Automated Vehicles Bill [Lords]

Debate between Wera Hobhouse and Jesse Norman

Report stage
Wednesday 1st May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Wera Hobhouse]

I have tabled three amendments that seek to strengthen the provisions made for data protection in the Bill. New clause 1 would require the Secretary of State to report to Parliament on the collection of personal data from automated vehicles within one year of the day on which the Act is passed and every year thereafter. This report must cover

“levels of compliance with data protection legislation within the automated motor industry,…instances where the Secretary of State has made regulations under section 42(3) of this Act…and the impact of those regulations on personal data protection, and…any significant trends in the collection of personal data and whether further action is needed to regulate the collection of personal data.”

For sustained public confidence in automated vehicles and the data protection issues that arise, it is important that we have this continued monitoring and reporting. With a new technology, it is inevitable that new issues will arise over time, particularly as automated vehicles learn and change their behaviour accordingly. The reporting is necessary to keep the regulations on data protection under review as the technology develops. The Government must give further assurances in the Bill that people’s personal data will be protected before this Bill becomes law and commit to the annual reporting set out in this new clause.

This Bill would also be strengthened by new clause 2, which would require the Secretary of State to consult the Information Commissioner’s Office before making regulations in relation to the provision of personal data relevant to automated vehicles. As I have mentioned, new clause 1 would maintain monitoring of the provisions made for data protection, and new clause 2 would make this monitoring and reporting process easier, as advice can be taken from the ICO rather than using parliamentary time. Again, this will instil public confidence in the legislation as the advice will come from an independent body.

In order to operate, automated vehicles must be able to collect data, and much of this data will be personal. The information collected will help to make AVs safer as the system learns more about the road and those using it. Strengthening the process of how any changes to future protections are made will again assure the public that their personal data will be secure. Further assurances would be given by amendment 8, which seeks to probe a number of concerns about data protection and ownership, and seeks to prevent the authorisation of companies as self-driving entities unless robust data practices are in place. This amendment would ensure that a person may not be an authorised self-driving entity unless they meet the following requirements:

“they have obtained a certificate of compliance with data protection legislation from the Information Commissioner’s Office for their policy in regard to the handling of personal data,…their policy in regard to the handling of personal data clearly outlines who has ownership of any personal data collected, including after the ownership of a vehicle has ended, and…they are a signatory to an industry code of conduct under the UK General Data Protection Regulation.”

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

I would be very interested, with regard to the latter new clause, if the hon. Lady could explain why she feels—or what feedback or evidence she has to think—that the safety regulation system that is put in place will be inadequate to handle the concerns she raises.

[Wera Hobhouse]

On Second Reading, I think I was very positive about the Bill’s introduction, and I see it as the bright new future, but we should be careful to ensure we are taking people with us. As I have said, this is basically about making sure that people feel confident that their personal data is really handled in the most secure way possible. I have tabled the amendments to provide assurance for the public that the Government and everybody involved in this bright new future will really take a very careful look at all data protection measures.

[Jesse Norman]

If I may quickly respond, given that this Bill has had a remarkably untroubled passage through both Houses to date and that both Houses are informed by enormous amounts of information from relevant parties and Members’ constituents, has she any such reason? I think what she is saying is that she has no reason, apart from a general worry about consent, to think that what she is talking about will be necessary, because she has no reason to think that the regulator will not be able to take this stuff into account when it comes to a review?

[Wera Hobhouse]

We will not push new clause 1 to a vote, but I want the Government to ensure that all necessary and possible protections are being put in place. This issue has been debated several times, but we are looking into the future and who knows what the future holds? We know that people are increasingly worried about their personal data, and that sometimes regulations are not as robust as possible. This is basically a plea to the Government to ensure that all possible assurances are in place.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Wera Hobhouse and Jesse Norman

Thursday 26th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman]

My hon. Friend knows that the Government have supported the use of hydrogen in road vehicles for over a decade, including the installation of hydrogen refuelling infrastructure where there is sufficient demand. I should also say that notably, Toyota recently announced the tremendous progress that it appears to have made in commercialising solid-state batteries. That is a very encouraging sign across the piece, not just for hydrogen but for electric.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

We have already heard that the uptake of electric vehicles is closely linked to charging points. When will the Government close the gap in charging costs between those who have the ability to charge at home and those who rely on a public charging point?

[Jesse Norman]

As the hon. Lady knows, there is wide and differing experience across the charging network. Many people are able to charge at home and many people are able to charge through the increasingly large public network. The way in which electricity prices have changed has tended to dominate changes overall, but she will, I am sure, share my pleasure that the new charge point regulations mean that we can now have a much more competitive market for charging across all the different forms of infrastructure.

West Coast Main Line Franchise

Debate between Wera Hobhouse and Jesse Norman

Tuesday 19th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman]

The hon. Lady did not ask a question, but I understood every word of her speech. Since she is new to the House, she might want to have a conversation directly with the rail Minister about this: he is highly engaged on these issues, as colleagues across the Chamber will know. If she has not seen any improvement in relation to her constituency, at least she has the satisfaction of knowing that improvements have been recognised around the House.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

The Government have ensured the immediate future of Avanti West Coast, but the same cannot be said for Great British Railways, which has an office but no powers. We urgently need a body to provide oversight and accountability to fix Britain’s broken railways. The Government are in favour of that, so can the Minister confirm that legislation to create Great British Railways will be announced in the King’s Speech?

[Jesse Norman]

I thank the hon. Lady for her tempting invitation, but I am not going to second-guess His Majesty on what he will announce in the King’s Speech. What I can say is that this is a topic of great interest to the Government and, as she will know, the Department is making considerable progress in the non-legislative mode that we are in at the moment to achieve many of the goals we all share.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Wera Hobhouse and Jesse Norman

Thursday 8th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

22. What assessment he has made of the impact of changes to funding for active travel on levels of uptake of that travel.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Jesse Norman)]

As the House will know, active travel is at the heart of the Government’s agenda and we are investing about £3 billion to support it—that is more than any previous Government. The Government report regularly to Parliament on progress towards meeting their active travel goals, and the next report will be published alongside the third statutory cycling and walking investment strategy in due course.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jesse Norman]

I congratulate my hon. Friend, who is a fantastic campaigner for active travel. She rightly says that it is great that North Devon has been able to benefit, along with the rest of Devon, from £1.8 million through active travel fund 4. Active Travel England plans to run a further capital funding round later this year and will work with local authorities, including those in rural areas, to encourage bids for schemes that have high potential to increase walking, wheeling and cycling trips.

[Wera Hobhouse]

People walking, wheeling and cycling saved 2.5 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions and avoided more than 29,000 early deaths in 2021. However, only a fifth of total active travel spending comes from dedicated funding, with the rest coming from various funding pots that are not guaranteed. With such a low proportion of ringfenced funding, how can the Government guarantee that this money is really spent on active travel, which is good for our health, economy and environment?

[Jesse Norman]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right that active travel—cycling, walking and wheeling—is probably the single biggest health intervention a human being can make in their lives as a choice of habit. She is right to highlight the importance of supporting it, as the Government have—more so than any previous Government. There are a range of pots, including city region sustainable transport settlements, the road investment strategy 2 and levelling-up fund moneys, into which authorities can bid. Many have done so and will continue to do so highly successfully. That provides a continuing opportunity for them to benefit from these levels of increased funding.

Stamp Duty Land Tax (Temporary Relief) Bill

Debate between Wera Hobhouse and Jesse Norman

Committee stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Monday 13th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

Covid-19 has highlighted the deep inequalities that existed long before this pandemic. Many people have been left desperate for support. Hundreds of thousands of people already have less money coming in, and hundreds of thousands have lost, or will lose, their jobs. The Government have thrown an eye-watering amount of money at our economy, but we do not yet know how this increasing mountain of debt will be paid back, or by whom. In the meantime, paying bills, rents and mortgages has become hard for millions of households. We must therefore question whether this tax cut should be a priority for the Government. It is expected to cost £3.8 billion, yet it will mainly benefit the wealthiest. The average earner, including the young generation who are struggling to pay ever-increasing rents, let alone be able to put down enough money to buy a house, will see nothing of it. The discount might provide a tax holiday for the privileged few, but it completely ignores the fact that the majority of people are unable to buy a home of their own now, and are never likely to do so in the future.

In my constituency of Bath, the availability of housing for first-time buyers is limited and house prices are expensive. The average house price in Bath is currently more than £430,000. A first-time buyer would qualify for £10,000 under the new rates, but even that would provide little benefit to a first-time buyer in my constituency who cannot secure a deposit or who faces an unaffordable mortgage. The cut to stamp duty will not solve the real problems at the heart of the housing crisis. Housing is one of the most important sectors for job creation—I agree with the Minister on that—but where is the focus on building social homes for rent? Social homes are the only way to provide secure and affordable housing for everyone, but, most importantly, for those on lower incomes. The private sector has completely failed to build social homes, and only a huge Government infrastructure programme to build social housing, as we saw in the ’50s and ’60s, will bring our social housing stock back to where it needs to be. That would create the jobs we need as well as the homes we need. Surely at this time, genuinely affordable homes are more important than ever, and more important than a stamp duty cut.

Lastly, the climate emergency has not gone away during covid, and we know that emissions from homes account for 30% of UK emissions. Decarbonising homes is therefore crucial to getting to net zero. Improving the energy efficiency of social housing is something that the Government could do straight away. They could also require landlords to achieve minimum levels of energy efficiency in order to be able to rent their homes. We need a Government with a vision to get the economy going, not a tax cut for only the few.

[Jesse Norman]

I thank the hon. Members for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) and for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) for their comments. There may be some slight misapprehension from the hon. Gentleman—I did not actually say what he said I said. I said it is not true that this measure will disproportionately benefit second home owners, and that is because it has a proportionate effect across the whole population of home ownership. However, he should also be reassured that we in the Treasury keep a very careful watch over these taxes. They are monitored and assessed and their impacts are regularly reported on.

As I said, the Bill will help to deliver a Government aim to ensure that people feel confident to move, buy, sell, renovate and improve their homes, and it is a policy that the Labour party has indicated that it supports. On that basis, I commend clauses 1 and 2 to the House and respectfully ask that it does not support new clause 1.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

The Deputy Speaker resumed the Chair.

Bill reported, without amendment.

Third Reading

VAT (Listed Properties)

Debate between Wera Hobhouse and Jesse Norman

Wednesday 4th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Wera Hobhouse]

Would not it therefore make sense just to define a little more what the VAT relief is for, rather than scrapping it for everybody?

[Jesse Norman]

Of course those are two entirely separate things. To remove a relief is to remove a very blunt and general instrument that is, by its bluntness and generality, open to abuse. In this case, it had the contradictory effect of potentially disincentivising repairs, because people focused on extensions, which was directly contrary to the purpose of the legislation. However, as has been recognised with the listed places of worship fund, there can be scope for a more targeted intervention through funds rather than tax reliefs. That is the other option we were given by my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet.

As my hon. Friend knows better than probably any other Member, VAT is a broad-based tax on consumption, and the standard rate of 20% applies to the vast majority of goods and services. There are exceptions to the standard rate, but they are strictly limited by domestic law as well as by fiscal considerations. Hon. Members will appreciate that we are not short of requests for VAT relief in the Treasury. We have VAT reliefs for repairs and improvements, but of course that includes repairs to damage caused by floods or by the desperate events that have necessitated re-cladding of buildings for health and safety reasons. In total, we are presently dealing with about £40 billion of requests for relief, many of them triggered by the recognition that we are leaving the EU and seeking to exploit that fact for other purposes. We must place this proposal in that category.

It is estimated that introducing a relief for the repair and maintenance of all buildings would cost the Exchequer something like £4 billion a year. We do not have an estimate for listed buildings, but, as was pointed out, there are more than 450,000 of them in the UK, so such a relief would undoubtedly be very substantial in quantum. Of course, that is a constraint on what we can do.

Let me address the remarks by the hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), who was commendably direct and straight about what exists: the 5% rate for the recovery of properties that have been empty for two years. She is absolutely right to point out the target issue versus the dead-weight cost, which I also highlighted. She is also right about our concerns, reflecting wider considerations on the state of the economy, and the need for a better understanding of the factual base for reliefs. Perhaps I can give her some comfort.

As the hon. Lady pointed out in response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne), who is no longer in his place, there is a relief available for the installation of energy-saving materials on residential properties, whether listed or unlisted. As she mentioned, we have measures to incentivise the use of listed buildings for residential purposes, as well as to increase the overall number of dwellings. Those measures cover listed buildings, so there is scope to support them in some circumstances.

I turn to some of the specific points made. My hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet pointed out that the relief is not directly comparable to its predecessor. The question of targeting is therefore central to what we have discussed. There is fairness, because listed and unlisted buildings are treated in the same way. The hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) said that the task for us all is to protect the homes that people live in, and of course an enormously larger number of people live in unlisted homes than in listed homes. The tax system tries to respect and acknowledge that intuition. It would be difficult to narrow the scope of a relief. Therefore, if one was to go down the path of a fund—my hon. Friend could raise that for a future fiscal event—such an approach could be a much closer fit and be accommodated within existing planning frameworks.

A point was made about anomalies. Of course, the tax system is full of anomalies and the question in many ways is which anomalies one seeks to eliminate—my hon. Friend wryly chuckles. Many of those anomalies exist in the nature of reliefs, and it would be an odd Financial Secretary indeed who wished to resolve an anomaly by creating another relief.

As a Government, we are committed to supporting the preservation of historic buildings and homes and the social and cultural contribution they make to our shared history. It is boilerplate but important to say that the Treasury keeps all taxes under review and is always willing to hear the case for what can be improved and refined. Even though we do not, at this time and for the reasons given, plan to change the VAT treatment of renovations or repairs, I thank everyone who has contributed to the debate.