Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 24th July 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Lucas]

50: After Clause 12, insert the following new Clause—
“Livestock markets and abattoirsThe Secretary of State must, on the day on which this Act is passed, set in train the creation of a national policy statement under section 5 of the Planning Act 2008 (national policy statements) covering the development of livestock markets and abattoirs.”Member’s explanatory statement
Giving livestock markets and abattoirs the privileges accorded to national infrastructure would provide the foundations for the creation of a new network of livestock markets and abattoirs, with good communications and outside town centres, ensuring that animals could be dealt with locally and humanely and profitably.

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[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, looking at livestock markets and abattoirs as critical national infrastructure would enable a coherent response to a set of problems that have been building up for many years. In the 1970s, the UK had around 2,500 abattoirs. By 2024, it had dropped to fewer than 200. That has resulted in a rising trend in animals suffering long journeys by road, and a sharp decline in the availability of abattoirs catering for independent and local food suppliers, such as butchers and restaurants wishing to supply local meat and farmers wishing to be part of local produce marketing arrangements. We should have care for both those things. We have these animals in our trust, and to treat them badly when we could treat them better is not something we should contemplate; and we need to cater for local and individual food markets if we are to have a healthy food economy.

Abattoirs and livestock markets are difficult to site—abattoirs for obvious reasons, livestock markets because of the noise and traffic. The ideal sites for them are near major road junctions, taking traffic and noise away from towns, but such sites are difficult to get planning permission for, because the need for the sites is national but the need that the application is assessed against is purely local. That makes for a very difficult and uncertain planning process.

If we are to have a rational structure, something that really works for us as a nation, we need some clear thinking as to what should go where, not instantly but over time—the evolution of a plan that makes sense. Places with good communications outside town centres would ensure that animals can be dealt with locally, humanely and profitably. The evolution of such a structure would also have the benefit of freeing up land occupied by current sites within towns, which would be appreciated by locals as well as by the industry. Altogether, it ought to be a good thing to do, but to make it happen it needs to be thought through at a national level, not developed half-heartedly and randomly, trying to make things happen locally, because that clearly does not work. We are just seeing a process of further decline, intensification and discomfort for animals, and lack of facilities for local food producers.

Such an initiative might sensibly be combined with looking at the case for strategic, logistic and supply chain hubs, which need much the same sort of location—away from town centres and near good, strong road and rail transport—and have much the same difficulties in organising and planning, in that they are judged by, “Do we need this near Basingstoke?”, rather than, “Is this a logical part of the national structure of road transport?”. I have been looking at a particular proposal for such a hub near Popham in Hampshire, mostly because I spent a lot of my young life crawling over the railway workings at Popham, which are one of the most glorious sites for chalk downland flowers. I would hope to persuade any such development to include a similar space of bare chalk, which could be allowed to develop into a botanical heaven.

There is a need for the advantages that would come through some element of national planning, some bringing in of national considerations to siting abattoirs and livestock markets at transport hubs, so that instead of everything coming in at Southampton having to go up to the Midlands and down again to service the south of England, it could be dealt with more logically—locally, or in whatever other structure works nationally. That is something that the Government, with a good long time in power ahead of them, could reasonably contemplate giving some thought to and taking forward. I beg to move.

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Lucas. In another place I represented Northampton, and when I was first elected in February 1974 it had a very active market and abattoir, not on the outskirts but on the fringes, I suppose. That has been gone now for the best part of a quarter of a century, yet the need is still there. My noble friend is right because the nature of businesses today, as opposed to 50 years ago, has changed. The demand is there for local pubs, local restaurants and other small businesses allied to the area.

Additionally, we should never forget animal welfare—I am sure that none of us does, but it does get forgotten. Today, many animals taken to an abattoir are travelling for 50 miles, 60 miles or more. That is not good animal welfare. We have only to see, as I saw the other evening on the television, the problems with some animals not being looked after properly—the specific example was of the RSPCA in relation to dogs.

I am not sure my noble friend is totally right, though, in saying that it has to be totally national. Yes, there has to be a national strategy, and I would hope very much that it would be done in conjunction with the NFU, which has always taken a positive interest in this area. I am from the east Midlands, and I suspect we could do it equally well on a regional basis, perhaps within an overall national objective. Other things are done very successfully on a regional basis. I hope, first, that the Minister has an open mind on this and, secondly, that he has an enthusiasm to take it forward, because the principle of the amendment my noble friend has moved is, in my judgment, very important.

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I hope I have answered noble Lords’ questions and considerations and reassured the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. I kindly ask him to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to everybody who spoke on this amendment. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, gave me hope for a moment when she said that the average age of a slaughterman was 63. I am thinking through what to do after I leave this place; unfortunately, there is no slaughterhouse close enough to make that practicable.

I understand where the noble Lord, Lord Khan, and the Government are coming from. Their answer is very much the same as the one I got out of the previous Government. It is good that the Government recognise the problem but, like the previous Government, they seem prepared just to let it get worse. I really hope that out of the processes that the Minister described comes some initiative that changes the direction. As I say, I am very grateful to all who have spoken, but I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 50 withdrawn.

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[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, we are now back on the Transport and Works Act. This clause relates to the holding of an inquiry when the powers of that Act are used. Since it will come up at some point later, it is worth reminding noble Lords, although I am sure they know all this, that for major construction works and infrastructure projects there are three methods available to a promoter for getting permission. One is planning permission from the local authority, and one—since 2008—is to go for a development consent order. When I say that there are three methods, there are really four, because there are also hybrid Bills. But there is also the intermediate thing of getting a Transport and Works Act order under that statute. In doing so, of course, one almost inevitably impinges on the property rights of others, so the possibility of having objectors and holding inquiries to examine those objectors must of necessity arise. That is the part of the Transport and Works Act that we are dealing with.

There are two things going on in the Bill, as far as I can make out. One is that it is currently the case that, if somebody raises an objection, the Secretary of State may hold an inquiry or may appoint somebody to hear the objector. However, they do not have to appoint someone to hear that objector if the Secretary of State considers that the objection is frivolous or trivial. There is a seriousness test, if you like, before the Secretary of State is obliged to respond to the objection by appointing someone to hear it or, indeed, by holding an inquiry.

One of the things happening in the Bill is that that seriousness test is being changed so that it now has to be something considered “serious enough” by the Secretary of State—no longer the very low bar of frivolous or trivial, which are terms quite well understood in legal circles, I believe, and therefore testable objectively, to some extent. Now, it becomes an entirely subjective test on the part of the Secretary of State as to whether it is “serious enough”—enough for what? No definition is offered. This moves the balance of power away from the citizen and in favour of the promoter, who is very often the Government, in a way that deserves inquiry. That is what these amendments are intended to highlight and invite the Government to comment on.

In addition, there is the question of whether the Government have to hold an inquiry or appoint a person. At the moment, in the Transport and Works Act, they “may” do so, but with the rising of the seriousness test—if that is admitted—it seems to me that, if someone passes the seriousness test, it should say “must” hold an inquiry or appoint a person on the part of the Secretary of State. After all, if it is admitted that the objection is serious enough—again, enough for what?—surely it must follow that an inquiry or a hearing should take place. If we are going to have a different balance, I am trying, not unhelpfully, to get the right balance. It would be worth hearing what the Minister has in mind here, and whether there is any give on his part.

Finally, I turn to my Amendment 53L, which relates to what is, as far as I can make out, a new power for inspectors in relation to Transport and Works Act inquiries—not planning inquiries but specifically Transport and Works Act inquiries—to impose costs on those who appear. At least in the planning realm, with which I am more familiar, inspectors can indeed impose costs on one side or the other, and in some cases on both, but only if there is some sort of delinquency on their part that has caused damage and held up the inquiry, such as a failure to provide documents on time or not turning up at hearings, which create costs for the other side.

The inspector can hold a separate costs hearing and can, and does, impose costs. I think we would all agree that that is a sensible measure to try to minimise delinquency on the part of those attending hearings. But a general power to defray the costs of the inquiry could have a chilling effect on objectors. That may be the Government’s intention—it may be that the Government want only the well-heeled to be able to appear before inquiries. If so, it would be as well to say so. But, if not, this new power needs to be either removed or very severely moderated. With that, I beg to move.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I very much support my noble friend in these amendments. This is not just something that is happening in this Bill; it is also going on in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, where the Government are looking at the conditions under which a parent is allowed to complain about their treatment by a local authority. There seems to be a general move to restrict individuals’ access to setting something right when they feel they have been hard done by by the state and really making it quite difficult. In the case of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, there are no criteria set out for the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State can just throw the thing in the bin without giving reasons, without doing anything. I hope we will manage to change that, but it is a big change in attitude and I am really interested to know what is going on in this Government, in that they want to change the relationship between the state and the citizen in that way.

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[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I think many noble Lords—I am one of them—have general sympathy with the Government’s ambition to remove unnecessary obstacles to the approval of infrastructure projects, which is why one has tried to be as indulgent as possible in bringing forward amendments to their clauses. But in this case, it simply will not stand. It is an entirely circular definition to say that an inquiry will be held if the objection is serious enough to merit an inquiry. It is entirely self-defining; it tells us nothing whatever. It does not tell us anything objective about the seriousness required, as one of my amendments would set out. The Government will have to come back to this because, as it stands, it is completely unsustainable.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, before my noble friend withdraws his amendment, I have a question for the Minister. He said the definition needs to be fleshed out in due course. Under what powers in what Act will that fleshing out be done?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for his interjection. I will write to him after this Committee and set out some more detail.

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I know that in the past there were intentions for a plan to support the installation of hydrogen refuelling points, but we have always been slow to act. There needs to be progress to get us to green hydrogen if we can for this purpose, for trucks, but I do hope that we can use the intentions that are set out here to have an assessment of how we can get to a green energy transition for HGVs rapidly so that it not only encompasses the electric charging points but hydrogen refuelling access as well.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 57C in this group, which proposes some alternative ways of solving the same problem, so I do not propose to go into it in great depth. The point of this debate is that this is something we should be moving to find a solution to because, although it us not particularly simple, it is not particularly difficult, either.

Many of us have come across simple cross-pavement charging arrangements, which people seem to be installing ad hoc. It would be a good idea if this became something that was regularised, because we want the street to be a properly controlled environment. On the other hand, we do not want to make it expensive or difficult for an individual householder to obtain what we intend to be a general provision. But, if we are looking at a system where a lot of people have this facility, we should also be looking at how we are going to manage parking in this space. There is not much good in having an electric charging facility if someone else has gone on holiday and left their van in the space you need to charge your vehicle. An efficient use of an electric charging system is that it is used by more than one person, so how will we enable householders to allow other people to charge in that space?

Neither of these are things with instant solutions, but, if we are looking ahead to a time where we all have electric vehicles—particularly people who live in flats or other arrangements where the parking outside the building is not going to be sufficient—how will we provide that? Can we provide it in a way which is better than the one we have at the moment, where, for one reason or another, mostly because it is provided by people who have no personal interest in the facility, the prices paid by people for on-street charging are very high? If someone has installed it for their own use, they are much less motivated to charge a huge price for someone else to use it. They are much more likely to say that any margin is a good margin. So I very much hope that we can look at democratising on-street charging. I am not saying it is easy, but I am saying it is something we need to make progress with.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, said, my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb signed a number of amendments in this group, so while noble Lords will know that I do not normally speak on transport, I am speaking on my noble friend’s behalf this afternoon.

I begin with the very interesting comment of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas: the efficient use of a charger would mean it being used by more than one person. I would go rather further than that and say that what we want is an efficient use of cars: them being used by more than one person. The practical reality, of course, is that most cars spend the vast amount of their time stationary, occupying public space when they are parked on the road. Coming to an arrangement is where Amendment 66, tabled by the noble Lady Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, comes in, requiring

“local planning authorities in England to publish and regularly update a three-year electric vehicle charging infrastructure plan”.

That charging infrastructure plan would ideally very much look at that car club kind of model, which could potentially free up large amounts of space in our cities to be put to much better use than simply being occupied by a stationary vehicle 96% of the time—that is the last figure I saw of the amount of time that cars are stationary.

It should be noted that my noble friend did not sign any of the cross-pavement charging solutions. I know that Caroline Russell, the Green London Assembly member, would not forgive me if I did not make the point that, whatever we say about charging across the pavement, the first priority has to be pedestrians, particularly vulnerable pedestrians. We must make sure that anything that is installed or allowed does not create even greater difficulties, on what is already a very difficult streetscape on many occasions, for pedestrians, particularly vulnerable pedestrians, with wheelchairs, buggies et cetera. I note, perhaps declaring an interest, that when I was in Camden I would regularly try not to trip over the electric cable that my boss at the time trailed out of his house and across the pavement out to his car on the street. Because he was my boss, I was not quite allowed to do anything about it.

I want to focus mostly on Amendments 64 and 67, which are about heavy goods vehicles. This is a crucial issue for the environment and for public health. At the moment, fewer than 1% of new HGVs sold are electric, and there are 500,000 HGVs in the British fleet. At the moment, they are emitting the equivalent of 20 megatonnes of CO₂ equivalent per year—the same as 2 million homes. They are also particularly bad in terms of emissions of nitrogen oxides and particulate matter, which have very significant impacts on public health. That tends to particularly strike in poorer, more disadvantaged areas—think about the homes along busy main roads, which tend to be where people who already have poorer health live. There is also the point that EVs are much quieter, which has significant public health impacts, and they are also better to drive. One of the things we have in terms of HGVs is an ageing driving population, and something that is easier to drive is a significant issue there.

I also note that the Government currently have a plug-in truck grant, with a discount for those who purchase them of up to £25,000. There is a push there, and the Government are spending money on it, but what is lacking at the moment is the general charging infrastructure, and these two amendments seek to have a programme and to make sure that when new depots and other infrastructure is being built, they are covered. I note that at the moment there is still an issue about the speed of charging, but megawatt charging is on the way. When we come to later amendments that my noble friend also signed, we also have to think about the infrastructure of distribution of electricity, to make sure that it is able to cater to that very heavy demand. I think there are very strong arguments here for a concerted, planned and organised approach. What we have now is extremely ad hoc, and in far too many cases we are seeing people literally trailing a cord across the pavement, which is a really bad idea for all kinds of reasons.

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I speak also on behalf of my other noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering on her Amendment 62. Both my noble friends apologise for not being able to speak to their amendments directly. My noble friend Lady McIntosh wishes to have a debate about the smaller reservoirs required by local golf clubs and farms, for example, and to set out why she is in favour of building them to serve their needs. This is currently discouraged by the de minimis rules in the Reservoirs Act 1975. The rules and safety regulations are very onerous, and disproportionate to the risk posed. While my noble friend welcomes the review currently under way, we would like to inject a sense of urgency into that review, so that changes from legislation—most likely through regulations, rather than primary legislation—can follow. I beg to move.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 61 in this group. Its purpose follows on from what my noble friend Lord Gascoigne said: namely, that we have not built a new reservoir for a long time. The intention of the amendment is to give the Government the power to change that—to make things happen.

I would hope that the existence of such a power would mean that things happen anyway, but we need the ability to shift things onwards and to get out of the situation we are building ourselves into. We want to put in another 1.5 million houses but have no way of supplying them with water, particularly in some bits of the country that would actually welcome additional houses. It is important to get over whatever the blockage is and it would be a good idea to give the Government a bit of dynamite to do this.

I am delighted that Tideway has come in on budget. Perhaps the noble Lord could introduce whoever is responsible for that to whoever is responsible for the doors here.

[Baroness Grender (LD)]

My Lords, as we consider the challenge of water security, we all feel the urgency. Demand is rising, our climate is changing and not a single new major reservoir has been completed in over three decades, as we have already heard. Yet pursuing a one-size-fits-all solution rarely serves us well, especially regarding water storage and distribution. I particularly thank the noble Lords, Lord Gascoigne and Lord Lucas, for inspiring this discussion and debate.

There is consensus on building new reservoirs, but this cannot be done in isolation. Proper investment from water companies is essential, particularly in tackling leaks and improving demand management so that we use water more wisely, even as we boost supply. This is not either/or; it must be both. Yesterday, in the Statement regarding the Independent Water Commission, the full implication of the broken infrastructure that has led to so much water going to waste was laid down very clearly.

It is tempting to focus on grand, large-scale projects, but we should make space for smaller, locally led interventions that reflect the needs and fabric of our communities. Alongside ambitious infrastructure, a programme of carefully sited small and medium reservoirs, delivered in partnership with farmers, landowners and councils, can speed up progress, reduce environmental barriers and, most importantly, engage local people. We have heard not just from experts but from communities themselves that local schemes such as Slow the Flow projects, natural dams and catchment-based storage bring added benefit for flood mitigation and biodiversity, not just water supply. These nature-friendly solutions must be championed alongside larger reservoirs.

However local schemes alone are not enough. We must pair them with strategic national thinking. Regions with water surpluses should be able to support those facing deficit—a modern, integrated network for water transfer. I ask noble Lords to bear with me, because this is a little complicated. The National Infrastructure Commission, which was replaced by the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority in April 2025, was praised by the National Audit Office for its proposals, which constituted a positive cost-benefit case for establishing a network of strategic transfers of water—a transfer system that enables us to balance supply across the country, smoothing out regional disparities and providing resilience against drought and flooding. The recent Commons Library briefing, Future Water Resources, highlights several proposed intercompany transfers, such as Thames Water to Southern Water—120 megalitres a day—demonstrating that active steps can be and are already being undertaken. Alongside large and small reservoirs, these transfer schemes are truly integral to future-proofing our water supply and reducing the risk of shortages.

Turning to the amendments before us, Amendment 59, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, proposes removing the size and complexity test for new water infrastructure to focus solely on the value for money test. But, as Ofwat’s current regulations set out, that test ensures that projects do not threaten a water company’s fundamental service to customers. Given the sector’s current state, we should tread carefully before removing this safeguard. A more prudent path may be to consider government co-funding models, such as that now being used for nuclear, if projects exceed what companies can realistically deliver and are in jeopardy of providing a poor or totally broken service—or further broken, should I say—to consumers.

Amendment 61, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, would hand powers to the Secretary of State to dictate timelines and, crucially, permit bypassing planning controls. While there is much in the amendment that we read with interest, I worry in particular about proposed new subsection (3)(b), which is a significant centralisation of power. Yes, there has been an unacceptable delay in reservoir construction, but concentrating such powers is unlikely to foster better outcomes. Proper local engagement, as we all made very clear in our Second Reading speeches, and scrutiny need to be balanced and are vital partners to each other.

Amendment 62, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, aligns more closely with the objectives on these Benches. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to the compelling arguments that were made on the noble Baroness’s behalf.

Above all, we must ensure that interventions, whether mighty reservoirs or smaller, community-scale schemes, work for people and for nature, and are delivered with transparency, accountability and genuine urgency. I hope the Minister will clarify the Government’s support for small reservoirs and for a robust water transfer network, so that every region and every customer in every region can feel protected, valued and heard.

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[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, I really appreciate this amendment being tabled and the manner and the style in which it was presented. I welcome the noble Lord’s comments and speeches in this space.

Amendment 60 requires guidance around the planting of trees on highways to be issued within six months of the Act coming into force. As the noble Lord said, this does not require great expense. We feel that it is a helpful, useful measure. I absolutely agree with the noble Lord that this is not about development versus nature. Actually, we need both, and both need to be conjoined and considered together, because we, as people who live in the new developments, who need to thrive and not just survive, need these things to work. They are better for all of us. They reduce health inequalities, they make us happier and healthier, and they make our lives more pleasant.

One example came to my mind on this: the work that was done on the upgrade to the A14 between Cambridge and Huntingdon, which opened in 2020. As part of the upgrade programme, 850,000 saplings were planted by the Highways Agency. Unfortunately, it was done in extreme heat and in poor soils, as a result of which three-quarters of the trees—roughly half a million—that the Highways Agency planted died. They are being replanted, at a cost of £2.9 million, which raises an issue about how we replant nature. Again, I do not want to go into Part 3, but there are obviously issues with trying to replicate nature or move nature from one place to another, and this is a very stark example of that.

Going beyond that, local communities really got involved in this area and I want to thank them, because people went out and planted trees themselves, cared for and nurtured them, and did a great job in trying to put right some of the mess. Some of the trees that were planted were the wrong types of trees; they did not have enough soil around them, so they dried out; the soil they were planted in was bad; the saplings were too young—generally it was not very well done and the trees that were planted were not cared for and nurtured. What tends to happen is that there is a concentration on numbers—it is a numbers game. Every party had a tree-planting commitment in its manifesto—“My tree-planting commitment is bigger than yours”—and that is not what we need. We need trees to be cared for and nurtured.

I suggest politely to the Government that they should focus not on numbers planted but the numbers in five years’ time. How many trees, five years after the planting, actually survive and are counted? If there are not enough, more planting should be done. Trees are really important. This is a valuable opportunity for the Government to look at the strategies and for us to have a broader look at how we do this. So I really welcome this amendment.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I very much support my noble friend’s amendment and the speeches that have been made. Getting good guidance published makes a lot of difference. There are always reasons why a local developer or authority will not do what is best. One can hope that a big authority would have good practices; our big local authority has decided to mow all its wildflower verges in the middle of June—sigh.

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[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I very much support Amendments 63 and 106 in this group. I will speak fearlessly to them, because my noble friend Lord Moylan has already put the WD-40 on my set of thumbscrews as a result of previous amendments.

It is entirely sensible to put solar panels in places where there is the immediate local demand for electricity when it is sunny. When it is sunny, our trains are running. To have solar panels along rail infrastructure supplies a demand which is entirely local. When the sun is out in a serious way, the rail consumes extra electricity in keeping the carriages cool, so it is an entirely sensible place to put them.

Car parks are excellent places to charge your car. They are usually next to supermarkets or other similar places that are using electricity in the daytime. If we are going to generate solar electricity, this is an entirely appropriate place to do it.

I would go further than this: I would allow local authorities to have local schemes to encourage solar on all commercial roofs and would allow them to increase the level of business rates payable on roofs that do not have solar. It is ridiculous when you stand on hills above Eastbourne and look at a couple of hundred hectares of commercial estates and there are no solar panels whatever on any of them, but they are all using electricity in the daytime. The difficulties arise from fractured ownership and lease patterns. It is not easy to do, but, if we can produce a substantial incentive that basically says to businesses, “You can either generate some solar in this space or you can pay into a fund to help us to do other things elsewhere”, and if the payment is sufficiently high, I think we will get a move to solar, and that would be a good idea.

The alternative is a large solar farm on an ancient marsh in the middle of town. That would be entirely destructive in visual terms and not at all helpful in terms of wildlife and the environment generally. It would be much better if we could have the same size of solar farm on land that is already developed and entirely suitable for it. But we have not got the right structures in place in government to enable that, and I would really like to see that changed.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, before I speak to these amendments, I declare my registered interests, including shareholdings in companies involved in renewable energy. These interests are not directly affected by the amendments under discussion. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, for tabling and speaking to these amendments so eloquently and passionately, and for her ongoing commitment to the UK’s decarbonisation ambitions in the transport sector.

Amendments 63 and 106 seek to mandate the installation of solar panels in the construction of new transport infrastructure and require solar panels to be provided as part of the construction of all new above-ground car parks. The Government are committed to achieving clean power by 2030, and it is clear that solar energy will be crucial to achieving our mission. The clean power action plan calls for the rapid acceleration of solar deployment, from around 18 gigawatts as of April 2025 to 45 to 47 gigawatts by 2030. This is an ambitious mission, which has enormous potential to create good jobs, protect bill payers, ensure energy security and reduce our exposure to volatile fossil fuel markets. The recently published Solar Roadmap includes over 70 actions for government and industry to take forward to help deliver this ambition by removing barriers to deployment of all types of solar.

We recognise that solar canopies on car parks have the potential to provide significant renewable electricity generation, shelter for cars and drivers, and localised power for EV charging points. This year, the Government published a call for evidence to assess the potential to drive the construction of solar canopies on new outdoor car parks over a certain size.

We are currently analysing the evidence that has been provided by the sector, and are conducting the essential cost-benefit analysis needed to understand the impact of any policy to mandate the provision of solar on new car parks. Having not yet concluded this process, it would not be appropriate at this stage to include this amendment in the Bill. However, the Government are considering this proposal very carefully and will explore ways to achieve its intention, including through future legislation, if the evidence supports this conclusion.

It is also the case that we do not currently have the evidence base to support requiring all transport infrastructure to include solar panel installation. We have not yet engaged with industry to fully understand the potential impact of this amendment, or conducted the necessary cost-benefit analysis to determine whether it would be appropriate to install solar on all the different types of transport infrastructure set out in the amendment.

The Government are committed to achieving their mission through significant solar deployment across the country. Following the publication of the road map, the solar council will be established to bring together the solar industry, the UK Government and other relevant parties. The council will work to secure, enable and accelerate the deployment of solar at all scales and identify emerging opportunities, realigning priorities and action as needed.

I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, notes the ongoing work the Government are doing in this area, which must conclude before any consideration of a legislative intervention takes place. I therefore kindly ask her to withdraw her amendment.

On Amendment 68, also tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, the Government recognise the importance of accelerating grid connections for electricity demand projects, including electric vehicle charging, as well as for generation projects. This recognition lies at the heart of the reforms we announced in the industrial strategy, which include using the powers in the Bill to amend regulatory processes and accelerate connections for strategically important projects.

Although the Government fully acknowledge the critical role of freight and logistics in national supply chain security and decarbonisation targets, it would not be prudent to enshrine in legislation a preference for one sector, as this would inevitably mean deprioritising equally important sectors listed in the industrial strategy, such as advanced manufacturing, the wider supply chain for clean energy projects, data centres, and more.

That is why we have also announced the connections accelerator service, which will support strategically important projects across all priority sectors to accelerate their connection dates. The Department for Transport will play a key role in helping to shape the framework for identifying these vital projects.

I also take this opportunity to highlight the suite of initiatives the Government are pursuing in support of the electrification of freight, logistics and the broader transport sector. This includes our ongoing efforts in national and regional strategic energy planning. We are working to support infrastructure investment ahead of need, ensuring that we not merely react to but anticipate demand. By planning strategically, we can deliver robust, future-proofed infrastructure, and support our broader decarbonisation and economic ambitions.

Furthermore, the Department for Transport is actively encouraging stakeholders in the transport sector to look ahead, to consider their future electricity needs and to feed this information directly into our strategic planning processes. By doing so, we will create a more comprehensive and responsive energy network that is able to meet the evolving requirements of our nation’s transport system.

I also highlight the work of the Freight Energy Forum. Led by the Department for Transport, this forum brings together transport and energy stakeholders from across the country, providing a platform for knowledge-sharing and collaboration. By working closely together, we can inform future action and ensure that the sector remains agile and well-equipped for an electrified future.

I trust that the Committee will appreciate the rationale for our approach and recognise the Government’s determination to deliver balanced, strategic and forward-looking energy infrastructure for the nation. The noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, mentioned a number of countries, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. The noble Baroness cited the French Government in particular. The potential for solar canopies on car parks is significant, and we are looking carefully at international best practice, including what France has introduced. Before committing to any prospective policy, including mandating, we believe it right to properly engage with industry and stakeholders to better understand the impacts and see whether government intervention is needed.

Noble Lords alluded to a couple of points about deploying solar on rail lines and roads. Rail track solar could be a feasible solution, particularly in urban areas where the track is electrified, as there will already be a good connection. However, there are some current obstacles that may inhibit the deployment of the technology in all areas, such as the challenge of grid connections in rural areas and additional kit required to convert electricity from solar to usable electricity for trains, which may be expensive.

Finally, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, talked about car parks and agricultural land. This Government are committed to a solar revolution that enhances energy security while protecting the UK’s biodiversity and agricultural spaces. Car parks indeed offer an opportunity to utilise vast spaces for solar generation, but we must engage with industry and gather a broader evidence base to overcome the potential structural and financial barriers to widespread use of solar canopies. For the reasons outlined previously, I kindly ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

Motor Vehicles (Driving Licences) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2025

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Monday 19th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, I do not have any argument with the Government over their laudable environmental and other objectives in bringing forward these regulations, but I have a question that is really to do with the physics of the matter. We know that kinetic energy is a key, or perhaps the key, determinant in the severity of and damage caused by road accidents. Kinetic energy is of course calculated as half of the mass times the square of the velocity.

Essentially, if, as I understand it, the Government are content that it is safe for a category B licence holder to drive a 4.25 tonne vehicle powered by zero-emissions means, why is it not safe for that same driver to drive another vehicle powered by any other means? In the event of a road accident or collision, the power source of the vehicle the category B driver is at the wheel of will make no difference to the brakes and tyres, and to the impact caused to the other vehicle involved in the accident.

When we are legislating on road safety, we have to take into account the realities and physics of the matter as well as other government objectives, such as decarbonisation, laudable though they may be. I would be very grateful if the Minister could answer that question.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, as the Minister points out, we have a large electric car market; as my noble friend Lord Moylan on the Front Bench points out, what we have is a market for large electric cars. I ask the Minister: why does that continue to be the case?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Lucas for raising the interesting point about an electric tuk-tuk for passenger use. I listened with great care to the Minister’s response. I have to admit, a few years ago, I looked at the possibility of purchasing a BMW i3. The cost at that stage was £33,000. I do not know what the Minister paid for his. I do not think, however, that my noble friend Lord Lucas is thinking about a vehicle of that sort and that cost. That is one of the principal—

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

For noble Lords’ information, the cost of an electric tuk-tuk in China is about £1,500.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

I am very grateful. That is something the Minister should respond to. I shall not comment further on it other than to say that it is a useful thing to know. But the BMW i3 is not £1,500; it costs a great deal more, and that is beyond the scope of the majority of people.

My noble friend Lord Goschen and the noble Earl, Lord Russell, made a point about road safety. The Government have given assurances on this. Although I am happy to accept those assurances for today, they will be held to them. We will expect those changes to be monitored for their road safety effects. The Minister has said that and we will hold him to it—it is a very important consideration.

Concerning the state of the roads, much has been made by the Minister and the noble Earl, Lord Russell, about the fact that a heavy goods vehicle is heavier than a car. I know that. Everybody knows a heavy goods vehicle is heavier than a car. It has the word “heavy” in its name. The key difference is that there are 33 million cars in this country. There are 500,000 heavy goods vehicles. The damage being done to our roads is not, as I said in my opening remarks, because of the occasional passage of a heavy goods vehicle down a lane in Oxfordshire. It is done by the relentless passage of heavier and heavier cars across those roads, which is not only leading to potholes but breaking up the base and creating a huge maintenance and restoration bill for our roads that will not, in my view, be properly addressed by £1.6 billion.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the Government were given the opportunity to reject the notion that they were going to manipulate driving licences and the conditions on driving licences to achieve objectives related not to road safety or vehicles but to net-zero policy. That would open a door to further manipulation in the future, which could well be used to disadvantage—as the price of a BMW i3 already disadvantages—people on lower incomes. The Government took no opportunity to reject that. Indeed, the noble Earl, Lord Russell, on behalf of the Liberal Democrats, endorsed it and thought it was a very good idea. That is a cloud perhaps no larger than a man’s hand, but it will come back—

Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 15th January 2024 Lords Chamber

The Department for Transport must be aware of the urgent need for this legislation because the companies concerned have been vocal about it. Why was the decision made to exclude this blossoming sector from the legislation? What are the problems with including it? Will the Minister agree to go back to his department and consider broadening the scope of the Bill so that the sector can be included, allowing us to take advantage of the latest technology? I beg to move.

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

Will the Minister be prepared to sit down with me, colleagues and the ORR to see whether a similar arrangement could be made for an independent statutory body—maybe the ORR or another body—to investigate on an ongoing basis whether everything that is proposed, especially under secondary regulations that we will not see, is the best and safest? I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

[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.

Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 10th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]

Lord Lucas Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 28th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[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.

Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 13th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I agree with the noble Lord, and I accept that it should have been published by 15 April. It is in its very final stages of preparation and will be published as soon as possible. There is an important component of this post-implementation review: there will be an opportunity for feedback on the scheme as it currently exists. Therefore, I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and anyone else with an interest will look at the post-implementation review, consider various reports which have recently come into the public domain, and think carefully about how we can improve the scheme. We are always looking for improvements, we keep the scheme under review, and I am willing to keep an open mind.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that, looking at the long term and particularly our 30 by 30 commitment on land use, we should not be devoting agricultural crops to vehicle fuels—certainly not ordinary vehicle fuels—and that anything we can get from waste should be directed at aviation and other sectors where it is extremely difficult to create substitutes, rather than ordinary domestic road vehicles?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The noble Lord is right. It is the case that the road vehicle sector is at a transition moment, as we go to battery electric and hydrogen fuel cells, but we can use it in this transition period. We are focused on using things such as recycled carbon fuels for sustainable aviation fuels, because we see that as a key way to decarbonise sectors that are much harder to abate, such as aviation. We will be looking at similar technology for maritime, if that exists.

Motor Fuel (Composition and Content) and the Biofuel (Labelling) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2021

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Monday 12th July 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for that exposition of the regulations. I hope that her colleagues in the Department for Transport will take the opportunity, over the next few months, to listen to their colleagues in Defra because at the same time as considering this measure we are taking the Environment Bill through the House, which faces in a very different direction from that which underlies this measure.

Biofuels, as in taking human food and burning it in vehicles, are a scam. They cause much more environmental damage than alternatives and are absolutely not the way we should be going. Biodiesel, for instance, seems to contain quite high proportions of palm oil, sourced from the expansion of palm oil plantations at the expense of forests—putting “a tiger in your tank” in a way that Esso never intended. Bioethanol involves taking food that could perfectly well be used by humans and burning it. It puts pressure on landscapes which could well be used for rewilding and to bring nature back into this country, in a way that the Environment Bill majors on. I would welcome an integrated approach to where we get our transport fuel from.

The basic direction in favour of electric must be right; getting electricity from sources other than the destruction of the environment must also be right. I very much hope that this is the high-water mark of a failed European policy and that we will see no more of it.

Transport Decarbonisation Strategy

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 19th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are extremely ambitious in this area. We are not even bothering about hybrids—we are going straight for zero-emission vehicles. As part of the £3 billion announced prior to the bus strategy, we will invest to support 4,000 zero-emission buses across the country. In this year alone, we will invest £120 million in zero-emission vehicles, which we expect to support 500 buses. This is in addition to the £50 million we are giving to Coventry for 300 buses. We are making a good start. There is a way to go, but we will have supported 4,000 buses by the end of this Parliament.

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, will my noble friend consider giving local communities much greater freedom to experiment with low-speed zones, road closures and other measures which might really encourage active travel locally? The more centralised system that we have at the moment takes an inordinate amount of time to navigate.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I accept my noble friend’s point, and we have had some good conversations about this in the past. I encourage him to wait for the transport decarbonisation plan; I suspect there will be a bit more about that in it. We want local authorities to take more control over carbon emissions in their area and their local transport strategies.

National Bus Strategy: England

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Thursday 18th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, it is very nice to have three minutes each for Back-Bench questions. I hope to take less than that. I start by congratulating the Minister on the publication of Bus Back Better. It is the most powerful transport policy document of recent years. I will put my hand up for on-demand autonomous buses when they come—they will be ideal for low-density south-coast towns.

My question for the Government is: to help those LTAs that are less successful, will the DfT move quickly to set up the dissemination of practical best advice? Will it ask the star performing LTAs how bus lanes were handled on shopping streets with delivery requirements; how narrow streets requiring the removal of parking were dealt with; and how fast but meaningful consultations could be carried out? These are all things that good LTAs have done well, as page 18 of the report makes clear, showing

“an average benefit-cost ratio of 4.2”

among 33 major bus schemes. The DfT knows where a lot of good practice is; it should not be hard to share it.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his warm words about the bus strategy—it is nice to have some. The noble Lord also makes a very important point: because we are giving more local control and accountability for bus services, the ability of local transport operators to put in place their bus service improvement plans will be critical. The noble Lord spoke of their need to share best practice. That is absolutely in the plan: the bus centre of excellence will combine learning from not only the Department for Transport but bus operators and the leading LTAs—which are already well down this track—and it will encourage everyone and ensure that they can move together at the same speed. We do not want what I call the recalcitrant LTAs: the people who have not loved buses as much as the Government have. My ambition is to make sure that we have no recalcitrant LTAs and that across the country everybody levels up so that we have good bus services everywhere.

The noble Lord mentioned demand-responsive transport. He will have seen the £20 million that we have put into 17 bids across the country. The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, mentioned them. We published the list of 17 successful places back in early January; all of them have moved into the final stage and secured funding. Demand-responsive transport will be really good for rural areas. The noble Lord wants them to be autonomous, and so do I, but perhaps not just yet.

High Speed Rail (West Midlands–Crewe) Bill

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report stage
Monday 30th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I am very lucky to be following my noble friend Lord Carrington because he said a great deal that I would have wished to say myself. A proper, healthy, temperate forest contains about 1,000 different tree species. That is true of North America and Asia. It is not true of Europe because the last ice age crushed the European flora against the Alps and we lost a lot of species and genera at that time. The ice ages also had a significant effect on us. At the peak of the last ice age we had only two trees species: pine and birch. Looking at things on a slightly longer than human timescale, those are the only two native British trees. Everything else has come in, but we still have only 31. It is a ridiculously small number and makes our forests extremely vulnerable to pests and diseases.

Pests and diseases travel easily. Even without our help, they blow in on the wind and come in on migratory birds. We have already experienced a number of these diseases. Round where I live in Eastbourne, most of the ash trees have gone. It looks as if as a continuing flow of disease is the future that we should expect. The right response to that is biodiversity. We should be striving for biodiversity in the number of species we are using in our new planting and in the origin of the seeds that we are using.

If we are careful and import seeds under proper conditions, the risks of bringing in disease are extremely low. I have seen the way Kew makes sure that what it brings in from around the world for its Millennium Seed Bank is safe to have and to store. It is not impossible and you do not need a huge weight of seed to supply a very large number of trees.

I very much favour what my noble friend Lord Carrington advocates. We should follow the direction that the Forestry Commission advocates and seek to increase our biodiversity—to get gradually towards a forest with more natural resilience and a more natural species than our current 31. That will give us resilience against incoming disease which we currently, quite clearly, do not have.

Where we face the regrettably small proportion of ancient natural woodlands, which are a great haven for established wildlife communities, we should not think that we cannot do anything to increase that. We need to plant the right kind of trees next door. It has always been the case that species move from one bit of wood to another. As I say, there were only two species here at the peak of the ice age. Everything else has come in. All the communities that live with them have come in. All these species are used to moving. If we create the right conditions next door, then in 100 or 200 years—the sort of timescale you are looking at if you plant trees—we will have a good community of woodland species in our new plantations.

We should not think that we can do nothing to increase our proportion of high-quality woodland. We should strive to increase it next to the woodland that we are damaging with HS2. To return to one of my noble friend Lord Blencathra’s earlier amendments, we should absolutely require that HS2 achieves biodiversity net gain.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Alderdice) (LD)]

The noble Lord, Lord Rooker has withdrawn, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Haselhurst. No? I call the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley.