Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill (First sitting)

Alan Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 14th March 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Baker]

Q I think that you just hit on the nub of the matter. A board director has major capital investments to protect, which means that they are inclined to stay within trammels once a technology is established. That is very much the point that my hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire has been making: there is a danger that we could end up choosing the wrong technology because a whole system of incentives sets up people to stick with electric.

Quentin Willson: The brutal fact of the matter is that getting hydrogen from point A to point B requires pipework. You can have static hydrogen stations that manufacture it, but they will be the size of shipping containers. If you look down the road, creating infrastructure and points, keeping it cheap and making it not a by-product of refining chlorine are all barriers to entry that are much greater than for electrification, which is simple and understandable; it is a currency that we are familiar with now, and we have the electric network. These are the major barriers to hydrogen uptake.

Robert Evans: To follow up on that point, Innovate UK and the Advanced Propulsion Centre are funding research and development projects involving hydrogen fuel cells, and they have done so throughout the period of the low-carbon vehicle innovation platform. The Office for Low Emission Vehicles recently put forward funding for both hydrogen stations and vehicles in deployment.

I think the challenge at the moment is that you could put a very large amount of money on the table and say, “Here’s the money; will you bring the vehicles?”, but the supply of vehicles is very limited. Quantities are still small, as has been explained, and they are very expensive, so the car industry is not looking to flood the market with these vehicles. What we are doing in the UK is being ready for the time when the vehicles will come in larger volumes. We will have a receptive market, and we have infrastructure here in London. What London has done is really positive progress that is viewed as a beacon for how the rest of the UK could be ready to deploy hydrogen fuel cell vehicles when they are ready and cost-effective, and when the supply comes to the UK.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

Q I have a few questions from a pre-selected list. It is probably best to ask about electric charging, to follow on from the discussion. The Government say that electric charging infrastructure makes more sense just now, and that hydrogen is still a wee way off. Can the panel advise what has been learnt today about the required structure of the charging network needed? Will the Bill and the current regime ensure that there will be adequate numbers of charging points in each part of the country?

On Second Reading we heard about the gathering of statistics on the current variance in the number of charging points. Orkney, for example, has many more charging points than some big towns in England. Also, is there a need for a uniform way to access charging points? Is the legislation as proposed sufficient for that? I rolled quite a few questions into one.

[The Chair]

I am sure that our panel will handle it. You do not all have to answer everything.

Robert Evans: I am happy to make a start. The first thing to say is that the UK Electric Vehicle Supply Equipment Association and the industry support the progress of the Bill and believe that it is an appropriate set of powers for the Government to seek. As the industry views it, the Bill effectively says that the deployment of electric vehicle infrastructure into the market is progressing. The market is working, and it is likely to deliver the solutions for motorists to access those charge points easily, and for those charge points to become a sustainable asset on which businesses can be built. What the Bill recognises is that there is a stage by which the Government will step away from some of the seeding activities that they have done, in terms of creating different schemes such as Plugged-in Places, national infrastructure programmes and funding that it has put in, and let the market progress.

The Bill gives the Government an insurance policy, which is that they can act if the market does not deliver in any particular important aspect that starts to stall the uptake of electric vehicles. The view is that the market is progressing well, and these are reserve powers that the Government might wish to take later. Therein will lie the detail about what the particular nub of a problem might be on which the Government will need to intervene. At the moment we have 11,000 charge points in the UK; we have a lot of private sector finance investment interested in investing in the commercial operation of charge point networks and the further deployment of charge points. That is to be commended. At this stage the Government just need to have this insurance policy in the Bill so that they can act should they need to, but they should expect that the market will deliver.

Quentin Willson: The critical thing is the availability of rapid chargers. Rapid chargers are the game changer. You can charge your car within 30 minutes to 80% of its battery life. Therefore, you can do multiple charges in a day, bringing the feasible range from this notional 130 miles for a Nissan LEAF to as much as 300 miles. I did a journey from Birmingham to Milton Keynes and back, charged twice at a rapid charger and arrived at Milton Keynes with 90 miles still on my battery range. So the Bill must make sure that these rapid chargers are rolled out much more and we see many more at motorway service stations and at key points within cities, because they will enable people to believe that their range is much wider than they are led to believe.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Alan Brown]

Q On roll-out and testing, is further testing suggested? One of the suggestions made on Second Reading was that the vehicles have not been tested in snow conditions yet, and there was a suggestion that different weather variables may need to be looked at. Robert gave the example of a busy Fulham Road at 7 o’clock at night. One example I gave on Second Reading was the single-track roads in Scotland, on which, if two vehicles drive head-on, somebody has to make the decision to back up to the nearest layby. Are there things like that that still need to be robustly looked at?

Quentin Willson: I am afraid I am not an expert in this autonomous technology, but there will have to be algorithms that can solve that and there will certainly have to be a testing regime.

Robert Evans: For connected and autonomous vehicles, there is now funding set aside for a series of demonstrations of different types. Those will reflect the real world as well as the virtual world in which the technology will be speedily developed before being put out into controlled demonstration environments and, ultimately, on to the open road. The UK is well placed, with activities and the announcements in the Budget, to do the preparatory work and the learning to make the UK a receptive environment for these vehicles to be deployed in and to deal with exactly the type of use cases you referenced.

Quentin Willson: However, it is possible to say that with autonomous vehicles you might even reduce the amount of accidents in the UK, because it is 90% human error. The 2,000 fatalities we have in the UK on our roads a year have plateaued and are due entirely to people making mistakes. If we put this technology in, that death toll could conceivably come down significantly.

[Mr Hayes]

Q It is good to hear you make the case for us being pre-eminent in this field. The Government are certainly determined to make this country a world leader. Returning to the issue of infrastructure, what are your views on on-street charging infrastructure? We spoke a bit about petrol stations, service stations, supermarkets and so on. Other places—Paris is a good example—have done quite a lot of work on spreading on-street charging infrastructure quite evenly across the city. What more could Government do on that?

In that spirit, what about the design of these charging points? Governments have not been entirely hopeless in past decades on that—one thinks of the Gilbert Scott telephone box, the Belisha beacon or the post box. In recent years it has perhaps been not so good, but we can do good things. Should we think more about the design of the charging points and what they look like, to make them instantly recognisable, iconic and widely respected and admired as such?

Quentin Willson: There is a powerful argument for making them iconic as part of this new and very important cycle of change that will make our lives better. In Bordeaux, they have a proliferation of on-street charges because they have a fleet of little electric cars that you can just go up and hire for the day, the hour or the quarter of an hour and then return to a little charging pod. It is a huge investment, but it works extremely well, and of course it limits the amount of traffic coming into cities because those cars are available. It would benefit us hugely if we started to think about urban car club schemes that are just electric cars and the proliferation, as with the Boris bikes, of a recognisable charging pole on the street. It would also help all those people who do not have parking to charge their cars.

Robert Evans: Members of the association take the view that they can produce an iconic charge point that is recognisable as their own brand. They have been in that business and have tried to make the best use of their equipment and make it as attractive as it can be. In the UK, we have quite a dynamic market for the supply of infrastructure. We now are learning that the major US supplier, ChargePoint, is looking to bring its technology into the UK market. We have had BluePoint, which is the Bolloré scheme, and others. They will bring what they view as the norm in their markets into our markets.

Quentin Willson: We could have a competition, could we not?

Robert Evans: We could, but I think there would be a resistance among the industry to effectively move to one standard shape of pole. You have a post and you plug into it, but the innovation is occurring in the way you access it. That is more about people using smartphones to input information and say, for example, “I want to charge for this period. I’m prepared to pay this. I might be prepared, if you incentivise me, to allow my vehicle to have managed charging, as long as it has so many kilowatt-hours in it by the time I come back.” That type of interface is where there will be a lot of innovation. The poles themselves work to pretty standard methodologies, and motorists are used to using them. The clever bit in the design will be about the user interface on the smartphone app that enables smart and managed charging.

Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill (Second sitting)

Alan Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 14th March 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Baker]

Does anybody else wish to add anything on that point? No? Thank you very much.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

Q Earlier, in the discussion with Rob, there was discussion about phraseology—about large fuel retailers or just retailers—and an issue with forecourts. I want to clarify something. I am not sure if forecourts are mentioned in the Bill, so is that a red herring? Is it not going to be up to the retailers to site the charging points where they are most convenient?

Following on from the previous question, if you are not blocking the forecourt, a rapid charger may take 30 minutes, but is that not an opportunity for sales if it is the shops that make all the money? I would have thought that for somebody who is travelling, if it is an intermediate store, it would be an ideal opportunity to park and charge their car, go into the shop, buy a newspaper or a magazine and a few snacks, sit in their car, then move on. Is there not a business opportunity there?

Edward Woodall: Yes, there is. As we said in our submission, only 11% of sites have seating areas for customers, so there might not be the capacity to manage all that. Equally, how big is a forecourt site? Think about your local forecourt site—how many cars can it fit? For some of these electric vehicle charging areas, they will not consider it unless it is an acre or an acre-and-a-half-sized site.

Teresa Sayers: Certainly, the charging sites would have to be on the periphery of a forecourt. The current configuration of estates has very limited space to accommodate any parked vehicles. As was previously mentioned, the business model is a very high throughput of vehicles. The maximum duration on the forecourt is usually below five minutes—they fill up, pay and leave. It is just not built and configured to have additional cars there for a very long period of time.

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

Q I want to ask about brevity. Mr Woodall, I have to confess that I cannot ever remember spending more than five or 10 minutes in a convenience store—presumably, that is why they are called convenience stores, because it is convenient and quick—so I cannot quite see the model of me pulling up in my electric car, plugging in for the half an hour or even 15 minutes, and spending that time in the convenience store, particularly when the number of spaces will necessarily be limited. There will not be 15 or 20 spaces; you might perhaps have two, which might therefore be full the whole time. Do your members really see this as a big business opportunity or is there a Government subsidy available so you might as well take it?

Edward Woodall: I agree with all those points. I think it is difficult in our format of retail to deliver electric charging, given that both on forecourts and in convenience stores, there is large throughput and we are usually in areas of small parades where there are limited parking spaces, or they are on forecourts that are likewise limited for parking space.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Selous]

Q Has the insurance industry thought about these two groups?

Ben Howarth: The potential limitation is that we do not know when this completely automated technology is going to come to market. We are assuming about 2021, but we cannot be 100% certain. There is quite a gap until then.

Telematics, which Iain mentioned, are not directly linked because it is a plug-in the insurer gives you that is not necessarily built directly into the car, but that is probably the first step towards an insurance policy tailored much more around tracking what you as an individual do, rather than broader risk factors.

Longer term, we are talking about cars that will take away the most common human errors and make the road safer. Increasingly, insurance is going to be tailored around the vehicle rather than how the individual behaves. Where you are talking about younger drivers particularly, their behaviour is going to become less of a factor. So you would not necessarily be thinking about age as a relevant risk factor when you look forward into the future. For older people and people who are vulnerable and do not have access to cars at the moment, this is transformational. We probably have not done any more work than any other witnesses on the evidence of that.

[Alan Brown]

Q I have a couple of questions. The first one is for Ben. We have conflicting information about insurance cost. Insurance cost could be much higher because of the repair cost and the lack of people qualified to do the repairs, as well as the cost of the car itself, but there are also expectations that insurance costs will come down because there will be fewer accidents. Is it fair to say that at the moment there is just not enough information to do accurate modelling to understand what insurance figures are going to look like?

Ben Howarth: I think that some people have tried to do modelling, but there is that uncertainty between those two things. We don’t actually know what the cars are going to cost on the market, and that is obviously going to be a factor in the insurance premiums as well. That said, our members are really enthusiastic about the technology. I think they all recognise that it is the future of driving. We don’t know exactly when it is going to come to the road, but it is going to happen. I think they are going to be very keen to be involved in it from day one, and to therefore be offering competitive products that people will want. So there is a market incentive to say, “Don’t make this too expensive.”

In terms of really detailed modelling on the exact price, we do not know enough. On the technology side, a lot of that is developing now. We are going to get many more assisted cars. They might not be fully autonomous and self-driven, but that technology is the same kind of technology that will eventually lead to automated driving. We have already started work on resolving the questions around how good the repair network is going to be, so it is not just a question of waiting for automated driving and then it switching over.

[Alan Brown]

Q Are there any special requirements that insurance companies would need for different testing, for example showing that people are capable of using the software or, with a semi-autonomous vehicle, when the right moment is to take action? We know that some people have trouble switching from a gear stick to manual, so this is another quantum leap. Are there any special requirements that insurance companies would like to see, going forward?

Ben Howarth: I do not think we would have any, other than what interested parties in the road safety world would want. I think we want drivers to be well informed about what they have to do. They have to know how this technology that they are taking on the road works and be confident about when they can and cannot use it. That is probably going to need to be part of the driver testing regime. It is a valid question to ask whether the driving test that you take at 17, which never changes again, is fit for purpose when technology will potentially be upgraded on a regular basis. That is worth further consideration. I am not sure that is for this Bill, but it is definitely something we will need to think about before the cars are commercially available.

[Alan Brown]

Q I just wonder what input your organisations have in the testing trials that are ongoing. I know that there have been four trials in different parts of England, but I am thinking of the bigger issues. If we look at it from a Scottish perspective, we have rural roads, single-track roads and different weather conditions. There are connectivity issues, which my colleague touched on earlier. What plans are there to review the tests that are ongoing? How much more robust do the tests need to be and how is that going to be rolled out across the rest of the UK?

Iain Forbes: My team actually oversees the research programme that is paying for the tests you mention, the four city driverless car trials. It is really important when taking forward the competitions to have as open a process as possible. We work closely with Innovate UK, the Government’s innovation agency, to design competitions around challenges where we think it is likely that the UK is going to be able to pull through developments in the research base into products that are going to be usable and commercially viable. The initial set of tests were in London, Bristol, Milton Keynes and Coventry. We anticipate having future rounds of competitions that will be open to anyone in the UK to participate in if they want to form consortium bidding.

[Mr Hayes]

Q You know that the Bill attempts to strike a balance between, on the one hand, doing enough not to constrain future development—indeed, to facilitate it—and, on the other hand, trying to determine what the schedule describes as an “unknowable future”. Have we got that right, or should we have done more? I draw particular attention to the relationship between connection and automation and the issues of privacy and security of data. Should we do more now, or is it enough that we take powers to do things when we know more later?

Iain Forbes: It is a really important question. The advent of automated vehicle technology will in time require changes to different parts of our regulatory system. We have heard about some of those already today. The trick is to try to find ways of targeting the areas where we think action is necessary now in order to unblock barriers, or where we know technology is near to market. We need to make sure that we have the framework in place to enable the safe use of that technology.

To some extent it is a question that different people have different views on, but we certainly consulted last year with a range of different stakeholders on the areas where they thought action was necessary in order to ensure that the UK was doing the right things to set up a framework. The area in the Bill was the one that stakeholders highlighted as the one that was most important to act on first.

In time we will have to have further steps in the process of getting our regulatory framework ready. In doing so, I would hope to follow the same approach of identifying where the barriers are that need action now and which technologies are nearer to market. We need to make sure that we have the framework in place to enable those.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Andrew Selous]

Q Chief Inspector Goodwin, I think you were expressing some concern about the increase in sales of lasers recently, and the possible need to regulate their sale. Do we have any figures on recent sales of lasers? Has there been a significant increase recently, and do we have any sense of the split in sales between legitimate use—such as for eye surgery, which we just heard about—and illegitimate use?

Richard Goodwin: I think what we are talking about is laser pens in particular. I suspect my colleagues from BALPA are probably better placed to go into the detail, because they have done some of their own market testing.

Martin Drake: Yes, indeed. When we realised that lasers were becoming an issue, we decided to spend some time looking at what was available. In some parts of the world—in fact, just down the road here—you can go into the local market and buy a laser that purports to be 500 milliwatts. We bought three of those and had them tested, and they varied between 280 and 650 milliwatts. They are about $20, give or take, and they are readily available.

At the higher end—you tend not to be able to buy those on the street; you have to go to the internet—a quick search will show you that they are available. The price has fallen considerably. When we started 10 years ago, £700 would be what you would pay for the most powerful laser. You can buy a 5-watt laser today off the internet for around $269. I do not think anyone has done the numbers, but experience tells me they are probably out there and being used.

There are certain countries where you cannot post a laser to over the internet; the USA springs to mind. You can only buy legitimate lasers from legitimate sources in the US. One of the companies we have investigated clearly says on its website: “We cannot post these products to the USA”. They are out there and they are relatively easy to buy. The advertising is up there and if you are of that mind, you can burst balloons, set fire to matches and do all these lovely things, make your cat chase around the room with it. They are up there. The advertising is there, so there is a market.

Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill

Alan Brown Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Carry-over motion: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 6th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I would like to hear how they settle that in Glasgow.

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Pugh]

I am presenting my personal observations. The hon. Gentleman has acknowledged that there are problems and I am simply alluding to them.

[Alan Brown]

Did the hon. Gentleman not make the case for autonomous vehicles when he talked about people potentially making long-distance journeys when they are tired? The whole problem with drivers at the moment is that they fall asleep at the wheel and lose concentration. Autonomous vehicles must be an improvement on that.

[John Pugh]

We are just looking at different sides of the same problems. It is quite obvious that people will not get tired in autonomous vehicles in the same way, but they will then perhaps make longer journeys than they otherwise might have. Both points remain valid.

If people are going to go along the motorways in convoy and at the right speed all the time, have we not considered the thought that everybody could get into the same vehicle? Have we not, through a back door, invented the bus all over again?

There are imponderables from a manufacturers’ side. It is easy enough to insist on technology that does not let people drive if it is unsafe, but once they are on the road, vehicle failure midstream is always a possibility, even if the software is up to date. There might be unexpected damage to sensors or equipment because of conditions such as bad weather or through accidental damage. In responding to a change of circumstance mid-journey, at what point is it the driver’s responsibility? If road signals fail, road markings are obscured or traffic is unexpectedly redirected in a haphazard fashion, at what point does the manufacturer, the council or the passenger take the blame should an accident occur?

We can leave out all the hypothetical moral dilemmas involving nuns or how a vehicle would distinguish between a black bin bag waving and a child frozen in terror when collision is inevitable. Machines would make different calculations, and I am sure there would be solutions. I suspect that with the development of artificial intelligence, machines will better reflect our moral preferences and become smarter. The other day, I was torturing myself by thinking about what would happen if two autonomous vehicles met on a single road, on which one could not pass the other, and one had to give way but both systems predicted that the other would. One would have a sort of parallel to the Balaam’s ass dilemma.

The Bill is a modest attempt to tackle the issues I have outlined. The pious hope behind it is that the tricky issues will eventually be ironed out in court. But courts can operate only within the law they have, and my expectation is that technology will move faster than the law and we will be back here soon.

Bus Services Bill [Lords]

Alan Brown Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 1st March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

I rise to say a few words on clause 17, which is the only UK-wide provision in the Bill. I am going to start by doing something that I have not done before, which is to commend the Government and the other place for agreeing to amendments that brought in clause 17 and the provisions on accessibility. This is a victory for common sense as well as for equality. It makes no sense that train operators have had to provide audio-visual information for years, yet bus companies are under no such obligation. By default it is clear that more people use buses and that people with visionary or sensory impairment are likely to require access to buses far more frequently than to trains.

As part of the Talking Buses campaign, I wrote to the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), and also used my first question to the Prime Minister to raise awareness of the campaign, so I am well aware that at that point the Government were not for moving on this matter. The Transport Minister’s response stated:

“Such systems are expensive to install, potentially creating a disproportionate financial burden to bus companies”.

He also stated:

“We propose that franchising schemes could require the installation of equipment to provide accessible information on buses where the local authority feel this is appropriate”.

We cannot have the Government putting out the message that these provisions would be too expensive for them, only to ask local authorities to deal with them instead.

[Rob Marris]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that some of the concerns about the cost of these proposed measures are entirely misplaced? When I drove a bus, it was a requirement of my job that I announced every stop as it was upcoming. Most bus drivers have a voice and can announce these things as part of an audio-visual information package for people with disabilities without spending any more money at all.

[Alan Brown]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for passing on his experience. That makes sense. In fact, the Department for Transport’s own figures suggest that the provision of audio-visual information would cost less than £6 million a year, which in terms of its overall expenditure is absolutely nothing.

The Government have previously suggested that phone apps might be the way forward. While apps have benefits, they cannot be the only solution. I was contacted by a company that gave me a phone to trial, so I handed it over to a constituent with a visual impairment. They told me that the app was fine as far as it went, but it could not be relied upon 100%.The app’s functionality also depends on the type of phone being used, so the Government cannot use that sort of technology as a way around the problem. We need audio-visual technology on buses.

[Huw Merriman]

Will the hon. Gentleman join me in congratulating the Government on the change? When the Royal National Institute of Blind People gave its thoughts to the Transport Committee, the situation was that such technology would only be for new buses. This measure goes further, so will the hon. Gentleman give some credit where it is due?

[Alan Brown]

I think I have the usual problem here of people not understanding my Scottish accent, because I said in my opening remarks that I commend the Government and the House of Lords for bringing this measure in. I do commend the Government; I was just saying some “buts” as usual to put the message out that they must go forward and fully implement the proposal. That is why I was making some minor criticisms.

As part of the campaign that I was involved in, I also participated in a Guide Dogs for the Blind Association blindfold walk through Kilmarnock—my constituency’s main town. The drivers were excellent, but my experience reinforced the need for new technology. When I went on the bus, there was absolutely no way of telling where I was on the journey or where I could get off. Buses clearly do not call at every bus stop, so if there is no information, people have to rely on help from drivers or other passengers.

[Lilian Greenwood]

I did a similar thing to the hon. Gentleman’s blindfold walk and know how important audio-visual announcements are to people with visual impairments. However, such announcements help everybody who uses the bus. One thing that puts people off using buses is not being quite sure where the stops will be and where to get off, which is why they like trams and rail systems. Audio-visual technology is important for increasing everybody’s bus use.

[Alan Brown]

I absolutely agree. It gives everybody the confidence to go on the buses, particularly the elderly and tourists and other people who are not familiar with different cities and towns. There are benefits for all passengers.

Returning to people with a visual impairment, a Guide Dogs report states that seven out of 10 passengers on buses that do not have audio-visual information have missed their stop because they did not know where to get off or were not assisted in getting off. I cannot imagine how distressing that must be. People who feel uncomfortable in using public transport would be reluctant to go back on a bus after an experience like that. I was pleased to hear that the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) has also participated in a blindfold walk. If any pressure comes up during the consultation about costs, I urge the Government to resist it. If anyone has any doubts, they should do what I and other Members have done and go on a blindfold walk to see what it is like.

In conclusion, I commend the Government again—as long as they follow through in the consultation and implement the proposal within an appropriate timescale. I also commend Guide Dogs, and the 30 organisations that supported it, for running a successful campaign, the many constituents who have contacted me, and the 30,000 people who signed the petition.

High Speed Rail (London - West Midlands) Bill

Alan Brown Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Gillan]

Thank you very much for reminding me of the rules, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am trying to stick very closely to the amendments. Of course, I am referring to the Lords proceedings and to these amendments. I agree with the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) that it is extraordinary that Ministers who represent constituencies along the route, and who were therefore unable to speak in this House, were prohibited from speaking to the Lords Select Committee because the locus standi was challenged by the very organisation set up by the Department for Transport—in collusion, in other words. MPs were shut up on this issue, as they have been in many instances since the project was first thought of.

With your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will now pay tribute to people such as Hilary Wharf and her husband Bruce Weston. They helped to lead the brave HS2 Action Alliance, which still gives advice to beleaguered people and tries to stop or improve this project. My county council, ably led by Councillor Martin Tett, has put an enormous amount of work into the Bill, as has my district council, Chiltern District Council, led by the formidable Councillor Isobel Darby. I particularly mention my parish council, which is struggling to find the resources, alongside the larger councils, to carry out the work necessary to protect and inform its residents.

An additional burden runs from the amendments on traffic regulations, for example, and those costs will fall on our local councils. The amendments covering flood risk, possession of land and changing traffic flows, for example, will lie at the feet of our financially challenged councils, and there is little chance of the full costs being restored to those councils for all the extra work that has been forced on them, unless the Minister tells me different at the Dispatch Box today. In other words, our constituents are paying not once but two or three times over for this project.

Will HS2 be a success? I am still not convinced. Will these amendments make it a success? We learned from last weekend’s newspapers that the Department is so concerned that HS2 may be overtaken by new technology, such as driverless cars, that it is trying to encourage technology companies such as Google and the ever-popular Uber to take a financial stake in the recently announced combined franchise for the west coast main line and HS2 in order to offset the risk that HS2 is, in fact, old technology.

This is my last opportunity to speak on the Bill, and I want to acknowledge, as did the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman, a couple of other people who tried to help those affected by HS2. I think particularly of Neil Caulfield, who tried so hard to help people through an obscure and often frightening process. He was a credit to this House and to the Clerks Department. He was scrupulously fair, and nothing was too much trouble for him. Quite frankly, he went above and beyond the call of duty to try to deal with an arcane process that really should be banished from our procedures in this House.

I also want to mention an amazing constituent, Mr Ray Challinor. He was chairman of the Hyde Heath village society, and his commitment to our community and social action was second to none. Sadly, his family laid him to rest this afternoon. I would have liked to attend his funeral to pay my tribute to him, but I pay my tribute on the Floor of the House because he was not a man who supported HS2. He was a man who was fiercely protective of our local community.

Lastly, I should mention all those individuals who have supported the campaign to either stop or radically change HS2. These are people who often could not afford to donate but did so because they could not believe that the state could ride in such a roughshod fashion over the very people who put it in charge.

The Government will get their way—Royal Assent will be given—but this Bill and this project are tainted by the way in which their people have gone about their business. In a democracy, there should not be a process that is so unequal, giving the state such powers over its citizens without the balance that we would expect from a fair society. I hope that at some stage we will be able to consign this hybrid Bill process to the history books. I wish I could say the same about HS2.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

I shall be brief, as I am well aware that for some people in the House this has been a long process and it is good that we are getting to the end of it. I caught the end of the previous debate, in which people were saying that the Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Bill was 64 years in the making, so this Bill has, in fact, taken somewhat less time. My party is generally supportive of this bold proposal from the Government, but we would like it to be bolder in the long run as it is important that HS2 extends to Scotland. We also need improvements to the existing line north of Crewe in the meantime so that we can have shorter journey times up north.

I am well aware that I am supposed to be speaking to the Lords amendments. As they have improved the Bill, we support them. We welcome the amendments to clause 48 relating to compulsory purchase order powers. It is important that the Secretary of State sticks to his commitment that any CPO powers will be used sparingly and as a last resort.

As I said, we are supportive of the concept. My background is in civil engineering, so I appreciate the value that infrastructure investment can bring in long-term wider business and economic benefits. On that basis, I would like to see the project go forward and I look forward to the start of the construction. I am well aware that some enabling contracts have been let. While we want to see construction starting, I again remind Ministers that we need improvements north of Crewe, and we need this line to get to Scotland sooner rather than later.

[Dame Caroline Spelman]

It is not every day that one walks into the Chamber to find parts of one’s constituency, villages or parishes singled out in legislation, but Lords amendment 1 does precisely that. Madam Deputy Speaker, you reminded us that these amendments are narrow, describing them as largely “typographical”, but I wish to impress on hon. Members that this is a topographical amendment. I should not want any Member to leave this Chamber without understanding exactly what we are talking about. The lovely parish of Bickenhill is perhaps where some hon. Members have disembarked from the west coast main line at Birmingham International station. Perhaps they have stood on the platform looking across to the National Exhibition Centre, but they might not have been wholly aware that they were in the green belt. Very close by is Chelmsley Wood, one of the largest council estates in western Europe. I mention those topographical points because, as I am sure that hon. Members can see, names such as Bickenhill and Chelmsley Wood conjure up images of lovely rural locations, yet people there are at no point further than 8 miles from the centre of either Coventry or Birmingham, so we are talking about land that is precious to those who try to keep the balance of green space and urban density.

Bickenhill parish lies in what is known as the Meriden gap, and ever since I have been a Member of this House, I have fought strenuously to protect it, because it is the green lung that holds Coventry and Birmingham apart. Although a matter of 3 or 4 hectares of green space may not theoretically—maybe abstractly—appear to be all that important to everybody else listening to this debate, it is an important issue for the residents of Chelmsley Wood, because the estate has a very high population density of 60 units of accommodation per hectare. The loss of green space in the area is therefore significant.

The local authority, Solihull Council, made representations when the Bill was considered by the Lords Select Committee because every hectare of green space in our green-belt borough is a matter of great importance to all of us who share completely in the local authority’s motto of “Urbs in Rure”. All Latin scholars will realise that that tells us everything we need to know about the balance we need to strike between urban and rural sustainability, side by side. I would therefore say that this is a bit more than just a typographical matter, Madam Deputy Speaker; it is really important for my constituents.

Will the Minister consider whether the Government’s proposals are compatible with their commitment to biodiversity offsetting? As the 2012 “Natural Environment” White Paper set out, the whole principle of biodiversity offsetting was to make it clear that when we destroy green space, we should create new green space to make up for the loss of natural capital. When he responds, will the Minister be clear about whether he has considered that important dimension?

If, by chance, the Government have not thought about the compatibility of their proposals with biodiversity offsetting, I impress on the Minister the enormous opportunity that exists to do something ambitious, at scale, to offset the loss of green space of the type referred to in the amendment. A good proposal to regenerate the Tame and Blythe river valleys has been worked up by a professor at Birmingham City University and presented to the Department. Rather than glossing over a small piece of green space, should we not seize the opportunity of working together to ensure that people who prize green space in urban areas get proper compensation for the green space that is so important to them?

Ultra Low Emissions Vehicles

Alan Brown Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Moon. I congratulate the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) on bringing forward this debate and sticking to a theme that he has raised before—it is obviously close to his heart.

We have heard much about air quality and the need for action. Just today, I read in the newspapers that according to the United Nations special rapporteur on hazardous substance and waste, air pollution is a crisis that plagues the UK, particularly for children, and urgent Government action is required. In November 2016, for the second time in 18 months, the Government lost a court case on their proposals to tackle air pollution. ClientEarth, which took the Government to court, states that over-optimistic modelling of diesel car fumes was used rather than actual road emissions. The Government clearly need to take proper action. It has also been widely reported that up to 40,000 deaths per year arise from air pollution. Air pollution is a killer, and we need to tackle it head-on.

Transport alone accounts for 23% of CO₂ emissions; transport and electricity generation are the joint largest net contributors to those emissions. That highlights the scale of the problem that needs to be tackled. Over the years, Governments of different colours have introduced a series of initiatives to encourage low emissions vehicles. Many of those initiatives seemed logical at the time, but Governments and their initiatives change, and that has hindered progress in people purchasing low emissions vehicles and the roll-out of the infrastructure that is required to support them.

In January last year, the Minister said he reckoned that the sale of ultra low emissions vehicles had reached a tipping point, and in September 2016 the Department for Transport issued a triumphant press release that said there had been a 49% increase in registrations of ULEVs compared with the previous year. That sounds great, but 805,000 new vehicles were registered and fewer than 10,000 of those were ULEVs, so they actually account for only 1.2% of new vehicles. As the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire said earlier, we need a massive increase in the sale and registration of these vehicles to reach the 5% target by 2020, and we are behind schedule. It is good to hear praise for the wee independent oil-rich country also known as Norway, where ULEVs have a market share of approximately 20%. What lessons does the Minister think can be learned from Norway, and what are the Government doing to replicate its success?

I appreciate the Government’s grant scheme. On the face of it, the scheme is good—it is attractive and the figures look good—but clearly there are still not enough people purchasing ULEVs, so perhaps it needs to be reviewed. Perhaps the Government just need to raise awareness and encourage the public to take up those grants. The Scottish Government have introduced a low-carbon transport fund, which, as well as grants, allows people to access interest-free loans of up to £35,000, which are repaid over six years. Businesses can access interest-free loans of up to £100,000. That is another way of encouraging people to purchase these vehicles. Again, perhaps the UK Government could do more.

The Scottish Government have spent £13 million in the last five years to support bus operators, and Aberdeen actually has Europe’s largest fleet of hydrogen-powered buses. Some 15% of charge points in the UK are in Scotland, which shows that Scotland is ahead in providing that infrastructure.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

Does my hon. Friend also recognise that Glasgow City Council and the Scottish Government did a lot of work during the Commonwealth games to install lots of charging points in sports venues around the city where people may want to go?

[Alan Brown]

Yes, and I welcome that work, although ironically, I was contacted by a constituent who is concerned that Glasgow City Council will charge people for using parking bays while they charge their cars, which is actually a disincentive. The council needs to take that on board.

As we have heard, we need to get diesel vehicles off the road. Similarly to the example that the hon. Member for Wells (James Heappey) gave, I have been contacted by constituents who are concerned that they will be penalised for having purchased diesel vehicles in good faith. Will the Government look at compensation or find other ways to fully incentivise those people to move to ultra low emissions vehicles? We must find a way to disincentivise people from buying diesel cars. There were good proposals in the Government’s consultation on the modern transport Bill, but the Bill has been delayed. When will it come forward, and will it contain proper measures, as we have discussed?

Rail Infrastructure (Train Operating Companies)

Alan Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

There are two issues here. Clearly, there is logic, for the midlands and the north, in having a really joined-up relationship between Network Rail and the local train operator. Of course there will be services, such as Virgin’s west coast main line and the CrossCountry service, that cross boundaries. We must preserve the existing regulatory framework so that those services are not affected by this. My hon. Friend talked about devolution; what I am talking about for London is exactly the same model that we have adopted for transport in the north and the midlands of partnership and of shaping franchises. Local designer franchises have played a big part in the north in delivering what is genuinely thought to be a great new franchise structure that will bring real improvements for people across the north of England.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

Just a couple of weeks after the autumn statement, which was supposed to herald new investment in infrastructure, the new Secretary of State has given the game away with today’s announcement that the new rail line between Oxford and Cambridge will be built with private investment, so his true colours are shining through. Let me take him back to his comments about the success of ScotRail Alliance and ask him this: if it is working so well now, would it not work even better if we removed more interfaces and fully devolved Network Rail in Scotland to the Scottish Government?

[Chris Grayling]

The hon. Gentleman talks about investment and true colours. My view is this: the public sector is already putting a vast amount of investment into the railways. I support that, and I will get as much investment as I possibly can for our transport system, but there is no harm in also trying to do more by supplementing that with private finance. That may be an ideological division between us, but I cannot see how our transport system loses by having some private finance alongside the huge amounts of public finance already going into the sector.

Road Traffic Accident Prevention

Alan Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2016 Westminster Hall

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) on introducing this important subject and speaking so passionately about it more than 35 years down the road, for want of a pun.

It is amazing that the number of road accident fatalities today is roughly a quarter of the number in the 1920s and 1930s when there were far fewer cars on the road. That is testament to the improvements in vehicle design, road engineering and driver behaviour, including attitudes towards drink-driving and wearing seatbelts. I commend the hon. Member for Huddersfield for outlining the passionate campaign and the hard work that went into making seatbelts compulsory. It is amazing to think that that was resisted so much within Parliament as it is accepted as normal behaviour now.

It is welcome that the UK has the third lowest accident fatality rate among OECD member states, and there has been a recent decrease in the number of fatalities compared with 2014 but, as we have heard, 1,730 deaths still mean 1,730 families getting a tap at the door. To that end, I was happy to serve today on a Delegated Legislation Committee that agreed to double the penalty points for the use of mobile phones when driving, but I was a bit disappointed by the response from the Minister when I challenged him on the drink-driving limits over which the UK Government preside. He reverted to the standard Tory argument of not targeting those who have a glass of wine on a Sunday. For me, as I have said, that is nonsense.

In the Scottish Parliament, Tory MSPs were particularly vexed about a wee granny having a gin and tonic, but it is a simple fact that alcohol impairs judgment and reaction time, and the UK Government are out of step with the rest of Europe. In Scotland, a lower drink-driving level has been introduced—50 mg of alcohol per 100 ml of blood—and there has been an 8% decrease in the number of people with drink-driving convictions. That is proof that it is further changing driver behaviour. Given that incremental changes make a difference to the number of road deaths, may I suggest that is one way we can go forward?

It will come as no surprise to Members that, as a Scottish MP, I think Scotland is leading the way on the reduction in deaths. If we look at the PACTS map and statistics, to which the hon. Member for Huddersfield referred, almost all constituencies in Scotland have low or very low indices. My constituency ranks 611 out of 650, which is very welcome—well within the top 10%. I was a local councillor before I became an MP, so I know full well the local investment by the council in junction redesigns, the roll-out of 20 mph zones and speed bumps. Another welcome change in behaviour that I have noticed is that people now actually request speed bumps, whereas there seemed to be a bit of resistance when they were first introduced.

The SNP has also invested massively in motorway upgrades and other infrastructure that helps to take people off the road, which is another way of reducing the risk of road accidents. The SNP Government have invested in rail infrastructure with the new borders railway and, as was touched on in an intervention, are investing heavily in segregation lanes for cyclists, which is to be welcomed. The SNP Government are spending £1 billion on public and sustainable transport, which is reflected in the record number of people who went to work by public or active transport in 2015. So much is being done, which is welcome. The UK Government have been undertaking similar schemes, but I urge the Minister to think again on drink-driving limits.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) on securing this debate. I pay tribute to the several decades that he has committed to the campaign. While he was doing so in this place, I was on the outside looking after the families of those who had been bereaved and injured. We share that passion. This debate is particularly apposite given that we have just had road safety week.

As we have heard, the UK has a proud record of some of the safest roads in the world—I pay tribute to the work of RoadPeace, Brake and other charities committed to the cause—but of late, we have hit a standstill. Sadly, over the past three years, the number of deaths on our roads has increased; the Department for Transport estimates that there were 710,000 road casualties last year alone. The Government say that road safety is a top priority, but so far their legacy has been one of disappointment and frustration. In the last Parliament, they scrapped the road targets introduced by Labour, which successfully reduced by one third the number of those killed or seriously injured. Some argue that targets do not achieve anything, but I disagree; they focus minds and attention and hold the Government accountable.

Sadly, the Government are also failing on enforcement. A majority of police forces have recorded year-on-year falls in full-time road policing officers. There were 1,437 fewer designated officers outside London in 2015 than there were in 2010. I am sure that the Minister will take heed of this year’s road safety week campaign, which centred on the important six-point pledge that everyone here will have signed, as I did. The pledge committed both drivers and other road users to the importance of slower, sober, secure, silent, sharp and sustainable driving. We need the Government to act in all those areas.

Serious questions remain about drink and drug driving. Since 2010, progress has ground to a halt, with no reduction in the number of road traffic collisions involving drink-driving. Each year, it causes around 240 deaths. Over half of those are not the drunk drivers but passengers or other road users in the wrong place at the wrong time. We welcome the Christmas advertising campaign, but what else is being done? What discussions has the Minister had with police and crime commissioners about existing limits and enforcement?

[Alan Brown]

What is the hon. Gentleman’s position on the call to reduce the drink-driving limit?

[Andy McDonald]

We take seriously the success in Scotland, and we want that evidence base to inform us. That is exactly the right direction to be going in, but let us see the evidence rolled out. I am sure that the Minister will wish to comment on that as well. Sadly, the Government seem oblivious to the impact of their substantial cuts to road police numbers. It is worrying that a majority of forces have recorded year-on-year falls in the number of full-time road policing officers.

Many of us will have seen the consequences of mobile phone use by drivers, such as the terrible crash that killed Tracy Houghton and her children. Department for Transport figures show that in 2015, drivers impaired or distracted by their phones were a contributory factor in 440 road accidents in Britain. Although we welcome this morning’s statutory instrument increasing the number of points on a driving licence for mobile phone use, once again it is not possible to police the issue if there are no police present to enforce the law. We cannot leave that work to tabloid newspaper photographers whose campaigning we have seen in recent weeks. The Government must take the initiative and invest in roadside policing, not cut it, so that accidents can be prevented and lives saved.

When accidents do occur on our roads, it is crucial that the vehicles involved have been designed to be as safe as possible. Given that 90% of road accidents are caused by human error, the introduction of autonomous vehicles on our roads in the not-too-distant future could be an opportunity to transform road safety.

In closing, I note that the Government stated in their manifesto that they would reduce the number of cyclists and other road users killed on our roads every year. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to the genuine concerns about police numbers, enforcement, penalties and awareness. Without action, it is projected that a third of a million people will be killed or seriously injured on the roads in Britain over the two decades ending in 2030.

Draft Road Traffic Offenders Act 1998 (Penalty Points) (Amendment) Order 2016

Alan Brown Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2016 General Committees

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. We in the Scottish National party also support these measures. The hon. Member for North West Durham asked a valid question about why it was six points. Work has been done on trying to identify how many people use mobile phones and there have also been consultations, but has there been any work on behavioural analysis and whether the measures will make an impact? The Minister spoke at length about the fact that novice drivers are the younger drivers most likely to use mobile phones and most likely to be at risk of losing their licence, so hopefully the measures will be effective. However, in terms of campaigning, how do we get the message through to those young people? They are generally the ones who are not party to the usual radio campaigns or television and newspaper advertising. If we are going to educate them and try to change their behaviour, we need to find a way to communicate effectively.

Drive-driving was mentioned as a comparator, but I think drink-driving is another elephant in the room, given that England, Wales and Northern Ireland still have the joint highest allowable alcohol levels. Is the UK Government going to look at that? On the previous questions about citizens getting caught up and inadvertently becoming victims, I do not think we should tie ourselves in knots. We should go ahead with the legislation rather than worry about somebody who might get caught. If they are using a mobile phone as a satnav system, they certainly should not be touching it or operating it, in which case they should be caught under the legislation.

[Andrew Jones]

There have been interesting and important questions from the Committee. I will tackle the drink-driving one first, which offers a clue as to how we can make progress on road safety. The first year for which we have detailed information on road fatalities in which alcohol was a factor was 1979, when 1,650 people lost their life. That number went down to 240 in 2014, the last year for which we have full data available. That reduction has been down to a mixture of enforcement and education, but especially peer pressure. It is now socially unacceptable to drink and drive, although there is a hard core of people still engaged in it.

We have seen social change in the world of drink-driving and I want to see such change in the world of handheld mobile phone usage while driving. There is a direct read-across in terms of social peer pressure. We are not seeking to make any changes to the limits because I do not want to criminalise the people who might go out and have a glass of wine with their Sunday lunch. I do not think that that is how we will make more progress on this issue. Other countries may have lower drink-drive limits, but they do not have better road safety records.

[Alan Brown]

I do not want to get bogged down in this, but the Minister’s argument is nonsense. That argument was put forward in the Scottish Parliament. It was said that the police would end up criminalising the wee old lady who goes out and has a gin and tonic and that the police should be doing other things. Drink-driving convictions in Scotland are down by more than 7% since the drink-driving limits were lowered, so the effect has been beneficial.

Exiting the EU and Transport

Alan Brown Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I am not necessarily a great fan of inappropriate subsidies, but I hope and believe that as we negotiate free trade agreements with countries around the world we shall create an environment in which trade and freight haulage are conducted on a level playing field, and that there are no artificial barriers that push up our costs and help others to reduce theirs. Above all, however, we benefit from a world in which trade flows freely. That is clearly in the commercial interests of European hauliers, especially hauliers from the Irish Republic. I am very aware that as we enter the negotiations, we have a particular duty of care to our friends in the Republic. We have a duty to seek to reach an agreement that will ensure that their trade, which frequently involves travel by road through the United Kingdom to other parts of Europe, can flow smoothly. It is in all our interests to ensure that we have sensible cross-border arrangements.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

The Secretary of State mentioned discussions with haulage companies. Is he discussing with them the fact that they currently rely on EU drivers, courtesy of licence harmonisation, and the fact that, even so, it is forecast that there will be a shortage of 40,000 HGV drivers by 2020? Is he having discussions about what the Government can do to plug that skills gap?

[Chris Grayling]

Absolutely. The task is within the remit of the Minister of State, Department for Transport, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes). Not only is he the Minister responsible for our strategic road network but, as a former skills Minister, he holds the skills portfolio in my Department, and I know that he is very exercised about this issue. Of course, with a managed system of migration, we shall be able to recruit skills internationally when we need them, but I want a new generation of young drivers. There is much that we can do to make the profession more attractive, and my right hon. Friend is working on that at this very moment.

I have talked about the potential for a more tailored regulatory framework for the ports sector after we have left the European Union. We have a thriving and competitive ports sector, strong international investment, and some first-class facilities. I believe that the sector will be an essential part of a nation that is focused on global trade, trading opportunities, and opening up trade links with other countries.

Our railway services through the channel tunnel link us with the continent, but apart from that Britain’s rail network is domestic. Although on day one after exit the rules will be the same as before, in future we shall be able to make our own decisions about changing those rules. We currently have a derogation from many of the EU standards for our existing railways. That is because many of them date back to Victorian times and were built to entirely different standards. That is not the case for new railways, so one example of the kind of challenge that we are dealing with in the construction of HS2 is the fact that European specifications for platform heights are inconsistent with flat access for disabled people on to trains. We have to address that as part of the development of HS2, but it is an example of how, freed from European Union regulation, we can make sure that we do a better job, in this case for disabled people, which I believe that Members on both sides of the House will think is the right thing to do.

I talked about the global opportunity for Britain, and across the transport sector I am determined not only to negotiate the best deal for Britain within Europe, but to find new opportunities for our transport sector around the world. We should support our industries as they sell their expertise and products and seek to win major contracts around the world. We have world-class expertise in this country in the automotive sector, aerospace, logistics, transport engineering, rolling stock manufacture and much more. We need to be confident in offering these services to the world, and we have every reason to be confident: we are doing some great things in this country at the moment, from the first-class work being done to deliver Crossrail in London to the high-quality automotive technology that is developing the new generation of autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

Thank you for calling me, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am sorry, but I am feeling a wee bit dizzy because I am not usually so high up the speakers’ list. It is also confusing that there is no limit on our speaking time. Clearly one of the reasons why I have been called so early is the real lack of Back Benchers in the Chamber. Given how many people have told us how bad Europe is and about all the wonderful opportunities that there will be following Brexit, I should have thought that Members would be queuing up to tell us about those opportunities.

[Sir William Cash]

I understand that the hon. Gentleman is about to become a member of my European Scrutiny Committee, so I simply say that I entirely endorse what he has said. Furthermore, many of the remoaners, and the doomsters and gloomsters, are not here defending the positions that they were taking before—I am not just referring to SNP Members. That is where a lot of the problems lie.

[Alan Brown]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that helpful intervention. Clearly we are part of the remainers, and we represent our constituents. The majority of our constituents across Scotland voted to remain, so we must represent them.

The hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) made a bit of a play of highlighting opportunities, but really he highlighted some of the problems with the European Union rather than proper opportunities. He seemed to put a lot of faith in the myth that the Government will invest the money that will not be going to Europe. He trusts the Conservative Government to invest that money. He used the word “subsidy”, although he knows full well that no Tory Government ever volunteer to pay money for subsidies.

This has been a wide-ranging debate. I will focus on road transport, but just before I do, I want to go back to the open skies debate. Prestwick airport, which is in one of my neighbouring constituencies, is a big employer for my area as well as for the constituency it is based in. It would be good if the Minister confirmed that Brexit will not affect Ryanair’s flights from Prestwick and tell us what the Government will do to mitigate any effects. I will throw out one opportunity for Prestwick—to be fair, this is not to do with the European Union—which is its potential as a spaceport. It is high time the Government made a decision about that.

As I said, I will focus on road transport. The Secretary of State said quite correctly in his opening speech that road transport affects us all. Given the proportion of goods that are transported by road to shops, road transport is fundamental to the price of goods. According to Government figures, almost three times as many goods are moved by road as are moved by rail and water combined, which shows us that road is the transport king.

That brings us to the question: what has the EU done for road transport? Apart from the harmonisation of licensing, the harmonisation of vehicle design, European Union-wide regulations for the transport of goods, workers’ rights legislation such as the Working Time Regulations 1998, the Road Transport (Working Time) Regulations 2005, the Agency Workers Regulations 2010 and the Fixed-term Employees (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2002, and funding for road schemes in Scotland, the EU has not done much to help road transport.

What else has the EU given us? Apparently, as the guys who are not here continually tell us, the EU has given us endless red tape and regulation. Let us look at how the EU has actually meddled in the pan-European transport of goods by road—this point was touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry). In 1998, a lorry travelling from Milan to London required 88 separate documents. The EU got involved, and after much wrangling, the number of documents now required is one. The number has gone from 88 down to one—that is the red tape that the EU has created for the transport of goods across Europe. In the 1980s, there were 100,000 sets of technical regulations across the member states. Thanks to the EU, they have been consolidated, and there is now one set of EU-level regulations.

We heard about ports earlier. Ports are integral to the import and export of goods for road haulage. As we have heard, ports handle 90% of the UK’s trade. Leaving the EU means that there is a risk that instead of a seamless journey on and off a ferry, there could be extended customs checks, which will slow progress. As we have heard, the infrastructure is not geared up for that, which could mean that ports will require additional parking. Some of the checks need to be repeated for each country that a lorry traverses. Given that the World Bank estimates that the customs clearance process for a single freight container adds around a day to the import process, it is clear that we could face a massive cost and logistics nightmare. Will the Minister therefore confirm that he is fighting for access to the single market and the customs union?

According to the Treasury’s figures, EU membership is estimated to increase trade with EU members by between 68% and 85%. I know that there has been a whole debate about how inflated the figures might or might not be, but even if they are inflated, they still show that there is huge benefit from our membership of the single market.

Has the Secretary of State and/or the Minister discussed the customs union with the automotive industry? At the moment, car components criss-cross the continent before returning for use in final assembly at car plants, so the customs union is a major positive for the automotive industry. The industry is completely appalled by the lackadaisical argument that simply claims that no tariffs will be applied because of the importance of the UK market. It has confirmed that tariffs are its No. 1 concern, so will the Minister touch on that when he sums up?

Nearly 300,000 HGV drivers were employed in the road haulage industry last year. In April 2015, only 1,165 jobseekers recorded their standard occupation as HGV driver, so it is clear that a HGV driver qualification is a pathway to full employment. Even so—we touched on this earlier—the road haulage industry is having to take advantage of EU nationals, using licence harmonisation, to plug the skills gap. There is a predicted shortage of 40,000 HGV drivers by 2020 and the Government do not challenge that figure. That situation will only get worse unless there is a post-Brexit reciprocal licensing arrangement.

I have repeatedly called for the Government to implement a grant scheme to allow small haulage companies to train new HGV drivers. Such a scheme would pay for itself from welfare savings. To date, I have heard nothing from the Government. The Secretary of State said that the idea was with the Minister of State, Department for Transport, the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), who is responsible for skills in the Department for Transport, but it is time we started hearing some concrete plans.

The last key topic I will touch on is road funding, which is particularly relevant to Scotland. Another dividend of the UK Union that we suffered from in Scotland for many years was a lack of investment in our road systems. It has taken an SNP Government coming to power to really push that agenda, in particular with the new M74 and M80 motorways, and the ongoing £500 million M8, M74 and M73 upgrades. It is ridiculous to think that there has never been a continuous motorway connecting Edinburgh and Glasgow; the SNP Government are having to rectify that.

[Drew Hendry]

It is not just the motorways my hon. Friend mentions that were neglected for a long time; many connections to rural Scotland such as the A9 were given no attention. The Scottish Government are now dualling the entire A9 between Perth and Inverness.

[Alan Brown]

I welcome that example and will come on to another shortly.

Investment for the current motorway upgrades came from the European Investment Bank, which drew in other international investment. Will such avenues for investment still be available at affordable rates to the Scottish Government in the future? It would be good if the Minister provided some clarity on that.

Anyone who has travelled to the highlands will know how many roads there are still single track, with passing places for oncoming vehicles. Those roads are lifelines. One example is the Fort William-Mallaig road, the road to the isles, which was completed as a two-lane carriageway only in 2009; previously, it was known as the worst trunk road in Europe. That shows the lack of investment that came to us from Westminster. The upgrade was completed partly with European funding. The allocation included £3 million from the European regional development fund, as well as European transitional fund assistance. That is proof that the EU managed to get money to Scotland that would not have come from direct funding.

Scotland secured a total investment of €941 million from the European structural fund in the 2014 to 2020 programming period. Of that, £14 million has been allocated to the low-carbon travel and transport strategic intervention programme, which helps to fund low-carbon transport hubs and active travel hubs, and £10 million is being invested in the smart cities strategic intervention. ERDF money has also been allocated to Strathclyde Partnership for Transport for various public transport upgrades. What will happen to the money that has not yet been allocated? Again, we do not know, as there are no guarantees from the Government. It is time they started to provide some certainty. The Scotsman reported a couple of days ago that councils in Scotland were worried about the possibility of losing £46 million of EU funding each year. Much of that money goes to local transport-related projects.

I mentioned travel in the highlands earlier and my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) touched on it, too. One common sight is busloads of tourists traversing the country. Many rights of passengers, particularly in relation to disabled passengers, are incorporated in regulations covered by EEA membership. Tour operators entering Scotland and the wider UK may choose not to enter the country in the future because EU passengers might not want to have to apply for a visa as part of a tour package.

It can be argued that many of these issues are not insurmountable, but the fact is that 8% of all travel in the EU in 2014 was attributed to buses and coaches, with 6.5% to rail. The Department for Transport gave very little consideration to buses in its “Balance of Competencies” report released ahead of the referendum, despite the volume of regulations in place to protect coach passengers within the EU.

It is clear that EU directives have made our roads safer and protected the rights of HGV drivers. They have made the transport of goods easier, and therefore cheaper, within the customs union. The free movement of goods and people in conjunction with the licence harmonisation process has been vital for the haulage industry. Without it, there would have been market failure by now. There has even been harmonisation of the blue badge system for people with disabilities. Will that be reciprocated post-Brexit? As I outlined, the EU has contributed funds for much-needed road upgrades in Scotland. It is high time the Government understood that Brexit means a lot more than Brexit, and that we want clarity.