nice to hear from him. Those present also remind me of those absent, and one of those is, of course, Lord Rosser, who was a much-loved Member of this House and a very great, moderate and sensible trade union general secretary.

It would be nice to have a coherent plan for transport, but in the last 14 years we have not achieved that. We had the impact of austerity, which led to massive cuts in local government budgets. I saw it in Cumbria, where we had fewer professional highways staff and where planned maintenance on our roads was cut to the bone, so we inevitably ended up with a chronic problem of potholes. The Government have done a lot of announcing about special funds for potholes, in a sort of patchwork attempt to cover up the consequences of what they did 10 years ago. In fact, that will only cover about half of what is needed to have a proper system of planned maintenance for our highways.

Austerity also brought big cuts in bus subsidies. When I was a Cumbria county councillor, we were forced to abandon bus subsidies for commercial services altogether. As a result, bus travel outside London has collapsed. The annual number of journeys since 2009 has gone down from 2.4 billion to 1.6 billion—a third lost.

Boris Johnson realised, to be fair to him, that this was a big problem. His Bus Back Better White Paper was full of typically bold promise and ambition, but, as with so much else, delivery was another matter. This is a serious issue—it might be even more serious than the railways—because the bus crisis affects the young, the elderly and the poor most of all. For a social democrat like me, we must do better and find a better policy.

The solution stares us in the face. London has seen little of the decline experienced in other parts of England. Why? Because, instead of the philosophy of provision being driven by free market competition, bus services in London are a fine example of public/private partnership, with a franchising model that works. This eliminates competitive cherry picking on bus routes that are highly profitable and allows cross-subsidy of those routes where there is less revenue.

The difficulty with this problem that Boris Johnson recognised is that the Government have never found time to legislate on it. This year, to be frank, the Government judged the pedicabs Bill more important than doing something to remedy our bus service problems. I regret very much the way that government policy has tilted against public transport since the Uxbridge by-election. The Government have tried to pose as a defender of the motorist against sinister socialist plots—this is nonsense. I am a strong believer in the freedom that cars bring. I was brought up in a non-car owning household and realised, with great wonderment and affection, how a car enabled me to travel to parts of the Lake District near my home that I had never been to before. As a councillor for Wigton in the last decade, I also saw how, in certain places where public transport is rotten, people depend on their cars. The care worker who is on the minimum wage—if that—depends on a car to do her job. Let us have no more of this culture-war nonsense.

We need, of course, sensible policies in towns and cities. We realised in the 1970s that there was no financially affordable or environmentally acceptable way in which road building could solve congestion problems. We did not want to become like America. When I was a young Labour councillor in Oxford in the 1970s, we championed what we called a balanced transport policy. We brought in park and ride from the outskirts, and bus lanes to get buses into town quicker. I remember how much opposition there was. Traders thought this was the end of the world. Professionals objected to not being able to drive their car to work as easily as they had done. But, when people saw the benefits, the objections quickly subsided. We could do much more in cities to improve bus reliability and efficiency without vast increases in public spending.

The same opportunity exists on our railways. I was never a dogmatic opponent of all privatisation, but I thought that separating the natural monopoly of the infrastructure from competing services that use it, while it might work well in telecoms, was a much more difficult proposition with railways. That has proved to be the case. The growing problems with privatisation have been evident for two decades. We had the collapse of Railtrack in 2001. We had the problem of franchisees overbidding for contracts and hoping that a weak Government would let them off the hook. My noble friend Lord Adonis told them to get lost, and their franchises were taken into public ownership. In 2018, the railways were unable to produce a timetable that worked. Since Covid, there has been a vast increase in costs and a real decline in quality of service. As a frequent Avanti user, although not quite as frequent as the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, I still cannot understand why it has been allowed to keep its franchise.

What Labour has announced today is fundamentally right—that we intend to bring the major part of the railway under unified public control and ownership. I disagree with my noble friend Lord Berkeley: we must take legislative action on this quickly, in our first term of office. A unified railway will save hundreds of millions of pounds by getting all parts of the system working together. It will end the costly arguments about delay attribution, and I hope that it will release the railway from the micro-control of civil servants who are currently making decisions about services and spending. It will not be a return to British Rail. Open access will be retained; freight services will continue to be operated by the private sector; the lease-holding arrangements for rolling stock will remain in place. This is a pragmatic response to the failings of the existing system. I hope that it will allow the kind of long-term approach that the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, talked about.

Again, there is not much difference between the Williams-Shapps plan and Labour’s proposals, which is why Keith Williams has backed them today. This provides an opportunity to establish a new, lasting consensus about the way railways should be run, and I hope that the Conservatives will take that view if they lose the next election.

Another area where consensus needs to be struck is on the issue of high-speed rail. After the Prime Minister’s decision, we are left with a high-speed line with apparently no public funds to build its London terminus at Euston, and a connection of HS2 to the west coast main line which makes the problem of train congestion to the north worse, not better, than it is at present. What was envisaged as a revolutionary transformation has, in effect, morphed into a high-speed tube extension from Old Oak Common to Birmingham. It has destroyed the integrated rail plan. In its place, we got the shoddiest White Paper I have ever seen from a Government, on the Network North plan; a set of incoherent proposals cobbled together in Downing Street without any expert input from transport people. This is no way to run a country.

Labour is not going to go for headline-grabbing announcements, but we need a carefully considered decision based on detailed work about where we are. There we have it: we must have a coherent policy at long last, replacing 14 years of dither and delay interspersed with reckless decisions. The country deserves a lot better.

Rail Manufacturing: Job Losses

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Wednesday 17th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I would first like to pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Rosser, who, sadly, passed away last week. In the context of this Question, he was an exemplar of the very finest in railway trade unionism.

In the other place, the much-respected rail Minister Huw Merriman said that the Government were working on a short-term solution to bring forward orders at the Alstom plant in Derby. Can the Minister confirm that, as reported in today’s Telegraph, this involves new trains for the Elizabeth line? Before Covid there was considerable investment in new rolling stock, but does he accept that, as the Treasury’s grip on railway finances has strengthened, his department has displayed, in the last couple of years, what can only be described as powerless drift and delay? This is no way to treat workers’ lives, and no way to conduct policy in a vital industrial sector. Where is the plan? Where is the promised guiding mind that will end the railways’ chaotic fragmentation?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Lord Davies of Gower) (Con)]

My Lords, I too pay my respects and offer my condolences to Lord Rosser’s family.

Several train operators are in the market for new trains, which will provide significant commercial opportunities for UK rolling stock manufacturers. Alstom will have the opportunity to take part in competitions for future contracts. Rolling stock owners are also continuing to support the supply chain by investing heavily in their fleets. Several major upgrades are under way, including for Govia Thameslink Railway’s Porterbrook-owned Electrostar fleet, and for Avanti West Coast’s Angel Pendolino fleet refurbishment.

Train Operating Company Contracts

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, it is almost six years now since the chaotic introduction of changed rail timetables demonstrated that the present system of train operating contracts is completely broken. Since then, we have had the Williams Rail Review, the Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail, and a lecture by the Secretary of State last year backing fully the case for reform. But all there is to show for this is a rather sketchy framework rail reform Bill, which the Government have put out for legislative scrutiny, despite the fact that the legislative programme is so light that the House of Commons is rising at 4 pm. What explains this dither and delay? I suggest to the Minister that the Government introduce this rail reform Bill into this House, where it could have lots of detailed scrutiny from informed people and be improved.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

As the noble Lord knows, the rail reform Bill is being scrutinised by the Transport Committee. That was an agreement by the usual channels. From May 2021, national rail contracts were introduced to bridge the gap between Covid-19 emergency agreements and future competed contracts. The last two national rail contracts began in October 2023. Under the national rail contracts, the Government cover the operators’ reasonable costs, receive revenues and bear the financial risks. The national rail contracts are flexible by design, allowing service levels to be adjusted as passengers return to the railways.

Pavement Parking

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Wednesday 21st February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

As I pointed out in my first Answer, the department received over 15,000 responses to its consultation, covering tens of thousands of open comments. Every one of these has to be considered fully, giving due regard to the wide range of opinions expressed. Pavement parking is an extremely complex issue. All the options which are recommendations of the Transport Select Committee have supporters and detractors, and significant challenges in their deliverability and effectiveness. Yes, it is time and I am hopeful that in the not-too-distant future we will come out with a report on this.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, all of us have enormous sympathy with the points the noble Lords, Lord Holmes and Lord Blunkett, have made. Can the Minister just disclose a little more about the options the Government are considering for better enforcement of the law? Will he tell us what they are, so that we might contribute better to this debate?

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

I cannot disclose them at the moment, but as I said, I am very hopeful that in the not-too-distant future we will be able to come forward with suggestions.

Network North

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Wednesday 14th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

Scotland will benefit from funding to deliver targeted improvements on the A75 between Gretna and Stranraer, which is one of the main routes from mainland Britain to Northern Ireland via the Cairnryan ferry. The UK Government have committed to providing £8 million development funding to the Scottish Government for a detailed feasibility study to develop options to improve the A75, and made it a priority action in our response to the Union Connectivity Review of 7 December last year. Additionally, as part of the announcements in Network North on 4 October, the UK Government have committed to provide funding to deliver targeted improvements to the A75, pending a business case being submitted by the Scottish Government.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I remind the House that, when HS2 was cancelled, the Prime Minister said that,

“we’ll reinvest every single penny, £36 billion, into hundreds of transport projects in the North”.

and the Midlands. Yet the Minister’s predecessor, the noble Baroness, Lady Vere, sent us a letter telling us that some of the money, £8.4 billion, would be spent on pothole alleviation across the country, including in such great northern counties as Wiltshire, and that only 31 of 70 road schemes that would be given the go-ahead were in the north and Midlands.

Following on from my noble friend Lord Grocott’s Question, will the Minister write to me with a list of the business cases for new public transport investment that have been presented to the Treasury since this announcement was made in October? How many of these business cases have been approved? I think that a lot would be. On this side of the House, many of us believe that the Government are holding back public investment so that they can justify tax cuts within their fiscal rules.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

I will be very happy to write to the noble Lord and give him an explanation of where the money is going. The Prime Minister said:

“Every penny of the £19.8 billion committed to the Northern leg of HS2 will be reinvested in the North; every penny of the £9.6 billion committed to the Midlands leg will be reinvested in the Midlands; and the full £6.5 billion saved through our rescoped approach at Euston will be spread across every other region in the country”.

Pedicabs (London) Bill [HL]

Lord Liddle Excerpts

3rd reading
Tuesday 6th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Lord Davies of Gower) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to the consideration of the Bill. Your Lordships’ invaluable insights, careful consideration and scrutiny have helped guide government amendments and resulted in a Bill that is not only in excellent shape but is one which I am confident we are sending to the other place with a consensus from your Lordships’ House.

As I mentioned at Second Reading, the Government have been committed to bringing forward this legislation when parliamentary time allowed. I am pleased to have had the privilege of taking this small but very important Bill through the House, and that your Lordships have been united in supporting the principle behind the Bill—namely, addressing the legal anomaly concerning London’s pedicabs.

Before I move on to my thanks, I will first draw noble Lords’ attention to an update following Report last week. My department published guidance on 1 February relating to the safe use of batteries in e-cycles and e-scooters. This matter has been raised consistently throughout the Bill’s passage through this House.

The guidance will raise awareness for owners on how to safely purchase an e-cycle or e-scooter and ensure that these meet manufacturing requirements and are bought only from reputable sellers. Other matters covered by the guidance included safe storage and charging, the warning signs for fire risk and how to address them, and how to dispose of batteries responsibly. I hope your Lordships consider this a helpful development and, as I mentioned in my comments on Report, the Office for Product Safety & Standards, and Defra, are in the process of reviewing the position with regard to batteries.

I now commence my thanks by recognising the critical role of my honourable friend Nickie Aiken, the Member for the Cities of London and Westminster, in raising awareness of the issue of pedicab regulation in London. She has been a tireless campaigner and shown commitment and determination in ensuring the legislation be brought before Parliament.

I am also most grateful for the constructive way the Opposition Front Benches have engaged with the Bill. I thank the noble Lords, Lord Tunnicliffe and Lord Liddle, and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, for their thoughtful contributions both on the Floor of the House and outside. I thank all the other noble Lords who have contributed with such clarity; playing their part in ensuring that the Bill we send to the other place is in great shape. In particular, I thank my noble friend Lady Stowell of Beeston, who has been a prominent supporter of my honourable friend Nickie Aiken’s campaign.

I hope noble Lords will join me in thanking all the policy officials and lawyers in both the Department for Transport and across government, whose efforts have contributed to making the Bill happen. I thank in particular the Bill team, Kenny Way, Chris and Donelle, and Adam Lawless in my private office. I also extend my gratitude to—I apologise for not having their surnames—Diggory and Douglas, the drafters in the Office for Parliamentary Counsel, who have prepared the Bill and its amendments during its passage.

Finally, I thank Transport for London for its engagement and support in bringing the Bill forward. The Bill will ensure that TfL has the tools it needs to effectively regulate pedicabs for the first time, and the Government look forward to a regulatory regime being implemented. As we send the Bill to the other place, I am confident that it will need very little, if any, amending. The Bill will make London’s roads safer and address the anti-social nuisance caused by rogue pedicabs.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the officials who have worked on this Bill and the Minister’s private office for the work they have put in. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Davies, for taking due account of the points that we made in the passage of the Bill. On the main question of how this regulation is going to be conducted, we have reached an acceptable consensus, and I thank him very much for that. I also welcome his statement today about the battery issue, which I think is a real public health and safety hazard. I am glad to see the Government recognising that and doing something about it.

This Bill, while not the most important piece of legislation we have ever seen—indeed, I think I may have remarked before that it basically affects two wards of a single London borough—is nonetheless tackling something that has been a considerable nuisance by ensuring that the pedicab sector is properly regulated and does not damage London’s reputation as an attractive tourist centre, which I think is very important. So we support the Third Reading of this Bill and look forward to its quick passage in the other place.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, stated, this Bill is limited in its scope. Indeed, it probably receives virtually no recognition beyond a couple of miles from this place—but it has been wanted for decades because of an increasing problem. Now this Bill is being passed in this House and sent down the Corridor, perhaps we can look forward to pedicabs becoming an asset to London’s tourism.

I add my thanks to the Minister and his team. They have been exceptionally generous with their time and exceptionally constructive in their approach. As a result, this is a much better Bill than when it came to this House. The devolution of powers over pedicabs to Transport for London is an issue of basic common sense. We have achieved that, and I thank the Minister for that and, finally, for his statement about batteries today. I had written a piece in preparation saying they are an unresolved issue and urging the Minister to keep working on it, but I can now thank the Minister very much indeed for his statement. It is not all that campaigners want—far from it—but it is a step forward. We are making progress, and I thank him for that.

Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 6th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Liddle]

28: After Clause 93, insert the following new Clause—
“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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

Pedicabs (London) Bill [HL]

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 30th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, there is a risk that this is beginning to sound like Third Reading, but I put on record from these Benches my thanks to the Minister and his team for their time and the care with which they have considered the points we made on Report and in meetings between then and today. They have been generous with their time and prepared to give serious consideration to the points made.

This amendment is, as noble Lords have said, about noise. Where, when, how and how loud the noise is, is a key aspect of the concerns about pedicabs. This is therefore a very useful addition and clarification and is in direct response to points made in Grand Committee. I am delighted that this amendment has come forward.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, on behalf of the Opposition, I will be very brief. We support this amendment and congratulate the Minister on bringing it forward; it demonstrates that Members of the House have been listened to. There is clearly a problem of noise created by pedicabs, and it affects people of all social classes who live in Soho, Mayfair and parts of Westminster. We are glad to see this amendment being proposed.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the acceptance of this amendment. We recognise the point made by my noble friend Lady Stowell about noise being disallowed after 9 pm. Clearly, during the winter months and dark nights it is not good to have this sort of behaviour and high levels of noise on the streets. That was very much behind the thinking in bringing this amendment forward. I am very grateful to all other noble Lords who have spoken, and I will certainly pass the thanks on to the team.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend that the first part of the noble Baroness’s amendment is very interesting but has a much wider application. None the less, she has cleverly found an opportunity to air broader concerns about lithium batteries. However, I feel rather sorry for the second part of her amendment, which is a very substantive measure. I do not think she particularly referred to it in her remarks and it has not been covered in the debate so far. It is about the amount of power that can be deployed by these vehicles and that they must be pedal-assisted and not just pure electric power.

The reason I support the noble Baroness’s sentiment behind that is something that we have covered in earlier debates. With electrically powered vehicles, which I think are great and have the ability to solve all sorts of environmental and other problems, particularly in cities, there is a blurring of where an electric bicycle ends and an electric motorcycle begins, and where an electric-powered but pedal-assisted vehicle ends and a motor vehicle begins, and whether the words that the noble Baroness has suggested really belong in TfL’s guidance or in the Bill. My concern is about putting very specific things in the Bill in terms of future-proofing. Who knows what will come along in future developments? Perhaps it is better covered by guidance.

However, there is a much wider concern about the difficulty of keeping up, from a regulatory perspective, with very rapid consumer change and the availability of electric scooters, which we talked about a lot at earlier stages of the Bill. Perhaps when the noble Baroness comes to wind up her remarks, she might just dwell a little on the second part of her amendment.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, we on this side of the House have enormous sympathy for the amendment that the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, has proposed, and I find myself, at least on this occasion, in full agreement with the remarks of the noble Lords, Lord Moylan and Lord Borwick, and the noble Viscount, Lord Goschen. However, it is the Government’s decision that one of the few transport measures they were prepared to put in their programme for this Session was a pedicabs Bill which, of course, is of very limited reach and scope. In fact, you could say that its reach is two wards of a single London borough. That is a pity, given that the country has enormous transport challenges in front of it, such as a failing railway system and the need for bus regulation. I could go on.

However, one of the issues that clearly has to be addressed is the one highlighted in this amendment. Although it would be inappropriate to try to carry amendments on this question of electric batteries, I hoped that the Minister might be able—indeed, I have urged him privately to do this—to come up with a timetable for when the Government might address these wider and more important questions. I am looking forward to his speech because it seems to me that in the House we have had a lot of concern raised about electric batteries and about the experimental period, as it were, of regulation of e-scooters, and we do not know how long that is going to go on for or what the outcome is eventually going to be. I would have thought that the Government must have a plan—after all, they are, I assume, thinking they might be re-elected—so we would quite like to know what future plans the Government have on what are very important and serious matters in which lives are at stake.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, I thank your Lordships for their diligence in scrutinising this Bill’s provisions. This second group of amendments is focused on electric pedicabs. My department is aware of concerns held by noble Lords surrounding batteries in e-cycles and e-scooters. Amendment 2 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, seeks to place a requirement on the Government to introduce independent conformity assessment processes for electrically powered pedicabs and the batteries used to power these vehicles. If I may say so, she Baroness puts her case well, and I will now seek to answer some of her points.

Noble Lords may recall my response to an amendment tabled in Committee on conformity assessments and potentially placing requirements on power-assisted pedicabs. My response to the amendment debated today will echo my previous position. The Bill is about closing the legal anomaly so that London pedicabs can be licensed for the first time. The amendment raises a much wider question about the construction of electrically assisted pedal cycles.

The UKCA, the UK conformity assessment marking, and its EU equivalent, the CE, the conformité Européene, demonstrate a manufacturer’s claim of conformity with statutory requirements. All e-cycles and e-scooters need to comply with UK product safety regulations. This includes the Supply of Machinery (Safety) Regulations 2008, which set out the detailed health and safety requirements for the design and construction of a product. Additionally, there is an existing requirement in these machinery regulations that responsible persons for all machinery within scope, which would include power-assisted pedicabs, must draw up a detailed technical file and a declaration of conformity. There are existing requirements to carry out appropriate conformity assessment procedures. In instances where the responsible person does not comply with existing requirements, they are in breach of the regulations.

The Government are seeking to reform the UK’s product safety framework through the product safety review. The Office for Product Safety and Standards is currently reviewing responses to its consultation on how it regulates all products on the GB market, including machinery, and where multiple regulations apply to specific products. The Government’s intention is to publish a response later this year that summarises findings and sets out its future plans.

Product regulations would not cover a scenario whereby a pedicab driver or operator adapted their power-assisted pedicab following purchase, However, Clause 2(6) provides Transport for London with the ability to make provisions relating to matters such as safety requirements, testing, speed restrictions, and the quality and roadworthiness of pedicabs. Therefore, there is sufficient scope for Transport for London to determine the expected standards for pedicabs operating on London’s roads.

Although pedicab batteries when not supplied as part of a pedicab would not be subject to a regime that requires the UK conformity assessment marking to be affixed to them, their safety would be covered by the General Product Safety Regulations. These regulations require that all consumer products placed on the market are safe. Furthermore, batteries must comply with the Batteries and Accumulators (Placing on the Market) Regulations 2008, which restrict the substances used in batteries and accumulators, as well as setting out requirements for their environmentally friendly end of life.

In bringing my comments to a conclusion, I draw your Lordships’ attention to the work of the Office for Product Safety and Standards, and Defra. They are in the process of reviewing the position on batteries. This includes examining the new EU battery directive and looking into the safety of the lithium-ion batteries used in e-cycles and e-scooters. This work should conclude in 2024. Alongside this, my department is developing guidance on the safe use of batteries in e-cycles and e-scooters, and we will publish this soon. I respectfully suggest that the Bill, with its narrow focus on licensing London pedicabs, is not the place to start tackling this issue. It is best dealt with as part of the wider work being taken forward by the Office for Product Safety and Standards and by Defra.

Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 15th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[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.