Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill

Debate between Carol Monaghan and Drew Hendry

2nd reading: House of Commons & Carry-over motion: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 6th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

I am generally supportive of the aims of this Bill, not least as the mother of an 18-year-old son who has just passed his driving test, as insuring him is almost impossible. The cheapest quote we have had so far is £1,700. Autonomous vehicles will offer young people and those who have given up driving—the elderly and the disabled—an opportunity to get into vehicles.

I am excited by the technology surrounding autonomous vehicles because much of it is powered by the photonics industry. It is really quite fortuitous that, only a few months ago, we set up the all-party group on photonics. I am delighted to be standing here as the chair of that group. It is almost as if the timing of this Bill has been set especially for us. Driverless cars are operated by light detection and ranging—LIDAR—technology, which allows for smooth traffic flow and reduced fuel consumption. Ultimately, the technology leads to safer transport.

The UK is perfectly placed to develop this technology. We have a world-leading photonics industry. In particular, I wish to highlight the photonics companies across the central belt of Scotland. I also want to mention a group at Oxford University that is developing a low-cost autonomous navigation system. A robot car will navigate using lasers and cameras linked to a computer. A horizontal laser on the number plate detects obstacles and halts the car to avoid a collision, while a vertical laser casts a curtain of light on the surroundings to make a 3D model of the environment. When the car takes the same route the second time, it recognises where it is and can drive accordingly.

A road train, which is a convoy of closely packed vehicles, might be one of the first applications of driverless cars. It is likely that it will appear first on motorways. The hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) raised concerns about his ability to continue to use his motorcycle, but I am sure there will be plenty of roads available that can be used by vehicles operating in a less autonomous fashion. There is certainly a real potential to get traffic moving on our motorways.

We have talked about the possibility of trials and pilots, and my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald) mentioned the grid system in Glasgow. I will add to that by saying that Glasgow is a perfect urban setting in which to hold a trial.

In Scotland, we have some difficult issues to overcome. We have heard about single-track roads, and while I will not talk about nuns and prams, there are often obstacles such as cattle grids and sheep that these cars will have to take into account. The bigger problem for rural Scotland, and for rural areas across the UK, is how these cars will communicate. Driverless cars have to communicate with their surroundings. If, as is the case in some areas, there is not a 3G network available, how will these cars be able to proceed?

[Drew Hendry]

I raised the subject of mobile connectivity earlier. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is vital that the UK Government take an outside-in approach with new licensing for the mobile spectrum auctions?

[Carol Monaghan]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. There is real concern that a lot of the spectrum that has been licensed before has been licensed for the benefit of companies, not consumers, and this is an ongoing problem for many people not just across Scotland, but in rural UK generally.

One of the challenges that we will face as this technology develops is dealing with our massive skills shortage in engineering and photonics. We currently have a huge number of EU nationals working in those fields, but we are yet to see any guarantees for those workers from the Government. We are talking about unilateral guarantees because those highly skilled workers have job prospects worldwide. We should be rolling out the red carpet for them, rather than for a certain President.

I also agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) that women are a massive group who are ignored in STEM careers. Someone once asked me why I keep going on about getting more women into STEM careers and whether it is just about gender equality. Yes, gender equality is important, but we also have massive skills shortages and a huge group of people whom we are not tapping into. We need to start taking advantage of that raw potential.

[Drew Hendry]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is being generous in giving way. Is it not an absolute scandal that 50% of the potential workforce we need in that industry are not being encouraged in—girls and young women?

[Carol Monaghan]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. One of the big challenges we face as a society is the need to look at the signals we give not just to girls who are considering their career options, but to parents. What are we saying to wider society? An engineer is not just somebody who wears an oily overall; an engineer can also be somebody working in the field of photonics and developing driverless technology. We really need to plug that. We need to see female engineers on programmes such as “EastEnders”, and then we might start to see some progress.

The industrial strategy Green Paper that was published a few weeks ago referred to key enabling technologies. If autonomous vehicles are to progress at a pace that keeps us up to date with the rest of the world, we must ensure that we properly support the photonics and engineering industries and ensure that enabling technologies are given proper priority.

Let me move on to low-emission vehicles. We have heard a few comments today about charging points. What will happen to the national grid when we all arrive home in the evening and plug in our electric vehicles? We already know that the national grid has certain peaks, for example during advert breaks in particular programmes. We can look at smart charging technology that will have different cars charging at different points, but we are still talking about a much higher current being drawn from the national grid, and the source of that energy will be power stations. Are we simply switching from dirty fuel in our cars to dirty fuel in our power stations?

[Drew Hendry]

Again, I thank my hon. Friend for being so generous in giving way. Is not it true that the use of renewable energy is the way ahead to ensure that we can cope with those loads? UK Government policy, by stifling renewable energy, is hampering a technology that could solve that very problem.

[Carol Monaghan]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. He has just taken my next point—thanks very much. Once again I will use the phrase “untapped potential”. Renewable energy really is the way ahead. I do not want to get pollution out of our cities only to put it into industrial areas with power stations, whether they are coal, oil, gas or nuclear.

Space Policy

Debate between Carol Monaghan and Drew Hendry

Thursday 14th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Drew Hendry]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his substantive point about engaging young girls and women with these industries, and I absolutely subscribe to that view. As I have said—I will continue to repeat it here until we get it right—this is an issue that we need to tackle together to ensure that girls are able to take advantage of these opportunities.

[Carol Monaghan]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one serious issue that has not been properly taken up is our major shortage of STEM-qualified teachers. Unless much more attractive and lucrative wages can be offered, this shortage will continue and it will impact on the number of girls coming through.

[Drew Hendry]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that education is the key. I mentioned the science skills academy, and the idea behind it is to influence children as they develop and give them these opportunities, but also to try to reach out to society in general and to say to parents and grandparents that they need to talk about this. It is also about saying to education professionals and to those who make the investments that lead to their recruitment that this issue has to be taken incredibly seriously.

Stakeholder activities going on at the moment are to be encouraged. For example, I congratulate The Telegraph on creating the women in space jobs resource, which includes educational resources encouraging women into STEM subjects. Another example is the Royal Society of Aviation, which established the women in aerospace and aviation committee in 2009.

On solutions, we need to increase public awareness of the UK space industry and its value to the economy. We need to increase engagement with young people through projects such as Scottish Space School. There will doubtless be others of which I am not aware, but we need to make sure that this sort of thing carries on. I support calls for the need to concentrate funding on research and development projects. We absolutely need to stop thinking about what is happening today and start thinking about the opportunities for tomorrow. We need to work to increase peer support to encourage female graduates to enter and remain in the sector.

Let me finish by citing Professor Alan Smith, head of the department of space and physics at University College London, who acted as rapporteur for an event hosted by the Scottish Government and the Civil Aviation Authority. He said:

“Scotland has embraced space. Space feels at home in Scotland.”

Let us make sure that all of us and all our children get the opportunity to feel at home in space, too.

--- Later in debate ---

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

I want to start by paying tribute to the original spaceman. I am not talking about Yuri Gagarin; I am talking about the legend who was David Bowie, and I am sure the House will join me in sending our condolences to his family.

I grew up in the 1970s and ’80s and there are three things I remember vividly from my childhood. The first was the excitement of the power cuts. That was maybe not so exciting for the industries, but, for me, as a child getting the candles out and wandering through the house in darkness always holds great memories. I remember Margaret Thatcher coming to power, too—probably the less said about that the better—and I remember space. I remember the space programme and the space shuttle programme, which started in 1981, with great excitement.

That excitement took off for me when the space shuttle made a surprise visit to the Paris air show in 1983, and for it to get there it had to piggyback on a jumbo jet. I was at primary school in Glasgow at the time, and we knew the jumbo jet would be flying over at some point in the morning. We had been told that when we heard the jumbo jet we had to stand, quietly put our chairs under our desks, line up at the door and all go carefully outside. Of course all order was abandoned when the noise of the jumbo jet was heard. Chairs were thrown, people climbed across desks, people were knocked down in the rush—[Interruption.] It was the west end of Glasgow. Eventually, out we went to see the incredible sight of the space shuttle perched—precariously, it seemed—on the back of this jumbo.

It was that single event in my childhood that sparked a major interest in me both in science and technology and particularly in physics. It was how I ended up choosing to study physics at university and eventually becoming a physics teacher, so the inspiration offered by space stretches across all strands of society.

At this point, I want to mention another physicist. He is a far more famous physicist than I am and has done great work for space: Professor Brian Cox. It was a great treat for my pupils at school to see clips of Professor Brian Cox taken from his wonderful DVDs “Wonders of the Solar System” and “Wonders of the Universe”. It never surprised me that the academic students would be interested, but what was really surprising to me was that the less academic ones wanted to see him as well, and regularly would say to me, “Miss, are you going to stick on that professor guy?” They enjoyed that. I was lucky enough to be at the Science Museum on 15 December for Tim Peake’s launch. There were thousands of schoolchildren there, and their enthusiasm and excitement reminded me of the incident from my childhood with the jumbo jet.

One of my colleagues asked me a couple of days ago: “What is the point of this debate? Is it really that important? Why does space exploration matter?” Well, it is absolutely crucial that we have this debate and it is timeous to have it at this point. I want to talk about the three aspects of space exploration that I think are most important. First, there are only two industries that push innovation in great leaps and bounds: defence and space exploration. Space spin-offs have found their way into all aspects of our everyday lives, through materials such as Teflon, solar cells and robotic arms, which have led to the development of prosthetic limbs. The basic memory foam mattress was developed as a result of providing cushions for astronauts during take-off. There is also a story about the space pen that NASA spent a great deal of money developing, only for the cosmonauts of the time to decide that a pencil would work just as well in zero-gravity conditions.

Space technology has wide-ranging applications. For example, the damping system on the launch pad has special fluid dampers to ensure that the launch can take place in a stable manner, and when the Millennium bridge just down the road developed vibration problems in the first couple of days after its opening, it was those same dampers, taken straight from the shuttle’s launch pad, that provided the solution. Such applications happen throughout. Those spin-off technologies do not simply have an impact on our lives; they also have huge economic benefits, and it is important that we recognise that.

Secondly, the satellites that are in orbit have become fundamental to the way in which we live our lives. The largest satellite in orbit around the Earth is of course the Moon, which is of fundamental importance to our lives. It creates the tides, which create great benefits for life in the tidal areas. Artificial satellites that have been put into orbit provide us with television from around the world through satellite broadcasts that come to us via geostationary satellites in high Earth orbits more than 22,000 miles above the Earth.

[Drew Hendry]

Does my hon. Friend agree that micro-satellite technology is providing some really exciting opportunities to dramatically reduce the cost of putting satellites into space while still performing the functions previously carried out by larger machines? Does she also agree that, on that basis, there should be much more investment in innovation in order to take forward that work?

[Carol Monaghan]

Absolutely. It is often not understood that satellite launches take place regularly. The next such launch is in fact on Sunday, but we have not heard very much about it in the news. The micro-satellites that my hon. Friend has just mentioned are providing us with more and more great services.