Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill

Iain Stewart Excerpts

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

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in support of this important Bill. I shall restrict my comments to parts 1 and 2—I have no concerns about parts 3 and 4. I wish to speak about the first two parts partly because of my role on the Transport Committee—we have considered these matters before—and partly because of a constituency interest. As has been referenced, Milton Keynes is at the forefront of developing and testing autonomous vehicles and a comprehensive charging network for electric vehicles.

The Bill is timely. The technology for autonomous and electric vehicles is quickly being developed and will be on our roads soon. I am talking not just about the experimental autonomous pods that Milton Keynes is innovating—the Secretary of State has just left the Chamber, and I was going to reference the maiden voyage that he and I took in the latest RDM UK Autodrive pod, somewhat bemusing shoppers in Milton Keynes shopping centre a few weeks ago, when I am happy to report that no injuries were sustained and that the technology worked splendidly—because established vehicle manufacturers and new entrants, such as Tesla and Google, are also developing cars that will be wholly or partly automated.

As the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald), mentioned, we already have cars that are partly autonomous, given the technology they have on board, whether that is a self-parking mechanism or intuitive cruise control, and I will return a little later to a concern I have about those. The Government are therefore absolutely right to be addressing now how this changing technology has moved ahead of existing regulations on insurance and other matters.

The intelligent mobility market will be huge. The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) said that it could be worth £900 billion by 2025. If he has not already read it, I urge him to read the “Intelligent Mobility Skills Strategy” produced last autumn by the Transport Systems Catapult, which is based in Milton Keynes. It identifies a possible skills gap of 750,000 people by that same year. The skills debate is for another time, but I mention this issue just to indicate the potential scale of what we are debating. It is absolutely essential that we get the basic parameters correct.

The Government are right to address the gap in insurance legislation that autonomous vehicles will produce. It was with some amusement that I read the Bill’s impact assessment—perhaps that is not the most appropriate name, given that we are dealing with possible vehicle collisions, so the Department might wish to rephrase its title—but it did contain some important points. As has been said, insurance is traditionally driver-centric, and we need to set a framework for what happens when an accident is caused by the machine or the software that governs it.

I agree entirely with the clauses, as far as they go, but I wish to highlight a few concerns, which I hope the Minister will be able to address in his response or in writing, if he does not have the answers immediately to hand. My first concern relates to clause 4, which deals with accidents that result from unauthorised alterations to the software or failures to update it. It is absolutely right, as far as it goes, but is there sufficient clarification of where liability would lie should there be an accident resulting from a failure caused by external tampering with the software, be it deliberate or accidental? Tests of autonomous vehicles and their technology, and even of other vehicles, have shown that their intelligent connections can be hacked. There are examples of that having happened in the United States, and it could lead to clashes. Lots of clever criminals have scammed the traditional insurance market by faking accidents or somehow causing them to happen, and then claiming the insurance premiums. If someone were maliciously to hack the smart technology, where would the liability lie?

I have another example of a more accidental nature. If a car with autonomous technology goes in for a service and the garage makes an error when that car is under its supervision and the driver has no knowledge of it, where would the liability lie? When my previous car was serviced, the garage messed up the software that governs the engine, and when I took it away the engine misfired and the car would not accelerate properly. That did not cause an accident, but it was an external intervention. I would be grateful for clarification on whether such instances are covered by the Bill or other legislation. If not, what further measures might be needed in the future?

My second concern relates to where the onus of liability lies when a car is partly autonomous. As I said, we already have such technology, which includes adaptive cruise control and self-parking. Existing legislation is clear that the onus of liability lies solely with the driver, but I can foresee a time when technology will develop to the point when the driver will be able to switch off his or her control of the car, leaving the car in control. Although the Bill covers liability when a car is in its autonomous mode, is there an onus on the driver to switch off the autonomous controls when he or she perceives a danger? If a driver is part of a motorway car train in which all vehicles are autonomously controlled and they spot an external incident that would make the continuation of that train dangerous, will there be an onus on the driver to switch off the autonomous controls? I would be grateful for clarification of whether that is already covered by law, or if it will need to be addressed at a later point.

I appreciate that it is difficult to give specifics at present, because the technology is not in operation, but we will have to think about this. In particular, as other hon. Members have said, we need the insurance market to work speedily in the interests of consumers. We cannot have a situation in which the consumer is the innocent party yet different insurance companies are fighting out where the liability lies. It would be helpful to have some clarification.

My third concern about insurance relates to practicalities and costs for the insurance policy holder in a changing mobility market. At present, most insurance is perfectly simple: the individual is insured either for a specific car, or comprehensively to drive any car. However, we will increasingly be moving towards MAAS—mobility as a service—products, whereby the direct ownership of vehicles will probably decline and people will buy a comprehensive package that covers train fares, buses, hiring a car and summoning an electric pod. The insurance market will become much more complex, and new products will have to be innovated to reflect the fact that one person may, over a relatively short period of time, drive all sorts of vehicles—from a simple city runabout right up to a high-performance sports vehicle, which they may wish to hire for a weekend. My question is: are existing regulatory frameworks for insurance companies sufficiently flexible to allow for the innovation of these products, or do we require further clarification? It is important that we make the regulations as watertight as possible because the market will be huge, and these developments will come sooner than I suspect many of us believe.

Although part 2 of the Bill deals with electric vehicle charging, it is not unrelated to autonomous vehicles, because such vehicles will be electric. The more automated features cars have, the more power they will need to derive from the electric power supply, so it is important that we look at these things in tandem. The Government are right to take a broad-brush approach. Various manufacturers are innovating different types of technology, from wholly electric cars to hydrogen vehicles, and I think that the hybrid market will be particularly important. Over the past few weeks, I have had the opportunity to travel in the BMW i3 and the Volkswagen Passat hybrid, which can be run fully on electric power but contain petrol engines to extend their range, for recharging, and to provide an alternative to the electric drive when the charge runs out.

I would not like the Government to have to make a call about which technology will become most prevalent, in the manner—if I may show my age here—of VHS and Betamax. We have not yet reached the tipping point of consumer behaviour that will indicate which technology will do so. People still have what is called “range anxiety”— they are fearful of switching to a wholly electric car because they might get caught out mid-way through their journey. Although they feel that such a car is appropriate for urban driving, they do not want to take it on a longer journey in case no charging point is available. I think that the tipping point will come when improvements in battery technology bring the range of electric cars up to a level comparable with that of petrol or diesel cars, and/or when charging an electric car becomes as easy and convenient as going to a filling station for petrol or diesel.

I do not have any concerns about the provisions in this part of the Bill. The one concern I have—it has been referenced by other Members—is outwith the scope of the Department for Transport, namely the demand that electric charging will place on the grid, especially if we do not find a way of smoothing out that demand. If everyone comes home at 6 o’clock and plugs their car in, causing a huge spike in demand, will we have the capacity in the grid and the generating capacity to meet that? That is relevant not just in this country but right across the developed world. I wish to see a cross-departmental approach. The Government are finally taking some initiatives in developing nuclear power, which I think will provide the necessary resilience in the grid. I urge them to look at nuclear fusion to provide a plentiful supply of electricity in the years ahead. That is a matter for another Department, but it is important that the Government operate in a joined-up way on these matters.

Let me conclude by congratulating the Government again on their foresight in bringing forward the Bill. It is important that the United Kingdom is a world leader in the technology and the regulatory framework for these new products. As I have mentioned, the market is huge. We want Britain to have a good share of that market, and the Bill will certainly help us along the way towards doing so.