Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill (Second sitting)

Clive Efford Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 31st October 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

Q Do you think that there needs to be, in effect, a national plan for the location of the charge points as we approach 2040?

David Wong: We would suggest a nationally co-ordinated approach.

Brian Madderson: I speak for 75% of the motorway service areas and the one thing that they are really against is any form of mandating, because they want the market to be able to choose what is the best form of charging at the time for them. This is in a great state of flux. Some of them have already entered into agreements that are more binding than perhaps they would have wished with the knowledge that they have just 12 months on. The mandating process seems to be all stick and no carrot. These motorway service areas fully recognise the need and, in fact, many now have both Tesla charging and other forms of charging, so they are working towards that but they think mandating is not appropriate in this case.

One of the other issues the motorway service areas have is that there does not seem to be joined-up government, which I think David was probably referring to. There are planning difficulties in getting car park extensions to put in extra parking bays for Tesla charging, for example. One of the things the Government should perhaps be mandating is not where the charging points go, but that where there are planning applications for charging points, local authorities must deal with them quickly, efficiently and sympathetically.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Q What is the incentive to develop the automated car technology? Is it large fleet owners who employ a lot of drivers wanting to cut down on their overhead staff costs? Or is it the private car industry?

Steve Gooding: From a consumer perspective, I would have to say that we do not really know yet, but there is a broad spectrum of what might happen next. For example, there is a clear incentive for a fleet operator who is counting every penny to be thinking, “How could I reduce my costs of operation?” Whether that is a fleet of vans or trucks, the operator would be looking at automation as a way of, first, saving money, and secondly, sweating the asset of that truck for longer hours. In turn, we are seeing a huge amount of investment in the auto sector in vehicles for the private market.

If I were to bet my money, I would say that the guys who are counting every penny will probably be the first in—people running fleets and large numbers of vehicles—but some people are clearly very attracted to the thought of having driverless capability. That could be from time to time, or it could mean freedom and independence for people who are currently denied that by the fact that they cannot drive, and we have just been engaged in a report on what it means for people with disabilities.

[Clive Efford]

Q Are we not a long way off from those sort of automated vehicles?

Steve Gooding: I think David would say we are four years off. Personally I think it is probably nearer 10.

Steve Nash: Ten.

[Clive Efford]

Q There is a difference between an automated vehicle that can undertake a journey on a motorway and a vehicle that would have to drive around the roads here in Westminster. If it is going to provide that sort of access for someone who cannot drive at the moment because of a physical disability, it has to be that high level—level 5—of automation.

David Wong: Correct. In the first instance, when I referred to 2020-21, I was referring to level 4—vehicles that will still have a steering wheel. That means under the right conditions, in the right use cases—for example, from junction to junction on a motorway—someone could let the system drive the vehicle, but could take back control outside that use case. If level 5, which is without a steering wheel, is not going to be as far off as 10 years, it is likely to be deployed in the first instance for first and last-mile journeys, perhaps even in pedestrianised areas—on pavements—as we have seen with some of the trials in Greenwich, as well as in Milton Keynes. As to when those level 5 vehicles without steering wheels are capable of performing end-to-end journeys—from my house in the village to my office in the city—that is anybody’s guess. That will probably be some time in the 2030s. It is quite complex.

[Clive Efford]

Q Can I ask about the figure of 95% of accidents caused by human error? Who else can drive a car and cause an error? At the moment we do not have automated vehicles. Is that not a bit of an obvious point—most accidents are caused by humans because cars, de facto, are driven by humans?

David Wong: I suppose you could—

[Clive Efford]

Q Can we expect that figure to go down as a proportion of the accidents, as we increase the level of automation?

David Wong: Yes. In principle, one would not argue that a computer is less safe than a human being. Obviously, the capability of a human being to perceive and perform the driving of a car is limited and depends on the human being’s condition and the road conditions, as well as the environment in which the human being has been conditioned to perform the dynamic driving task. Lots of evidence has been published. The figures range from 90%; some are at 97%. We are taking the average figure, which is that 94% of all serious road accidents involving fatalities are caused by the human being. I mean that in the sense that it is not mechanical fault, lack of road markings or slippery roads, but the human being that caused the accident, perhaps by being inattentive or sometimes even perhaps by doing things that they are not supposed to do.

[Clive Efford]

But even the slow-moving vehicle in Greenwich hit a plastic chair when it was put in front of it, did it not? We are going to see accidents during a journey where the vehicle is being driven by software. Those accidents are going to happen. The periods when a vehicle is not driven by a human are going to increase, so we are likely to see an increase in the number of accidents that are not human error. Is that right?

David Wong: We think that overall the number of accidents will fall, but if anything can be learned from one of the trailblazers of the self-driving car experiments and trials—Google—it is that the earliest accidents that they encountered a number of years ago when the car was being trialled were the result of the cars being rear-ended by manually driven vehicles. The learning from that was that Google had to tweak the algorithms to ensure that the self-driving vehicle—the computer—behaved a little bit more like the human being. They succeeded in doing that, and today you do not get so many of the rear-ending accidents.

Steve Nash: It is also important to say that these vehicles will be connected. When one experiences something, the knowledge is passed to all of them, which does not happen today.

[Clive Efford]

Q I was going to come to that, if the Chair indulges me. You touched on the issue of the vehicles making decisions. In an incident where a vehicle is being driven by software on an automated journey and a child runs out in the road in front of the vehicle, the vehicle can either veer to the left into oncoming traffic or to the right on to the pavement, or it can knock down the child, because the child is too close for it to be able to stop. How do we make a moral judgment about how a vehicle should behave in those circumstances?

David Wong: This is the classic trolley problem question that we get asked almost at every single conference that we attend—

[Clive Efford]

Q Yes, but we have to legislate.

David Wong: Not at this point, but at some point certainly. First, if you take a cue from the ethics commission report that was published in Germany just a few months ago, it suggested that in any case, human life should always be prioritised. If it is a decision between a human and non-human, obviously the human life would have to be prioritised. That is No. 1. Secondly, we should not expect the car to do anything massively different from how a human being would behave. The car should perform a minimal risk manoeuvre to stop and brake in such a way that the impact will be minimal. To expect the car to make an ethical decision to kill A or B is probably not the right approach. I would suggest that none of us has the divine power to decide who to kill. At the end of the day, someone who writes the algorithm will have to decide. If you insist that the car must decide, it is incumbent on the engineers to programme that into the algorithm.

[Clive Efford]

Q So no evasive action would be taken. The vehicle would just—

David Wong: There would be a minimal risk manoeuvre, depending on the situation. There may be evasive action in such a way that it would be the safest possible option. If it needs to stop, it will brake and stop. May I point something out? I mentioned autonomous emergency braking. It has been demonstrated that the technology is improving all the time. Previously, autonomous emergency braking worked perfectly at 30 mph, which is urban speed, but it is becoming increasingly sophisticated. AEB can work well even at 50 mph. It would not surprise me if the technology improved in years to come to the stage where autonomous emergency braking could kick in at motorway speeds of 70 mph to prevent an accident or lessen the impact of an accident.

[The Chair]

I have a growing list of people who want to ask questions, and I want to try to get everyone in. We want brisk questions and brisk answers. It is not necessary for every witness to answer every question.

--- Later in debate ---

[Clive Efford]

You certainly look good for having done 50,000 miles “under” the wheels.

Quentin Willson: Absolutely!

[Clive Efford]

Q Anyhow, this is about automated vehicles. When automated vehicles and conventional vehicles share the roads, will the question of who is liable for accidents become more complicated?

Quentin Willson: Enormously complicated. It is not my area of expertise, but the question I would ask is: can they co-exist peacefully? Can the connected and the unconnected in the UK’s very limited road space exist? Can those cars that drive themselves be allowed to co-exist with the cars that are driven by human beings? Will there necessarily be some friction during that period? I think that in the short to medium term, it is going to take some time.

[Clive Efford]

Q Do you think that the legislation goes far enough on that? Do you think that there should be more in the Bill?

Quentin Willson: I think we need to be very careful that we know exactly who is liable, because there will be quite a few accidents, whether it is the manufacturer, driver, network provider or road provider. It has to be established very early on.

[Clive Efford]

Q Can I move on to this issue about the transition from automated vehicle to a person taking over? We have heard various descriptions about the length of time that might take. You say that we need to be clear about the moment that the driver becomes responsible and the software is not, but is there an issue around safety caused by that transition?

Quentin Willson: Inevitably you will get a feeling of complacency, of reliance on the technology, and if there is an emergency situation or you leave the automated road system to the non-automated road system, you will have to have that moment of what we call extreme alertness. Consumers need to be trained for that and we need to be ready. If that is a legal transitional moment, where you take the wheel having been driven autonomously, that could be an issue as well.

[Clive Efford]

Q On the moral issues that are raised by algorithms that control these vehicles at a time when there is an accident, a scenario I used earlier on was that of a child stepping out in front of an automated vehicle, and to the left there is oncoming traffic and to the right there are pedestrians on the pavement. How do you legislate what you require of the vehicle in those circumstances?

Quentin Willson: I do not think that artificial intelligence will ever be trained to be able to make those moral decisions, and when we take a driving test we are not trained to make them either, so it is a difficult area to think we can resolve. Can we ever expect artificial intelligence in an automated car to make that split-second moral decision between the child in the pushchair or the old people in the Nissan Micra? I do not think we can. We are not trained to do that and we cannot. It is a split-second thing that happens and legislating for it would be enormously difficult.

[Clive Efford]

Q So what will happen?

Quentin Willson: I am not an expert on artificial intelligence in cars at the moment, but it will be, depending on the sensors, the object that has the least resistance.

[Clive Efford]

Q I will leave it there. One last question on what is driving this forward—that was not an intentional pun. Is it the desire of companies that employ large workforces that drive vehicles which are striving for automated vehicles, or is it the demand from the public, which wants to sit comfortably behind the wheel and not have to think too much for long journeys?

Quentin Willson: It is driven, I guess, by the fact that there is a huge world of opportunity here and that is predicated on the fact that people do not like driving anymore—there is congestion, it is expensive and it is difficult—and on the rent economy, whereby you summon an automated car on your smartphone and it comes to your door. When you look at the research, that is very attractive to the public. The golden era of getting pleasure from driving cars has gone, and I say that with some regret, but it is a fact. There was a survey by Catapult in Milton Keynes which asked this question: if you were to replace your current car with an autonomous car—we are not going to tell you what it is or what it looks like—would you be prepared to change to that autonomous car? Some 58% said that they would change to the autonomous car without knowing what it was, simply because of the liberation of not having to make those decisions and sit impotently in snarling traffic. It is partly driven by commerce and partly by the public.

[Alan Brown]

Q Is the Government’s target of 2044 for zero-carbon new cars ambitious enough?

Quentin Willson: I sat before this Committee a year ago and was broadly optimistic about the short and medium-term future of electric cars. I think Michael Gove’s announcement in July, coupled with Sadiq Khan’s T-zones and ClientEarth’s relentless pushing on air quality issues, has terrified consumers. It has wiped probably £30 billion off the value of diesel cars. Lease companies are now looking at a collapse in the residual values of the cars that they lease to consumers on personal contract purchase. We are looking at a real issue in the short to medium term.

The consumer now feels that he or she cannot buy a diesel car; we have seen sales of diesel cars absolutely collapse over the last quarter. They are feeling, “Right, I’ve got to buy an electric car.” We need to manage their expectations. I am quite concerned that people who rely on one car as the family vehicle will go out and buy, like me, a second-hand Nissan Leaf for £10,000. That is great, but we must understand that those cars’ ranges are nowhere near viable for an everyday, use-it-all-the-time car. They are a wonderful urban solution, but long journeys—anything more than 100 miles—are really difficult. I came down here in an alternative car; I had to leave my Nissan Leaf at home, because getting here would have required three stops to charge.

It is about managing consumer expectations. Otherwise, this whole thing will go horribly wrong. The new Nissan Leaf, which I saw in Oslo last week on its launch, has a quoted official figure of 235 miles to one charge, but the Nissan engineers tell me that in reality, it is 175 miles for everyday driving. If you drive that car on the motorway at 70 mph, that will fall to about 130 or 140 miles. The technology of the lithium ion battery still has some considerable work to do.

Again, it is all predicated—the mass adoption of electrification in the short to medium term—on having better battery density, maybe of alternative materials such as graphene, and a very robust charging infrastructure network. I am not talking about on-street chargers; I am talking about charging hubs like petrol stations, with 20 rapid chargers that can charge 20 cars in 40 minutes. That is the only way that mainstream consumers will be able to do any form of distance. They are wonderful for town work, but if you are doing more than 100 miles, you are still compromised.

--- Later in debate ---

[Karl Turner]

Q I have one really quick question on safety. What are the safety implications for blind pedestrians, runners and people of that nature?

Stan Boland: Safety is the start and finish of whether we can bring these cars on to the streets. A huge amount of attention will be focused on making these vehicles safe, in our case, for use in urban environments, where we will have all sorts of obstacles and agents with all sorts of different behaviours. That really centres on having systems that are able to perceive what is in the scene accurately in 360° and three dimensions and classify what those objects are.

This also talks to predicting what will happen next. We actually have to predict human behaviour, and we have to learn what those behaviours might be ahead of time. Our vehicles will certainly have to be state of the art for perception, but they will also have to be very good at predicting human behaviours. In the case where we identify an object and can tell, just like a human can, that this person, cyclist or whatever it turns out to be has a certain type of behaviour, we will have learnt those ahead of time, and if we are not sure, we will have to propagate that uncertainty through our software and slow down.

The behaviour of these vehicles will be slightly different to that of human drivers, but it will be possible to attain the levels of human safety, and in the long term surpass them, by applying technology. Our systems can pay attention in 360° all the time, and that makes it a bit different to human drivers.

[Clive Efford]

Q What will be the limit of the speed that your vehicles can travel at in an urban area?

Stan Boland: We are kind of hoping that we can operate at normal driving speeds. To be able to do that, it is important that we can predict behaviours. We cannot have a system that is collision-avoidance only, because that would result in frozen robots all over the city and would make congestion worse. What we humans do is anticipate human action. We actually run more than one world in our heads, and are constantly looking to see whether that world is turning into reality or some other world is going to happen. That allows us to merge on to full lanes of traffic, for instance. We cannot just have a system that is collision-avoidance only, because we would make traffic worse. The idea is that we are operating in normal streets with normal road signs at normal road speeds and obtaining and exceeding human levels of safety.

[Clive Efford]

Q In 2019, your vehicles would be the only automated vehicles on the road.

Stan Boland: At that point it is a trial, so there is a safety driver in the car. The safety driver is able to take control of the vehicle immediately.

[Clive Efford]

Q Immediately?

Stan Boland: Yes. The safety driver has to be there, literally able to take control of the car instantly.

[Clive Efford]

Q All the research that I have seen in preparing for this Committee shows that there is a time lag in the transition from the vehicle being under automated control to being under driver control. Your vehicles will not have that.

Stan Boland: You are describing what is called level 3 autonomy, which is a system where the car is under automated control and then there is a warning to give a human driver time—there is a debate about what that warning time should be—and then the human is meant to take over. We think that system is intrinsically unsafe. It is much better if either the human is in control or the system is in control—that is a fully automated, level 4 or level 5 system. We are building a system where the cognitive capability of the car is in control, but for the purpose of testing, until it is actually legal to offer that service, there will always be a driver in the car who can take over instantly.

[Clive Efford]

Q But there is an issue about when drivers take over from automated vehicles: they are over-cautious and slow down. There are concerns about whether that is dangerous at that moment in time and also it increases congestion because you suddenly have loads of slow-moving vehicles. You seem to be suggesting a flick of a switch and that it goes from driver to automated.

Stan Boland: While we are testing it. We are talking about a period when we are testing the capability of the vehicle in our existing cities. It is level 4—a highly automated or fully autonomous system—but for the period between now and a regulatory capability of doing this and, moreover, underwriting the risk of it, we have to have a driver in the car to take over.

[Clive Efford]

Q As the legislation is drafted, as long as somebody insures you, there is nothing stopping you putting that vehicle on the road for an experimental period in 2019.

Stan Boland: As long as there is a safety driver who can take over the car. That is not the same as somebody watching a Harry Potter movie while the car is self-driving. We are talking about a qualified driver who is paying full attention to the road scene all the time and can take over.

[Clive Efford]

To test—

Stan Boland: To test the vehicle.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

Q To follow on from the hon. Member for Eltham, you are talking about level 4 rather than 3. Do you envisage that the machine’s design will be able to engage in autonomous conduct on every kind of road from the very first moment that they are launched?

Stan Boland: No, that would be a definition of level 5 in our parlance: something that could literally drive anywhere on the planet and be able to work out what every object was, what the semantics of every scene was, and the human behaviour in that part of the world, so we are definitely not saying that.

Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill (First sitting)

Clive Efford Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 31st October 2017 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

The first question is from Clive Efford.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Q This is a question about insurance, but it is open to any of the witnesses to answer. When automated vehicles and conventional vehicles share our roads, will questions of who is liable for accidents become more complicated?

David Williams: I do not think they will become more complicated, because I think the information that should be made available from the autonomous vehicle will make it much easier to establish what has happened. If you think of the sensors that are involved in getting the vehicle around safely, there are traditional cameras, lidar, radar, ultrasound and all those sorts of things; that will give a much more complete picture than we currently have. A lot of insurance claims at the current time are based on different opinions with very little evidence to substantiate them. We still send people out to measure skid marks in the road, for instance; so we will be moving to a much clearer but more granular position. There will be a lot more data, so I suppose it will be more complex in that way, but I think, in terms of establishing who is responsible, things should be clearer.

Iwan Parry: I would add that it is quite important that we establish with these technologies that that capture of the data that David has described is a requirement of the vehicles. That really builds on the kinds of data that are captured by vehicles today but which are not necessarily available for investigators when it comes to investigating road traffic accidents, which could be very useful for in-depth investigations, in some cases. Therefore, as vehicles become more complex, with a greater ability to capture external data in the moments before a collision, we believe that it is very important that those vehicles are able to preserve that information and make it available to the appropriate and authorised investigators, in terms of understanding what has happened during that incident sequence.

[Clive Efford]

Q Should the Bill actually specify what information should be retained and recorded?

Iwan Parry: It could do. There is a mechanism in the Bill, in terms of the list of vehicles that would be approved as an automated vehicle, and potentially part of qualifying for that list might be that a vehicle would fulfil certain required criteria.

[Clive Efford]

Q Will vehicles continue to record driver performance, for instance, and collect data when it transitions to being driven manually?

David Williams: The capability is there. I think we are then drifting into data that motor manufacturers would not necessarily want to share with third parties. They would argue that maybe that driving information is something that they could use for different business purposes. There is currently a big debate in the telematics market about whether there will still be a future for separate telematics boxes being fitted in these vehicles to provide insurance and other solutions when the vehicles are being driven manually; but certainly there would be the capability to record that information.

[Clive Efford]

Q Can I ask about the transition from an automated vehicle to manual? There is a time lag; research has been done into that. At what point is the driver responsible, therefore becoming the insured party, during the transition from automated vehicle to the driver taking over?

Ben Howarth: My view on that would be that when the transition is from the driver to the car, the driver has to be responsible for what is happening to some degree throughout the whole of that transition phase. Once they have actually got confirmation that the car is in autonomous mode, that is the point when they are no longer responsible. In reverse, when the car is transitioning back to the driver, the same applies, but the driver is not responsible until they have taken full control of the vehicle. I think that is the easiest way to deal with that.

[Clive Efford]

Q You started your answer by saying, “In my view,” and that suggests that there are other views.

Ben Howarth: I do not know whether other people dispute that. That would need to be consulted on in the process of—

[Clive Efford]

Q So in all the data we collect it is possible to pinpoint the moment when the car transitions from manual to automated and back again.

David Williams: We are involved in a number of the Government-backed consortia. There is Venturer in Bristol; the first trials that were carried out with the Venturer vehicles and in the simulator were with regard to the handover. There are two elements that need to be decided on. I agree with Ben that you should not make somebody responsible until they have fully taken control, whether that is the machine or a human being, but nobody has really worked through that. The other aspect is about making sure that the vehicle has controls that do not try to hand over too quickly. As insurers, one of the things we are very concerned about is that handover. People may be surprised at how long it actually takes a human who has been disengaged to get up to speed, so to speak, so that they are alert enough to be able to drive the vehicle safely. That is why it will take a while for European vehicle manufacturing regulations to catch up, but there will be regulations that require minimum periods and indicators and signalling during that handover phase, because that is essential for keeping these safe.

Ben Howarth: A key point is that while there are lots of data that other parties—police, investigators—might want, insurers are clear that we only want the data when a collision has occurred to confirm whether the car was in automated mode or not. I do not think we are looking to use the Bill as a way of grabbing loads and loads of data and tracking cars from A to B.

[Clive Efford]

Q I have one last question. If you have all your data from an accident from the software in the vehicle, which tells you that the vehicle performed perfectly, but there was an accident with a driver who is driving the vehicle manually, is the assumption from the insurance company that you are not going to pay out because everything functioned perfectly with the machine?

David Williams: No, that is the opposite of what the Bill is trying to achieve. There will be accidents on the roads where nobody is to blame, as there are now. If you can have an accident with a human driver where nobody is to blame, you can have that with an automated vehicle. For instance, a vehicle is driving carefully down a road but there is some black ice and it skids off and takes out a bus queue—I know that is a bit of a dramatic scenario—but everything has functioned perfectly. The Bill makes it clear that is an accident—injury has been caused by the autonomous vehicle—and it would be paid for by the insurer. In that circumstance there is unlikely to be any recovery from the motor manufacturer, but the whole point of the Bill is to give the general public the confidence that if somebody is injured, we do not have to worry about whether we are going to claim that the software was defective. If somebody is injured by an automated vehicle, there will be virtually a strict liability on the insurer and we will deal with that claim.

[The Chair]

I have had Graham Jones, Karl Turner, the Minister, Iain Stewart, Oliver Letwin and Craig Tracey indicate that they want to ask supplementary questions. Is there anybody else? I will take the Minister next.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Waiting to ask questions, I have Sir Oliver Letwin, Craig Tracey, Alan Brown, Edward Argar, Scott Mann and Sir Greg Knight. Is there anybody else? Clive Efford, you wish to come in with another?

[Clive Efford]

If we have time.

[The Chair]

If the questioners and the panellists could be very pithy and pointed, that would be helpful.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Greg Knight]

Q Rather than a free-for-all before the courts, with the court deciding in each case who gets what.

Iwan Parry: Yes. I think there should certainly be some clarity around the types of data that we would regard as beneficial and that could qualify for the list that will be established. The vehicle’s ability to make available those data would potentially be a qualification criterion.

[Clive Efford]

Q Mr Parry, following on from the questions from the right hon. Member for West Dorset, can you clarify how the vehicle knows when it is not appropriate to be in automated mode and therefore prevents the driver from flipping over to that?

Iwan Parry: This is very much part of the research and development that industry is doing right now, but the expectation on manufacturers providing access to an automated control system would be that, in that handover situation, the vehicle would be assessing the circumstances of the traffic and the road conditions surrounding it and would accept the handover only if it was able to respond appropriately to that traffic scenario.

[Clive Efford]

Q So the vehicle is constantly taking in data on its environment—the surrounding area—and therefore is switching itself off, making it impossible for the driver to switch over to automated mode.

Iwan Parry: The vehicle would be expected to be aware of what is around it at all times, and during a process—as it was described earlier—of handover, whereby the person or the vehicle that is in control at a particular time will remain in control until the other half of the equation is ready to assume control, that readiness to assume control can be determined only by sensing what is around it in the specific scenario that the vehicle is driving in, and accepting that it is now able to assume that control in a safe manner.

David Williams: This is a key point, because there will be many vehicles that can operate autonomously—initially, at least, only in certain environments, certain designed domains. For instance, I would imagine that the first ones that come to market will be able to operate on motorways and dual carriageways. [Interruption.] Exactly. Therefore, if you are travelling down Clapham High Street and you want to flick the vehicle into autonomous mode, it will not accept control.

[Clive Efford]

Q Let me ask about transition, because the studies in Bristol suggested that vehicles slowed down significantly after the transition from automated mode to driver mode, because the driver was being excessively cautious or very cautious, which can lead to more dangerous circumstances. Is that an issue for insurers?

David Williams: It is something we need to be aware of, which is why we asked Venturer to do handover first of all; I think guidance needs to be provided. I think it is less likely to be a safety risk and more likely to be a congestion risk, but the other aspect is that when we are doing these tests, we are deliberating doing on, off, on, off. In my vision of the future and, I think, the way motor manufacturers are designing vehicles, it will not be like that. It might be that you drive on the country roads because you enjoy that and then you hit the motorway and flick the vehicle into autonomous mode for the next couple of hours. But yes, we need to understand and provide appropriate training and guidance on the handover; that is something we still need to understand more about.

[Alan Brown]

Q As insurance premiums come down, as predicted, in the future, is there a concern or risk that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will increase the Government’s take from insurance premiums, so that all the savings are not passed on to the driver?

David Williams: We always worry about insurance premium tax increasing.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

I am going to start again with Clive Efford.

[Clive Efford]

Q I do not know if I need to declare an interest: I am a member of Unite and the GMB. When automated and conventional vehicles share our roads, will questions of who is liable for accidents become more complicated?

Diana Holland: I think that is the crux of the matter. Obviously, while the Bill covers a very limited aspect of what the important role of these changes can mean, we are particularly concerned, as the previous discussion demonstrated, that the only concentration is assuming issues around private drivers, whereas the implications of this go into all modes of transport where automation will apply.

We are particularly concerned about the current methods of employment, particularly within certain parts of the road transport industry. That means that liability will be very unclear. There are all sorts of drivers who are accounted as owner-drivers but, actually, in the way in which the contract has been established they are workers to all intents and purposes.

We are very concerned, for example, about bogus self-employment contracts and leasing of vehicles: all those things that will mean that all kinds of people could end up being held liable when they should not be in those circumstances.

[Clive Efford]

Q So should the Bill address those issues more directly and in more detail?

Diana Holland: We have two areas of concern. One is about issues that are not addressed by the Bill but have implications for the impact of driverless technology on the transport industry and on transport policy in our communities. I think there are problems and the House of Lords report is extremely clear about all the outlying issues: job losses, job creation, job shifts. We would want that to be part of the discussion that goes on around this.

We are very concerned about some of the wording, specifically in clause 3(2) and clause 4(4), (5) and (6) around the software engineers. All sorts of people could be encompassed within that or it could lead to knock-on effects on people who work in the transport industry or in software engineering. They could be implicated either by the employer concerned or by the policies of the insurance company. We would want that to be addressed.

[Clive Efford]

Q We have just heard from insurance companies that for many years to come automated vehicles will not operate in many areas but mainly on major routes such as smart motorways, which clearly has an implication for people who drive long distances. There is the issue about transition from being automated to manual and vice versa. Is that an issue of concern for you and the people you represent: the delays in transition and the impact that taking over a vehicle has on the behaviour of a driver?

Adrian Jones: It absolutely is. As was said in the previous session, when a driver is not concentrating on driving, their attention is elsewhere and the transition back to driving is a slower process. The agreed trials for platooning are part of the debate and should not be forgotten. If you have three vehicles in a platoon, you have a driver in the front vehicle that is controlling the other two vehicles, what are the other two drivers doing? When they come to the end of the motorway or road where the platoon is taking place, what do they then do?

We also have the concern raised in this very room about 18 months ago. The report from AXA suggested over £5 billion a year savings in labour costs, due to the introduction of automated vehicles. That clearly says to me that there is either a downgrading or lack of recognition of professional drivers who are carrying freight, passengers or anything else. I think there is a real concern that the Bill does not cover any of those aspects at all. If it is not covered in this Bill, it needs to be covered somewhere.

[Mr Hayes]

Q Dealing with your point, Diana, I think you are right. Perhaps I can provide some reassurance. I do think you should contextualise this debate in a bigger debate. I do not think it is something you can do in legislation. You are absolutely right that the implications over the longer term oblige a proper lateral discussion—quite a serious discussion—about our transport future. If I can briefly make a case for the Bill, Chairman, it tries to steer a way between being too prescriptive about what that future looks like and putting enough of a framework in place not to inhibit research and development and further technological change. There is a big contextual discussion to be had, and I hope the Bill might stimulate that in the time we have here and in Committee, but it is going to take place over a longer time in a bigger forum, I suspect.

On the specific point about job growth and job shift—you made a very balanced point about how some jobs will change, some will grow and some will shift—I want to come back to the issue raised by previous witnesses about people who currently cannot or do not drive. In rural areas, for example, in many places in Cornwall, Lincolnshire, Dorset and similar places, half the parishes do not have access to public transport. Can you imagine a future where autonomous vehicles will fill that void and provide a link to public transport, perhaps buses, trains and so on, and therefore boost the use of that transport for people who currently cannot get there. They will have access to autonomous vehicles because they are straightforward things to drive.

Diana Holland: Cards on the table: Unite is not opposed to technological advances, autonomous vehicles or anything in this area. It is about how it is done, the basis on which it is done and making sure that safety is absolutely critical. We are slightly concerned about the current moves. We believe that risk-based health and safety management needs to be properly built into this and we are slightly concerned that that is not recognised. We are not opposed to this in any way—it provides all sorts of opportunities—but because the overall approach is about private individualised driving rather than about the implications for the whole road transport industry of passengers, as Adrian was saying, with road haulage and taxis, it is also going to operate on a marine basis, in agriculture and all those other things. The concentration on private vehicles is going to advance this in such a way that I think there is a danger that it skews the potential for developments by concentrating on one aspect to the exclusion of the others. Does Rob want to mention your wider point about the commissioners?

Rob Johnston: To pick up on a couple of points, I think some of the challenges are about the definition of automation, which is at the root. We work with a number of global institutions, employers’ bodies and manufacturers. We have developed a framework of five layers of automation. When you look at what we are discussing, at least three or four of those layers need to be included. On the point just made about people who cannot drive potentially being able to drive, there is also a question about the definition of the amount of automation needed to give them that mobility. It is very difficult not to consider the whole piece. In the end, it will not be a journey from where we are today to suddenly having fully automated vehicles. It will be a process as technology slowly comes through. In particular, platooning, which is one of the areas that we are likely to see in a relatively short time period, would not be covered under the Bill in its current format.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hayes]

It is a good point.

Diana Holland: I was quite concerned when I looked at those terms. Although there is some implication about developments in technology, it seemed that we would need to look at the way it is worded to ensure that it properly reflects this. Otherwise, the Bill will not provide the opportunities that it needs to. So yes, that is a really important point.

[Clive Efford]

Q On the issue of vehicles being connected in convoy on the motorway, are you saying that there should be a specific reference or clause in the Bill about connected vehicles and how they behave?

Rob Johnston: There is a definition that the ITF and a number of organisations such as the European Automobile Manufacturers Association and the International Transport Forum at the OECD have worked to establish. It sets out five layers of automation. We believe that will be a useful reference point for looking at how to define what automation really means. In those five layers are different degrees of automation. The previous evidence alluded to that in some ways.

[Clive Efford]

Q So those layers go from driver assisted right through to full automation?

Rob Johnston: Yes, absolutely.

[Clive Efford]

Q Are you satisfied that that is covered in the Bill or should there be reference to those five?

Rob Johnston: No, we believe that the Bill should be expanded to cover those five areas. If you look at technological development, it is likely that those layers will come to fruition in their current format.

[Clive Efford]

Q Would those five layers cover all forms of transport as time goes on, not just lorries on smart motorways but vehicles that are passing one another, approaching one another in built-up areas and communicating with one another? Would it cover all those areas of automation?

Rob Johnston: Yes, it would. The layers run from driver assistance at the lowest level to full automation at the highest level, and everything in between.

[Clive Efford]

Q Is it your understanding that automation governs all aspects of the vehicle, so they cannot speed and will obey the speed limit at all times?

Rob Johnston: I think that there is a question, which the Bill tries to deal with, on regulation. In order to accept the fully automated vehicle, you would have to accept a number of criteria around the algorithms that would do that, and they pose some questions. Essentially, the vehicle would need to be able to make choices between certain decisions. For example, if the vehicle was involved in an accident or there was a crash, it would need to have an algorithm that would define which course of action it took. I think that area really needs further regulation. In Germany, for example, they have established a body to deal with that: High-Tech Strategy. In September 2017, they came up with some guidance on how they believe these algorithms should be programmed, and that is a useful reference point.

[Clive Efford]

Thank you. That is very interesting.

[The Chair]

I have Scott Mann and the Minister. Does anybody else want to ask this particular panel a question?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hayes]

Q While you acknowledge, reasonably so, that we cannot be definitive about exactly where this will lead, we need to start engaging with all the partner organisations that can make the skills you describe a reality.

Diana Holland: I think the approach we see all too often is the race to the bottom that means that even those employers that want to invest are forced to undercut in order to win contracts. There is an opportunity here for Government to say that nobody can undercut on the basis of the standards we think should be set and operating in this industry. If we are approaching skill levels in that positive way, that can be extremely helpful, because it means we are saying that people are recognised for the skills they have, and having those skills will mean we get the kind of industry we want.

[Clive Efford]

Q If, under clause 4, an employer were to compel a driver to take a vehicle on the road that does not comply or have all the safety-critical software downloaded, should that be a criminal offence on the part of the employer? What should be included in the Bill to deal with that?

Adrian Jones: I am not sure if it would be included in this Bill. There are already regulations in force through the Traffic Commissioners’ office for operators who infringe on maintenance, for example. The key, for this Bill, is how the driver would know whether or not that vehicle is fit. At the moment, a driver is expected to carry out a daily check to ensure that the mechanical aspects of the vehicle are fit for road use. How can they check that the software has been updated appropriately, and who will be held responsible if it is not? The Bill does not cover that, and it would be helpful, certainly for drivers and for the confidence of other road users, if, when I see an automated vehicle on the road, I know that it has been properly updated and the vehicle has a professional driver or worker who has ensured that the updates have been made.

[The Chair]

If there are no further questions, I will move on. I thank the witnesses for their evidence.

Examination of Witness

Robert Llewellyn gave evidence.

Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill

Clive Efford Excerpts

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

[Mr Hayes]

Yes, that is true. Electric cars can be a different but altogether just as enjoyable an experience. I have had the opportunity of test driving an electric car. As a Minister, I have travelled very frequently in an electric car driven not by me but by the driver from the Government car service. Only in the past few days, I have had the chance to drive in one of the new electric taxis. To experience that is to see a different kind of future and to enjoy a different kind of driving experience. I do not think it is worse. It is certainly different, but better in all kinds of ways, as I shall explain.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Is the Minister going to set out the scope of the intelligence and decision making of the vehicles that he is describing? For instance, some automated vehicles are capable, in the event of an accident, of assessing the situation and deciding which course of events is likely to cause the least amount of injury. To what degree does the Bill cover the decision-making process of those vehicles?

[Mr Hayes]

The hon. Gentleman, with his usual assiduity, introduces into our debate the really important aspect of how autonomous vehicles develop over time. This morning, I was fortunate enough to be looking at autonomous vehicles and having a discussion with some of those engaged in the research and development that I described a moment ago. We considered the programming of an autonomous vehicle, for this is, in essence, a combination of developing the sophisticated software that helps to drive the car and the technological development associated with the running of the vehicle. In testing that software, a judgment needs to be made: how much do we want the autonomous vehicle to emulate what a human being would do if they were at the wheel, and how far do we want it to improve on what a human being would do? As the hon. Gentleman implies, many car accidents—in fact, the insurers tell us that it is 95% of car accidents—are in some way due to human error. If we could, let us imagine for a moment, eliminate that error, or at least reduce it very considerably, we would, as he suggests, completely change the profile of driving, reducing the number of accidents and making our roads safer. That is a big opportunity, and not one to be sniffed at.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hayes]

The research and development work I studied in detail this morning looked at hundreds of thousands of scenarios. The people developing these products are now engaged in exactly this process of designing software capable of anticipating all the variables that drivers might encounter. It is complex and challenging, but it is going to happen. The hon. Gentleman is right, however, that this is about doing as well as—indeed better than—a driver in control of a vehicle and therefore about making the vehicle safer.

[Clive Efford]

If in making a moral decision—for instance, between hitting a child on the road and careering into a bus—a computer decides that hitting a child is the less dangerous option, what comfort is that to the parents? These are major issues to which we need answers before we allow vehicles with these capabilities on to the roads.

[Mr Hayes]

That is the point I made earlier about how much we want autonomous vehicles to emulate human behaviour and how much we want them not to. It is a fine balance, but not one we can strike in legislation debated in this House. It will need to be considered further down the line, but it is not the business of the Bill to do so. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise the issue, however, because it is about whether we can get vehicles that we can be sure about and be confident in and which will then be purchased on the basis that people enjoy that certainty, so I am glad he has raised the issue. It is not one for the Bill, but it is not unreasonable to put it on the table as something to debate in the future.

I want to move to my conclusion. I have spoken about our desire to be a global leader in the production and use of automated vehicles. We all in the House have experienced the benefits that good access to transport can bring. We can continue to debate these issues without amaritude or contumely. As I said earlier, perhaps what moves me most is the fact that some people do not yet have that good access to transport. For the elderly, those with disabilities, or those who cannot drive, using the transport system can be tough, and that can leave them unable to enjoy opportunities that come easily to others. The Government believe strongly that we should act to improve this situation.

If autonomous vehicles make a significant difference to those currently disadvantaged by their inability to access transport easily, they will have done an immense service to our country. In August, we published our draft transport accessibility action plan, with proposals to improve the travel experience of people with disabilities, and a key part of that will be exploring the opportunities that new technology offers to make travelling easier for these people. It might be a while before vehicles can fully drive themselves, but when it happens it has the potential to be transformational—to improve lives, spread opportunities and enable a transport system that works for everyone.

Taken together, the two measures in the Bill will ensure that the UK is at the forefront of the most profound changes to affect road transport in over a century. In the spirit of opportunity that enabled my father to provide a good life for his wife and family, we will be driven by the common good. That means cleaner vehicles, easier travel and safer roads. Good Governments know when to step forward and when to step aside to let others imagine, innovate and improve how we live. Ours is an ambitious plan to support the invention, development and manufacture of new vehicle technologies and to build skills and jobs here in the UK.

Ensuring a transport system that works for everyone, now and in the future, means believing in a new generation of cars made available to all so that all might benefit from the chance to travel.

Our glorious past was made by those with the confidence to dare to dream; the will to make dreams come true; and the means to craft and create a future filled with wonder. When our reach extends beyond our grasp, we can do our best, be our best. That is the prospect before us. Now let us reach out to the future. I commend the Bill to the House.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

I start by putting on the record my sincere thanks to the Minister—and I do not say that entirely for the benefit of his family in the Gallery; he always co-operates with the Opposition. We greatly welcome his collegiate approach, and we share his objective of making this the best Bill it can be as it passes through the House. We would, however, have liked more time between First Reading and today for Members properly to scrutinise the Bill. It is true that some of these issues were rehearsed during our debates on the Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill, but we have new Members since the election, and they should have been given more opportunity to scrutinise the Bill. I accept, though, that that is not the Minister’s doing but another symbol of the Government’s weakness in having to push their non-contentious Bills to the fore.

We broadly support the Bill but have some concerns about the impact of some of its measures. We will press the Government on those and table appropriate amendments in Committee, but the Bill is crucial and we wish to support it. Part 1 deals with automated vehicles and insurance. Ultra-low emission and autonomous vehicles will play an important role in our country’s transport in the years to come, so it is right that the Government seek to address some of the issues relating to them. Last year, the UK automotive industry added £18.9 billion in value to the UK economy and supported 169,000 people directly in manufacturing and 814,000 across the industry and throughout the supply chains. Forecasters have estimated that the overall benefits of ULEVs and autonomous vehicles will be in the region of £51 billion a year and that they could create an additional 320,000 jobs. In the light of Brexit, supporting this industry will be vital to the future of our economy.

The uptake of ULEVs will also play an important role in tackling the air quality crisis, which reportedly leads to 50,000 premature deaths each year and hundreds of thousands of cases of respiratory illnesses. It is an air quality crisis that is choking many of our towns and cities but which the Government have failed properly to address. Labour in government would do better and—it is fair to mention, given the Mayor of London’s announcement on toxic vehicle charges today—does do better. These vehicles will also be vital to the UK meeting its climate change objectives, for which the Government currently lack a clear plan.

It is vital that we introduce the legislation needed to facilitate and encourage investment, innovation and the uptake of vehicles of this kind, but if that is to be possible, a definition of autonomous vehicles will be necessary. At present, there is no clear distinction in UK policy, standards and legislation between advanced driver assistance systems and fully automated driving technology. The Bill requires the Secretary of State to prepare, keep up to date and publish a list of all motor vehicles to be used on roads in Great Britain that are deemed to be capable of safely driving themselves without having to be monitored by an individual for some or part of a journey, and the definition of an automated vehicle will be a vehicle that is included in the list drawn up by the Secretary of State. We are concerned that this gives the Secretary of State the power to define what is and is not an automated vehicle. There is clearly a need for collaboration between the Government, manufacturers, insurers and consumers to develop a viable and practical system of classification to identify whether a vehicle should be deemed “automated” or “autonomous”.

The dividing lines between automated and autonomous vehicles are not always completely clear. The Government must give more details of the plans to classify vehicles as automated, and consult widely on the definition and criteria for adding to the list of AVs in the Bill. In Committee, we will press for that to be subject to secondary legislation. Resolving the issue of how automated vehicles can be insured is also essential if they are to become a feature on our roads, and we support the Government’s action to ensure that vehicles’ insurance policies facilitate that in the future.

We are, however, concerned about the potential cost to policyholders, and the contention over liability between manufacturers and insurers. It is imperative that, in the event of a technological failure in an AV, it is easy for consumers to establish quickly where liability rests, and to make a claim as appropriate. At present, insurance law in the United Kingdom is driver-centric: drivers must have insurance in order to provide compensation for third parties for personal injury or property damage. The Government intend to emphasise that if there is an insurance event, the compensation route for the individual is still within the motor insurance framework rather than through a product liability framework of a manufacturer.

[Clive Efford]

May I pursue the issue of insurance policies and who will be liable? In the event of a collision between a human-driven vehicle and a vehicle that is being driven by its computer technology, will the insurance company assume, given that 95% of accidents are due to human error, that the computer is right and the human is wrong and is therefore at fault?

[Karl Turner]

That is a salient point. I understand that responsibility for the fully automated vehicle would rest with the manufacturer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I welcome the Bill. I will concentrate my remarks on the issues surrounding automated vehicles, but I support all the points that have been made about electric vehicles, particularly those regarding compatibility and infrastructure. We do not want people to be inconvenienced by different connectors and things like that. That is an obvious point to make, but one that has been overlooked in the past and that was well made today. Clearly, it is a technology for which the time has come. The batteries have a longer life and the vehicles can now travel further as a consequence. The environmental benefits are obvious and the cost of the vehicles is starting to come down, making them much more accessible, so I very much support that element of the Bill.

One of the impact assessments that accompanies the Bill refers to “connected and automated” vehicles, but the Bill is silent on connected vehicles, and I wonder why. Maybe the Minister will touch on that. Perhaps I am being too much of a conspiracy theorist, but the topic of “connected and automated” vehicles opens up a whole different range of issues from the straightforward automated vehicles as I understand it. The Minister will correct me if that is not the case. The issue that concerns me is that the software has to make a whole load of decisions when it is operating or driving the vehicle. We have heard from the Minister, and it is accepted, that somewhere between 90% to 95% of vehicle accidents occur due to human error. What happens if a vehicle is under the control of the software and has an accident with a vehicle being driven by a human or with a pedestrian, and the technology is then checked and is found to have been in perfect operating order? Is it the case that the human is assumed to be at fault? We need an answer to that question because it will have an enormous impact on how insurance companies approach decisions about who is at fault and who should get a payout.

[Sir Hugo Swire]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Clive Efford]

I will not, if the right hon. Gentleman does not mind. I am trying to make a little bit of progress, but I may give way in a while.

The Minister said that he has visited the site in Greenwich that is testing automated vehicles. I was not there, but I heard of an incident where somebody threw a chair in front of the automated vehicle and the vehicle smashed into the chair. That raises the question of what would happen if a child ran into the road. Now, the accident with the chair may have happened even if the vehicle had been driven by a human. The chair may have flown out in front of the car far too late for the car physically to be able to stop, whether driven by a machine or by a human being. But let us imagine an incident where there is an automated vehicle on the road that is capable of making a decision about how to evade an accident.

If a child suddenly ran out in front of the vehicle, the software would be trying, in a split second, to make a decision about the safest evasive action, if any, to take in order to avoid running the child over. We are then immediately in the situation where a machine—a piece of computer software—is making a moral judgment. If we are to open ourselves up to the situation whereby connected and automated vehicles have to make such judgments when incidents or accidents are about to happen, we legislators have to be aware that such eventualities will come around. We must try, as much as possible, to be ahead of the technology, because one thing is becoming quite clear in the debate around emerging technologies: the huge companies are getting ahead of the regulators and legislators, and driving the barriers backwards.

Take, for instance, the recent situation with Uber in London, where the Mayor of London had to step in and take action. There are other examples of technology driving regulators to distraction and forcing us to catch up, such as Airbnb. In some cities, rents have been driven up because of the sudden availability of businesses and people hiring out their properties. Legislation has consequences and so does this Bill.

Automated planes fly on a daily basis; most of the flights that we all take are fully automated. The part of the flight that is controlled by a pilot only lasts for a few minutes. Many people do not appreciate the fact that most of their flight is now controlled by a computer. We are only a fraction away from technology whereby a plane could be flown without a pilot at all. If there were an incident and the plane had to be taken over by someone who is capable of flying it, that could be done from an air traffic control centre. We do not have to have the pilot on board. That technology exists, but the air industry is not imposing that upon us by removing pilots from aeroplanes because public opinion is so much against the idea of fully automated flights.

[Sir Hugo Swire]

But is not that exactly the same in other areas of the industry, such as driverless trains?

[Clive Efford]

Yes, but driverless trains drive on a dedicated track. My point is that such technology is not being implemented in an area where the possibilities already exist—pilotless planes. Yet we are prepared to roll out that technology on our streets and our roads, where quite a complex range of incidents could occur and where vehicles being driven by software will come into contact with humans. I accept that the technology is here. We will have to accept that there will be demand for these types of vehicles, not least driven by the huge companies such as Uber, which already has driverless cabs on the streets of Pittsburgh. We are seeing technology driven forward by these large companies, but we as legislators have to start looking at some of the issues that arise around the moral questions that may have to be answered by machines.

[Vicky Ford]

On the point about safety, nine out of 10 accidents today are caused by human error—often because the two drivers miscommunicate with each other. Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that one advantage of automated vehicles is that they can communicate with each other, thus avoiding accidents and making the world a safer place?

--- Later in debate ---

[Clive Efford]

Yes, where the situation involves two vehicles, but they are not the only things on our roads, and they are not the only things a car or other vehicle can come into contact with. I accept the hon. Lady’s point that this technology can improve safety. We have heard a lot tonight about how we even expect premiums to come down. I think we have more chance of finding hen’s teeth, but the fact is that one of the expectations is that there will be fewer accidents, that fewer payments will need to be made, and, therefore, that that will be passed on to the consumer. I hope that is the case, but there is, none the less, a moral issue. Two vehicles may be about to collide—accidents will happen, and even the most ardent supporters of this technology accept that—but the question I am raising is about the software, which has been programmed by a human, as we have heard, making a moral judgment about the safest course of action to avoid the accident. Which path will cause the least injury and damage? That could involve the software making a decision about which individual gets hit—about whether to veer into the oncoming traffic or on to the pavement, or whether just to go straight on and collide with the other vehicle.

There is no question but that these situations will come about. I would therefore like the Secretary of State to have to list in clause 1 the types of technology that can be attached to these vehicles, so that we have some idea of where we are actually going and some control over that. This general reference to an automated vehicle does not allow us to consider the situation where this technology is placed on our roads and where moral judgments are made by a piece of software. We as legislators have to pay great attention to that.

I do not want to see the door opened wide to this technology by default as a result of this Bill. As the barriers are pushed back by this sort of technology, I would like the moral questions that are raised about machines making these decisions to come back to us, so that we can judge whether we are going in the right direction and whether that is where we want to go. I am not arguing against the technology, or arguing that it should never be applied. I am not suggesting for a minute that we should hold it back or deny the opportunities for our economy that developing such technology will open up. However, it is unavoidable that there are moral questions for us as legislators to answer about where we are going with this legislation and this technology, and I hope the Government are listening.

Oral Answers to Questions

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I do not normally like to differ with my right hon. Friend, but I am very clear on this: CH2M has done the right thing in taking a step back, having identified a problem that would have called into question whether it could and should operate the contract. It was not some massive misdemeanour, but an error in process that has caused CH2M to take a step back. It is now for the board of HS2 Ltd and its independent directors to make sure that they do the right thing in taking the contract forward. From the country’s point of view, it is important that we get on with the job. We will have all the necessary governance in place as we go through the process of replacing CH2M, but we do need to get on with the job.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

My constituents have endured all the disruption and chaos while the Thameslink work is going on at London Bridge, and they did so in the expectation that they were going to get an improved service. They are now incandescent with rage, because the new franchise proposes cutting services to Charing Cross and Victoria and reducing off-peak services. This is unacceptable. Will the Secretary of State agree to meet me to discuss the matter?

[Chris Grayling]

The whole point is that it is a consultation. We have not taken any decisions, and we do not even have an intent. It is about asking people, “There are ways of running this railway that could potentially make it more reliable. What do you think?” If the answer is, “We don’t want you to do that,” we will listen. My focus for the hon. Gentleman’s local passengers and for those local railways is to deliver more capacity, the best possible reliability and, in particular, longer trains. All those things are firmly on our agenda.

Future of Rail (Passenger Experience)

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 16th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) on her introduction to the report and the Government response. I came on to the Committee part way through the investigation, but I feel a certain amount of ownership because in my previous life on the Select Committee I was involved in the 2006 report. I am dismayed to be back here still debating exactly the same things we raised in our report all that time ago.

Before the 1997 general election I went to an event attended by the comedian and satirist John Bird, back when rail privatisation was still in its fledgling years. He said that the rail operating companies had given up calling people “passengers” because they did not want to give them the idea that they had any intention of taking them anywhere. People served by Southern and Southeastern —my constituents are served by Southeastern—get the impression that nothing at all has changed since. Things have not moved on.

The passenger experience is at the heart of what we should be seeking to achieve in our railways. It is not satisfactory to say that the railways must be a success because so many more people are travelling on them. People travelling on Southern, for example, do so because they have no alternative but to suffer the service they are being offered. After all, there are few alternatives for getting to work other than to suffer that service.

The poor performance of Southern and Southeastern is exacerbated by the development taking place at London Bridge. I commend the railway industry for keeping London Bridge operating while such an incredible feat of engineering is taking place—to add two additional lines through so busy a station while keeping much of it operating is quite an achievement—but that does not excuse the frequency with which my constituents are inconvenienced because the infrastructure has broken down, whether it is a set of points at Charing Cross, London Bridge or Lewisham, as is frequently the case, or a train that is blocking the rail. That is too often the experience of the customer.

Recently, quite late one evening, coming back from the House, I was at Waterloo East and the trains were all delayed—I cannot remember whether it was a train or the points on that occasion. A woman standing next to me shouted across to the central platforms of the station, trying to get some information from the staff about how she could get to the station that she wanted to get to. They were holding their hands to their ears, trying to hear what she was saying, then a train trundled between them and stopped at the platform. The woman sauntered off down the platform and the train left, while the staff kept talking to each other on the other platform. The impression was that the staff were so beaten down by the quality of the service that they had given up making any attempt to assist passengers.

There is something in that about the quality of the customer interface; the interaction of staff and passengers who have been inconvenienced. That needs to be addressed and the Government should hold the train operating companies to account for it. It is not good enough to collect statistics. The companies should train their staff to react and respond to passengers, in particular when the service is disrupted, and they should be readily available to provide prompt advice. Waterloo East station has four platforms, but on that occasion four members of staff were all on the two central platforms. Why were they not deployed to help the customers who needed information? Southeastern needs a rocket under it to provide better information. I have other experiences, which I could go into.

[Robert Flello]

I am enjoying my hon. Friend’s contribution. I wanted to make a point about some of our stations, as I shall very shortly experience the joys of Euston station, to get back to Stoke. Why is it, for example, that we are told only 15 minutes before departure which platform our train to Stoke is to leave from, even though the train has been there for ages? That sort of thing drives people crazy.

[Clive Efford]

My hon. Friend’s intervention is incredibly timely, because I was about to go on to describe my attempts to get to Stoke-on-Trent on Virgin Trains on 23 February. I was fortunate that I did not take the 10.30 am train as my colleagues had. It had left, but perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), who is present, only got to Stafford at 8 o’clock in the evening, as my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) did. He texted me from there; he had been travelling for more than 10 hours. My train did not leave at all. I sat there for 45 minutes and finally it was cancelled, although that turned out to be fortunate, because I did not end up trapped half way up the country, nowhere near where I wanted to go.

I then tried to claim my ticket back. I know we are going to do an inquiry into this, but it too is part of the passenger experience. As instructed, I went on to the Virgin website to claim my ticket back, but there was no facility to say that my train had been cancelled. I was allowed to say that my train had been delayed, but I was unable to say that it had been cancelled. Every time I pressed the button, I was sent back to the beginning, so I took to Twitter and asked, “Is anyone else having this problem with Virgin rail?” I am sure because I am a Member of Parliament and on the Select Committee, I then got Rolls-Royce treatment—[Interruption.] It was absolutely Rolls-Royce, because Virgin wrote back to me saying, “Dear Joseph”, and that they were sorry about my customer experience. They also sent me half the money and we finally resolved the matter. The point, however, is that the experience should not be like that.

In the report one of the online ticketing companies, Trainline, said that people were uncertain whether they had bought the cheapest ticket, which was a barrier to some people choosing to use rail at all. Which companies make the cost of their product so opaque that it might put customers off, other than one that has a trapped market and people who have no choice but to use that service, no matter how bad it is? We really need to deal with that customer experience.

My last point is about overcrowding and capacity. I go back to Southeastern. The figures in the report show that Southeastern operates an appalling service. It is one of the worst, and it should be thankful for Southern which stops it from being bottom of the customer satisfaction rankings. When we consider that every day so many people in south-east London rely on that surface rail service to get to work, and that there is no alternative but road, we realise what an appalling service it is and what an appalling and disproportionate impact it has on the lives of people from that part of London.

Many people think that the whole of London is served by the underground, but my part of London is well outside the orbit of the underground, and buses from outer south-east London take a devil of a time to get into central London. We rely almost entirely on that commuter rail service, and it is not acceptable that it is such an appalling performer. When we do get on trains, they are overcrowded at peak times because they are not long enough and there are so few alternatives to that rail service.

We have lengthened the platforms, so let us now lengthen the trains. We need to ensure that we have the capacity on Southeastern rail services so that people can get on the trains at peak time. We need 12-car trains serving the metro services in south-east London so that constituents from north Kent and my constituency can get to work comfortably and on time every day. Thank you, Sir Edward, for allowing me to make that contribution.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. Mr Quince, I was a bit hard on you. If you wish to make a comment now, you may.

--- Later in debate ---

[Marion Fellows]

I stand corrected. However, in anyone’s book that number of cancellations is not acceptable. The management fee basis on which the Southern franchise was put out seems to be quite a drain on the public purse and something that the Government should look at as quickly as possible.

[Clive Efford]

Did the Scottish National party Government in Scotland learn anything from the franchising process we have undergone in England? The passenger survey shows that, since the Scottish Government privatised the service to Abellio, satisfaction in the service has declined, and the service has declined since then. I wonder whether any lessons—

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. I do not think we need to start debating Scottish railways—unless you really want to, Marion Fellows—because I am not sure they are germane.

Oral Answers to Questions

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

11. What plans he has for the future role of the public sector as a result of the development of rail franchising policy.

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Chris Grayling)]

Franchising has been instrumental in improving the railways for passengers and as part of the enormous growth in rail usage since privatisation 20 years ago. Our approach to rail reform is about delivering an improved service for passengers through better teamwork between Network Rail and passenger rail franchises, and making Network Rail more customer focused by giving more power to its local route managers.

[Clive Efford]

We now know that the Secretary of State is putting politics before the interests of passengers, and he is taking a dogmatic approach by ignoring what could improve our railway system. He has refused to allow the Mayor of London to take over suburban services, in spite of the fact that his predecessor thought that that was a good idea. The public are in favour of public ownership: 58% of people polled by Transport for London are in favour of the Mayor having greater control over suburban services and only 14% support his position. Is it not time that public ownership of our railways was considered by the Government, and are not the public in favour of it?

[Chris Grayling]

It is hardly a surprise that Conservative Members for constituencies outside London have doubts about a Labour Mayor inside London running local services, particularly when the Mayor delivered a business plan that did not offer improved capacity and was founded on a lot of uncosted promises. So far from this Mayor, we have seen a fare freeze that was not a fare freeze and a London of no rail strikes with a rail strike last Monday. I do not take the Mayor’s promises at face value, I am afraid. We have taken a partnership approach that also listens to the people of Kent, who are equally important in this franchise and said they should be equal partners with the people of London in designing it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Paul Maynard]

This is the third time that my hon. Friend has brought me to the Dispatch Box to discuss the Chase line, so no one can say that she is not assiduous on the matter. As she may well be aware, if a passenger’s journey is delayed by 30 minutes, for whatever reason—be it cancellation, part cancellation or a train turning around short of its destination—they are entitled to claim delay repay compensation. Under the new invitation to tender for the west midlands franchise, we are looking at how we scope the “delay repay 15” scheme, which will be brought in under that franchise.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

My constituency is not served directly by the London underground or the docklands light railway, much as we would like it to be, which means that we are heavily reliant on rail services. I receive a stream of complaints almost daily about delays on Southeastern railway. This cannot be allowed to continue, because people are heavily reliant on that service. One thing I would say for Southeastern is that it needs extra capacity—it needs extra carriages. The carriages that become available when the Thameslink programme is complete must be made available for Southeastern so that we can deal with the capacity problem, but we must also deal with Southeastern’s performance.

[Mr Speaker]

I think that the question was rhetorical in nature, but if the Minister wants briefly to reply, he may.

Airport Capacity

Clive Efford Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I think the message that Britain is open for business is one of the most important messages that we can send to the world. When are we ever going to create this gateway to the future if not now, at a time when we are changing our role in the world? I think we all regret the fact that, notwithstanding our ambitions, it still takes time to do, but we really must get on with it now.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

The Department’s answers to questions that I tabled asking what protections there were from noise pollution at City airport for constituents such as mine were woefully inadequate. It is clear that once expansion has taken place there will be scant regard for protections for the public, whether from industry or the Government. It is hardly surprising that people roll their eyes when the Secretary of State comes here and tells us that there will be all these environmental protections. In order to convince people that he is in earnest, would he be prepared to make those requirements legally binding, with penalties in place, before any permission is granted for this expansion, so that people can be confident that there will indeed be environmental protections?

[Chris Grayling]

My view is straightforward. The commitments that are made in relation to compensation for the public and amelioration must form a binding part of the eventual agreements.

Oral Answers to Questions

Clive Efford Excerpts

Thursday 15th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Jones]

Yes.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Will the Minister agree to invite all Members whose constituencies are served by Southeastern trains to the meeting with the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill)? Our constituents are suffering daily disruption to their lives, as a result of the poor performance of Network Rail and Southeastern, and we would welcome a meeting with him to bring that to his attention.

[Paul Maynard]

I very much recognise that there are issues involving Southeastern. I am happy to meet Members from all parts of the House.

Southeastern Train Services

Clive Efford Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the reliability of Southeastern train services.

It is a pleasure to be here under your chairmanship, Mr Evans, and I welcome the Minister. We had hoped to meet her to discuss the Southeastern situation before this debate, but we are here now and perhaps it is better to discuss it in public, so that people know what is said.

The situation that we have found ourselves in since Christmas is not entirely the fault of Southeastern—Network Rail is responsible for more than 70% of the failures—but quite frankly my constituents do not care who is to blame. They want their trains to turn up on time, as stated on the timetable, and to take them where they need to go. Since Christmas, the situation has deteriorated significantly. Trains are constantly being delayed, cancelled or diverted, and the landslide took services out for about a week.

My constituents and those of other hon. Members are bombarding us with complaints and angry messages. I will give a few examples. One constituent complained about the

“appalling level of service provided by Southeastern on the evening of Friday 19...Trains reduced from 8 and 12 carriages to only four”.

Another wrote:

“Terrible service on the Sidcup line…Constant complaints to Southeastern but no improvements despite repeated promises”.

One constituent said that when the first Bexleyheath service of the day was cancelled, he found that he could not use his season ticket to get the bus and tube from North Greenwich, because it was not recognised by Southeastern as a “reasonable alternative route”. Someone else complained about the

“appalling and deteriorating levels of service on the Sidcup line”,

which also serves part of my constituency. She regularly uses the delay-repay compensation scheme, which she found to be “clunky and time consuming”. I will come to that later, but I have received constant complaints about difficulties in claiming compensation for lateness or cancellations. Another person complained about constant delays after Christmas in a commute to London Bridge:

“Been commuting for 40 years and never complained before. Worst it has ever been.”

It just goes on and on, and I am sure other hon. Members could give similar examples.

To give my own experience during this chaos, on one occasion I managed to get a train in the direction of Eltham as far as Lewisham, from where there was supposed to be a replacement bus service. It was impossible to find the bus stop for the replacement service; the signage was appalling. I approached a group of staff, who were clearly beleaguered, and asked them when the bus service was likely to arrive, but they had no idea. I asked, “Where does it stop?” and they waved in the general direction of the outside of the station. I felt sorry for them, but they were not providing a good service, although that has to be because they had not been provided with the information by the rail company.

On another occasion—it was the same scenario—I went outside the station to get a bus and found a blind man wandering around the building works. I do not know if anyone else has had the pleasure of trying to find a way through the roadworks outside Lewisham station, but it is difficult for someone who is not blind. Yet I found that man just wandering around. I grabbed him by the arm and asked, “Where do you want to go?” He wanted to go in the same direction as me, but how is it that he was not given assistance? Why were the staff not on the lookout for people who clearly needed such assistance? He wanted to get to Bexleyheath; he could have been put on the replacement bus service, but was given no help whatever.

On another occasion, going home late in the evening on a Bexleyheath train, we got to Lewisham only to be told that the train was no longer for Bexleyheath, but for Sidcup. People on the train just got up and blocked the doors. They were so fed up with what was going on that they stood with their feet in the doors and said, “We’re not putting up with this anymore.” When they saw me—I had got off the train and was wandering across to see if a train was ever going to be going in the general direction of Eltham—they said, “We’re protesting: we’re fed up with this.” I do not know what the end of that scenario was, but it demonstrates the scale of the frustration that people are feeling about the standard of the service.

[Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. The Labour party may be divided over its leadership, and the Conservative party over Europe, but what unites us all is Southeastern. It is fair to say that its service has deteriorated of late. Does he agree that Southeastern seems to have all but given up on getting its franchise renewed?

[Clive Efford]

That is a worry and something the Minister should consider. If that is the case, the Government should take the franchise away now, because if Southeastern is going to look at its bottom line rather than the quality of the service, passengers will continue to suffer. That was a prime example of giving way to someone and them coming up with a better line in their intervention than I have in my speech, so I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on pulling all that together.

People in south-eastern London have suffered for decades. We had the disastrous privatisation that gave us the Connex franchise. We then had a period of relative stability, when the franchise was taken back in-house—in effect, nationalised—but that was followed by the ridiculous decision under the Labour Government to reprivatise it. I opposed that at the time, but we are where we are.

Passengers who use London Bridge station understand that the Thameslink scheme is bound to cause disruption. They have accepted that, despite the chaos at Christmas 2014. At the time, the Minister accepted that there had been an unacceptable deterioration in the service and she took action—I commend her for that—but this year’s performance has deteriorated to an all-time low. Passengers had accepted that train patterns would be substantially altered and that regular journeys had to change, because trains that people were used to catching might no longer be going to Cannon Street or Charing Cross, but the level of disruption they are suffering now is nothing to do with that. On the lines between Dartford and London Bridge, the service has failed, although when we had discussions before the Thameslink works started, we were told that the situation was under control. As I said, my constituents do not care who is to blame; they want to know that the tickets they purchase will get them to where they want to go.

I am grateful to the Library for an excellent paper it has produced to provide Members with information for this debate. It sets out how the public performance measure is calculated. The PPM shows the percentage of trains that arrive at their terminating station on time and combines figures for punctuality and reliability into a single performance measure. It is the industry standard for measuring performance, but it does not distinguish between extreme lateness and a brief delay. Southeastern’s PPM has fallen from 91.3% 12 months ago to 83.2% now. The average for all operators is 89.3%, so we are way below that. Another measure is right-time performance, which uses the percentage of trains arriving at their terminating station early or within 59 seconds of schedule. Southeastern’s right-time performance has fallen from 65.2% 12 months ago to 53.5% now. The average for all operators is 64.8%. Again, it is well below average.

The cancellation and significant lateness measure is for when a train is cancelled at origin or en route—this was my experience on the train that was going to Bexleyheath but then went to Sidcup—and when the originating station is changed or the train is diverted. A train is significantly late if it arrives at its terminating station 30 minutes or more late. On that measure, 2.4% of Southeastern trains were cancelled or significantly late 12 months ago, but the figure is now 4.3%—it has nearly doubled—while the average for all operators is 3%.

On every single measure we see poor performance from Southeastern. In autumn 2015, Passenger Focus showed that Southeastern’s passenger satisfaction was 75%, down from a high of 84% in 2013. In autumn 2015, the Chiltern franchise had the highest satisfaction rate, at 91%. The bottom three ranked operators were Thameslink, Southern—they are franchised as Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern—and Southeastern, which share the common factor of going into London Bridge. That must account for some of the dissatisfaction that people have with the service.

Last week, Which? published its annual passenger satisfaction survey. Southeastern was placed joint last, with an overall score of 46%; last year it was at 45%. Which? considers the impression of passengers over the previous year of the service provided. The difference between that and the Passenger Focus survey is that Passenger Focus considers the last journey that passengers made. That can be open to all sorts of factors, which can distort the figure. I would say that the Which? methodology far more accurately reflects the passenger experience than that of Passenger Focus, which is now Transport Focus. Those figures demonstrate just how consistently poor the service has been.

[Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

I am sorry that the fracture clinic will prevent me from being here for the entirety of the debate. I thank and congratulate the hon. Gentleman for holding this debate. Many of my constituents have experienced the same difficulties he has described. While I believe there will be better times around the corner once the track and station at London Bridge are developed, I am still concerned that we are short of capacity on these lines. Does he agree that it would be a huge concern if plans to give the Mayor of London wider powers for outer London were to affect the capacity further south? Does he also agree that to free up capacity we need a high-speed rail link from Bexhill and Hastings to St Pancras to create more capacity for his constituents?

[Clive Efford]

I wish the hon. Gentleman luck in pursuing his scheme; I have got my own, which I will come to shortly. I have to say, Transport for London cannot be worse than Southeastern. It has had a positive impact when it has taken over other lines in similar circumstances, so hopefully it can achieve what Network Rail and Southeastern have failed to achieve in south-east London. Key bottlenecks such as Lewisham have to be overcome to achieve some of the things that Transport for London is talking about. I remain sceptical about whether it can achieve everything it says it can, but I am prepared to run with it and to be a critical friend, guiding it along the path of improving our train services in south-east London.

We need to hold people to account for what the figures demonstrate is consistent failure. The Minister did take action last Christmas when the service was appalling and there was a dangerous number of passengers on the concourse at London Bridge, but we must do more. To quote the Minister back at herself, on 28 January she admitted to the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) that

“Southeastern was not at the top of the list for overall satisfaction. It is not quite at the bottom, but it is not at the top either.”—[Official Report, 28 January 2016; Vol. 605, c. 526.]

It was actually second from bottom and it has been so consistently. The Minister was reluctant to call it how it is, but we do our constituents a disservice when we do not do that. We really need to call it how it is to hold these people to account.

One concern I have about accountability is that the penalties that the franchise operators are required to pay the Government if they fail in their obligations are shrouded in commercial confidentiality, as are the payments made if they overperform. I would like to see some examples of overperformance—it would cheer me up no end. Why is that shrouded in secrecy? It is public money and a public service, so there should be public accountability. The Government should be proud to say, “We have penalised this franchise” when it fails our constituents. They should say, “Yes, we have made them pay a price and forced them to reinvest this money in this way to address this failure.” We should not say to the companies, “You can come and run a public service. You can hide behind commercial confidentiality and not let people know the price being paid.” All too often we see these people paying themselves huge bonuses in public services after such failures and that is not acceptable.

I want the Minister to ensure that we can see how the companies are being penalised for failures, because of the effect of those failures on people’s lives. They are late for work, late for job interviews, late getting a connecting train. We have all travelled on these train services that get stuck, and we have heard people’s life stories on their mobile phones as they go into meltdown around us because of delays. It is not right that the companies are not held publicly accountable when their failure is on such a scale.

Given the scale of the problem, the compensation scheme seems to be underused by passengers. Something needs to be done about that, because if we can make compensation easily accessible the companies might start to consider the standard of their performance a little better. People are eligible for compensation after their train is delayed for 30 minutes. The compensation scale goes up to a 100% refund for 60-minute delays, but according to the Library’s document no figures are available for take-up. I suggest that take-up is extremely low. The Office of Rail and Road found that just 11% of passengers surveyed nationally always or usually claimed compensation when they were entitled to it; 15% said they rarely claimed; and 68% said that they never complained.

We clearly need to do more to encourage passengers to come forward. Rather than come to their Member of Parliament, because they see us as the only outlet to vent their spleen, perhaps they could by right claim their compensation and make their voices heard directly with the franchise operators. Which? is running a campaign to make rail refunds easier that calls for

“clear information on how to get a refund for rail delays…all train companies offering cash as the first option”

and for train companies

“to be held to account if they fail to encourage passengers to claim refunds.”

I commend that campaign to the Minister and urge her to support it.

The Minister said on 28 January:

“We effectively now have rail fares going up at the lowest level”.—[Official Report, 28 January 2016; Vol. 605, c. 526.]

Is that absolutely correct? I have figures that say an annual season ticket from Eltham to central London has gone up by £328 a year—33%—since 2010. I do not think my constituents would say fares have been going up at the lowest level. Would the Minister care to comment on that? I do not think it is true. People are being forced to pay more for a service that clearly is not up to the standard they have a right to expect.

I know that an announcement is pending about increased capacity on our rail services—12-car trains. I have been campaigning on that for 15 years and been fobbed off with “The electricity supply isn’t up to it. The platforms aren’t long enough. We have terrible bottlenecks at Lewisham and London Bridge. Twelve-car trains are such a drag,” and all the rest of it. The fact is that in south-east London we do not have direct access to the London underground. Most of our journeys are like the spokes of a wheel, going in to central London and the main terminals at London Bridge, Charing Cross, Waterloo and others. Our constituents rely heavily on those services and have few alternatives. Buses do not really provide an alternative for journeys of that length, nor do buses have the capacity for the number of people who want to make those journeys. There is a transport deficit in south-east London.

We constantly hear from the people at Transport for London about how much TfL must invest in the London underground and how important it is to increase capacity, and I get that. I understand how vital it is to London. However, TfL is even calling the new underground line going through New Cross the orbital route; that is how far TfL thinks London goes out—as far as New Cross. People outside its orbit are Pluto, or something. Because we do not have direct access to alternatives, our rail services are vital.

For too long people have been crammed on to overcrowded carriages, particularly at peak times. This morning, for example, I was waiting at the station at 7.35 at Eltham. The Victoria train came in and it was six carriages long, at peak time. It is not acceptable. The train that I caught to Charing Cross was eight carriages long. At those times of the day they should be 12-car trains. Trains are packed by the time they get to places such as Eltham, Kidbrooke and Blackheath; anyone getting on at Lewisham needs a crowbar. It is not acceptable. We have got to have increased capacity on our rail services.

TfL is very keen to take over the service and it would have my blessing, but as I said, I will be a critical friend. If it is going to increase the frequency of trains on the service it will have to deal with the signalling system. It is no good putting more frequent trains through with fewer carriages; we need more capacity. I will support TfL’s bid for the metro services on Southeastern, but we need to ensure that the Government and MPs scrutinise what it says about what it will deliver. We need to improve the service and increase its capacity significantly.

The landslide caused me great concern. I thought, “What if it had happened as a train was going by?” which was highly likely, because the vibration of a train could have exacerbated the situation and brought a landslide down. Some infrastructure was involved, so I want to know if a proper survey of the infrastructure has been done. As I said, more than 70% of the delays have been due to signals and infrastructure under the control of Network Rail. Does it survey the infrastructure to the point at which it identifies likely problems and puts them right, so that they do not become constant nagging problems and a cause of future delays? It seems that the system is creaking at the seams. Is Network Rail on top of that? I would like the Minister’s assurance that she is on top of Network Rail, and that she will ensure it tries to drive out the gremlins that cause all the problems for Southeastern and our constituents.

As I have mentioned, I want the penalties and rewards for train operating companies’ performance to be published and the people concerned held to account. I would like the Minister to put pressure on the transport operating companies to make people aware of compensation schemes. Above all I want the Government and TfL to recognise that south-east London has a transport deficit, which cannot continue to be ignored when the future expansion of rail services, including such things as the underground and the docklands light railway, is considered. The situation in south-east London is unacceptable. I look forward to hearing what the Minister intends to do about it.

Several Hon. Members rose—

[Mr Nigel Evans (in the Chair)]

Order. As we can see, seven hon. Members want to speak. I will start the winding up speeches at 10.38, which gives 10 minutes each, plus two minutes for Mr Efford to wind up. Please do the maths, but I think we are looking at perhaps just under five minutes each.