Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill

John Hayes Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 29th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman]

My right hon. Friend will be aware that one of the purposes of a smart grid is precisely to allow people to recharge their car at the most cost-effective time. I recently had the opportunity to drive a Tesla, and it is extraordinary how the car is continually updated with patches that can reduce its impact on the atmosphere and improve other aspects of driving in a very green way.

[Mr John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

As my hon. Friend knows, the new clause was tabled at my behest, having been prompted by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) in Committee. Ruskin said

“when we build, let us think that we build for ever.”

What we build in respect of electric charging points is vital. The Minister will be familiar with the RAC Foundation’s analysis in “Ultra-Low-Emission Vehicle Infrastructure—What Can Be Done”, which shows that, although the number of charging points is growing reasonably quickly, the number of rapid charging points is growing much more slowly. Is it not vital that, in his work to build this infrastructure so that it is fit for purpose, account should be taken of the need for more rapid charging points?

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[Karl Turner]

I very much agree with the hon. Gentleman. There were many suggestions in Committee that we call the charging points Hayes hooks. The former Minister, the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings, was keen for schools and colleges to get involved in some sort of national competition on the design.

[Mr John Hayes]

As I have been mentioned by name, I feel obliged to intervene to thank the hon. Gentleman for his earlier complimentary remarks and to say that I know that the competition is indeed envisaged. One of the last acts that I commissioned in the Department was to sort out the detail of who would judge what and when. I am sure that the Minister will want to enlighten the House on the progress that has been made, what day the competition will begin, when it will end and what the criteria will be.

[Karl Turner]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. In Committee, we discussed making the charging points as recognisable as telephone boxes. That is essential. I hope that the Minister has taken on board what was said in Committee and appreciates the work that the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings did on the Bill.

It would be eminently sensible for the Government to promote a national network of sustainable charging points for private vehicles. We welcomed the announcement in the Budget of £200 million of public money to be invested in charging infrastructure. Of course, that matched Labour’s manifesto commitment to invest £200 million to support ultra-low emission vehicles.

This Bill was an opportunity to set out a long-term plan for building the infrastructure needed to encourage the uptake of automated and electric vehicles, and it is a little disappointing that it has failed to do so fully. The Bill could have been a major step forward in taking high-emitting vehicles off our roads. We know that air pollution is linked to the premature deaths of around 50,000 people in the UK each year. That is a staggering number and the Government need to do an awful lot more to address that.

Electric and alternatively-fuelled vehicles are key to reducing air pollution and meeting the UK’s climate change objectives. In Committee, the then Minister said:

“It is very important that we monitor closely how charge points are rolled out. We have spoken about workplaces, local authorities, service stations and so on and so forth, but we need to get a clear view about where the concentrations of charge points are and what needs to be done to fill in any gaps that emerge.”––[Official Report, Automated and Electric Vehicles Public Bill Committee, 14 November 2017; c. 186.]

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[Helen Goodman]

That is very interesting. I think local authorities have not taken up that offer in the way people hoped because there are no resources for the upkeep of the charging points.

On Second Reading, I asked whether planning permission for new housing developments should require charging points. I am disappointed that that has not been mentioned by the Minister or in any of the new clauses or amendments. I also sent a rather long letter to the Department, to the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes) who was handling the Bill extremely well. I am also disappointed that I have not had a reply to my letter, as the then Minister told me that he was going to discuss the planning issues with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. It is no good Ministers relying on people charging their car at home, because to do so, people must have off-street parking. A third of this country lives in terraced housing or flats without off-street parking, which is why we need charge points along residential roads everywhere.

[Mr Hayes]

I do not want to anticipate my long and fascinating speech except to say that I did initiate discussions and I am confident that my successor will perpetuate them.

[Helen Goodman]

Good. I am very pleased to hear from the right hon. Gentleman, and I look forward to a positive response from the Minister on this issue of planning permission.

To some extent, new clause 3 covers my next point, which is that we need one system not just for paying when we go to the charge point, but for interconnections. When trying to charge up a car at a public point, it is incredibly annoying for a person to find that they have the wrong kind of plug. It is as absurd as if we had an electricity system in which some houses have three-point plugs, some five point plugs, and others two-point plugs. We have gone way beyond that. Although we want to encourage the private sector—when it comes to manufacturing the cars and the great work that Nissan and Toyota do, we are all in favour of it—the infrastructure for charging is a natural monopoly. It is obvious that the Government should be taking control of it. I am also slightly concerned that there has been systematic mis-selling and over-inflation on the range of electric cars.

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[Mr Hayes]

I want to contribute briefly to this debate. I have enjoyed the scrutiny of the Bill over what seems most of my recent life. I have spent more time speaking about automated electric vehicles than I care to count, having shared that endeavour with a number of hon. Members in the Chamber.

The amendments introduced by the Minister are a direct consequence of the scrutiny that we enjoyed in Committee. That Committee, like its predecessor—the Committee that considered the Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill, which also considered these matters—was conducted in a positive, constructive, collaborative and wholesome way and I believe that the Bill can genuinely be said to have been improved as a result of the endeavours from Members from all parts of the House.

The infrastructure for electric vehicles is one of the critical elements of their gaining wider acceptance. It is not the only one, but it is salient. As has already been said, that requires us to think broadly about how and where people will want to charge. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) made the very good point that most people will want to do that as close to their home as is conveniently possible and on-street charging is vital. The work with the local authorities, which has been recommended from a number of places in the Chamber, is critical to achieving that. The planning system also needs to recognise it, in respect of new developments. I go further and say that the Government have already taken steps and can take more on local authorities that are laggards—if I can put it that way—about putting into place the necessary measures to bring about on-street charging.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Hayes]

I happily give way to my former Parliamentary Private Secretary.

[Neil Parish]

I pay tribute to the great job that my right hon. Friend did as Transport Minister and in his many other ministerial roles.

It is very much the charging points—their accessibility and the ability to charge vehicles quite quickly—that will really encourage people to have electric vehicles. At the moment, only about 1% or 2% of vehicles are electric. We really need the infrastructure if we want that figure to be 25% or 30%. Until we get the infrastructure right, we will not necessarily get everybody to sign up to having an electric car. We have to be absolutely certain to get the infrastructure right.

[Mr Hayes]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has been not only a student, but a mentor to me as my PPS and as my great friend. He is right, as he often is on this subject. It is right that we build an infrastructure that is accessible. It also needs to be affordable and recognisable. The arguments that have prevailed so far have focused on those points—that the infrastructure must be easily recognised by anyone who wants to charge their vehicle.

[Michelle Donelan]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that another aspect that could hold back the industry is the skills shortage in the science, technology, engineering and maths sector? That is why schemes such as the Year of Engineering are so vital to companies in my constituency and in Wiltshire, such as Dyson and AB Dynamics, which are leaders in the sector.

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[Mr Hayes]

Yes. When we speak of infrastructure, we often think of physical infrastructure. But it is also a matter of human infrastructure, and skills are critical to the success of this industry. I recommend to my hon. Friend the report by the Institute of the Motor Industry that addresses exactly those points. It highlights the accreditation system that it has put in place and recognises that, so far, only a small proportion of the technicians and people who service cars more widely have achieved the necessary competences to work on electric vehicles—of course, autonomous vehicles are yet to come. It will be vital that that understanding and those competences are widely spread. If I might make a point particularly on that, I am anxious that they are not simply owned by large corporate companies. We do not want to see the disappearance of local garages and start-up businesses. The spread of the ability of those who can repair and service these new types of vehicles needs to be sufficient not only to seed those competences in the way I have described, but to make them available to people in rural areas as well as in urban centres. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw attention to that human aspect of this technological challenge.

As well as the charge points being recognisable—and I am delighted that the shadow Minister has confirmed that they are going to bear my name, which I expect the Minister will also confirm—I am delighted that there is a determination to ensure that there is some consistency about the charge points. One needs to be able to drive down a road in an electric vehicle and immediately recognise a charging point, as we recognise a telephone box, a pillar box and many other things. And it should be beautiful, by the way.

[Stephen Kerr]

I agree with my right hon. Friend about the importance of recognisability and that a charging point should be a thing of beauty that adds to the landscape of our towns, cities and rural areas. There has again been mention in the Chamber tonight of the competition for a beautiful design that the Government will sponsor. Will my right hon. Friend—and, perhaps, the Minister—comment on whether the design competition will be for a UK design, rather than just an England, or England and Wales, design?

[Mr Hayes]

Well, that would certainly be my wish. It will be for the Minister to confirm or otherwise whether that is the official position. I no longer speak in official terms, but happily endorse the view of my hon. Friend that we should have a UK-wide design and competition. When Gilbert Scott designed the red telephone box, of course he recognised that it was a functional item, as it remains. But he was also determined to make it something of elegance and style—something that, in the words of my hon. Friend, added to the built environment. And so it should be with these charging points.

The third important element of charging points, as well as their accessibility and recognisability, is their affordability. It is absolutely right that we should have a single means by which people can pay. It is preposterous that people might arrive at a charge point, ready to charge their vehicle—perhaps even desperate to do so, if the remarks of the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) hold true—and then find that the means by which they have to pay does not fit their expectation and that they need some card or prepayment system. We need to ensure that all charge points conform to a single means of payment, or at least a number of means of payment that suit every circumstance. What we cannot have is different charge points with different technologies, different modes of payment, and a different look and feel. That would be preposterous and I know that the Government will not want anything preposterous to happen.

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way; he is being very generous with his time. As he got the Bill to its current state, did he consider that perhaps we have started the whole basis of the electrification of cars and batteries at the wrong point? The trouble is we are beyond this point already, as we have a Tesla-style battery, a Lexus-style battery and batteries by other manufacturers. Would it not have been more sensible and better if the current network of petrol stations had been places where we could simply change the battery? That could have been done in an instant, or within a minute or two, rather than waiting for this long charge system. I am concerned that the manufacturers have started us off on the wrong basis. Perhaps it is not too late to get us back on track.

[Mr Hayes]

Innovation and change often initially result in a multiplicity of systems. One thinks of the industry that I was once in—the IT industry. It took some while before MS-DOS, and subsequently Windows, emerged. Of course, there are still Apple computers with a different system altogether, but at the birth of the personal computer, all kinds of technologies co-existed. It was a while before standards became certain, adapted and adopted, widely recognised and used. I suspect that the same applies in this area of innovation and change. As the technology beds down, I expect that there will be greater consistency, but the Government must play their part too.

Although I am sure that the market will normalise around a set of standards, the Government can—by what they do both legislatively and in terms of the kind of incentives I mentioned earlier that might be provided to those who are developing charge points such as local authorities—help that process along the way and that will build consumer confidence. Recognisability, affordability and accessibility are critical if people are going to buy electric cars without the uncertainty that the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland described to us. She was a bold early adopter who entered the marketplace with a degree of optimism and hope. I hope that her hope has not been too tarnished by subsequent experience because the trailblazing spirit that she personifies is important if we are to get the momentum we want for this change in the way we drive and what we drive.

I welcome these amendments. As I said at the outset, they reflect sensible scrutiny of important legislation, although of course there is more to be done. In establishing this national infrastructure, I am confident that the same spirit of conciliation, collaboration and co-operation that has characterised our considerations so far will continue.

I begin the end of my remarks where I started—with Ruskin. Ruskin said:

“The training which makes men happiest in themselves also makes them most serviceable to others.”

Further to the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan), the change that I recommend will not work unless we have people ready to make it work. That requires skills and training that is serviceable to others. It requires building a human infrastructure fit to do the job to make the physical infrastructure as effective as it can be. I know that there will be more consideration of that during the rest of this debate.

In the short time that I have been on the Back Benches, I have learned that one of the virtues is that one does not have to stay for the whole of a debate. To stay longer, in any case, might attract more plaudits, and even I would begin to become embarrassed. In the interests of the whole House, not just my own, I am now going to end this brief contribution, sit a moment longer and then proceed to my dinner, safe in the knowledge that I pass the baton to others still more capable of continuing the debate in the spirit in which it began.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

I call Matt Warman.

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[Matt Western]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his invitation, and I would certainly be delighted to take him up on it. That is one for the future.

[Mr John Hayes]

I have no desire to prolong the hon. Gentleman’s speech unduly, as the Financial Secretary to the Treasury is waiting for his dinner. However, on the hon. Gentleman’s point about buses and local support for electric vehicles, he will know that the Government have done a great deal to support the provision of low emission vehicles by bus companies. Indeed, workplace charging has also been supported strongly by the Government. Does he agree that perhaps we need just to broadcast that more, so that more people know they can benefit from the support that is available? The Government have done their bit, and I am extremely grateful for the great work that my officials did on that in my time. Does he think it is about more publicity?

[Matt Western]

It is. It is about motivating and encouraging change through consumers.

I would like to move on finally to electric bikes and mobility vehicles. That might seem like a less glamorous or glossy sector of the market, but we have some terrific bike manufacturers in this country. We have Pashley and Moulton, and Brompton here in London. Brompton’s first e-bike is about to roll off the production line. However, our sales of electric bikes are way behind those of other countries. We are something like seventh in Europe, with 5% of its total sales, way behind Austria, Italy, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. Germany has 36% of the total sales for Europe.

In 2016, the city of Munich started a subsidy scheme for electro-mobility that includes electric bikes. The subsidy for the purchase price is granted to private companies and non-profit organisations, with a contribution of, say, €500 for electric bikes or €1,000 for electric cargo bikes. In Sweden, there is a 25% Government subsidy for all e-bikes until 2020, which has led to a 50% surge in electric bike adoption in the country. It has been hugely successful in the past 12 months, and that shows what leadership can do to change consumer behaviour, which the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings referred to. The same thing applies to commercial vehicle fleets, whether they be for haulage or local delivery.

I urge the Government to adopt new clause 3, which is simple and straightforward. It puts forward a framework to identify all the vehicle sectors that need to be considered, so that we ensure that they are very much in the front of our minds.