Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Randerson

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 5th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson]

I shall speak to Amendment 33, which seeks to amend government Amendment 29. This would allow the Secretary of State the power to extend the provisions in Amendment 29 to other local transport authorities as well as to metro mayors. This is where I differ from the general view that has been expressed so far, and have differed from it in our past debates, because in our view it is unfair that this power should apply only to areas with metro mayors. Perhaps that is because I come from Wales, where it is the policy of the Government not to have metro mayors so, however large the city, you have no metro mayors.

However, I can think of other areas that might want to take a lead in encouraging modern transport—for example, Cornwall, which was granted special powers on bus franchising but clearly does not have a metro mayor. I remember reading recently that a list of the most congested towns in Britain was topped by Bournemouth, which has no metro mayor. Those are all areas that would quite likely wish to encourage the use of electric cars and ultra-low-emission vehicles which in some areas suffer from considerable congestion. As we all know, congestion means increased emissions, and that is why they would have a legitimate reason to want extra powers along the lines that the metro mayors are being allowed.

The new amendment was picked up by the DPRRC in its 28th report, to which I draw the attention of the House. In its previous report, the DPPRC highlighted the fact that the power to make regulations under Section 10 should be made by affirmative procedure, and it was not convinced by the idea that only the first set of regulations should be affirmative. In its 28th report, it argued that the new clause further undermines the Government’s argument. It states:

“Allowing mayors to request different regimes for their own areas, in our view, must imply that provision which will be made in such area specific regulations will be significantly different from that made in relation to the UK generally. Accordingly, we consider that the affirmative procedure should apply to all exercises of the power where regulations under clause 10 are made in response to a request under the new clause”.


We are asking for the Secretary of State to have additional powers to devolve powers, no matter what local government structure is in place because, as others have said, in urban areas, there is a strong need to encourage the use of ultra-low-emission vehicles.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and others in this group. Local transport authorities ought to be able to deal with particular problems that arise.

We have a problem in Eastbourne, surprisingly enough, with high levels of particulates—seemingly related to the geography of the place. The local authority therefore wishes that we should be able to reduce them. We do not have a motorway. My noble friend Lord Young said that service centres had not yet been defined. I should be interested to know how the Government are thinking of defining service centres. In Eastbourne and, I should think, most metropolitan areas, we have a petrol station as part of a large, shared area where there is a lot of parking and a lot of other retail. Will this be defined as a service centre? It is as close as we get to a service centre. That would enable the benefits of Clause 10 to extend to an area such as ours and, if the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, is accepted, we might even get the full benefits of Clause 10. As that is clearly a direction in which our community wishes to move, I would very much like the Bill to give it the power to do so.

Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Randerson

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 9th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, can I argue against crisp definitions? We do not yet know what will happen. Maybe we can evolve a system where the ordinary car we use at home can switch into fully automated mode for, say, travelling around the railways, and then when it is not part of a railway, it will come off. Sometimes it is a car and at other times it is a rail vehicle. If we are to take a lead in this industry, we will need to continuously shape and reshape definitions. We do not want to be hamstrung by what we can think of now. I agree that we ought to share definitions around the world, but they ought to be based on technology as it evolves. It ought to be fast moving. We ought to equip ourselves with legislation which can move as the industry moves.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, asked me whether there would be capacity constraints. No, there would not be; if you transfer to rubber wheels, you can manage much higher traffic densities because you do not have the braking distance problems, and you can fit with the current level of autonomous safety. I am not saying that one could manage high-speed lines, but Southern rail is all low-speed. The fast services on the London to Brighton line manage 45 miles per hour. If, with autonomous vehicles, you are managing to go 70 or 80 miles per hour, just by doing that you are doubling the capacity. Therefore there are no capacity constraints on using these routes for autonomous vehicles. It will probably be managed by Network Rail because you need the consistency, predictability and safety constraints that go with rail services. However, we are talking about much smaller vehicles and different technology—about providing a basis for the whole of autonomous vehicle technology to evolve. Under those circumstances, you have to move definitions to keep up with the technology.

Level 3, as I read the definition, seems to provide a pretty good base: there are times when the vehicle can be autonomous but then it gets to a point where it says: “Hang on, I can’t be autonomous here, I need the driver to take back control”. That seems to be the sort of technology you might well try to put on a rail service so that, without having to get to levels 4 and 5, you can provide room for individual vehicles to travel on the service and provide the connections that people want beyond a railway station. We do not know yet; we have not got there. We have to allow the Government the breadth of definition that will allow us to experiment and to lead the field.

[Baroness Randerson]

The noble Lord talks about looking at the future and says we have not got there. With all due respect, we have got there. I have been in a driverless car—technologically, they exist. They are being trialled in parts of this country and indeed across the world. However, the noble Lord is right that we are crystal ball gazing over exactly how they will be used. In what circumstances will we use them? Will we all own our own little pod or will we summon up a pod to collect us and take us to work, or whatever, whenever we wish it? There is a great deal of debate here; undoubtedly the initiative has already been taken by taxi companies, for example, in this area.

However, I return briefly to Amendment 1 and the points made about definitions. I am not slavishly devoted to levels 3, 4 and 5—or 4 and 5. If the Minister says this has been rejected, that is contrary to what I was told, but I am happy to go with what has now been accepted. The definition needs to be precise enough for this not to end up in a lot of court cases. I say that because the whole of this part of the Bill is about insurance; we all know that insurance is always mired in legal definitions, so the Government need to be on firm ground. Having said all that, I am happy to withdraw my amendment.

Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill

Debate between Lord Lucas and Baroness Randerson

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 9th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Borwick]

My Lords, Amendment 27 is a probing amendment, triggered when I first read this Bill, which happened at about the same time as the very first fatal accident in America from a Tesla vehicle, when it was it was speculated in the press that Tesla would not release the data from the vehicle because it had proprietary value to Tesla. In fact, as I understand it, Tesla released the data in due course. However, I could imagine circumstances in which the owner or manufacturer of an automated vehicle believed that the less which was found out about this accident, the better for them.

One of the greatest advantages to the insurance industry of the automated vehicles is the enormous quantity of data that will be available from them. Not only will there be the product of six or more cameras facing every single direction but all the other information picked up about speeds can and will be stored in the vehicle as it goes by. Maybe the industry would be grateful if the Minister could confirm that to delete such data would be the offence of perverting the course of justice. However, in the meantime I wanted to propose the amendment.

Amendment 30, the next one in this group, is on the question of regulations, which has already been touched on in earlier debates about standards. However, I believe that the range of aspects of automated vehicles that we have discussed this evening is very great, and there is clearly a lack of knowledge on the part of noble Lords such as myself, not just about the sheer detail of this but about the industry and what is coming on. So many different things are happening, and each of them is an outstanding opportunity for the country. We need a legislative background that can cope with completely new circumstances, not only prohibiting things that are brand new and thoroughly bad but permitting things which are brand new and have not been invented yet.

On the suggestion that we can revert to new primary legislation, given the number of years it has taken to develop this legislation and the constant pressure on legislative time in both Houses, it would be wise for the Government to take regulatory powers to come up with new regulations to deal with new matters. Therefore, these limited new regulatory powers are proposed in Amendment 30.

[Baroness Randerson]

My Lords, I take this opportunity to ask the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for a little more information about his intention with regard to this amendment on transmission of data. One can see advantages to that flow of data, and one knows that it would naturally take place, because technically it can take place. However, there are huge issues about privacy. I am not entirely sure that I would want—to grasp an example from the air—information to be in someone else’s hands about the fact that I go swimming every week, so that suddenly a department store starts trying to sell me swimsuits every day of the week. I do not want that unnecessary invasion of my privacy. There could be very much more sensitive issues. I could be visiting a hospital and wanting to keep my medical condition private—that kind of thing. There have to be rules about what this data is used for, how it is kept, and so on. Is it the Minister’s view that current legislation on data and privacy going through this House would cover that sort of issue, or will we need other legislation to cover it? Does the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, envisage a sort of situation akin to the black box that some drivers use now to reassure their insurance company that they are driving safely and within speed limits, and so on, which, in return, keeps their insurance premiums down? I am interested in that point.

Finally, I will make a comment about Amendment 30. I am not usually keen on giving the Government delegated powers but there are some sensible limits on this here. I understand that we are envisaging a future; we cannot predict every requirement accurately and we cannot wait around on every occasion for primary legislation—so, as far as that goes, it seems a sensible proposal to me.

[Lord Lucas]

I share the noble Baroness’s admiration for my noble friend’s Amendment 30, which puts things in a very simple and clear way and is well worth having in the Bill. As far as the insurance amendment is concerned, I was looking for a way within the narrow confines of the Bill of illustrating the need for the Government to go further now. Even dealing with the subject of insurance, there are matters that need to be discussed now which we may need to bring into secondary legislation to enable things to operate properly. We should make provision for these things to be done in the Bill. I do not have answers to the questions that the noble Baroness has asked. I imagine that, in an automated world, having a dump of the data for the quarter of an hour before an accident and through as far as the machine keeps recording would be a useful way of establishing what happens during an accident; it really ought to be something we are thinking about, even in the narrow confines of this Bill.

I turn to what my noble friend said about motor vehicles. I presume the Bill will somehow, through the atmosphere of legislation, pick up the definition of motor vehicle from Section 185(1)(c) of the Road Traffic Act 1988:

“a mechanically propelled vehicle, intended or adapted for use on roads”.

However, I think the Bill uses motor vehicle in a slightly different sense, as vehicles that,

“are or might be used on roads”—

that is okay so far—

“or in other public places”.

Clearly, we have a different definition of motor vehicle here from the one in the Road Traffic Act. Therefore, we are somewhat adrift; we are dealing with things that might be used in public spaces and therefore presumably might interact with footpaths, crossing all sorts of land; they could include the sort of thing that mows golf courses too, which might very well go automatic, or the farming equipment my noble friend was referring to. If you have a footpath across the land and one of these vehicles is trundling across it, it is occupying a public space at that point; we are encompassing a wide range of vehicles beyond the definition in the 1988 Act. This might be something worth resolving at some stage.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for that reply. I will assume that included in it, but not vocalised, was a promise to write to me about the definition of motor vehicles. I like my moments of pedantry as well as the next man, and I would be interested in pursuing that subject in correspondence.

On the main points, I am delighted that my noble friend found at least half a warm word for my noble friend Lord Borwick. I think there is a real opportunity here that, with a little persuasion and some crafting of the amendment, we might, unusually, find ourselves supporting the Government in giving themselves some powers that they do not yet know how to use, within this limited area, because it would have such a potentially positive effect on the economy of the UK. I beg leave—

[Baroness Randerson]

Before the noble Lord sits down, is he aware that there are now reasonably big drones delivering goods? They trundle along pavements and across level crossings and so on, appearing to behave a bit like pedestrians. I have been thinking about what the noble Lord is saying, and he is raising a good point. What is the difference between a drone delivering an Amazon parcel and a driverless van delivering an Amazon parcel? The only difference is probably the size, so there will have to be some definition of a cut-off point—unless we are going to insist that drones are insured, in the same way as vehicles.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Randerson]

Not in Wales, no—in London. We are not that advanced in Wales.

[Lord Lucas]

The noble Baroness raises a very valid point. What we seek to regulate is autonomous automated vehicles that are likely to interact with people. That will include delivery drones, whether they are flying or trundling on the pavement. It would be quite useful in parts of London to be able to go amphibious and drop into the Thames for a bit, run up the river and then back on to the bank. We are talking about things that will interact with the public. I hope we are looking at a wide definition here and not just talking about things that are supposed to confine themselves to the road. One of the virtues of automated vehicles is that they do not have the same need to do that as other things, and they might well turn out to be quite versatile. I look forward to learning in correspondence where we are on the definition, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.