Automated Vehicles Bill [Lords]

Debate between Iain Stewart and Roger Gale

2nd reading
Tuesday 5th March 2024 Commons Chamber

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

It is a great pleasure to be able to contribute to this debate. I should flag that the Transport Committee conducted an extensive inquiry on self-driving vehicles and published our report on the subject last year. Our principal recommendation was to bring forward legislation to give the industry and investors the certainty to continue their work. We are very pleased indeed that the Government have taken on board our central recommendation and brought forward this Bill. We commend the Law Commission for the background work it did to provide the legal underpinning.

Hopefully there will be sufficient time for the Bill to reach the statute book before we get to the general election. Had it not been brought forward, there was a real danger of a missed opportunity. The UK has been a leading player in the development of this global technology, but there is no certainty that that would continue. One message we heard loud and clear from the sector was that it needs the regulatory framework and that certainty to allow further investment to take place, so we are, as I say, very pleased that that is happening. To give some idea of the scale, figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders estimate that by 2040, the annual economic impact to the country will be £66 billion. My fellow Select Committee member, the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris), raised legitimate concerns about the risk to jobs from this new technology, but there is an upside: 12,000 new direct jobs in automotive manufacturing, and more than 300,000 additional jobs in the wider economy, again using SMMT figures. There are economic opportunities —job opportunities—provided by this new technology.

It is always difficult to adjust to change in the economy. I often use the analogy that a few decades ago, lots of people were employed in manufacturing typewriters; now there is hardly anyone in that industry, but other job opportunities arose. That will also be the case in this sector. He is not in his place now, but I echo the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) that the city of Milton Keynes has been at the forefront of the research and development and the testing of this technology in the UK, and long may that continue.

As other speakers have said, the advantages are not just economic; this technology also widens the accessibility of transport for many people who are, for various reasons, inhibited at the moment. That wider social value may be more difficult to quantify in monetary terms, but will be increasingly valuable. More generally, this technology will widen the transport choices available. Self-driving vehicles will replace some journeys made purely by car, but will also be part of an integral transport system where a self-driving vehicle may pick up people from a railway station, bus station or airport to complete their journeys. There are many, many upsides to this legislation.

I want to highlight a few other concerns we had during our inquiry, some of which the Government have already addressed. The first is on safety. We very much welcome the amendments put forward by the Government in the other place to introduce a more certain and wider definition of safety; we set out concerns in our report that the broad definition of a self-driving vehicle as being as safe as a

“competent and careful human driver”

was just a bit too vague and weak. The amendments that have been brought forward in the Lords to ensure proper consultation not just with the industry, but more widely with road safety stakeholders, are very welcome, while the change in the parliamentary procedure from a negative to an affirmative resolution will give it greater clarity. We very much welcome that.

I will raise two particular safety issues. One, which I mentioned in my intervention on the Secretary of State, is the need to ensure that drivers have the relevant level of skill and experience to intervene when the technology requires them to do so. As I said, those instances will obviously be immediate and often in challenging conditions, and will require skills over and above the general driving competencies and knowledge as to what a driver ought to do in those circumstances. I do not think it is necessarily something to include in the Bill, but, as the Government look at the consultation on safety, I strongly urge them to look at what changes to the driving test may be appropriate, and even at wider encouragement for everyone to have refresher courses. I think most drivers—me included—would be terrified at the prospect of resitting our driving test, as we have probably built up many bad habits over the years. There is, perhaps, a wider point about ensuring that drivers remain competent, but this new technology does introduce specific new circumstances that need to considered.

The second safety-related issue is about ensuring that MOT tests are up to date so that they properly capture all safety-critical technology. In the future, cameras, sensors, software and other technology will be as safety-critical as tyres, brakes and other mechanical parts that are currently assessed. Again, I urge the Government to look ahead and perhaps redefine what is encapsulated by the MOT.

Related to that is a concern raised with me by smaller garages about ensuring that they still have a fair chance of carrying out MOTs. As the technology becomes ever more sophisticated, there is a risk that the original equipment manufacturers will have a monopoly on maintaining software and related equipment and that only their garages will be able to carry out such work. There a wider point—this is not just about self-driving vehicles—about ensuring that the full spectrum of operators in the car repair and maintenance sector has fair access to doing that work.

I will also raise two points related to insurance. My friend and colleague from the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Easington—he is no longer in his place—mentioned data sharing. I welcome the fact that data sharing is referenced in the Bill and that its scope will be set out in secondary legislation. It is important for the insurance industry to be able to capture the full picture of driver behaviour and the behaviour of vehicles in this new world. That will not be limited to collisions, where the insurers will need to know what happened; there will be other injuries for which data must be available—say, a self-driving vehicle may brake suddenly, which results in a whiplash injury or related concerns. As a probing suggestion, is there a case for putting in the Bill a requirement for consultation with the insurance industry on the concept of data sharing, similar to the one that Government have set out for the setting of safety parameters? I will leave that with my hon. Friends on the Front Bench to consider.

The second insurance concern was raised by the Motor Insurers’ Bureau about where we have what might be called a “black swan” event, with a significant co-ordinated cyber-attack that instructs many vehicles simultaneously to behave in a way that could cause mass public injury. The instruction might be to drive at high speed and turn sharp right into a crowded pedestrian area. The concern is that, as things stand, the absence of a mutualisation of risk could lead to such a level of claims that it would bankrupt the car insurance sector.

In property, there is an equivalent backstop to cover the event of such terrorist activity. Some thought needs to be given to that. Again, it probably goes wider than purely self-driving vehicles, because, as the Secretary of State mentioned, the technology is often already embedded in cars and could be hacked by a malevolent actor. The insurance industry is concerned about that, and I urge the Government to consider that perhaps not necessarily in the Bill but as part of wider reform.

Notwithstanding those concerns and questions, this is a welcome Bill with huge upsides economically and socially. As the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) put it succinctly, it is an exciting new world, but for many people it is a scary new world, and we have a duty to bring the public with us.

There are many areas where transport is already automated and people accept it and are quite relaxed about it. They will get on a get on a docklands light railway train, which is automated, and aircraft flights are now 95% automated. In Milton Keynes, we have delivery robots going along the pavement and no one bats an eyelid about them. But as we see with smart motorways, if the public are not convinced about the safety of new technology, they will not accept it.

We all have a duty to make sure that the regulations ensure the safety of the drivers and the passengers as well as the wider roads-using and pavement-using public. The upsides are enormous, but we must bring people with us. I commend the Government for bringing forward the Bill, which is incredibly important, and I look forward to seeing it on the statute book.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

I call the SNP spokesman.