Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill (Sixth sitting)

Debate between John Hayes and Richard Fuller

Tuesday 21st March 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

I am grateful, Ms Ryan, for your permission to say a few words to encourage the Minister not to be persuaded by the well-meaning nonsense being peddled by Opposition Members, with this re-bubbling commitment to the all-seeing omniscience of Soviet or socialist planning that ascribes to Government powers that, I think experience has shown, are well beyond their ambit: to foresee, invest and direct the resources of the nation in the direction of what might, today, be the most inspired strategy but tomorrow might be ashes around the Minister’s feet.

[Mr Hayes]

Perhaps I can begin where my hon. Friend concluded. My admiration and, I might say, deep affection for him has never allowed me to be persuaded more than I need to be by the argument he makes for unbridled freedom. We have known each other for a long time and he is right that the Government should not go too far, but I think I disagree with him on the margin, in the context of that deep affection. The Government sometimes need to go a little further when change of the kind we are envisaging brings with it an immense opportunity but also risks. Where the Government are mitigating the effect of those risks on the people we represent, they need to get involved. I look, therefore, to form a middle road between the Opposition and my hon. Friend because, as is well known, I am an extremely moderate man.

My dream—at the heart of all men’s existence, is a dream, as Chesterton said—translated as my political mission, which began in infancy, is to prevent many things from changing but, when they do, to help to shape them and, when they must, to help to ensure that they have the most efficacious and virtuous possible effect. So it is with this technology.

My hon. Friend is right—I must not flatter him too much—that this market will develop in ways that we can barely now envisage. To have too clearly defined a plan would not be wise; it would be just about possible, but it would certainly not be right. None the less, we would not be bringing this Bill forward if we did not think that Government had a part to play, not only in facilitating beneficial change, but also in ensuring that what we do does not constrain it. For example, the amendments deal with the difference we are trying to make in respect of charging infrastructure for electric vehicles. The Bill is designed to allow the market to be the best it can be, rather than to dictate the future in a way that my hon. Friend and I would not wish to do.

Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between John Hayes and Richard Fuller

Thursday 16th March 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Hayes]

I think that is helpful in this sense: it is certainly true that there will need to be some accessible, comprehensible and consistent means by which we define “automation”. However, the hon. Gentleman is right that, if my analysis is accepted, these things will change iteratively and that there will be a series of further technological developments that we cannot predict with accuracy.

Of course it is true that the Secretary of State, in drawing up this list, would need, as my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire said, to continue to listen, consult and be involved in how that definition of “automated” might evolve. It is hard to know quite what an “automated” vehicle might look like in decades to come, and it is right that we should be sufficiently flexible to take account of technological changes.

Nevertheless, for the insurance purposes, which, as the hon. Gentleman said in his opening remarks, is where we start with this matter, it is really important that we are clear about the core definition of what automation looks like, and it is this matter of capability—the capability of the vehicle to drive without the intervention of a driver or other human being.

[Richard Fuller]

I just want to get absolute clarity. The example that my right hon. Friend the Minister provided of the automatic pilot would be an example where oversight would not be required but might be provided by the pilot. Therefore, is that an example of something that would fall within or without scope of being “automated”?

[Mr Hayes]

Inasmuch as any vehicle had the capability of being piloted—driven—without human intervention, yes. I do not want to go too far with this metaphor, but in the circumstance that I set out, the responsibility for the vehicle—the plane or car—remains with the pilot or driver. There is a balance to be found between the function of the vehicle and the responsibility for the vehicle, which I think is a parallel with the example I gave. That was the hare I set running and my hon. Friend is now encouraging it to run faster.

[Richard Fuller]

Will the Minister therefore accept that including in this definition the principle of oversight and not restricting it to control provides a much wider ambit for what this list will be required to provide? Indeed, we would find situations where self-parking vehicles would be included in the list, because it is so hard to prove that someone at the time would not have a duty of oversight.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Fuller]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend. I have no wish whatever to demean one of the most important export earners for our country. Insurance is indeed important, but when it comes to the issue of the word “monitoring”, what my hon. Friend and other colleagues on the Committee need to work out is the implication of that word—yes, through the context and lens of the insurance industry—for the ability of this country to provide an adequate platform for innovation.

I was trying to think of the implications of the word “monitoring” versus “controlling” for when I am sitting in a vehicle. Surely one of the advantages of the vehicles that we are trying to encourage here is that it is a different type of experience. When someone gets into an autonomous vehicle, that enables different types of things than when they get into a regular vehicle. One must surely be that they have the ability to do other things, because the car is taking them from A to B. However, if the word in the definition is “monitoring”, I understand that my time doing other things is now limited, because I have essentially got to be doing what I would be doing anyway, which is monitoring the road, the vehicle, the conditions and pedestrians. I will be spending all of my time monitoring what is going on, even though I am not necessarily controlling what is going on.

[Mr Hayes]

Heaven forbid that I should in any way limit my hon. Friend’s remarks, as there is no one I would rather fly to the moon with, and possibly fly among the stars with, than him, but, to be absolutely clear, what I said was that we are defining automated vehicles as those vehicles that have the capability of driving themselves without human oversight or intervention for some or all of the journey—without human oversight or intervention.

[Richard Fuller]

I am grateful, but I fear that I have still not been fully persuaded by my right hon. Friend in this battle between the never-to-be-demeaned insurance sector—the foundation of all human endeavour—and the entrepreneurial spirit. There is a third person in this little equation, which is the driver him or herself. I worry that the perpetuation of the word “monitoring” rather than “controlling” is essentially designed for a substantial amount of risk to be shifted from those two participants and on to the driver themselves. The message may go, “You were not providing sufficient monitoring of your circumstances in this autonomous vehicle.”

In this era of innovation, clarity is not only required by insurers and innovators, it is required by those people who create the demand for the product. Therefore, if we are setting up a regulatory structure that in any way takes away from the confidence of people to spend their hard-earned money on an innovation or new type of product, we are backtracking from that commitment. I would like a little more persuasion from the Minister—perhaps not today, but as he is going to write to the Committee prior to Report. Otherwise, I would say that there is a good case for the Government to review clause 1(1)(b) and replace the word “monitored” with the word “controlled”.