Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill

Debate between Lord Borwick and Lord Hunt of Chesterton

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 9th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)]

My Lords, I was on the Science and Technology Committee and we discussed automated vehicles. After our session, I met some industrialists—people making and selling cars—in the context of automated vehicles. One of the things it was suggested that the Secretary of State might consider—it would come under Clause 1, referred to earlier—is that people purchasing vehicles, particularly those that are partially or wholly automatic, should understand the properties of the vehicle. There were some examples this year or last year when someone had a blackout and the vehicle took over control and moved them. So it seems that already some of these level 3 properties are not well understood by the people buying the cars. For some people, as I understand it, once you have paid by credit card or hire purchase the car arrives at your front door and off you drive. Even Tesla makes you have 95 minutes of training before you buy and use one of its cars. This is an area covered by subsection (1)(b) that the Secretary of State should be considering very strongly.

[Lord Borwick (Con)]

My Lords, I should first make an unusual declaration of interest: namely, an investment that does not exist at this moment but which will almost certainly be made in the next few days. I will have an equity interest in the Penso group of companies and become its chairman. Penso is a manufacturer of very high-tech carbon fibre parts for the automotive, aerospace and rail industries, and produces the Vito London taxi for Mercedes in Coventry. The investment is likely to complete in the next few days, making the interest declarable as its product is very relevant to the lightweight future of electric cars. I should explain that none of my amendments seeks to confer exclusive benefits on the company and that I am moving them because I believe them all to be in the public interest.

Unfortunately, the grouping of the amendments in today’s debate is slightly unusual and many groups contain amendments that do not naturally fall together. Some of my later amendments overlap with, and propose different ways of achieving the same ends as, the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson. I apologise if the Minister has to repeat the same points in different sections.

Although I support the noble Baroness’s Amendment 1, we may yet hear from the Bill team that Amendment 2 is just not the way in which they wish to go with this definition. I must say that I believe that that is a mistake, because, although the Society of Automotive Engineers standards may change and the Government normally like to be in complete control of the definition, the choice here is between a vague definition that could be interpreted in different ways by different lawyers and an international standard developed by the SAE and adopted worldwide. Chinese vehicle producers will adopt the SAE regulations, as will producers all over the world. There seems therefore to be a great deal of merit in sticking to the worldwide standard rather than inventing our own because we believe that our choice of English will be so elegant that we can achieve it.

There are other ways of achieving the definition from those used in the Bill, and I will come to them in my later amendments. However, were the Government to change their mind and support the noble Baroness’s Amendment 2, I would immediately support it as well.