Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill

Debate between Lord Mawson and Lord Tunnicliffe

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Thursday 17th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mawson (CB)]

Listening to the debate I find it really interesting, but I certainly would not claim to be an expert. I can easily imagine circumstances in which we end up with many diverse charging points across the country, and not enough people buying cars to use them. I have seen many examples in other areas of government doing things and pushing forward proposals, but with disconnects on the ground.

Having a 17 year-old, one thing that I have discovered recently is the cost of insurance for that age group. We need some joined-up thinking in that respect. We live in a rural area and my son has quite an old petrol car, but the insurance for him is £1,857—a great deal of money. If we are to get the next generation of young people buying electric cars and helping us to move this agenda forward, we may need some joined-up thinking between that amount of money being invested in insurance companies and the need to trigger more purchases of electric cars, with incentives to that generation to own a better, cleaner car, which would work for them and also begin to trigger the economy. I suspect that there are opportunities in all this, amid the problems that the younger generation face—but we need more joined-up thinking to ensure that we do not have lots of power points that are not used.

[Lord Tunnicliffe]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendment 66, in my name. It would provide exemptions for operators with limited forecourt space who could not accommodate public charging points without an expansion of land, and ensure that retailers and operators did not incur disproportionate costs for complying with regulations. The general thrust of the Bill is to make more charging points available, but we must ensure that there are no unreasonable unintended consequences. I do not think the wording of the amendment is particularly good, but I would like the Minister to consider that general approach. There are a lot of powers in the Bill, and if we are not careful we may find some pockets of unreasonableness.