Gatwick Airport: Growth and Noise Mitigation

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered growth and noise reduction in Gatwick Airport.

Thank you, Sir Christopher, for allowing me to address this Chamber. I am delighted to have the privilege of congratulating you on your well-deserved honour, which recognises your lifetime of service.

The issue of aircraft noise is incredibly important to me, and I am afraid that many in the Chamber will have heard me speak about it many times. It is also important to all the residents of Tonbridge, Edenbridge and surrounding villages—indeed, I have received more correspondence on this issue than on any other since I was elected. That is unsurprising for those of us who live under the flightpath in the beautiful villages of west Kent, which are the most beautiful in England, as we all know—I declare an interest because our home is there. The impact of aviation noise on the economic prosperity and environmental sustainability of our communities has been severe.

Why am I raising the matter now, when many villages in Kent, Sussex and Surrey have been experiencing noise from flights for half a decade or more? In 2013, the introduction of the aviation policy framework meant a dramatic change to the flightpaths of the Gatwick airport approach. Many of the villages around Tonbridge, Edenbridge and Malling are now overflown as they have never been before. I therefore wish to focus on what Gatwick and the wider industry are doing or not doing to reduce noise from approaching aircraft as the airport continues to grow.

It is great that there are busy airports in this country, proving the case that you have made many times, Sir Christopher: that we are a global country open for business with the whole world. It is wonderful that communities from across the world are using the airport, but the impact on communities who live under the flightpaths are also of great concern to us all, and we should take into account the impact of each aircraft that arrives or leaves.

I am well aware of the London airspace management programme and of the importance of getting it to properly reflect the views of communities. The global implementation of P-RNAV—precision area navigation—will require more to be done to reduce noise, but it will not be implemented until the early 2020s. Communities such as ours need action to address the problem now.

This may surprise you, Sir Christopher, but extraordinarily enough, I would like to acknowledge the change in attitude from Gatwick airport. Not only does it say that it is helping with the work of the London airspace management programme, which I welcome, but it has listened more in recent days and its attitude has improved dramatically since I first met its representatives in 2014.

The arrivals review was much needed and proposed some good ideas. I am grateful for the work done on it by Bo Redeborn and Graham Lake, whom I am glad to see in the Gallery today, and for the community representation, but it needs to go further. For example, modifications have been made to the whine of the Airbus A320 that many of us will have heard. I am sorry that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, who worked so hard to achieve those modifications, is not present, but I know that he is on Government business abroad—he is in our thoughts, and I know we are in his. The modifications are welcomed by all communities, but they are not enough and they were even agreed before the arrivals review was completed.

Recommendation 11 of the review would have provided a fair solution, utilising both sides of the airport equally on days with no wind, but it was rejected. It should have happened as part of the commitment to implement the review in full. It has also been admitted by almost all those involved that recommendation 10—widening the swathe—will not alone cure the problem, so we clearly do not have the solution to the noise issue.

Growth comes at a price to the communities affected. The impact of both arrivals and departures is heard for many miles around on all sides. Complaints continue to increase and new protest groups have sprung up all over Kent, Surrey and Sussex. These folk are protesting not because they want to, because they have nothing better to do or because they have a history of direct action, but because aircraft approaching Gatwick are having a serious impact on their lives, their health, their children’s development and their right to enjoy their properties in peace.

[Sir Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. I know that he has done a great deal of work on the matter and that it has caused grave difficulties in his constituency. Does he agree that one of the problems of dealing with Gatwick—indeed, with any airport—is that people must be able to trust the information that they get from it? In East Grinstead in my constituency, there are constant complaints about erring off the straight and narrow. It is clear that trust has broken down between residents and the airport. What suggestions does my hon. Friend have for a remedy? Does he agree that it is a very serious problem?

[Tom Tugendhat]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for expressing that essential point. The noise management board, which is part of the solution, has begun that work, but of course it cannot solve the problem alone. As he would expect, I will come on to the Department for Transport and its role in restoring trust. I welcome his points.

I remember David Wetz, who lives in Chiddingstone, telling me last summer that he was unable to enjoy his daughter’s birthday celebration properly outside because normal conversation simply was not possible in the garden. That is a disgrace. It is not a matter of nimbyism. It is about people wanting to live a normal life without having a motorway built over their heads.

As representatives in Parliament of communities such as Chiddingstone, we are responsible for representing their interests to the Government—I pay tribute not only to the right hon. and hon. Members present, but to the many others who have joined groups with us. It is clear that we need to enforce a better balance between the interests of the aviation industry and of local people affected by noise. Successive Governments have designed policies that seek to achieve that balance, but we must consider whether Gatwick is complying with them and whether the Department for Transport is enforcing them in its role as noise regulator.

The key policy—it is a welcome policy—on noise is the 2013 aviation policy framework, which clearly stated Government policy on aviation noise as

“to limit and where possible reduce the number of people in the UK significantly affected by aircraft noise”.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I know that the debate is about Gatwick, but the same issue affects other airports. Belfast City airport has a cut-off time of 9.30 pm for aeroplanes to land. Obviously there are cases in which aeroplanes land later, but a system of fines is in place and the money goes into the community. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that what happens at Belfast City—a smaller airport, but one that is surrounded by houses—could well be helpful for his investigations, and indeed for the Minister and his Department?

[Tom Tugendhat]

I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman has come up with some suggestions, and I would be happy to look into them later. In fact, some interesting work has been done on the approaches to Schiphol airport with respect to the effect of laying out the ground on how sound travels. There are interesting ideas out there, and I certainly welcome looking at Belfast’s example.

The policy set out by the Government is clear: they do not endorse any increase in the number of people significantly affected by aircraft noise. That approach is a welcome change, but Civil Aviation Authority data demonstrate that it is not being followed. Since the policy was introduced and the flightpaths were altered radically in 2013, Gatwick has increased its flight numbers by 12% and its passenger numbers by 22%, but the number of people significantly affected has not reduced. In fact, it has risen every year.

The Minister will know about the 57-decibel average noise contour—after all, it is the Government’s preferred noise impact measure. Using that calculation, the number of people affected by aircraft noise has increased by 27% since 2013. Looking at it geographically, the affected area has increased by 8% across Kent, Surrey and Sussex over the same period. Using the Government’s preferred data method, we can show that noise is continuing to get worse in the communities affected, despite the policy. My question for the Minister is clear: why have the Government failed to implement the aviation policy framework in full? Their own figures clearly show that the number of people being significantly affected by aircraft noise has increased.

The aviation policy framework rightly looks at sharing the benefits of growth between the aviation industry and local communities. Indeed, to quote it directly:

“The industry must continue to reduce and mitigate noise as airport capacity grows”.

I hope everyone includes in their definition of “the industry” airlines, airports, National Air Traffic Services, the Civil Aviation Authority and all those industry representatives who sit on Gatwick airport’s noise management board. Have the benefits of growth been shared? Certainly, many people are benefiting from the airport—Gatwick and the air industry have grown—but both collectively and within their individual areas of responsibility, they have not done enough to reduce noise.

I am afraid that it remains unclear what the industry has done so far, particularly away from the confines of the noise management board. At the Gatwick airspace seminar and noise management board public meeting only last month, we heard that the airport requires airlines to contribute to the reduction of noise. We also heard very clearly from the chair of the noise management board, Bo Redeborn, that this issue would not be considered because it is outside the terms of reference of the board. However, in a letter to me and six other colleagues on 6 December, the day before the airspace seminar, the Secretary of State for Transport mentioned that Gatwick’s noise management board was the place to discuss these matters. We obviously need a little clarity. Which one is it? Should the noise management board be looking at these matters at the expense of the industry doing anything to reduce and mitigate noise as airport capacity grows? If so, that is in contrast to the policy. However, it is clear from Bo Redeborn’s comments last month that the noise management board is not the place to discuss these matters, contrary to the Secretary of State for Transport’s letter.

I am disappointed that repeatedly the Department for Transport seems unwilling to take a view on whether its aviation policy framework is being properly implemented or not. My view, however, is clear: I agree with Bo. It cannot be left solely to the noise management board, although it definitely has a role. The line from the policy is clear and it is the whole industry that needs to do more, individually and collectively, to reduce and mitigate noise. Passing the issue to the noise management board for its consideration is being used as a reason not to enforce policy, which is a great shame. My second question to the Minister is this: what steps will he or his Department take to ensure that the industry will reduce and mitigate noise on its own, outside of the agreed work programme of the noise management board?

Finally, I will again quote from the aviation policy framework—everybody’s favourite bedtime reading. The framework says it is clear that the Government want

“to incentivise noise reduction and mitigation”.

Sadly, in the considerable correspondence that I have had with the Department for Transport over the past few years, I cannot find many examples to highlight what incentives have been offered for noise reduction and mitigation. It seems that Gatwick airport’s compliance with the aviation policy framework is largely optional. As Gatwick, along with Heathrow and Stansted, is a noise-designated airport, the Secretary of State has direct responsibility for regulating noise at the airport. It is for the Department for Transport to ensure compliance—that cannot be delegated down to the airport’s noise management board.

[Colin Clark (Gordon) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. I will just say how important the south-east airports are to the regional airports and how important economically the south-east airports are to Aberdeen. I know that he will visit the north-east soon, so today I will highlight the heliport at Aberdeen. During his campaigning on noise, I would also like him to emphasise the issue of helicopters, because, as he is well aware, helicopters dwell, as opposed to just flying in on a flight-line. The residents of Dyce, near Aberdeen International airport, are blighted by the noise from helicopters. I would be very grateful if he could remember helicopters as well as fixed-wing aircraft.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I will be absolutely delighted to remember that. Helicopters are not an enormous issue around the area that I represent, but the issue does arise, and when I am up in the north-east of Scotland I will look out keenly for helicopters.

Community groups, including those who are not affected by helicopters, are represented on Gatwick’s noise management board and wrote to the Secretary of State on 11 October last year—I urge community groups in my hon. Friend’s local area to do likewise. That was followed up on 2 November with a letter from myself and my right hon. Friends the Members for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) and for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), and my hon. Friends the Members for Chichester (Gillian Keegan), for Crawley (Henry Smith), for Horsham (Jeremy Quin), and for Reigate (Crispin Blunt), whose support I very much welcome. We specifically asked what the Government were doing currently to address noise, given that it has been evident for the past half a decade. I am afraid that I was deeply disappointed, as was every resident and community group representative who I have spoken to, that responses from both the Secretary of State and the new Aviation Minister—Baroness Sugg—failed even to mention any action that the Department for Transport was taking. Instead, we heard that the existing channels of communication were satisfactory, when sadly they evidently are not.

As Gatwick is a noise-designated airport, the Department for Transport is responsible for regulating noise at Gatwick and it must take its role as a regulator far more seriously, so my third question to the Minister is this: what measures will he or his Department take to deliver a reduction in noise that meets the aims of the Government’s policy regarding the significant growth of Gatwick airport in recent years? I am sure that that question will be familiar to the Secretary of State because it is exactly the same one that we put in writing in November last year and that was not answered properly in his response on 6 December.

To be clear, three issues clearly arise from the motion. The first is that more needs to be done to ensure that the aviation policy framework is enforced in full; the second is that the industry needs to do much more to reduce noise; and the third and final one is that the Department for Transport needs to take its role as a noise regulator more seriously.

I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response. I welcome the fact that he is here—I appreciate that the Aviation Minister sits in the other place and that my hon. Friend is, as it were, taking one for the team. It is very welcome that he is responding on her behalf.

Before I wrap up, I should emphasise that the only reason I called for this debate is that it is evident that the Department for Transport can do more, should do more and must do more to deliver peace to west Kent. As Gatwick is a noise-designated airport, the Department’s role in this regard is to fulfil its statutory responsibility. A Government should be able and willing to implement the policies that they have introduced. That is all we ask the Department for Transport to do. It should not be the job of local communities to hold Gatwick airport to account with regard to its growth and consequent noise reduction measures.

I urge the Minister to meet me and representatives of local community groups, including the excellent Gatwick Obviously Not! group, which is based in Penshurst—some of its members are represented in the Gallery today. They can express to the Minister in words that are even clearer than mine exactly what the impact is. I look forward to hearing hon. Members’ comments.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Jesse Norman)]

May I say what a delight it is to have you in the Chair, Sir Christopher, especially in your recently dignified form? I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) on securing this debate about growth and noise reduction at Gatwick, and all those Members who have spoken. My hon. Friend has proved himself on this issue as on every other to be an indefatigable campaigner—a tribune of his people—and still more strikingly so with a voice that is obviously failing under him. We can only congratulate him on his courage and resolution.

As my hon. Friend acknowledged, this matter falls briefly but unhappily into what might be referred to as a ministerial limbo, and therefore I am responding on behalf of the Government—I should say that I am very far from an expert on these matters, as I fear will become strikingly clear with the passage of time. I also pay tribute and offer my pity, if I may, to my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) for having to put up with me twice in a single day, once on transport for the north and once on noise in the south. Those issues are not necessarily as different as one might think.

As hon. Members will be aware, the Government recognise that noise disturbance from aircraft is a serious concern to local communities. The concern can be still more pronounced when an airport is experiencing growth of the kind that has been seen at Gatwick. The Government’s role is to ensure that the right balance is struck locally and nationally between the environmental impacts and the economic and consumer benefits that aviation growth can deliver. Those environmental impacts of course include noise.

I need hardly say that the value of aviation does not need to be debated in this Chamber. It connects us with the world and allows us to visit our friends and family, to conduct our business and to see foreign countries and further parts of this country. The sector is also, as has been recognised, a very important part of the economy, directly supporting more than 230,000 jobs with many more employed indirectly. It contributes around £20 billion annually to the UK economy. The inbound tourism industry alone across the country is worth a further £19 billion.

Although there has been an aerodrome at Gatwick since the 1930s, the commercial airport as we know it today was opened by Her Majesty the Queen in 1958. In its first year of operation, just 186,000 passengers passed through the airport. Today, it is the UK’s second largest airport and helps take more than 44 million passengers to 228 destinations in 74 countries around the world every year.

As has been recognised by several hon. Members, Gatwick is a very important local employer—it is important to put that on public record again from the Government perspective. Almost 24,000 people work on the Gatwick campus across 252 different companies, with 2,800 directly employed by the airport. Nationally, the airport supports a further 61,000 jobs and contributes more than £5 billion towards our GDP. As such, it is a key part of our national infrastructure. Its local economic impact and the local economic value of its recent growth are significant drivers of growth and prosperity in the south-east. That means better pay, more jobs, stronger local businesses and growing asset values.

The Government recognise and have made clear that the benefits of airport growth must not come without due consideration and mitigation of the environmental impacts of aviation, in particular those impacts caused by the noise generated by aircraft. As my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling mentioned, the Government’s policy, as set out in the aviation policy framework, is

“to limit and where possible reduce the number of people in the UK significantly affected by aircraft noise.”

My colleagues have recently brought forward new policies and measures in line with that aim. It has been suggested that nothing has happened, but I understand that that is not true and I want to put some of the measures on the public record. They can then be discussed and debated and used as a framework for further discussion.

As hon. Members are aware, the Government set noise controls at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted airports using powers in the Civil Aviation Act 1982. My Department has the power to direct those airports, including Gatwick, to fine for noise infringements. I have no doubt that Gatwick’s management is, or shortly will be, following this debate closely. The responsibility—as matters presently stand, pending a further aviation strategy—lies with Gatwick, as advised, with potential enforcement from the Department.

One of the main controls the Government set is restrictions on operations at night time, because we recognise that noise from aircraft at night is, among many unacceptable aspects of aircraft noise, widely regarded as the least acceptable. In October last year, the Government introduced changes to improve the night flight regime. By introducing a new quota count category for the quietest aircraft, the Government are seeking to improve transparency for communities and to ensure that all aircraft movements will count towards an airport’s movement limit, whereas before such aircraft were exempt.

I reassure hon. Members that the Government have maintained the previous movement limit for night flights at Gatwick, which has been fixed for many years. It will guarantee until 2022 no increase in flights beyond what was already permitted. Furthermore, among other measures, from later this year there will be a reduction in Gatwick’s quota count limit, which should incentivise airlines to purchase quieter aircraft to make use of the airport’s permitted noise and movement allowances.

Separately, last October the Government published our decision on how we aim to support airspace modernisation, which includes new policies to ensure noise is more thoroughly considered in these important decisions. As hon. Members may know, the way our airspace is managed is based on arrangements that are in many cases almost 50 years old. In today’s world, that approach is increasingly inefficient, and can lead to unnecessary delays for passengers and an excessive impact on the environment around airports. We therefore need to modernise our airspace to enable the UK to keep pace with the rest of the world in exploiting the newest technologies. Advances in technologies have provided great improvements in the environmental performance of aircraft airframe design and engines, in terms of both noise and carbon emissions, and that has had a substantial effect on the noise experienced on the ground. For example, new-generation aircraft such as the Airbus A350 and Boeing 737 MAX have a noise footprint that is typically 50% smaller on departure and 30% smaller on arrival than the aircraft they are replacing.

We expect aircraft noise to continue to fall in the future, compared with today’s levels, and we believe that that trend has the potential to outweigh the noise generated from increases in air traffic. My right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames), who is no longer in his place, discussed the screaming banshee of the BAC 111. There is no doubt that, as it and the A320 indicate, tweaks to aircraft design can greatly improve noise performance. As he said, the noise experienced over the past few years may have actually decreased by some measurements. I respectfully suggest to my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling that it may not be correct to measure from just 2013. Possibly the correct measurement for noise is to look at before the recession of 2007-08—the Gordon Brown recession, as I like to refer to it—when noise levels were not quite at the level they are now in terms of the number of people affected, but were certainly significantly higher than in the intervening period.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I am loth to be pedantic with the Minister, but he understands better than anybody, having represented his community in Herefordshire so assiduously for so long, that, although an incremental change downwards is to be welcomed, should an uptick come, it is hard to remember where we were 10 years ago—it is very easy to remember where we were before the uptick.

[Jesse Norman]

I am exceedingly aware of that. It is generally a feature of human consciousness that we ignore the things we benefit from but are extremely angry if things we enjoy are taken away from us. This is an example of that. I would not derogate for a second from what my hon. Friend said.

To say that we believe that the trend has the potential to outweigh the noise generated from increases in air traffic is, of course, not to say that as aircraft get quieter there are not difficult issues that need to be addressed with the implementation of the new technology. One major component of airspace modernisation—some hon. Members touched on this—is performance-based navigation, which allows aircraft to fly their flightpaths far more accurately than they could with previous navigation techniques. That has obvious benefits in terms of noise, because populated areas can be better avoided, but it also poses challenges—I do not need to remind hon. Members that with great power comes great responsibility —particularly in its effect on those directly underneath flight paths that experience a greater concentration of aircraft. That requires proper administration and control, and a sensible and considered approach. That is why the Government have brought about a new requirement for options analysis to be used when developing proposals to change the use of airspace. That will enable communities to take part in a more transparent airspace change process, and it ensure that options such as concentrated routes versus multiple routes and the degree of respite that can be offered, which has been discussed today, can be given proper consideration.

The Government recognise through the 2014 “Survey of Noise Attitudes” that attitudes towards aviation noise are changing. That goes to my hon. Friend’s point. The work carried out during the SONA study shows that sensitivity to aircraft noise has increased. The same percentage of people are registered as “highly annoyed” at lower levels of noise than in a past study. That is what we should see in an increasingly prosperous society. The threshold for interruptions and loss of amenity should go up. That is not a bad thing by any means, although it might be highly distressing for those involved. That is why the Government have introduced new metrics and appraisal guidance to assess the impact of noise on health and quality of life. In particular, it will ensure that for future airspace changes, noise impacts much further away from airports are considered much more than they are at present.

As the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) mentioned, the Government have also committed to creating an independent commission on civil aviation noise later in the spring. ICCAN, as it is known, is designed to help rebuild some of the communities’ trust in the industry that we recognise has been lost, and will ensure that the noise impacts of airspace changes are properly considered. Communities will be given a greater understanding of and stake in noise management.

Alongside the Government’s work, Gatwick, which in this case is the responsible entity, is seeking to address the concerns of the communities surrounding the airport. I welcome the tone of the constructive remarks in relation to how Gatwick is engaging with those around it. In response to the significant concerns raised in 2014 and 2015 about Gatwick-related aircraft noise, the airport has launched several programmes of community engagement, most notably the noise management board, which is independently chaired and attended by representatives from several local community groups. Its role is to develop, agree, and maintain a co-ordinated strategy for noise management for Gatwick on behalf of stakeholder organisations. My officials are actively involved in that work, and all evidence raised at the NMB is considered in the development of Government policy. If it is for Gatwick, as the responsible entity, to take action, it can do so under advisement from the NMB.

Furthermore, and in accordance with its obligations under the environmental noise directive, Gatwick will later this year publish its draft noise action plan for 2019-23, which will provide an opportunity for the public to have their say on what it is doing to mitigate noise. The final approval of the noise action plan falls to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, but my officials will work closely with the airport and officials at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs as the plan is developed.

Finally, I want to return to aviation in the national context and the aviation strategy, which has been discussed. It is subject to a process that is already under way. We seek for it to be comprehensive in its scope. It will seek to address many important issues, such as security, connectivity and skills, and the development of innovation and new technology, which the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East raised—I have some experience of our great investment from when I was at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, through the National Aerospace Technology Exploitation programme, and our relationship with some of the big aircraft manufacturers. Hon. Members may be pleased to know that one of its objectives is to consider how we support growth while tackling the environmental impact of aviation. As the Secretary of State said in his recent letter to my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling, one of the issues that the Department wants to consider is whether there should be new framework to allow airports to grow sustainably. That means looking at trends in aviation noise over the long term and how they relate to growth in aircraft movements.

I want to give my hon. Friend a moment to finish, so I will speak for just a second longer. This issue is relevant not just to Gatwick, but to all airports across the UK, and it demands a national approach. We cannot prejudge the process, but one of its outcomes may be that we will want to clarify our existing aviation policy and how it should be monitored and enforced. My colleagues and I recognise the importance of accountability, and that may well be something that needs to be considered as part of a more developed overall aviation strategy framework.

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[Tom Tugendhat]

I welcome my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, who has arrived in the nick of time. His presence and support is always gratefully received.

I want to reinforce three very brief points. The Minister responsible should take time out of her schedule to meet the community groups and the noise management board. Gatwick Obviously Not! and other groups have done an awful lot to ensure that their requests are not only appropriate and reasonable, but well argued and practical to implement. I also suggest that, as the London airspace management programme phase 2 is developed, it should take into account the full review of airspace policy that the Government have promised. The policy must not weaken the relationship between growth and noise. Indeed, it should be tightened.

I thank my right hon. Friends the Members for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames) and for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. I also thank my hon. Friends the Members for Gordon (Colin Clark), for Chichester (Gillian Keegan) and for Horsham (Jeremy Quin), and the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon), for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine), and for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner), for their contributions. I thank the Minister for responding for the Government.

Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 23rd October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is presenting a series of very good arguments, but why does he assume that responsibility for the error would rest with the designer rather than, for instance, the software designer or the programmer, or perhaps even the ethicist who informed the design?

[Karl Turner]

The hon. Gentleman is right to correct me. The claim will lie with the insurer. However, as other Members have pointed out, the position is not entirely clear. The Association of British Insurers is concerned about the likelihood that existing insurance practices would need to be significantly changed to deal routinely with road traffic accidents involving automated vehicles. The Government acknowledge that in their impact assessment for the Bill, saying that it might result in increased administrative and procedural costs for insurers. Although the Bill does enable them to claim from the manufacturers when the vehicle is in automated mode and deemed at fault for an incident, the Government also acknowledge that there could be significant teething problems with the system, particularly given early disagreements about liability between the parties. I hope that that answers the hon. Gentleman’s question.

It is difficult to estimate how different insurance premiums will be when automated vehicles are fully functional on the road. The roll-out and proliferation of autonomous vehicles should produce significant safety benefits, with driver error being either significantly reduced or eliminated. Although that should lead to reduced premiums, a great deal of work will be necessary, as we prepare for this new environment, to better assess whether that will in fact be the case. If there were increased procedural and administrative costs for insurers, there could be higher premiums, in which case there would be a severe impact on the uptake of AVs in the UK, making the Government’s actions self-defeating. We believe that the Government must review at regular intervals how the insurance for AVs is working, so Labour will press for a review date to be included in the Bill.

[Tom Tugendhat]

The hon. Gentleman is making some extremely important points, and I hope that he will forgive me for interrupting him again. On that very issue of insurance, the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) made the very good observation that human error is the greatest cause of accidents nowadays. It is likely—although we cannot be 100% sure of anything—that the arrival of driverless vehicles would reduce the number of accidents, thus reducing the amount of insurance required and, as a result, reducing insurance premiums as well. Would that not, in many ways, liberate drivers rather than hampering them?

[Karl Turner]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. Indeed, I think that I made the same point myself.

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[Mrs Gillan]

I will leave the hon. Gentleman to make his own point on that.

I am particularly excited about the progress of electric vehicles because of my concern about the environment. Air quality has already been mentioned, and there is no doubt that the Paris climate talks started to exert the downward pressure on carbon dioxide emissions that will inevitably result in the phasing out of fossil fuels. I have been talking to the Renewable Energy Association, which is the UK’s largest trade association for renewable energy and clean technology. It has produced an excellent forward view, which estimates that the move towards electric vehicles will be even more rapid than is currently anticipated by the Government.

[Tom Tugendhat]

My right hon. Friend is making a fine speech about energy purity and clean air. Is she as excited as I am that so much Chinese technology is coming along, largely due to the dirtiness and air pollution in so many Chinese cities? Does she also welcome the amount of invention that is taking place not through Governments but through the free market and the technologies that it is spurring?

[Mrs Gillan]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. I shall refer to the international scene later in my speech.

The Renewable Energy Association estimates that most new car sales will be electric well before the 2040 diesel and petrol sales ban. It further estimates that 75% of new car and light commercial vehicle sales will be all-electric or plug-in hybrid by 2030. That goes to show that the electric vehicle market is set to be one of the most exciting in modern times. As others have said, however, there are several barriers. They include public policy, the cost and range of vehicles, the lack of infrastructure and the lack of availability of low carbon energy.

The UK’s EV and energy storage markets directly employ more than 16,000 people. That number will grow significantly, particularly if our public policy supports growth in, for example, grid flexibility as well as strengthening our building codes and even introducing workplace regulation. In addition to domestic growth, we also have the possibility of post-Brexit manufacturing and export opportunities, which are potentially very significant. However, to expand those export markets, we will need a robust domestic market, which will in turn depend on a reliable, available and affordable low carbon electric vehicle charging network.

The network certainly has a long way to go. I had a look in Chesham and Amersham, which are pretty go-ahead places that will be early adopters of the new technology. I was really disappointed by the electric charging map, however. I saw one point in Great Missenden, one in Little Chalfont and one in Chalfont St Peter. Chesham is ahead of the game with two. I found it interesting that the point in Little Chalfont is at the London Underground car park. I hope that the Minister will say something later about encouraging organisations such as London Underground and Transport for London to invest in far more charging points at their car parking facilities throughout the south-east.

As I said earlier, international progress is going to be rapid. My hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) mentioned China, and it is worth taking a few minutes to look in more detail at what is happening internationally. In the UK, the Government have confirmed that they will ban the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles without a battery element by 2040. France has done the same. The Netherlands has confirmed its plan to ensure that all new vehicles are emissions free by 2030. That will effectively be a ban on the sale of new diesel and petrol vehicles. Germany is considering banning new petrol and diesel cars by 2030. That would certainly require the upgrading of the country’s entire manufacturing processes and supply chain by that date. China is considering a ban similar to the one being introduced in the UK, but it has yet to announce a timeline. I think that that will be highly significant. Moving on to another country with a vast population, India has announced that it wants all new car sales to be electric by 2030.

An interesting by-product is the question of what will be needed for the manufacture of the batteries. Volkswagen estimates that 40 gigafactories are going to be needed for battery manufacture globally, and there is a belief that there is scope for a number of those factories to be located in the UK. They would create new manufacturing jobs and inward investment, if domestic markets were created for those battery products. I hope that the Minister will tell us what possibilities exist to encourage that sort of investment in our manufacturing in the UK.

I welcome the Bill. There is no doubt that the national roll-out of a strategic, smart and effective charging infrastructure is a critical component of developing the electric car market. The move to hold powers to require service area operators to provide a minimum level of EV charging is welcome, both on motorways and trunk roads. There is already some provision for charging on the majority of major motorways and trunk roads by one dominant operator, but there is a need for more competition and for making access easier in order to break down the perceived barriers to the uptake of EVs.

The applicability of these provisions to large fuel retailers that are not part of trunk road or motorway service areas might not be as valuable, however, because the dwell time at such sites is less desirable to the motorist. EV drivers typically stop for a short break commensurate with the time required to get a significant charge. There might be a need for further provision in areas where customers need to rely on public rapid charging instead of the classic overnight charging at home or at work. In those areas, the charging would be likely to be combined with another amenity, and it is therefore essential that the Government consider these provisions in relation to retail sites and coffee shops, for example, to provide an associated activity alongside the charging of the vehicle.

In the light of the alternative fuels infrastructure directive, we are starting to prescribe a common standard for what the future of EV charging should look like. We will also need to allow roaming. Just as we have roaming for phones, we will also need roaming to allow vehicle operators to use other people’s equipment. I would like to know what the Government are doing to encourage the use of another operator’s hardware, in order to cross the barriers created by having a contract with a single user.

It has been mentioned that the variety of ways of accessing charging points through accounts, cards or smartphones is confusing and unnecessary. We need to look at standardising that process. The requirement for charge points to be smart, especially those at home and in the workplace, is essential. It will allow electric vehicles to become part of the developing decentralised grid. We need to be able to use those vehicles not only to take power out of the network but to put it back into the grid at certain times. I hope that that massively distributed part of our grid infrastructure will become a reality with EVs, and I would like the Minister to say something about that as well. I have already mentioned the fact that solar carports and canopies will be essential to ensuring that rural areas are not disadvantaged.

I wondered whether there was any possibility of amending the Bill, so I want to make a couple of suggestions before I sit down. The Government could consider going further and regulating so that all new houses and housing developments with driveways or on-site capacity for EV charging should have the three-phase electricity supply that is necessary for effective charging of EVs. We should also ensure that the minimum power supply levels are included in building codes for all new homes, offices, shopping centres, public buildings and other areas where parking is available to the public. While we have only a small number of EV charge stations at present, that would ensure that retail sites can rapidly expand as demand grows. All new workplaces should also have EV charging facilities on site or a provision to install charge points. Lastly, those who have electric vehicles should be identified. In Norway, such vehicles have the identifying letters EL on their licence plates, which can go up to 99999, meaning 99,999 vehicles, and I think they are up to about 60,000. I hope that people can be rewarded by the Government for turning to electric vehicles. It is an exciting technology. It is the future, and I am glad that our Government are grasping it by the horns.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

We often get a feeling of déjà vu in this place, and tonight is another of those times; I feel like we have been here and have heard some of these comments before. I warn Members that if any of them have actually paid attention to my speeches on electric vehicles, they will get another feeling of déjà vu. [Hon. Members: “Hooray.”] It merited more than that. Anyway, the sense of déjà vu comes because the Bill was clearly part of the previous Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill, which is testament to the folly of calling a general election. Not only was it a waste of money, but we are now revisiting legislation that had effectively already been through its Committee stage. We are redoing work that has been done before, which is costing the taxpayer money. [Interruption.] I will give way if the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) wants to make an intervention.

[Tom Tugendhat]

The hon. Gentleman was saying that the general election was a waste of money, but I cannot possibly agree. We have 13 Conservative MPs in Scotland, which is a great success all on its own.

[Alan Brown]

rose—

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[Edward Argar (Charnwood) (Con)]

The thrust of this Bill is rightly uncontroversial and consensual. Were persuasion of its merits needed, it was supplied by the Ciceronian eloquence and elegance, and indeed the exhaustive explanations, with which the Minister for Transport Legislation and Maritime, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), characteristically set out his case.

As hon. and right hon. Members have said, the pace of technological change in this area, as in others, is rapid and dramatic, and is in many ways a manifestation of the much-talked-about fourth industrial revolution. The prize in this space is huge. We all want the UK to be the best place in the world to innovate and invest, and for society, individuals and the environment all to benefit as we do so.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) made extremely important points. Where technology advances rapidly, the regulatory framework too often lags behind and in some areas, as here, risks acting as a drag on that new technology.

The key to this Bill is that it seeks to remove barriers to the market operating and developing as we would all wish. Given the pace of change, it is right that we include provisions to enable the use of delegated legislation, with appropriate scrutiny, to allow the regulatory framework to continue keeping up with the pace of change—creating a framework to stimulate the market, but not specifying the specific technological solutions.

The Bill has two key aspects, as other hon. Members have said. First, the Bill is about stimulating automated vehicle technology, which is in its infancy. There are then the provisions on electric vehicles, a technology already set fair and continuing to grow, but which must be encouraged.

Automated vehicle technology continues to develop apace. In 2015, only a couple of years ago, there were four test sites in the UK looking into that technology and how it might develop. I hope more sites will explore the technology in future and that at least one of those sites might be in Scotland, drawing on the track record of experience and innovation north of the border, as highlighted by the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown). In order for there to be such growth, one of the key barriers that must be overcome is insurance. Insurance policies and the insurance framework were designed for an age—indeed, our age—when all vehicles were controlled by humans and the idea that they would not be was inconceivable, with an individual being held responsible for their decisions and actions through the courts and through the insurance framework. We have already seen technology move on—for example, as in automated parking—but we have yet to see the insurance framework move with it.

[Tom Tugendhat]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting distinction between a vehicle controlled by a driver sitting at the steering wheel and a vehicle controlled by technology, suggesting that the latter is not controlled by a human. But of course it is controlled by a human—the human who wrote the code, who came up with the ethical choices and who designed the system, and who is now remote from the vehicle. There is still human control. It is merely a question of which human is responsible, not whether a human is responsible.

[Edward Argar]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Perhaps I should say a vehicle’s driver has historically been held responsible. Of course, in this context the person who wrote the code would not be held responsible. The insurer, in the first instance, would be held responsible, with the insurer or the authorities being able to pursue remedies against the manufacturer through the courts were there to be a technological flaw or error. It is right to keep the insurer as the first step in seeking redress, as that makes redress as swift and easy as possible for an injured party, while not taking away the opportunity through the courts to address any issues that arise with the manufacturer.

I will address four areas of policy relating to automated vehicles. The first is safety. Concerns have rightly been expressed in the press and, on occasion, in this House about whether the technology is safe and whether this will be a safe way to proceed. The technology is in its infancy and continues to be explored, but the statistic from the Department for Transport is that 97% of accidents or collisions relate to human error, with the explanatory notes and the Library briefing on the Bill stating that it mainly falls into two categories. One of those is a driver losing control of the vehicle, driving too fast for the conditions or not being able to manage the vehicle’s progress. The other is a driver not seeing something. We would hope the technology would be perfect—I am not sure whether it will or will not be—but any technology is likely to significantly reduce that level of accidents and human error.

That takes us to the second challenge that has been both raised and then addressed by Members from both sides of the House: the impact on insurance premiums and the insurance market. Let us suppose that that reduction in accidents that we would all hope and expect to see occurred. As has been said in this debate, with the Minister, the shadow Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) I believe making this point, we would expect to see that helping to drive down premiums. That is not a reason for the insurance industry not to continue developing new products and streamlining its processes—I hope it will—so that this does not add to an administrative burden for those purchasing insurance, and I think there is a potential to drive down premiums there.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Given his expertise, I know that my hon. Friend will know that the car insurance market underwrites a lot of other insurance markets, as it is the most profitable, so the loss of premium in that market could have consequences in other insurance markets, including home insurance, that would have other societal consequences. I am sure he is going to address that.

[Edward Argar]

My hon. Friend is right to say that changes on this scale have the potential to change not just the technology, the way in which we use it and the way we live our lives, but the supply chain, the energy market and the insurance market. One challenge for all of us and for that market is how it evolves and adapts to that change. In his speech in March on the precursor to this Bill, he highlighted to hon. Members who perhaps suggested that the pace of change was too fast that we cannot sit still and use the challenges posed to the current ways of doing things as a reason for not progressing.

There are two final areas I wish to touch on in respect of automated vehicles, the first of which is the environmental benefits that could be delivered through fuel-efficient transportation, for want of a better way of putting it. One would hope that the decisions made by a computer are that bit quicker and more efficient than reactions by a human, so this has the potential to bring about increased fuel efficiency. The other area is one the Minister highlighted: the opportunities that automated vehicles provide for those who may until now have been excluded from driving or from making use of vehicles, be they elderly or disabled people. These vehicles may well increase the opportunities for them to make use of this way of getting around.

The second part of the Bill deals with electric vehicles, a technology that is already well developed. I was very much involved with this issue in a past life, as Westminster City Council’s cabinet member for the environment and transport. One key thing I worked on back then with the Mayor and my colleagues in city hall was expanding access to electric vehicle charging points in central London. In many ways, this is the easy end of the scale in expanding use. My hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse), who is no longer in his place, has spoken eloquently on this subject, and in his successful time as deputy Mayor of London he did much to drive forward the technology and access to it. My hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley), a former cabinet colleague of mine on Westminster City Council at the same time, also did a huge amount to expand that network. Westminster is one of the most heavily covered parts of the capital—it may even be the most heavily covered—for EV charging points, which increase access. One may argue that it is a part of the country that needs fewer charging points than others because the average journey in London is 10 km or less, and even current battery technology is normally capable of delivering that.

Achieving the roll-out and the commercial success of EVs more widely requires a number of key issues to be addressed in the country as a whole, the first of which is choice. In any market where a consumer makes a decision on where to invest their money and what to buy, particularly on a purchase of this size, we want to make sure that there is a functioning market. We see that in place, with myriad new electric vehicles coming on the market every year. The technology also needs to be affordable and we need to make sure that the charging networks are simple to use. We need the prices to come down and we need this to be seen as a viable and affordable alternative to conventional fuels. We must ensure that we have a network of interoperable charge points so that people can plug in regardless of the network they are on or the deal they are signed up to. That relates to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) on concerns about range. The grid must be smart, so that we can ensure we do not overload it when everyone comes home from work in the evening and plugs their car in and suddenly we see a surge in demand. Charging must also be swift. The point was well made that at service stations or motorway service areas there is an opportunity for people to plug in their EV and charge it while doing other things, but many people will want a quick charge and to move on.

The technology continues to develop but it is not there yet. A wonderfully interesting book was written some years ago called “Start-up Nation” which is about innovation in Israel. It talked about technology being developed to charge an electric vehicle’s battery in a matter of minutes. I do not know whether that technology worked or whether it is still being developed, but it shows that the innovation and the willingness to drive it forward are there. All these things are addressing the challenges of battery technology, but I believe that as we move forward—as we have seen with renewable energies—we will see significant strides in battery technology which will deal with these challenges. This Bill gives the scope for all these issues to be addressed. On technological advances, one of the best analogies we could draw is with the early mobile telephones. Twenty or 30 years ago, a mobile phone came with a briefcase, which was its battery pack, but over a very short period that was reduced to something that is probably smaller than my thumb. I see no reason why as this market develops we will not see similar developments in this area.

I believe the future is bright. We have an obligation to future generations. Not only are the economic benefits and the benefits to individuals evident, but we hold our environment in trust and it is in its environmental opportunities that the greatest opportunities with this technology exist. As the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun set out, it is estimated that about 40,000 people die annually from illnesses related to poor air quality. Some 80% of nitric oxide in inner-city hotspots is due to road transport, so the potential to address both air quality and climate change is there. Some may fear that we are swapping dirty fuel in cars for dirty power generation, as more electricity is needed. I would say simply that that is not a reason not to act; it is exactly why we must in parallel continue to embrace the opportunities presented by green and renewable power generation, building on the real progress made so far, also enabled by technology.

To conclude, this is a Bill to be welcomed. We must seize the opportunities that new technology offers for our economy, for enhancing our daily lives and for preserving and enhancing our environment for future generations. This Bill does that and I am pleased to support it.

Chris Gibb Report: Improvements to Southern Railway

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Andy McDonald]

The hon. Gentleman rather makes my point for me. Why on earth are we discriminating against disabled people, who want the same freedom as able-bodied people to turn up at a railway station and carry on with their journey?

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andy McDonald]

No, I am not giving way again. The hon. Gentleman should sit down.

Before the Secretary of State claims that this a conspiracy theory cooked up by ASLEF or the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, a spokesperson for Govia Thameslink Railway said:

“there is no cast-iron guarantee that passengers with accessibility requirements can spontaneously board a train in the assumption there would be a second member of staff on board every train.”

Here is another quote from a representative from a train operating company seeking to introduce DOO, in a recent edition of Modern Railways, on the advantages of trains that could go into service with only the driver on board:

“The good thing would be that all of the regular passengers would still be carried, it would only be the wheelchair users who wouldn’t be able to travel”.

The Secretary of State will be well aware of numerous stories of disabled passengers who have been left stranded as a result of the staffing changes that he is forcing through. Sandra Nighy, 56, of Highfields, Tarring, was left stranded in the freezing cold for more than two hours waiting for a Southern service on Hampden Park train platform near Eastbourne, because there was nobody to help her on to the train. Sandra said:

“the whole situation was horrible and embarrassing and it is unforgiveable when I had booked assistance 48 hours in advance”.

Everyone should be able to use rail services, and providing assistance to those who need it should be a top priority to ensure a good quality of life. The Transport Secretary should be ashamed that he is making our railway less, not more, accessible for disabled people. I firmly believe that the Labour party, passenger groups, staff and the disability charities are in the right when we say that the Government’s objective should be to make our railways safer and more accessible, not riskier and more exclusive.

The Gibb report paints a picture of a chaotic relationship between Network Rail, the Department for Transport and Govia Thameslink Railway, none of which has sufficient oversight or responsibility, leading to poor performance on Southern. Gibb says:

“None of the parties in the system share the same incentives or objectives”.

He recommends

“that the custodian of the overall system integrity be better identified”.

While those criticisms are clearly true for Southern, they are an accurate summary of what is wrong with the way in which our railways are managed in general. Labour has consistently highlighted the fact that privatisation and fragmentation of the railway has prevented the necessary oversight and responsibility needed to deliver upgrades and run efficient services, which is why, as part of our plans to take rail into public ownership, we will establish a new national body to serve as a “guiding mind” for the publicly owned railway, to avoid the chaos over which this Government have presided.

There is no need for the Government to prolong the suffering of passengers any longer—this industrial dispute is but one part of an unedifying scene—as basic managerial inefficiency characterises this woeful service.

It is within the Secretary of State’s power to end the industrial dispute tomorrow. He can do it by calling off his plans to expand driver-only operation and by guaranteeing a second safety-critical crew member on every train, and he should do so immediately.

As with the east coast main line, which delivered the lowest fare rises and highest passenger satisfaction of any rail service in the country, and which returned over £1 billion to the Treasury, it is time to admit defeat and to take Southern back under public control as a public service.

The privatised, franchised railway system, which allows all comers, including state-owned rail companies from across the globe—with the bizarre exception of the UK itself—to extract profits from passengers and taxpayers alike has had its day. The Government should wake up and recognise the chaos they have created. They should do the right thing and bring our railways back under public control and ownership. If they don’t, a Labour Government will.

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[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

What a pleasure it is to see you in your place, Madam Deputy Speaker. I thank the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) for all he has done, along with my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames), on the all-party parliamentary group on Southern rail. I hope that the group will reform as soon as he is ready.

This is a particularly important debate for me and it is one that is very close to my home, in the sense that I live very near a station on the Southern line, from which I take a train to get here. This situation has had a huge impact on my life and the lives of many of the people I have the privilege to represent. People around our communities cannot get home. Children cannot get to school and therefore the parents, even if they could have got to work, cannot go because they do not have emergency childcare.

I have been working very closely with my hon. Friend the Minister, who has done enormous amounts of work of late to ensure that the rail network gets the money it requires. But in the Gibb report we find many indications of why this is not just about money. It is about so much more. It is about huge amounts of time and infrastructure, and that is why I shall skip over the industrial relations that have been so adequately covered by many of my right hon. and hon. Friends and over some of the aspects of union power touched on by those who are my friends, even if they sit on the other side of the House. I shall focus instead on areas in which we need to take the Gibb report seriously.

As various people know, electrification of the Uckfield line has been spoken about since the 1970s. It was, I believe, the last track to use a steam engine for regular commuting services, right up to the 1970s, and now that legacy is coming through on the diesel line. Surely enough is enough. It is 2017, Thomas the Tank Engine is on an iPad—he is not even a book any more—yet we have diesel trains running on what should frankly be electric tracks. Please, Minister, can we have the electrification we need? Can we catch up with the iPad generation?

There are many people from Edenbridge and District Rail Travellers Association with whom I have been working very closely who have spoken about this and about how we can get this done: how to get the lines dualled—or rather, redualled, as the dual line was removed in the 1990s. Perhaps—here is the real chance—we can get the line to run beyond Uckfield. Imagine that, Madam Deputy Speaker: taking your holidays and deciding that instead of driving down—you do not want to do that, through Croydon and south London, on all those crowded roads—you will get on the tube at Westminster. You take the Jubilee line straight through to London Bridge, where you get on the train. You will travel down some of the most beautiful tracks in Kent, but then you end up by accident in Sussex. However, you will still go through beautiful parts of Kent, travelling on from Uckfield down to the coast. Imagine that, Madam Deputy Speaker, for an evening in Brighton after a day in the House. I can see that you are already desirous of those moments.

I can see that that is something that we can all aim for. There are many issues that we can touch on: the parking at Cowden and Hever; the fact that many folk have to drive to stations such as Hildenborough or Sevenoaks, rather than getting on at the station nearest to them, which has an impact on the environment and road safety. These are narrow lanes with cyclists and horse riders. That is a danger for all of us.

Perhaps the most important issue is the fact that we have to invest in our future. Time and again, we have lived off the legacy of our great-grandparents’ thoughts and dreams—those investments that built the trains, bridges and roads. They were built by the Victorian and Edwardian generations, and in this new Elizabethan age surely we need to emulate that investment, because when we spend on the rail networks we are not spending on getting to London five minutes quicker; no, we are spending on making our nation great, and we are doing it because London is not just the people who live in it. All great metropolises depend on the networks they feed off, and there is none greater than ours and there is none that requires more investment.

Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill (Fifth sitting)

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Hayes]

No, but we look up to you; that is the point I am making.

We are also working with UK security agencies. When I was in my previous job as security Minister in the Home Office, I was heavily involved in consideration of cyber-threats and cyber-security. It is important for the Committee to know that this is something that has been discussed across Government, because some of these responsibilities are shared by different Government Departments and different Ministers. We are therefore working with other parts of Government on the new National Cyber Security Centre to engage directly with the industry to raise awareness and promote best practice. Using the Government’s approach to cyber-security, applying it to this area of work, engaging with the automated industry and those who are developing this technology is central to our purpose.

The hon. Gentleman invited me to go into some more detail. As part of that, we have set out for the industry the objective of developing a set of principles for cyber-security. As a result, our thinking is developing alongside that of the industry. It is important that we establish at an early stage the principles—many of which the hon. Gentleman touched on—that will underpin the safe and secure development that he and I seek.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

Given that the foreign countries to which people are most likely to take their electric cars are going to be European countries, can the Minister tell the Committee a little about what co-operation he hopes to have with European partners, particularly on charging points? We know that the vulnerability in cyber-security is often at the point of connection. The telephone network—presumably a telephone network is linking them—and the charging points are going to be vulnerable.

[Mr Hayes]

The promotion of sharing good practice will be national; it will be between Government and industry; and it will be pan-national, pan-European and, beyond that, international. The establishment of an information exchange to share exactly those kinds of principles is part of what we are doing. That certainly includes work across Europe, for the very reason my hon. Friend gave, which is that people will want to travel beyond the boundaries of this country. They will also, of course, buy vehicles that are manufactured in other places—the nature of the automotive industry is that it is pan-national. It is critical that we can rely on digital standards, just as we expect mechanical standards to be reliable.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rob Marris]

My hon. Friend is right. I am not an expert but, intuitively, I recognise that solar power generation is likely to be less efficacious at night, although I appreciate that the wind blows at night and that, if we continue with nuclear reactors, they produce electricity all the time. That is why electricity is cheaper at night through Economy 7.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I think we have spoken in Committee about the fact that some charging capability will also be fed back into the grid. The hon. Gentleman is very much describing a nightmare scenario, in much the same way as in the 1800s some of those Manchester cotton workers described the spinning jennys as a nightmare scenario. The truth is that technology evolves and human practice evolves with it, so I feel that he is being a little bleak for this stage of the Bill.

Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill (Sixth sitting)

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

Given that the Minister has conceded that there will be a strategy, may I urge the hon. Gentleman to do as little strategising as possible and perhaps to include corporates as much as possible? My experience of watching Governments strategise, whether in the military or the civilian field, is to see what is charmingly known as a cluster emerge from the ideas of Whitehall and get thrust on corporations and individuals who then have to untangle whatever came out. I urge him as much possible in our process to act simply as a receptacle of ideas, rather than as a preacher of doctrine.

[Richard Burden]

In many ways, I think that is what we are getting at. Throughout Committee we have emphasised the importance of consulting stakeholders, and listening to and involving them. The corporate sector, particularly in the automotive industry, is central to that. Automotive is one of those areas in which partnership between Government and industry has been at its most successful. The Automotive Council, established by the previous Labour Government—but I am pleased to say continued by the coalition and this Government—has been held up as a beacon for a non-bureaucratic way to bring Government and industry together to lay out where we want to go and the kind of road map needed to get there.

Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill (Fourth sitting)

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Thursday 16th March 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Andy McDonald]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for pointing out the necessary correction. My concern is that there is nothing in the Bill that requires software to be updated. I find that somewhat difficult to understand. These vehicles will be available for use and there will be several iterations of the software updates, so I am staggered that there is nothing to require that to happen. It is almost an assumption—the nature of the beast is such that of course it will be part of the debate—but there is no obligation.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

Many businesses have insurance for business disruption based on their updating cyber-security software for their accountancy models and so on. I am not entirely sure why the hon. Gentleman feels that such a provision is needed in the Bill when it works alongside the insurance element, so in reality the insurance company would provide that check.

[Andy McDonald]

I am not entirely sure that, as a matter of course, insurers would check whether the software on all the vehicles they insure is up to date. They might demand that at the outset but I am not sure what mechanism would make sure of it, other than to warn people that otherwise policies would be voided.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Would not that in many ways be similar to servicing vehicles? My insurance policy, like many others, requires me to service my vehicle, which is about as non-electronic as it is possible to get these days, pretty regularly. The insurance company will not have checked in advance, but if they later find out that an accident was caused because the vehicle was not in a roadworthy condition because I did not maintain it properly, my insurance is invalid. I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point, but not why he believes it should be in the Bill, rather than leaving it to insurance companies to manage.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hayes]

We are ranging a little widely, but I must say that the hon. Gentleman is entering the realms of fantasy, to use a phrase often used by Captain Mainwaring of Corporal Jones in that legendary programme, “Dad’s Army”. Insurance models are currently available for all kinds of vehicles of all ages and at all stages of development and iterations—my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire is a renowned expert on the subject. Some of those vehicles are very ancient indeed and include no modern technology or mechanics, but they are safe, they can be driven safely, and they are insured accordingly. It would be extraordinary if the insurance industry did not develop products that suited vehicles of all ages. They do so now, so why would they not do so in the future?

[Tom Tugendhat]

The Minister makes an impassioned defence of his point, and he is absolutely right: the market has solutions for these things. It is not necessarily for the state to decree the exact contractual relationship between an insurer and a vehicle manufacturer. It is certainly true that some software solutions, unlike the mechanical solutions that my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire enjoys, will inevitably become obsolete, just as some computers and telephones have done, but the Bill’s purpose surely cannot be to ensure that no car built from now on is allowed to go obsolete and that all its systems and software must be kept constantly up to date until the last person who wishes to drive it decides no longer to do so.

[Mr Hayes]

Perhaps, having accused my dear friend—not my hon. Friend in parliamentary convention, but my dear friend—the hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West of entering the realms of fantasy—

--- Later in debate ---

[Rob Marris]

What a Minister! Given that he has been so generous to me, I will be generous to him.

On a more serious point, may I draw the Minister’s attention to the beginning of line 23 of clause 4, which states

“knows he or she is required”?

I think that should state “knows or should have known that he or she is required”, because otherwise the person can plead ignorance and there is no “should have known” about it, which is a common construction in law, as my hon. Friend for Middlesbrough will know. Similarly, in line 33, “that an insured person knew or should have known that he was required under the policy” would be legally clearer and help all of us, including insurers. Line 41, subsection 5(b), reads

“which, at the time the person knew he or she was required”.

It ought to be “at the time the person knew or should have known he or she was required”. Having put that forward, I know the Minister will consider it in his usual generous spirit.

More importantly and substantively, there should be a provision in clause 4 on the cost of software updates. I appreciate that clause 4 is principally about insurers and so on, but it is about software updates. If in terms of safety—not the legalities—there is a safety-critical update that the manufacturer decides is going to cost £1,000 to whack in and the insured decides not to do that, that would void his or her insurance policy, but it would also put the rest of us at risk.

That is not a figure plucked out of the air. I might have said in an earlier session that the software to install a sat-nav in my car—just for the software; none of the hardware—costs £600. To update the software for sat-navs in many cars can be £300 or £400. That is just for the software update for a poxy sat-nav, let alone for an automated vehicle.

[Tom Tugendhat]

The hon. Gentleman is seeking now to regulate the contract between an individual and the car company they buy from in relation to servicing. There are many different updates that are required for a car in terms of safety-critical features, which happen every now and again, such as changing tyres. [Interruption.] Or buying a new set of brakes, as my hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire says. Each different manufacturer has a different price list. If someone wants to buy a Rolls Royce, they can be pretty sure that the price of the items will be very high. I chose not to—there were several reasons for that, not least that child seats do not fit very well. Rather more fundamentally, I chose to buy a cheaper car for the simple reason that I realised that if I was going to be asked to service the damn thing, I wanted it to be affordable. The hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West is effectively seeking to govern the servicing arrangements.

[The Chair]

Order. That was a very lengthy intervention.

[Rob Marris]

Without straying too far, the Labour party was in favour of looking at a regulatory regime to cap energy prices; so now is the Conservative party. There is a role for the state when there is market failure. We are talking about potential market failure for very important safety items, not whether it is going to cost £100 or £200 to service a car and someone decides whether they buy a Rolls Royce, or whatever presumably less expensive car the hon. Gentleman bought—I cannot think that he would have bought a more expensive one. I understand the role of the market for that.

I am not looking to cap service charges, but there is an argument for the state putting a cap on the price of software updates, on safety grounds. The hon. Member for Wycombe referred earlier to parachutes. He can correct me on this, but I do not think that many people are killed in this country from someone’s parachute failing, besides that individual. What we are talking about here potentially is an individual whose parachute fails and who then lands on someone else and kills them. It is not just the owner of the vehicle; it is the rest of us.

[Tom Tugendhat]

The hon. Gentleman talks about safety-critical software. Brake pads are pretty safety-critical. If someone does not maintain their vehicle to a reasonable standard with proper brake pads, the vehicle is uninsurable. The same would be true in this case. If the manufacturer overprices the update, people will not buy the car. If people do not update the software, the car will be uninsurable and therefore undrivable.

[Rob Marris]

The hon. Gentleman has a much more touching faith in the market than I do to resolve these things—that is why he is on those Benches and I am on these. That is fine, but in terms of the safety of all of us—he drives on the road, so do I; his family goes on the road, so does mine—I want a cap on safety software upgrade prices. The Minister should consider that, and it would go in clause 4.

Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill (Third sitting)

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Thursday 16th March 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Richard Fuller]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, and to have listened to the opening speeches. I will focus on the intent of clause 1 and how it relates to the title and ambitions of the Bill. As you know, it is entitled the Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill, and, for those of us with an interest in technology, it is that forward-looking word that attracts us. The Bill meshes with the Government’s stated strategy of being at the forefront of welcoming technology businesses into the UK, both broadly and in the area of vehicle automation. Both the Opposition spokesman and the Minister alluded to that general principle and the context in which the Bill has been introduced. I raised a point earlier about whether the word “monitoring” is part and parcel of that broader ambition and whether it assists in it, which will certainly be an important consideration for Government Members.

The Minister kindly drew my attention to my question to the chair of the Automated Driving Insurers Group, who replied that, yes, the Bill met the insurance industry’s ambitions. I think the Minister was trying to reassure me with that, but I must gently point out that if it had been up to the satisfaction of insurers, Columbus would not have gone to America, no one would have gone to the moon and Steve Jobs would not have created Apple. The confirmation and endorsement of insurers may be a necessary condition, but it is certainly not a sufficient one to meet the ambitions that we have set ourselves.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes some good points, but the whole point of insurance is to share risk. It was that sharing of risk that allowed Columbus to go to America and allowed the exploration of the known world. In fact, it was the invention of insurance in these islands that enabled us to create an empire and trade with the world. I feel slightly that my hon. Friend is perhaps aiming at the wrong target.

[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.

Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill (First sitting)

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Tuesday 14th March 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Q I want to recognise the progress that we have made in this country, but could I press you on the 2050 date, which is 33 years away? A quarter of all of Norway’s vehicles are either electric or hybrid. China has, I think, 517,000 new energy vehicles, as they call them, on the road, and last year there were 800,000 charging points, notwithstanding the fact that it is a larger country. Thirty-three years is quite a long way off. I would like to press both Mr Wong and Mr Naberezhnykh on how we might turbo-charge this, perhaps adding a bit more to the three As that Mr Wong has told us about.

Denis Naberezhnykh: It is important to consider vehicles more broadly in the separate categories of vehicle types and vehicle users. When we think about the 2050 target for almost decarbonising the transport sector, we have to not treat private car owners in the same way as fleet and commercial vehicles. That is missing a little from the Bill at the moment. It focuses on overcoming short-term barriers—the problems and challenges that private car owners experience when attempting to use electric vehicles, such as clarity of data available on charging points, accessibility and the availability across the motorway network. However, what needs to happen to achieve the 2050 target is consideration of a broader picture, and recognition that there are other vehicle types—not just cars, but vans, trucks and buses—so what do we need to do to encourage those? They could create a growing proportion of the vehicle population as vehicle trends change over time anyway.

There is also a danger in comparing the UK situation to that of Norway and China, because the two have taken very different approaches in reaching their success. In Norway they have employed subsidy schemes and taxation schemes that I do not think we would find appropriate in the UK. In China they have taken the approach of simply saying, “You must buy these vehicles under any conditions,” and “You must install these charging points.” Unless we are willing to take steps like that, we have to be much more aware of what the market needs, or what the users need, and then tailor the products to suit those needs. That is where the transport sector needs to pay more attention: to focusing this Bill and future activities not only on targeting the near-term shortcomings, but on what we think might be the challenges in 10, 15 or 20 years from now, and preparing for those.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

Q I will move on to the mixed use of roadways in the intervening period. Clearly one of the challenges is the new technology coming on to the roadways while the old technology is still using them. Has anybody done any thinking about the regulatory implications of that?

David Williams: We think it is less complicated than it first appears. The Bill means that somebody involved in a road accident does not need to establish which insurance regime is in place; we are going to have the Road Traffic Act, and insurers are going to be dealing with claims in the first instance. Regardless of the fact that it will take a long time for manual vehicles to be replaced with safer vehicles, we also think, from looking at the modelling we are doing, that statistically the roads will become safer. Some people have expressed concerns that manual vehicle insurance might become incredibly expensive as the prices for autonomous vehicles plummet, but the reality is that if, say, 50% of the vehicles on the road are autonomous and much better at avoiding accidents, that makes driving in a manual vehicle safer. We are confident that the way the Bill sets things out means that establishing the claims process will be relatively straightforward, and that roads will become safer.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr John Hayes)]

Q A couple of things have arisen from what witnesses have said. If I can call you David 1 and David 2, on insurance, David 1 helpfully used the word “compensation”. Presumably the key is to make sure that any injured party enjoys the same circumstances as they do now, and then anything else that happens does so invisibly to them. The injured party in any circumstance essentially gets what they get now; is that right?

David Williams: Absolutely. We are very pleased with the way that discussions developed and the Bill came out, because initially the conversations were that liability would move from RTA motor to products liability. You can imagine a situation where an individual was involved in a little accident—a small dent or something like that—and then, because people are talking about products liability, you get a motor manufacturer’s high-powered lawyers arguing for two years about a little dent, just because they are concerned about creating a precedent. What will now happen is that an insurer will deal with the claim in the first instance, as is the current state of affairs. Yes, there will be circumstances where the motor manufacturers are held responsible, but that can take three or four years; it does not matter.

The other advantage we have is that it will be based on existing legislation, case law and precedent. The rules of negligence and defences available to motor manufacturers are still there unless the Government choose to amend them at a later stage. I really welcome the Bill, because it focuses on continuing to protect road users.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Burden]

Q Perhaps you could answer a question about the idea of Government action on consumer incentives. Is there more that could be done? What should be the targets?

Quentin Willson: There are simple things like free on-street parking everywhere in the UK for electric vehicles, use of bus lanes and some form of priority. The Americans have had huge success with priority lanes for electric vehicles. We need to think about the stuff that you cannot buy, the things that give people an advantage in city centres if they drive an ultra low emission or electric vehicle.

Robert Evans: The other alternative is low emission zones, and we could do that. London’s low emission zone, followed by an ultra low emission zone, is the direction of travel that a lot of cities would like to take. They want to do it in a staged format, working to national guidance as to what constitutes the standards you would set for access, so that a motorist travelling in the UK can know whether they can gain access to the low emission zone and the ultra low emission zone as they move from city to city. That is a particularly important activity. It is not covered in the scope of this Bill as such, but low and ultra low emission zones are one of the key ways of incentivising the right kind of behaviour. The second-hand market is incredibly important, and it makes those vehicles more accessible.

Company car taxation is a particular favourite that helps to drive electric vehicles into a market where others would not. The lightbulb has gone on with fleets. Previously, they would operate a diesel-only policy. “You never got sacked for buying IBM,” was the traditional term, then, “You never got sacked for buying diesel,” and that has now switched. They can see that the motor industry is not going to support that in the long term and that they need to make a change. They are now embracing what they can see is the future that they need to have in their fleet.

Quentin Willson: Any benefits in kind that the Treasury can keep going must be kept going if possible. The plug-in grant has been really significant.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Q Forgive me; in relation to the cycles that we are talking about in introducing new technology, as you correctly identified, Quentin, the way we are going is towards transport as a service rather than as an item. If that is so, then presumably automatic vehicles will, rather like those vacuum cleaners you get in homes, be able to drive themselves to a car park somewhere, charge themselves up during the downtime and come back out again, at which point we are talking about investing an enormous amount of public money into an infrastructure system that will, within 20 years—you were referring to 2040—be redundant. That is quite a short timescale for large-scale infrastructure investment to be redundant.

Quentin Willson: But that infrastructure investment will also be used for this new breed of autonomous cars, because they will all be plug-in. They will all be electric.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Q But presumably they will be plugging themselves in, rather than the current vehicles that require somebody to get up, pick up a wire and stick it into a vehicle.

Quentin Willson: I do not think that is a given at all. You will still have to have manual interference in that process, unless we can get to the stage where we have automatic wireless charging in the roads. To wait for that to come—

[Tom Tugendhat]

Q I am not sure that is necessarily to come. It is not beyond the wit of man to imagine that a car pulls up into a dock, and a little arm goes out. That is not the structure that we are intending to build right now.

Quentin Willson: That is further away than you think. We would have to have a commonality of autonomous cars, and somebody will own these autonomous cars and there will be charging stations. They will broadly resemble the ones that we are lobbying for now. This vision of the arm that comes out and charges your pod, if you like, is still some way away.

Robert Evans: Inductive charging has been referenced today: charging along the motorway as a form of dynamic inductive charging. Static inductive charging is when you drive over a pad and that pad is then able to charge your vehicle. The groundworks for all the current charge points can potentially be adapted to deploy inductive charging, as that starts to come through into the market. I do not think that is so much of an issue. We do not assume that what we deploy as charge points now will be as is in a 20 or 30-year timeframe; they are going to be updated over time as suits the vehicles coming to market.

Quentin Willson: As we are doing now, in effect.

Robert Evans: As we are doing now, yes.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Q What would you change in the Bill to make sure that that level of infrastructure change is more active?

Robert Evans: I do not think it is necessary to change the Bill, in the sense that as the vehicles start to come forward, the charge point infrastructure suppliers will start to bring forward commercially available inductor charging. At the moment, we talk about people having that in their garage for particular vehicles, but at the moment those are not inductive vehicles, other than, say, for some bus operations and the like. It is early pre-commercial.

[Alan Brown]

Q Is the technology used to operate autonomous vehicles safe and reliable at present?

Quentin Willson: That is a difficult question. Where do we begin? There have been some very successful trials of autonomous vehicles in America and Europe, and they have collectively driven many millions of miles with an infinitesimal amount of accidents. Significantly, they have driven in traffic. In Los Angeles, Nissan, Toyota, Lexus and Volvo have had great success in driving autonomous cars in traffic, which have mixed in successfully.

However, it would not be fair of us to say that there is not a great challenge. Ironically, the challenge comes probably not from autonomous cars themselves but other road users, some of whom may just think, “I’m going to have a go here.” All of the insurance legislation needs to be sorted out, but we need to absolutely understand that there will be a period of some pain. More than that I cannot give you.

Robert Evans: It is a tremendous opportunity for the UK motor industry. The industry has sought to progress and be competitive around new technologies, with low-carbon vehicles being one and connecting and autonomous vehicles being another. We have a series of projects in the UK—with both technology development and now with funding set aside in the Budget for demonstration locations—to be able to work through, understand the issues, and test and understand the state of development of the technology. There is something like 1 million lines of software involved in making a vehicle have the artificial intelligence to be able to progress. It is one thing to go down the motorway at high speed with clear lines; it is completely different to go down Fulham Road at 7 o’clock in the evening on a very busy day. There is a lot of work still to be done.

The good thing about the Bill is that it is the first time that automated vehicles have figured in UK legislation. This is the beginning of a process that makes the UK a potential lead market for the deployment of this technology. It will be hugely beneficial for our motor industry if we are able to be receptive and responsive to what we can all see will deliver huge value societally, in terms of reduced accidents or the ability of people to move when they are older or infirm, or younger people who cannot drive vehicles. There could be huge benefits to society, and this at least starts the process of making the UK ecosystem autonomous vehicle-friendly.

Quentin Willson: And to create literally tens of thousands of jobs, bring billions—that is not an exaggeration—of investment to the UK, and a new product cycle and a new consumption and production. We should be the world leader in this stuff.

Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill (Second sitting)

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Tuesday 14th March 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Richard Burden]

Q What kind of consultation would you expect the Minister to go through before producing his or her list? At the moment, the Minister has complete discretion. There is nothing in the Bill that says he or she has to consult anywhere.

Iain Forbes: I would anticipate quite a lot of work at international level to set the regulatory framework and technical standards that will underpin the safety framework for approving these vehicles. When that happens, there will be a decision for Ministers to take about how they consult with stakeholders in the UK to make sure that people are comfortable with those definitions before they are transferred into UK law.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

Q May I ask a couple of questions relating to the way that you have looked at the insurance? It seems to me that you are treating the concept of ownership as it is today, rather than as it is likely to become; transport is likely to become a service, rather than a commodity. Is that fair?

Iain Forbes: The policy aim of the Bill was to set up a framework that protected innocent victims of incidents relating to these vehicles in such a way that it felt similar to the current framework. We can have a framework around vehicle sale that is based on current patterns of ownership. In future that might change, as you say, in which case we would have to review the framework to make sure that we were making appropriate provision in law to allow people to operate the system safely.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Q It will probably become unlikely that car companies will end up selling their cars; they will lease them for shorter and shorter periods, as many car companies already do with their corporate fleets. It would seem sensible to have a look at that.

Perhaps we can go straight on to insurance. The safety systems before full autonomy—what you are calling level 4 cars—

Ben Howarth: I prefer to call them fully automated cars, but level 4 is the definition.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Q Various cars, while not fully automated, already warn you if you are going to cross a white line or are getting too close to the car in front. As automation levels come up, are insurance companies intending to offer better premiums?

Ben Howarth: I would say that insurers have already done that. Autonomous emergency braking was referred to. Even before we had any claims data to back this up, we set any car that had that technology a lower group rating. If you have that technology in your car as standard, you get a cheaper insurance premium. We now have evidence to back that up; we have pretty robust data that say that that technology works. That is definitely the intention, going forward.

One of the key things that we as an industry need to know is when that technology is in a car. That is a practical challenge that we have. I do not think it will be a problem in four years’ time, when the Bill comes in. We as an industry would really like to know when this technology is in cars, to make sure that we are pricing accurately. It is a data-sharing challenge, because it is often impossible to find out whether we have got it.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Q As the Bill comes in and starts to make greater provision for understanding who is liable, the question of ownership kicks in: is the driver responsible for upgrading the software, or does Toyota or whoever maintain ownership throughout? As semi-autonomy moves more towards full autonomy, you get an opportunity, but you also get this question: at what point do you start pricing out real drivers of real cars, if you see what I mean?

Ben Howarth: You do, potentially, but bear in mind that there will be a tipping point at which there are so many really safe cars on the road that it will have an overall impact on the number of accidents. The number of accidents will go down across the board. Also, the whole fleet will get safer; there will be a decreasing number of people in cars with no automated function at all, and even they will get the benefits of generally safer roads.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Q Of course, as the number of incidents goes down, premiums will presumably fall for everybody. Given that car insurance is the most lucrative area of the insurance market, have you done any work on what this will mean for house insurance and various other forms of insurance, on the grounds that it seems unlikely that your members will voluntarily lay profit aside?

Ben Howarth: I am not sure whether it is true that it is the most lucrative part of the insurance market, but we have not looked at the wider impact on the industry.

[Tom Tugendhat]

It makes up about 50% of insurance profits in the UK.

Ben Howarth: I am sure that individual insurers will look at the potential impact on other parts of the market, but we have not.

[Andy McDonald]

Q Returning to the issue of software, clause 4 devotes a lot of attention to when insurers will not be picking up the can—something that we are familiar with. Can you say a little bit about how you are expecting software to be updated? What is the process for doing that? We all update our phones; we plug them in and press “install”, and the phone tells us when it is done. What is the current state of knowledge? Where are we, scientifically, on achieving that?

Linked to that, what responsibilities should there be on manufacturers to provide updates and tell the owners or users of vehicles that those updates have to be made? As I read it, there is nothing in the Bill that places any obligations on manufacturers to do that. A lot of time is devoted to when the software has not been updated, but where is the principal obligation for the manufacturer to do it? There are a lot of questions, but I am wondering whether that loops back to the definition and whether that needs attention to ensure that we have addressed the obligation. So how is it done and what are the obligations on the manufacturer?

Iain Forbes: Those are good questions. To answer the second one first, what is important about this Bill is that it is looking just at the insurance regime for these vehicles. It will have to work in concert with other parts of the law, including the system by which vehicles are approved for sale. You might imagine that if vehicles that operated automated systems were to be approved for sale there would be a close look at what would be necessary to ensure that the systems were updated where necessary to take account of any changes that were important to ensure safety.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rob Marris]

Okay, but from an insurance point of view, you have no concerns about Northern Ireland?

Ben Howarth: Not that I am aware of.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Q I assume that you looked at other countries as you prepared for the Bill. Will you say a little bit about how other countries are addressing the insurance and regulatory challenges?

Iain Forbes: The legal frameworks in different countries are often specific to those countries, so it is not possible to do an exact read-across, but we are looking at what people are doing to see whether there are broad lessons that we can learn. For example, in California, if you want to test automated vehicles, you have to put up a surety bond to ensure that there is a provision to cope with any accidents. Looking at that and other systems, we felt that the system in the Bill was appropriate for the UK and how our insurance system operates. It builds on a system that people would recognise, so it would look similar to what people do now, and it targets an important policy, which is to ensure that innocent victims caught up in an incident involving a vehicle in automated mode can get quick access to claims.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Q What about our European partners?

Ben Howarth: I was going to mention European partners, but from an insurance industry perspective, I think that we are ahead of everyone else in having clarity about how the legislation will work. Obviously there are still things that need to be done before the technology goes to market, but I get the sense that other people are debating the issues, but not with a formal proposal on the table. I genuinely think that we are a step ahead of everybody else.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Q The reason this matters is that a lot of people will now be thinking about booking their ferry and Eurotunnel tickets. Will we be able to take those cars abroad?

Iain Forbes: Interoperability is important, as you mentioned, and it is frequently discussed.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Q It does not matter which hand drive a car is, does it?

Iain Forbes: Which is part of the reason why it is important for some of the discussions about the regulatory framework to take place at international level, under the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe or other bodies that regulate how vehicles operate to ensure that, where possible, we have interoperable systems.

Ben Howarth: If you are thinking about cross-border insurance, as long as the broad principles are united—there are already big differences between the UK and other parts of Europe and how they insure vehicles; we have a driver-centric version whereas a lot of other European countries have a vehicle-centric system and a form of strict liability with various definitions—one would hope that we could evolve a system that gives at least minimum cover on a unified basis. We should not therefore have too much of a problem.

[Rob Marris]

Q Mr Tugendhat made an interesting point. It had not occurred to me, but if I am in my automated vehicle, which I have taken through Eurotunnel, and I am driving down a road in France and a non-automated vehicle is coming at me in the middle of the road, I do not want my British automated vehicle diving off to the left—which is what you would do to take evasive action in this country—

[Tom Tugendhat]

Presumably, you have got GPS—

[Rob Marris]

This is a serious point in the context of Mr Forbes’s discussing interoperability. I presume there has been a discussion about the coding—I would like reassurance about this—so that the evasive action that automated vehicles might take when faced by unsafe manoeuvres by non-automated vehicles is appropriate to the side of the road on which one drives. Otherwise, we will have a big problem, as Mr Baker will know, with software coding and so on.

Iain Forbes: These are the sorts of challenges that you have to work through when you sit down to think about how the system will operate in practice. We are still at the stage of the technology where the developers are making sure that they can get their systems to work in particular locations—particular cities or areas. If the developers want to sell products and services that can be used in more than one country, that is something we will have to bear in mind when taking forward our development programmes. Indeed, if they are going to operate in accordance with the right regulatory framework, they will have to have discussions with regulators about how that will operate in practice.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy McDonald]

Q Although we are not specifically restricting this discussion to aviation, because it could be another vessel, I think BALPA has suggested in evidence to the Committee that it is equally important and significant when lasers are shone at air traffic control towers. Have we got a history of that happening? Is it a significant risk? Would you prefer to see the legislation embrace air traffic control towers, rather than just vehicles, as currently described?

Martin Drake: There certainly is history of it in the USA, and I can think of a couple of times in the UK where a laser has been shone at the air traffic control tower. For an air traffic controller working the tower—that is the control bit that does the final approach and the controlling of the aircraft as they depart, so it is within close proximity of the airport—most of that is done visually. If his or her eyes were to be affected, it could reduce their capability of seeing aircraft close to the airport. They would then have to come off duty and be replaced fairly rapidly. It is not as common as shining at aircraft, but it does happen.

Steve Landells: Can I expand on that slightly? It depends on the airport’s procedures, but I know of one airport where, if a laser is shone at the visual control tower, they take the visual controllers out of that tower. You effectively shut down the airfield.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I am sorry; what did you say?

Steve Landells: They take the visual controllers out of the tower to protect them, and if that happens, the airport is effectively shut down.

[Andy McDonald]

Q What do you think should be happening to better control the availability of the devices themselves? What restrictions would you prefer to see in place to stop the devices being acquired?

Simon Bray: There have been discussions about whether to deal with some of these items as offensive weapons. Clearly, if there is an intent to shine and to harm someone’s eyesight with one of these devices, you can deal with them in that way, provided you get the evidence behind it that demonstrates possession of an offensive weapon with intent to cause harm; likewise if you assault someone with a laser. The difficulty is investigating and proving those instances.

What the Bill does do is provide blanket legislation that is suitably serious—more so than the different sorts of legislation that we are having to use at the moment. It is an advance on what we have currently got. I definitely take the point that were we to have additional powers restricting sale and possession, it would be easier for us to deal with things before they take place.

Richard Goodwin: Colleagues I have been working with in the Department for Transport are working with colleagues in the Department responsible for business employment, looking at potential import restrictions and some of the issues around how we control the sale of some of these lasers. That work has been going on for seven or eight years, and during that time the availability and power of lasers has increased and the cost has come down. There is a Department looking at that control now, and clearly we support that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Burden]

Q At the moment, there is no need to do that because the action of pointing a laser, however strong it is, at a vehicle is the offence. Presumably, without reclassifying them as offensive weapons, if you got your power of stop and search, that would be because of suspicion that the laser would be used for—or had been used for—that purpose. But if you were simply going to say that the possession of a laser could be the possession of an offensive weapon, would that need to define the strength of the laser?

Simon Bray: You would have to have the definition of what is an offensive weapon clearly in the process of stopping and searching or when trying to work out whether it is of that type. You would not know unless you had the laser tested afterwards to see whether it met the criteria.

Richard Goodwin: I am trying to rack my brains about reasonable excuse and lawful excuse, which is in the current offensive weapons legislation—why someone in a park at 10 o’clock at night has a laser in their pocket. I am slightly reluctant to go down the route of power because that is difficult for an operational officer at the time to understand and define. Some lasers come in as one thing and then turn out, when they are tested, to be something completely different. For me it is more about what that person intends to do with any laser, rather than about some of the more high-powered ones.

Paul Watts: It is not necessarily the power that is causing the threat, but the dazzle and the distraction that we spoke about. That effect would come from a very large power range of lasers.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Q Given your point that the power is not entirely relevant because the dazzle is so important, can you talk about the other equipment that exists with lasers today? Surveyors use lasers, and presumably there is a risk, so they must be cautious about how they use them. Driverless vehicles are likely to use lasers in different ways and various autonomous measuring equipment is likely to use lasers. Can you talk about the dangers that they pose and how they might be mitigated?

Steve Landells: Public Health England says that lasers under about 20 milliwatts will not cause any eye damage—so, provided that they are not pointing up in the air, they are not going to dazzle and distract, and they will not cause eye damage if they happen to strike your eye. A normal blinking reaction will take into account a 20-milliwatt laser, but the problem is that the ones we are seeing now are 2,500 milliwatts or 4,000 milliwatts. They are the problem. Depending on the uses that they are put to—astronomers use them as well—and providing that they are at the lower end of the power range, if they are not being pointed in the air with driverless cars and things like that, maybe that is not an issue.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Q Does the Bill affect people such as astronomers using them as you suggest?

Martin Drake: We do not think so. We have done quite a bit of research on the legitimate use of laser technology, and boy, is it useful. Eye surgery uses lasers; you said surveying. There is a whole list of them. The equipment that uses those sorts of laser is designed to use the laser in that way, and it tends to have safety functions, so that if the laser strays, it shuts down, and of course it is used by trained people. The people who have those lasers fully understand their dangers and how to use them, and the Bill does talk about legitimate use. We are not in any way, shape or form saying that there are not really good reasons for using a laser. However, when they are used irresponsibly at the powers of laser that we are seeing, that gives us cause for concern. Most legitimate lasers do not have the powers that we are seeing. I say “most” because some do, but most of them do not have the powers that we are seeing, which people can quite happily buy over the internet and have delivered to their home.

Simon Bray: There is a clear defence within the Bill, and that is something that we have been paying close attention to in terms of our investigations.

[Alan Brown]

Q We have heard that lasers are becoming more common, and you obviously support the proposed legislation. It is similar with drones, which are becoming more accessible and more common. Would you like to see proposals to ensure better regulation and safety with regard to the use of drones?

Steve Landells: From BALPA’s point of view, we would certainly like to see more regulations and toughening up around drones. We understand that a lot of work is going on at the moment and there is a DFT consultation, but yes, it would be good to see drones in there.

Simon Bray: Likewise, whatever regulation comes out and whatever changes there might be to navigation orders and so on, we would like a simple set of regulations for the police to get involved with enforcing.

Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

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

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), who is a fellow member of the Transport Committee. He was educated at a good school in my constituency—for those who may be wondering, it was Hutchesons’ Grammar School—and his remarks show that that obviously paid off.

I want to recommend a book by a man called Alec Ross, who was the innovation and technology adviser to President Obama during this election campaign. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) has obviously read it. Alec Ross was also the innovation and technology adviser to Hillary Clinton when she was at the State Department. The book is called “The Industries of the Future”, a large chunk of which is dedicated to the issue of driverless cars. It also looks at other issues, and it provides some context for what we are discussing today.

The book looks at how the rise in the use of robotics helps not just in the vehicle industry, but in the provision of services. For example, a remarkable part of the book talks about how robotics are used to deliver some social care services in Japan. Hon. Members, if they take the time to read it, will find that absolutely remarkable. It looks at the use of robotics in the classroom, and at how young children who cannot get to a classroom can take a full part in the education system.

The book looks at the rise in the use of genetic code, the codification of money and markets, and the weaponisation of code—I am sure that that is very much on the Minister’s mind as a former Minister with responsibility for cyber-security—but it also looks at the use of big data, which was briefly touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry). Just as land was the material of the agricultural age and iron was the material of the industrial age, so data must surely be the material of the new information age that we find ourselves in.

As has been mentioned, this country is driving the innovation in driverless cars, but let us be entirely honest with ourselves: we are slightly behind. I accept that the Bill goes some way to bringing us up to speed and, indeed, getting us into a position from which we can lead, but self-driving taxis have already been used in Singapore, Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh. It has been said that the technology has become mature over time, and that we can get to the position in which driverless cars are a thing of the mass market. I hope we do get there, because the last thing anybody wants is for such cars to become a plaything of the rich. The technology must be something that really drives big changes in all areas of our society.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very fine speech on the nature of innovation. Is he going to touch on the very radical change that the driverless technology that he is talking about could make to our entire economy? For example, if one thinks that the average car is in use only about 10% of the time—often even less—driverless technology could allow that figure to rise to 90%. However, that would of course mean fewer cars, fewer auto workers and less need for road space, which would be a huge transformation for our economy.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and I will come on to mention some of those things.

I am keen to hear more from the Minister about testing, and not just about where it will take place. As we have heard, there has not been any testing in Scotland yet. May I make a punt for my own fair city of Glasgow? Given that it was designed on the grid system, it would actually be ideal for testing driverless cars. I also want to hear more about the conditions in which the cars will be tested, because very few driverless cars have been tested in snow. In that respect, anyone coming to pretty much anywhere in Scotland at any time of the year will find some snow somewhere.

These are important issues, and although companies are developing driverless cars that can recognise the difference between a pedestrian and a cyclist or between a lamp post and another vehicle in front of them, it is quite clear that there is still some way to go. In that endeavour, the Government have my support.

[Tom Tugendhat]

The hon. Gentleman touches on such an important area that I know he will be aching to speak about: the ethics of the decision-making process. If a driverless car in his fair city of Glasgow has to make the awful decision of whether to hit a lady with a pram or to hit two nuns, which should it hit? That is a terrible and very difficult ethical choice to make, but I am sure he will guide us.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

I am not going to suggest it hits either, but the hon. Gentleman hits on an important point. Alec Ross travelled to 41 countries during his time at the State Department. He found that the suspicion of robotic technology is actually greater in developed western economies than it is in the east. In reality, I suspect that driverless cars will be the first major robotic that people learn to trust. If we are going to trust them, they will have to be tested so they do not hit the lady with the pram or the two nuns.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

The Minister is absolutely right.

In his first intervention, the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling asked about the change this will bring to our economy. The big technological change that stands before us will perhaps bring us some unintended consequences. For example, if driverless cars become a thing of the mass market, what of the future of car parks? Local authority car parks are worth over £1 billion to the economy according to the British Parking Association, and that does not take into account private sector car parks. Mr Deputy Speaker, if you can get your car to take you to the airport and programme it to pick you up after your two weeks in Salou—though I am sure you would not be away for that long—or wherever you have chosen to spend your time, why on earth would you pay the fees, which are in some cases exorbitant, for your car to sit in the car park for a fortnight? It also raises questions about what it will mean for the workforce who drive taxis, buses or HGVs, who, it has to be said, in most cases do not have the education or qualifications to go into other skilled parts of the economy.

[Tom Tugendhat]

The hon. Gentleman is making such a fine speech that I feel I am only adding the smallest of cherries on the top of his extremely fine cake. In any moment of transition there is always a danger that some people will be left out of the moment of transformation. However, I am sure he shares my confidence that should a moment of transition happen—I look forward to it happening—there will be an opportunity for people in one form of employment to be employed in other areas, for example the caring sector. He mentions a car sitting idly in a car park for 14 days; it could instead ferry people to and from medical appointments or liberate the infirm. This is an amazing opportunity.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

I welcome all the cherries the hon. Gentleman has been throwing at me from the other side of the House. He is absolutely right. In considering the workforce and the change we will be presented with—this is perhaps less for the Minister’s Department and more for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy or the Department for Education—how will our education system deal with it? How do we need to restructure vocational education? As some people will win, some people will inevitably lose. I hope that Ministers, including the Minister here tonight, are heavily engaged in these discussions; otherwise, we risk protests like those we saw in Seattle in 1999 with regard to the free trade agreement. If this big technological change—I cannot wait to see it happen on the scale that will inevitably occur—is to mean anything, it must mean that it does not leave out those who hang around the bottom end of society, constantly looking to this Government and indeed to all Members of Parliament to make sure that the future belongs to them as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

Just last week, I was complimenting the Government on introducing an amendment for talking buses in the Bus Services Bill, and now this week I find myself in agreement with another Bill, so I am greatly looking forward to Wednesday’s Budget, when normal service will be resumed.

In this Bill, the measures on autonomous vehicle insurance are certainly a welcome look ahead; they are just a small step on the way to the future outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald), but they are a welcome step nevertheless. However, we also need to start planning the necessary mobile infrastructure to allow these vehicles to be fully rolled out in the future.

Scotland must not be left behind on AVs, and, as we have heard from my hon. Friends, we must ensure that Scotland is involved in future trials of these vehicles. I am thinking here in particular of our country and rural roads. Scotland is still unique in that in many areas there are single-track roads with passing places, and it is not unusual for people to become involved in a Mexican stand-off where two vehicles come head to head and the question is which will reverse first. I would like to see how AVs tackle that dilemma; that is not quite the dilemma of the nuns or the mother and the baby in the pram, but it still needs to be overcome.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I would like to hear how they settle that in Glasgow.

[Alan Brown]

The hon. Gentleman does not want to know how they settle that in Glasgow.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) about our wish for a hub for the development of AVs in Scotland. That covers AVs from our perspective, but I particularly want to focus on ULEVs. Part 2 is okay as far as it goes. Greater clarity and consistency is undoubtedly required in information on charging points, and it is welcome that the Government are going to clear that up. That will lead to improved customer and consumer confidence, because many people are clearly still reticent about buying EVs, as they are concerned about how far they can actually travel journey-wise. Clearer information on charging points and the type of charging points will clear that up.

The key questions for the Minister, however, are whether the Bill goes far enough with respect to charging points and the roll-out of infrastructure and whether there is enough strategic thinking on this matter across Departments. The reason I pose those questions is that the Scottish Government and the UK Government share the target of all vehicles being ultra-low emission vehicles by 2050. That target exists because of air quality issues and greenhouse gas emissions. At present, transport contributes 23% of carbon dioxide emissions—it is the joint largest contributor along with power generation —so the decarbonisation of transport is absolutely vital. The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) pointed out that there are 44,000 deaths a year as a result of poor air quality. That underlines the need for action in this area.

Recently, the United Nations special rapporteur on hazardous substances and waste stated:

“Air pollution plagues the UK”,

and particularly affects children. He also said that there was an

“urgent need for political will by the UK government to make timely, measurable and meaningful interventions”.

I should point out that, in November 2016, the Government lost a court case relating to their proposals to tackle air pollution for the second time in 18 months. There is no doubt that more needs to be done to improve the roll-out of ultra-low emission vehicles. In January last year, the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), suggested that the sale of ULEVs had reached a tipping point, and a Department for Transport press release last September trumpeted the fact that there had been a 49% increase in registrations of such vehicles compared with the previous year. The reality is that the registration of ULEVs represents only 1.2% of vehicles, and a 50% increase on 0.8% of sales is not really a tipping point. We have a long way to go.

This Government have to do more. They should copy some of the initiatives that the Scottish Government have undertaken, including the low carbon transport fund, which offers interest-free loans of up to £35,000 for new hybrid and electric vehicles, with a repayment period of up to six years. Businesses can access loans of up to £100,000. However, even that is not enough. At the moment, we have the paradox of low oil prices keeping fuel costs down, making a switch to electric vehicles even less attractive in the short term.

I have touched on air quality. The bottom line is that need to get diesel vehicles off the road. The UK Government must be bold in that regard. I also suggest that those who have already bought diesel vehicles in good faith should not be penalised. I have been contacted by constituents who are concerned that they will be penalised for having bought such vehicles, even though they did so in good faith. Do the Government have any plans to help those people and to truly disincentivise the purchase of diesel cars, rather than simply leaving that to local initiatives? A wee, independent, oil-rich country called Norway has managed to achieve a market share of 18% for electric vehicles. What lessons are the Government learning from Norway?

As I have said, the switch to ULEVs is moving at a snail’s pace. However, while we can get fixated on the roll-out of electric cars, the biggest polluters are large diesel vehicles. We have started to see real progress with buses, and the Scottish Government are leading the way with the hydrogen fleet in Aberdeen. We are also seeing buses switching to biofuels, which is welcome. But the elephant in the room is heavy goods vehicles, particularly transport refrigeration units. Approximately 50% of TRUs, which keep goods cold in transit, are powered by a secondary diesel engine. These small engines emit 29 times more particulates and oxides of nitrogen than the vehicle’s main diesel engine. The main engines are governed by European standards, but those separate refrigeration units are not regulated at all. There is a huge disparity there.

Also, those secondary units can use red diesel, so the Government are providing a subsidy that is enabling the units to pollute the atmosphere and cause the kind of air quality issues on which the Government have already lost court cases. The Government need to rethink how they handle the regulation of secondary units. To be fair, they have invested in research and development to fund the development of zero-emission refrigeration units, so it makes sense for them to provide more funding to allow haulage company owners to upgrade their units, which would improve air quality and, in the long run, provide health benefits and reduce costs for the health service. Providing funding would lead to a virtuous circle.

I touched on research and development and, going back to strategic thinking, the Government need to provide better joined-up thinking on R and D for low-emission transport and renewable energy. We should bear in mind that this Government have wrecked the renewables sector with a 95% reduction in investment by 2020, with one in six jobs in the sector being under threat. The Government have also withdrawn funding for carbon capture and storage. If we truly are to meet our green energy targets by 2050, the Government need to rethink their policies as a whole. I welcome the Bill, but the Government need to consider things across the board rather than in isolation.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

I rise to support the Bill with a mixture of joy and apprehension. I feel joy because I see foresee the great things that it will bring to people’s lives. If those who would otherwise not be able to drive find themselves with the liberty of independent travel, that will be a very good thing indeed. I think particularly of people who may be disabled or blind. Also, given the commute I had this morning—I happened to drive in—I think how much it would have been improved if I had not had to drive along the A40. I do view the development of automated vehicles with a degree of joy, but my apprehension, as I indicated earlier, is that I do not want conventional driving to be banned. Some of us enjoy driving or riding a motorcycle as a thing of pleasure and take some joy from the skill of driving for ourselves.

Although a ban may seem a preposterous, ludicrous suggestion, I raise it because an enthusiast for the policy and for driverless vehicle technology took some pleasure in telling me that motorcycling would have to be banned one day because motorcycles cannot, or ought not, to be made autonomous because they would be dangerous alongside self-driving cars. I therefore view such developments with a degree of apprehension.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Coming all the way from Wycombe, my hon. Friend will know that not only is there the possibility of having driverless vehicles, and therefore autonomous vehicles, but horses could have been abandoned and yet have not been. Despite the fact that technology has moved on, horses have never been more popular than they are today. I hope that my hon. Friend is not assuming that we have to abandon all legacy technologies just because technology moves on.

[Mr Baker]

My hon. Friend is right. We still enjoy our bicycles and all the rest of it. Should the dread day come that driving is banned, I do not doubt that things would continue on the racetrack, but my point is that an enthusiast for these new technologies—a member of a Conservative party policy group—put it to me with some joy that motorcycles would have to be banned because he considers them dangerous and incompatible with self-driving cars.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

This modest Bill is clearly uncontentious. It seeks to adjust legislation to new technology, but from the red flag Acts onwards the House of Commons has not been great on anticipating either the potential or pitfalls of technological advance. Victorian Members used to fulminate against the railways, on the grounds that they led to revolution and moral torpor. In truth, it would have been hard for those Members to have anticipated the astounding success of the internal combustion engine, and the huge behavioural, commercial and social change that flowed from it.

Cars are potential killing machines driven by millions of people, of a variety of dispositions and intelligences. The fact that the car does not simply create havoc is due to intelligent legislation which has evolved over time. As I am sure the Minister would agree, it is always better to have legislation in place before we get to the problems, rather than after. I apologise if at this point I sound like a petrol head—the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) has confessed to being one and I must, too—but I am sure that we have not quite sized up all the problems relating to these new cars and new technologies. Indeed, we probably cannot do so. I recognise that autonomous cars and electric cars exist as developed technologies and will only improve, and that we already have satisfactory transport in the sky and on the rails which is almost autonomous. We also know, and we all agree, that human error is the principal cause of accidents. However, successfully trialling a few vehicles on an open road in California or in dedicated areas in the UK does not enable us to figure out, in any easy way, the consequences of their mass adoption, especially within a heavily congested network with a mixed ecology of driven and autonomous vehicles. Sure, we need to get insurance for those that exist and charging capacity for electrics, but what will mass roll-out look like? What desirable and undesirable behavioural changes will result?

I am sceptical about the mass adoption of electric vehicles, which may be a strange thing for a Liberal Democrat to say, as the party has always been massively enthusiastic on this score. However, there are big implications for the grid; for greenhouse emissions, as this depends on how we actually generate the electricity and how clean that is; for the streetscape and for planning authorities; for the world’s resources, given all these batteries which, to some extent, use rare elements; and for the second-hand market, which is not doing so well in electric vehicles, and on which I heavily depend.

[Tom Tugendhat]

The hon. Gentleman is making a fine speech, from a luddite perspective. I appreciate that he was instrumental in passing the red flag Acts through this House in the early 1900s, but surely he can see the liberation of resources and of planning-scape, the reduction of the impact of the vehicle and the liberation of the citizen that all that can bring.

[John Pugh]

Not necessarily, but I did listen to the hon. Gentleman talking about the Deputy Speaker’s voyage to the airport and saying that he would not need to leave his car in the car park. The hon. Gentleman was looking on the positive side, but we can also look at the negative side: the Deputy Speaker’s car has had to travel back to parts of Lancashire and then come out to get him again, so he has filled up the road more. We can spin these things either way.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I am terribly grateful that the hon. Gentleman is giving me the opportunity to reply, but he is assuming a level of ownership of today’s vehicle that is simply not relevant. If one looks at a vehicle as a means of transportation and sees it more in the form of a train, one sees that Mr Deputy Speaker uses a vehicle to get him to the airport and then gets out and gets on his plane, and somebody else gets in the vehicle and goes all the way back to Lancashire. Lucky Lancashire, to have spared the use of two cars.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

The good thing is that I do not have a plane, either.