London Local Authorities and Transport for London (No. 2) Bill [Lords] Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateBob Blackman
Main Page: Bob Blackman (Conservative - Harrow East)London Local Authorities and Transport for London (No. 2) Bill [Lords]
Bob Blackman Excerpts(10 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Chope
I shall deal next with amendment 29, Mr Deputy Speaker. It proposes the removal of clause 16(9), which states that in subsection 8,
“’the relevant vehicle’ means the vehicle in respect of which the connecting cable was about to be, was being or had been used for charging”,
and that
“’ªthe relevant time’ means the time when the liability arose.”
That seems to me merely to compound the proposals in subsection 8.
We then arrive at what could be described as a bright dawn. Amendment 30 makes the following proposal:
“Clause 16, page 13, line 15 after ‘cable’, insert
‘or wire which is not provided by the authority’.”
I tabled that amendment because I considered it to be an essential safeguard, spelling out the status of the charging apparatus to which we have been referring, which had not been provided by the authority.
Mr Chope
May I anticipate my hon. Friend’s intervention by saying that I am delighted by the broad-minded way in which he has viewed some, if not all, of the amendments? I understand that he is now about to give the House a verdict on the merits, or demerits, of amendment 30.
Bob Blackman
Let me say on behalf of the promoters, in order to save time, that they are happy to accept amendment 30. I trust that we shall now be able to move on to the rest of the amendments that my hon. Friend wishes to press.
Mr Chope
Giving my hon. Friend the benefit of the doubt, my response to his intervention is that that is not necessarily so. This provision presupposes that the London authority, which might be Transport for London, would be providing the charging points and doing so against the wishes of the local planning authority in whose area it was going to put those charging points. That is what I am trying to get at: it is possible that there will be two different authorities. The London authority exercising its power under clause 16(1) is not necessarily the same as the local planning authority as defined in the Town and Country Planning Act 1990.
Amendment 38 will leave out subsection (2), which talks about an “authorised person”. The same issue arises about consultation and, as I have already said, I do not think that the powers in the Bill should be extended to authorised people. The same point arises from amendment 39, which will leave out subsection (3).
Last but not least comes amendment 40. Clause 19 creates a new offence of unlawful use of a charging point—[Laughter.] My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley laughs, and I think that many people coming to the issue for the first time would laugh as well. The clause provides for a new offence—have we not enough offences on the statute book already—and states:
“A person shall be guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale if he uses charging apparatus in contravention of a sign displayed on the apparatus which indicates that…the apparatus is not to be used for any purpose other than charging a vehicle; and…it is an offence to so use the apparatus…A person is not guilty of an offence under subsection (1) if…he had the permission of the person who operated the charging apparatus at the time to use the charging apparatus for the purpose in question”—
although it was a non-authorised purpose—
“he had reasonable cause to believe he had such permission; or…at the time there was on the charging apparatus an indication given by the person who operated the charging apparatus that it could be used for the purpose for which it was used.”
Effectively, the clause creates a new offence of stealing electricity.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend, is the sponsor of the Bill, is nodding. That would be fine if there was not already provision in law to deal with the stealing of electricity, and that is why the provision is completely redundant.
We are creating a separate regime of stealing electricity from a charging point for charging electric vehicles rather than relying on the general statute law on electricity theft. I do not know whether the House is familiar with this, but electricity theft is a big issue. At the beginning of July the energy regulator, Ofgem, said that it wanted more to be done to combat electricity theft. I know that this is not the subject of the Bill, but a third of electricity theft in this country is to power cannabis farms. Nothing is being done about that—it is apparently being ignored—but meanwhile we are trying to bring in draconian measures to deal with people who, in a fit of over-enthusiasm, might abstract some electricity from a charging point.
Surely we should keep the law simple: whether the electricity is from a charging point, from a company or from someone’s own meter through changing the wires or using a device, we should rely on the same law—that is, the Theft Act 1968. The Theft Act provides that it is an offence to steal electricity and there are guidelines about the reasonable penalty to be imposed on people who steal electricity. I look forward to hearing from my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East why the promoters of the Bill think that existing laws on electricity theft are inadequate to deal with electricity that is taken from a charging point. Some 25,000 people—quite a lot of people—steal electricity each year, and such theft costs each electricity customer the equivalent of £7 a year.
Philip Davies
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. When I am on the opposite side of an argument from that of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, I wonder whether I am on the wrong side of the argument. Having the robust support of my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) will reinforce my confidence that I am on the right side.
The desire of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch to use the amendment to force the privatisation of car parks may have merit. If he were back in charge of a local authority, he might decide that that was the best way to go. I am not convinced that other local authorities would take that view, so the provision would end up being an unnecessary burden on the taxpayer. The amendment is therefore not worthy of support, despite his best efforts to rescue support for what might otherwise be thought of as a poor amendment.
I turn back to amendment 24. In effect, preventing local authorities from allowing the private sector to run charging apparatus on their behalf would be a retrograde step. If we are to embark on this project, the merits of the amendments are not necessarily relevant. We have to presume that we are going down this route. If we are, I would like the private sector to be involved; it would have an awful lot to offer and could probably show local authorities how to operate the points better, more efficiently and more cheaply. To prevent the private sector from being involved, as my hon. Friend envisages with amendment 24, is not sensible. I cannot support the amendment.
Amendment 25 is a consequential amendment to amendment 24 that also reinforces it, so if I cannot support amendment 24 I certainly cannot support amendment 25. On that basis—my hon. Friend will correct me if I am wrong—I do not think I can support amendment 26 either. I think that for the first time in my short time in the House I have found that I cannot support the first six amendments tabled by my hon. Friend. I hope that that will never be repeated in future.
On amendment 27, my hon. Friend is back on normal form again, because he is absolutely right about subsection (7). I am not a legal expert, as he is, but it seems to me that in the normal way of things people are responsible for their equipment. The subsection implies that everybody in the whole country, apart from London local authorities, is responsible for any accidents, damage or incidents that happen as a result of their equipment. I am sure that the Government’s view and Parliament’s view is that people should be responsible for their own stuff. It is utterly unacceptable to say that we are going to exempt London local authorities willy-nilly from the normal course of the law. Why on earth we should think that the state should be exempt from all the normal things that apply to everybody else is beyond me. I hope that the promoters of the Bill will reflect on this, because it drives a coach and horses through what we would expect in this country. I certainly encourage my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch to pursue amendment 27.
On amendment 28, my hon. Friend is again on to a very good point. In seeking to strike out subsection (8), he focuses on the part where it says that
“it shall be presumed that the person in charge of the relevant vehicle at the relevant time had responsibility for and control of the cable.”
The person in charge at the time may well have control of the cable—it is probably self-evident that if they are using it they have control of it—but to say that they have responsibility for that piece of equipment is a step too far. As my hon. Friend said, we would not expect somebody filling up at a petrol station to take full responsibility for the pumps they were filling up from. I cannot believe that anybody in this House would think that. If people should not take full responsibility for the pumps when they are filling up their car with petrol, why on earth should they take responsibility for the cables when they are charging their car? The same rules should apply. It might be a different form of fuel, but the same principles should apply across the board. Leaving aside control of the cable, it is unacceptable to impose responsibility for it. For that reason alone, I support my hon. Friend in wanting to strike out subsection (8). Of course, if it did not include the words “responsibility for”, I might take a different view, but as it stands it is unacceptable. Subsection (9) relates to the previous subsection, so we do not need to waste much time on that.
I was puzzled by the Bill’s sponsor, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East, saying that he was willing to accept amendment 30, because it seems to fly in the face of what my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch was trying to achieve with his previous amendments. I understand now, however, that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch is throwing in the towel—I certainly hope he is—with regard to amendments 21, 22 and 23. Amendment 30 seems to pre-empt that throwing in of the towel, because it suggests a much more sensible state of affairs whereby my hon. Friend accepts that the private sector could be involved and that the wires it provides should also be covered. For that reason, amendment 30 is sensible and I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East accepts it.
We do not need to waste time on amendment 31. Amendment 32 takes us back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch about the authorised person. As I said earlier, I am for having authorised people other than the local authority, so for that reason amendments 32, 33 and 34 should be discarded.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend, the sponsor of the Bill, is getting ahead of me. He is clearly a much faster reader than I am. He is ahead of the game and is absolutely right that amendments 35 and 36 are also relevant.
My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch is on to a good thing with amendment 37. It seems ridiculous that the only duty in clause 18(1) is to consult. The title of the clause is: “Duties to consult or obtain consent”. Somebody taking a fleeting look at the Bill would think that obtaining consent was an important part of it, but my hon. Friend is right that subsection (1) mentions only consultation, which is not good enough. Consent must be obtained; otherwise it is a potential affront to local democracy. What on earth is the point of consulting if no regard is to be given to the views of the consultation? That would be a pointless exercise. If an authority has decided that it is going ahead with something and then simply goes through the motions, that would be a waste of time.
Bob Blackman
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) for his amendments, his speech and his comprehensive description of the amendments. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) for explaining his position on them.
In commencing my response, it is important to note that we are talking about the future of the motor industry in this country. I take the view that within the next couple of years the private vehicle of choice will be the electric car. It is therefore essential that electric charging points are placed around London in appropriate places for people to charge their vehicles—there is currently limited capacity—so that we can encourage people to take up this new form of transport.
Before I respond to the amendments, it is important to note that there are two sets of provisions: one for car parks, which may be operated by the local authority, Transport for London, London Underground and other bodies; and the other for the public highway, where the provision is likely to be, although not exclusively, where meters and so on are currently provided. They will operate in tandem. The point at which the vehicle can be connected to the charging point will be provided, and the issue is then the cable connection between the charging point and the vehicle. Motor manufacturers may come up with different arrangements for that connection and we cannot pre-judge that. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley pointed out that the Mayor of London’s key strategic vision, which I support wholeheartedly, is for the roll-out of electric charging points across London in a big way. I trust that where London leads the rest of the country will follow.
Amendment 21 would require a local authority to provide the charging apparatus in every car park it operates. In London, there are car parks with space for 10 vehicles and some with space for hundreds of vehicles. It should not be the duty of a London authority to have to provide electric charging points at every car park. London authorities are clear that they want to do this—they do not need to be told that they must do so. I therefore urge my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch to withdraw the amendment. How would the proposal work? How many points would have to be provided, and over what time scale? There is an incentive for local authorities to provide charging points in car parks, but to oblige them to do so would lead to the questions: when would it be a requirement to do so, for how many, and who would enforce it?
Philip Davies
I think I am with my hon. Friend, broadly. He said he was a big supporter of the Mayor of London’s document, “An Electric Vehicle Delivery Plan for London”. How can he guarantee that its ambitious targets will be hit? The Bill as currently drafted contains no requirement for local authorities to do this; there is only the hope that they will.
Bob Blackman
London local authorities are ambitious and keen to get on with the job. They do not need to be told that they have to do it. Some of the other amendments would make it harder for local authorities to introduce charging points.
Mr Nuttall
Does my hon. Friend not think that if there is a demand for charging points, then private sector operators—for example, filling stations—will meet that demand by providing charging points in their stations?
Bob Blackman
I predict that in the coming years petrol stations will provide electric charging points, in addition to petrol. That is not to say that local authorities should not have a duty to consider installing charging points. Local authorities may lead; the private sector might jump ahead of them. That confirms the view that local authorities should not have to provide electric charging points when the private sector has provided them already in petrol stations. Indeed, one frequently finds petrol stations co-located with local authority car parks, for example, so why should the local authority be under an obligation to provide charging points when the private sector is providing them anyway? In my view, the market should take over.
Mr Nuttall
With the greatest respect, the words “on a discretionary basis” merely refer to the erection of charging points on the highway, not in car parks. There is a distinction.
Bob Blackman
I completely accept my hon. Friend’s intervention: amendment 23 would relate to the highway. However, if a local authority was not too keen, it could place one charging point somewhere on the public highway in its borough and thereby perform its duty, which would be bizarre. I suggest that amendment 23 is not very sensible.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
If such cars are popular, surely the private sector will provide charging points anyway. We do not have municipal petrol stations, so what is the problem?
Bob Blackman
The thrust of the amendments is to require public authorities to provide charging points; the thrust of the Bill is to allow them to provide charging points if they so wish. That is why I am urging my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch not to press his amendments.
Amendment 24 is particularly pernicious, because it would remove the power of local authorities to get the market—either electricity companies or other third party providers—to install charging points in car parks or on the highway, when that is something we should encourage wholeheartedly. Amendments 25, 26, 32 to 36, 38 and 39 are consequential on amendment 24, so I would urge my hon. Friend to withdraw them en bloc.
Amendment 27 is about local authorities’ liability. If a local authority grants permission to a third party, be it an electricity company or someone in the private sector, it should be the people who have installed the charging point and operated it who take the liability. The effect of the amendment would be to place the liability on to the authority, rather than on to the people who implemented the service. I would urge my hon. Friend not to press that amendment, as the liability should fall on the third party, if that is who is chosen. The other issue is that if a local authority is negligent, it cannot discharge that liability. However, the key point is about the damage and injury caused by the presence of charging apparatus, which would probably be an issue for either the third party or the individual who misused the charging point.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is making a valiant attempt to justify his argument, but this is a local authority Bill and of course local authorities are going to want legislation to be passed which states that they are not liable for anything. Surely it is the duty of this House to say that that is unacceptable and that if local authorities want to indulge in this kind of activity, they will have to accept that same kind of liability that applies to other people. Parliament cannot allow local authorities to write their own laws, willy-nilly, to exempt themselves from any liabilities.
Bob Blackman
I accept the principle behind my hon. Friend’s point, but if a local authority is negligent, it cannot discharge that liability. Let us remember that the charging points will be on the public highway and in public car parks. If someone abuses a charging point, that must be their responsibility rather than that of the local authority. Clearly, if something had been incorrectly connected or was dangerous, that would be the responsibility of the local authority, or of the third party operating the facility on its behalf, to fix it, but only if the problem had been caused by the authority’s negligence.
Let us move on to amendment 28. If someone has used their own connecting cable to plug their vehicle into a charging point on a public highway or in a public car park, the local authority should not have to accept any liability. The responsibility should lie with the individual who has plugged in their vehicle. It is an accepted provision for various electrical devices that it is up to the user to accept responsibility for the cable that they are using. I urge my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch not to press the amendment. Amendment 29 is consequential on the outcome of amendment 28.
Mr Nuttall
I have listened carefully to my hon. Friend, and his argument would be all very well were it not for the fact that a “connecting cable” is defined in clause 16(11) as being
“any cable or wire, whether provided by the authority or otherwise, used to connect the charging apparatus to a vehicle”.
On that basis, the connecting cable could have been provided by the local authority.
Bob Blackman
In practice, the motor manufacturers will provide cables to connect their vehicles to the electric charging points. The end of the cable that connects to the charging point will probably be common to all cables, but the end that connects to the car could be different in the case of each make of vehicle. I suggest that local authorities will therefore not provide cables, and that it will be up to the individual car owner to bring the cable with them when they want to charge their vehicle. That is why the amendments are unnecessary.
Bob Blackman
In some car parks, a local authority might wish to control the process. I do not envisage cables being littered all along the public highway, but local authorities could provide cables in car parks, particularly when there is someone present to ensure that the process is operated properly. It is important to be clear about whose responsibility this would be. Indeed, there could be an issue in civil court proceedings in that regard. Amendment 31 would remove the definition of a connecting cable, which could be dangerous. The term “connecting cable” is clearly defined in the Bill and the amendment is not helpful. I urge my hon. Friend not to press it.
Amendment 37 relates to the way in which permission is given and the consultation that should take place. We are talking about potentially 25,000 of these charging points, to which my hon. Friend has alluded, right across London—and possibly more. The amendment would require planning permission to be given for each of those charging points, at a time when I would suggest that the Government are trying to move away from the whole process of granting planning permission. We are talking about two aspects: one is the public highway; the other is council-operated car parks. Clearly, the only people who would have any concerns about council-operated car parks would be the council and the potential users of the car park. The users will not be consulted—they may use the car park, but would not have any rights over what happens in it—so only the planning authority would be consulted. Under those circumstances, the requirement to obtain planning permission seems like overkill.
Bob Blackman
Let me explain the other issue—about the public highway—first. If we ended up having to grant planning permission for all the different boxes that are going to placed alongside parking meters on the public highway, it would again lead to complete overkill. What the promoters suggest—and planning authorities in London, by the way, have given their consent to it—is that they are happy to be consulted without having to go through giving full planning permission for this to operate. They are content in that this is London local authorities dealing with London planning authorities—funnily enough, they are the same thing—so in those circumstances, it again seems like overkill.
Philip Davies
It is not the local authorities, but local residents, that I care about. My hon. Friend makes great play of how the Bill will be used in practice, but a full planning meeting will not have to be convened for every one of these requests. Rather, this is a safeguard. Most of the consents can be given in a flash by the planning authority—we do not need to go through a full planning meeting for a planning authority to give consent—but ensuring that consent has to be given provides an essential safeguard for the one or two cases that might be contentious in the local community, even though my hon. Friend might not be able to envisage them.
Bob Blackman
Having served as a councillor on a local authority for 24 years before coming to this place, I can confirm what the position would be, and it would mean the local authority having to give planning permission for every single one of these charging points. A planning application would have to be taken out—at a cost, by the way, to the local council tax payer—and those considering the planning applications would then have to advertise locally and send to every local resident in the immediate area where the charging point was to be sited an invitation to lodge an objection. I suggest that that whole process would be extremely bureaucratic and unnecessary.
In considering implementing the charging points, any local authority worth its salt would consult individual residents as appropriate and advise them through publications or notifications what is going to take place. There would then need to be a process for finding a reasonable mix in respect of where the charging points would be. That would be preferable to requiring full-blown planning permission, which I think would be draconian, would slow the process down considerably and would lead to extremely high costs for the individuals putting in the charging points—costs that are completely unnecessary.
Mr Chope
I take my hon. Friend’s point that we do not want to have thousands of planning applications, but is there not a middle way? Could this not be done, for example, through permitted development rights? Putting a charging apparatus on the street could be granted permitted development unless there were objections from neighbours—a form of permitted development similar to what the Government have recently brought in for extensions to domestic houses.
Bob Blackman
I thank my hon. Friend for that suggestion. The key here is consulting the planning authorities on their approach to a particular area, but let me come back to the effect of the amendment. It would effectively require the local authority to go through the wholesale planning permission process. On that basis, I urge my hon. Friend not to press the amendment.
Mr Chope
Unfortunately, there is no reference to vandalism in the clause, which refers specifically to someone who
“uses charging apparatus in contravention of a sign”.
Someone who vandalises, abuses or interferes with such apparatus is not using it. My hon. Friend mentioned the problem of theft from parking meters. I imagine that that is dealt with not by a specific offence of stealing from a parking meter, but by the offence of theft. Surely exactly the same principle could apply to the theft of electricity, which is already an offence on the statute book.
Bob Blackman
I thank my hon. Friend for clarifying his purpose, but I think we should make it clear that misusing a charging point, or using it without appropriate authority, is an offence, and that a penalty will be imposed if someone is convicted of such an offence. That is what the promoters want, and I strongly support it.
I urge my hon. Friend not to press his amendment to a vote. It is clear that the offence of electricity theft would not necessarily cover all aspects of unauthorised use of a charging point. Clause 19 makes that a specific offence, and makes it clear both to members of the public and to the courts what the penalties would be. I think that removing it would constitute a very dangerous precedent, because local authorities would have to use some other part of the law to enforce the rules. Given that there is to be a new basis for the provision and charging of private vehicles, we need sensible measures to deal with unauthorised use of the new devices.
Let me say on behalf of the promoters that we are happy to accept amendment 30. I urge my hon. Friend not to press the remaining amendments, but if he chooses to do so, we will oppose them.
Mr Nuttall
It is, as always, a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman). I thank him for the good-natured way in which he has steered this Bill through a number of sittings on the Floor of the House, and in particular for the very helpful way he has steered through these amendments, all of which relate to part 5 of the Bill dealing with charging points for electric vehicles. They were so ably moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) at the outset of this brief debate.
This whole issue is important on a variety of levels and for a variety of reasons, but particularly because it addresses a growth area. As my hon. Friend made clear in his opening remarks, this is an area that will receive a great deal of attention in the months and years ahead. The sorts of issues we have debated this evening will be debated at length in the years to come and some of the problems we have identified will be applicable not only to London, but throughout the country, and I regard this Bill as a blueprint for what will follow.
I wonder if it might have been better for this whole issue of charging points for electric vehicles to have been dealt with on a national basis so that we could deal with it across the nation, with a single set of rules and regulations, rather than just dealing with it, as this Bill does, on a piecemeal basis for London alone.
What I call the first sub-group of amendments deals with the provision of charging apparatus within car parks and on the public highway. Essentially, the issue is this: who should have the responsibility for providing these charging points? Should it be, as my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) suggested, purely the private sector, or should it be, as my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch would have it in these amendments, purely the local authorities, or should there be a mix of the two?
If the amendments are agreed to, essentially a monopoly would be created for the London local authorities, in the sense that the permissive nature of clause 16(1) which says they
“may provide and operate charging apparatus for electrically powered motor vehicles”
would be changed, and the provision would state they “shall” do those things. Under clause 16(1)(a) they would be required to provide those charging points in every single “public off-street car park” and under subsection (b), on a discretionary basis, on the
“highway for which they are responsible as highway authority.”
In my view that goes way too far.
On this amendment and consequential amendments, I am entirely with my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East and the promoters of the Bill in that I think the London local authorities should not be forced to provide these charging points. This part of the Bill is entirely superfluous. Given the Localism Act 2011, I question whether there is a need for specific provisions to give London local authorities the power to provide and operate charging apparatus for electrically powered motor vehicles. Under the general power that all local authorities were granted under that Act, they may already have these powers, should they choose to investigate the matter and make use of them.
This should be left for the market to decide, as was made clear by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East. We are talking about providing the energy to power vehicles. Nobody has ever suggested that local authorities should be responsible for providing diesel or petrol and setting up their own petrol stations, so why does this Bill contemplate giving them the power to provide charging points for electric vehicles? Why the difference? At the start of the 20th century were our forebears in this place suggesting that the local authorities of the day set up petrol stations for the newly invented combustion engine? I suggest that they were not. On that basis, I am suspicious about amendment 21 and the two consequential amendments, 22 and 23. I have to inform my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch that if they are pushed to a vote, I would vote against them.
Amendment 24 would remove clause 16(2), which gives local authorities the power to provide for someone else to operate these charging points, and would mean, in effect, the nationalisation of this scheme. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley, I am surprised that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch tabled this amendment, as it goes against what I would have thought were his normal instincts in these matters. Nevertheless, it has been tabled and we must consider it. It has a number of consequential amendments, all relating to “authorised persons”. Reference has been made to those, so, for speed of debate, I will not go through them again. The point is: if London local authorities are going to be given this power, it is entirely fair and reasonable that they should have permission to allow another authorised person, if they so wish, to do this work on their behalf and operate these charging points.
The next amendments deal with the issue of liability for these charging points, and we have heard a number of arguments tonight as to where that responsibility should lie. I can only assume that the objective of subsection (7), which would be removed if amendment 27 were accepted, is to try to absolve local authorities of responsibility. There can be no other reason for it. If they were not negligent, they would not have anything to fear; there would be no problem. I am suspicious about why the subsection is in the Bill at all and I agree entirely with amendment 27, which I would support if it were pressed to a Division later this evening.