Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill (Third sitting)

(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)

Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 2nd November 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

Thank you, Sir Edward.

As the Minister knows, two specific issues in the Bill concern me and led me to seek to be part of the Committee. One relates to the question of the strict liability of insurers when the vehicle is operating automatically, which of course relates to the software and its safety—the subject of this group of amendments. I have suggested to the Minister two possible approaches to resolving that problem, which was exposed in our evidence sessions. One of those relates to clause 1(1) and would probably require a somewhat different amendment from those that have been tabled, albeit broadly of the same kind. Let me first explain the problem and then try to suggest the solution.

We established clearly from the insurance industry representatives we questioned that, as the Bill is currently drafted, strict liability will attach to the car rather than to an individual, which is an entirely new phenomenon in insurance law. Let us suppose that there is not a fundamental legal problem with strict liability attaching to the insurer of a car. I make that assumption, although I do not necessarily think that it is a safe one; that may be explored further in the other place by lawyers with much deeper acquaintance with insurance law than I claim to have.

Supposing that that is a feasible arrangement, we then face the question: at what point should that strict liability clock in? That would not be a material question if the machine was never driven by a human being but was driven only by the machine itself. As the hon. Member for Eltham pointed out, that was raised during the evidence session by the rather enterprising group that will create service operations on London’s streets out of what are, in effect, level 5 vehicles way ahead of the schedule that other witnesses suggested would apply. Such vehicles clearly will never have a human being driving them; they will be automated objects that human beings will get into. As it is currently drafted, the Bill will therefore create a strict liability for the insurers. On the happy assumption that that will work legally, insurers will insure those vehicles, they will discover whether that is a very expensive proposition and that will get built into the service price. I am not worried about that from a legislative point of view.

However, I think that the Minister would agree, as all our witnesses seemed to, that it is extremely likely that, in parallel with that rapid roll-out of highly automated level 5 items, for perhaps many millions of motorists there will be a gradual progression—not necessarily strictly demarcated as level 3, level 4 and so on—from vehicles that are largely driven by a driver but somewhat assisted by the machine, to vehicles that are driven by the machine under more and more circumstances but are sometimes driven by the driver.

I certainly do not think that we should legislate on the assumption that we know what the future will look like, but it is highly likely that there will be a stage at which there are vehicles that, for example, are well designed to operate on motorways on an automated basis. The nation may benefit hugely from them operating in that way, because it is safer and allows much shorter distances between vehicles and therefore much more intensive use of motorways, which diminishes capital investment in the motorway system, improves safety and prevents the environmental damage that building more motorways would occasion, so that may well in fact become compulsory at some point. However, those very same vehicles may be ill-designed to deal with country roads, city roads or other kinds of road, so they may well have a function that enables them to be switched back and forth between automated driving and being driven by the driver.

We heard rather different things from witnesses about that switchover. To tell the truth, I think that that is because nobody really knows how it is going to operate. The history of technology is littered with prophecies from experts about how future technologies will operate that have proved to be false, so the Committee would be wise to assume that we do not know, and will not know when legislating, how exactly the switchover between driver and automated vehicle will occur.

Mr Wong suggested in an evidence session that the vehicle itself will offer up to the driver the opportunity to switch over to automation in circumstances in which the vehicle is sufficiently intelligent to know that it is safe for it to take over the driving, and that it will never otherwise offer up that opportunity. It is perfectly sensible that if the vehicle offers itself to the driver to take over operation, and if the driver allows it to take over operation, the vehicle becomes the driver, and the strict liability of the insurer attaches to the vehicle and not any longer to the person. That would be fine.

However, if, as some other witnesses seemed to think was the case, it is the driver who will, at least in some circumstances, make the decision of whether to switch over to automated use, this becomes a highly material question: has the driver made that decision in a reasonable and sensible fashion? The reason is that if the driver has not made the decision in a sensible and reasonable fashion, and if the insurer of the vehicle is nevertheless bound to have strict liability for the vehicle taking over the action, insurers could be faced with enormous bills in circumstances in which what they were actually doing was facing a bad decision by a person whom they had never insured; they had insured the vehicle and not the person. That is the problem we need to address, which brings me to the question of clause 1(1).

[The Minister for Transport Legislation and Maritime (Mr John Hayes)]

I am delighted that my right hon. Friend has looked into these matters with typical assiduity. I am also delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I briefly say that, as I have risen for the first time. I know that your sagacity in the Chair will match the warmth of your friendship and the generosity of your home, which you have offered me just this week at a dinner party. Anyway, let us leave that to one side.

[The Chair]

Flattery of the Chair will get the Minister nowhere!

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[Mr Hayes]

I like dancing on the head of pins—I think it is an appealing thing to do—but we must be careful to avoid it in this Committee, because time does not permit it, many hon. Members want to contribute and there is a slight risk from doing so in this case. I will make this argument as quickly as I can. The key issue about an event that took place while the vehicle was in autonomous mode is not the point at which it went into autonomous mode, but the events at the point at which the incident occurred. If we can be very clear that the vehicle was being driven autonomously at the time of an incident or accident, that becomes the salient issue, rather than what might have happened five minutes or half an hour before, when the driver switched it to autonomous mode, because of course the circumstances of its being autonomous will then become absolutely clear, and at that point the liability is not in question.

I take the point that whether the vehicle should have been in autonomous mode may be material and I shall explore that more when I respond to the debate, but I think that it is what happens at the point of the accident that is of greatest concern. I just put that to my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset for further consideration.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I have considered that and I think that is the assumption. My right hon. Friend has well exposed the logic that underlies the current drafting, and it is in error, in my view, because although of course the material moment is the moment of the hypothetical accident, the cause of the accident is the material question from the point of view of the operation of our insurance system, and if the cause of the accident was a bad decision by the person, there is an illogic that will eventually undo all the good we are trying to do if nevertheless the insurer of the vehicle has strict liability. The fact that it may have been five, 20 or 55 minutes before the accident that the person handed over control to the vehicle is irrelevant if the basis on which the person handed over control was wrong and the person made the wrong decision. It seems to me that the question we need to address is this: is it possible that the person should have made such a wrong decision, or have we eliminated that possibility? That is what I want to get on to, because that is where clause 1(1)(b) needs to have a (c).

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It is indeed possible that the proposition that my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire has put, which is exactly the proposition put by Mr Wong in the evidence session, will happen and that vehicles that are capable of genuine automated driving will have sufficient intelligence built in so that they will offer to take over only if it is totally safe. If that is the proposition on which the Minister wishes to base the legislation, bearing in mind that we do not actually know at the moment whether the technology will go in that direction, it seems what is needed is an amendment or a new subsection—clause 1(1)(c), or thereabouts—that makes it clear, and this relates to the Opposition amendment, that the Secretary of State will have the power to approve a fully automated system only if the Secretary of State has have verified that that system will always safely determine its own capability to take over the car.

[Mr Hayes]

rose—

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I will give way, of course, in a moment.

Such a course of action is fine and would solve the problem that I have advanced, because the Minister or Secretary of State, or an expert acting on his or her behalf, would have verified in advance that the machine was capable of taking over and would take over only under safe circumstances. Before I give way to the Minister, I want to point out that that is using the law to limit the technology, and the history of the approach to that in our country’s legislation has been very bad. I will not go into all the history, but I am happy to write the Minister a memorandum about it if he wants. I once wrote an article about this. There is a very long history of Parliament trying to prejudge the technology, legislating on the assumption that it will be only that technology, mandating therefore only that technology, and discovering that there is not any of it and that people elsewhere are manufacturing things that we do not get because they do not fit our legal system. It is not the route I recommend, and I will come back to that when we get to clause 2. It is a possible route, however, and one that the Minister should at least consider.

[Mr Hayes]

I will speak more about my right hon. Friend’s last point when I respond to the debate as a whole, because of course it relates closely to the shadow Minister’s point about how far we define what we do now. The Bill is an attempt to thread a course between creating sufficient certainty to establish a framework to allow further development and, on the other hand, doing exactly what my right hon. Friend has mentioned in trying to predict a future that may not come to pass. He is right to raise that and I will deal with it in greater detail.

On the specifics of his point about liability, I draw his attention to clause 3(2), which we will debate later. You will not let me debate it now for that reason, Sir Edward, but clause 3(2) specifically talks about the subject that my right hon. Friend describes, because it draws attention to the possibility of an accident being

“wholly due to the person’s negligence in allowing the vehicle to begin driving itself when it was not appropriate to do so.”

That is very much what my right hon. Friend speaks about, and it is why we put it in the Bill. He makes a separate point—a good one—about technology that kicks in of its own accord because the technology, the software, determines that it is better at that point for the vehicle to be driven autonomously. We will explore that in greater detail as we consider the legislation. I simply draw his attention at this stage to clause 3(2).

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I recognise that I am treading on your indulgence, Sir Edward, but, as the Minister has mentioned clause 3(2), I will briefly point out, although no doubt we will discuss this later, why I do not think that it solves the problem. It is possible that it is susceptible to redrafting so that it will, but it is ill drafted if the intention is to solve the problem I have raised. In the first place, it says, “wholly”, in that it is

“wholly due to the person’s negligence”.

That is an almost impossible thing to establish. As currently drafted, it does almost no heavy lifting at all. I think I know why a parliamentary draftsman has nevertheless inserted the word “wholly”, because, like the Minister, I have had quite a long experience of dealing with parliamentary draftsmen on numerous Bills. I know that they think through carefully the question of what happens if we do not put in a word such as “wholly” under these circumstances.

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[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

I rise simply to ask for a point of clarification from the Minister when he responds to the debate. I anticipate the answer to my question will be yes, but I would like to have it on the record. I anticipate that, as well as motor cars, the list of vehicles that the Secretary of State will compile and update will include lorries, buses, emergency services vehicles and other vehicles for which the driver would require an HGV licence or a public service vehicle licence. I would like clarification on that. For instance, I anticipate that, with technology, HGVs could be driven normally for a large part of a journey but then form part of some road train on a motorway with other similarly equipped vehicles. As I said, I would like clarification that the list will include those vehicles as well as private motor cars.

[Mr Hayes]

To paraphrase Bernard Shaw, I do not know whether I was born too early or born too late, but I do know that I was born to dare to dream of a future inspired—indeed shaped—by the past but not constrained by it; a future where we can achieve wonder. Part of that journey will be assisted by technological change. The technological change we are considering, as the Opposition spokesman said, could liberate many people who have not had easy access to private transport for a variety of reasons. That has extraordinary and wonderful prospects. As we consider the Bill, we should discuss it, as the shadow Minister did, in that context.

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[Sir Oliver Letwin]

My right hon. Friend mentions the core requirement of safety. What does he understand “safety” or “safely” to mean in this context, and what advice has he received about whether it can bear the burden of distinguishing between an ethically proper set of choices by artificial intelligence and an ethically improper set of choices?

[Mr Hayes]

That is a very big question indeed. It is the one that, in a sense, was first raised by the hon. Member for Eltham in the evidence session and on Second Reading, when he painted the picture of a scenario where a human being faces an ethical dilemma while driving. I will paraphrase the example for the sake of brevity: a child runs into the road and the driver has the choice of hitting the child or swerving and possibly causing a more catastrophic accident. That is a momentary judgment that any driver makes. In the end, it is a practical and ethical judgment, is it not? We could have a very long debate. My hon. Friend on my right, the Whip, may be my former Parliamentary Private Secretary, but he will not be entirely indulgent of me if I engaged in that very long debate, because of course one could extend it—

[Clive Efford]

rose—

[Mr Hayes]

Ah! We are indeed going to extend it.

[Clive Efford]

Let me invite the Minister along that path a little. The right hon. Member for West Dorset raised an important question—I did not word it as succinctly as he did, but he has more experience of drafting legislation than I have, so that is no surprise. If morals or ethics are not specifically referred to in the legislation, a sharp-witted lawyer may later argue that the issue is not ethics or morals, but safety, and that it is therefore ultra vires to use the legislation to regulate that area of the technology. I urge the Minister to look at this issue again and consider amending the Bill to address it.

[Mr Hayes]

Let me try to answer the hon. Gentleman and my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset in two ways. First, I draw attention to something that Mr Wong said in evidence on Tuesday:

“May I point something out? I mentioned autonomous emergency braking. It has been demonstrated that the technology is improving all the time. Previously, autonomous emergency braking worked perfectly at 30 mph, which is urban speed, but it is becoming increasingly sophisticated. AEB can work well even at 50 mph. It would not surprise me if the technology improved in years to come”.––[Official Report, Automated and Electric Vehicles Public Bill Committee, 31 October 2017; c. 44, Q103.]

The technology is improving so rapidly and dramatically that in the scenario painted by the hon. Member for Eltham, an automated vehicle is likely to change lanes and—as in Mr Wong’s example—brake to ensure safety.

The representatives of the insurance industry stated in their evidence that the industry believes there will be fewer accidents, because the judgment of an autonomous vehicle will outpace that of a human being. I use the word “judgment” for technology with caution, as my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset used the word “ethics” with caution, but the judgment of the software driving the automated vehicle will be more acute and, in the end, safer. These machines are likely to be less prone to error than human beings, so there will be fewer accidents; the vehicles will be safer and therefore easier and cheaper to insure. We heard that point repeatedly in the evidence session. We can be confident that that is the direction of travel—I apologise for using that rather hackneyed phrase in this context—but we cannot be sure how quickly we will get there or exactly what it will look like. I would be a very bold man if I made such a prediction.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I, too, listened to Mr Wong and have re-read the part of his evidence that the Minister quotes from, but it is wholly irrelevant to our point. I thought it was extremely instructive that Mr Wong, who is clearly a very great technical expert, completely failed to understand the issue. The Germans have begun to understand it, but the Bill does not genuinely or seriously address it.

The Bill is drafted as if artificial intelligence were the same kind of thing as speed control. It is not, and that is a very important error underlying the Bill’s drafting. Speed control is a technical matter, and we could go much further with technical development and still be in the technical arena in which safety is the only question, because the ethical judgments are made exclusively by the human drivers. With artificial intelligence, as the hon. Member for Eltham rightly says, we are moving into a terrain in which the machine will make the kind of decisions that Parliaments and human beings make. These are questions not of safety, but of judgment about the right outcome under difficult circumstances.

I ask the Minister to go back to his Department and talk to its lawyers about whether jurisprudence will deliver to him or his successors the ability to refuse approval to a piece of artificial intelligence that, either directly or through its learning processes, will or could have the effect of producing totally dysfunctional anti-utilitarian results by making judgments that are technically perfectly safe but that just happen to take the view that, for example, wiping out a group of three-year-old schoolchildren is better than wiping out a 98-year-old crossing the road. That is a very difficult judgment for a human being to make, but it is the kind of judgment that Parliaments have to make, and I think that at the moment it is very clear in the Bill that it would not permit a Secretary of State to prevent type approval for a machine that was designed in such a way that there could be those very bizarre and undesirable results, and I am sure that that is not what the Department or the Minister wants to achieve.

[Mr Hayes]

Let us not overestimate how far this Bill—I am being very particular about my words—intends to go. This Bill is about ensuring that victims of collisions caused by autonomous vehicles get quick, easy access to insurance compensation in line with conventional processes. What we heard in the evidence and what we debated when the Bill was in its earlier incarnation was that it was important for the insurance industry, and therefore for the further development of this technology, that we were clear about that—there would be no difference, from the perspective of the person who owned the vehicle, in how they went about making a claim.

There is a much bigger debate, which will clearly have to be dealt with in legislation, in regulations, in type approval—in a whole range of other things—about some of the other matters that the hon. Member for Eltham and my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset have raised. If they are both right that we will get to a point at which the machine makes what is in effect an ethical judgment—I am trying to use words very carefully; it is very obviously the machine making ethical judgments, but I do appreciate the strangeness of it—clearly that will have to be taken into account at a future point in the legislative process. I do not think this Bill is the place to do it; I just do not think it can do it, because we do not yet know enough.

We are back to my first point, about the line we are trying to tread between what we can do now with certainty and what we might do in the future in a world in which we can as yet only imagine what might occur. If my right hon. Friend will permit me to say so, perhaps the Hegelian synthesis, where we might meet between what appears to be my thesis and his antithesis, is that this Bill is a starting point—a first step along, as I have said, a long road.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. I entirely accept that this Bill is just the starting point, but I think he is missing the point that I am trying to make about what starting with this language—with just the word “safely” and no reference to wider considerations—will do to his successors.

There is no point in having the Secretary of State empowered to make a list unless Secretaries of State are actually going to make lists. There is no point in empowering them to make lists of automated vehicles unless those lists are going to relate to automated vehicles. Those automated vehicles will have artificial intelligence built into them; they cannot be automated otherwise. Therefore, the Secretary of State, who is making the list in the first place, which this Bill provides for—not some other Bill, but this Bill—will be constrained by the terms that the Bill sets for what basis they can use to make the list. That is why the shadow Minister has raised questions about the criteria, and why we are having this debate in the first place. Surely, therefore, we need to empower—I am not suggesting that we in any way oblige—later Secretaries of State to consider, inter alia, whether the machines that they are putting on the list are actually murderously safe or good and safe machines. At the moment, they can decide only whether it is a safe machine. If it happens to be safe in the sense in which Stalin could “safely” eliminate large sections of his population, the poor old Secretary of State would, as I construe it—the Minister has not given us any indication that he has had advice to the contrary—be prevented from—

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[The Chair]

I think he is. We have started to wander more and more away from these quite narrowly defined amendments. I know that the Minister will get us back on track.

[Mr Hayes]

I am, as ever, guided by you, Sir Edward—having already cited your sagacity, I could hardly be anything other. I am delighted that we managed to get Stalin and Hegel into the same exchange. You will not get that in many Committees, Sir Edward. I am thinking about where we might end up, but I am prepared to live with that. It is important for safety, which in the end is a baseline factor, as I think my right hon. Friend will agree. However, there is a point about ethics. The advice I have received is that no vehicles that are not considered safe and ethical will be allowed on the market and therefore are not for consideration on the list.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

Safe and—

[Mr Hayes]

Safe and ethical. I have received advice; I like taking advice and not taking it. Before I make that my definitive position, I want to reflect a bit. If we were to say no to the advice that was not safe and ethical, I want to be absolutely clear what ethical means. We know what safe means. We can draw on existing practice in respect of type approval. We know what measures of safety are about, but when we get to measures of ethics, we are in an altogether more challenging area. That is why I will reflect a bit on the characteristics. This is an incredibly interesting debate, by the way, and very useful.

[Karl Turner]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Hayes]

I will give way briefly, but I must make progress or I will get into real trouble.

[Karl Turner]

I am obliged to the Minister for giving way. Will he concede that the right hon. Member for West Dorset and my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham are absolutely right that there is huge potential for legal argument about what is actually safe driving? There will be a debate around that that could end in litigation. No?

[Mr Hayes]

Yes, I agree. I think that is precisely right. As I said a moment ago, that is the significance of the debate. We are now at one in that there needs to be a list and that needs to be qualified. We have made some changes, which I will deal with in a second, since we first debated these matters. In his first contribution to our consideration, which now seems a long time ago, the hon. Gentleman spoke of consultation. I do not want to constrain the identification process or be too precise about the criteria, for the very reason that we have all been discussing, but it is right that a consultation is an implicit part of the continuing consideration of this. I am happy to say that that has to be part of it. As the technology develops, given what I have said about dynamism, there would have to be ongoing communication about the change in character of the technology and what that meant.

The safe functioning criteria are more straightforward. This is about a marriage between software and the machine. The machinery certainly needs to be safe. We drive machines now with internal combustion engines that are not fundamentally different from their early ancestors. So we know that the machine needs to be safe. The existing provisions in the Bill are clear that the list can comprise at present only vehicles that can be legally used on the roads. Having reflected briefly, I will reflect more—I am in reflective mode, as the Committee can tell. Perhaps it is about what we do in regulations. There might be an opportunity to qualify or clarify through regulation how the list develops.

[Matt Western]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Hayes]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman in one second. My right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset made the point that if we are too narrow in what we put in this legislation, even though it is a first step on the road, it may make the second, third or fourth step more difficult. That is the essence of his point, which he came to in the end. Either he focused his argument more precisely at the end or I was not bright enough to grasp it at an earlier stage of the argument, but that seems to be the essence of what he was saying. That is the bit that I want to think more about. I think that we are all happy that this is not the end of this process, but we must make the beginning of the process fit for purpose. That is essentially where we are.

Let me try to get through some more of my pre-prepared notes rather than extemporising, as is necessary when we have proper dialogue and scrutiny.

[The Chair]

Yes, the Minister was in danger of going around in circles, so he should get back to the script.

[Mr Hayes]

I will not go around in circles; I will come to a brief conclusion.

As I said, I am not sure that it would be appropriate to be too precise about the criteria. The only scope that the Secretary of State will have to list a vehicle is by determining whether it meets the safety definition. If it does, it will be included on the list; if it does not, it will not. There is no discretion to make a decision outside those parameters; the power is merely administrative and is not a discretionary legislative power. That is so we can be clear about why vehicles need to be on the list.

The defined vehicles will not be covered by our current insurance framework and will therefore need new, specific insurance products. That is the point I was making about the limits to what we are trying to do now and the essence of why they matter. This is about allowing the further development of appropriate insurance products that are not out there now, because if they are not out there in the future that will inevitably limit how far we go with the further development of vehicles.

I promised to give way to the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington and I have not done so. That was very discourteous of me, so I do so now.

[Matt Western]

I thank the Minister. It was not a discourtesy; I was waiting and listening. I want to pick up the regulatory framework and where that takes us. The interpretation of safety is all about the criteria and what is set by, say, the Transport Research Laboratory. Let us look, for example, at the standard for an acceptable braking system. It is what the Secretary of State, through the Department for Transport, ultimately determines to be the criterion for, say, acceptable responsiveness—whether that is a swerving action by a vehicle or a braking system—that gets measured and therefore determines whether a vehicle is acceptable for inclusion on the list. We are obviously at the first stage, but the next stage will be determining those criteria for deeming a vehicle acceptable for UK roads. I hope that that is helpful; I imagine that a very technical regulatory framework will need to be determined.

[Mr Hayes]

Yes, I agree. That is precisely why we should develop criteria down the line in a regulatory way, as the hon. Gentleman suggests, and why we will need to do so mindful of the international standards that I described and the ongoing debate that is taking place internationally through well-recognised bodies. I agree. This is a highly dynamic and dramatic series of changes, if I might say so.

My final point is that the character of the amendments and of our debate is about the Secretary of State’s interpretive powers. We have to be careful about extending the interpretive scope of this part of the Secretary of State’s responsibilities. This is yet another line to walk and not to cross. The criteria for inclusion on the list need to be sufficiently clear as not to allow any doubt in the insurance market about precisely what kind of vehicle might be on the list and therefore what kind of vehicle might or might not be insured. I am therefore doubtful about extending the interpretive scope.

We need to be clear which vehicles and which software can safely be operated in automated mode. The Secretary of State will therefore be able to transpose approved vehicles on to the list to ensure that our domestic insurance framework is based on and clear about which vehicles need which insurance products. It would not be appropriate to legislate at this early stage, as amendment 8 and new clause 11 suggest, to set an approval procedure or safety criteria until we know what the international standards are. The hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington is right; we will almost certainly need to do that further down the line as those international standards become clearer. Whether that is in other legislation or more likely in regulation—that is how I would like to go—is no doubt something we will debate over the course of the coming days.

In essence, I return to my core argument: the Bill is a starting point to creating greater clarity. It is not by any means the end of what I hope—I return to my very early words—will be a wonderful story.

[Karl Turner]

I accept that the Bill is the mechanism for getting the ball rolling, but the more I listen to the debate, the more I am persuaded that we need something on the face of the Bill to ensure that there is consultation and criteria.

[Mr Hayes]

I always try to avoid contumely—I think that is a well-known fact about me—but I have said I will reflect on what the hon. Gentleman and my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset said. I have said that consultation is an implicit part of this process. I implore the hon. Gentleman to avoid contumely and withdraw his amendment.

[Karl Turner]

I will not withdraw the amendment. With your leave, Sir Edward, I will press it to a Division.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

Division 1

Ayes: 6

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Labour: 5
Scottish National Party: 1

Noes: 9

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Conservative: 6

Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

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[Clive Efford]

My understanding of tier 4, as Mr Wong said in his evidence, is that it is only at tier 4 that the human is removed from the equation; I think that those were his exact words. I must admit that that seems to be a contradiction. Tier 5, as I understand it, is a fully automated vehicle with no steering wheel, totally under the control of technology. One wonders what tier 4 is. If tier 3 is the transition between human and vehicle and tier 5 is a fully automated vehicle with no steering wheel whatever, what is tier 4? Is it a lesser tier 5 or a greater tier 3? I will give way to the Minister, who is going to enlighten us.

[Mr Hayes]

I suggest that I drop a note to the Committee setting out what each tier means; otherwise, we will have this debate time and again. I can anticipate Members across the Committee querying it. I have asked my officials already.

[Clive Efford]

That would be helpful. I have looked at it, but as has been demonstrated in our exchanges, the difference between tier 5 and tier 4 is not entirely clear. From the descriptions of the people who gave evidence to us, in tier 4, the human is removed entirely from the equation.

We need to consider this issue. The evidence that I read said that the Venturer experiment at the Bristol testing centre discovered that drivers, when they first took over, tended to be over-cautious and drive at slower rates, which could increase congestion. There was also the potential for danger in vehicles suddenly slowing down, and Mr Gooding said in his answers to our questions that he felt that that issue was more important than congestion.

There are some important considerations raised by the issue of transition, particularly in tier 3. We asked witnesses, “When will the vehicle decide whether it is safe for the vehicle to drive or whether the vehicle should be handed back to the human driver?” They said that it depended on road conditions. That suggests that it will happen in the same locations on our roads: for instance, as vehicles leave motorways and enter more built-up areas, where there are more potential hazards and dangers for vehicles, it is likely that the vehicles will transition back to being driven by the driver. If that will happen regularly in the same location, it could create accident black spots. We could create a considerable new hazard on our roads.

[Clive Efford]

I accept that entirely and agree. It comes back to my point that it is likely to happen regularly in similar locations, and that patterns of behaviour will occur in particular spots where transition occurs because the technology requires it. We need to be aware of that. The testing is telling us that that is happening, but we are not taking it into consideration in the Bill, as we should.

I suggest to the Minister that we need to take that away and consider it. Safety must be the aspect most prevalent in our minds. There is also the moral or ethical issue of driver autonomy: will the driver be in charge of the vehicle, or will the technology be in charge of the driver? In the debate on previous amendments, he said that the technology is superior; he did not use that word, but he said that it is safer than a human in the event of an accident, even suggesting that a vehicle would make better or quicker choices than a human. That points us down a road, if Members will pardon the pun, of having roads operated in the way that our railways or underground service are controlled. Why not have fully automated vehicles of which drivers do not have control at all?

[Mr Hayes]

Let me be clear about that. We will not have time to complete our consideration of this group of amendments, so I feel that intervening might be helpful. What I said was that I drew that conclusion from the evidence that we received. The insurance industry and other witnesses said that they thought that the vehicles would be safer, and that insurance premiums might decrease over time; they said so because they believe that autonomy will make vehicles safer. It is implicit that they gauge the autonomous driving mode to be safer.

[Clive Efford]

My experience has been that many people who come to give evidence to us as MPs assure us that a technological advance will deliver X, Y and Z, take us far forward and lead us to a promised land where things are safer and much improved, yet we find that due to the law of hidden consequences, we face a whole different set of scenarios. The one that I am pointing to here is that the transition between driver and technology is already throwing up potential hazards on our roads, even before we have let the vehicles on our roads. We know that the issue exists, because it has shown up in the testing. Therefore, we should legislate for it. I have asked the Minister to take on board those arguments, and I can see that the Whip is itching to get to his feet.

Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—Andrew Stephenson.