Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 15th January 2024 Lords Chamber

That is why I have asked for Clause 83 not to stand part and laid Amendment 53, which would at least establish a statutory advisory panel with the purpose of designing a national minimum standard for accessibility of self-driving passenger service vehicles, and Amendment 57, which is consequential to it. The key thing about Amendment 53 is the involvement of disabled people. We in the disabled community have a saying: “Nothing about us without us”. Where coproduction works best, we are involved right from the start in the design, so that the voice of the disabled passenger can be heard and understood before it is too late to change it. I thank the Minister for his offer of a meeting and I hope that we can meet before Report. In the meantime, I hope that he can respond more favourably than he did at Second Reading.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and to agree with everything they said. In offering support to all the amendments in this group, I will make a couple of additional points.

First, to follow on from debates on previous groups today, it is obvious that, given the general state of our roads and infrastructure, if we are to see automated vehicles operating in the foreseeable future, that will be in only very limited and controlled circumstances—probably in newly constructed areas—and they are likely to be public transport. A great deal of our debates on this Bill have focused on private individuals having their own cars whizzing around, but public transport systems are most likely to be the first affected. We need to see the provision of access by design included as part of that.

Secondly, it deserves to be noted that, for the past year, the Transport Committee has been holding hearings on the accessibility of what we have now. These have exposed insufficient accessibility right across the transport sector, particularly in the need to update regulations to accommodate modern travel methods and equipment. As the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said, we are starting from scratch and could get it right from the beginning, so we should absolutely aim to do so. She spoke about relying on the public sector equality duty when it is so clearly failing; we have not heard the final conclusions of the Transport Committee, but a report out last month from the disabled people’s organisation Transport for All titled Are We There Yet?—to spoil the ending, the answer is definitely “No”—surveyed more than 500 disabled people in England on the journeys they had made in 2021 and 2022.

The report found that disabled people make far fewer journeys than non-disabled people—an average of 5.84 a week, which is one-third of the national average across the community. Those disabled people said they would like to make twice as many journeys every week, but lack of accessibility was preventing them doing so and being able to fully participate in our society, in the way that they would like. Finally, the report noted that nearly half of the respondents

“thought that the accessibility of transport and streets”

would worsen in the next 10 years, while only 28% thought it would improve. Your Lordships’ House has a duty and an opportunity to show that it is possible to make things better instead of letting them continue to deteriorate.

[Lord Borwick (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest, as I have been involved in accessibility to modern taxis and other public transport over many years. I entirely agree with most of the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and my noble friend Lord Holmes. However, with their amendments, I am not sure that we are heading in the right direction. It is clear from Clause 87 that those clauses intending to make the vehicle more accessible are heading in the right direction, but the noble Baroness believes they do not go far enough.

I am not sure that adding an extra automated vehicle accessibility standards panel, as in Amendment 53, would do anything other than delay everything in practice. By the time that such a panel is formed and educated to the standard of familiarity that we all hold with the Bill—or most of us do—I am not sure that it would do anything but delay the whole Bill, when we are already behind others. Although I very much hope that we could be at the forefront both of the existence of automated vehicles and of accessibility, we are of course two years behind other countries in Europe. We have got to catch up. I hope that we can alter Clause 87 to achieve what the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and I would like to see, rather than add a completely new panel on top.

Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 10th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 3, 5 and 8 in my name. I thank the Minister very much for the very informative meeting we had, and the Society of Motor Manufacturers was very helpful on any questions he could not answer on technicalities. That and a trip round the streets of King’s Cross in an automated vehicle thanks to Wayve—which was actually remarkably boring, which is what they tell me it is supposed to be—have put my technical questions to one side.

My concerns and my amendments, rather like those from the noble Lords, Lord Berkeley and Lord Tunnicliffe, are all about safety. The Minister said, as I recall, that safety would be the cornerstone of this Bill and, if we lose the confidence of the public—who are very concerned about safety—we are going to run into trouble and, as the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, said, there are going to be bumps in the road. If we lose confidence, people are going to lose confidence in the whole concept.

In the meeting, the Government said that, if we set safety standards too high, it will deter manufacturers and companies from coming into the market. But, at the moment, if raising these standards is deterring companies, maybe these companies should not be entering the market anyway and should not be involved in the development of automated vehicles.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, I think that cyclists will bear a disproportionate brunt of any casualties. As the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, said, they will be the “losers” in this whole equation. I turned to Cycling UK for some amendments, which seem to beef up the safety standards. Amendment 3 says

“leave out ‘an acceptably safe standard’ and insert ‘a high standard of safety’”.

That does not strike me as rocket science. In the same way, Amendment 5 says

“leave out ‘an acceptably’ and insert ‘a very’”

to make

“a very low risk of committing a traffic infraction”.

That is very similar to Amendment 4 from the noble Lord, Lord Liddle.

Amendment 8 says that, instead of “better”, the Bill should state that road safety would be

“significantly better for all road users”.

To me, this seems self-explanatory and would mean that safety truly is in the heart of the Bill. This seems like common sense to me and I look forward to the Minister’s answers.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, who has done sterling work in contributing to this Bill. I apologise for the fact that I have not managed until today to fully engage with Committee stage. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, who raised a crucial issue which, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said, really does not seem to be covered here.

I want to take a specific example here of the tragic case—which is far too common—of small children, toddlers up to the age of about seven, being killed on domestic driveways by human drivers. A report from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents which was supported by the Department for Transport shows that, since 2001, 34 children have been killed in domestic driveways, nearly always in their own home. There have been 19 deaths since 2008. In 22 of those cases, the child was killed by a reversing vehicle.

Here we have circumstances where—one would assume—usually competent and careful human drivers were not able to make allowance for what was happening around them. If we are going to think about automated vehicles, we need to think very hard about circumstances where we are not on the road but are in situations where vulnerable people, or animals for that matter, are not going to behave in manners that follow some logical kind of algorithm. That is not how the world works and, if we are going to have automated vehicles, we have to allow for circumstances like that.

I will pick up a point that the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and a number of others made. Whether we have this Bill or not, and whether we have automated vehicles or not, we should be aiming to do vastly better than we do now on road safety. In the most recent figures we have, in 2022 there were 1,711 fatalities and nearly 30,000 when you put the “killed” and “seriously injured” figures together. That was five fatalities per billion vehicle miles travelled. That sounds like a big number, but the figure is up 2% on the last time we had a year like it, which was 2019, the pre-Covid year. So, on the metric we should be counting, we are heading in the wrong direction.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, I think that, of the amendments we have before us, Amendment 8, which says

“significantly better for all road users”

is probably the best one; we have a number of ranges before us. Again, I am not sure that this would get past the Table Office, but I believe, and the Green Party very strongly believes, that the Government should be adopting a policy known as Vision Zero. It is the idea that we should have the goal of no deaths or serious injuries on our roads. We know that humans will make mistakes, that pedestrians will make mistakes and that there will be children, animals and all sorts of things. We have to design everything to reduce the risk to as close to zero as we can possibly manage. I do not know whether we could write Vision Zero into this Bill. I can foresee the wrestle we might have with the Table Office now, but I think that

“significantly better for all road users”

at least takes us in the right kind of direction.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, I thank Cycling UK for its excellent briefing. We often talk about cyclists as vulnerable road users and this briefing is from Cycling UK, but the most vulnerable road users are pedestrians, particularly young people and, increasingly, older pedestrians who on average tend to move more slowly and are more vulnerable in all sorts of ways. In recent years we have seen a real increase in the dangers to older pedestrians, such as in changes made a few years ago to traffic lights in London that had disastrous, hideous impacts on them. Amendment 8 refers to “all road users”; a lot of the discussion at Second Reading was about interactions between two motorised vehicles, but we have to make sure that we think about all the other interactions as well. We need a great deal more work and thought on this Bill, particularly this element of it.

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

My Lords, this may be the only contribution I make to this part of the Bill, but I wish to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and other noble Lords because this business of safety in Clause 2 seems to be the most pivotal thing in the entire Bill. As the noble Lord said, the public are looking to us to make sure that it is enshrined here.

One thing the noble Lord did not mention is the claim that these automated vehicles will be materially safer than the human-driven equivalent. It is therefore right that it is not “no worse than” or even “as good as”; it has to be “materially better than”. Otherwise, we simply should not go there. As this Bill paves the way for what will have to come through a lot of secondary legislation, that is vital to get across at this juncture. If we do not agree it today, I hope we will at some other stage on the Bill.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, made a really important point about road safety in the debate on the previous group of amendments and elaborated on it in the debate on this group with her Amendment 7. Clause 2(2) says:

“The principles must be framed with a view to securing that road safety in Great Britain will be better as a result of the use of authorised automated vehicles”.


That is a low aspiration. In my view, it needs to be considerably better. The noble Baroness said that she wanted to include private drive entrances, but they were declared out of scope by the clerks. I encourage her to persist. In my profession as a chartered surveyor, over many years I have helped people with their property boundaries, and one point that often comes up is where the private property ends and the highway starts. The customary arrangement is that between the blacktop—the adopted surface—and the front of the property boundary there is usually a verge or sometimes a pavement. Over it, the private driveway has what is known in the cant of the trade as a crossover. It is still part of the public highway, although it may be maintainable by the householder. That is an important distinction. The noble Baroness might go back to the clerks and say, “I want something that deals with crossovers”. I obviously do not wish to make a legal pronouncement, and I certainly defer to the views of the clerks, but that has been my understanding over many years of the principle behind the interface between the highway and private property.

Strikes (Minimum Service Levels: Passenger Railway Services) Regulations 2023

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Wednesday 6th December 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle]

As an amendment to the motion in the name of Lord Davies of Gower, to leave out all the words after “that” and to insert “this House declines to approve the draft Strikes (Minimum Service Levels: Passenger Railway Services) Regulations 2023 because they expose trade unions to liability of up to £1 million, make trade unions act as enforcement agents on behalf of employers and His Majesty’s Government, are likely to prohibit more than 40 per cent of rail industry workers from taking part in strike action, and fail to ensure that rail services will be safe on strike days.”

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I am delighted to welcome the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, back to the Labour Front Bench, as I am sure the whole House does. I agree with everything he said, except to make the point, as I did with the previous Labour Front Bench speech, that it appears to be more of an argument for my fatal amendment than for a regret amendment. I also very much agree with him about the need to change the way in which our railways are run. If we bring them back into public hands and run them for public good, not private profit, that would be a very good foundation for resetting our industrial relations in the operation of our railways.

I am not going to repeat all the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle. I have one question for the Minister, raised by the TUC briefing and I have also seen it in other contexts. If there is a partial service running as required under the minimum service levels, we all know that there are likely to be significant overcrowding and safety issues. I am sure many Members of your Lordships’ House picked up this piece of paper and thought, “Well, I’d love some minimum service levels on the trains I ride on non-strike days”. We know how crowded trains can get when they are cancelled for other reasons. Can the Minister assure rail workers that they can continue to apply work-safe principles, and stop working if it is no longer safe for the trains to continue to run? It needs to be clear that they will not face legal consequences for making a safety decision. We do not want what are often not particularly well-paid or senior staff in a situation where they make decisions with the feeling that such consequences hang over their head. I beg to move.

[Lord Snape (Lab)]

My Lords, my criticism of the proposed legislation is a quite simple one: it will not work. I listened to the Minister who, I have to say, went through his brief faster than any train I have been on recently. It is not a new idea. It was considered by the Thatcher Government and rejected. It was considered by the Cameron Government and rejected. It will not work. The problem is that this has been put together by lawyers who have no concept of how the railway industry actually works, or how train crews are rostered and how people are laid down for their various duties. The rostering of train crews is done at local level. The management and the local district committee—the shop stewards, if you like—sit down at every timetable change in May and December to decide the future rosters. The trade union side will obviously not sit down and discuss rostering under this minimum service level. As for choosing the name “minimum service level”, what else have we had in the railway industry for some time but a minimum service level?

It is not just the Labour Party and the trade union movement that are against this. The Rail Safety and Standards Board has said that it has considerable reservations about rail safety in future. That is not an organisation that one would normally regard as particularly left wing in its outlook. What the Government are proposing will poison industrial relations within the railway industry for years to come.

I have a couple of questions for the Minister. What happens if a minimum service level driver is rostered and declines to pass through a picket line at a particular depot? Will the Minister prosecute the driver or the trade union of which he is a member? The chance of conflict because of this barmy legislation cannot be emphasised too much. I said earlier—I do not wish to detain the House—that it is not just the Labour Party against it. I commend the Minister to read a paper prepared by Nicholas Finney OBE for the Centre for Policy Studies, that well-known left-wing organisation. He attacked the whole concept because, like me, he says it will not work. Maybe he will be regarded as a destructive member of British society. He is, or was, the chairman of the Wantage Conservative association, so if someone like him feels that this legislation is impractical, the Minister really ought to look again.

I am almost speechless at the stupidity of the Government bringing forward this legislation. I repeat that it will poison industrial relations within the railway industry for years to come, and I beseech the Minister even at this late hour to take some proper advice and not to make this into a lawyer’s dream.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords who have taken part in this debate for their consideration of these draft regulations. This is about achieving a balance between the rights of trade union members and the public’s expectation of being able to travel to work or, indeed, for any other social reason. At the end of the day, transport is at the heart of our nation’s success.

A number of questions have been asked, which I will try to address as briefly as I possibly can. This Government understand the difficulties imposed on the public by strikes on the passenger rail network. While it is right that workers are able to take strike action, it is a priority for the Government to protect the public and businesses from the disproportionate impact of strikes, including on people’s ability to make important journeys and on their livelihoods.

The careful design of the regulations, based on evidence from the public consultation and further consultation with stakeholders, means that minimum service levels will deliver a considerable improvement in service levels and experience during strikes. The economic damage to businesses and the wider economy would also be limited, and the industry would have the flexibility it needs to ensure that the minimum service levels are deliverable. At every stage of policy development, my department has carefully balanced workers’ ability to take strike action against the needs of people to make important journeys by rail, such as to get to work and to access vital services such as education and healthcare. Ensuring that this intervention is proportionate has been a central and continual consideration. Subject to parliamentary approval, we expect the regulations to come into force before the end of this year. In-scope employers would then be able to use minimum service levels for any strike action after they come into force, should they choose to do so.

I turn to some of the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle. The Government firmly believe that the ability to strike is an important part of industrial relations in the UK, rightly protected by law, and understand that an element of disruption is inherent to any strike. But we also need to maintain a reasonable balance with the needs of the public and the impact of strikes on businesses and the wider economy. In cases where work notices are issued by employers, this policy will impact some rail workers’ ability to take strike action. As such, the department has, at every stage, carefully balanced workers’ ability to take strike action against the needs of people to make important journeys by rail.

Evidence provided through consultation and engagement with industry indicates that the proportion of workers needed to deliver the minimum service levels will vary by employer and job role. In critical operational roles, for example, we understand that more than 40% of staff are likely to be required to work to deliver a service level of 40% under the categories A and C of the regulations. The extent of the coverage of priority routes under category B also means that the proportion of infrastructure workers required to deliver the infrastructure minimum service level will vary by geography.

On the safety point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, passenger rail employers must comply with safety requirements on the railway. The regulations do not override any existing safety rules or obligations. Moreover, the regulations have been designed to fit within the existing safety frameworks, and the department has consulted with the Office of Rail and Road during development.

Where an employer decides to issue a work notice, the Act requires that the work notice identifies the persons required to work during the strike in order to secure that the levels of service are provided and to specify the work required to be carried out. Employers can identify only persons who are reasonably necessary to provide the minimum levels of service under the regulations in the work notice. We consider that this would include workers who are reasonably necessary to meet legal and contractual obligations relevant to the delivery of the minimum service level, including safety obligations.

It is therefore expected that services delivered on strike days under minimum service levels will be as safe as services delivered on strike days without the use of minimum service levels. Great Britain is a world leader in rail safety. Ensuring high standards of rail safety will always remain a top priority for this Government.

With respect to the issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Snape, under the parent Act, trade unions must take reasonable steps to ensure that any of their members named on the work notice comply with that notice or the union will lose its legal protection from damages. Workers who take strike action despite being included on a valid work notice will lose their automatic protection from unfair dismissal. It will be for individual employers to determine whether any disciplinary action should be taken against employees for non-compliance with a work notice or legal action against a union that fails to take reasonable steps.

These regulations strike a carefully balanced and proportionate approach to mitigate the impact of strikes on the passenger rail sector for passengers and our economy. The regulations make possible a considerable improvement in the service that can be delivered during rail strikes. This will support passengers to make important journeys, including getting to work and accessing vital services, and will limit negative impacts on the economy. This is proportionately balanced with workers’ ability to take strike action, ensuring that impact is felt when a trade union goes on strike but passengers can still expect a consistent, albeit lower, level of service to be provided.

Therefore, although I am sure we all hope that strike action can be avoided, implementing these regulations will provide a means of addressing the disproportionate impacts that strikes have on the public, communities, businesses and our economy when they take place.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for answering our questions and for what has been the clearest, least-hedged explanation from the Government—that workers can be sacked under this legislation, which of course contradicts what was said in the other place. I am also pleased with what the Minister had to say about how safety rules override the regulations we are debating. However, I hope that the Government will make that fact very clear and publicise it to workers in the rail industry, who may face difficult situations under extreme pressure due to crowded trains and people seeking to crowd on to them, so that people are aware. I am aware of the hour so I will simply stop at this point and beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment to the Motion withdrawn.

Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 28th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in following the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, I will start by reflecting on some of the safety issues he raised and pick up in particular a phrase the Minister used in his introductory speech—that the introduction of self-driving cars could mean that the lack of human error saves lives.

Automation does not remove human error. It simply changes the potential site of it from an individual vehicle to a programming system, an algorithm and the control system applied to many vehicles. There is the potential for one error to be multiplied many times, with disastrous impacts. It also allows individual actions, possibly malevolent ones, to produce mass effects. A number of noble Lords referred to what has happened with people running around with traffic cones in San Francisco. We are speaking just a couple of weeks after the National Cyber Security Centre produced its seventh annual review, noting that the UK’s critical infrastructure is at grave risk. By relying on this single system, or multiple systems, we are potentially creating a much higher critical safety risk and a resilience risk.

This morning I was talking about climate adaptation and resilience with the National Trust. We need to look at all this in terms of our systems. If we rely on these systems and keep using them for years, what will happen to the skills of drivers should we suddenly need individual people to take to the road and control vehicles? What happens, as we have seen in San Francisco, if they all suddenly stop working or decide to assemble in one place? What does that do to the functioning of our society?

I was going to start with the Bonn climate talks, COP 23, in 2017. I recall a state of near panic among members of the climate community because it was thought that we could see self-driving HGVs all over the place any day soon. That could have massive climate impacts as they now spend a large amount of their time parked up because their drivers need rest periods and there is limited availability of drivers. If you put self-driving into the equation, you potentially massively increase the climate impacts. That was 2017, and there is actually much less fear now.

I begin my contribution today by making a call for realism and an understanding of what this Bill is actually about and the environment in which it arrives. I have already challenged the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, when she was wearing the Treasury hat. A government spokesperson briefed the Telegraph that this Bill would mean that we could see self-driving vehicles on our roads by 2026,

“if they were proved safe”.

When I challenged her, the noble Baroness, Lady Penn, being the skilled operator that she is, agreed that yes, if they were proved safe, this would be possible. Well, I might run a two-hour marathon if I were 30 years younger and had entirely different genetics, but that is not the world that we live in. I am asking for an acknowledgement of the realism of the situation as we conduct our debate going forward on this Bill.

I start with a potential positive impact if we were to see self-driving vehicles, even operating in small areas in controlled circumstances—which I think is a far more likely possibility. One study I looked at noted that, for self-driving vehicles to operate effectively:

“Roads may need to be kept free of small debris”


and “uneven” surfaces smoothed. A number of noble Lords have already referred to the current state of our roads. Let us imagine that we are going to go ahead with self-driving autonomous vehicles. Just think about what our roads might look like for the rest of us to enjoy. However, I ask for a little realism here. Do we actually have the capacity—the financial, human skills or machinery capacity—to deliver roads entirely free of debris and uneven surfaces? I rather doubt it.

This raises an important point, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, that I want to highlight and which we will come to in the detail of our later debate: we need to think about statistics and data. The road conditions in the US, France and Australia are very different from here. Can we extrapolate figures on safety from there and apply them here? If we cannot, how do we get figures at scale in the UK? That is a terribly important point.

I am not sure that anyone has directly referred to this, but it is worth noting the issue of safety. The Transport Select Committee has looked at this in some detail and I think we are going to have large debates on this at a later stage. Is the careful and competent human driver the right test to be applying? Improved safety is not a given in the real circumstances of our roads. As the RAC Foundation has said:

“When we put our lives in the hands of automated machinery, we expect it to perform to the highest standards of safety”.


That is an expectation that people have. We know that human beings make mistakes, and we know that, as pedestrians, cyclists and other drivers, we make allowances for other peoples’ mistakes. However, we are not necessarily going to apply the same criteria to autonomous vehicles.

This debate has moved as we have progressed through. A number of the early speeches were very much focused on the positive opportunities seen in autonomous vehicles. The noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, was one of those people. However, I want to address some policy points about the environmental risks of self-driving or autonomous cars.

If as a result of such cars we see more vehicles on our roads and more and longer journeys, we could see increased emissions. I think most of us assume that these will be electric vehicles, but about half of the PM2.5—small particulate matter pollution from vehicles —comes from brakes and tyres. Autonomous vehicles still have brakes and tyres. There are the congestion issues; there is also the noise and the sheer disruption caused by vehicles moving around our roads.

There is some real data on this from partially autonomous vehicles. In 2019, a study in California found that the owners of partially autonomous vehicles were taking them on longer journeys, particularly at weekends. That makes sense when you think about it: you can put your feet up, play a computer game, read or have a sleep, and so you decide that you are going to take a long weekend trip to the other end of the UK. If lots of people do that, it has a real and significant environmental and social impact.

There is another risk. Let us imagine the situation with the theatre up the road, when lots of people have an autonomous vehicle. It costs heaps to park in the city but, as you do not need to park an autonomous vehicle, they decide to get their cars to drive them to the theatre and then send them home again. They then call their car when they want to leave in the evening. Can noble Lords think about what Charing Cross Road might look like under those circumstances? What kind of chaos would it cause and what might it do to the buses?

I turn to an issue that no one has raised but which is really important, because we need to look at many areas beyond autonomous vehicles. There is a temptation to think of the cloud and algorithms as being immaterial and that things that happen out there in the cloud have no real-world, physical consequences. Actually, we can thank researchers from MIT—Sudhakar et al, in an article published in the IEEE Micro journal—for calculating, using and processing the data and algorithms to find out what the environmental cost could be. I hope that noble Lords will forgive me for putting in some large numbers.

Data centres now produce 0.3% of global climate change emissions; that is the same as Argentina. The MIT study shows that, if the world introduced a billion autonomous vehicles, the demand for energy for those data centres would double. It adds that

“if an autonomous vehicle has 10 deep neural networks processing images from 10 cameras, and … drives for one hour a day, it will make 21.6 million inferences each day. One billion vehicles would make 21.6 quadrillion inferences. To put that into perspective, all of Facebook’s data centers … make a few trillion inferences each day … 1 quadrillion is 1,000 trillion”.

Take the numbers away and that is a huge demand for energy, computing power and all the technology, computers and databases, so where will we find the capacity in the world to deliver that? We still have children in Africa who do not have a lightbulb to do their homework at night and areas of India that need the most basic levels of infrastructure. We need to look at all this in that policy context.

I will bring up two more points. The noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, made a really disturbing suggestion: we might have to bring in anti-jaywalking laws to allow for autonomous vehicles. What are our economy and society for? Are we here to serve the needs of people or are we here to service the machines? That is a question that the noble Lord’s point raises.

The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, raised an important issue that might be seen as explicitly excluded from the scope of the Bill: delivery vehicles and drones. They are examples of autonomous systems that may not use the roads but that multinational companies see as replacing human beings in delivering goods while using lots of our public spaces, including the air and pavements. Can the Minister tell us now or by letter later—I understand that it might not be in his briefing—what the Government’s thinking is about ensuring the regulation of those?

Finally, that brings me to reinforce the point about the need for this all to be inclusive by design, made by both the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and the noble Lord, Lord Holmes. We need to think about how our streets, pavements and airspace work for people, not for the benefits of multinational companies and their machines.

Transport: Zero-emission Vehicles, Drivers and HS2

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I reassure the noble Lord that it is still the Government’s intention that there will be Great British Railways. As I have said previously, it will depend on parliamentary time, but an enormous amount of work is of course going on in the meantime to establish an interim guiding mind to get as many things as we can. There are matters to work through as we develop the guiding mind principle—industrial action obviously being one of them—to give the senior leadership the head space they need to make some significant changes to establish a guiding mind.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, freeing roads for people and cyclists and reducing urban road speeds are a public health measure as well as a transport measure. They are a move to benefit small independent businesses in city centres as well as a step towards improved road safety, of course. A review was published in The Lancet Public Health journal, gathering research on low-emission schemes from around the world. Five of eight showed a clear reduction in heart and circulatory problems, and none showed a worsening. In Oxford, where Broad Street’s parking has been removed and new LTNs have been created, the city-centre footfall has grown by 15%, versus a UK average of 0%, while the shop vacancy rate is 6%, versus 13% in the south of England. Should not decisions about road use and conditions be made locally—as they have been in the Prime Minister’s own constituency, where North Yorkshire Council is significantly expanding 20 miles per hour speed limits—rather than be imposed from faraway Westminster?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

Yes, they absolutely should and, of course, the Government issue guidance for local authorities to make those decisions.

West Coast Main Line

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 19th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I will happily write to the noble Lord and to all Members of the House with an interest in this to set out how the net advocacy scores are calculated. Unfortunately, I do not have the information to hand.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in the other place, the Government were asked about the criteria for the contract decision. The response was that it was a commercial matter. Does the Minister acknowledge that this is a major problem with our privatised railways if we cannot know what is happening because it is all hidden behind commercial confidentiality? I have another question, which perhaps the Minister might be able to answer more positively. What consultations did the Government have with the Scottish Government, local councils and mayors of places along the routes affected? What input did they have into this decision? I should declare my position as a vice-president of the LGA.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

At the end of the day, we have to be able to balance the need to get the best contract and the need for parliamentary scrutiny with the need to protect some elements of contracts because they are commercial matters. We try to publish as much as possible. We believe in transparency. Where we can, we make some information available without it being commercially sensitive. One of the best outcomes of scrutiny is performance. This has improved over time and will continue to do so. I believe this is the best way to hold the operator and the Government to account.

Trains: Wifi Provision for Passengers

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 25th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the Minister has a number of times referred to people using their own 4G or 5G contracts instead, but people who have to really watch their costs in the cost of living crisis are very likely to have capped contracts where the amount of 4G or 5G they use is limited. Given the already eye-watering cost of rail fares and the fact that if you get wifi you are not using that scarce resource you have in your 4G or 5G contract, is this not actually pricing even more people off the railways and making the service available only to the rich?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

As I have said many times, business cases will be drawn up by the train operating companies, and those considerations will be top of mind.

Bus Services

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

We are not planning any changes to the levels of concessionary bus fares, but we are looking closely at the implementation of the concessionary fares scheme. Over the course of 2023 we will look closely at the reimbursement guidance and the calculator to make sure that bus operators are getting the correct amount of money for the people they carry.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the statutory concessionary bus fare scheme provides free travel for pensioners and disabled people from 9.30 am to 11 pm Monday to Friday, and at any time on weekends and public holidays. Given the change in use patterns, that people needing to get to medical appointments often have to travel before 9.30 am, and that many older people—including someone I was talking to in Liverpool at the weekend—are providing childcare that enables other members of their family to work, should that statutory concession not operate 24 hours a day on weekdays as well?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My Lords, we have looked at the concessionary scheme and we have no plans to change it at this time. However, I remind the noble Baroness that the £2 fare cap is currently in place, and that will benefit those who are not able to use the scheme early in the morning.

Jet Zero Strategy

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Monday 14th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the Jet Zero Strategy reports:

“Non-CO₂ impacts currently represent around 66% of the net effective radiative forcing”


of aviation—the global warming potential of flying—and notes that the Department for Transport analysis does not take any account of these outputs of water vapour and nitrous oxide at high altitudes. Instead, it commits to a five-yearly review of the evidence. How will the Government deliver net-zero aviation if these effects are found to be significant even with non-fossil fuel aviation fuels?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

For once, I agree with the noble Baroness. Non-carbon dioxide emissions are incredibly important, yet the science is as yet unresolved. There are significant uncertainties around the impacts of all the different emissions produced by aircraft, particularly at high altitude. We are looking at the research and will be developing policies once we have had more time to consider where the science currently is.

Doncaster Sheffield Airport

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

As the noble and learned Lord will know from when he encouraged me—fairly robustly, I might add—to look at the CCA regarding this issue, we have been in touch with 2Excel. I have spoken to the company myself, and it is fair to say that it feels quite aggrieved at the way it has been treated by Peel. I have to say that I have some sympathy with that. Peel has publicly stated that it will work to minimise disruption to its tenants; I very much hope that it will honour what it has said, rather than leaving it to the courts to wrangle over the leases, which will be brought to an end early. We have spoken to 2Excel and have had written confirmation that the contracts in place for search and rescue for the Maritime and Coastguard Agency will not be impacted. As I said previously, I have also had assurance from the Home Office that NPAS will also be able to function.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, associated with Doncaster Sheffield Airport has been a huge amount of public funding of infrastructure such as roads. Are the Government going to make any attempt to recover some of those funds from the Peel Group? We went through the same cycle with what was Sheffield Airport, when a huge amount of public money went in and then Peel Group pulled out. Will the Government ensure that the future use of that infrastructure and, indeed, the airport will support small and medium-sized enterprises, co-operatives and genuine prosperity in the local community?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

Regarding the infrastructure that was put in around Doncaster Airport, such as roads, I have travelled along a road there, which was fairly new and of incredibly high quality. It was of course put there to support the airport and to enable passengers and workers to get to and from the airport, but it should be said that Peel Group invests for the long term. I do not know what its plans are for the longer-term site at Doncaster Airport, should it eventually no longer be used as an airport. However, it is a prime, very large site in an area with a significant number of people who would have the skills to develop various businesses there. I anticipate that any infrastructure that has been put in would be utilised by whatever takes place at the airport.