Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

Let me be drawn on the first part of that question, if I may. My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Hydrogen technology is very important for heavier vehicles and potentially for trains, whereas it is battery technology for cars. We are working and funding both.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

21. I thank the Secretary of State for listening to my call last July and bringing Northern Rail back into public ownership from 1 March. When the trains do arrive on the Harrogate line through my constituency, they are dirty diesel trains. Will he commit to electrifying the Harrogate line so that we can have carbon-neutral travel?

[Grant Shapps]

On the hon. Gentleman’s specific point, I have asked the operator of last resort to do a deep clean of all the trains from 1 March, and that there should be a proper schedule in place and they are cleaned. It is disgraceful that they should ever be turning up dirty in the first place. There are also new trains coming on to the network. As part of yesterday’s announcement, next year trains will be brought up from elsewhere on to the network as well.

Seaborne Freight

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

In effect, what we are doing is buying tickets in advance on cross-channel ferries on a number of routes around the country. That is what we are doing. It is no more and no less than that.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is quite incredible that the Secretary of State has awarded a contract to a company with no ships, no investors, no customers, no credible business plan, no employees and no premises. Is he aware that Seaborne Freight tried to get an option to purchase the following four ships: the Hartmut Puschmann, the Espresso Catania, the Espresso Ravenna and the Via Adriatico? They all operate in the southern Mediterranean and would need a complete refit to be able to operate in the channel. In addition, two of the ships failed EU safety inspections. On top of that, Tirrenia, which owns the ships, said that it would not sell them because it did not believe that Seaborne Freight had the money. I visited Tirrenia’s website and found that I could go on a Mediterranean cruise on the four vessels in April. Was the Secretary of State aware of that?

[Chris Grayling]

I am not going to comment on the commercial plans of Seaborne Freight. I am satisfied that it will have the ships necessary to operate the service, but if it is not able to deliver them, it will not be paid.

Train Operating Companies: Yorkshire

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Wednesday 19th December 2018 Westminster Hall

[John Grogan]

Let us make it a joint letter, sending Christmas wishes to Germany.

Without delaying the House too much longer, it would be remiss not to mention the strike, which is causing difficulties for the Yorkshire economy. There was some good news when it appeared that Transport for the North and, I think, the Government acknowledged that there would be a second person on all trains, but there seems to be an issue about the detail of what that second person would do. In Scotland, a deal was done where the guard would continue to have a safety-critical role—the driver would open the doors and the guard would close them. There are compromises that can be reached. Having beer and sandwiches at No. 10 is perhaps out of fashion, but we need Minsters to get the different parties together to end this strike and have proper negotiations.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Many of my constituents travel from Otley to my hon. Friend’s constituency to catch the train on the Wharfedale line, and they all find that the trains are overcrowded. Without the guard, they would really struggle to use that service, particularly as the bus and train times are not compatible with each other. They need that additional support when they reach train stations on the Wharfedale line.

[John Grogan]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. His constituents are very welcome at Burley in Wharfedale, Menston, Ilkley and so on. I believe in the critical safety role of the guard.

I will move on to talk about Boxing day trains. One consequence of the disruption on Northern and TransPennine is that they are not fulfilling their promise—it was in the franchise—to run Boxing day trains. Northern and their franchise were meant to run 60 Boxing day trains this year, and TransPennine were meant to have proposals that would be funded by Government. There are no Boxing day trains in Yorkshire, but there are four lines in the south-east of England that will be running Boxing day trains. The following football teams have home games in Yorkshire: Leeds United, Sheffield United and Barnsley. Harrogate are playing against Halifax—a big local derby in the lower leagues—and I will be watching Guiseley play against Bradford Park Avenue.

There is demand for public transport and trains on Boxing day. Buses now run in Leeds, Bradford and some other Yorkshire cities, whereas they did not a decade ago. Some people cannot go home for Christmas from London to Yorkshire, because they have to be at work on 27 December and they cannot get a train back on Boxing day. There are also the issues of the environment and of loneliness—not everyone relishes being at home for 72 hours at a stretch, in some cases on their own. I appeal to the Minister: let us have Boxing day trains, as in the franchise, on Boxing day 2019. I think he can be the man to deliver that.

We have not yet heard much of London North Eastern Railway in this debate. I understand that it has promised to have seven direct trains to London, which were meant to start in May 2019—previous transport Ministers have assured us that they would. My understanding is that they will now start in the autumn of next year, and I wonder whether the Minister can confirm that today. Lots of businesses in Bradford are really looking forward to those direct trains to London.

Finally, I want to share a railway success story, which is about the role of heritage railways. They will be running across Yorkshire during the holiday period. My distinguished predecessor Bob Cryer was instrumental in saving the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway, and my distinguished predecessor Ann Cryer is president of that railway. I have to report to Members that its “Santa special” on Christmas Eve is completely full—even the local MP cannot get a ticket. I am assured that if there are any cancellations, tickets will be available on Facebook.

Rail Review: Terms of Reference

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Thursday 11th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I do not think that the Welsh can ever claim that their money is siphoned off to pay for the rest of the country, given the amount of support from taxpayers elsewhere in the UK that goes into Wales, but we will be looking at all aspects of the industry, how we operate different parts of the infrastructure and ensuring that we do the right things for the whole of the UK.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My constituents who use the Wharfedale and Harrogate Northern rail lines are still experiencing missed and late services and are still travelling on Pacer trains. I have met Northern a number of times. They have promised the new trains by December and no more Pacers by March, and that these problems will be alleviated. How will the new terms of reference ensure that those demands are met?

[Chris Grayling]

I was in Harrogate recently, talking to passengers at the station, and I know that the new trains have started to arrive on the line from Leeds north through Harrogate. I understand from my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones) that he has had a number of letters from constituents praising the new trains and saying that it is a great new departure for the local railway. Of course it takes time for a new fleet of trains to arrive. The Pacer trains will be going, the sooner the better from my point of view, but the good news for people using that line is that they are one of the first in the north to get the new trains.

Confidence in the Secretary of State for Transport

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Tuesday 19th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

It will not be a surprise to the Secretary of State or the Minister to see me standing up to speak in this important debate, as my office has been in daily contact with theirs over the past few weeks. I can tell them that things are no better in Bedford. Until 20 May, passengers in Bedford had two choices: they could travel on Thameslink trains, which were slow but made more stops, or they could travel in and out of London on a fast East Midlands Trains service. The Department stopped those fast trains last month. We were told in December that there was no choice but to do that. We were promised that it was only for two years and that we would have two fast Thameslink trains an hour and thousands more seats instead, but that was not true. What we have seen since 20 May has been absolute chaos. People are paying to stay in hotels all week, and some are driving into the city. People have run out of childcare options and their bosses have lost patience. These people are tired, angry and desperate. They have been crammed like sardines into the few trains that do run, and family life has been completely disrupted.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend’s constituents’ experience absolutely reflects those of my constituents. The two train stations in my constituency are the last two before the main Leeds city station. By the time the two-carriage trains come, they are full and my constituents cannot get on them. When they do, we have seen cases where people have fainted or been unable to breathe. Does he agree that we need to do something now, as the lack of investment and action is dreadful?

[Mohammad Yasin]

I agree with what my hon. Friend says, because I am a commuter and I see the trouble at Bedford station every day. Almost every hour, a train is either delayed or cancelled. This Government need to take control and do something about this urgently.

Two weeks ago, in this Chamber, I asked the Secretary of State to reinstate EMT peak rail services. His response was that that would be the logical solution to the problem, yet two weeks later those trains are still speeding through Bedford half empty and not stopping. On Friday, he finally wrote to me to tell me that he cannot make this happen after all, as, apparently, it will make some trains 13 minutes later further up the track. Tell that to my constituents who have to wait an hour or more for a train and do not see their children before they go to bed. Tell them that a 13-minute delay on a journey to Sheffield is a good enough reason for these services not to be reinstated. EMT says that these services are already overcrowded. In his letter on Friday, the managing director of EMT said that

“there are few, if any seats available”.

Yet EMT’s own guide to seat availability says that all but one of the peak-time trains travelling between Wellingborough and St Pancras have seating available. Most are running at 75% capacity or less; we can all see the empty seats, but we just cannot get on those trains.

I have no idea why there is such an absence of will to sort this problem, but this is a mess, and it is clear now that there was never any intention of bringing inter-city fast trains back after two years either, because if they cannot make it happen now, when Thameslink is not operating a full service, they are not going to be able to make it happen when it eventually is. All we have heard are excuses. The truth is the industry needs to work together to resolve this quickly. The Secretary of State should have a grip on this weeks ago—months ago, in fact. I warned him and the Minister many times that this timetable will not work for Bedford, but they completely ignored that and carried on regardless. He and his Department have spent a good proportion of the past few weeks putting together the invitation to tender for the new east midlands franchise. Is this farce not proof enough for him that rail franchising does not work? My constituents need solutions and they need them urgently. They need solutions before things get even worse. If the Secretary of State cannot fix this, he should resign and give the job to someone who can.

Transport Secretary: East Coast Franchise

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

One of the firmest ideological principles held by Conservative Members, as we have just heard from the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng), is their insistence on the superiority of the private over the public with regard to the ownership of capital. The continued failure of the rail franchising framework to harness the power of the private sector ought to give them pause for thought on this matter. Much has been said about the £1 billion surplus that was poured back into the Treasury when the east coast main line was run in the public interest prior to Virgin-Stagecoach, but less has been said about how East Coast achieved what private companies could not.

[Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that improved transport links are vital to the success of the so-called northern powerhouse? As such, does he agree that this east coast fiasco means that we can now show that only a publicly owned company model can deliver that agenda?

[Alex Sobel]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. I often stand at King’s Cross waiting for my train home and see the words “Train cancelled” above me. I look wistfully at platform nine and three quarters, hoping that I may be able to go through the wall and travel home on the Hogwarts Express. Although the Minister for Magic, Cornelius Fudge, was a very inept Minister, he at least managed to run the Hogwarts Express successfully—unlike the Secretary of State. I completely agree with my hon. Friend’s point.

I would like to turn to the remarkable East Coast Rewards loyalty scheme that was made available to customers from 2011 until it was scrapped by Virgin Trains East Coast. I extend my thanks to the individuals behind the “Save East Coast Rewards” campaign, who kindly provided my office with a collection of documents obtained through freedom of information requests, including financial reports and business plans produced while East Coast was under public control. The documents disclose the business thinking behind the creation of East Coast’s generous loyalty scheme. There is a sharp focus on understanding and exploiting the unique market characteristics of the east coast main line, to compete with fierce competition from road and air.

The scheme had the following benefits. Frequent business travellers who spent £1,800 over three months would receive six first-class return tickets, lounge access for them and a guest, 20% off advance fares from the East Coast website and a quarter of a bottle of wine, which I am sure Conservative Members would enjoy. That was a bold and competitive offer, and it brought business back from air travel and road on to the railways. For less frequent business and leisure travellers, a spend of just £255 through the East Coast website entitled them to a free standard-class ticket anywhere on the network, so they could enjoy Yorkshire, the north-east or Scotland completely free.

After Virgin took over the franchise, it decided to roll out the Nectar point scheme. Subsequently, an £1,800 spend over three months would award business travellers £18-worth of Nectar points, instead of six first-class tickets. A £255 spend would get someone £2.50-worth of Nectar points, instead of one standard ticket under the public East Coast. It appears that Virgin Trains simply pushed the Nectar reward scheme on to East Coast, without paying any attention to what was already on offer, demonstrating a lack of understanding of the loyalty market, what East Coast had to offer and competition from air travel.

Financial reports from East Coast show that, in 2013-14, East Coast Rewards had more than 380,000 members, who accounted for 50% of expenditure. In subsequent reports, the reward scheme is shown to be ever growing, with more than 600,000 members, before being folded when Virgin-Stagecoach came in. The reward scheme was increasingly central to the surplus that East Coast provided back to the Treasury.

The remarkable thing is that a not-for-dividend subsidiary rail operator appears to have understood far better than Virgin-Stagecoach how to run a viable rewards scheme that succeeded in exploiting the market characteristics of the east coast main line—its status as an artery route and its discretionary travel base of leisure travellers, with competition from road and business air travel—to successfully run a rail franchise. Virgin’s inability or unwillingness to recognise the viability and popularity of the reward scheme it inherited from East Coast seems at odds with the belief that private interests are best placed to organise business profitably.

East Coast was an example of a rail operator that was not responsible to shareholders or profits and was not contorted into complementing the brand identity of Virgin. We had a well-run and well-liked organisation that understood its market position and its strengths and weaknesses and improved the service while pouring money back into the public purse. We need to return to that situation, not as a last resort but as a default position, using the best ownership model for rail travellers, whether as directly operated rail or a co-operative, which would have strong employee and consumer interest. We on the east coast deserve the best railway, which we have not had under Virgin-Stagecoach but did have under the public East Coast.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joseph Johnson]

The hon. Lady mentions climate change, which is of course relevant to freight, as one reason for the freight sector’s difficulties in recent years has been the withdrawal of coal from use in power stations and the declining coal tonnage in freight. And, of course, the Government are committed to our climate change targets, and we are on track with our various carbon budgets.

I will turn now to the main subject of the debate: last week’s decision on the east coast. Our decision ensures that the taxpayer will recover all the money possible under the terms of the contract, and Virgin and Stagecoach have lost nearly £200 million in the process.

Throughout all this we need to remember that, fundamentally, the Intercity East Coast rail operation, as a train service business, continues to be a successful enterprise that returns good value to taxpayers now and will do so in the future. VTEC could not meet the agreed costs of its contract with the Department but, as an operating business, Intercity East Coast services are in good shape, and commercial revenues more than cover the direct costs of the train business. In fact, VTEC paid back more money to the taxpayer than when the line was in public sector ownership.

[Alex Sobel]

Does the Minister see in any merit at all in the public sector running of the east coast line between 2009 and 2015?

[Joseph Johnson]

We are putting together the new east coast partnership, which will constitute a new approach to how we run the railways. It will bring together the best of the public sector and the best of the private sector, ending the blame game that has seen train companies blame the track operator and vice versa.

Let us not forget that, as a passenger service, this was a well-run railway. The dedication of the staff responsible for the delivery of railway services has maintained high levels of passenger satisfaction—more than nine out of 10 passengers are happy with their journeys.

Opposition Members have suggested that we have nationalised the railway. That is, of course, not the case; rather, this is a temporary return to public control. Indeed, that was envisaged in the original design of privatisation in the early 1990s. The use of the operator of last resort—our public sector operator—is an integral part of the franchising system, not an alternative to it. It is used on a routine basis when we negotiate with private companies to provide a genuine alternative in negotiations, ensuring that we secure real benefits for passengers and taxpayers, and keep people moving. They are given a better deal because they know that the Government have this option in their back pocket.

As was emphasised in the 2013 Brown review, passengers remain protected through the Department’s ability to handle default with an operator of last resort on hand to take over. In this situation, the OLR will do what it is supposed to do: work with the Department on the next competition for a commercial train operator. It will help us to shape the new partnership railway on the east coast, preparing the ground for the line to be transformed into a public-private partnership that will deliver the best of both worlds.

Haulage Permits and Trailer Registration Bill [Lords]

Alex Sobel Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Monday 14th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andy McDonald]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for making that point. I am just delighted that the hon. Lady got there eventually.

Road haulage is essential to the complex and sensitive just-in-time supply chains that underpin the UK and EU economies. Roll-on roll-off ferries face the most serious impact from a no-deal Brexit. A staggering 10,000 trucks pass through Dover each day. Almost none of these currently requires a customs clearance process. The port estimates that a two-minute delay per vehicle will generate a permanent 20-mile-long traffic jam.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Given the current snail’s pace in the negotiations, with the Cabinet split in two to look for solutions rather than no solutions, should there not have been some contingency in this Bill for customs checks, which are looking increasingly likely due to the Government’s handling of Brexit?

[Andy McDonald]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. One does wonder why no such contingency has been put in the Bill, and we will have to address that in Committee.

The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders tells me that, on average, 1,100 trucks from the EU deliver components worth £35 million to UK car and engine plants every single day. The UK automotive industry relies on just six major ports for the export of 95% of completed vehicles. The SMMT says that some manufacturers face costs of up to £1 million an hour if production is stopped due to component supply issues. A 15-minute delay to parts delivered just in time can cost manufacturers £850,000 per year. Is it not blindingly obvious that the current trajectory of this Government, with Brextremists at their core, means that we are heading for economic and trading chaos?

Electric Vehicles and Bicycles

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Wednesday 9th May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr McCabe. The take-up of electric vehicles and electric bikes is vital in our fight against irreversible climate change and to improve our air quality—especially in cities, given that so many of our cities exceed both EU and World Health Organisation safe air quality levels. I represent a constituency with no public electric vehicle chargepoints, which is an issue I have raised with the Minister for Energy and Clean Growth, the right hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry), both publicly and privately. I can now add this Minister to the list of those I am raising it with.

I want to use the debate to make public ideas that I have put to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and that I now put to the Department for Transport. This is timely, following the joint report by the Transport Committee, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, the Health Committee and the Environmental Audit Committee—I sit on the Environmental Audit Committee—which included a recommendation that,

“the Treasury introduces more ambitious measures to encourage the take-up of low emission vehicles”

and electric vehicles, including,

“a revision of Vehicle Excise Duty rates to better incentivise both new purchases and support the second-hand market.”

Those points were made brilliantly by the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), who did not make any points in his speech that I disagreed with.

I have ideas in six areas that would improve the take-up of electric vehicles and bikes. First, we should align Office for Low Emission Vehicles residential chargepoint grant residential funding with the Joint Air Quality Unit funding to provide a match for local authorities, to make OLEV residential funding feasible. Currently, we have very low take-up of that OLEV grant. At present, local authorities have no repayment mechanism for residential OLEV, so they need to find a matched funder. A list of potential match sources would unlock the fund. Local authorities will not currently commit their scarce funding to fund OLEV residential chargepoints; they need that matched funding.

Secondly, we should regulate the electric supply so that three-phase power supplies are included in building codes for all new homes, offices, shopping centres, public buildings and other areas where public parking is available. Only a small number of EV charge stations may then be necessary. At present, retail and commercial sites may rapidly increase the number of EV chargepoints on their premises without having to make major investments into new power supply, but power supply is one of the great barriers to increasing EV chargepoints. Further to installing wires, it would doubtless encourage take-up if we regulate so that all new workplaces—particularly those of large employers—have a minimum number of EV charging facilities on site.

Thirdly, clean air zones such as the one coming to Leeds next year are a powerful policy tool. However, one concern is that those in social grades D and E who have kept an old vehicle running are likely to be charged, and they are least likely to be able to make use of the Government’s ultra low emission vehicle grants. We could test extending the ULEV grant into the secondary market. Plenty of electric vehicles will be fleet cars, and one or two-year-old vehicles in the secondary electric vehicle market could be purchased by those in the lower earning quartiles. That should be encouraged via an extension in ULEV grants. The Government should test such a policy in areas where they are bringing in clean air zones, because that is where charging will start.

Fourthly, we should encourage EV charging more broadly. There is considerable scope for soft measures to encourage electric vehicles, which could include free parking electric vehicle-only bays on the high street, with free charging, which would incentivise those bays to be used and normalise electric vehicles among people who use the high street.

Fifthly, we should provide support for the city centre parking levy—a levy on businesses with parking spaces—to encourage a modal shift to other measures, including opt-outs for EV charging. We would put a levy on businesses, but if they put in an electric vehicle space, that space would not be charged for, to incentivise them to put in electric vehicle chargepoints.

Sixthly, on licensing and planning, we should make regulations to ensure that when granting new planning or licensing of some commercial premises over a certain size, EV spaces must be installed at a certain density per resident or parking space. This area has fallen through the gaps: we see many planning permissions across the country with no electric vehicle spaces or chargepoints. We should therefore legislate to ensure that all UK car parks with more than 50 spaces must have a minimum of one EV space per 25 spaces. Therefore, a car park with 50 spaces would have to provide a minimum of two EV chargepoints. That would be incredibly easy to implement in quite a short timescale.

Those are my immediate points for improving our EV infrastructure. I understand that we are looking at 2040, but we need a timetable. I agree that we need to look to 2030 or even 2025—the Norway model. My suggestions are not in conflict at all with deadlines or implementation dates and could be considered now. They would hugely incentivise take-up of electric vehicles.

Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill

Alex Sobel Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 23rd October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I welcome the Bill, although it is clearly much reduced from what was originally put forward. It is interesting how so much of our discussion has been around cars as vehicles, as opposed to vehicles more generally, and I draw attention in particular to electric bikes, scooters, taxis—which have been mentioned—vans and lorries, and in particular buses, which I will refer to again later.

I also welcome initiatives such as the Faraday challenge, which is a terrific example of how Government can work with academia and businesses to bring about change and revolution in a particular sector. That stimulus is crucial for major step changes such as electric vehicle technology and autonomous vehicles. A good example of that has been at Warwick Manufacturing Group, which although not in my constituency employs a good many of my constituents. It is very much at the cutting edge of the development of battery and fuel cell technology, working with many other universities across the country and vehicle manufacturers from the UK and around the world.

It is critical that we gain leadership in this sector. We need a competitive advantage over the likes of China, South Korea and Japan, which are very much the established dominant players in battery and fuel cell technology. To that end, we urgently need to establish a battery prototype centre that is able to adapt to the rapid change in this technology; as we see in other sectors, change can be so rapid that it is easy to be caught out by technological development. I hope that such a centre might be located at the heart of the automotive industry, which is very much in my constituency of Warwick and Leamington, and in Coventry and Warwickshire. They are at the heart of the development of connected vehicles. That would be a very welcome move indeed, and I look forward to an announcement on that matter.

The ambition has to be matched by our legislative will as policymakers, and by the acknowledgement of the need to change consumer behaviour. There has been a lot of talk about that recently by Members on the other side of the Chamber. We have to encourage people through initiatives, exemptions, fiscal measures and perhaps scrappage schemes if we are to accelerate not only that change in behaviour but investment from manufacturers and investment in infrastructure.

Several weeks ago, I was lucky enough to be invited to the Jaguar Land Rover Tech Fest event here in London, at which the company announced that every new vehicle line would have electrified versions as of 2020. That is a terrific innovation coming from such a major employer and investor in this country. Even the E-type Jaguar will be retrofitted with a battery cell, so there is something for everyone in what the company offers. We have heard about the Nissan Leaf, which has been hugely successful and a terrific economic stimulus for the north-east. We have also heard about the electric versions of the Mini that are coming through. Reference has also been made to the Polestar range from Volvo and Geely. I think I am right in saying that Geely will be the first car manufacturer with an entirely electric vehicle range.

There need to be incentives, but if we look at other countries we see perhaps a greater degree of leadership in this area than there has been here so far. I believe that more than 10% of new vehicle sales in Norway’s total car market are pure electric vehicles, for example. That compares with just 2% or 3% in this country. We are really behind the curve compared with other European countries. Our ambition is to be non-petrol and non-diesel by 2040, but that will come a little too late.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, in order to stimulate the electric car market and ensure that we can move to a fully electric market, we will need a minimum density of electric charge points in residential and commercial areas?

[Matt Western]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s intervention, and I certainly agree that there needs to be a minimum density. That is an area of infrastructure on which we should insist in all development in our town centres, and also in our new-build housing. It relates to local plans, and it is a critical part of the framework. The Government and local authorities should be showing leadership in this area. This is a great opportunity and we need to accelerate the uptake in electric vehicle use over the next few years.

Buses have not yet been referred to. Our buses, lorries and vans are among the dirtiest vehicles in our urban areas and there is perhaps greater urgency to get them off the roads. I was recently proud to attend the launch of the new Volvo electric bus, which is now being tested in certain areas around the country, most recently in Greater Manchester, where it was extremely well received. These sorts of vehicles will change the air quality in our town centres dramatically, and we need to encourage and accelerate their adoption.

The challenges also lie in the power grid, which can be hard to access in many areas, particularly rural areas. A further issue for the adoption of electric buses is that of interoperability and the standardisation of on-route charging sites. This is an area in which our European peers are a little bit further ahead. It is rather like the VHS/Betamax debate many years ago, which many of us will remember. We need a general acceptance of standardisation, to ensure that we have the right sort of infrastructure in place in our town centres. At the same time, we need subsidies and fiscal incentives for bus operators to adopt electric buses. Bus operators receive public money in subsidies, so I urge that this is targeted through a progressive taper to advantage electric vehicles.

As was mentioned by the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), there has been much debate about domestic, commercial and on-street charging points—my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) also referred to them a moment ago—but I want to draw greater attention to the revolution that can be had with the advent of smarter cities, where streetlight columns and other street furniture can be used for charging. That is happening elsewhere, and the supply can be two-way, to the benefit of either the user or the municipality.

In summary, I welcome the Bill, but I urge more ambition in certain areas and more caution in others. In implementing the regulatory framework and incentives to accelerate electric vehicle adoption to arrest serious air quality problems and climate change, we must be as ambitious as India, the Netherlands and others in banning new petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030—2040 is too late. In considering the merits and needs of autonomous vehicles, I urge legislative caution. Yes, the legislation must be enabling, but as we see with sat nav systems even today, the concern is about the data and the software’s interpretation of it. By way of example, around the corner from where I live in my constituency is a narrow cul-de-sac called Clapham Terrace, which is regularly used erroneously by continental articulated lorries to access a local industrial estate. They must then reverse 300 metres back down a narrow street with a school on it. Finally, will Ministers ensure that the Bill is clearer about different types of vehicles? It should include lorries, buses, motorbikes, scooters and electric bicycles. In all other respects, I welcome the intent of the Bill.