Pedal Cycles

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, for initiating this debate.

If noble Lords will indulge me, this is my first opportunity truly to welcome the Minister to his new role. Since he has brought it up, I thought it worth mentioning that I calculated that we first worked together 25 years ago, when I was a vice-chairman of the London Councils’ transport and environment committee, which I later chaired. At that time, he was managing director of surface transport at Transport for London. Later, he was the commissioner and I sat on the board. We overlapped for about seven years, and for much of that time I was deputy chairman. We worked together and we both had firm views that one of us was working for the other. I am not entirely sure they would be absolutely concurrent if names were slotted into those particular sentences, but we had a very effective partnership. Perhaps his greatest achievement during that time was the stunning contribution Transport for London made to the success of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. He went on from that, and spent the last nine years as chairman of Network Rail.

The Minister’s latest achievement, of course, is managing an almost balletically deft transition from the Cross Benches to the Labour Front Bench. Who noticed that happening at the time? I thought it was worth mentioning these things. He is knowledgeable and effective and, when I took on this role, I was rather hoping for somebody who would not be, but there we are—and there was a wide choice.

I turn to the substance of the debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, and my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering pointed out, Conservative Ministers commissioned the cycle safety review in 2017 and last year supported proposals to change the law, in the Criminal Justice Bill, to create a new offence of causing death by careless or inconsiderate cycling. The Bill fell at Dissolution earlier this year. So many questions have arisen in the course of this debate that few of mine are going to be original, but one question that I think the whole House is interested in is whether the Government intend to bring back that measure and so fill what is generally regarded as a lacuna in the range of sentences available in the admittedly rare event of death or serious injury caused by a cyclist.

When I first became a local government councillor, I had some advice from a very wise council officer that I should never allow myself to get in the middle of an argument between the pro-dog and anti-dog people. Similar sort of advice might apply, I discovered later in life, regarding the pro-cycling and anti-cycling people. There has been a slight flavour of that in this debate, although at a most distinguished and elevated level, of course. I shall try to avoid it as far as possible. However, I simply want to say—and it is incumbent on the Government to provide this—that we need a roads policy that delivers for all road users, keeps people safe and ensures that they go about their daily lives as freely and efficiently as possible. It is that test that the official Opposition will apply when we hold the Government to account on matters related to cycling, and so forth.

I add one point that is of importance to all of us, and which was illustrated by the amusing but terrifying speech made by my noble friend Lord Shinkwin, on the special responsibility we have to those who are disabled. I include in that those with less obvious disability: simply the disabilities of age, and those of us who are less able to dodge out of the way than we were some years ago—and maybe than we think we still are—who take more time to cross the road, and so forth. That has not been fully addressed, and the Government should make recognition of the vulnerability of the disabled a central feature of the management of their roads policy. How they do that is very much up to them.

There are two issues that I want to mention in relation to disability, in addition to the sort of moving traffic incident mentioned by my noble friend. The first is the litter of dockless bikes, which is very difficult to negotiate for pedestrians in general and in particular for those who are in wheelchairs or suffer from vision disabilities. The other is the increasing use of cycle lanes that go behind bus stops—between the pavement and the bus stop. These are frequently found in London and maybe elsewhere. Do the Government have a view on those, and are they going to develop them?

The previous Government concluded—and this remains our view on the Opposition Front Bench—that the cost and complexity of introducing a mandatory bicycle licensing system would outweigh the benefits of such a scheme. But it is now very much in the lap of the party opposite to decide whether that is still the view, and I think we would like to know about it. There was much discussion of the question of licensing, and we have to bear in mind that there are two separate schemes for licensing. One is licensing a vehicle and giving it a registration plate and the other is licensing a person to use that vehicle.

When it comes to licensing, we are suffering to some extent from the advance of technology and our difficulties in grappling with it. Back in the day, it was all very straightforward: you had a thing that in my father’s generation was known as a pushbike or a pedal cycle; then you had something called a motorbike, and it was perfectly clear what the difference between them was. Now we have electric cycles that comply with the electrically assisted pedal cycle rules, are limited to 15.5 mph hour and generally require some sort of pedalling to make them move. The last Government had a consultation on legitimising bicycles that would have double the wattage available but would also be twist and go: you turn a throttle and the bike starts, and you do not need to pedal the thing at all because it powers itself as it goes.

There comes a point, of course, where you are overlapping with mopeds. Mopeds do require licensing, both of the person and of the vehicle, but the distinction between the two is breaking down, in my view. I will just complete the picture beyond mopeds. They can be driven permanently on a provisional licence that is simply renewable; you can do anything on a moped with a provisional licence, except go on the motorway. The reason a lot of the people have L-plates, as was referred to, is that they never get a proper licence. That is true of large numbers of delivery drivers and so forth, but also others. Of course, for a full motor cycle, you need a proper licence.

The system has become incoherent and does not command respect any more. The outgoing Government—I accuse them—did not address this issue, but I think it will fall very firmly into the lap of the new Government. They will have to take a proper schematic view of what the licensing scheme should be for the whole range of two-wheelers, because that old distinction between the pushbike and the powered two-wheeler no longer exists in the way that it did.

I come, briefly, to illegal e-bikes. I do not understand why there are illegal e-bikes; are they imported or are they the result of illicit adaptation? Who is doing this adaptation? Is it being done on a commercial basis? If it is, why is that not being stopped? These are questions that I do not understand—there may or may not be answers to them. In March this year, police data showed that the number of illegal e-bikes confiscated by police doubled in 2023 compared with 2022. In the whole country, 260 were seized; there were 130 in 2022 and only 61 in 2021. Part of that increase in numbers from 2021 to 2023 is of course explicable by lockdown, but it is good to see the numbers going up. I suspect, however, that it is merely a drop in the ocean and I wonder what intentions the Government have when it comes to enforcing the existing rules.

Finally, we come to e-scooters. Here, I think the previous Conservative Government were totally wimpish. As noble Lords explained, they are illegal, but they are legal if you are riding them as part of a licence scheme. That scheme is a trial, and the trial has been extended perpetually, I fear because Ministers did not want to grapple with the decision of whether and in what circumstances to legalise them. As I say, I accuse my own colleagues, my own side, of not bringing that to a conclusion—but it cannot be escaped. This trial cannot be continued for ever. There will have to be a decision, and it would be very helpful if the Minister could tell us today what he thinks that decision might be.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, for initiating the debate, and I very much look forward to hearing from the Minister. There has been a great deal said today; I hope that he will listen to it all and present us with a properly synthesised policy in due course.

Bus Franchising

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the Statement. The Official Opposition share the Government’s desire for high-quality public transport and we will hold the Government to account on this.

In government, the Conservatives prioritised buses, protecting our network during the pandemic and introducing the “Get Around for £2” scheme, saving millions of people money on their commute and, most importantly, incentivising them to travel by bus again quickly after the impact that the pandemic had on travel. We know that our public transport sector desperately needs increasing passenger numbers to make routes viable and this is an especially acute problem in rural areas. The previous Government’s policy, driven by the “Get Around for £2” scheme, was successful in driving up the number of passenger journeys in the year to March 2023 by almost 20%. While this is not yet at pre-pandemic levels, our scheme is supporting the return of passengers and boosting the bus sector. So, before addressing the specific issue of bus franchising, can the Minister say what the Government’s intention is for the “Get Around for £2” scheme and whether it is also at risk of means testing? Will the Minister rule that out?

I turn now to the subject of the Statement: the statutory instrument. It seeks to give to all local authorities the powers on bus franchising that are currently exercised in major conurbations such as London and Manchester. Broadly and generally, the Official Opposition welcome the granting and devolution of more powers to local authorities, but this statutory instrument, like a number of announcements from the Government to date, is fundamentally bogus, for two reasons. First, it is often argued that cities and towns outside London should have the sorts of public transport services that London has and the sort of system that provides those transport services. As noble Lords will no doubt be aware, the bus service in London is provided by private companies that operate under concessions that have been granted to them, competitively, by Transport for London in a way that ensures a degree of coherence and system in the operation of the bus service across the conurbation.

The fares risk, which is the crucial question in all this, is borne by Transport for London. The bus companies themselves simply supply the service for a fee. The truth is that this is not something that just happened overnight. TfL did not suddenly find a way to do something that nobody else had ever done. Transport for London, in various guises, has been operating transport services in London for over 150 years, and bus services going back at least to the foundation of the General Omnibus Company—a French company, actually—in the 1850s in London. It is the historical core of what we now call London Buses. The capacity of most local authorities to deliver these services is extremely limited. They do not have those roots or those abilities. Where, out of nowhere, are they to conjure the ability to set up a bus concession management system?

The second reason that this is a fundamentally bogus statutory instrument is the cost of doing it. Running bus services, on the sort of basis that local authorities wish to provide them, is very expensive and requires large subsidies. My figures might be slightly out of date, but when the last Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, left office, the subsidy to London Buses was of the order of £450 million a year. The last I heard, and it may not be totally up to date, was that under his successor the cost of London Buses is of the order of £700 million a year. That is in a very large city, of course, but £700 million a year is a huge amount to have to find to subsidise bus services.

Throughout the country, local authorities will have to subsidise buses if they are to provide the sorts of services that this statutory instrument and this Government are holding out as being possible. Where is the money going to come from? Without massive investment in capacity and the subsidisation of operations, this statutory instrument is fundamentally meaningless.

So do the Government intend to publish a full assessment of the expected impact of this policy on the quality, frequency and accessibility of bus services? Will the Minister commit to assessing the relative impact of this policy on rural communities in particular, as opposed to urban communities?

Finally, the Official Opposition, as I say, support the desire for improved public transport and we generally support the increase of powers to local authorities. But this policy appears to put showmanship ahead of practical improvements. The Government have yet again got their priorities wrong, focusing on who runs local bus services rather than on delivering the people’s priorities, which are the quality, frequency and reliability of our public transport network.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, the Liberal Democrats welcome this Statement. As it has emphasised, it is clear that buses are crucial to our economy and society. They provide services for many of the poorest groups—the young, the old, more women than men—and are crucial for access to education, jobs, health services and other aspects.

We welcome rapid action to deal with our rapidly declining bus network outside London and we are fundamentally in favour of devolution, believing that decisions made locally are generally more effective and efficient. If the Minister looks back to Hansard in 2017, he will see that I put down during debates on the Bus Services Bill amendments that did roughly what the Government’s proposed measures will do—allow all local authorities to franchise and set up their own bus services. The response from the then Minister was that it was all about issues of capacity. To be fair, that is still an issue. On its own, this will not be enough, so what are the Government going to do? Will they provide additional funding and funding changes in the Budget in order to ensure that franchising is enabled in those local authorities that are not generally as big as, for example, Manchester.

As with the rail Bill, our concern is that the key issues are not necessarily included in the Government’s proposals in order to be broad enough to solve the problems. I have a couple of associated questions. Reference has been made to government subsidies to support the £2 fare cap. That will run out in December, and another funding stream that is designed to support improved services will run out in April. Can the Minister give us a commitment that we will see the end of temporary funding and that it will be replaced with a multiyear, more encompassing set of funding that is less divided up? There are four sets of funding that go to local authorities. They need, as the bus industry needs, certainty and a long-term approach, so I hope the Government will do that.

Finally, can we have an assurance that the Government will look at badly needed incentives and assistance to encourage young people on to our buses? For years and years, we have had free fares for elderly people. Young people need a nationwide scheme of at least reduced fares in order to get them on the buses and encourage them to become the bus users of the future. Many rural areas in particular need additional bus services, and young people using the buses would be a great incentive to the establishment of new bus services in those areas.

Road Investment Strategy

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Wednesday 11th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The point about emissions and the environment will be covered by the capital spend portfolio review. I think potholes are a major part of what the noble Baroness referred to. The state of the roads is pretty disgraceful, and the Government are committed to doing far more on filling potholes and making roads safe than the previous Government. There will be no more smart motorways, and my understanding is that the programme to modify those already installed will be completed.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the noble Lord’s admission that road transport contributes to growth, jobs and housing, but when one looks throughout the country, wherever the Labour Party is in power, be it in Wales, London or many local authorities, one sees increasing costs and restrictions being imposed on the motorist, many of them felt most deeply by working people who are struggling to make ends meet. Does his welcome statement today about the value of road transport mean that Labour’s war on the motorist is now at an end?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

If the objective is economic growth, jobs and housing—I am pleased that the noble Lord agrees—we should choose those transport projects that contribute the most to it in various parts of the country. I have a wry smile because he was the deputy chair of Transport for London when I was the commissioner, and between us we probably removed more road space from the streets of central London for a Conservative mayor, so I am not sure that this alleged war on motorists is quite as one-sided as he might suppose. It is very important that the highways are managed in the best way possible because transport is a facilitator of growth, jobs and housing. The projects that we are able to choose to fund in these difficult circumstances should always be the ones that deliver the most in those categories.

Local Bus Sector

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Baroness will recognise the important ability of the Mayor of London to fund cheap and free fares for young people. The opportunity that the Government’s franchising proposals will give is that other local authority leaders and combined authority mayors will also have the ability to fund fare concessions for the purposes that she mentions.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, the Minister is right to emphasise the importance of bus services, particularly for the elderly. I speak as somebody who has reached pension age. In that light, and given the Government’s, shall we say, cavalier attitude to pensioners that we have seen on display, can he give an unshakeable commitment that the Government will maintain the national bus pass and the statutory freedom pass scheme in London? Or is there the possibility that they too could find themselves subject to means testing?

High-speed Rail Services: West Coast Main Line

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Wednesday 4th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The performance of the Great Western main line has been the subject of a great deal of discussion and a change of management in Network Rail, and the infrastructure is improving. Nevertheless, I will take away my noble friend’s remarks on it, and we will press both Network Rail and the train operator to do better.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the Minister to his place. I did not feel that the very good question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, was adequately answered, particularly in relation to Euston. Can the Minister be candid with the House and say how much public money his department is bidding for in the current spending round to extend the operation of HS2 from Old Oak Common to Euston—or does he hold the view that this can be achieved entirely by private sector investment?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

The noble Lord’s question in relation to Euston is germane in relation to the usefulness of HS2. The Government have been left with a position where many things have been promised and there is not enough funding for them all. However, we are reviewing the position on Euston urgently and intend to respond when we can to the proposition to extend HS2 from Old Oak Common to Euston.

Public Bus Collisions

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Monday 13th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, as I have said, road safety is a priority for the Government. The department is determined to make roads safer for everyone, and the delivery of high-quality walking and cycling schemes, coupled with the changes to the Highway Code in 2022, will play an important part in addressing the safety concerns of people wanting to walk, wheel and cycle. Active Travel England is working with local authorities to ensure that walking and cycling infrastructure is of the right quality and in the right places to maximise its value and impact. On the issue of bus companies investigating themselves, as the noble Lord knows from debates on the Automated Vehicles Bill, we have no intention of introducing separate investigation for buses.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that many injuries caused by buses in fact occur inside the bus, especially to the elderly and vulnerable? Care needs to be taken in examining any statistics that suggest how many bus-related injuries arise in a particular period, to ensure that a distinction is made between those occurring inside the bus, often because of excessive braking, and those involving pedestrians in the street.

Transport System: Failings

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Snape, for securing this important debate. He gave us a splendid knock-about speech to start, full of horror stories. These have been added to—stories of failures, inconveniences, cancellations and so forth—in the course of our debate. I would like to take the word “strategy” seriously. Many of the examples that have been deduced today are not pertinent to the question of strategy; they are what I would rather think of as tactical failings. You can have a large number of tactical failings without it necessarily meaning that you do not have a good strategy. That said, I do not think the Government have much of a strategy for transport, but the two are worth distinguishing.

I would like to use the few minutes available to set out some of the principles that ought to underly a transport strategy for this country and the United Kingdom. First, we need to think the right way. We need to think teleologically about transport. The purpose of transport is transport; it is moving people and goods. That movement brings economic and social benefits; these are not inherently the purpose of transport but they are beneficial consequences. Transport also brings pollution, which is not the purpose of transport but simply a negative unwelcome consequence. We need to distinguish between the purpose of what we are doing and the consequences.

Secondly, it is also not the purpose of transport to meet non-transport policy objectives—for example, net zero. As an aside, it is quite interesting that I am probably the first person in this debate to use the words “net zero”. I do not use them in a very positive way; I just give it as an example. Extraneous policy objectives are constraints on how you deliver transport policy; they tell you how you should be doing it rather than why. That is also a necessary clearing of the mind if we are to think about these things properly.

My third point might seem obvious, but it has huge consequences. Public transport works best where you have a concentration of passengers. That means that it works well, largely speaking, in cities and larger towns. Having a density of population is a necessary condition for sustainable public transport. It is possible that transport services can create density, in the way that the Metropolitan Railway created Metro-land, but our anti-development planning policies nowadays sadly make that a thing of the past.

Fourthly, as a consequence of that, we have to be realistic about what we are ever going to be able to offer rural areas in public transport services. The idea that rural areas will have transport services akin to what is on offer in London is simply unrealistic. It is to hold out a pledge that can never be met. This emphasises that, especially in rural areas, there is always going to be a very important role for the private motorcar—and, indeed, for cheap private motorcars. The whole question of electric vehicles and how far we can expect them to spread, especially in rural areas, seems to be determined by their cost. At the moment, they are far too expensive. If we want cheap ones, we are going to have to pay to import them from China. That is basically the dilemma we face. We need to be realistic about that.

My next point might be controversial. Public transport is expensive to run, particularly rail. It costs a great deal of money, and not simply because of the monopoly supply of labour and the way in which the trade unions have been able to extract enormous salaries, especially for drivers, as a result of that. It is very expensive to run and only the fare payer or the taxpayer can pay for it. The money has to come from one of those two sources. It is a profoundly political decision how that expense will be allocated.

My suggestion—unpopular though it may be—is that any national strategy should be directed at maximising fare income. This does not mean high fares for everyone, because transport is a paradigm case of where marginal pricing adds to income—railway operators have understood this since the railways started in the 19th century. The fact is that it costs more or less the same to run the train whether it has passengers on it or not. Even £1 from that last marginal passenger adds to income. Airlines completely understand this. They set and vary their prices from day to day on that basis, in order to maximise revenue—not by having high fares for everyone but by having high fares for some and lower fares for others. We should perhaps learn from that.

I am coming to a conclusion. I would like to say a lot about technology, as my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond has. That would be another speech, as there is a great deal to say on that.

Finally, I will briefly say something about the nationalisation of rail, as announced today. I am not, despite what noble Lords might think, a mad privatiser of every utility. I was deputy chairman of Transport for London, so I can hardly believe entirely in privately running things. But the announcement today will make no difference whatever. Nearly everything you can pick up and touch in the railways is nationalised already, except the trains. If you take over the train operating companies, which are already puppets of the Department for Transport, you will simply have the same people doing the same jobs. Nothing very much would change, but you would run out of capital to invest at some point. That is the great advantage of privatisation.

Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]

Lord Moylan Excerpts

3rd reading
Monday 19th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, I will make a short speech, conditioned by my being a former pilot with experience of Boeing, probably the most sophisticated company in the world on unmanned aircraft. The net result so far has been that 346 people died recently, although, thankfully, nobody died in the Alaska experience. Given that situation, although this Bill is supposedly about safety on the roads, we need to take great care; I recognise that we need a framework here, but I hope my noble friend will listen to what the noble Lord suggested earlier in the debate and have the Office of Rail and Road help oversee this Bill as it is implemented in relation to vehicles on the road.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

I briefly congratulate my noble friend the Minister on bringing this useful, modest and largely technical Bill to its completion. The Government have expressed optimism that the arrival of automated vehicles in large numbers on our roads is going to have no effect whatever on how the rest of the road system and other road users operate. It is the principle on which the Bill is based but, to me, it seems to be credible only in the somewhat artificial reality of your Lordships’ House.

My noble friend the Minister and his department still need to address a worry many of us have. He has stated that nothing will change—that facilities for pedestrians, for example, will not be affected—with the arrival of these vehicles, but it is clear that is not wholly credible. The people who have invested in automated vehicles will find that pedestrians and other road users are obstacles to the rollout of their plans, and they will then turn up at the ministry and say, “We have spent all this money, so now you have to do something to make it work for us”. At that point, officials will roll over, Ministers will wave their hands and the money will decide what the policy is. All of this will happen without a parliamentary debate considering the effect of the vehicles and what they mean for road users, especially in urban environments. I hope my noble friend the Minister will find an opportunity to allow us, and the public, a debate about what the vision of our cities is when automated vehicles are operating in large numbers as the Bill makes provision for.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, in line with the usual courtesies of the House, I thank the Minister and his team, all of whom were exceptionally helpful and willing to give their time and expertise in some useful meetings with myself and my Liberal Democrat colleagues. I also thank my noble friends Lady Brinton and Lady Bowles, supported by Sarah Pughe in our Whips’ office, for their work. Finally, I thank noble Lords across the House: there was exceptional co-operation in improving the Bill, and one of the outcomes was the amendment of the Minister which clarified the statement of safety principles.

The Bill was a logical progression from 2018, and I would predict that this second Bill will be followed, I am sure, by a third Bill to try and get this right. There are still unanswered questions, and I will briefly list them. There needs to be a fresh look at the legislative framework affecting delivery vehicles that are already on our streets. Those who operate them are concerned about lacunas in the legislation.

We are also particularly concerned about the issue of disabled access, which is where my noble friend Lady Brinton worked closely with the noble Lord, Lord Holmes. As the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, said,

“the promise of automated vehicles is accessible mobility for all”.— [Official Report, 6/2/24; col. 1585]

It is, therefore, deeply disappointing that the concept of disabled access—from the physical space of the vehicle to the software that drives it—is not to be built in from the start. It always costs more to adapt things later, and I believe this is yet another missed opportunity.

Finally, it is a great pity that the vote on the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, was lost so narrowly. It was just the kind of thing an advisory council could provide a sense of direction on. I hope the Minister will reflect on the need for certainty on the future structure of appropriate bodies to provide advice and regulation.

We remain concerned, in particular, about data protection in respect of the Bill, which is predicated on a future conglomeration of personal and commercial data, and data associated with the security of the state. It will come together in an unprecedented way. It would enable a massive intrusion of personal privacy, but in its entirety would offer massive power to a malign foreign power or even to a clever, meddling, individual hacker. Although it is well intentioned, the Bill hardly starts to tackle the dangers of that accumulation of data.

Having said all that, I thank the Minister again for his co-operation, assistance and leadership on the Bill.

Pedicabs (London) Bill [HL]

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 30th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I have considerable sympathy with the argument made by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson. I find it very strange that, in this modern world, it seems impossible to rely on the safety of something as straightforward as a battery. We have known about battery-like things for at least 250 years. I think it was in the 18th century that the first battery was discovered.

Now we have lithium-ion batteries, which appear to be perfectly safe in one’s telephone but not if they are attached to a pedicab. We have a similar problem with e-scooters. On some occasions, the batteries have been known to blow up, which is why they are banned from every part of the London Underground network—platforms and stations as well as trains; they are a fire risk. How has this circumstance come about? I have no answer.

While I have sympathy with the noble Baroness’s argument, I am glad to hear that she is not intending to advance this to a vote. I am not entirely sure that this is the right Bill for the issue to be addressed in. There is a wider question about what the Government are doing to ensure the safety of batteries that are available for consumers to buy as part of equipment. In this case, they are allowed to buy e-scooters, but not to ride them on the public highway. That is another anomaly that perhaps we will address at some stage, when the endless trial the Government have been conducting on e-scooters is eventually brought to a conclusion and some determination is made about their future. There needs to be a measure that addressees the safety of batteries more broadly than simply in pedicabs, as this amendment would.

We will come in the next group to the question of guidance. I will simply say that if my noble friend were to say that safety issues including the safety of batteries would be included in guidance and covered by regulations, I think that would be satisfactory, without the need for the noble Baroness’s amendment. It is an issue that needs to be addressed.

[Lord Borwick (Con)]

My Lords, I entirely agree with my noble friend; it all makes sense. I shall give a little history: at one stage I was chairman of a lithium battery manufacturer. It is possible in the manufacturing of a lithium battery for a little strip of lithium to move from one part of the battery to another during the manufacturing process. That can later cause a fire.

The trouble with this amendment is entirely that, as my noble friend mentioned, if we got it right in pedicabs, we would be getting it right in only a tiny percentage of the total number of vehicles with large lithium batteries. It is a particularly serious problem when fires break out in big batteries in small houses. These pedicabs are not going to be recharged in people’s houses in the majority of cases; it will be done at a depot of some sort.

This is a good provision in the wrong place. I would look forward to supporting such a clause in a different place, if only there was something equivalent. The noble Baroness has grabbed the opportunity and should be applauded for doing that.

Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 15th January 2024 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Moylan]

62: Clause 99, page 71, line 1, at end insert—
“(7) Regulations under this section may not be made until the Secretary of State has launched a public consultation for updating the Manual for Streets to take into account the consequences for streetscapes of the introduction of automated vehicles, particularly in urban areas.”

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I realise we are coming to the end of Committee, so I shall endeavour to be fairly brief, but the subject I raise by way of these two amendments is quite important. Generally, this is a good Bill at a technical level, but it assumes that automated vehicles are going ahead and will be deployed. In fact, there has been little debate with the public about what the consequences of this might be for our streetscapes and the urban landscape in which we live. There has been a failure on the Government’s part, in a sense, to sell to and explain to the public what I call the look and feel of automated vehicles, as opposed to the technical matters dealt with in the Bill.

If I may say so, it was a mistake of the Government when they published their policy document on this subject last year not to have brought it to the Floor of the House for debate at some point, so that noble Lords could have commented on what they thought the consequences might be. An illustration of that failure is the debate we had earlier on accessibility. The fact is that disabled people—and the rest of us—simply do not know what the Bill will mean for them in practice. They ask questions of my noble friend the Minister and get very exiguous answers, which do not satisfy them as to what their experience will be when these vehicles are deployed. That is true in other realms as well.

My Amendments 62 and 63 simply probe these questions. This may not be a long debate, but it is important to raise them. Amendment 62 relates specifically to the Manual for Streets, which is to do with how our streets are designed. Amendment 63 is broader and takes account of the operation of the streets, how they function and the legislation that covers that. To a certain extent, the Manual for Streets and design sit within the broader operation, but I have separated them out because there are two different questions.

It is worth saying that, when the Manual for Streets was published in 2007 and its complementary second part published in 2010, it was widely welcomed by people who were interested in this area. It has been due for an update for quite a long time, and I believe that a contract was let two or three years ago to one of the chartered institutes in order to prepare a draft. But, as far as I know—my noble friend will correct me if I am wrong—it has never been republished, and we are still waiting, years on. I do not understand why. Before I go further, I ask my noble friend to give us an indication of when the revised version of the Manual for Streets might be published. Will it take account of any of the consequences for the design of streets that might arise from the introduction of automated vehicles?

I was involved in quite innovative and imaginative—I hope—streetscape design ideas for some 15 years, as the deputy leader of a London borough council and with personal responsibility for that area, as deputy chairman of Transport for London, and during the whole of that time as chairman of Urban Design London, which I helped to found nearly 20 years ago. We were trying to achieve the removal of clutter—particularly guard-rails along pavements—the scrapping of one-way highways through the centre of London, like Piccadilly, and their reversion to more natural two-way streets, and the promotion of shared space. In short, we were trying to humanise the urban experience, which is what we are trying to achieve. How will those ambitions be affected by the introduction of automated vehicles?

The Government have a clear and robust but fundamentally unconvincing response to this, saying that there will be no changes: that automated vehicles will simply have to respond to what exists and, if they do not work with that, they will not be allowed on the road. As I understand it, that is the Government’s position, but this is unconvincing. Take guard-rails as an example. We know that automated vehicles will be designed so that, as far as possible, if somebody steps out in front of them or if a cyclist goes across their path, they will automatically detect the obstruction ahead of them and stop. That exposes the entire urban network of automated vehicles to frivolous activity on the part of people who want to stop them and bring the whole thing to an end, if they choose to do that.

I cannot believe that, with the amount of money that is likely to be required as an investment from the private sector in automated vehicles, manufacturers will not, at some point, turn up at the department, saying, “This can’t go on. We can’t be putting up with all this. We’re not going to invest in a network that can be brought to a stop on this basis. We demand the reintroduction of guard-rails. Let us have designated pedestrian crossing points on the streets that everyone will have to move to”. Potentially, for the first time in England, this would criminalise jaywalking, so that people could be fined for crossing the road. That is naturally what they will ask for.

At that point, I find it difficult to believe that the Government will turn around and say, “No”. They will have taken the bait: they will have sold the idea that there are millions of green jobs—or blue jobs, or whatever we want to call them—in all of this, and that the investment is good for Britain and so forth. We will have put in place the Bill’s legislative, technical and insurance-based risk-management apparatus, much of which is sensible—I know there are detailed questions about its operation, but, fundamentally, I think everyone in the House agrees that this is a necessary component. But it puts the cart before the horse; it puts the framework in place before we know what it will look like when it is deployed. I gave that one example of guard-rails, but I could multiply this; in the interest of time, I will stop with that one example.

However, these are important questions, and I feel fundamentally dissatisfied—not with the content of the Bill and what it is trying to achieve but with the Government’s approach to it, which seems to pre-empt discussion about who benefits from this, its purpose and the attractions we will find in it, allowing us to debate that when the Bill effectively excludes it. My amendments simply open up a brief moment at the very end of Committee—I realise that people are understandably thinking of further obligations in the course of the evening and may not want to debate this at great length, but these are important questions. Any contribution would be helpful, but a response from the Minister that is a little more than what has been said before—and a little more convincing than what has been said before—would be very helpful.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for tabling these amendments and for sharing his perspectives on these issues. I will begin by briefly addressing his point about public understanding and properly communicating what he refers to as the “look and feel” of a world with self-driving vehicles.

In previous debates, I have referred to The Great Self-Driving Exploration. This ground-breaking study was specifically designed to allow people from all walks of life to understand more about self-driving vehicles and to comment on whether they felt their introduction would be beneficial. This is just one example of the work we have been doing in this space.

Amendment 63 looks to require that a statement be made on the necessary changes to highways legislation that may arise from the use of self-driving vehicles. As I set out earlier this afternoon, the Bill does not require changes to our roads, nor are changes considered necessary for the safe deployment of self-driving vehicles. The Bill already sets out the legislative changes that we believe are necessary to enable their use. Local authorities are responsible for managing their road networks, and the existing legislative framework provides them with a wide range of powers to regulate traffic. It also places duties on them to ensure that they do so effectively, for the benefit of all road users. We believe that this existing framework is sufficient to enable them to regulate traffic, including self-driving vehicles, appropriately. Highways legislation is a complex area of law, covering a wide range of powers, duties and responsibilities. For many parts of the Bill, a statement of the kind proposed in the amendment would be irrelevant and would cause unnecessary delay in implementing the new regulatory framework.

My noble friend’s Amendment 62 calls for a consultation on updating the Manual for Streets to take into account the introduction of self-driving vehicles. As I have made clear, self-driving vehicles must adapt to our roads, not the other way round. We would therefore not expect significant changes to the Manual for Streets to be necessary. As was pointed out, the manual was first published in 2007 and updated in 2010. The department is working on bringing together and updating both manuals, which will be published in due course. I will ensure that my noble friend is updated on the progress of this.

Local authorities are responsible for the design and management of their roads, and for setting their own design standards. We have long encouraged them to use the principles in the Manual for Streets in doing so. The department produces a wide range of technical advice documents on aspects of street design and traffic management, of which the manual is just one. There is no statutory consultation requirement for the Manual for Streets, so imposing such a requirement in this case would be unnecessary. However, in line with good practice, key stakeholders have been involved in its development.

Tying the commencement of the Bill to the production of the manual would appear disproportionate, considering there is relatively little overlap between the two. It would therefore cause unnecessary delay in implementing the framework for self-driving vehicles. While I recognise that I may not have been able to provide my noble friend with all the answers that he was looking for, I hope that these explanations have none the less been helpful and go so some way to allowing him to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend has not actually provided the answers to any of the questions that I raised, but I am not wholly surprised by that. I shall say only that it is indeed part of the purpose of the proposals to cause delay to the implementation of the Bill while we work out what we are trying to achieve. My noble friend has acutely put his finger on that point—so we are at odds on that.

However, given the lateness of the hour and the fact that I do not think that further debate would be fruitful in eliciting helpful responses from my noble friend, I ask the Committee’s leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 62 withdrawn.