Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill (Sixth sitting)
Tom Tugendhat Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
Given that the Minister has conceded that there will be a strategy, may I urge the hon. Gentleman to do as little strategising as possible and perhaps to include corporates as much as possible? My experience of watching Governments strategise, whether in the military or the civilian field, is to see what is charmingly known as a cluster emerge from the ideas of Whitehall and get thrust on corporations and individuals who then have to untangle whatever came out. I urge him as much possible in our process to act simply as a receptacle of ideas, rather than as a preacher of doctrine.
Richard Burden
In many ways, I think that is what we are getting at. Throughout Committee we have emphasised the importance of consulting stakeholders, and listening to and involving them. The corporate sector, particularly in the automotive industry, is central to that. Automotive is one of those areas in which partnership between Government and industry has been at its most successful. The Automotive Council, established by the previous Labour Government—but I am pleased to say continued by the coalition and this Government—has been held up as a beacon for a non-bureaucratic way to bring Government and industry together to lay out where we want to go and the kind of road map needed to get there.
Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill (Fifth sitting)
Tom Tugendhat Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Hayes
No, but we look up to you; that is the point I am making.
We are also working with UK security agencies. When I was in my previous job as security Minister in the Home Office, I was heavily involved in consideration of cyber-threats and cyber-security. It is important for the Committee to know that this is something that has been discussed across Government, because some of these responsibilities are shared by different Government Departments and different Ministers. We are therefore working with other parts of Government on the new National Cyber Security Centre to engage directly with the industry to raise awareness and promote best practice. Using the Government’s approach to cyber-security, applying it to this area of work, engaging with the automated industry and those who are developing this technology is central to our purpose.
The hon. Gentleman invited me to go into some more detail. As part of that, we have set out for the industry the objective of developing a set of principles for cyber-security. As a result, our thinking is developing alongside that of the industry. It is important that we establish at an early stage the principles—many of which the hon. Gentleman touched on—that will underpin the safe and secure development that he and I seek.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
Given that the foreign countries to which people are most likely to take their electric cars are going to be European countries, can the Minister tell the Committee a little about what co-operation he hopes to have with European partners, particularly on charging points? We know that the vulnerability in cyber-security is often at the point of connection. The telephone network—presumably a telephone network is linking them—and the charging points are going to be vulnerable.
Mr Hayes
The promotion of sharing good practice will be national; it will be between Government and industry; and it will be pan-national, pan-European and, beyond that, international. The establishment of an information exchange to share exactly those kinds of principles is part of what we are doing. That certainly includes work across Europe, for the very reason my hon. Friend gave, which is that people will want to travel beyond the boundaries of this country. They will also, of course, buy vehicles that are manufactured in other places—the nature of the automotive industry is that it is pan-national. It is critical that we can rely on digital standards, just as we expect mechanical standards to be reliable.
Rob Marris
My hon. Friend is right. I am not an expert but, intuitively, I recognise that solar power generation is likely to be less efficacious at night, although I appreciate that the wind blows at night and that, if we continue with nuclear reactors, they produce electricity all the time. That is why electricity is cheaper at night through Economy 7.
Tom Tugendhat
I think we have spoken in Committee about the fact that some charging capability will also be fed back into the grid. The hon. Gentleman is very much describing a nightmare scenario, in much the same way as in the 1800s some of those Manchester cotton workers described the spinning jennys as a nightmare scenario. The truth is that technology evolves and human practice evolves with it, so I feel that he is being a little bleak for this stage of the Bill.
Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill (Third sitting)
Tom Tugendhat Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Richard Fuller
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, and to have listened to the opening speeches. I will focus on the intent of clause 1 and how it relates to the title and ambitions of the Bill. As you know, it is entitled the Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill, and, for those of us with an interest in technology, it is that forward-looking word that attracts us. The Bill meshes with the Government’s stated strategy of being at the forefront of welcoming technology businesses into the UK, both broadly and in the area of vehicle automation. Both the Opposition spokesman and the Minister alluded to that general principle and the context in which the Bill has been introduced. I raised a point earlier about whether the word “monitoring” is part and parcel of that broader ambition and whether it assists in it, which will certainly be an important consideration for Government Members.
The Minister kindly drew my attention to my question to the chair of the Automated Driving Insurers Group, who replied that, yes, the Bill met the insurance industry’s ambitions. I think the Minister was trying to reassure me with that, but I must gently point out that if it had been up to the satisfaction of insurers, Columbus would not have gone to America, no one would have gone to the moon and Steve Jobs would not have created Apple. The confirmation and endorsement of insurers may be a necessary condition, but it is certainly not a sufficient one to meet the ambitions that we have set ourselves.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
My hon. Friend makes some good points, but the whole point of insurance is to share risk. It was that sharing of risk that allowed Columbus to go to America and allowed the exploration of the known world. In fact, it was the invention of insurance in these islands that enabled us to create an empire and trade with the world. I feel slightly that my hon. Friend is perhaps aiming at the wrong target.
Richard Fuller
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend. I have no wish whatever to demean one of the most important export earners for our country. Insurance is indeed important, but when it comes to the issue of the word “monitoring”, what my hon. Friend and other colleagues on the Committee need to work out is the implication of that word—yes, through the context and lens of the insurance industry—for the ability of this country to provide an adequate platform for innovation.
I was trying to think of the implications of the word “monitoring” versus “controlling” for when I am sitting in a vehicle. Surely one of the advantages of the vehicles that we are trying to encourage here is that it is a different type of experience. When someone gets into an autonomous vehicle, that enables different types of things than when they get into a regular vehicle. One must surely be that they have the ability to do other things, because the car is taking them from A to B. However, if the word in the definition is “monitoring”, I understand that my time doing other things is now limited, because I have essentially got to be doing what I would be doing anyway, which is monitoring the road, the vehicle, the conditions and pedestrians. I will be spending all of my time monitoring what is going on, even though I am not necessarily controlling what is going on.
Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill (Fourth sitting)
Tom Tugendhat Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Andy McDonald
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for pointing out the necessary correction. My concern is that there is nothing in the Bill that requires software to be updated. I find that somewhat difficult to understand. These vehicles will be available for use and there will be several iterations of the software updates, so I am staggered that there is nothing to require that to happen. It is almost an assumption—the nature of the beast is such that of course it will be part of the debate—but there is no obligation.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
Many businesses have insurance for business disruption based on their updating cyber-security software for their accountancy models and so on. I am not entirely sure why the hon. Gentleman feels that such a provision is needed in the Bill when it works alongside the insurance element, so in reality the insurance company would provide that check.
Andy McDonald
I am not entirely sure that, as a matter of course, insurers would check whether the software on all the vehicles they insure is up to date. They might demand that at the outset but I am not sure what mechanism would make sure of it, other than to warn people that otherwise policies would be voided.
Tom Tugendhat
Would not that in many ways be similar to servicing vehicles? My insurance policy, like many others, requires me to service my vehicle, which is about as non-electronic as it is possible to get these days, pretty regularly. The insurance company will not have checked in advance, but if they later find out that an accident was caused because the vehicle was not in a roadworthy condition because I did not maintain it properly, my insurance is invalid. I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point, but not why he believes it should be in the Bill, rather than leaving it to insurance companies to manage.
Mr Hayes
We are ranging a little widely, but I must say that the hon. Gentleman is entering the realms of fantasy, to use a phrase often used by Captain Mainwaring of Corporal Jones in that legendary programme, “Dad’s Army”. Insurance models are currently available for all kinds of vehicles of all ages and at all stages of development and iterations—my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire is a renowned expert on the subject. Some of those vehicles are very ancient indeed and include no modern technology or mechanics, but they are safe, they can be driven safely, and they are insured accordingly. It would be extraordinary if the insurance industry did not develop products that suited vehicles of all ages. They do so now, so why would they not do so in the future?
Tom Tugendhat
The Minister makes an impassioned defence of his point, and he is absolutely right: the market has solutions for these things. It is not necessarily for the state to decree the exact contractual relationship between an insurer and a vehicle manufacturer. It is certainly true that some software solutions, unlike the mechanical solutions that my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire enjoys, will inevitably become obsolete, just as some computers and telephones have done, but the Bill’s purpose surely cannot be to ensure that no car built from now on is allowed to go obsolete and that all its systems and software must be kept constantly up to date until the last person who wishes to drive it decides no longer to do so.
Rob Marris
What a Minister! Given that he has been so generous to me, I will be generous to him.
On a more serious point, may I draw the Minister’s attention to the beginning of line 23 of clause 4, which states
“knows he or she is required”?
I think that should state “knows or should have known that he or she is required”, because otherwise the person can plead ignorance and there is no “should have known” about it, which is a common construction in law, as my hon. Friend for Middlesbrough will know. Similarly, in line 33, “that an insured person knew or should have known that he was required under the policy” would be legally clearer and help all of us, including insurers. Line 41, subsection 5(b), reads
“which, at the time the person knew he or she was required”.
It ought to be “at the time the person knew or should have known he or she was required”. Having put that forward, I know the Minister will consider it in his usual generous spirit.
More importantly and substantively, there should be a provision in clause 4 on the cost of software updates. I appreciate that clause 4 is principally about insurers and so on, but it is about software updates. If in terms of safety—not the legalities—there is a safety-critical update that the manufacturer decides is going to cost £1,000 to whack in and the insured decides not to do that, that would void his or her insurance policy, but it would also put the rest of us at risk.
That is not a figure plucked out of the air. I might have said in an earlier session that the software to install a sat-nav in my car—just for the software; none of the hardware—costs £600. To update the software for sat-navs in many cars can be £300 or £400. That is just for the software update for a poxy sat-nav, let alone for an automated vehicle.
Tom Tugendhat
The hon. Gentleman is seeking now to regulate the contract between an individual and the car company they buy from in relation to servicing. There are many different updates that are required for a car in terms of safety-critical features, which happen every now and again, such as changing tyres. [Interruption.] Or buying a new set of brakes, as my hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire says. Each different manufacturer has a different price list. If someone wants to buy a Rolls Royce, they can be pretty sure that the price of the items will be very high. I chose not to—there were several reasons for that, not least that child seats do not fit very well. Rather more fundamentally, I chose to buy a cheaper car for the simple reason that I realised that if I was going to be asked to service the damn thing, I wanted it to be affordable. The hon. Member for Wolverhampton South West is effectively seeking to govern the servicing arrangements.
Rob Marris
Without straying too far, the Labour party was in favour of looking at a regulatory regime to cap energy prices; so now is the Conservative party. There is a role for the state when there is market failure. We are talking about potential market failure for very important safety items, not whether it is going to cost £100 or £200 to service a car and someone decides whether they buy a Rolls Royce, or whatever presumably less expensive car the hon. Gentleman bought—I cannot think that he would have bought a more expensive one. I understand the role of the market for that.
I am not looking to cap service charges, but there is an argument for the state putting a cap on the price of software updates, on safety grounds. The hon. Member for Wycombe referred earlier to parachutes. He can correct me on this, but I do not think that many people are killed in this country from someone’s parachute failing, besides that individual. What we are talking about here potentially is an individual whose parachute fails and who then lands on someone else and kills them. It is not just the owner of the vehicle; it is the rest of us.
Tom Tugendhat
The hon. Gentleman talks about safety-critical software. Brake pads are pretty safety-critical. If someone does not maintain their vehicle to a reasonable standard with proper brake pads, the vehicle is uninsurable. The same would be true in this case. If the manufacturer overprices the update, people will not buy the car. If people do not update the software, the car will be uninsurable and therefore undrivable.
Rob Marris
The hon. Gentleman has a much more touching faith in the market than I do to resolve these things—that is why he is on those Benches and I am on these. That is fine, but in terms of the safety of all of us—he drives on the road, so do I; his family goes on the road, so does mine—I want a cap on safety software upgrade prices. The Minister should consider that, and it would go in clause 4.
Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill (Second sitting)
Tom Tugendhat Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Richard Burden
Q What kind of consultation would you expect the Minister to go through before producing his or her list? At the moment, the Minister has complete discretion. There is nothing in the Bill that says he or she has to consult anywhere.
Iain Forbes: I would anticipate quite a lot of work at international level to set the regulatory framework and technical standards that will underpin the safety framework for approving these vehicles. When that happens, there will be a decision for Ministers to take about how they consult with stakeholders in the UK to make sure that people are comfortable with those definitions before they are transferred into UK law.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
Q May I ask a couple of questions relating to the way that you have looked at the insurance? It seems to me that you are treating the concept of ownership as it is today, rather than as it is likely to become; transport is likely to become a service, rather than a commodity. Is that fair?
Iain Forbes: The policy aim of the Bill was to set up a framework that protected innocent victims of incidents relating to these vehicles in such a way that it felt similar to the current framework. We can have a framework around vehicle sale that is based on current patterns of ownership. In future that might change, as you say, in which case we would have to review the framework to make sure that we were making appropriate provision in law to allow people to operate the system safely.
Tom Tugendhat
Q It will probably become unlikely that car companies will end up selling their cars; they will lease them for shorter and shorter periods, as many car companies already do with their corporate fleets. It would seem sensible to have a look at that.
Perhaps we can go straight on to insurance. The safety systems before full autonomy—what you are calling level 4 cars—
Ben Howarth: I prefer to call them fully automated cars, but level 4 is the definition.
Tom Tugendhat
Q Various cars, while not fully automated, already warn you if you are going to cross a white line or are getting too close to the car in front. As automation levels come up, are insurance companies intending to offer better premiums?
Ben Howarth: I would say that insurers have already done that. Autonomous emergency braking was referred to. Even before we had any claims data to back this up, we set any car that had that technology a lower group rating. If you have that technology in your car as standard, you get a cheaper insurance premium. We now have evidence to back that up; we have pretty robust data that say that that technology works. That is definitely the intention, going forward.
One of the key things that we as an industry need to know is when that technology is in a car. That is a practical challenge that we have. I do not think it will be a problem in four years’ time, when the Bill comes in. We as an industry would really like to know when this technology is in cars, to make sure that we are pricing accurately. It is a data-sharing challenge, because it is often impossible to find out whether we have got it.
Tom Tugendhat
Q As the Bill comes in and starts to make greater provision for understanding who is liable, the question of ownership kicks in: is the driver responsible for upgrading the software, or does Toyota or whoever maintain ownership throughout? As semi-autonomy moves more towards full autonomy, you get an opportunity, but you also get this question: at what point do you start pricing out real drivers of real cars, if you see what I mean?
Ben Howarth: You do, potentially, but bear in mind that there will be a tipping point at which there are so many really safe cars on the road that it will have an overall impact on the number of accidents. The number of accidents will go down across the board. Also, the whole fleet will get safer; there will be a decreasing number of people in cars with no automated function at all, and even they will get the benefits of generally safer roads.
Tom Tugendhat
Q Of course, as the number of incidents goes down, premiums will presumably fall for everybody. Given that car insurance is the most lucrative area of the insurance market, have you done any work on what this will mean for house insurance and various other forms of insurance, on the grounds that it seems unlikely that your members will voluntarily lay profit aside?
Ben Howarth: I am not sure whether it is true that it is the most lucrative part of the insurance market, but we have not looked at the wider impact on the industry.
Tom Tugendhat
It makes up about 50% of insurance profits in the UK.
Ben Howarth: I am sure that individual insurers will look at the potential impact on other parts of the market, but we have not.
Andy McDonald
Q Returning to the issue of software, clause 4 devotes a lot of attention to when insurers will not be picking up the can—something that we are familiar with. Can you say a little bit about how you are expecting software to be updated? What is the process for doing that? We all update our phones; we plug them in and press “install”, and the phone tells us when it is done. What is the current state of knowledge? Where are we, scientifically, on achieving that?
Linked to that, what responsibilities should there be on manufacturers to provide updates and tell the owners or users of vehicles that those updates have to be made? As I read it, there is nothing in the Bill that places any obligations on manufacturers to do that. A lot of time is devoted to when the software has not been updated, but where is the principal obligation for the manufacturer to do it? There are a lot of questions, but I am wondering whether that loops back to the definition and whether that needs attention to ensure that we have addressed the obligation. So how is it done and what are the obligations on the manufacturer?
Iain Forbes: Those are good questions. To answer the second one first, what is important about this Bill is that it is looking just at the insurance regime for these vehicles. It will have to work in concert with other parts of the law, including the system by which vehicles are approved for sale. You might imagine that if vehicles that operated automated systems were to be approved for sale there would be a close look at what would be necessary to ensure that the systems were updated where necessary to take account of any changes that were important to ensure safety.
Rob Marris
Okay, but from an insurance point of view, you have no concerns about Northern Ireland?
Ben Howarth: Not that I am aware of.
Tom Tugendhat
Q I assume that you looked at other countries as you prepared for the Bill. Will you say a little bit about how other countries are addressing the insurance and regulatory challenges?
Iain Forbes: The legal frameworks in different countries are often specific to those countries, so it is not possible to do an exact read-across, but we are looking at what people are doing to see whether there are broad lessons that we can learn. For example, in California, if you want to test automated vehicles, you have to put up a surety bond to ensure that there is a provision to cope with any accidents. Looking at that and other systems, we felt that the system in the Bill was appropriate for the UK and how our insurance system operates. It builds on a system that people would recognise, so it would look similar to what people do now, and it targets an important policy, which is to ensure that innocent victims caught up in an incident involving a vehicle in automated mode can get quick access to claims.
Tom Tugendhat
Q What about our European partners?
Ben Howarth: I was going to mention European partners, but from an insurance industry perspective, I think that we are ahead of everyone else in having clarity about how the legislation will work. Obviously there are still things that need to be done before the technology goes to market, but I get the sense that other people are debating the issues, but not with a formal proposal on the table. I genuinely think that we are a step ahead of everybody else.
Tom Tugendhat
Q The reason this matters is that a lot of people will now be thinking about booking their ferry and Eurotunnel tickets. Will we be able to take those cars abroad?
Iain Forbes: Interoperability is important, as you mentioned, and it is frequently discussed.
Tom Tugendhat
Q It does not matter which hand drive a car is, does it?
Iain Forbes: Which is part of the reason why it is important for some of the discussions about the regulatory framework to take place at international level, under the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe or other bodies that regulate how vehicles operate to ensure that, where possible, we have interoperable systems.
Ben Howarth: If you are thinking about cross-border insurance, as long as the broad principles are united—there are already big differences between the UK and other parts of Europe and how they insure vehicles; we have a driver-centric version whereas a lot of other European countries have a vehicle-centric system and a form of strict liability with various definitions—one would hope that we could evolve a system that gives at least minimum cover on a unified basis. We should not therefore have too much of a problem.
Rob Marris
Q Mr Tugendhat made an interesting point. It had not occurred to me, but if I am in my automated vehicle, which I have taken through Eurotunnel, and I am driving down a road in France and a non-automated vehicle is coming at me in the middle of the road, I do not want my British automated vehicle diving off to the left—which is what you would do to take evasive action in this country—
Rob Marris
This is a serious point in the context of Mr Forbes’s discussing interoperability. I presume there has been a discussion about the coding—I would like reassurance about this—so that the evasive action that automated vehicles might take when faced by unsafe manoeuvres by non-automated vehicles is appropriate to the side of the road on which one drives. Otherwise, we will have a big problem, as Mr Baker will know, with software coding and so on.
Iain Forbes: These are the sorts of challenges that you have to work through when you sit down to think about how the system will operate in practice. We are still at the stage of the technology where the developers are making sure that they can get their systems to work in particular locations—particular cities or areas. If the developers want to sell products and services that can be used in more than one country, that is something we will have to bear in mind when taking forward our development programmes. Indeed, if they are going to operate in accordance with the right regulatory framework, they will have to have discussions with regulators about how that will operate in practice.
Andy McDonald
Q Although we are not specifically restricting this discussion to aviation, because it could be another vessel, I think BALPA has suggested in evidence to the Committee that it is equally important and significant when lasers are shone at air traffic control towers. Have we got a history of that happening? Is it a significant risk? Would you prefer to see the legislation embrace air traffic control towers, rather than just vehicles, as currently described?
Martin Drake: There certainly is history of it in the USA, and I can think of a couple of times in the UK where a laser has been shone at the air traffic control tower. For an air traffic controller working the tower—that is the control bit that does the final approach and the controlling of the aircraft as they depart, so it is within close proximity of the airport—most of that is done visually. If his or her eyes were to be affected, it could reduce their capability of seeing aircraft close to the airport. They would then have to come off duty and be replaced fairly rapidly. It is not as common as shining at aircraft, but it does happen.
Steve Landells: Can I expand on that slightly? It depends on the airport’s procedures, but I know of one airport where, if a laser is shone at the visual control tower, they take the visual controllers out of that tower. You effectively shut down the airfield.
Tom Tugendhat
I am sorry; what did you say?
Steve Landells: They take the visual controllers out of the tower to protect them, and if that happens, the airport is effectively shut down.
Andy McDonald
Q What do you think should be happening to better control the availability of the devices themselves? What restrictions would you prefer to see in place to stop the devices being acquired?
Simon Bray: There have been discussions about whether to deal with some of these items as offensive weapons. Clearly, if there is an intent to shine and to harm someone’s eyesight with one of these devices, you can deal with them in that way, provided you get the evidence behind it that demonstrates possession of an offensive weapon with intent to cause harm; likewise if you assault someone with a laser. The difficulty is investigating and proving those instances.
What the Bill does do is provide blanket legislation that is suitably serious—more so than the different sorts of legislation that we are having to use at the moment. It is an advance on what we have currently got. I definitely take the point that were we to have additional powers restricting sale and possession, it would be easier for us to deal with things before they take place.
Richard Goodwin: Colleagues I have been working with in the Department for Transport are working with colleagues in the Department responsible for business employment, looking at potential import restrictions and some of the issues around how we control the sale of some of these lasers. That work has been going on for seven or eight years, and during that time the availability and power of lasers has increased and the cost has come down. There is a Department looking at that control now, and clearly we support that.
Richard Burden
Q At the moment, there is no need to do that because the action of pointing a laser, however strong it is, at a vehicle is the offence. Presumably, without reclassifying them as offensive weapons, if you got your power of stop and search, that would be because of suspicion that the laser would be used for—or had been used for—that purpose. But if you were simply going to say that the possession of a laser could be the possession of an offensive weapon, would that need to define the strength of the laser?
Simon Bray: You would have to have the definition of what is an offensive weapon clearly in the process of stopping and searching or when trying to work out whether it is of that type. You would not know unless you had the laser tested afterwards to see whether it met the criteria.
Richard Goodwin: I am trying to rack my brains about reasonable excuse and lawful excuse, which is in the current offensive weapons legislation—why someone in a park at 10 o’clock at night has a laser in their pocket. I am slightly reluctant to go down the route of power because that is difficult for an operational officer at the time to understand and define. Some lasers come in as one thing and then turn out, when they are tested, to be something completely different. For me it is more about what that person intends to do with any laser, rather than about some of the more high-powered ones.
Paul Watts: It is not necessarily the power that is causing the threat, but the dazzle and the distraction that we spoke about. That effect would come from a very large power range of lasers.
Tom Tugendhat
Q Given your point that the power is not entirely relevant because the dazzle is so important, can you talk about the other equipment that exists with lasers today? Surveyors use lasers, and presumably there is a risk, so they must be cautious about how they use them. Driverless vehicles are likely to use lasers in different ways and various autonomous measuring equipment is likely to use lasers. Can you talk about the dangers that they pose and how they might be mitigated?
Steve Landells: Public Health England says that lasers under about 20 milliwatts will not cause any eye damage—so, provided that they are not pointing up in the air, they are not going to dazzle and distract, and they will not cause eye damage if they happen to strike your eye. A normal blinking reaction will take into account a 20-milliwatt laser, but the problem is that the ones we are seeing now are 2,500 milliwatts or 4,000 milliwatts. They are the problem. Depending on the uses that they are put to—astronomers use them as well—and providing that they are at the lower end of the power range, if they are not being pointed in the air with driverless cars and things like that, maybe that is not an issue.
Tom Tugendhat
Q Does the Bill affect people such as astronomers using them as you suggest?
Martin Drake: We do not think so. We have done quite a bit of research on the legitimate use of laser technology, and boy, is it useful. Eye surgery uses lasers; you said surveying. There is a whole list of them. The equipment that uses those sorts of laser is designed to use the laser in that way, and it tends to have safety functions, so that if the laser strays, it shuts down, and of course it is used by trained people. The people who have those lasers fully understand their dangers and how to use them, and the Bill does talk about legitimate use. We are not in any way, shape or form saying that there are not really good reasons for using a laser. However, when they are used irresponsibly at the powers of laser that we are seeing, that gives us cause for concern. Most legitimate lasers do not have the powers that we are seeing. I say “most” because some do, but most of them do not have the powers that we are seeing, which people can quite happily buy over the internet and have delivered to their home.
Simon Bray: There is a clear defence within the Bill, and that is something that we have been paying close attention to in terms of our investigations.
Alan Brown
Q We have heard that lasers are becoming more common, and you obviously support the proposed legislation. It is similar with drones, which are becoming more accessible and more common. Would you like to see proposals to ensure better regulation and safety with regard to the use of drones?
Steve Landells: From BALPA’s point of view, we would certainly like to see more regulations and toughening up around drones. We understand that a lot of work is going on at the moment and there is a DFT consultation, but yes, it would be good to see drones in there.
Simon Bray: Likewise, whatever regulation comes out and whatever changes there might be to navigation orders and so on, we would like a simple set of regulations for the police to get involved with enforcing.
Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill (First sitting)
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Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
Q I want to recognise the progress that we have made in this country, but could I press you on the 2050 date, which is 33 years away? A quarter of all of Norway’s vehicles are either electric or hybrid. China has, I think, 517,000 new energy vehicles, as they call them, on the road, and last year there were 800,000 charging points, notwithstanding the fact that it is a larger country. Thirty-three years is quite a long way off. I would like to press both Mr Wong and Mr Naberezhnykh on how we might turbo-charge this, perhaps adding a bit more to the three As that Mr Wong has told us about.
Denis Naberezhnykh: It is important to consider vehicles more broadly in the separate categories of vehicle types and vehicle users. When we think about the 2050 target for almost decarbonising the transport sector, we have to not treat private car owners in the same way as fleet and commercial vehicles. That is missing a little from the Bill at the moment. It focuses on overcoming short-term barriers—the problems and challenges that private car owners experience when attempting to use electric vehicles, such as clarity of data available on charging points, accessibility and the availability across the motorway network. However, what needs to happen to achieve the 2050 target is consideration of a broader picture, and recognition that there are other vehicle types—not just cars, but vans, trucks and buses—so what do we need to do to encourage those? They could create a growing proportion of the vehicle population as vehicle trends change over time anyway.
There is also a danger in comparing the UK situation to that of Norway and China, because the two have taken very different approaches in reaching their success. In Norway they have employed subsidy schemes and taxation schemes that I do not think we would find appropriate in the UK. In China they have taken the approach of simply saying, “You must buy these vehicles under any conditions,” and “You must install these charging points.” Unless we are willing to take steps like that, we have to be much more aware of what the market needs, or what the users need, and then tailor the products to suit those needs. That is where the transport sector needs to pay more attention: to focusing this Bill and future activities not only on targeting the near-term shortcomings, but on what we think might be the challenges in 10, 15 or 20 years from now, and preparing for those.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
Q I will move on to the mixed use of roadways in the intervening period. Clearly one of the challenges is the new technology coming on to the roadways while the old technology is still using them. Has anybody done any thinking about the regulatory implications of that?
David Williams: We think it is less complicated than it first appears. The Bill means that somebody involved in a road accident does not need to establish which insurance regime is in place; we are going to have the Road Traffic Act, and insurers are going to be dealing with claims in the first instance. Regardless of the fact that it will take a long time for manual vehicles to be replaced with safer vehicles, we also think, from looking at the modelling we are doing, that statistically the roads will become safer. Some people have expressed concerns that manual vehicle insurance might become incredibly expensive as the prices for autonomous vehicles plummet, but the reality is that if, say, 50% of the vehicles on the road are autonomous and much better at avoiding accidents, that makes driving in a manual vehicle safer. We are confident that the way the Bill sets things out means that establishing the claims process will be relatively straightforward, and that roads will become safer.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Mr John Hayes)
Q A couple of things have arisen from what witnesses have said. If I can call you David 1 and David 2, on insurance, David 1 helpfully used the word “compensation”. Presumably the key is to make sure that any injured party enjoys the same circumstances as they do now, and then anything else that happens does so invisibly to them. The injured party in any circumstance essentially gets what they get now; is that right?
David Williams: Absolutely. We are very pleased with the way that discussions developed and the Bill came out, because initially the conversations were that liability would move from RTA motor to products liability. You can imagine a situation where an individual was involved in a little accident—a small dent or something like that—and then, because people are talking about products liability, you get a motor manufacturer’s high-powered lawyers arguing for two years about a little dent, just because they are concerned about creating a precedent. What will now happen is that an insurer will deal with the claim in the first instance, as is the current state of affairs. Yes, there will be circumstances where the motor manufacturers are held responsible, but that can take three or four years; it does not matter.
The other advantage we have is that it will be based on existing legislation, case law and precedent. The rules of negligence and defences available to motor manufacturers are still there unless the Government choose to amend them at a later stage. I really welcome the Bill, because it focuses on continuing to protect road users.
Richard Burden
Q Perhaps you could answer a question about the idea of Government action on consumer incentives. Is there more that could be done? What should be the targets?
Quentin Willson: There are simple things like free on-street parking everywhere in the UK for electric vehicles, use of bus lanes and some form of priority. The Americans have had huge success with priority lanes for electric vehicles. We need to think about the stuff that you cannot buy, the things that give people an advantage in city centres if they drive an ultra low emission or electric vehicle.
Robert Evans: The other alternative is low emission zones, and we could do that. London’s low emission zone, followed by an ultra low emission zone, is the direction of travel that a lot of cities would like to take. They want to do it in a staged format, working to national guidance as to what constitutes the standards you would set for access, so that a motorist travelling in the UK can know whether they can gain access to the low emission zone and the ultra low emission zone as they move from city to city. That is a particularly important activity. It is not covered in the scope of this Bill as such, but low and ultra low emission zones are one of the key ways of incentivising the right kind of behaviour. The second-hand market is incredibly important, and it makes those vehicles more accessible.
Company car taxation is a particular favourite that helps to drive electric vehicles into a market where others would not. The lightbulb has gone on with fleets. Previously, they would operate a diesel-only policy. “You never got sacked for buying IBM,” was the traditional term, then, “You never got sacked for buying diesel,” and that has now switched. They can see that the motor industry is not going to support that in the long term and that they need to make a change. They are now embracing what they can see is the future that they need to have in their fleet.
Quentin Willson: Any benefits in kind that the Treasury can keep going must be kept going if possible. The plug-in grant has been really significant.
Tom Tugendhat
Q Forgive me; in relation to the cycles that we are talking about in introducing new technology, as you correctly identified, Quentin, the way we are going is towards transport as a service rather than as an item. If that is so, then presumably automatic vehicles will, rather like those vacuum cleaners you get in homes, be able to drive themselves to a car park somewhere, charge themselves up during the downtime and come back out again, at which point we are talking about investing an enormous amount of public money into an infrastructure system that will, within 20 years—you were referring to 2040—be redundant. That is quite a short timescale for large-scale infrastructure investment to be redundant.
Quentin Willson: But that infrastructure investment will also be used for this new breed of autonomous cars, because they will all be plug-in. They will all be electric.
Tom Tugendhat
Q But presumably they will be plugging themselves in, rather than the current vehicles that require somebody to get up, pick up a wire and stick it into a vehicle.
Quentin Willson: I do not think that is a given at all. You will still have to have manual interference in that process, unless we can get to the stage where we have automatic wireless charging in the roads. To wait for that to come—
Tom Tugendhat
Q I am not sure that is necessarily to come. It is not beyond the wit of man to imagine that a car pulls up into a dock, and a little arm goes out. That is not the structure that we are intending to build right now.
Quentin Willson: That is further away than you think. We would have to have a commonality of autonomous cars, and somebody will own these autonomous cars and there will be charging stations. They will broadly resemble the ones that we are lobbying for now. This vision of the arm that comes out and charges your pod, if you like, is still some way away.
Robert Evans: Inductive charging has been referenced today: charging along the motorway as a form of dynamic inductive charging. Static inductive charging is when you drive over a pad and that pad is then able to charge your vehicle. The groundworks for all the current charge points can potentially be adapted to deploy inductive charging, as that starts to come through into the market. I do not think that is so much of an issue. We do not assume that what we deploy as charge points now will be as is in a 20 or 30-year timeframe; they are going to be updated over time as suits the vehicles coming to market.
Quentin Willson: As we are doing now, in effect.
Robert Evans: As we are doing now, yes.
Tom Tugendhat
Q What would you change in the Bill to make sure that that level of infrastructure change is more active?
Robert Evans: I do not think it is necessary to change the Bill, in the sense that as the vehicles start to come forward, the charge point infrastructure suppliers will start to bring forward commercially available inductor charging. At the moment, we talk about people having that in their garage for particular vehicles, but at the moment those are not inductive vehicles, other than, say, for some bus operations and the like. It is early pre-commercial.
Alan Brown
Q Is the technology used to operate autonomous vehicles safe and reliable at present?
Quentin Willson: That is a difficult question. Where do we begin? There have been some very successful trials of autonomous vehicles in America and Europe, and they have collectively driven many millions of miles with an infinitesimal amount of accidents. Significantly, they have driven in traffic. In Los Angeles, Nissan, Toyota, Lexus and Volvo have had great success in driving autonomous cars in traffic, which have mixed in successfully.
However, it would not be fair of us to say that there is not a great challenge. Ironically, the challenge comes probably not from autonomous cars themselves but other road users, some of whom may just think, “I’m going to have a go here.” All of the insurance legislation needs to be sorted out, but we need to absolutely understand that there will be a period of some pain. More than that I cannot give you.
Robert Evans: It is a tremendous opportunity for the UK motor industry. The industry has sought to progress and be competitive around new technologies, with low-carbon vehicles being one and connecting and autonomous vehicles being another. We have a series of projects in the UK—with both technology development and now with funding set aside in the Budget for demonstration locations—to be able to work through, understand the issues, and test and understand the state of development of the technology. There is something like 1 million lines of software involved in making a vehicle have the artificial intelligence to be able to progress. It is one thing to go down the motorway at high speed with clear lines; it is completely different to go down Fulham Road at 7 o’clock in the evening on a very busy day. There is a lot of work still to be done.
The good thing about the Bill is that it is the first time that automated vehicles have figured in UK legislation. This is the beginning of a process that makes the UK a potential lead market for the deployment of this technology. It will be hugely beneficial for our motor industry if we are able to be receptive and responsive to what we can all see will deliver huge value societally, in terms of reduced accidents or the ability of people to move when they are older or infirm, or younger people who cannot drive vehicles. There could be huge benefits to society, and this at least starts the process of making the UK ecosystem autonomous vehicle-friendly.
Quentin Willson: And to create literally tens of thousands of jobs, bring billions—that is not an exaggeration—of investment to the UK, and a new product cycle and a new consumption and production. We should be the world leader in this stuff.
Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill
Tom Tugendhat ExcerptsMonday 6th March 2017
(7 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill 2016-17 View all Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill 2016-17 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), who is a fellow member of the Transport Committee. He was educated at a good school in my constituency—for those who may be wondering, it was Hutchesons’ Grammar School—and his remarks show that that obviously paid off.
I want to recommend a book by a man called Alec Ross, who was the innovation and technology adviser to President Obama during this election campaign. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) has obviously read it. Alec Ross was also the innovation and technology adviser to Hillary Clinton when she was at the State Department. The book is called “The Industries of the Future”, a large chunk of which is dedicated to the issue of driverless cars. It also looks at other issues, and it provides some context for what we are discussing today.
The book looks at how the rise in the use of robotics helps not just in the vehicle industry, but in the provision of services. For example, a remarkable part of the book talks about how robotics are used to deliver some social care services in Japan. Hon. Members, if they take the time to read it, will find that absolutely remarkable. It looks at the use of robotics in the classroom, and at how young children who cannot get to a classroom can take a full part in the education system.
The book looks at the rise in the use of genetic code, the codification of money and markets, and the weaponisation of code—I am sure that that is very much on the Minister’s mind as a former Minister with responsibility for cyber-security—but it also looks at the use of big data, which was briefly touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry). Just as land was the material of the agricultural age and iron was the material of the industrial age, so data must surely be the material of the new information age that we find ourselves in.
As has been mentioned, this country is driving the innovation in driverless cars, but let us be entirely honest with ourselves: we are slightly behind. I accept that the Bill goes some way to bringing us up to speed and, indeed, getting us into a position from which we can lead, but self-driving taxis have already been used in Singapore, Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh. It has been said that the technology has become mature over time, and that we can get to the position in which driverless cars are a thing of the mass market. I hope we do get there, because the last thing anybody wants is for such cars to become a plaything of the rich. The technology must be something that really drives big changes in all areas of our society.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman is making a very fine speech on the nature of innovation. Is he going to touch on the very radical change that the driverless technology that he is talking about could make to our entire economy? For example, if one thinks that the average car is in use only about 10% of the time—often even less—driverless technology could allow that figure to rise to 90%. However, that would of course mean fewer cars, fewer auto workers and less need for road space, which would be a huge transformation for our economy.
Stewart Malcolm McDonald
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and I will come on to mention some of those things.
I am keen to hear more from the Minister about testing, and not just about where it will take place. As we have heard, there has not been any testing in Scotland yet. May I make a punt for my own fair city of Glasgow? Given that it was designed on the grid system, it would actually be ideal for testing driverless cars. I also want to hear more about the conditions in which the cars will be tested, because very few driverless cars have been tested in snow. In that respect, anyone coming to pretty much anywhere in Scotland at any time of the year will find some snow somewhere.
These are important issues, and although companies are developing driverless cars that can recognise the difference between a pedestrian and a cyclist or between a lamp post and another vehicle in front of them, it is quite clear that there is still some way to go. In that endeavour, the Government have my support.
Tom Tugendhat
The hon. Gentleman touches on such an important area that I know he will be aching to speak about: the ethics of the decision-making process. If a driverless car in his fair city of Glasgow has to make the awful decision of whether to hit a lady with a pram or to hit two nuns, which should it hit? That is a terrible and very difficult ethical choice to make, but I am sure he will guide us.
Stewart Malcolm McDonald
I am not going to suggest it hits either, but the hon. Gentleman hits on an important point. Alec Ross travelled to 41 countries during his time at the State Department. He found that the suspicion of robotic technology is actually greater in developed western economies than it is in the east. In reality, I suspect that driverless cars will be the first major robotic that people learn to trust. If we are going to trust them, they will have to be tested so they do not hit the lady with the pram or the two nuns.
Stewart Malcolm McDonald
The Minister is absolutely right.
In his first intervention, the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling asked about the change this will bring to our economy. The big technological change that stands before us will perhaps bring us some unintended consequences. For example, if driverless cars become a thing of the mass market, what of the future of car parks? Local authority car parks are worth over £1 billion to the economy according to the British Parking Association, and that does not take into account private sector car parks. Mr Deputy Speaker, if you can get your car to take you to the airport and programme it to pick you up after your two weeks in Salou—though I am sure you would not be away for that long—or wherever you have chosen to spend your time, why on earth would you pay the fees, which are in some cases exorbitant, for your car to sit in the car park for a fortnight? It also raises questions about what it will mean for the workforce who drive taxis, buses or HGVs, who, it has to be said, in most cases do not have the education or qualifications to go into other skilled parts of the economy.
Tom Tugendhat
The hon. Gentleman is making such a fine speech that I feel I am only adding the smallest of cherries on the top of his extremely fine cake. In any moment of transition there is always a danger that some people will be left out of the moment of transformation. However, I am sure he shares my confidence that should a moment of transition happen—I look forward to it happening—there will be an opportunity for people in one form of employment to be employed in other areas, for example the caring sector. He mentions a car sitting idly in a car park for 14 days; it could instead ferry people to and from medical appointments or liberate the infirm. This is an amazing opportunity.
Stewart Malcolm McDonald
I welcome all the cherries the hon. Gentleman has been throwing at me from the other side of the House. He is absolutely right. In considering the workforce and the change we will be presented with—this is perhaps less for the Minister’s Department and more for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy or the Department for Education—how will our education system deal with it? How do we need to restructure vocational education? As some people will win, some people will inevitably lose. I hope that Ministers, including the Minister here tonight, are heavily engaged in these discussions; otherwise, we risk protests like those we saw in Seattle in 1999 with regard to the free trade agreement. If this big technological change—I cannot wait to see it happen on the scale that will inevitably occur—is to mean anything, it must mean that it does not leave out those who hang around the bottom end of society, constantly looking to this Government and indeed to all Members of Parliament to make sure that the future belongs to them as well.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
Just last week, I was complimenting the Government on introducing an amendment for talking buses in the Bus Services Bill, and now this week I find myself in agreement with another Bill, so I am greatly looking forward to Wednesday’s Budget, when normal service will be resumed.
In this Bill, the measures on autonomous vehicle insurance are certainly a welcome look ahead; they are just a small step on the way to the future outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald), but they are a welcome step nevertheless. However, we also need to start planning the necessary mobile infrastructure to allow these vehicles to be fully rolled out in the future.
Scotland must not be left behind on AVs, and, as we have heard from my hon. Friends, we must ensure that Scotland is involved in future trials of these vehicles. I am thinking here in particular of our country and rural roads. Scotland is still unique in that in many areas there are single-track roads with passing places, and it is not unusual for people to become involved in a Mexican stand-off where two vehicles come head to head and the question is which will reverse first. I would like to see how AVs tackle that dilemma; that is not quite the dilemma of the nuns or the mother and the baby in the pram, but it still needs to be overcome.
Alan Brown
The hon. Gentleman does not want to know how they settle that in Glasgow.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) about our wish for a hub for the development of AVs in Scotland. That covers AVs from our perspective, but I particularly want to focus on ULEVs. Part 2 is okay as far as it goes. Greater clarity and consistency is undoubtedly required in information on charging points, and it is welcome that the Government are going to clear that up. That will lead to improved customer and consumer confidence, because many people are clearly still reticent about buying EVs, as they are concerned about how far they can actually travel journey-wise. Clearer information on charging points and the type of charging points will clear that up.
The key questions for the Minister, however, are whether the Bill goes far enough with respect to charging points and the roll-out of infrastructure and whether there is enough strategic thinking on this matter across Departments. The reason I pose those questions is that the Scottish Government and the UK Government share the target of all vehicles being ultra-low emission vehicles by 2050. That target exists because of air quality issues and greenhouse gas emissions. At present, transport contributes 23% of carbon dioxide emissions—it is the joint largest contributor along with power generation —so the decarbonisation of transport is absolutely vital. The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) pointed out that there are 44,000 deaths a year as a result of poor air quality. That underlines the need for action in this area.
Recently, the United Nations special rapporteur on hazardous substances and waste stated:
“Air pollution plagues the UK”,
and particularly affects children. He also said that there was an
“urgent need for political will by the UK government to make timely, measurable and meaningful interventions”.
I should point out that, in November 2016, the Government lost a court case relating to their proposals to tackle air pollution for the second time in 18 months. There is no doubt that more needs to be done to improve the roll-out of ultra-low emission vehicles. In January last year, the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), suggested that the sale of ULEVs had reached a tipping point, and a Department for Transport press release last September trumpeted the fact that there had been a 49% increase in registrations of such vehicles compared with the previous year. The reality is that the registration of ULEVs represents only 1.2% of vehicles, and a 50% increase on 0.8% of sales is not really a tipping point. We have a long way to go.
This Government have to do more. They should copy some of the initiatives that the Scottish Government have undertaken, including the low carbon transport fund, which offers interest-free loans of up to £35,000 for new hybrid and electric vehicles, with a repayment period of up to six years. Businesses can access loans of up to £100,000. However, even that is not enough. At the moment, we have the paradox of low oil prices keeping fuel costs down, making a switch to electric vehicles even less attractive in the short term.
I have touched on air quality. The bottom line is that need to get diesel vehicles off the road. The UK Government must be bold in that regard. I also suggest that those who have already bought diesel vehicles in good faith should not be penalised. I have been contacted by constituents who are concerned that they will be penalised for having bought such vehicles, even though they did so in good faith. Do the Government have any plans to help those people and to truly disincentivise the purchase of diesel cars, rather than simply leaving that to local initiatives? A wee, independent, oil-rich country called Norway has managed to achieve a market share of 18% for electric vehicles. What lessons are the Government learning from Norway?
As I have said, the switch to ULEVs is moving at a snail’s pace. However, while we can get fixated on the roll-out of electric cars, the biggest polluters are large diesel vehicles. We have started to see real progress with buses, and the Scottish Government are leading the way with the hydrogen fleet in Aberdeen. We are also seeing buses switching to biofuels, which is welcome. But the elephant in the room is heavy goods vehicles, particularly transport refrigeration units. Approximately 50% of TRUs, which keep goods cold in transit, are powered by a secondary diesel engine. These small engines emit 29 times more particulates and oxides of nitrogen than the vehicle’s main diesel engine. The main engines are governed by European standards, but those separate refrigeration units are not regulated at all. There is a huge disparity there.
Also, those secondary units can use red diesel, so the Government are providing a subsidy that is enabling the units to pollute the atmosphere and cause the kind of air quality issues on which the Government have already lost court cases. The Government need to rethink how they handle the regulation of secondary units. To be fair, they have invested in research and development to fund the development of zero-emission refrigeration units, so it makes sense for them to provide more funding to allow haulage company owners to upgrade their units, which would improve air quality and, in the long run, provide health benefits and reduce costs for the health service. Providing funding would lead to a virtuous circle.
I touched on research and development and, going back to strategic thinking, the Government need to provide better joined-up thinking on R and D for low-emission transport and renewable energy. We should bear in mind that this Government have wrecked the renewables sector with a 95% reduction in investment by 2020, with one in six jobs in the sector being under threat. The Government have also withdrawn funding for carbon capture and storage. If we truly are to meet our green energy targets by 2050, the Government need to rethink their policies as a whole. I welcome the Bill, but the Government need to consider things across the board rather than in isolation.
Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
I rise to support the Bill with a mixture of joy and apprehension. I feel joy because I see foresee the great things that it will bring to people’s lives. If those who would otherwise not be able to drive find themselves with the liberty of independent travel, that will be a very good thing indeed. I think particularly of people who may be disabled or blind. Also, given the commute I had this morning—I happened to drive in—I think how much it would have been improved if I had not had to drive along the A40. I do view the development of automated vehicles with a degree of joy, but my apprehension, as I indicated earlier, is that I do not want conventional driving to be banned. Some of us enjoy driving or riding a motorcycle as a thing of pleasure and take some joy from the skill of driving for ourselves.
Although a ban may seem a preposterous, ludicrous suggestion, I raise it because an enthusiast for the policy and for driverless vehicle technology took some pleasure in telling me that motorcycling would have to be banned one day because motorcycles cannot, or ought not, to be made autonomous because they would be dangerous alongside self-driving cars. I therefore view such developments with a degree of apprehension.
Tom Tugendhat
Coming all the way from Wycombe, my hon. Friend will know that not only is there the possibility of having driverless vehicles, and therefore autonomous vehicles, but horses could have been abandoned and yet have not been. Despite the fact that technology has moved on, horses have never been more popular than they are today. I hope that my hon. Friend is not assuming that we have to abandon all legacy technologies just because technology moves on.
Mr Baker
My hon. Friend is right. We still enjoy our bicycles and all the rest of it. Should the dread day come that driving is banned, I do not doubt that things would continue on the racetrack, but my point is that an enthusiast for these new technologies—a member of a Conservative party policy group—put it to me with some joy that motorcycles would have to be banned because he considers them dangerous and incompatible with self-driving cars.
John Pugh (Southport) (LD)
This modest Bill is clearly uncontentious. It seeks to adjust legislation to new technology, but from the red flag Acts onwards the House of Commons has not been great on anticipating either the potential or pitfalls of technological advance. Victorian Members used to fulminate against the railways, on the grounds that they led to revolution and moral torpor. In truth, it would have been hard for those Members to have anticipated the astounding success of the internal combustion engine, and the huge behavioural, commercial and social change that flowed from it.
Cars are potential killing machines driven by millions of people, of a variety of dispositions and intelligences. The fact that the car does not simply create havoc is due to intelligent legislation which has evolved over time. As I am sure the Minister would agree, it is always better to have legislation in place before we get to the problems, rather than after. I apologise if at this point I sound like a petrol head—the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) has confessed to being one and I must, too—but I am sure that we have not quite sized up all the problems relating to these new cars and new technologies. Indeed, we probably cannot do so. I recognise that autonomous cars and electric cars exist as developed technologies and will only improve, and that we already have satisfactory transport in the sky and on the rails which is almost autonomous. We also know, and we all agree, that human error is the principal cause of accidents. However, successfully trialling a few vehicles on an open road in California or in dedicated areas in the UK does not enable us to figure out, in any easy way, the consequences of their mass adoption, especially within a heavily congested network with a mixed ecology of driven and autonomous vehicles. Sure, we need to get insurance for those that exist and charging capacity for electrics, but what will mass roll-out look like? What desirable and undesirable behavioural changes will result?
I am sceptical about the mass adoption of electric vehicles, which may be a strange thing for a Liberal Democrat to say, as the party has always been massively enthusiastic on this score. However, there are big implications for the grid; for greenhouse emissions, as this depends on how we actually generate the electricity and how clean that is; for the streetscape and for planning authorities; for the world’s resources, given all these batteries which, to some extent, use rare elements; and for the second-hand market, which is not doing so well in electric vehicles, and on which I heavily depend.
Tom Tugendhat
The hon. Gentleman is making a fine speech, from a luddite perspective. I appreciate that he was instrumental in passing the red flag Acts through this House in the early 1900s, but surely he can see the liberation of resources and of planning-scape, the reduction of the impact of the vehicle and the liberation of the citizen that all that can bring.
John Pugh
Not necessarily, but I did listen to the hon. Gentleman talking about the Deputy Speaker’s voyage to the airport and saying that he would not need to leave his car in the car park. The hon. Gentleman was looking on the positive side, but we can also look at the negative side: the Deputy Speaker’s car has had to travel back to parts of Lancashire and then come out to get him again, so he has filled up the road more. We can spin these things either way.
Tom Tugendhat
I am terribly grateful that the hon. Gentleman is giving me the opportunity to reply, but he is assuming a level of ownership of today’s vehicle that is simply not relevant. If one looks at a vehicle as a means of transportation and sees it more in the form of a train, one sees that Mr Deputy Speaker uses a vehicle to get him to the airport and then gets out and gets on his plane, and somebody else gets in the vehicle and goes all the way back to Lancashire. Lucky Lancashire, to have spared the use of two cars.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
The good thing is that I do not have a plane, either.
Oral Answers to Questions
Tom Tugendhat Excerpts(7 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Hayes
I think that the right hon. Gentleman will recognise from my immensely measured remarks earlier that I am not prepared to demonise anyone. I am certainly not prepared to put at risk the wellbeing of people who need to travel to work and school, and to access other opportunities—public services and so forth. Of course we need to be balanced in our approach to this.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Transport (Chris Grayling)
I fully recognise the effect on local communities of aircraft noise during the night, particularly the health effects associated with sleep disturbance. As my hon. Friend will be aware, we are consulting on future night flight restrictions at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted, including options that will reduce the amount of noise that airports are allowed to make while ensuring that we maintain the benefits to the economy of night flights on some key routes.
Tom Tugendhat
I hugely welcome the work on this that the Secretary of State is doing, but may I urge him to agree that the major European airports that have brought in quiet periods from 2200 hours onwards offer a very suitable example for airports such as Gatwick that are blighting the lives of many people in towns such as Edenbridge and Penshurst?
Chris Grayling
I am well aware of the pressures on my hon. Friend’s constituency and neighbouring ones due to night flights and the way in which routes currently operate around Gatwick. As he will know, part of our consultation is about exactly how we use airspace, as well as how we limit the use of night hours for aircraft. I encourage him to take part in that consultation. I do believe, however, that new technology can help us to make a significant difference.
Chris Grayling
The Labour party neglected our roads for 13 years. The hon. Gentleman needs to travel around the country today and see the schemes that they did not do, that we are doing: dualling the A1; building the link road between the M56 and the M6; smart motorways; starting the progress, finally, on the A303 and developing the tunnel there; as well as smaller schemes around the country. Last week I was in Staffordshire, seeing an important improvement to the A50. None of that happened when the Labour party was in power. It is, frankly, bare-faced cheek to hear them saying what they are saying now. I also remind the hon. Gentleman that in the autumn statement we provided an additional £75 million to improve Britain’s most dangerous roads.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
Chris Grayling
My hon. Friend is identifying the fact that the problems on the Southern rail network are not simply about the trains; they are also about the track and infrastructure. That is why we are now spending £300 million, in addition to the money I announced last September, on things like points replacement, track replacement, and replacing the small things on the infrastructure that go wrong regularly and cause frustrating delays for commuters. We are now moving ahead with that quickly, and it is very important in making sure that my hon. Friend spends less time on a train outside East Croydon and more time in this House asking about space.
Airport Capacity and Airspace Policy
Tom Tugendhat Excerpts(8 years ago)
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Chris Grayling
The truth is that that is a constraint. There is still capacity around London’s airports, and there are some first-rate regional airports near the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. The east midlands and south Yorkshire have access to good airports in Leeds Bradford and East Midlands, both of which have done phenomenally well in recent times and are providing more and more international links. However, we are constrained by the fact that the decision was not taken a long time ago, which is why we need to get on with it now.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
I have written to the Secretary of State on numerous occasions, so he will know well that airspace management over parts of west Kent, particularly of night flights, is becoming a serious problem for many constituents. While you, Mr Speaker, can enjoy your nights undisturbed, my constituents sadly do not have that luxury.
Chris Grayling
That is an important point. I have been examining the issue and it is being dealt with in some innovative ways around the country. We will be able to glean from the consultation the public’s views on how we can best manage night flights to minimise the impact on communities. Being able to follow more exact flight paths will make a significant difference and will address some of the issues that I have seen in the many communications that my hon. Friend has received from his constituents that have been passed to me.
Southern Rail
Tom Tugendhat Excerpts(8 years, 2 months ago)
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Paul Maynard
I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s urgent question. The best thing she can do on behalf of her constituents is to go and speak to her close friends in the RMT and tell them to call off their disproportionate and unreasonable industrial action. That is the best contribution she can make.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
Thank you for calling me during this urgent question, Mr Speaker, which is important because it is about not only the Brighton main line, but communities in my area. Students trying to get to school from Edenbridge on the Redhill to Tonbridge line and people trying to get to work on the Uckfield line have endured misery. This is about the unions, but the nationalised Network Rail has also failed us again and again. Will the Minister please get on with sorting out that organisation, too?
Paul Maynard
My hon. Friend is entirely right to point out the impact on his constituents in Kent. I travelled to Sevenoaks today through London Bridge and saw some delays. The only long-term solution for this overburdened part of the network is for both Network Rail and the train operating companies to align the incentives and work together to fix the underlying problems that plague the network.