Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill
Baroness Randerson ExcerptsThursday 17th May 2018
(6 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Automated and Electric Vehicles Act 2018 View all Automated and Electric Vehicles Act 2018 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 82-II Second marshalled list for Committee (PDF, 108KB) - (15 May 2018)
Baroness Randerson
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, this is a large group of amendments, all of which are connected with hydrogen as a form of fuel for cars and other vehicles. Many of these amendments are simple and straightforward, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, for subscribing to some of them.
The Government are in danger of choosing electricity and electric cars and vehicles by default simply because hydrogen is not mentioned except at one point in the Bill, yet hydrogen is a viable alternative fuel, albeit at an earlier stage of development. The fact that it is not in the Title of the Bill is crucial and that is the point behind Amendment 108. The fact that hydrogen does not feature properly in the Bill was the subject of much criticism in the other place, but shoe-horning the word “hydrogen” into just one place in the Bill is totally inadequate. It certainly does not send the right signals to the industry, potential purchasers or manufacturers.
As noble Lords will know, creating hydrogen for powering cars and other vehicles is a water-to-water process via electrolysis, and most hydrogen cars are fuel cell. The only output is water. Therefore, it does not have emissions problems. Moreover, hydrogen has advantages over electricity, and here I declare an interest as the owner of an electric car. It takes only five minutes to refuel a hydrogen vehicle and it has a range of around 400 miles so you do not have range anxiety in the same way. The market model for hydrogen, however, is likely to be much closer to that for petrol and diesel in that electric charging points can be put on every street corner or even into every lamp-post—something that we will come to later—or in the driveway if you have one, but it is not possible to have hydrogen pumps in those situations. Hydrogen would be provided on a large scale in specific fuelling stations, possibly even alongside petrol and diesel, although suitably separate for safety reasons.
There is another issue, which is that a hydrogen pump costs around £500,000 to install, so it is heaps more expensive. That is a very important factor to hold on to when thinking about the development of this market. It is the lack of infrastructure that is currently holding back sales. Those cars that exist are mainly in fleets with a pump installed on sites where dozens or perhaps hundreds of cars are parked overnight. We have the example of the Minister Jo Johnson supporting the concept of the development of hydrogen trains, which already exist in Germany. Buses are becoming a viable option, and I believe London is purchasing hydrogen vehicles, while HGVs are also a possibility. There are some refuelling pumps already. For example, there is one on the M25 next to a Shell station, and around 10 stations in the UK. It is therefore clear that the fuel is not yet viable.
Most of my amendments would simply add the word “refuelling” wherever the Bill refers to charging points. The aim behind doing this is that those working in the sector have said to me that you do not charge a hydrogen car any more than you would charge a petrol car; you refuel it. The Bill needs to acknowledge this by using the term “refuelling” to describe the process. This might seem minor, but it would send a signal to investors and to the markets, although the impression that the Bill appears to give is that the Government have chosen electricity and are ignoring hydrogen and, indeed, all the other varied technologies. Without really meaning to, the language of the Bill could, I believe, entrench an already difficult situation in relation to the development of the infrastructure.
It is far too simplistic simply to add “refuelling” to “recharging” everywhere in the Bill, but I have tabled these probing amendments because what is needed is a totally separate strategy. As I have said, you cannot make hydrogen pumps available in the same locations as electricity charging points, so the Government need to develop a separate strategy. What we need is a whole separate clause in the Bill, and I would ask the Minister whether the Government will now do this. I personally did not feel up to writing an additional clause, but I am sure that the noble Baroness has officials who will be only too pleased to oblige.
Do the Government have a strategy for the development of hydrogen vehicles? My Amendment 56, which proposes a report on the issue, is an attempt to encourage the Government to develop a strategy if they do not have one. A strategy is needed urgently because the technology is there but the infrastructure is failing the development of these vehicles. The Government talk all the time; every new initiative is accompanied by the words, “We want to be world leaders”. Of course, we are all ambitious for our country, but we are already behind on this issue. China and Japan are well ahead of us. Germany is ahead of us on trains. We need to catch up; to do so, the Government need a properly formed strategy. I am told that Toyota, Hyundai, Honda and Daimler have already committed to developing this market. Now, they need the Government to provide the legislative framework that will create the infrastructure they need to succeed.
Baroness Randerson
I thank the Minister for her response, but I emphasise that this Government are very keen on extremely narrow Bills. What we end up with is a transport policy with little dots of policy and great gaps in between, and hydrogen is falling through that gap, if I can put it that way. The Minister started with the ambition for 2050. That is a very distant date. It is so distant as to be meaningless as a spur to action. We need a much nearer date and possibly a different target to spur a change in people’s way of buying vehicles, vehicle manufacture and the way vehicles are owned and operated.
The Minister said that the Bill is intended to be technology neutral, but if you have a Title that talks about electric cars and does not mention hydrogen cars, then by definition you are not technology neutral. The message is out there in the industry that the Government’s preferred option is electric cars and that they are not interested in hydrogen. I think something pretty remedial needs to be done with the Bill to put that right. I was pleased to hear that the Government are developing a hydrogen strategy and that it will in due course be published, but will the Minister, either now or in a letter, clarify whether we can expect a separate Bill on other forms of zero and ultra low emission vehicles?
Once again, “world-leading” has been repeated. I say to the Minister that we are not world-leading in this market. Potential and actual investors regret that we are not world-leading. To change this, the Title needs to be changed and there needs to be a separate section, because it is very difficult for somebody looking for the law on hydrogen vehicles to know that they should look for it in a piece of legislation about electric vehicles. That is not logical. Really, the Government should look at legislation that will stimulate as well as regulate the market, and this does not do that for hydrogen. However, I am very pleased that the Minister has said she will consider these things before Report and therefore I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Baroness Randerson
“( ) performance standards for public charging points;( ) procedures to be put in place to repair faulty public charging points.”
Baroness Randerson
I am pleased to move Amendment 44. The dinner that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, referred to was indeed a lively occasion—much livelier than the average dinner in this place, I believe, in its conversation and opinions. The noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, is correct to say that the Bill lacks a spine. It is a collection of good ideas, probably, but it is not a strategy.
Addressing range anxiety among electric car owners is fundamental to the Government having a flawless strategy for encouraging people to buy these vehicles, and therefore for them to be manufactured. The whole population benefits from some of us buying electric vehicles. The amendments in this group relate to the availability of charging points and their ease of use, which is really the crux of the issue. Where they are placed is something we will come to in other groups of amendments, but this is a simple provision.
When you drive along and see on your in-car computer screen that there will be a charge point in 10 miles, it is at the very least supremely frustrating to find when you get there that it is not working. It can be a huge issue if you go on a long journey. I have told before in this House of the occasion when I went from one motorway services to another and another before I found a rapid charge point. I got a fast charge in the second and third ones, which was enough to send me to the next motorway services, but that is not the way to encourage people to own electric cars. It can be worse than really annoying. It can be a fairly dangerous situation to find yourself without any electricity in a lonely public car park, where there should be a charge point but it is not working. Charge points are almost always somewhere quite lonely. They are usually badly lit and, unlike getting petrol or diesel, you do not have a nice warm roof over your head. Standing out there in the rain and wind can be a pretty dispiriting process. When you get there, you therefore need the confidence that it will work.
This matter is easily addressed and I urge the Government to take these amendments seriously. I hope the Minister will accept them, or accept their principle and bring forward her own amendments. It is stating the blindingly obvious to say that you need some kind of measure in place so that when contracts are let, there is an obligation for these charge points to be working for a certain specified percentage of time, so that there is a commitment to repair them when they break.
The other side of trying to use a charge point is that almost all of them require you to have an app or be a member of a group. I think I have six or seven such apps on my phone, to be ready for all eventualities. If there are that number of apps on your phone, you do not use any one of them that often. This means that often, you turn up somewhere, only for the phone to tell you that you need to renew the app because you have not updated it and it will not work. My Amendment 46, which deals with,
“the use of contactless payment”,
seems the simple way to ensure that you have a straightforward way of paying that would be available to virtually everyone. We all know the effectiveness of contactless payment, which has worked brilliantly in beginning to replace Oyster cards in London. It has a simplicity about it.
I am not suggesting that these groups we join up to should not exist or that the apps could not be used. There could even be a financial or some other incentive for joining these groups, rather than having contactless payment. However, I am suggesting that there should be an obligation to make the charging points easy to use by ensuring that you have the fallback position, at the very least, of contactless payment. I will leave it there for now, and I beg to move.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, I listened carefully to the Minister’s previous response. His argument seemed essentially to be based on the need to ensure that we do not move too fast because there may be technological developments, which would mean that we had perhaps taken the wrong decision in the regulations. This is in the event that they were—in his view, obviously—prematurely introduced.
Let us go through the amendment. It mentions:
“performance standards for public charging points”.
Why can we not set those minimum standards on the basis of the technology that applies now—not what may apply in future, but what applies now? Standards will not go down in future; they will go up. The next thing the amendment requires is,
“procedures to be put in place to repair faulty public charging points”.
What is wrong with that? We have charging points, and there is a problem with repair. Why can we not have regulations requiring the suppliers of such equipment to ensure that it is maintained properly? That does not require technological developments.
Baroness Sugg
The noble Lord raises a common issue. We have seen development in this area with overstay charges, and we are investigating them. As I was about to say, I understand the correct desire for us to consider the amendments again, and I will go back to do so. We want to ensure that the Bill enables improvement in our infrastructure for electric vehicles.
Baroness Randerson
My Lords, the Minister has given us a lot of information. I will of course read the record carefully and probably seek to rearrange my amendment in a different format for next time if she does not feel able to address these issues. I urge her to look at this again.
My noble friend referred to an issue which I believe is addressed in Amendment 48 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. This is something the French have dealt with by a pricing regime which means that if you lurk around on a charging point ages after your car is recharged, it becomes a very expensive way to find a parking space. It is perfectly easily solved.
The issues we are addressing are not ones that we have dreamed up from nowhere. It is well known that in London, the pressure on the rollout of charging points for the introduction of electric cars meant that the whole process wobbled and stalled at one point. All the charging points were put in but they were not maintained, so the system fell into disrepute. A new contractor and a new contract appear to have addressed quite a lot of that problem, but the Government need to take this seriously. Otherwise, public confidence will be undermined and electric cars will not take up the position that diesel cars have had in the past.
Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill
Baroness Randerson ExcerptsThursday 17th May 2018
(6 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Automated and Electric Vehicles Act 2018 View all Automated and Electric Vehicles Act 2018 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 82-II Second marshalled list for Committee (PDF, 108KB) - (15 May 2018)
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, I rise to speak to the amendments in this group in my name. I cannot see much of a theme between them so I will deal with them separately.
Amendment 95 addresses the issue of smart meters. We all know that smart meters are in the Bill because the Government believe, or have reason to believe, that there could be issues with pressure on the national grid. They are dealing with, or planning to deal with, that pressure through the use of smart meters. My amendment intends to ensure that smart meters really are smart, and very sophisticated. When we have talked about them before, people have said, “It’s really important to charge at night when there is not great pressure on the grid”. In fact—my amendment deals with this—specific groups of people have very good reasons for not charging at night. Some people cannot charge then because they are out at work and have taken their car with them, and some people, such as people with solar panels—I declare an interest because I have them on my house—have a good reason to charge during the day. I am keen to charge my car during the day, whenever possible, because that is when my panels are generating electricity.
I am probing the Minister to find out the Government’s view on this and whether the concept of smart meters can now take that kind of thing into account. It would be frightfully unfair if night shift workers, such as NHS workers, had to pay a higher price for their electricity just because they have to charge their cars during the day. I would hope that we had moved on a long way, technologically, from the days when night storage heaters imposed a blanket situation where you charged at night, dispelled your heat during the day—whether you were there or not—and had no control.
The national grid has assured us that there is enough overall capacity, but I fear that it is similar to the mobile phone companies saying that 95% of the population has a good signal. We all know that 5% of the population lives in a large geographical area known as the countryside, so there are great swathes of the country where mobile phone signal is very poor. Already, the national grid is overreaching full capacity in some areas such as south-east England and many rural areas because there are no links with the grid.
Amendment 103 is intended simply to make sure that the regulations that spring from the Bill are dealt with in the appropriate manner. I have tried to reflect the views of the DPRRC that there should be some affirmative resolutions.
Amendment 68 refers to the need for consultation with fuel retailers. Here, I am probing the issue of the definition, and how the Government will reach a definition, of “large fuel retailers”. The Association of Convenience Stores was rather worried that it would be forced to have electric charge points in inappropriate places. My view is that fuel retailers need to look 10 years ahead. If this revolution has taken place, they will not be selling loads of diesel in even five years’ time, nor loads of petrol. They need to think about how they will diversify. Consultation would help not just to produce good regulations, but to raise awareness among fuel retailers that they will need to consider the future.
When the consultation takes place it will also be important to consider the capacity of the grid. We have talked a lot about motorway service stations. They generally have an electric charging point. In the great and glorious future we hope they will have several electric charging points, but they are usually in the countryside. It might be that the grid does not have the capacity for that in that area. Things such as consultation would help to unravel that spectrum of things and make it clearer for the Government, as well as for those who have to supply the electricity.
Very briefly, Amendment 87, which I have added my name to, relates to data. I will leave the issue of data largely to the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, as the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, has spoken already, but I am seriously concerned that this is yet another gaping hole in the Bill. We dealt with it in Part 1 on automated vehicles, but electric vehicles have the same data-collection capacity. There are serious issues that the Government need to grapple with to reassure the public that the data being collected about their movements is dealt with responsibly and not used just as an easy marketing gambit.
Baroness Worthington (CB)
My Lords, I will briefly speak to the amendments in my name in this group. Consulting the sector, particularly the charge point providers and operators, is essential to ensure that the regulations we pass are fit for purpose. I am sure that that will be a component of the Government’s strategy, which we wait to see published. I look forward to hearing more about that from the Minister.
Amendment 87, which the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, mentioned, concerns a huge topic on data from electric vehicles. It is correct that we touched on it under the part of the Bill on automatic vehicles, but it is not present in this part. It would be good if the Government took this away and had a think about it. As a driver of an electric vehicle I often override the question at the start that says, “Do you want to send your data to the company that owns the car?”, simply because I think, “Why should I share it?”. However, there might be very good reasons why you want to share anonymised data to facilitate completely different ways of taxing people’s use of the vehicles.
In the Bill and certainly in the Government’s strategy we have to think about what will happen to the public purse when we move away from a transport system fed by fossil fuels, which generate huge amounts of revenue to the Treasury. As we come off that and go on to electricity we will not see the same revenues at all. Yet there might well be embedded into these technologies a new data source that would enable a different form of taxation based on road use. If we can come up with a taxation system that uses this data, perhaps on an annualised basis rather than the Government tracking your every move, we would be able to use it to inform a new form of taxation similar to the way we do an MoT at the end of the year, so you can pay taxes on that basis. There is an enabling aspect of the data as much as there is concern about privacy and use of data for purposes we were not aware of when we signed on the dotted line for different services.
This is a big topic. We probably cannot do it justice with just this amendment, but I will genuinely listen to and be very interested to hear from the Government about this topic and what they plan to do about it in the protective sense, but also in the use of it in creative ways to ensure we still collect revenue to fund our public services.
Baroness Randerson
“( ) Regulations may prohibit the removal of public charging or refuelling points unless the appropriate permission is obtained from the relevant local authority.”
Baroness Randerson
This group of amendments relates once again to the provision of charging points. Amendment 53 relates specifically to a situation I came across in my local area. A developer had built a car park associated with a shopping centre and had probably received a grant to put in a charging point. About two years later, they decided that, to reconfigure the car park, they would take out the charging point. There will always be a group of people who find a way round these things. Amendment 53 is designed to ensure that we look ahead and work to alleviate the problems that such people might cause us.
Amendment 71 is a further attempt to future-proof. That means that buildings built in the future will either need charging points to be built in or, as suggested by the similar Amendment 76, ducting should be put in even if you do not go the whole hog and put charging points there from the start. Nowadays, we expect all our houses—all our buildings, whatever they are—to have electricity and mains drainage. Very frequently, planning authorities require a property, whether it is for employment purposes or residential—to have car parking spaces. My amendment suggests that we should simply take that one step further and use the planning regulations to ensure that, in future, houses and any other kind of buildings are built with an anticipation that electric car drivers will live there, or use the building, and therefore need to be provided for. I beg to move.
Lord Borwick (Con)
My Lords, I shall put Amendment 54 into context by mentioning the reasons for this Bill. The first half is to get Great Britain into the front row of one of the most exciting brand-new industries in the world, although the department seems determined to make sure that the Bill addresses insurance only. However, this half, on charging points, is trying to help solve one of the serious problems of our cities: air pollution. People are dying out there. People are suffering with every breath of air they take, their damaged lungs strangling them.
I should declare that for 12 years, ending some time ago, I was a trustee of the British Lung Foundation, and I am presently a trustee of the Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospital charity. The hospital is doing great work treating patients crippled by air pollution. These patients are predominantly poor people—people who live beside roads and in dense cities—and their under-researched diseases need more attention. We know some of the causes, including the PM2.5 particles that go right into the lungs and probably even into the brains of sufferers. The consumers know the situation, as is shown in the graph distributed by the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington. I would have preferred to see the graph separate hybrids from electric vehicles, as there are a host of mild hybrids that are certainly better than nothing but not nearly as good as a pure electric vehicle.
The message is clear: in the last year consumers have stopped buying diesels and increased their purchase of petrol cars. Why not electric? Because of the absence of rapid charging points. We do not even have a rapid charging point on the Parliamentary Estate. We should be ashamed of that fact. I know we are working hard to correct it, but the complexity of the rules of heritage and the planning permission for the yellow lines all have to be dealt with. I would rather install it first and sort out the problems later, which is why I would be a rotten choice to be put in charge of it.
Baroness Randerson
To be fair to the Parliamentary Estate, there are two fast charging points in the underground car park at the other end of the Building. There is not one in the Lords, but there is one in the other place.
Lord Borwick
I thank the noble Baroness for that. I was told that there were two charging points at the other end but not rapid charging points.
Lord Borwick
The distinction between rapid and fast may be in the eye of the tortoise but is terribly important. There is a lot of difference between charging points and rapid charging points. The table distributed by that doughty fighter for clean air, Stephanie Jarvis of TfL, shows that the number of rapid chargers installed on borough highways in London, “as part of TfL network”—whatever that means—is nil: absolutely none at all. To tease and adapt the witty words and tortured French accent of my excellent and noble friend Lord Young, I think that the score for the department is “nul points”.
Baroness Sugg
It is purely because in the NPPF we have already committed to the residential side of things and have made that clear in the industrial strategy, while we have not yet gone so far on the non-residential side of things, which I will go back and have a look at. As I said, the consultation on the NPPF recently closed, so we are doing this work at the same time as MHCLG is considering its response to that consultation. I believe it is due to publish that in the summer, but obviously we will have Report before that, so I will take that back.
Baroness Randerson
I thank the Minister for her response. Once again, it is a very detailed issue, and I will read the record carefully.
I will respond on one point. The Minister said that it was not reasonable to complain if a parking space with a recharging point were taken out when it had never had to be put in in the first place—whoever did so did it willingly. That is what I understood her to say. My vision of how this would work is rather akin to the issue of parking spaces. There are planning permissions in certain areas where maybe for a certain size of house you need one parking space. If you choose to put in five, that is up to you; it is not illegal—you can do it. If you then want to take out those extra four spaces, no one can complain, but if you want to take out the fifth, they can. It is an issue of dealing with your minimums and ensuring, once again, that this is always at the top of consideration.
To be honest, I was not frightfully impressed by the concept that local authorities “need to consider” something; they need to address it, not just consider it. I listened with interest to the discussion about the mayor’s plans versus the local authorities in London. There needs to be a solution here which is not heavy-handed in taking away local initiative but which ensures that those local initiatives are empowered and encouraged and run rather more smoothly than they have done up to now. I understand the point that there has not been enough action up to now. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Randerson
“Report on the installation and use of public charging or refuelling points and the effectiveness of current incentive schemes
(1) The Secretary of State must commission a review of the current schemes available to local authorities, individuals and any other relevant parties to encourage the installation and use of public charging or refuelling points.(2) The review must determine whether further steps are necessary to encourage the installation and use of public charging or refuelling points, and if so what those steps could be.(3) The Secretary of State must lay the report of the review under subsection (1) before each House of Parliament within six months of this Act coming into force.”
Baroness Randerson
My Lords, the amendments in this group relate to attempts to get a more strategic approach. Amendment 55, for instance, proposes the well-tried and tested concept of a report. It is a frequently used device but, in this case, it is a serious attempt to get the Government to take a strategic view on this issue by looking at the effectiveness of current schemes—looking at how, for example, the various grant schemes are working together, and perhaps analysing the situation which was revealed in London and which probably exists elsewhere, where there are two levels of authority, and quite possibly confusion and certainly a lack of action between the two. That is the sort of thing that is addressed when you look at the hard figures in a report.
Baroness Sugg
My Lords, I very much agree that it is important that the Government take a strategic approach to encouraging and supporting the uptake of electric vehicles and the infrastructure that they rely on, that we monitor our progress against our air quality and carbon targets and that we review the effectiveness of any regulations brought forward under this Bill. I know that there is frustration about the narrow scope of the Bill, but I am afraid that it is just about electric vehicle infrastructure. It is not the extent of the Government’s work in this area.
In 2013, the Government published a strategy entitled Driving the Future Today, which set out the path towards achieving our zero-emission vehicle aims. Of course, much has changed since then—10 times as many ultra-low emission vehicles were registered in the UK last year as in 2013. While the aims of that strategy remain relevant, we are rightly considering how our approach needs to change in light of developments in the automotive sector and beyond.
As noble Lords are already aware, the Government will shortly publish a new strategy for promoting the uptake, manufacture and use of zero-emission vehicles, which will set out the Government’s vision and support for the provision of charging infrastructure for both battery electric and hydrogen cell electric vehicles to help facilitate this transition.
The strategy will go wider than just zero-emission vehicles. We recognise that it is also important to drive down emissions from the conventional vehicles that currently dominate our roads if we are to meet our ambitious climate change and air quality commitments. That includes considering air quality and carbon impacts in parallel and setting out the Government’s view on the role of different fuels in the coming decades.
With regard to Amendment 55, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, to review the effectiveness and uptake of the Government’s incentive schemes, the department already keeps under review its existing schemes supporting the rollout of infrastructure and will take the necessary steps to encourage the installation of charge points where they are needed. Further steps will be identified on that in the forthcoming strategy.
I thank the noble Baroness for her suggestions in Amendment 70. We are also looking at the potential of lamp posts. She is quite right to say that not all of us have driveways or garages and so we need to make sure that we get on-street parking right, too. We have an on-street residential charging scheme and we are funding several local authorities to help them to install lamp-post charge points—450 this year. That is something that we are looking to develop.
On the important point of reporting against our air quality and carbon targets, which noble Lords have addressed in Amendments 98 and 99, there are already legal obligations to report and make public data on ambient air quality and emissions of a range of damaging air quality pollutants. In some cases, these obligations implement international level commitments. Of course, the national air quality plan and the clean growth strategy also set out how the Government plan to meet the UK’s air quality and climate change obligations. In addition, we are also already required to report to Parliament on progress against our obligations under the Climate Change Act 2008, of which of course the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, was a lead author. Our ambitions to achieve a greater uptake of zero-emission vehicles is central to delivering the transport sector’s contribution to those obligations and will therefore form part of the reporting requirement.
As I have explained, the introduction of regulations will depend on the precise circumstances at the relevant time, so we are concerned that we may not be in a position to report on the impact of these regulations within the 12-month reporting period set out. The policy scoping notes set out the approximate timings for when we expect the regulations to be brought forward. I will probably follow that up in writing rather than go through the different clauses in detail now because the question of when we envisage the regulations coming in has been raised a number of times in today’s debate.
Our wider strategy for electric vehicles as well as the infrastructure to which the Bill specifically relates will be published shortly. I have mentioned the existing requirements to report against our air quality and carbon targets. We want to ensure that a requirement for reporting on this quickly moving area of technology is not disproportionate and unnecessary, but following the debate today, I will reflect on the points made ahead of Report and consider an amendment on this point. Given that assurance, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Randerson
I thank the noble Baroness for her response and I am certainly happy to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, I want to take us back to Clause 10(2)(a), which states:
“Regulations under subsection (1) may, for example—(a) require large fuel retailers or service area operators to provide public charging points”.
In the real world, can we imagine a motorway service station that would follow this? A stream of cars would come in and get to the forecourt—where there is an existing garage with petrol pumps—and, somewhere in that area, we have to facilitate perhaps hundreds of cars charging at the same time. Some of them might be on rapid charging units for as much as 20 minutes, which is why I say that there will be a lot of vehicles there. There may well not be enough space, so we would be looking at adjacent land. We know that the public interest is served when that adjacent land is made available.
How will we acquire that land? If we want a reservoir, an airport or a railway track, we have compulsory purchase powers; however, some people might argue that using them to aid the financial arrangements of a private operator running a service station is unreasonable. So what will we do to ensure that the additional land, adjacent to these facilities on motorways, is made available for the substantial number of rapid charging units required? I see no requirement to do that in the legislation. We know that it must be introduced by regulations. Departmental officials should be thinking through the consequences of this, to see to what extent the state can intervene to ensure that adjacent land is available. I have referred to service stations, but this could happen for land adjacent to other facilities, such as railway stations—although that is probably different because such land is probably used otherwise for housing development.
It would carry a far higher price than agricultural land surrounding a service station on a motorway, which might be worth only £10,000 of £15,000 an acre. Might Ministers consider asking officials to consider the implications of that provision in this legislation?
Baroness Randerson
My Lords, in response to that, I hope that people who run petrol stations and service stations will have redundant space where the diesel pumps were. We all know that if you own a petrol station and you close it down, that land has to lie vacant for many years because of pollution concerns. Therefore, it is of great interest to those who currently run service stations to make them continually financially viable. That means they will have to adapt. That is my logic on that.
Lord Campbell-Savours
I hesitate to intervene immediately after speaking myself, but the pump area is a very small amount of space. We are talking about a space capable of taking maybe hundreds of vehicles, all on charge for 20 minutes to half an hour.
Baroness Randerson
Service stations also have car parks. That is where the charging points are at the moment. There is a possibility there.
That leads very neatly to Amendment 72 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, which I have signed. It seeks to specify once again some general ideas on the sort of facilities that would usefully be used to accommodate charging points. It is important to bear in mind that there is an acknowledgement in proposed new subsection (2)(b) of local authorities’ important co-ordinating role. They have a key part in the chain of strategic provision here.
Proposed new subsection (3) lists a selection of places where we might find charge points. Just to illustrate how subtle this art is, proposed new paragraphs (a) and (b)—“supermarket car parks” and “public car parks”—would be suitable for the provision of only rapid charge points, because no one wants to spend three and a half hours in a supermarket while your car charges, whereas airport or train station car parks could usefully use fast chargers. The Government have to look at this strategically and in detail to make sense of the provision. It needs to be worked out in co-ordination with the industry to make sure the proposals are practical. I am particularly keen on the concept of using supermarket car parks; I have seen this frequently in France. I do not often shop at Waitrose but I do on one particular journey because it has a charger. It is a very useful opportunity.
I will briefly respond to what the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, said and put a different point of view on Amendment 75. I am not opposed to the idea of giving additional powers. What concerns me is that the vast majority of people in Britain do not live in mayoral authorities. I come from Wales, where there are no elected mayors as a matter of policy. Therefore, it strikes me that there is a danger of creating second-class citizens in cities, towns and rural areas that do not have elected mayors. They will limp along behind with less provision for people who want to buy electric cars. We should have solutions that benefit everyone and not just people who live in one sort of authority.
Baroness Randerson
My Lords, I support the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington. I will bring in another issue, which we have hardly referred to. We have talked a lot about fast and rapid charging, and so on, but until now we have not talked about the key issue of interoperability. I take this opportunity, using the excuse of this group of amendments, to make the point to the Minister that the reason why the Committee has not mentioned it is that the Government did, and we agree with them. It may feel as if we have ignored it but it is a really key issue.
At the beginning of today’s debate, I talked about the frustration of getting to a charging point that was not working, as did other noble Lords. However, the same frustration is felt when you get there and it does not fit your make of car. This has also been a major own-goal by the motor industry. I hope that the industry will read the proceedings of this place in Hansard because it is undermining its own efforts with electric vehicles by hanging on to different and distinct forms of charging. There really needs to be a cross-industry meeting to reach an agreement on where it is going. We will otherwise end up with something rather like the VHS versus Betamax situation, which wasted an awful lot of consumers’ and manufacturers’ money. It always amazes me when manufacturers do not realise this pretty early on. It has taken Apple an awfully long time to realise that it just irritates us if every phone or computer we buy needs a different form of charging lead.
I hope that the Government will keep interoperability at the top of their requirements in these regulations. I simply want to underline the key message in these amendments, which is that we have to have sufficiently speedy and robust charging points for them to be useful in many circumstances.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, I think I heard everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, said when she set out the various levels of equipment and the capacity of each level to charge. I am sure she will know the answer to this but I do not, and I am sure that the public outside who might follow our debate do not know the answer. When commercial operators apply to fit this equipment, who is to determine the capacity of the equipment that they are going to fit? If it is left to the market, those in the market might say, “I’m not going to pay £40,000 for a rapid charger. I’m going to put in a slower charger that might take three hours. I can still make as much profit as I want out of that facility”. However, that might not serve the public interest. It might be that the public interest is served only when a rapid charger, or a series of rapid chargers, is put into a location. What is the framework within which these decisions will be taken? I wonder that because they cannot be taken by the market, and there must be some intervention by a public authority in taking them.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, we have just heard a very earnest plea from the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington. I noticed during our proceedings today that the Ministers at the Dispatch Box, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, indicated that they might be prepared to take things back to the department for further consideration. I express the hope that, when we get to Report, there will be some government amendments that reflect the concerns expressed in the debate today.
Baroness Randerson
My Lords, in speaking to my Amendment 106, I want to agree with what has been said by the noble Lord and the noble Baroness. This is a missed opportunity in that, until the last six months or so, transport Bills have been few and far between. I realise that they are falling like confetti now, but each one is so tiny that, between each Bill, there are great gaps in the strategic action that needs to be taken. Ironically, we have been concentrating a lot on the cutting edge of technology—we have looked at space travel in the Space Industry Bill and at lasers. The pace of technology in those areas is very fast, and this is the same. There is a need for strategic thinking, because the detailed stuff is in danger of becoming out of date. The result is that the Government, being aware of that, have written not just narrow Bills but very vague Bills, giving them lots of power to dream up regulations but no guarantee on the direction in which they are going.
The noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, addresses in her amendment the need to be accurate about what the Bill is. Turning that on its head, in various speeches in our proceedings I have referred to the fact that the part of the Bill dealing with automated vehicles ignores the street scene changes and the changes to the structure of road safety law that will be needed. In Amendment 106, I have drawn attention to hydrogen. That is another specific example of other sorts of developing technology that are lower emission and deserve to be part of an overall strategy.
My final thought on this is that the Government need to do a great deal of connected thinking on all these little bits of effort. We are in danger of leading people to think that we have a strategy fit for the future. I do not believe that we have.
Baroness Sugg
My Lords, throughout the proceedings today we have considered the scope and timings of this legislation, and those two points are captured by the amendments in this final group.
Amendment 105 suggests that the legislation comes into force on the day on which it is passed. Under the current text, the Secretary of State will appoint by regulation the day on which the Act comes into force. The commencement timings that are currently contained in Clause 18 follow standard conventions for commencement, whereby the substantive provisions of an Act come into force on dates specified in regulations. I understand the desire of the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, to make sure that the important measures in the Bill are implemented as soon as possible to ensure that we have the tools available to install the infrastructure necessary to support the uptake of electric vehicles in this country, and to enable insurers to start developing products for automated vehicles. I assure the noble Baroness that we do not intend to delay bringing forward this important legislation once it has passed.
As I mentioned earlier in the debate, we will start to bring forward regulations on smart charge points soon after Royal Assent. As outlined in the policy scoping notes, we think that the regulations under Clause 10 will be needed in the early 2020s for battery electric charge points, and not until the mid-2020s in the case of hydrogen refuelling—although that may not be quick enough for the noble Baroness.
As outlined earlier, the Office for Low Emission Vehicles will continue to monitor the market, working closely with stakeholders, to determine when it is appropriate and right to bring forward the regulations. But it is important that the affected sectors are not disadvantaged by having little or no notice of the coming into force of the Act, and that the Government have the flexibility to bring the provisions of the Act into effect at a time when they are ready to use them.
Amendments 106 and 107 would change the Short Title of the Bill. I recognise that there is room for the Bill’s scope to be reflected in greater detail in the Short Title by making more explicit the range of powers included in the Bill, and as we mentioned at the start of this debate, it is clear that hydrogen refuelling is also very much a part of the Bill. It certainly was not designed to get false credit or to be dishonest, so I will certainly look at that issue again before Report.
I should like to take this opportunity, in the final group of the day, to reiterate that this piece of legislation is not the limit of the Government’s activities in the field of electric vehicles and automated vehicles, nor are we standing still while we wait for this legislation to come through. We have narrowly selected the provisions in this Bill to bring forward those that we think are ready and necessary to legislate for at this point in time. We are using a number of other tools to increase the deployment of electric vehicles. Our forthcoming strategy on how we will get to zero emissions from road transport will set out how we will continue to support the transition to zero-emission vehicles, ensure that the UK is well placed to capitalise on new economic opportunities and drive down emissions from conventional vehicles.
I have heard the frustrations of noble Lords today on the level of ambition in the Bill. I am afraid we will not be able to widen its scope. That will be for future legislation after the Road to Zero document, which will be full of connected thinking. But I certainly commit to taking away points raised by noble Lords and to seek to strengthen the provisions where I can. I thank noble Lords for their contributions today, and look forward to returning to the Bill on Report. I hope the noble Baroness is able to withdraw her amendment.
Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill
Baroness Randerson ExcerptsWednesday 9th May 2018
(6 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Automated and Electric Vehicles Act 2018 View all Automated and Electric Vehicles Act 2018 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 82-I Marshalled list for Committee (PDF, 133KB) - (4 May 2018)
Baroness Randerson
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, I am very pleased to see that we have, after several weeks’ delay, reached the Committee stage of this Bill. As I said in the previous debate, I welcome it. I was reminded, however, of its very narrow scope when I tried to devise some amendments which seemed to me useful and straightforward but seemed to the clerks, quite rightly, to be out of the scope of the Bill.
I understand the Government’s desire to deal with insurance as the low-hanging fruit of automated vehicles first of all. As we are told, however, that these vehicles will be on our roads in two to three years—and indeed as they are widely being trialled across the world and in parts of Britain—the Government, I fear, are going to have to run very fast to catch up on this issue given the pace of development of technology. I know that the Law Commission is looking at other aspects beyond insurance, at such matters as criminal responsibility and the wider issue of pedestrian and driver behaviour, but there is a serious danger of being overtaken by events. In moving Amendment 1, I want to concentrate our minds on the issue of vehicles manufactured and purchased or simply manufactured outside Britain and the importance of their being properly and fully reflected on the Secretary of State’s list.
The amendment’s intention is to ensure that this list is fully robust. Up to now, our insurance system has coped with imported cars simply because a car is a car. Whether a car is manufactured abroad and imported here prior to sale or manufactured and sold abroad and then imported into this country for use, either temporarily or permanently, this list has to be clear and comprehensive. How do the Government intend to ensure that the list is truly comprehensive? The world is a very big place, and we have a large number of people living in this country with links to other countries who might choose to import cars from abroad. There are also many hundreds of thousands of cars—indeed, millions—being driven on our roads that were manufactured abroad.
Amendment 2 stresses the importance of the Secretary of State’s list being aligned with definitions used in other countries—indeed, that goes for the whole Bill. The insurance industry has produced what it calls the 10 commandments, or 10 points, that a vehicle needs to adhere to in order to be considered automated. The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, or UNECE, deals with global transport issues in relation to safety and is currently discussing international definitions of automation. I am told that the Department for Transport is taking a leading role in this.
The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders is concerned that the Secretary of State’s list should follow the internationally accepted criteria as spelled by UNECE and should not be just a UK-specific definition. For this reason, it is keen that this legislation should use the internationally accepted levels used across the world within the industry. These standards were established by the Society of Automotive Engineers International and are apparently used everywhere across the world.
The Government intend the Bill to apply to levels 4 and 5, but, as written, it could apply to some vehicles at level 3. I want to draw attention to a recent court case in which a man was prosecuted for driving a Tesla S down the M1 near Hemel Hempstead while sitting in the passenger seat—there was no passenger in the driver’s seat. He was on autopilot. That is described by Tesla as a suite of driver assistance features including traffic-aware cruise control, which assists with acceleration and deceleration, and auto-steer. Although the reports I read did not specify it, I imagine that the vehicle also has automated emergency braking, because that is quite common in a range of cars. That is level 3, but it meets the definition in the Bill at Clause 1(1)(b), that vehicles are,
“capable, in at least some circumstances or situations, of safely driving themselves”.
Clearly, the argument here is whether that was safe, but I fear that the Government might find themselves involved in a great deal of protracted court procedure on the definition of “safe” After all, level 3 cars are certainly on our roads.
If I go into a little detail about the difference between the levels, the Committee will see how narrow that difference is and how the Government’s definition in the Bill could be misleading. In level 3, the vehicle controls all monitoring of the environment. The driver’s attention is still needed, but can disengage from safety-critical functions such as braking. Many level 3 cars currently available require no human attention to the road at lower speeds. At level 4, a vehicle tells its driver when it is safe to be automated and when not. The vehicle is capable of steering, braking, accelerating, monitoring other vehicles and the road, and responding to traffic. It can determine when to change lanes and signal but it cannot cope with traffic jams. That is sometimes referred to as the, “mind off” level. At level 5, a steering wheel is optional—there is no need for a steering wheel—no human intervention is required and you do not need brakes or pedals. It is a totally new design of car.
I have gone into that in some detail because I fear that the Government’s definition of automated vehicles as being,
“capable, in at least some circumstances or situations, of safely driving themselves”,
is oversimplified. They need instead to rely on internationally accepted definitions. The reason the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders is concerned is that the levels are so well established and widely used across the world and within the industry that even if technology advances further, as it probably will, all they will do is add a level 6. It is rather inconsistent of the Government. I understand that they want some all-embracing definition that is not subject to change, but in the second part of the Bill, for example, which relates to electric vehicles, the Government are happy to refer to “fast and rapid charging”. That is the same kind of technological term currently in use—the current jargon.
I believe, and the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders also suggests, that this could lead to a blurring of definitions. It could lead to legal challenge and the Government could spend a lot of time defining what is safe. Amendment 33, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, also deals with the definition of safe driving. I welcome it especially because it touches on the crucial issue of hacking: I am sure we will come back to that in later debates. I beg to move.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 33 and comment briefly on the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson. The debate today will cover several areas, but one of them will be safety and I shall speak more about that later. My amendment covers safety, and lights particularly upon hacking. This is not a controversial Bill as I see it: virtually all the amendments are probing amendments and I hate to say it to the Minister but I think the speaking part on this occasion will be principally hers rather than mine.
Clause 7 sets out the terms for when a car is deemed to be driving itself, or in automated mode. However, it makes no mention of what happens if the vehicle is designed or manufactured faultily, or if it is hacked due to a failure by the manufacturer to install adequate software safeguards. While we all welcome the opportunities that this new technology will bring, we also have to recognise that it will bring new risks. A lot of these risks will be around the software used and therefore may be harder to pick up than in a conventional vehicle. This is a good opportunity to put in safeguards to give protection around this area now, rather than later down the line.
The amendment tightens up this area of the Bill by setting out when an automated vehicle is capable of driving itself safely. This would give the driver protection with regard to liability if it was proven that there was a manufacturer’s fault or the vehicle had been hacked. The purpose of the amendment is to get a general debate started in relation to this area, particularly on the hacking element.
Baroness Sugg
I am afraid that we do not have a specific timetable. Obviously, technology is developing all the time, and we do not yet have the technology available for type 4 and type 5 vehicles. We are working closely, as I say, at United Nations level, and are also working as part of that with both vehicle and software manufacturers to be able to define those standards. Given that we do not yet have the technology, we are not yet able to define the standards, so I am afraid that it will slightly depend on how things progress. However, we play a leading role in this and, as soon as these international standards are set, we will then be able to use them for our type approval for standards within the UK and declare it legal and safe for those vehicles to be driven in the UK.
Baroness Randerson
I thank noble Lords and the Minister for her comments, and particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, for his support on the need for a more precise definition.
In response to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, I clarify that I have specified levels 4 and 5 because that is what the Government have said that the Bill applies to. If the Government want it to apply to level 3 as well, that is fine. The principle is the need for a clearer definition; the use of levels rather than the definition is what I am suggesting.
The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, asked how long it would take to get used to automated vehicles. If you drive a minibus, it comes as a bit of a shock to find that you are sort of on top of the car in front of you, in comparison with driving a car, when you expect to have a bonnet in front of you. We are getting used to new ways of driving. As I have mentioned before to noble Lords, I have an electric car, and that is a totally different style of driving. We will get used to it more quickly than perhaps some people think.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, can I argue against crisp definitions? We do not yet know what will happen. Maybe we can evolve a system where the ordinary car we use at home can switch into fully automated mode for, say, travelling around the railways, and then when it is not part of a railway, it will come off. Sometimes it is a car and at other times it is a rail vehicle. If we are to take a lead in this industry, we will need to continuously shape and reshape definitions. We do not want to be hamstrung by what we can think of now. I agree that we ought to share definitions around the world, but they ought to be based on technology as it evolves. It ought to be fast moving. We ought to equip ourselves with legislation which can move as the industry moves.
The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, asked me whether there would be capacity constraints. No, there would not be; if you transfer to rubber wheels, you can manage much higher traffic densities because you do not have the braking distance problems, and you can fit with the current level of autonomous safety. I am not saying that one could manage high-speed lines, but Southern rail is all low-speed. The fast services on the London to Brighton line manage 45 miles per hour. If, with autonomous vehicles, you are managing to go 70 or 80 miles per hour, just by doing that you are doubling the capacity. Therefore there are no capacity constraints on using these routes for autonomous vehicles. It will probably be managed by Network Rail because you need the consistency, predictability and safety constraints that go with rail services. However, we are talking about much smaller vehicles and different technology—about providing a basis for the whole of autonomous vehicle technology to evolve. Under those circumstances, you have to move definitions to keep up with the technology.
Level 3, as I read the definition, seems to provide a pretty good base: there are times when the vehicle can be autonomous but then it gets to a point where it says: “Hang on, I can’t be autonomous here, I need the driver to take back control”. That seems to be the sort of technology you might well try to put on a rail service so that, without having to get to levels 4 and 5, you can provide room for individual vehicles to travel on the service and provide the connections that people want beyond a railway station. We do not know yet; we have not got there. We have to allow the Government the breadth of definition that will allow us to experiment and to lead the field.
Baroness Randerson
The noble Lord talks about looking at the future and says we have not got there. With all due respect, we have got there. I have been in a driverless car—technologically, they exist. They are being trialled in parts of this country and indeed across the world. However, the noble Lord is right that we are crystal ball gazing over exactly how they will be used. In what circumstances will we use them? Will we all own our own little pod or will we summon up a pod to collect us and take us to work, or whatever, whenever we wish it? There is a great deal of debate here; undoubtedly the initiative has already been taken by taxi companies, for example, in this area.
However, I return briefly to Amendment 1 and the points made about definitions. I am not slavishly devoted to levels 3, 4 and 5—or 4 and 5. If the Minister says this has been rejected, that is contrary to what I was told, but I am happy to go with what has now been accepted. The definition needs to be precise enough for this not to end up in a lot of court cases. I say that because the whole of this part of the Bill is about insurance; we all know that insurance is always mired in legal definitions, so the Government need to be on firm ground. Having said all that, I am happy to withdraw my amendment.
Baroness Randerson
Baroness Randerson
My Lords, removing the two words “or adapted” would mean that the Secretary of State’s list would not include vehicles manufactured for conventional driving and adapted for autonomous mode. Those involved in the motor industry regard the concept of adapting vehicles as extremely dangerous. The technology companies—the people who write and design the software for cars—also regard it as very dangerous. The point they make is that their software is specifically tailored to individual car design. The fact that their technology works safely in one car does not mean that it can be shoe-horned into another model, even a similar model.
The clause as written would include individual adaptations by enthusiasts, which would be a very uncertain path to go down. Indeed, if a car manufacturer decided to adapt a current level 3 model—for example, the Tesla S, to which I referred earlier—to a level 4 car, I am absolutely sure that Tesla, in line with standard motor industry practice, would call it the “Tesla S Elite” or something similar. It would be a different model and therefore it would not be an adaptation in the meaning set out in relation to the Secretary of State’s list. What I am really pointing out here is that the concept of “adapted” vehicles would narrowly include those adapted on a one-off basis by individual enthusiasts, and therefore it would not seem reasonable to expect the Secretary of State and the Department for Transport to have the expertise to know whether that was safe.
I want to refer briefly to Amendment 29, which is in this group and stands in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe. A big section of it is very similar to the amendment tabled by Labour in the Commons to the Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill. I congratulate the noble Lord on having managed to get this amendment accepted. I could not think of a way of doing it, but he has done very well.
Amendment 29 addresses crucial issues associated with the proper repair and maintenance of automated vehicles. In particular, it goes into detail on the need to establish properly accredited training schemes for those who repair and maintain them. Rather like the repair of electric vehicles, the process is totally different from traditional vehicle repair. I spoke at Second Reading about the need for a process similar to the old CORGI gas safety scheme. That was a highly respected, universally acknowledged scheme and came about as a result of the Government working with the industry. We need the Government to work with industry in the same way on automated vehicles, and I am very grateful that the noble Lord has raised it in his amendment. I beg to move.
Lord Tunnicliffe
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 29 in my name. I accept the noble Baroness’s congratulations on behalf of my staff—which is one quarter of a very able lady—who managed to get this past the Public Bill Office. The proposed new clause would protect insurers against accidents caused by vehicles repaired by unauthorised technicians. It would also require the Government to establish a scheme for the authorised inspection, repair and maintenance of automated vehicles by licensed and accredited technicians.
The automotive industry already relies on hundreds of thousands of individuals who support work on and maintain vehicles. As the technology develops, so too must the skills of those working on them. We are already aware of an existing skills gap in the industry. As the technology develops, that gap may well worsen but, as it stands, the Bill does not address a worsening skills gap. If we do not start planning for this now, we will be left with a huge hole in the support structures for these new vehicles.
I am of the generation where I was privileged at the age of 17 to buy a car for seven pounds and 10 shillings. The car was seven years older than me. It tended to go only about 10 miles before having to have its plugs cleaned and so on—which made courting my wife a bit difficult at times. But we were of a generation when the skill of looking after automotive technology was very straightforward, and widely understood by a large section of the population. Now I drive a Prius, and I would not dare touch anything on it. Not only is it unduly complex, but it could be very dangerous, with the very high voltages involved and so on. There is nothing I could do to that car that would do anything other than worsen its performance.
Baroness Randerson
My Lords, I accept that my Amendment 3 is a very simple and straightforward device. It was an attempt to approach one aspect of the safety issue. Amendment 29 is a much more complex and comprehensive approach. If Amendment 29 or something like it were adopted, there would be no need for Amendment 3.
I was trying to begin to talk about safety and to raise the issue that if you allow adaptations, the Secretary of State will have to devise a way to apply a wide and rigorous range of safety tests. Currently, if you build your own car in a garage you can test it pretty straightforwardly and take it on the road. You could be stopped by a policeman and you could take it to a garage and it would or would not get its MoT on a series of straightforward yes or no tests with no doubt about it. But, if we are talking about adaptations to autonomous vehicles, the danger in these adaptations will almost certainly be in the software, which it is very much more difficult to test. We have only to look back at the Volkswagen scandal. Volkswagen installed the so-called defeat device in the software of its diesel cars that kicked in only when it detected that it was being tested. It was therefore able to mask the true extent of emissions. That is a very complex operation. To test software we would have to go through very lengthy, all-situations style testing to make sure that a vehicle is truly safe. It is not just a case of putting your foot on the brake and saying that it stops quite quickly and it is fine.
Lord Berkeley
Would the noble Baroness be tempted to press the Minister to have a meeting on these issues before Report and come back with a much shorter text than Amendment 29 with the intention of covering these issues? I think that would give many noble Lords who have spoken in the debate quite a lot of comfort.
Baroness Randerson
The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, puts forward a very good idea. I know that the Minister is always very generous in providing opportunities to discuss issues. We already have two issues that we need further information on. I am sure that there will be other amendments later where we will need a meeting or, at the very least, a fairly lengthy letter—but it would be better to discuss it.
I readily acknowledge that the approach taken by the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, is a more thorough approach to the issue of safety. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Borwick
My Lords, we have here a portmanteau group of about three different subjects which have in common that they are all proposed by me, but that is about it. I will start with Amendments 4, 5, 6 and 7. These address the alternative to using the SAE definitions that the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and I think are probably the right solution to the problem.
The first amendment deals with the phrase,
“in at least some circumstances or situations”.
As has been mentioned, the Science and Technology Committee did a very good study on autonomous vehicles, let down, in my mind, only by the fact that we were not allowed to entitle it “Goodbye, Mr Toad”. This was supported by a large number of people because the phrase encapsulates one of the greatest advantages of autonomous vehicles: bypassing bad driving. In the future automated vehicles will drive better than human beings.
The phrase,
“in at least some circumstances or situations”,
will certainly open discussions as to whether some downright unusual vehicles such as agricultural autonomous vehicles will fall under that description. I fear that in the Secretary of State’s opinion, they will not, and somebody will undertake a judicial review as to whether the Secretary of State was right. The net result will be wealthier lawyers rather than a clear definition.
Similarly, the meaning of the word “safely” is very unclear. One man’s “safely” is another man’s “dangerously”. Putting such ambiguous words into legislation opens up the possibility of somebody’s saying, “That autonomous vehicle was involved in an accident; it therefore cannot have been driving safely. If it was not driving safely, it should not have been on the list, and is therefore not covered by the insurance that it was thought to be covered by”. I hesitate to say that putting in the word “safely” is dangerous, but it opens the possibility of a bunch of litigation which is unnecessary because the clause works without it.
I know that the word “safely” is part of the Government’s attempt to differentiate between what we would call level 3 and levels 4 and 5. It comes from the Government’s determination not to use those terms. If the Government were to change their mind on that, the need for subjective words such as “safely” would disappear.
Amendments 31, 32 and 34 deal with the meanings in Clause 7 of “being controlled” and “driving itself”. The Bill states that,
“a vehicle is ‘driving itself’ if it is operating in a mode in which it is not being controlled, and does not need to be monitored, by an individual”.
There is a lot of uncertainty as to what phrases such as “be monitored” mean. Amendment 34 tries to identify that more clearly. On Amendment 32, there is again some uncertainty as to what “an individual” means. Does it mean an individual who is licensed to drive that vehicle? Does it mean an individual who is capable of driving, with a driving licence, or one who is not drunk or fast asleep? There is a lot of uncertainty in these words. The Minister may say that the wording will be sorted out in the detailed regulations, but it could be changed to deal with such problems at the start.
On Amendment 35, “roads” has not been defined in the Bill and could easily be defined to tie up with the Road Traffic Act 1988 so that a creative lawyer does not come up with an alternative definition for their own benefit. I hope that all the amendments are helpful in clarifying the meaning of these phrases. I beg to move.
Baroness Randerson
My Lords, I went through the process of devising amendments with a lean approach to the wording. Once again, the amendments take a more comprehensive approach to the same issue I raised regarding the definitions. I understand the point made earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, about there being some overlap in the grouping of amendments. That is because this is a highly technical Bill and the aim of the amendments is not always obvious. In this case, the aim is clearly the same as the one I was approaching, and it underlines the point I made when speaking to my first group of amendments: that definitions will be central.
Many years ago, I was a justice of the peace. I sat through many motoring cases at a basic level in the magistrates’ court where clever lawyers spent ages examining the definitions of simple words. There were many cases where people avoided apparently obvious judicial process because of a definition. The Government need to look again at the definitions used in the Bill.
Lord Borwick
My Lords, we have reached halfway through the list before us today. This is a discussion about the difference between accidents and damage. I feel that, sometimes, the legislation as drafted moves fluently between the words “accident” and “damage”. I fear that that is open to misinterpretation, as an opportunity, by lawyers in the future.
It is critical that “caused” be defined in this Bill. A lack of a test of cause of an accident or damage to a person or vehicle will lead to years on end of appeals in cases. The Bill therefore has the opportunity to provide for a measure against a reasonable standard. The focus should be on what or who caused the damage, rather than the accident causing the damage. By doing this, the Bill could be a world leader in clarifying such a test, as has never been done before. We must accept that the public are nervous about this new technology, and the Bill should clarify what happens before, during and after an accident. It will clearly demonstrate that we have the citizen at the forefront of our minds.
The problem of leaving “caused” undefined is that, in so many processes, the Ministry of Justice is trying to reduce the amount of litigation. As has been mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, the magistrates’ courts are filled with motoring cases of liability for damage caused by somebody’s unreasonable behaviour. If we are careful with the drafting, we could help reduce that litigation in future. Therefore, I beg to move these amendments.
Baroness Randerson
My Lords, I wish to speak to my Amendment 17. I am grateful for the support of the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, on this. The key issue is what sort of standards we can expect from automated vehicles. We are told, as has already been said, to expect far higher standards and few accidents. The estimate is an 80% reduction in the number of road traffic accidents once automated vehicles are fully established. After all, we know as humans that even very good drivers sometimes have a bad day, and we are not all very good drivers, but automated vehicles should always be on the ball. However, undoubtedly there will still be accidents, especially during the lengthy transition period, when some cars have drivers and others do not. There are even worrying tales of some pedestrians, in areas where automated vehicles are being trialled, playing chicken by testing how close you can get to the cars by stepping out in front of them, to see how quickly they will stop.
Legal advice we have received indicates that under the Bill as drafted, the insurer would be liable when an accident happens, even if damage is not caused or the damage caused is not the fault of the automated vehicle. My Amendment 17 would lower the standard by which the automated vehicle is judged to that of a reasonable driver. This, of course, removes the double standard the Bill would create—that an automatic vehicle is always safer than a manually driven car. It would therefore lower the burden on insurers.
I am not entirely sure about the term “reasonable” driver; I wondered whether “competent” might be a better word, but I was assured that “reasonable” is an accepted legal term and would be understood. I have tabled this simply as a probing amendment because we need clarity from the Government. After all, millions of insurance policies will rely on this Bill and the structure it creates. The Government have written the Bill expressly to prepare the insurance market for AVs, so it is vital that we have clarity on how the Government view the system they plan to create.
The amendments proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, in this group, replace “accident” with “damage”. This is an issue of technical legal terms, on which I would welcome clarification as well. I am very pleased to see that he has tabled his amendments.
Lord Borwick
I should perhaps earlier have declared my interest as chairman of the advisory board for the Gateway autonomous vehicle in Greenwich project, which has done a lot of work on the subject that the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, mentioned—the habit of pedestrians testing autonomous vehicles. They found that in time, that habit reduces, not because the relevant pedestrians are squashed by the autonomous vehicle but because they get bored with the test. They might try it once, as a teenager, but they do not bother to try it again: it is a boring process. Boring a teenager is not something we should use as the basis of a safety standard, but it is a powerful factor in this matter. I very much support the amendments in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, and myself.
Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill
Baroness Randerson ExcerptsWednesday 9th May 2018
(6 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Automated and Electric Vehicles Act 2018 View all Automated and Electric Vehicles Act 2018 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 82-I Marshalled list for Committee (PDF, 133KB) - (4 May 2018)
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, it seems that the Government have not thought widely enough about the issue of how software operates these days. Certainly, as the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, said, there is an element here of the concepts being slightly out of date.
My car’s software is automatically downloaded. We became aware a few months ago that it had been updated and now, no matter where we went, it told us that we did not have enough electricity to get there—which is taking range anxiety to its extreme. The problem is that, two visits to the repair shop later, they still have not been able to fix the problem. I would be pretty upset if this were an automated car and people said it was my fault when clearly I had faulty software.
It is also important to remember that, even though software might be automatically downloaded, individuals still have a responsibility, and that responsibility is not to interfere with it. It is not beyond imagination that software on automated cars might impose a maximum speed of 90 miles per hour so that you could not go any faster. It would not be impossible for someone who was pretty clever at interfering with software and writing their own to override this. Clearly there needs to be something in the Bill that expresses the fact that owners, drivers and users of these vehicles should not interfere with the software.
My point is that the Government need to rethink this, about a year or 18 months on from when it was originally thought about, and look at it from the modern perspective of the issues that we are all aware of now in relation to software.
Lord Borwick
My Lords, Amendment 27 is a probing amendment, triggered when I first read this Bill, which happened at about the same time as the very first fatal accident in America from a Tesla vehicle, when it was it was speculated in the press that Tesla would not release the data from the vehicle because it had proprietary value to Tesla. In fact, as I understand it, Tesla released the data in due course. However, I could imagine circumstances in which the owner or manufacturer of an automated vehicle believed that the less which was found out about this accident, the better for them.
One of the greatest advantages to the insurance industry of the automated vehicles is the enormous quantity of data that will be available from them. Not only will there be the product of six or more cameras facing every single direction but all the other information picked up about speeds can and will be stored in the vehicle as it goes by. Maybe the industry would be grateful if the Minister could confirm that to delete such data would be the offence of perverting the course of justice. However, in the meantime I wanted to propose the amendment.
Amendment 30, the next one in this group, is on the question of regulations, which has already been touched on in earlier debates about standards. However, I believe that the range of aspects of automated vehicles that we have discussed this evening is very great, and there is clearly a lack of knowledge on the part of noble Lords such as myself, not just about the sheer detail of this but about the industry and what is coming on. So many different things are happening, and each of them is an outstanding opportunity for the country. We need a legislative background that can cope with completely new circumstances, not only prohibiting things that are brand new and thoroughly bad but permitting things which are brand new and have not been invented yet.
On the suggestion that we can revert to new primary legislation, given the number of years it has taken to develop this legislation and the constant pressure on legislative time in both Houses, it would be wise for the Government to take regulatory powers to come up with new regulations to deal with new matters. Therefore, these limited new regulatory powers are proposed in Amendment 30.
Baroness Randerson
My Lords, I take this opportunity to ask the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for a little more information about his intention with regard to this amendment on transmission of data. One can see advantages to that flow of data, and one knows that it would naturally take place, because technically it can take place. However, there are huge issues about privacy. I am not entirely sure that I would want—to grasp an example from the air—information to be in someone else’s hands about the fact that I go swimming every week, so that suddenly a department store starts trying to sell me swimsuits every day of the week. I do not want that unnecessary invasion of my privacy. There could be very much more sensitive issues. I could be visiting a hospital and wanting to keep my medical condition private—that kind of thing. There have to be rules about what this data is used for, how it is kept, and so on. Is it the Minister’s view that current legislation on data and privacy going through this House would cover that sort of issue, or will we need other legislation to cover it? Does the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, envisage a sort of situation akin to the black box that some drivers use now to reassure their insurance company that they are driving safely and within speed limits, and so on, which, in return, keeps their insurance premiums down? I am interested in that point.
Finally, I will make a comment about Amendment 30. I am not usually keen on giving the Government delegated powers but there are some sensible limits on this here. I understand that we are envisaging a future; we cannot predict every requirement accurately and we cannot wait around on every occasion for primary legislation—so, as far as that goes, it seems a sensible proposal to me.
Lord Lucas
I share the noble Baroness’s admiration for my noble friend’s Amendment 30, which puts things in a very simple and clear way and is well worth having in the Bill. As far as the insurance amendment is concerned, I was looking for a way within the narrow confines of the Bill of illustrating the need for the Government to go further now. Even dealing with the subject of insurance, there are matters that need to be discussed now which we may need to bring into secondary legislation to enable things to operate properly. We should make provision for these things to be done in the Bill. I do not have answers to the questions that the noble Baroness has asked. I imagine that, in an automated world, having a dump of the data for the quarter of an hour before an accident and through as far as the machine keeps recording would be a useful way of establishing what happens during an accident; it really ought to be something we are thinking about, even in the narrow confines of this Bill.
I turn to what my noble friend said about motor vehicles. I presume the Bill will somehow, through the atmosphere of legislation, pick up the definition of motor vehicle from Section 185(1)(c) of the Road Traffic Act 1988:
“a mechanically propelled vehicle, intended or adapted for use on roads”.
However, I think the Bill uses motor vehicle in a slightly different sense, as vehicles that,
“are or might be used on roads”—
that is okay so far—
“or in other public places”.
Clearly, we have a different definition of motor vehicle here from the one in the Road Traffic Act. Therefore, we are somewhat adrift; we are dealing with things that might be used in public spaces and therefore presumably might interact with footpaths, crossing all sorts of land; they could include the sort of thing that mows golf courses too, which might very well go automatic, or the farming equipment my noble friend was referring to. If you have a footpath across the land and one of these vehicles is trundling across it, it is occupying a public space at that point; we are encompassing a wide range of vehicles beyond the definition in the 1988 Act. This might be something worth resolving at some stage.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for that reply. I will assume that included in it, but not vocalised, was a promise to write to me about the definition of motor vehicles. I like my moments of pedantry as well as the next man, and I would be interested in pursuing that subject in correspondence.
On the main points, I am delighted that my noble friend found at least half a warm word for my noble friend Lord Borwick. I think there is a real opportunity here that, with a little persuasion and some crafting of the amendment, we might, unusually, find ourselves supporting the Government in giving themselves some powers that they do not yet know how to use, within this limited area, because it would have such a potentially positive effect on the economy of the UK. I beg leave—
Baroness Randerson
Before the noble Lord sits down, is he aware that there are now reasonably big drones delivering goods? They trundle along pavements and across level crossings and so on, appearing to behave a bit like pedestrians. I have been thinking about what the noble Lord is saying, and he is raising a good point. What is the difference between a drone delivering an Amazon parcel and a driverless van delivering an Amazon parcel? The only difference is probably the size, so there will have to be some definition of a cut-off point—unless we are going to insist that drones are insured, in the same way as vehicles.
Lord Berkeley
Before the noble Baroness sits down, may I ask her whether she really thinks that drones trundle along pavements?
Baroness Randerson
I have indeed seen them. There are experimental systems that are wheeling along pavements.
Lord Lucas
The noble Baroness raises a very valid point. What we seek to regulate is autonomous automated vehicles that are likely to interact with people. That will include delivery drones, whether they are flying or trundling on the pavement. It would be quite useful in parts of London to be able to go amphibious and drop into the Thames for a bit, run up the river and then back on to the bank. We are talking about things that will interact with the public. I hope we are looking at a wide definition here and not just talking about things that are supposed to confine themselves to the road. One of the virtues of automated vehicles is that they do not have the same need to do that as other things, and they might well turn out to be quite versatile. I look forward to learning in correspondence where we are on the definition, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Transport Levying Bodies (Amendment) Regulations 2018
Baroness Randerson Excerpts(6 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Sugg) (Con)
My Lords, the draft regulations that we are considering, if approved, would enable Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority to collect appropriate levies from its constituent councils to meet the costs of carrying out their transport functions. As only the upper-tier authorities—Cambridgeshire County Council and Peterborough City Council—have transport functions, the levy will fall solely on these authorities.
The seven constituent councils of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority—the administrative areas of Cambridgeshire County Council, the city councils for Cambridge and Peterborough, and the district councils for East Cambridgeshire, Fenland, Huntingdonshire and South Cambridgeshire—have led a local process to improve their governance arrangements, which culminated in this House and the other place agreeing orders that saw the establishment of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority in March 2017. This order gave effect to the desire of the local authorities in these areas to improve their joint working, including on transport matters.
An order has since been made that provided for a mayor to be elected in May 2017 for the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority. The elected mayor is the chair of the combined authority.
Combined authorities are designated as levying bodies under the Local Government Finance Act 1988. Under that Act, the Secretary of State is able to make regulations relating to the expenses of combined authorities that are reasonably attributable to the exercise of its functions, including those relating to transport.
The draft regulations before the House would amend the Transport Levying Bodies Regulations 1992 to take account of the creation of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority. They have been drafted to reflect the proposed approach of these local areas and have been agreed by the combined authority. The levy could fund any of the transport functions that sit with the combined authority.
The functions of the combined authority are set out in its establishment order, and any subsequent order that confers transport functions will be clearly identified. These include developing a local transport plan, as well as a range of passenger transport-related functions. It will be for the combined authority to decide how to fund these in accordance with the establishment order and any subsequent orders.
The upper-tier authorities—Cambridgeshire County Council and Peterborough City Council—will need to consider how they fund any levy issued by the combined authority as part of their budget process, whether by council tax, government grants or other sources of revenue. They will need to take into account the impact of council tax levels in their area, including when determining whether any council tax increase is excessive.
The regulations have to establish how any transport levy would be apportioned between the upper-tier authorities if the combined authority could not reach agreement. In the event that they cannot agree, the combined authority will apportion the levy by taking into account previous levels of transport expenditure by those authorities.
The regulations help to facilitate the provision of transport arrangements as part of the combined authority’s wider governance changes. I commend them to the House.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her comments. The regulations come after a period when there has been, not surprisingly, a lot of local discussion and debate about the formation of the combined authority. Having been through a period of change in local council formation in Wales about 20 years ago, I still bear the scars; it is never an easy or happy situation. As I knew that there had been debate about this matter and some discussion about the plans for transport in the area, I took a look at the mayor’s transport delivery plan. There are local concerns about an overemphasis in that plan on Cambridge city and on roads.
I applaud the ambition of the mayor, because his ideas include a Cambridge underground—the Cambridge autonomous metro with underground electric buses. It is ground breaking stuff and a very good idea in many ways, because Cambridge as an historic city with a dense population has a huge traffic problem to solve. However, undergrounds involve tunnelling, which is very expensive. It is therefore not surprising that the amount of money that would be sucked into the Cambridge area has alarmed people in Peterborough, who believe—I think quite rightly, being familiar with Peterborough—that much needs to be done to improve their bus network, such as the introduction of bus lanes and encouragement of ultra-low emission buses, as well as to improve cycling and walking infrastructure and the uptake of rail. Those are much less expensive options.
Then there is a wider picture, because Peterborough and Cambridge are two cities in the midst of a large rural area. I strongly welcome devolution of powers over railways, but, in that wider area, people are campaigning for the reopening of Wisbech station, which was a casualty of the Beeching era, and of the line from there to March. They are isolated communities that desperately need investment. People are also campaigning for the electrification of the Peterborough to Ely and Cambridge line to encourage freight from the east coast ports to the Midlands on to the rail. Of course, there are always demands for better rural bus services, with people emphasising the importance of sustainability and tackling congestion and air quality problems. I am simply trying to set the issues that have been put forward in this debate in the context of these regulations, and I have some questions for the Minister.
First, taking devolution fully into account, infrastructure development is of course an essential part of co-ordinated transport planning. So how does the Department for Transport monitor the way that levying bodies, not just this one but others as well, spend the money they raise? How does the department ensure that transport plans treat the whole area affected by this fairly? How does it ensure that there is co-operation and co-ordination—this is a key point—from one local authority area to another? Because there are certain aspects of transport provision, such as local buses, which are rightly an issue for that area alone, but when you are looking at railways you are almost always linking from one local authority area to another, and the same with road provision. So you have a transport plan from here to somewhere; you cannot just stop it at the border. I am interested in how the Government can ensure that the levy, which is after all a levy on the people of that area, is spent wisely.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, I can set the Minister’s mind at rest that we are not going to have a constitutional crisis: this will be one of the thousands of affirmative instruments that will go through without a Division. Nevertheless, I have some mild misgivings.
The draft regulations give authority to the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority to levy the upper-tier authorities, as far as I can see without constraint. They give this authority to set a levy in respect of transport. I did not know until I heard the speech of the noble Baroness that they were considering digging holes underground. My experience of digging holes underground is that they cost about £250 million per kilometre and they have a dreadful habit of not coming out at anything like the figure you thought they should. Therefore, this levy, if there is overambition, could be a very significant drag on the upper-tier authorities.
I cannot see in the legislation how that is limited. I saw some words about having regard for the ability of the upper-tier authority to pay, but that seemed to be all, so my first question is: are the upper-tier authorities consulted on the level of this levy? There is a general principle that there should be no taxation without representation. There should surely be some process with proper checks and balances in it.
In researching this order, I went back to the Explanatory Memorandum to the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority Order 2017, which says on page 5, at paragraph 7.13:
“To give effect to the contents of the deal to devolve powers to the proposed Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority, the Order confers local authority functions for public transport on the proposed CPCA, to be exercised by the Mayor. It also enables the Mayor to produce and publish a Local Transport Plan for the CPCA area”.
My second question, therefore, is: has the mayor produced a local transport plan? Has he costed it? Has he explained the criteria for how the decisions on expenditure are made? Surely this transport plan should create a budget which the upper-tier authorities are able to have sight of and have some say about whether or not they are getting value for money for their levy.
Haulage Permits and Trailer Registration Bill [HL]
Baroness Randerson ExcerptsTuesday 24th April 2018
(6 years, 4 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Haulage Permits and Trailer Registration Act 2018 View all Haulage Permits and Trailer Registration Act 2018 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 84-R-I Marshalled list for Report (PDF, 80KB) - (13 Apr 2018)
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, I will not detain the House with a great long speech, but I endorse the words of the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe. I thank the Minister for her courtesy and the care with which she has dealt with the Bill.
Baroness Sugg
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, for their comments and constructive engagement throughout the passage of the Bill.
Haulage Permits and Trailer Registration Bill [HL]
Baroness Randerson ExcerptsTuesday 17th April 2018
(6 years, 4 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Haulage Permits and Trailer Registration Act 2018 View all Haulage Permits and Trailer Registration Act 2018 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 84-R-I Marshalled list for Report (PDF, 80KB) - (13 Apr 2018)
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, my name is attached to three amendments in this group. I have added my name to Amendment 1, which is a retabling of an amendment put down in Committee by the Labour Party that would put on the face of the Bill that it is the Government’s objective to secure continued participation in the EU’s Community licence arrangements. This is another example of where a perfectly good arrangement currently exists in the EU but we will be leaving that arrangement and undoubtedly, I fear, moving to a less satisfactory situation. These amendments, as a group, are intended to encourage the Government to make the best possible arrangement with the EU for the future and to move to the best possible set of arrangements in the circumstances.
The amendments tabled by the Labour Party will almost certainly also ensure that the powers granted under this legislation will not be applicable if we stay in the EU’s Community licence regime, and that is very similar in principle to the sunset clause that I tabled in Committee. My Amendment 2 carries on this theme, because our argument is that the Bill should be applicable only with its original intended purpose, which is to make provisions for after we leave the EU, and that it should not be used as an opportunity to tidy up existing law. We often hear the phrase “skeletal Bill” but this is a “coat-hanger Bill”. It is possible to put any garment you can think of on this coat-hanger because it is drawn so broadly, and it is very difficult to see where the Government might go with it. Therefore, I believe that it is in everyone’s interests to keep the Bill to its original purpose.
Amendment 3, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, refers to the new permits regime and attempts to ensure that there is agreement in the future between the Government and the EU.
Finally, our Amendment 7 would make it a negotiating objective of the UK Government that there must be reciprocity regarding the number of UK-registered hauliers travelling to the EU and vice versa. This is a key issue. The view of haulage industry leaders is that we have to do all we can to ensure that there is an agreement, because, in their eyes, it is certain that the system proposed here will not work. The Freight Transport Association says that last year 300,000 journeys to the EU were made by British trucks and that 103 permits were issued, as those were all that were needed. If the Government are to adopt the permit system, a massive scaling up will be required to cope with that volume of traffic, but I think it is unrealistic for the Government to believe that they can scale up quickly and satisfactorily to that extent.
There are other issues which the transport associations are very concerned about and which these clauses do not deal with. After Brexit, WTO rules will require a significant increase in the number of checks. However frictionless a system the Government manage to create, ensuring that there are a limited number of checks to be made, WTO rules will kick in and will require checks to be made on a much bigger scale than now.
Simple precautionary measures are bound to be required to deter people intent on cheating the new system. There is also the unlikelihood, in the eyes of those who engage with the system at the moment, that the new computer-based system that will have to be devised by HMRC will be fully functional in the less than three years that we have left before the end of the transition period.
Then, of course, there is the issue of bringing 85,000 businesses up to scratch—that figure is from the NAO report. Currently, those businesses export only to the EU. Therefore, although they are exporting frequently—on a daily basis in many cases—they have never made a customs declaration. These businesses have no processes in place and no departments dedicated to that. If you add to that increased border delays caused by non-tariff aspects of the Bill, such as the end of mutual recognition of standards, there must be every incentive to reach an agreement, because there will be huge impediments to trade.
This Bill deals only with part of these issues. It makes no reference to the mutual recognition of lorry driver qualifications or to a shortage of skilled workers—13% of trucks on British roads are driven by EU drivers. Therefore, we are keen, through these amendments, to encourage the Government in every possible way to ensure that they make an agreement. I fear that we are not in a strong position on this, but the Government have to make every effort. Unless they do so, there is a huge chance that our major haulage companies will move abroad. There is already talk of companies seeking to register abroad in order to trade more easily. None of us wants that to happen.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 2, 3 and 7 in this group, Amendment 3 being in my name. Before I do so, I note the comments from the Chief Whip a few minutes ago on what noble Lords are supposed to do during Report stage. I question the second point, which says,
“a member to explain himself in some material point of speech”.
I do not imagine that the Minister will be able to answer that, but I hope that we all explain ourselves.
I support all the points made by my noble friend Lord Whitty and the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson. The noble Baroness said that this is a coat-hanger Bill, and she is probably right, but I suggest that it is a great deal better than nothing. There are many other sectors being debated in the context of Brexit for which there is nothing. We should give the Government a bit of credit for this, albeit that the Bill as it stands is pretty defective in many of the solutions that it comes up with. My conclusion, along with that of the noble Baroness, is that the system will not work anyway.
It is worth mentioning that, although this applies to road haulage, the border checks that we are all concerned about cover a very large number of different issues. Previous speakers have mentioned some of them. The easy one, actually, is customs. If that is done well and the IT system works—there is a big question about that—much of the work can be done in advance and, in theory, there would be no delays at frontiers, provided that it all goes smoothly. We discussed the drivers in Committee and their need for permits for vehicles and trailers and then we get into the interesting bits, which are the responsibility of Defra—plant and animal health and welfare, foot-and-mouth and rabies. You cannot check for those away from the frontier; it has to be done at the frontier. I do not know how many trucks per year would come under that, but they probably all need inspecting.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, I have Amendment 5 in this group. The noble Baroness has in part answered the issues it is intended to raise, but it is not very clear in the Bill, in which the criteria for granting a permit seem to be entirely an issue of allocation of numbers, in terms of either the number of drivers or the number of vehicles, and what is available for a particular country. The amendment attempts to say to Ministers that there also need to be some qualitative criteria as to whether permits are given.
In the way the noble Baroness described it, the consultation might include that, but I would like that to be a little more explicit. We need to make sure that the operators who apply for and are given permits have reached certain standards of performance in relation to safety and maintenance, and to the employment and training they provide for their drivers and others; in relation to certain financial criteria that enable them to be of good financial repute; and in relation to certain environmental standards, as well as safety standards.
I hope that the consultation will cover all those things. What the Minister has said clearly includes that, but it is slightly odd that the wording of the Bill does not refer at all to regulations. I would therefore be grateful if the Minister could even more explicitly reassure me that these issues will be taken into account when criteria are established as to the suitability of operators to receive permits under the new system—if we need a new system.
Baroness Randerson
My Lords, to take further the argument put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, I note that the Minister said that the Government would seek to maximise the benefits to the UK economy in the way in which permits are distributed—and that needs to be done in a way which seeks to enhance the good repute of the industry and therefore of our country. I was struck by a point put to us in a briefing from Unite, which suggests that permits should be linked to the good repute of the operator; for example, their record on driver infringements should be taken into account, not just to reward good practice but to incentivise further good practice. I raise this issue because I seek an assurance from the Minister that the Government will be prepared to investigate such an approach, which seems a much fairer system than that suggested in Committee, when we talked about first come, first served and some kind of balloting system. There needs to be something to encourage good practice in the industry.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, of course I support my noble friend the Minister’s amendment. On the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, the noble Lord was Roads Minister many years ago and I was the Opposition Front Bench spokesman on transport. We had a lot of fun together and we made various improvements. The noble Lord will know that to engage in international goods vehicle operations, one needs an international goods vehicle operator’s licence—one can have an international licence or a national licence.
When the noble Lord was Minister, I would try to increase the standard required of all operators—not just international operators but national operators as well. Sometimes he took my suggestions—there was one issue on which we achieved an improvement—but, generally speaking, as happened with most Ministers, the Opposition’s suggestions would be turned down.
However, if we wanted to, we could raise the bar for having an international operator’s licence. The tests already include the need for good repute and financial standing. If an operator gets into trouble with their annual pass rate or the number of prohibitions they pick up on the roads, the traffic commissioner can remove their licence. However, the noble Lord is right: if you want to engage in international operations, you need to operate to a higher standard than national operations—because, let us face it, operators operating on the continent are representing the United Kingdom. So the noble Lord raises a good point, but it is already covered by the fact that, to engage in international operations, you need an international goods vehicle operator’s licence under the Goods Vehicles (Licensing of Operators) Act.
Baroness Randerson
My Lords, two things above all concern the haulage industry in relation to this aspect of the Bill: the number of permits that will be available, which the Minister has already addressed, and the key issue of the potential cost of those permits. As the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, has just said, it is, at least in part, about fairness—to give our operators a fair opportunity in competition with those from the rest of Europe. We should not be making it more expensive than we have to.
I raised this issue in Committee. In her response, the Minister made the point that if we made the EU permit free, the Government would just put up the cost of the operator’s licence to cover the cost of it. I can clearly see that point of view, so the amendment in my name is an attempt to balance that issue and shut off that exit for the Government by saying that, overall, the cost has to be proportionate.
What I am really trying to do is to urge the Government to minimise the cost of these permits. It is probably not terrifically significant for the big operators but for the small operators—the people who have just one, two or three lorries going to Europe—it is a very significant aspect of their cost structure, so I ask the Government to give the industry a break and make this as cheap as possible. There is also a symptomatic or symbolic thing in this decision: it has been free in the past, for very logical reasons because the EU has been an extension of our domestic market so people were therefore not charged extra for going there; but, symbolically, they are now to be charged more for the right to travel and transport goods overseas. It is therefore important that we keep that cost to the minimum possible.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, once again the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, raises important points and I agree with them. That should be what the Government will negotiate for—equal access, reciprocity, et cetera—and I am sure that my noble friend the Minister will tell us that that is the case. However, once again, I would not like to see the Government tie their hands by agreeing to have the noble Lord’s amendment in the Bill, because it might be necessary to do something that does not quite meet the requirements of his amendment in order to achieve some other desirable outcome. I hope that he will reluctantly accept that point.
As to the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, I agree with the sentiment, particularly on the need to minimise the costs. I hope that if we did have to have this system, it would be just a technicality that a permit would be issued and the costs could be very low. Whatever we do, it must be on some form of cost-recovery basis where the international haulage industry pays for it, but there is the horrible prospect that, for some reason, the system that we will have to adopt is much more complicated and expensive to administer than the old Community licence system. The noble Baroness’s amendment says that the costs should not exceed that, which I suggest to my noble friend the Minister means it is not wise to accept that amendment. It will otherwise be impossible to recover the costs of operating the system. I entirely agree with the sentiment but I hope that my noble friend the Minister does not accept the noble Baroness’s amendment.
Baroness Randerson
Before the noble Earl sits down, I hope he will accept that the wording I used was not that it should not exceed it but that it should not be “disproportionate”.
Earl Attlee
I entirely accept the point. The amendment is carefully drafted but it would still have the undesirable effect.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, this group of amendments deals with the situation for the trailer market. It is clear that the provisions in the back half of the Bill, which deals with trailers, are important and welcome. As the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, said, at one point I had to be quite familiar with all this, but, thankfully in some ways, I have lost touch with parts of the industry in the interim. Nevertheless, it has been represented to me that the trailer market and the use of trailers is actually quite a complex subject—although a more pejorative word is sometimes used. For example, trailers are shared, hired out, or picked up by a driver for one operator and delivered to another, used for part of the journey and then used by another operator. What I am querying in the text is that the reference to the operator or keeper does not seem to include the part of the trailer market that is effectively hiring out. They are either hiring out for money or hiring out in kind by swapping one trailer for another or for a whole range of different services for trailers. It is a complicated area but it is important that those who hire out vehicles have the same obligations on registration, safety and the offences created by the Bill as do operators who always use their own trailers or operate on simpler, less complicated arrangements.
This is a significant part of the market without which the whole system would not operate, or at least it would be hugely more costly and inconvenient to operate without it. Therefore, those who hire out trailers, on whatever terms, are an important part of the efficiency of the sector. But they, likewise, have responsibilities. The Bill should reflect that they have the same responsibilities for registration and related matters as other operators within the sector. I beg to move.
Baroness Randerson
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, raises an important issue which did not have much discussion in Committee. It is a complex issue partly because it is possible to stick a registration plate on a trailer but not really know which trailer it is for. It appears to be the same trailer, but it could be a different one, depending on what is pulling it. We need a system to specify who is responsible and who is operating in a rental market for trailers. We should remember that rental trailers range from trailers used to cart excess household rubbish to the tip through to camping trailers for holidays and up to large commercial trailers. It is a big market. We must also take account of the important issue that, at the commercial level of the industry, drivers swap trailers regularly. In order to be fair to the drivers, there needs to be a simple way for them to check that the trailer is properly registered and safe. That is a key issue that we did not address at all in Committee.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I take it that the intention of the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, is to deal with the commercial HGV trailer market. He said that the issue is complex, and it is certainly that. There is a wide variety of renting, leasing and finance arrangements and they will all have different registration arrangements, so he is right that it is complex. However, it is no more complex than the situation for tractor units or rigid vehicles, which also have complex leasing and rental arrangements. Equally, the situation is no more complicated for a trailer than it is for a goods vehicle. I therefore cannot see why we need to have special consideration in this legislation in the way that the noble Lord suggests.
The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, suggested that operators would not know which trailer is which. However, we already have the ministry plate which is attached to the trailer along with the goods vehicle test disc. Moreover, there is a chassis number on the trailer and the manufacturer’s plate.
Baroness Randerson
For clarity, I was referring to the casual observer rather than the industry insider, or indeed the police or any law enforcement agency that sought to check.
Earl Attlee
Yes, my Lords. As I understand it, there will also be a conventional number plate on the trailer. Once it is registered under this legislation, it will have a number plate in the same way as a rigid vehicle.
The noble Baroness touched on smaller trailers for private use. My comments are particularly aimed at the commercial sector.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)
My Lords, I spoke at length in Committee on this matter. I do not intend to do so today. This is a very good compromise arrangement. The Government would ultimately take the decision. We would simply establish a framework on which basis a Government can take the decision. I hope the Government will accept the amendment.
Baroness Randerson
My Lords, safety has to be taken extremely seriously in this context. Along with the Minister and, I suspect, most of the people here, I rather wish that there had been no need for this legislation, but since we have it we might as well use it in this situation to draw attention to, and give the Government the opportunity to draw some conclusions on, the issue of safety.
The National Caravan Council believes that the number of accidents connected to caravans and similar trailers are mainly not due to the design or condition of the caravan or trailer itself. Most are caused by bad driving, bad loading or bad hitching of the trailer. Therefore, there is a huge need for public education on this. I very much hope that the Government will use the opportunity of providing the report suggested in the amendment by looking at the need for widespread public education on this.
I do not know whether any noble Lords have witnessed an accident of this nature. I did, driving behind a caravan on a motorway. A small wobble rapidly becomes magnified until it becomes a huge sweep of the caravan. Eventually, it cuts back on itself. That motorway was closed for six hours and very serious injuries were sustained. It was a frightening experience which brought home to me how important it is that driving with a trailer is done moderately. In that case—there may have been other factors—it was clear to me that the driver with the caravan was going much too fast, hence the need for public education.
Baroness Sugg
My Lords, at Second Reading and in Committee we discussed our intention to consult industry on possible permit arrangements and the trailer registration scheme. Ministers and officials in my department have been engaged with industry throughout the development of the Bill and have held workshops with hauliers and relevant trade associations. We also intend to hold a public consultation on the details of these schemes that will inform the regulations made under this Bill.
Given the importance we place on understanding the impact of regulations on hauliers and trailer users, I now propose to include a requirement to consult in the Bill. The amendment provides that, before making regulations, the Secretary of State must consult such persons as he thinks fit. This wording and this obligation are consistent with other road traffic legislation, such as the Road Traffic Act 1988. I hope that noble Lords will support the inclusion of this clause. I beg to move.
Baroness Randerson
My Lords, I welcome the Government’s amendment. The Minister has made a significant gesture. In my amendment, Amendment 27, which relates to Clause 21, I have specified a number of organisations because I see no harm in having certain key organisations named in the Bill. To choose one organisation at random from the list, the Freight Transport Association has existed since the 19th century. It would do no harm to specify it in the Bill. The amendment allows the Secretary of State complete discretion to add other organisations as he sees fit.
My earlier amendment did not include the trade unions. Having tabled the amendment, I looked at it the next day and thought, “Oh, there’s no reference to the trade unions”. At a meeting this morning, it was pointed out to me that, although my list is perfectly admirable as far as it goes, it does not refer to the National Farmers’ Union or the Farmers Union of Wales, whereas trailers are an important part of farm working. Therefore, it is important that we look very widely at the list of organisations. I gather that the Government have not yet consulted the trade unions—that is what the Minister said in Committee. I believe that she has not yet had the opportunity to meet the National Caravan Council. Given that this Bill is a coat-hanger, it is important that there is very wide government consultation because so many aspects of the Bill are going to be crucial to the haulage industry.
Whatever arrangement with the EU we come to in the end, it is important that all aspects of the haulage industry and of industries that are affected by haulage are consulted on the implications of the Bill. That is particularly the case because the Government now say that the Bill will come into play not just if there is no agreement with the EU but that aspects of the Bill will come into play whatever happens. I urge the Minister to consider the widest possible consultation in future on the Bill.
Baroness Sugg
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, for her amendment. We feel that the inclusion of a list of consultees in this clause would not give the Secretary of State sufficient flexibility to decide who needs to be consulted. I take the noble Baroness’s point that we can always add to the list, but as soon as we add organisations to it we are statutorily obliged to consult them. For example, if a highly technical amendment needed to be made or if a change were to be made to permits regulations, we would be obliged to consult trailer stakeholders. As I mentioned earlier, there are good precedents for the wording of the government amendment.
We are consulting widely on the regulations, beyond those organisations included in the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, and I can reassure noble Lords that we will consult all the groups listed in her amendment. We are planning to consult on the regulations before the Bill receives Royal Assent, as we intend to bring forward regulations shortly after the passing of the Bill to give as much time as possible for hauliers to make any necessary preparations for leaving the EU.
On the noble Baroness’s point about the National Caravan Council, I have sadly not had the opportunity to meet it yet, but just this afternoon my honourable friend Jesse Norman, the Roads Minister, is meeting it to follow up on a number of meetings with officials.
On trade unions, the department regularly speaks to the unions, specifically Unite and the United Road Transport Union, on freight issues. We absolutely will involve them in the consultation on new regulations. Noble Lords referred to their helpful contributions on the criteria side of things, which we will also be looking at.
We have had workshops covering permits and trailer registrations and shared the policy scoping documents with stakeholders and, as I said, we intend to consult publicly in the next few months. That will now be a statutory requirement, should this amendment be accepted. We will continue to consult with all these organisations. We are very aware of how these regulations can affect industry, whether it be the haulage industry or the caravan industry, and indeed leisure users. I hope that reassurance allows the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment. I am pleased with the broad support that the government amendment has received, and I beg to move.
Baroness Randerson
Baroness Randerson
My Lords, my amendments would simply ensure that the affirmative procedure is used throughout, and not just in the first instance. I welcome the fact that the Government have moved on the issue of making this an affirmative procedure in the first instance, but I remind noble Lords that the DPRRC recommended the sifting procedure. It also expressed extreme concern about the vagueness of the Bill, to put it in simple terms. There is a strong case for ensuring that the affirmative procedure is used more widely than just in the first instance. This relates particularly to where offences are being created. There is an issue of public confidence that Parliament has had the opportunity to consider what is being done as a result of the Bill.
Amendment 28 once again reintroduces the concept of a sunset clause, which would cause Sections 1 and 3 of the Bill to expire after three years. The Secretary of State could extend that by affirmative resolution—this was recommended by the DPRRC. I believe that I have allowed a very generous time for the sunset clause. Our argument is that the Government should use the Bill—or at least Sections 1 and 3—to do what it was drafted for and what it was proposed that it should do, which is to be a backstop in relation to a failure to agree with the EU and reach some kind of settlement that is mutually acceptable on all sides. We very much hope that a failure to agree will not happen. We all hope that there will be a positive and strong agreement with the EU in the end. But, in the event of failure, the Government have this Bill, and it should be used for the purposes that it was apparently drafted for. I believe that it remains too wide and therefore that there is a good argument for a sunset clause and for ensuring that any offences created should be subject to the affirmative procedure.
Baroness Sugg
My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords for their contributions to the debate and, as it is the last group today, I am grateful for contributions throughout the passage of the Bill. The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, has moved an amendment to provide a sunset clause for some aspects of permanent schemes introduced under the legislation, and the DPRRC report also recommended the insertion of sunset provisions. I agree that the Bill should not provide powers that may never be used, but use of the regulation-making powers set out in the Bill does not depend on the outcome of our negotiations with the EU, as we have discussed. The powers will be used in any event for applications outside the EU context—for applications pursuant to our bilateral agreements with non-EU countries, for example—so a sunset provision would constrain our ability to manage permit applications for those bilateral agreements.
I agree with the noble Baroness’s intention to ensure that unnecessary and unused legislation does not languish on the statute book but, as I said, that would not be the case. The effect of the amendment, even with the Secretary of State’s ability to extend it, would be to commit both government and Parliament to an unnecessary procedure. We would always need to extend the clause, as we would be using the regulations. For that reason, I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
I tabled the government amendment to apply the affirmative procedure to the first regulations made and those first regulations only. I have taken account of the views of the DPRRC and the Constitution Committee—I am grateful for their work in scrutinising the Bill—and the concerns raised in Committee and agree that there should be further scrutiny of regulations in this case as they are likely to have an impact on the haulage sector. We believe that it is appropriate for the first regulations only; the same scrutiny is not required for subsequent regulations. The noble Baroness mentioned offences in particular. Again, we are following precedent by moving offences to affirmative first. In recent regulations, such as those under the Childcare Act, those offences are only affirmative first, and that is what we followed.
We want to ensure that scrutiny of the regulations in this area is proportionate, and we spent some time in Grand Committee debating the merits of the affirmative and negative procedures. We are using powers that will replicate many aspects of existing schemes such as those under the Vehicle Excise and Registration Act, and those regulations are subject to the negative procedure but, given that these regulations will introduce an entirely new scheme, it is absolutely appropriate that they are affirmative in the first instance.
I hope noble Lords will agree that the government amendments allow proper and proportionate scrutiny, and I commend them.
Baroness Randerson
I am grateful to the Minister for the progress we have made. Taken altogether, this will make a clear difference to certain parts of the Bill and I am happy to beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Haulage Permits and Trailer Registration Bill [HL]
Baroness Randerson ExcerptsThursday 22nd March 2018
(6 years, 5 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Haulage Permits and Trailer Registration Act 2018 View all Haulage Permits and Trailer Registration Act 2018 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 84-II Marshalled list for Grand Committee (PDF, 75KB) - (20 Mar 2018)
Baroness Randerson
“(1A) Regulations under subsection (1) must provide for compulsory registration of—(a) commercial trailers weighing over 750kg that travel internationally;(b) non-commercial trailers weighing over 3.5 tonnes that travel internationally; and(c) all new commercial trailers over 750kg.(1B) Regulations under subsection (1) must provide for voluntary registration of all trailers not covered by subsection (1A).”
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, Amendment 15 would require the Secretary of State to provide for compulsory registration of certain trailers. These requirements were suggested in the impact assessment by the Government as a possible registration scheme. We are simply suggesting that those requirements should be in the Bill. There is a number of reasons: first, as a general principle, this is an opportunity to flesh out this very thin Bill a bit in a meaningful way. It is, after all, a trailer registration scheme, and that is one of the two purposes of the Bill. If this amendment were on the face of the Bill, the Government would not be able to provide for a compulsory registration scheme for all trailers; in other words, this would narrow the scope.
The amendment would also give more clarity about the status of certain vehicles. On Second Reading and in our previous Committee sitting, several examples were raised regarding the uncertainty surrounding what categories would be applied to which trailers.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)
The amendment refers to trailers weighing over 750 kilograms. Is that gross weight or net weight?
Baroness Randerson
It is, I gather, but that is the instruction from the Minister. We are working to the Government’s definitions.
This is a good opportunity to raise the issue of the voluntary registration scheme currently provided by the National Caravan Council, not to be confused with the Caravan Club. The council is an industry body which operates a very well-established scheme of registration. It is concerned that the Bill should not muddy the waters on registration. I am sure that it would like its own scheme to continue, but I am concerned that we do not end up with two different registration schemes with slightly different requirements and criteria. This will already add complexity to the existing situation, and we need to be careful that it does not become confusing as well as slightly more bureaucratic. How will the Government’s proposed scheme fit with the National Caravan Council scheme? Have she or her officials had discussions with the council, because it remains concerned about the issue?
Our other amendment in this group, Amendment 17, was drafted simply to help provide clarity to travellers who may, as a result of us not being a party to the community licence any more, be subject to different trailer registration requirements in different EU countries. The point has been made in debate here that Germany, for example, is quite stringent in its requirements on trailers. We are seeking to take the opportunity of this Bill to raise public awareness of the variation in the attitude between different EU member states to trailer registration. I very much hope that the Minister can give us some information to allay concerns.
Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)
My Lords, I have tabled Amendment 16 in this group. It is a probing amendment that would cover commercial and non-commercial trailers. It relates, along with Amendment 18 in the next group, to concerns raised by Karin Smyth, MP for Bristol South, prompted by a tragic case involving constituents of hers, Donna and Scott Hussey. Their son, Freddie, was killed in 2014 when he was hit by a trailer that had come loose from a Land Rover. The trailer’s tow-hitch was not secure as the position of its handbrake prevented it being properly locked down. The family and Karin Smyth have been campaigning ever since on the issue of trailer safety, and they have attracted support from successive road safety Ministers, including the current Minister, Jesse Norman. The National Trailer and Towing Association also supports legal changes.
My Amendment 16 simply says that there should be a compulsory register of trailers weighing under 3.5 tonnes, regardless of whether it is used in the UK or internationally, and that the register should be maintained by the Secretary of State. It is pretty obvious that registration is essential as a requirement for regular safety checks. There is no evidence in the impact assessment published alongside the Bill as to why the Government have set the weight rules at 750 kilograms and applied the regime to commercial trailers only. Why limit the scope in the way in which the department is proposing? Why not take advantage of the legislative opportunity that this Bill provides to widen the scope of safety checks? The Freddie Hussey case is not the only example of failed safety measures leading to loss of life. The Husseys, understandably, have done quite a lot of research and have come across several similar cases.
The impact assessment says that the Bill presents an opportunity to improve safety through better regulations. This amendment seeks to probe this possibility. I also give notice, if I may, that, if I get an unsympathetic response from the Minister, I might want to push this issue on Report. I would, of course, much prefer to get there by agreement and co-operation. I am sure that the Minister will be sympathetic to this and I hope that the Committee will be also. When we come to Amendment 18, I will flesh out some of the thinking behind this approach and the trailer safety requirement, which I will move later.
Baroness Sugg
I am afraid that we do not have the detailed figures on trailer accidents ahead of the next discussion.
Baroness Randerson
I thank the Minister for her reply. As usual, she has indicated that she is in discussions with the National Caravan Council. I am content with that. I will look carefully at the details of the reply, particularly in relation to the National Caravan Council’s registration scheme and its requirements.
The noble Lord asked about the size of the sector. As an illustration, the figures I have show that in the last year there were 65,000 new caravan registrations and sales—and that is only one sort of trailer. The National Caravan Council’s scheme registered more than a third of those, so it is an important scheme that already exists and it is important that it fits alongside the Government’s proposals. Obviously, I will come back to the Minister if I have any further questions, but at this moment I am happy to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Snape
Desperate though we are to hear from the noble Baroness, and I know that she is equally desperate to put us right on this amendment, I am concerned about the tone of the debate. My noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe has talked about the nanny state and not wishing to overregulate trailers. My noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours said that this is about small trailers. He had one himself that he drove around the countryside and everything was fine. However, noble Lords ought to reflect on the fact that no matter how small they are, these trailers can travel at a fair old speed, depending on the mood of the driver. Even a small one breaking away on a motorway, for example, could cause an enormous amount of carnage.
I spent my working life in the railway industry, where the smallest wagon is inspected on a regular basis. That is probably the reason the railway industry has gone for a decade without killing a passenger in a moving train accident. The same does not apply on our road network. For my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe to talk about the nanny state ignores the fact that we are still killing a couple of thousand people and seriously injuring more than 10,000 on our roads. The smallest trailer, if badly maintained, could play its part in adding to that carnage.
My noble friend shakes his head, but he must be aware of the issues when he is driving on a motorway. Because of the lack of traffic police these days—we can play a game called “spot the traffic policeman”; the only time I see one is when I watch the television because I do not see any on our roads—I have been overtaken by people dragging those little trailers that my noble friend has just referred to. They drive in a cavalier way at 65 or 70 miles an hour, although strictly speaking they are supposed to be restricted to 50 miles an hour. If one of those trailers were to break away at 70 miles an hour, I do not care how small it is, it could cause a great deal of carnage on the road. I disagree with my noble friend’s view that the nanny state should keep out of legislation in this particular instance and I think that there is a proper case for inspection and regulation. I hope that the Minister will refer to it when the happy time comes and she is allowed to respond to the debate.
Baroness Randerson
My Lords, I cannot sit still any longer. I have listened carefully to the debate. For the avoidance of doubt, I have driven a trailer. For about 25 years I would pull a trailer once a year for our summer holidays going camping. It requires a different driving technique and I agree with the noble Lord that even a small trailer, if it has not been hitched properly, has been overloaded or is being driven badly, can be extremely dangerous.
I have decided to take part in this debate to ask the Minister if she agrees that the Government should look at the issue of trailer safety in the round, although this Bill may not be the place to do that. However, it is obvious that years ago in the minds of people at the Department for Transport, there was an association between the size of the vehicle being driven and the danger posed. I notice, having reached a certain age where one has to apply for a new driving licence, that without separate permission and a test, you are not permitted to drive large vehicles even if you drove such vehicles in the past. The concept that as you get older, certain aspects of driving are more difficult, has been applied to the issue of size, so I think that there is a case for the Government to look at the issue of the safety of trailers as a whole, not only in the context of the Bill.
Baroness Golding
My Lords, I, too, would hate to be left out of this debate. I have been driving for 65 years and I have never seen an accident caused by a trailer. I have never seen one tipped over at the side of the road. However, having said that, times have changed. These trailers are much more powerful than they used to be, so we ought to look at the legislation and decide what needs to be done.
Lord Blencathra
My Lords, as the chairman of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, I am delighted to say a few words on Amendment 27. No doubt my noble friend the Minister swotted up on all the briefs and the grand issues relating to Brexit and European trailers; little did she know that she would have to hear confessions from Members on all sides of the Committee about their experiences driving good trailers, big trailers and dodgy little trailers—and wheels falling off.
I am not sure whether I can trump the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, but as a boy up on the farm in the Highlands I was able to drive a tractor by the age of 10 and drive it on the highway by the age of 12. When I was allowed legally to drive a car on the highway, my first car was a three-gear Ford Prefect which, on a long downhill slope, I once got up to 62 miles an hour—I could drive the tractors a bit faster.
The Delegated Powers Committee has recommended the sifting committee procedure for Clauses 1 and 2. We recommend it for Clause 1 because, as we say in our report,
“the content of any regulations made under clause 1 will depend on future international agreements … there is no current indication as to what regulations under clause 1 might say or how important they might be, if they are needed at all … it cannot be known in advance that the negative procedure will always be suitable for regulations made under clause 1 … it might transpire that some regulations made under clause 1 might require the affirmative procedure”.
On Clause 2, to shorten our report to the basics, we cite the Explanatory Memorandum which states that,
“it is not yet clear what sort of a regime or regimes will need to be introduced and, in the interest of ensuring that the provisions cater for agreed scenarios and are not too wide, it is necessary to legislate by way of secondary legislation once negotiations have been concluded and the nature of any permit scheme that needs to be introduced is clear”.
We say:
“Although the Government do not currently know what regulations under clause 2 will contain or how significant they will be, the Government propose that the negative procedure will always apply”.
For that reason, we think that there should be a sifting mechanism where colleagues in the House can decide which ones are tiddly statutory instruments and the negative procedure is okay and which ones require the affirmative procedure.
We stress in paragraph 10:
“We are not seeking to make a sifting mechanism a general feature of our legislative landscape”—
we are not seeking to attach it to every Brexit Bill.
“However, the circumstances of the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union have given rise to unique legislative challenges”.
We know that next year we may have 800 to 1,000 statutory instruments to get through, perhaps in a short period of time. In those circumstances we have recommended the sifting procedure to the House. I know that the Leader of the House, the Lord Privy Seal, has rejected that already, but we recommend it for the Bill because the first five clauses begin with the words, “Regulations may”. That is almost unique. Because there will be so many regulations and some will be routine, trivial and therefore not crucial, some will be mega important and may require the affirmative procedure, we commend the sifting mechanism—exactly the same procedure as we identified in the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, using the same secondary legislation scrutiny procedure, not creating any new all-singing all-dancing committee—to the Committee, and I commend it to my noble friend.
Baroness Randerson
My Lords, my Amendment 23 is an attempt to tackle the issue in a parallel manner. It takes on board the Delegated Powers Committee report which I think we can say was not entirely favourable. Last week, I quoted the committee as saying that the Bill is,
“more of a mission statement than legislation”.
As the noble Lord just said, the committee specifically referred to Clauses 1 to 5 all beginning with the words, “Regulations may”. It also chastised the Department for Transport for not producing some illustrative regulations alongside the Bill and urged us to probe the Government in Committee. I am trying to follow its advice.
As the committee report highlights, 16 of the 24 clauses contain delegated powers, all of them subject only to the negative procedure. Amendment 23 attempts to rectify this, ensuring that the substantive clauses of the Bill are subject to the affirmative procedure.
I also want to note that the Constitution Committee said specifically that Bills like this are difficult for Parliament to scrutinise and—this is the key phrase—present a fundamental challenge to the balance of power between Parliament and the Executive. Given the reference just now by the noble Lord to the number of statutory instruments that we have coming through, it is important that we continue to maintain a more stringent attitude to SIs than is indicated by the Bill as currently written.
Amendment 21 particularly highlights Clause 17, which would give the Secretary of State the power to create offences by statutory instrument. Labour’s Amendments 24, 25 and 27 relate to the sifting committee for statutory instruments, which was recommended in the report of the Delegated Powers Committee. I believe that these are very sound suggestions and I support them. There are good reasons for adopting a more rigorous attitude towards this and I am sure that the Minister would be the first to admit that at this stage the Government do not have absolute clarity as to how they are going forward. To my mind, that is an even stronger argument for why we should have some form of sunset clause and sifting to ensure that the important elements of this Bill are properly scrutinised in the future.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I have no idea why your Lordships keep banging on about affirmative orders and want everything to be done by the affirmative procedure. It is good that we have my noble friend the chairman of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee with us, and we have his counsel. However, in my opinion, and it may be wrong, his committee keeps recommending the affirmative procedure when it is not appropriate.
These are insignificant matters. We are talking about having an international permit for heavy goods vehicles and about registering trailers. The Bill does not provide for significant or severe penalties—they are limited in the Bill. But my noble friend the Minister can make drastic changes by means of negative instruments. For instance, using Section 42 of the Road Traffic Act 1988, she can change the construction and use regulations, having decided one day that every car must have a 20 kilogram dry-powder fire extinguisher. That would be really painful and a tremendous waste of money, but she can do that under the negative procedure. Or she could put a requirement in the construction and use regulations that it is very easy to fall foul of. That would be undesirable, but again, she can do so under the negative procedure.
It there was a problem with the regulations that will arise from this Bill or with a negative instrument—perhaps the penalties are too severe, although they are limited, or have other unintended consequences—the negative instrument can be prayed against; I think the praying period is 40 days. Industry and stakeholders have very good means of alerting Her Majesty’s Opposition to any problems with new regulations. If there are undesirable effects, the Opposition and other parliamentarians have a range of tools they can use to flag them up. Her Majesty’s Opposition can require a negative instrument to be debated on the Floor of the House, and they can also make sure that it takes place in prime time.
Baroness Randerson
I recall the noble Earl saying similar things last time, but he knows as well as I do that the precedents for that kind of activity—that kind of movement against negative instruments—indicate how difficult it is to actually change anything. He knows there is an outcry if we try to deal with things like that in the way that he describes. Is it not therefore better to have a more precautionary approach? Although the issues here might seem small, the big issue of whether we can trade properly abroad and with our neighbours is fundamental to the whole economy. I think the noble Earl would accept that the tenor across the Room today has not been that of a group of people seeking minute regulation. There has been a very reasonable attitude towards increasing regulation.
Earl Attlee
On the precautionary principle, the problem I have is that we are using precious time to debate things that we do not need to. When I was an Opposition Front-Bench spokesman, I dealt with affirmative orders while thinking, “Why in God’s name are we debating this?” One day, the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, came in with a defence order—a Foreign Office order or something. She made a big speech, and I just smiled at her and then the order went through.
The other point that the noble Baroness raised was about the difference between an affirmative order and a negative one. The ability to debate it and to change it is no different whether the order is affirmative or negative. The only difference is whether it has to be debated or whether it gets debated only if we can flag it up: our ability to amend it is no different. I am going to get killed now.
Baroness Randerson
My Lords, my Amendment 28 in this group is to Clause 23. It provides a sunset clause which would cause Clauses 1 and 3 to expire after three years, which is a period that the Secretary of State could extend by affirmative resolution. This was recommended by the Delegated Powers Committee.
Amendment 22 to Clause 21, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, requires the Secretary of State to lay a draft of the regulations he intends to make under Clauses 1 to 5 and 2 to 18 before the House within three months of the Bill passing. I understand the purpose of this: to improve scrutiny and introduce a sunset clause, but I am not sure that we support the three-month timeframe in this case. We expect the Secretary of State to consult thoroughly before making the regulations and, to my mind, three months is not a realistic period. I understand that the need to make law quickly has to be balanced by the need to make law well, and that always requires consultation, but the Minister has our sympathy if she has to keep to a three-month timescale. I think that that is overly ambitious, but the principle of a period within which the work has to be done is very good.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I have some sympathy for the noble Baroness’s amendment. I have general concern about Acts of Parliament hanging around on the statute book that have not been commenced. I have drafted an amendment that I have not used yet—I will willingly share it with the noble Baroness—and discussed it with officials, along with my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham. Some pretty high-profile bits of legislation have hung around causing hellacious problems when the Government did not implement them. I have sympathy with her amendment, but I suspect that there are reasons why it is not appropriate for the Bill, although we need to stop legislation hanging around that has not been commenced.
Baroness Randerson
To clarify, the reason for this is that with most Bills we pass here, the Government believe that they need the legislation—whether we like it or not—and have a clear idea of how they are going to implement it. This Bill suffers from a number of uncertainties over exactly how it is going to work in practice and even whether it will be needed. It is worth remembering the Minister’s opening words, which were to the effect that this was a Bill the Government hoped they did not need.
Lord Bassam of Brighton
The amendment I have in this group is just to tease out when the Secretary of State might bring forward the licensing arrangements. We would like to have some idea of the timetable. I accept that this is a Bill the Government do not want to use and I suspect that the industry would rather they did not either. Most of us would think that it would be better to have the current system than what is on offer here, not least because operators will end up being charged. But I would like some idea of the timetable and how the Secretary of State intends to organise these regulations.
I rather take to Amendment 28 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson. It is very valuable for Clauses 1 and 3. Obviously, I support Amendment 22, moved by my noble—and good—friend Lord Tunnicliffe.
Baroness Randerson
“( ) Before making any regulations under this Act, the Secretary of State must consult—(a) the Road Haulage Association;(b) the Freight Transport Association;(c) the National Caravan Council;(d) the Caravan Club;(e) the Institute of Grocery Distribution;(f) the British Retail Consortium;(g) the Food and Drink Federation; and(h) such other persons or organisations as the Secretary of State considers it appropriate to consult.”
Baroness Randerson
My Lords, I will be brief on this amendment. The DPRRC report mentioned that the Government have given no examples of the regulations that they intend to make under the Bill. Given the wide-ranging consequences these could have—not just for industry but also for hobbies and leisure; indeed, for the whole of life—it is essential that there is full consultation before regulations are put before Parliament. We have suggested a range of organisations; some are obvious and some are less obvious, but I am absolutely sure that it is not a comprehensive list. However, it is presented here as an opportunity to ask the Minister about the details of how the consultation will take place, the nature of the consultation and which organisations will be consulted. I can see immediately that the list we have put forward—apologies come from my noble friend Lord Teverson who is at Defra discussing the marine safety audit—does not include, for example, trade unions, given that there are obviously employee interests in this as well as employer interests.
I do not need to delay the Committee any further. It is simply a question of whether we can have some details on the consultation process. I beg to move.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, to cut my contribution short, I shall quote from page 8 of the Explanatory Memorandum:
“A consequence of ratification is that unregistered trailers could be turned away at the borders of other countries who have ratified the 1968 Convention. Therefore, for operational reasons, a trailer registration scheme needs to be implemented”.
I would have thought that critical to the process of consultation was the AA, because at our borders that organisation is the last port of call for people who need advice on what is going to happen when they go abroad. The leaflets that it circulates are about subjects such as travelling abroad, insurance arrangements and health arrangements. You can pick them up in its kiosks at Dover, or I suppose at any port where you have a roll-on, roll-off ferry system. They should be made available. That is my case, and I hope the AA is consulted.
Baroness Sugg
My noble friend makes a very good point as always. No, we would not consult trade unions unless it were relevant to do so.
I understand the noble Baroness’s and noble Lord’s point: many of the people who will be affected by this will indeed be employees travelling to and from the continent. We need to make sure that the regulations work for them as well as employers, and that the people who will be responsible for registering the trailers and applying for the permits are consulted too. We have not yet had any formal consultations with the trade unions, but I will certainly take that away and we will look to involve them at the appropriate point.
Baroness Randerson
In view of the Minister’s response, I am happy to withdraw the amendment.
Rural Bus Services
Baroness Randerson Excerpts(6 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Randerson
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they have taken to improve rural bus services.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Sugg) (Con)
My Lords, buses are a vital part of our public transport system and the Government are committed to supporting them. They can be particularly important in rural areas, where many people depend on their local bus service, but no single solution will work for all rural areas. The Government are providing funding and powers, most recently through the Bus Services Act 2017, so that local authorities can work in partnership with local bus operators to identify and support services that best fit the needs of individual communities.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, the rural bus network has been cut by 40% in the last 10 years, with further cuts planned, for example in Norfolk and Kent. Councils blame a £200 million shortfall when the Government reimburses them through the concessionary fares scheme. Many older people, as the Minister said, rely on this in isolated communities. Will the Minister agree to review funding for concessionary fares and to look at funding for community transport to replace bus services where they are no longer provided?
Baroness Sugg
My Lords, last year the Government renewed our commitment to supporting older and disabled people. We recognise the importance of accessible and affordable transport and are therefore entirely committed to the concessionary fares. Through the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, local authorities are provided with the funding to meet their statutory obligations over concessionary travel. Bus operators are reimbursed on the basis that they are no worse off for carrying concessionary pass holders. We issue guidance to help local authorities administer that concession, consistent with that principle.
Haulage Permits and Trailer Registration Bill [HL]
Baroness Randerson ExcerptsTuesday 13th March 2018
(6 years, 5 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Haulage Permits and Trailer Registration Act 2018 View all Haulage Permits and Trailer Registration Act 2018 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 84-I(a) Amendments for Grand Committee, supplementary to the marshalled list (PDF, 61KB) - (12 Mar 2018)
Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)
My Lords, you will have to bear with me; it is a while since I have had to do this.
I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, to Grand Committee and hope that she enjoys it as much as we will. Amendment 1, in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, is very simple. Its aim is to ensure that the Government have as a negotiating objective continuing participation in the EU Community licence arrangements. Those arrangements have served the UK well. One might argue that they have created a frictionless regime for borders, are easy to understand and largely ensure safe passage of UK goods across the EU 27 and from the EU into the UK.
The Minister should welcome the amendment because it is surely what the Government want to secure in their negotiations. To put it into the Bill would give the freight industry the sort of confidence that it requires and demonstrate beyond doubt that the Government are very much on the industry’s side. If anyone needed reminding of the importance of freight to our economy, they need go no further than read last night’s Hansard. I have had the benefit of reading it, and my noble friend Lord Berkeley, among others, was passionate in his arguments on behalf of the freight industry generally, but for our economy in particular, when he moved amendments on freight-related issues. In particular, his Amendment 104 to Clause 7 of the withdrawal Bill caught my eye. It has similar objectives to this amendment in the sense that any new procedures that we put in place should avoid increasing delays to freight transport. The only surefire way to achieve that is to continue the current scheme.
The volume of traffic between the UK and the EU is enormous. In 2016, as my noble friend Lord Berkeley reminded us, 67 million tonnes of unitised freight were imported or exported, of which 14 million tonnes were temperature-controlled. There are 3,000 trucks a day carrying temperature-controlled loads. In one year alone, 55 million UK customs declarations had to be made, and my noble friend says that this is likely to multiply fivefold after Brexit.
We want at all costs to avoid the queues we have seen when Operation Stack has had to kick in. That would kill our export trade and decimate our ability to move materials into the UK for industry and farming purposes. Seeking to emulate what we already have must be an objective of the Bill, and that is what my amendment achieves.
I look forward to the happy prospect of the Minister not just welcoming my amendment but agreeing to busily import it and incorporate it into the Bill. I cannot believe that the Government would want to create any doubt in anyone’s mind about their intention to be successful in their negotiations and to secure the self-same benefits for the road freight sector that we currently enjoy. I am sure that the FTA and RHA would welcome that certainty. I am confident that our farming industry would want it and that manufacturers, the pharmaceutical sector and, importantly, the construction industry would want it too.
It might be for the convenience of the Committee if I say just a few words about some of the other amendments in my name in this group. The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, and I have put our names to sunset provisions simply because, if the Government are successful, not only do the main provisions of the Bill cease to have relevance but we both feel that the clauses should cease to have a place on the statute book. These amendments are supported by the Delegated Powers Committee and the Constitution Committee; I draw colleagues’ attention to the Constitution Committee’s report that has just been published. I also support the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, in the group. I beg to move.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, I signed Amendment 1 because it drew attention to the fact that, yet again, we have an example of the Government trying desperately to devise a way to maintain a position that we already have. They are fighting to keep the benefits that we currently enjoy as members of the EU. Although the Government have been quite innovative in their approach—in so far as there is any detail—the situation will clearly not be anything like as good as what hauliers currently enjoy.
The formulation in the amendment is similar to that used in the Nuclear Safeguards Bill, for example, in which we urge the Government to pursue Euratom membership. The Minister will be familiar with my Private Member’s Bill on the open skies agreement; it is the same formulation. We have a perfectly good arrangement in the EU at the moment, which we will leave for something less satisfactory. This group of amendments ensures that the powers granted under the haulage permits Bill are not applicable if we stay within the EU’s Community licence regime—in other words, if we successfully negotiate to remain in some kind of positive relationship within the EU.
I draw attention to the very harsh words of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee on the Bill. They reflect the sort of thing that we have heard quite regularly recently, but they are rather stronger than we are used to:
“The Bill is wholly skeletal, more of a mission statement than legislation”.
The committee also points out that:
“16 of the 24 clauses contain delegated powers, all of them subject only to the negative procedure”.
We have not even got draft regulations in order to see what the Government are aiming at.
It is clear that the Bill was written in a panic at the very last minute. It is the first instance I have come across of the Government legislating while saying that they do not want to and admitting that they do not know how the system will work. That is not how British democracy should work. It is yet another example of the destructive impact of Brexit. Having admitted that they did not want to have to legislate in this way, the Government should have included in the Bill some sunset clauses or the use of only the affirmative procedure. As it stands, the Bill is not worthy of a democracy.
Lord Snape (Lab)
My Lords, I support the noble Lord and the noble Baroness in their amendment. Noble Lords will have to forgive me if I sound even less coherent than usual today. I am suffering from what everybody else would call a cold, but, being a man, I believe it is something far more serious. Nevertheless, I am still here.
I would have thought, as my noble friend implied, that the Government would be in favour of the proposed new clause. As the noble Baroness said, this is rather last-minute legislation. In a way, it is understandable, because we still do not know how far negotiations have gone where these matters are concerned. I promised myself not to make a Second Reading speech and will not, but I found it surprising during the Brexit discussion to find so many road hauliers in favour of Brexit because they were not happy with the status quo as it then was. Now, of course, they are a lot less happy at the prospect of a status quo no longer existing. The main concern, at least of those whom I spoke to, was about cabotage; there is little mention—in fact, I do not think there is any—of cabotage in the Bill, and it would be interesting to hear from the Minister whether any discussions which have taken place with the rest of the EU have concentrated on this aspect of the road haulage industry.
My noble friend and the noble Baroness mentioned the number of lorry movements from the United Kingdom to the rest of the EU; there are a hell of a lot coming the other way—I understand about three times as many. We have expressed concern about the likelihood of Kent being a lorry park if no arrangements are made in light of this amendment, but if three times as many lorries are coming into the United Kingdom as leaving, it would be possible to imagine northern France also becoming a lorry park. That is not to say that I share the optimism of those who say that there will be an agreement because these matters cause even more dislocation to our European partners than they do the United Kingdom. Again, it is difficult to tease from the Government where exactly we are in the negotiations. We await the Minister’s response to this amendment. My view is that it might be something that the Government are happy to support. If she says that, at least we will have started the Committee off on a happy note, even if it is not repeated—although I hope it will be—during our deliberations. I support my noble friend and the noble Baroness and hope that the Minister can give a sympathetic response.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, I support Amendments 6 and 11 in this group in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe. I do so in my capacity as chairman of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee.
The first thing I need to say to the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, is that it is a bit unfair to characterise my committee’s report as having “very harsh words”. The noble Lords, Lord Tyler, Lord Thomas of Gresford, Lord Thurlow and Lord Lisvane, and my noble friend Lord Moynihan do not do harsh. Further, if one looks at my committee’s report, one will see that we have made five recommendations, two of which say that it would be nice to have a sifting committee and two of which say that we should have a sunset clause, as proposed in Amendments 6 and 11. The first recommendation suggests that it would have been helpful if the Government had given us some examples of the type of regulations necessary. If those are “harsh words”, I think the noble Baroness is living in cloud-cuckoo-land, if I may say so.
Baroness Randerson
Can I clarify that? Having used the term “harsh”, I then used the precise words that are in the report. Anyone reading these proceedings will be absolutely clear that my definition of “harsh” is based on the words used in the report. It might be in the eyes of the reader rather than the reality of the situation.
Lord Blencathra
I thank the noble Baroness. Our report does say:
“The Bill is wholly skeletal, more of a mission statement than legislation”.
It goes on to say in paragraph 4 that:
“We appreciate that the position remains unclear for a variety of reasons”,
which explains why we think the Bill is skeletal. I hope my noble friend the Minister can give us a few examples of the sort of regulations that may be necessary.
On Amendments 6 and 11, the Government’s helpful Explanatory Memorandum says that:
“The power has been left to delegated legislation rather than included in the Bill because the terms of international road transport agreements are as yet unknown. The provisions put in place, if any provisions are needed at all, will reflect the terms agreed between the UK and the EU or other countries for the carriage of goods”.
The wording in the Explanatory Memorandum is almost identical on Clauses 1 and 3, to which these amendments relate. That is why we simply say in our committee’s report:
“Given that regulations under clause 1”—
and Clause 3—
“might prove to be unnecessary, we recommend that the Bill should contain a sunset provision, extendable if necessary, to remove the regulation-making power in clause 1 if it does in fact prove to be unnecessary”.
I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, on tabling that amendment on behalf of my committee. I had been a bit negligent in putting it down myself, so I am grateful to him and I would be grateful if the Minister, in due course, could respond to the points made.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, Amendments 2, 4 and 5 in my name come from a question I have about Clause 1: why do drivers transporting goods to Northern Ireland get singled out? We know that the Republic is going to remain in the single market and that Northern Ireland is not. I see no difference between the requirements for a permit, or anything else, for drivers going between Northern Ireland and the Republic, between Northern Ireland and the UK—I assume that there is no need for a special licence between Northern Ireland and the UK—and between Northern Ireland and continental Europe. There is an added complexity to the licensing system which is not justified. What is the difference between drivers in Northern Ireland and those in other parts of the UK going to other parts of the European Union? Finding that out is the purpose of these three amendments. I beg to move.
Baroness Randerson
My Lords, Amendment 3 in my name also deals with Northern Ireland. It is a probing amendment, seeking an explanation from the Minister. Following an “international agreement”, Clause 3 allows the creation of regulations prohibiting an operator of a goods vehicle using it in specified circumstances. This creates obvious problems for the Irish border. If an international agreement were able to prohibit the travel of goods between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, this could lead to a diminishing sense of the common identity that has developed in the years following the Good Friday agreement. It also presents a practical problem, as the avoidance of a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic would not be possible. We all know that the Prime Minister has repeatedly said that she wishes to avoid a hard border, but you are going to have a problem delivering that if checks are needed on the border. Whether the operator can cross the border or not, it is the checks that are the issue.
The Bill suggests that there is a sensitivity about travel between Northern Ireland and the Republic. Our amendment simply strengthens that reference. We obviously do not want to imply that there should be checks between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK—quite the contrary. I therefore want to emphasise that the amendment is to investigate how this provision would work and in what circumstances the Government anticipate that they might have to use it. It would obviously be a lot easier for everyone if we kept to the current arrangements.
Lord Campbell-Savours
My Lords, “first come, first served” implies immediately a limited number of permits, a shortage of permits and problems in the industry. I want to read the general conditions from one such permit issued nearly 35 years ago, which civil servants may find useful during the negotiations. It is quite short, but raises a number of issues. Under “General Conditions”, it states:
“This authorisation, together with the journey record mentioned below, must be carried on the vehicle and be produced at the request of any authorised inspecting officer. It authorises only the number of journeys indicated. It is not valid for national transport. It is not transferable. The carrier is required to comply, in the territory of each Member State, with the laws, regulations and administrative provisions of that State, and in particular with those concerning transport and traffic. This authorisation must be returned to the issuing agency within fifteen days of date of expiry. Before each transport operation, the holder of this authorisation is required to prepare any journey record provided for in bilateral agreements. Such journey record must be returned at the same time as this authorisation”.
So it is a fairly complicated process for the hauliers.
If it is not used within 15 days of the date of expiry, it is returned, but that permit has already been allocated to a specific journey—if that is what it says in the terms and conditions. Is that permit then written off? Does it affect the total number or permits that are allocated, or can we simply allocate a substitute permit, having declared that permit to be written off? I am asking this because, if a limited number of permits are allocated, there is going to be some argument about where they are going. I am trying to establish how we calculate the total numbers that are allocated.
I have been thinking about the earlier intervention by my noble friend Lord Snape. He talked about it being of benefit, in certain circumstances, to our haulage industry. There is a problem there, because we want to avoid that. If we are going into these negotiations on the basis that we want enough permits to supply all the demand, the last thing we want to do is starve the Irish of permits. If they need them, they should be given them, because that helps our case in the negotiations with the European Union.
Baroness Randerson
In her reply, will the Minister clarify exactly what these permits will be? The background briefing that her department issued referred to single-journey permits and multiple-journey permits. It referred to the European Conference of Ministers of Transport permit system. Having researched this, I believe that the number of permits available under that system would be absolutely tiny. Where are these permits going to come from? What is going to regulate them? Are we going to dream it up ourselves or base it on the international system? We need a bit of clarity on this.
Baroness Sugg
My Lords, I thank noble Lords again for their contributions to this debate. I assure noble Lords that this provision is not intended to allow these methods to be the only approach used, or for these to be used without the use of other criteria. We are in the process of negotiating with the EU on how UK hauliers will operate in the EU 27 after our withdrawal. As I said, we are confident we will secure an agreement which allows them to operate without restrictions on market access. If we do agree a permit system, “no restrictions” would mean unlimited permits. The exact nature of what will be in the permits will be down to the international agreement with the EU. We do not have details of that yet, but I imagine that it would follow the international information which is included on them. I will take back the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. I will look in detail in Hansard about what the exact restrictions on that permit are. I am not sure that we would repeat them in a future system.
In including this, we are attempting to be prudent in ensuring that the industry would be able to continue to operate under a range of different outcomes. It may be that, depending on our future partnership agreement, in some circumstances, the demand for permits may exceed the available number. As I said, that is not the aim of negotiations or what we are hoping for, but we have a duty to plan for that, as a contingency.
One of those outcomes could see the permit scheme we agree involving a set quota of permits. The Bill allows us to set criteria to allocate those permits, should we need to. The detail of the criteria will be setout in regulations and guidance. We have set out some examples in the scoping documents. In such a case, criteria such as the economic benefit the permit would bring would be reflected. Of course, a more sensible way of allocating permits would be the best outcome. However, if the use of those criteria—set out in the regulations—was not sufficient to balance demand versus supply, we may need to apply a further method such as random allocation to decide between applicants. For example, if we were able to clearly allocate 90% of applications because of the economic case, we could then use a first come, first served basis or random allocation to allocate the other 10%. As I said, and as noble Lords have made clear, we want to avoid a system with a limited number of permits, but we need the ability to allocate them should we find ourselves in the unfortunate situation of their being limited.
Baroness Randerson
My Lords, I rise to speak specifically to Amendment 12, to which I added my name, but also to the group as a whole, because it covers the cost of all this to the haulage industry: the cost of UK-registered vehicles operating in the EU; the efficiency of haulage after Brexit; future arrangements for the international transport of goods; and the cost impact. I have a slight feeling of Groundhog Day. I will spare your Lordships much of the detail, but I have been through this once in the previous 24 hours, during the EU withdrawal Bill debate, when we covered some of the same territory. For the sake of variety, I will say a few different things because there are plenty of things to say.
A report came out today—hence it was not the topic of my speech last night—by Clifford Chance and Oliver Wyman. It estimates that the costs to business of Brexit in terms of customs arrangements, additional legal and bureaucratic requirements and haulage requirements in relation to customs arrangements for goods in transit will be £32.8 billion. I always measure things in relation to £350 million, for reasons that might be obvious to some noble Lords here; that figure comes out at roughly double £350 million a week. That is a very significant issue and I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, illustrated the situation so well with original documents. I recall that, a year ago, one of the haulage organisations—forgive me, I am delving into my memory and cannot remember which one—sent us a briefing about the costs to the haulage industry. It illustrated them by saying that, depending on the type of goods being carried, driving from the UK to Italy and back could require 64 different pieces of documentation. In this day and age, I am sure that would not be pieces of paper, but people have to fill in the forms online in just the same way. Anyone who spends as much time filling in forms online as I do will know that it is very easy to make one of the mistakes referred to by the noble Lord.
Last night, we talked about delays at the ports. Dover is a particularly stark example because of its geographical configuration and the built-up area around it. That all adds to the cost, and the issue of permits and other documentation is key to getting the lorries through Dover and all the other ports as quickly as possible.
The amendments address the impact of additional border controls and delays, the costs of which go well beyond the haulage industry. When we had Operation Stack—and Dover port is predicting worse queues than Operation Stack as a regular feature—it cost the police and council in Kent £1 million a day. All these other things add up, so it is so important that any permit system is simple, straightforward and as flexible as possible.
I also emphasised last night that we talk all the time about the cost to government, but businesses have to internalise and absorb those costs or pass them on to their customers. In the case of large companies, that might be quite reasonable over a period, but there are SMEs that have only ever exported to EU countries. They will never have dealt with custom systems before, and will not be familiar with the whole process. They will have to set up whole new departments and systems, which will be of significant cost to business and have significant impact on our industry. That applies across the board.
The Clifford Chance report picked out the impact on the car industry because car parts move across borders frequently during their production. The impact will be on car manufacturers not just in this country but in other countries bringing their cars and car parts to us.
I very much hope that the Minister will be able to assure us that the Government are doing some work on this and will soon be able to produce some hard figures. Reports have been published. They may be accurate or inaccurate, but the work has been done. Individual industries are doing that work. It would be very useful if we had some information on what the Government calculate will be the impact.
Earl Attlee
My Lords, I see merit in some of the amendments. Clearly, we need to know the outcome of the negotiation and what the impact will be. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, mentioned demurrage, which is a good point. If you have a complex system, you can foul up. The problem for a small haulier is getting anyone to pay demurrage. It might be in the contract, but you try getting your customer to pay it for a small haulage business: you will struggle. It may be okay if you have a supertanker and your contract agreed on the Baltic Exchange, but for a little haulage deal? Forget it.
The Committee needs to consider the position of our EU partners. It is not in their interest to have a complex system either. We have the Hams Hall engine plant making BMW engines that have to go to Germany. We know perfectly well that automotive components go backwards and forwards several times, as the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said. It is in no one’s interest to have a complex system.
Baroness Randerson
My Lords, this clause refers to the payment of fees for the permits that we have been talking about. Currently, hauliers have to buy a licence to register as hauliers, but they are also able to have on request a Community licence, which will be equivalent to the permit and which is free. However, under the scheme that the Government envisage, Clause 5 gives them the power to levy fees for the permits. I want to know why the Government feel they should charge fees for something that up to now has been provided to the hauliers free of charge.
The hauliers seem to be suffering several times over. Rather than having this easy-to-access, free and on-demand Community licence, they now have to apply for a specific permit, pay for it, perhaps even queue for it if we are still talking about first come, first served—and all this when in the end they are going to have a much less convenient system.
My particular concern is for SMEs. Given that, when we discussed this informally, the Minister indicated that the amounts of money would be in the order of £50 or £55—if I recall correctly—clearly for a large haulage company operating vehicles on a daily basis, that will not be a massive amount of money and will be passed on to the customers, as is inevitable. However, this will be a significant additional cost for an SME. Can the Minister explain to us the cause of the Government’s decision to reclaim their costs, when clearly they have not done so up to now, whether they are open to persuasion that charging for this would not be a good idea and the basis on which charges will be levied?
Lord Bassam of Brighton
My Lords, the noble Baroness raised some interesting issues, some of which I touched on earlier. When I read the impact assessment, I could see that there was clearly some consideration by the Government about the potential impact on SMEs, as the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, said. The assessment suggests that some SMEs would struggle. Clearly that worries us: we have a vibrant and viable haulage sector that works well and has served our economy well and we do not want to damage it.
I wonder what full-cost recovery really means and I wonder what extra the permit will be paying for. I saw reference in the impact assessment to a suggestion that inspections would be carried out—ones that perhaps do not currently have to be carried out—to make sure that permits are valid and do the job that they are supposed to do in terms of haulage operators being able to move across the EU 27. In particular, there was a suggestion on the trailer registration scheme that some benefits would accrue through an extra inspection regime. That may well be the case—we will have that argument another day and we have amendments that raise some of those issues—but what does full-cost recovery cover? How much is it likely to cost? What will the impact be on SMEs? What sort of inspection regime will take place? Will it mean an expansion in staff? The Minister suggested that the work will be undertaken by the DVLS, is it?
Baroness Randerson
Can the Minister clarify something? In their examples of existing permits where there are bilateral agreements, the Government refer to both single-journey and multiple-journey permits. Multiple-journey permits are clearly a lot less bureaucratic, but single-journey permits are a lot less expensive. Do the Government have an image of which way they are going on this or whether they are going to have single and multiple-journey permits if required?
Lord Campbell-Savours
I am flying blind now—I should really know the answer to this question. When a British haulier travels in France now, I presume they pay a fee on the motorway. French motorways are very expensive. When a French haulier arrives in the United Kingdom, do they pay any charges for the use of our roads? I think not. If that is the case then we might like to raise this issue if we have any trouble with the French—particularly with the hauliers—in the course of the negotiations. It might not only be France; it might be that some other countries in Europe like to charge for the use of their motorways, such as the Italians, and I am sure that there are others as well. The Swiss get their share too—whenever I go through Switzerland they take me for a ride for 40 francs for my car alone.
Baroness Sugg
The reason we do not think the permit will be allocated to a specific truck is to allow for flexibility, should there be a limit on the number of permits. It will enable hauliers to move them between trucks, so they are not restricted to only one truck going back and forth to Europe. On fraud, we are designing a system to try to ensure that it will be allocated to a specific company. It may give us the number of trucks that could use the permit. We could check the licence plates and other things. We are working through the issues on that. I hope that that explanation will satisfy the noble Baroness.
Baroness Randerson
I thank the Minister for the amount of detail she has given on this. Certainly, it is sufficient that I will have to look at the record and quite possibly come back with some more questions. I am very grateful for the amount of further information she has given us.