Laser Misuse (Vehicles) Bill [HL]

Lord Oxburgh Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Craig of Radley (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to the first group of amendments, Amendments 1, 4, 5 and 7, which are in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh. I fully support the purposes of this short Bill and I thank the Minister for her thoughtful letter of 15 January, copied in the Library, commenting on points that I made at Second Reading. These amendments, and others in my name which come later, have been drafted in an attempt purely to highlight, and as necessary close, any possible legal loopholes in the intended coverage of the Bill.

As I mentioned at Second Reading, I felt that the use of “beam” as a generic description of all lasers was inadequate. There are other lasers that fire bursts or pulses of light. A laser exists that uses infrared bursts, down which a lightning-type bolt will travel to hit a target, rather like an extended Taser shot. On YouTube, you can see demonstrations of so-called laser guns and laser rifles. There are a number of hand-held laser-type devices at prototype stage for use in conflict or riot control. If developed into production, such devices could be acquired and misused in ways featured in this Bill. Laser technology is still developing. A beam is defined in this context by the Oxford English Dictionary as a ray or shaft of light. This does not seem to be sufficiently comprehensive, even when combined with the descriptor “laser”, as in “laser beam”. The Minister’s letter defines “laser” by coherence and as comprising a single frequency of light, and equates that to “beam” in the Bill.

My simple amendment, replacing the word “beam” with “device”, in no way detracts from the beam connotation but seeks to cover all types of laser, existing or in future development, more comprehensively than just using the word “beam”. As I am no expert in electronic engineering, I am grateful for the support of my noble friend Lord Oxburgh, a most respected fellow of the Royal Society and former chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defence. His support, and some legally informed support, gave me confidence to pursue this point in Committee and to explore the Minister’s brief dismissal at Second Reading and her subsequent, rather superficial justification for relying on the word “beam” in the Bill. The combination of the words “laser device” and,

“shines or directs a laser device towards a vehicle”,

as would appear in the Bill if this amendment were accepted, seem to deal with a beam and with any other or future type of laser that might be misused.

Finally, I have a query. Should a low-power, clinically safe laser be used, would its low power be an acceptable defence because it could do no more than possibly dazzle or distract the person with control of the vehicle, at worst? A laser’s power is not mentioned in the Bill. Is the Minister satisfied? Perhaps she will let me know at a later date that power is not relevant to the Bill. I beg to move.

[Lord Oxburgh (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to support my noble and gallant friend Lord Craig. We should be grateful to him for drawing attention to this aspect of the Bill. I apologise to the Committee for not having been free to participate at Second Reading. Fundamentally, what my noble and gallant friend is trying to do is to future-proof and, dare I say, lawyer-proof the Bill. It would not be useful to have counsels who did not really understand what they were about arguing over this in court.

I notice that the last five or six subsections of Clause 1 relate to definitions of words which are in general, commonplace use. I suggest that the Minister adds a subsection to that group defining what the Government mean by laser. In doing so, dare I suggest that she consult the holder of my former office in the MoD, who could give up-to-date advice on appropriate wording for the definition of a laser here? The fact is that there are lasers of different kinds, different definitions of laser and some devices which would be called a laser under one definition but not another. It would be quite useful to add a subsection, duly considered, from an authoritative source that dealt with that.

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

My Lords, it is plain that anyone trying to dazzle or distract someone in control of a vehicle by using any laser device ought to be guilty of a criminal offence. The critical question raised by this group of amendments is whether the dazzling or distracting light produced by every sort of laser device can properly be described as a beam. If it can, there is no need for this amendment. But if, as I understand is being suggested by my noble and gallant friend Lord Craig of Radley, supported by no less distinguished a scientist than my noble friend Lord Oxburgh, other laser devices such as a laser gun or rifle can reasonably be said to produce light not by beam, but in some other way—by pulse, burst or whatever—the Bill as drafted may well not catch these other sorts of laser misuse.

As a lawyer, I thought to remind myself of the cardinal legal principles that apply to the construction of statutes. To this end, I consulted Bennion on Statutory Interpretation, the sixth edition of which runs to no fewer than 1,200-odd pages. The only relevant principles perhaps worth mentioning here are what is called the principle against doubtful penalisation and the principle that ordinary words in the English language should be given their ordinary meaning, understood as they are in common language.

As to the principle against doubtful penalisation, the court’s approach will be that a person should not be penalised except under clear law, so that penal enactments require a strict construction. As to the principle that words should bear their ordinary meaning, it could perhaps be argued that a pulse or a burst of light is not, in the ordinary use of the English language, properly to be described as a beam.

I am certainly not saying that if this issue were to reach the courts, it is likely that the Bill as drafted would be found wanting. Indeed, I strongly suspect that it would be held to encompass all laser misuse, as so plainly it is intended and right that it should. But if there is any scintilla of doubt about that, and if that doubt can be quite simply removed by adopting this amendment, then why on earth not do that? That surely is the sensible question the Minister should ask herself today.

I add only that if the Bill team is wedded to the word “beam”, then why not simply add to that, “or device”? Alternatively, we could go down the road suggested by my noble friend Lord Oxburgh and in the definition provisions at the end explicitly put the matter as he has suggested, which would take it beyond the reach of any lawyer, however imaginative.

Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (Science and Technology Report)

Lord Oxburgh Excerpts

Wednesday 20th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Oxburgh (CB)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, because it gives me an opportunity to thank him for his leadership of the committee, which he did with his customary firmness, urbanity and unfailing courtesy. He had to deal with some fairly unruly committee members at times, which he did with great dexterity.

As the noble Earl has already pointed out, the public interest in autonomous vehicles focuses largely on road vehicles and surface transport. This is understandable, but in many ways this is probably not the main area of change in the immediate future: seaways and the air tend to be less congested and more firmly under external traffic management control. I suspect that in both those areas we will see seriously autonomous vehicles in the not too distant future: this looks like an opportunity for air freight and sea freight in particular.

As the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, pointed out, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders produced the rather useful table, which we reproduce in our report, with the levels 1 to 5, and level 0 being zero automation. In fact, as far as surface vehicles and motor vehicles are concerned, we have been living with what I would describe as creeping automation for quite a long time. With the first vehicle that I ever owned, as a student, one had to adjust by hand not only the fuel mixture but the timing, and of course double declutching was standard. These are things which have moved into our vehicles and made them easier to drive—almost imperceptibly—and we simply take them for granted.

Anyone who has had the opportunity to drive one of the relatively modern vehicles that are around today will find themselves with all sorts of driver-assisting technologies which we did not dream of 10 years ago. We have already mentioned automatic parking; there is also automatic switching on of your lights when the external light drops to a particular level and automatic switching on of the windscreen wipers—a whole range of activities which make driving easier. Particularly valuable, I think, is the so-called lane assist, where sensors sense the track and alert the driver if he drives out of a marked lane on the road. These things are coming. Levels 1, 2 and 3 of the series that the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, described represent increasing levels of automation, using these and probably other devices and assists that we have not yet thought of or certainly are not aware of, with less and less driver involvement.

It is worth pointing out that modern passenger aircraft are probably somewhere between levels 2 and 3. It is well known that passenger aircraft travel on autopilot for long distances. Indeed, it is perfectly possible for modern aircraft to land automatically; take-off has a few more complications. But we are very much in those areas.

The existence of these levels perhaps suggests that the differences between them are more or less equidistant, of similar length, and we just progress from one to the other. But in fact when one moves from level 3 to level 4 there is a big jump in the technology requirement, and certainly an even bigger one when one moves to level 5. Level 4 allows a vehicle to travel under a certain degree of direction. Fundamentally, this means that its application on the surface will be in the automated control of shuttle vehicles or public transport vehicles travelling along well-defined routes—trams and light rail are the obvious easy applications. It would be perfectly possible for there to be movement on marked highways where there were clear lines or electronic markers of other kinds, but these would be limited and the vehicles would not be able to move outside them.

Level 5—default full autonomy—is another kettle of fish. There you are talking about the vehicle taking full responsibility for everything—in so far as a vehicle can be responsible for anything, and that raises some interesting legal and insurance questions. Here I think we have prodigious challenges of data processing and data management. I was discussing this recently with a friend who works in artificial intelligence and he said that, for full autonomy in one of these vehicles, you have to have the ability to process images and interpret those images in real time, like a human being can do, which means exceedingly quickly. He said that if we look at the computational capabilities that are available today, you would need about as much power to drive a computer that can do that as you would need to propel the vehicle. That is not to say that this is not going to happen, but it emphasises that it will not happen tomorrow.

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Lord Oxburgh Excerpts

Tuesday 14th October 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Oxburgh (CB)]

My Lords, briefly, I support the thinking behind the amendment. I have two points. There has been significant discussion of the gas price and the coal price. One should bear in mind that both of these could go up and down fairly dramatically. It is quite likely that the shale gas price in the US will rise, simply because the majority of the shale gas in the US resource is not economically exploitable at the present price of between $3 and $4. This is not of great importance, except to emphasise that coal and gas can change. It is important that we see the long-term perspective here and that we do not legislate now on the basis of how these prices look today.

I am not sure that the wording that we have here is right, but the Government need to come back to the House and let us know how they are actually going to meet their obligations under the Climate Change Act in the light of the elevation of the carbon price and the other considerations to which noble Lords have drawn attention.

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for tabling these amendments. I know that many of us heard the well rehearsed arguments during the passage of the Energy Bill. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Whitty; I do not think it was four years, although it probably felt like four years. Whatever, we all got a lot of grey hairs from it—I remember that.

The measures in the Bill and our electricity market reforms have demonstrated that they are already working and starting to deliver new investment in electricity infrastructure: a clear demonstration of industry confidence. In April, we announced the allocation of the first contracts for difference to eight renewables projects. These projects included offshore wind, coal-to-biomass conversions and a dedicated biomass plant with combined heat and power. By 2020, these projects alone will be able to provide up to £12 billion of private sector investment, supporting 8,500 jobs, and could add a further 4.5 gigawatts of low-carbon generation capacity to Britain’s energy mix. This builds further on the major growth in the UK’s renewable electricity sector that we have seen, with capacity more than doubling since 2010 and with renewables now providing around 15% of our electricity. I wanted to point that out before I came back to the noble Baroness’s amendment.

We recognise that the intent behind the Energy Bill amendment was to achieve outcomes broadly consistent with those to which the Government are firmly committed. The potential uncertainties of applying the EPS in the way proposed by the amendment, on balance, pose risks that the Government should be unprepared to take.

The noble Baroness has already helpfully explained that existing coal-fired power stations will need to invest in fitting equipment in order to meet the requirements of the EU industrial emissions directive. That directive succeeds the large combustion plants directive and sets much more stringent limits on emissions of oxides of sulphur and nitrogen from 1 January 2016. However, I recognise that there have been a number of developments since last year as we have set about implementing our electricity market reforms.

I do not share the noble Baroness’s analysis of the current position or her prediction of the future. I am therefore not convinced that in the case of this amendment there is a need to revisit the conclusion reached by both Houses on this point less than a year ago. I do not think that I want to go back and rehearse the arguments made during the debate on the Energy Bill that led to the rejection of the amendment previously. They highlighted the risk that it could lead to a scenario where coal plants closed earlier than might otherwise be necessary to most cost-effectively achieve the decarbonisation of the electricity system. Were this to happen, the need for more generation capacity to be built earlier than we currently project could result in an increased cost to consumers. The noble Baroness may be prepared to risk imposing such unnecessary cost but I am not. The argument in recent months has been how consumers feel about the cost of energy.

I think there is almost unanimous consensus on the need substantially to decarbonise electricity generation by 2030. There is similar consensus that there will be little or no role left for unabated coal generation in future. However, we continue to believe that applying the EPS as proposed by the amendment is unnecessary and potentially a risky intervention to the market. It is our other EMR policies that will work to deliver the outcomes that we all wish to see but without risking our security of supply and ensuring that we are able to give consumers energy at as low a cost as possible.

The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, asked why we allow existing coal stations to participate in the capacity market. We do it so that the market ensures security of electricity supply at the least cost to the consumer. It is important to reiterate that all existing coal plants still need to meet their environmental commitments and will be subject to the carbon price floor. I assure the Committee that it is also about the fact that we have seen 7 gigawatts of new gas plant come forward seeking capacity agreement, which indicates that the capacity market is bringing on new investment.

I am not convinced that we need to revisit this argument. I know that the noble Baroness is absolutely committed to raising this issue again but I hope that I am able to convince her that the steps we are taking in the broader argument are ensuring that we are able to deliver at a cost value to the consumer and that security of supply remains, and that we remain committed to bringing on as much low-carbon energy as possible through the reforms that we have made in the Energy Act. I hope that on that basis she is able to withdraw the amendment.

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Lord Oxburgh Excerpts

Wednesday 18th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Oxburgh (CB)]

My Lords, it is a tough job to follow a speaker as well informed and experienced as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. Fortunately, I will take a slightly different line. As has been pointed out, the Bill covers a number of interesting and somewhat loosely related topics. The first part deals with roads and establishing a strategic highways company, or companies—I share the puzzlement of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, over the reference to companies—to implement the roads programme. I have some specific questions on this which I will come to later.

For the moment, I wish to raise how the roads programme was established in the first place and how it will fit into considerations of the broader national infrastructure. Perhaps this will be revealed in the strategic vision promised by the Minister. She also spoke of the very substantial investment being made in infrastructure, which is to be welcomed. Undoubtedly, things have got better. Yet, as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, pointed out, the evidence suggests that we may not yet be getting these things right. The recent World Economic Forum report on global competitiveness ranked the overall quality of UK infrastructure rather low in the world league, which echoed the conclusion of the CBI report in 2011. I think we can agree that that has to change if the economic recovery, which fortunately is under way at present, is to continue and to be consolidated.

Good infrastructure is what attracts investment and underpins virtually all economic activity. One does not have to go very far in other European countries to be impressed by the seamless integration of air, road and rail services in a way that all too often seems to elude us.

Why should we have a problem? There is a national infrastructure unit within the Treasury, advised by a National Infrastructure Advisory Council that includes external members. A policy paper was published entitled National Infrastructure Plan 2013 that was updated on the website on 31 March 2014. The trouble is that it is not an infrastructure plan: is a list. It enumerates the major road projects that are to go ahead, along with dozens of other local infrastructure projects of many kinds in different parts of the country. We find sections on roads, rail, airports, energy and a host of other important investments. However, each section appears to have been written in isolation by different authors and to a large extent ignores other infrastructural elements.

What we do not find in the plan is any integrated view of national infrastructure as a whole, or indeed any recognition that the different elements of infrastructure should interact with each other. This approach has dogged our recent discussions of major infrastructure projects. In the ongoing discussion of HS2 there has been little mention of how the motorway network might be affected one way or the other if it were built or not built—or, for that matter, whether the HS2 line offers the possibility of a new route for high-speed broadband fibre. These things can go together. Similarly, the discussion of new airport capacity in the south-east has been driven largely by local considerations with the assumption that whatever road or rail connection were needed would simply have to be built.

The national infrastructure plan contains virtually no discussion of policy. For example, in the roads section, I was unable to find any indication at all that any of the projects had taken into account the fact that over the next 30 to 40 years of their lifetime they would certainly have to withstand more extremes of climate than have been usual in the past. Indeed, the Department of Energy and Climate Change is not represented on the National Infrastructure Advisory Committee. In the particular context of road development, for example, there is no discussion of whether it is desirable to have an infrastructure that promotes the movement of more freight by rail. These are important strategic considerations that seem to be completely omitted from our thinking.

The national infrastructure plan is seriously misnamed. It is not a plan, as I pointed out. The enumeration of infrastructure projects planned or in progress in the country as a whole gives no clue as to why the priorities have been decided on or how they might fit together. They give the appearance of priority lists generated by a series of unco-ordinated departmental silos.

At this point, I draw the attention of the House to the work of the London School of Economics Growth Commission on which two of our colleagues, the noble Lords, Lord Browne and Lord Stern, serve. Although the Growth Commission’s remit is wider than infrastructure, it emphasises that proper infrastructure planning is essential for the economy to prosper. Among other recommendations, the commission proposes the establishment of an overarching infrastructure strategy board that will view national infrastructure as a whole.

Infrastructure projects are essentially long-term in both their execution and operation, and need to survive many Parliaments and many Ministers. For that reason, the commission argues that infrastructure planning needs to be removed as far as possible from adversarial party politics and carried forward on the basis of political consensus—and the commission makes suggestions as to how that can be done.

To turn to the specifics of the Bill, the proposed replacement of the Highways Agency with a company or companies wholly owned by government is a central plank. The proposed arrangement offers the possibility of more independence in the day-to-day running of matters relating to national roads and should allow a greater degree of certainty in planning. The expectation is that this will make the funding of road projects easier.

So far, so good, but what does this imply for the planning of road projects? Where will the responsibility lie for deciding how the national road network will evolve and how this will relate to other aspects of infrastructure? How will priorities be decided? The Bill is quite explicit that although the putative company—or companies—may subcontract the implementation of certain aspects of the work, responsibility for those aspects will remain with the company. Does this carry over to the relationship between Ministers and the company? Does the Minister retain full responsibility for the actions of the company or can the company develop and maintain the road network in a way that takes no account of other national priorities? It would be extremely useful to hear the Minister’s views on these questions.

I had not expected or planned to speak on Part 4, but, given that it has been subject to discussion, I will say that the sad thing is that Part 4 is necessary. Until, I think, about three years ago, I was chairman of a very successful onshore wind company, which operated both in mainland Europe and in the UK. Certainly in the UK, before embarking on any project in an area where we had identified a good wind resource, the first thing we did was to go into the local community and, through a variety of local organisations, say, “Look, we think you have a great wind resource here. Would you be interested in developing it in collaboration with us?”. The response was almost invariably positive, which was certainly a matter of expediency to the extent that it enormously facilitated the passage of the proposal through the planning process.

The last project was perhaps the most interesting, when we built a wind farm on the northernmost tip of the island of Skye, well away from the areas that are visited by tourists. We found, to our astonishment, that the local take-up of shares in the company was really significant. I cannot remember, but I think that members of the local community ended up owning three of the windmills themselves. The opening of the park was celebrated by a great ceilidh and the local distillery produced a windmill malt with one of our turbines illustrated on the label. The message is simply to emphasise what the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, said: that this has been going on for some time and sensible companies should have been doing it. Those that have not would learn a great deal from looking at these lessons. Whether this is a necessary provision, I just do not know.

In conclusion, I shall not address other aspects of the Bill, which introduces a number of measures that I think will be useful, particularly those concerned with invasive species. However, I emphasise again that there are important questions about our overall, global, infrastructure planning in this country. I would like the Minister to tell us whether there is any process by which the component elements of infrastructure are considered together and prioritised in the national interest. My inquiries suggest that this does not happen at the meetings of the Treasury’s Infrastructure Advisory Council. Could it be that our infrastructure plan is not a plan at all but simply the outcome of an interdepartmental free-for-all, to a greater or lesser extent refereed by the Treasury with the sole priority of keeping down spending? If that is the case, our low position in the world infrastructure rankings is easily understood.

I support the Bill because its provisions seem to be generally beneficial but my concern is that we may not be getting value for money from our infrastructure investment because of a lack of articulation between its components.

Airports: London

Lord Oxburgh Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee]

It was the party opposite that came up with a policy for a third runway at Heathrow with no consensus and therefore it did not survive a change in government.

[Lord Oxburgh]

My Lords, can the Minister assure the House that any decision on the future of London’s airports will be taken in the light of a coherent and integrated transport policy for this country, involving both rail and road?

[Earl Attlee]

Absolutely, my Lords. The Airports Commission is charged with taking that into consideration, particularly as regards rail connectivity.