Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill (Second sitting)

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Tuesday 14th March 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

Q Earlier, in the discussion with Rob, there was discussion about phraseology—about large fuel retailers or just retailers—and an issue with forecourts. I want to clarify something. I am not sure if forecourts are mentioned in the Bill, so is that a red herring? Is it not going to be up to the retailers to site the charging points where they are most convenient?

Following on from the previous question, if you are not blocking the forecourt, a rapid charger may take 30 minutes, but is that not an opportunity for sales if it is the shops that make all the money? I would have thought that for somebody who is travelling, if it is an intermediate store, it would be an ideal opportunity to park and charge their car, go into the shop, buy a newspaper or a magazine and a few snacks, sit in their car, then move on. Is there not a business opportunity there?

Edward Woodall: Yes, there is. As we said in our submission, only 11% of sites have seating areas for customers, so there might not be the capacity to manage all that. Equally, how big is a forecourt site? Think about your local forecourt site—how many cars can it fit? For some of these electric vehicle charging areas, they will not consider it unless it is an acre or an acre-and-a-half-sized site.

Teresa Sayers: Certainly, the charging sites would have to be on the periphery of a forecourt. The current configuration of estates has very limited space to accommodate any parked vehicles. As was previously mentioned, the business model is a very high throughput of vehicles. The maximum duration on the forecourt is usually below five minutes—they fill up, pay and leave. It is just not built and configured to have additional cars there for a very long period of time.

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

Q I want to ask about brevity. Mr Woodall, I have to confess that I cannot ever remember spending more than five or 10 minutes in a convenience store—presumably, that is why they are called convenience stores, because it is convenient and quick—so I cannot quite see the model of me pulling up in my electric car, plugging in for the half an hour or even 15 minutes, and spending that time in the convenience store, particularly when the number of spaces will necessarily be limited. There will not be 15 or 20 spaces; you might perhaps have two, which might therefore be full the whole time. Do your members really see this as a big business opportunity or is there a Government subsidy available so you might as well take it?

Edward Woodall: I agree with all those points. I think it is difficult in our format of retail to deliver electric charging, given that both on forecourts and in convenience stores, there is large throughput and we are usually in areas of small parades where there are limited parking spaces, or they are on forecourts that are likewise limited for parking space.

[Kit Malthouse]

Q So on your earlier point on the greater investment required for hydrogen, given that hydrogen requires no behavioural charge—you refuel in about the same amount of time as you do a current internal combustion engine—the throughput of people might be greater, so the return on investment could be higher. Rather than having two people sitting there for half an hour, you might have 30 people going through who would therefore spend commensurately more, even though the initial investment might be more.

Edward Woodall: In terms of the hydrogen market, we are a long way off hydrogen being—

[Kit Malthouse]

Q That is what everybody keeps saying. There is a body of us who do not necessarily buy that, but okay, I understand that.

Edward Woodall: It is hard for me to answer and model that—

[Kit Malthouse]

Q I understand that. I have one other question, which is about the very high voltage required for fast charging. On an existing petrol or diesel forecourt, you are not even supposed to use your mobile phone because of the possibility of some kind of arc or charging gas. Is there a safety issue with the incredibly high voltage that is required to charge a car in half an hour and the possibility of arcing in an atmosphere of gasoline fumes?

Teresa Sayers: I am not qualified to answer that question. However, that is something that needs careful consideration. There are technically qualified people who can give you a comprehensive answer.

Steve Nash: With current electric cars—no pun intended—and the connections you make, there is very little chance of arcing, but I understand that you are not going to put volatile things next to high electric charges.

I have some experience of hydrogen because I was formerly on the board of BMW in the UK and we were running hydrogen cars around London. To deliver hydrogen as a liquid, it has to be stored at absolute zero. That is very, very complicated. It is also a very small molecule, so it permeates just about everything, so storing it is a real challenge. We are talking about hydrogen fuel cells, which are still kind of in their infancy. It depends on how the hydrogen is required, whether as a gas or a liquid. Either way, there is a long way to go. I think there are only two places in the south-east of England that could deliver hydrogen if you wanted it at the moment.

[Kit Malthouse]

Q There are six actually.

Steve Nash: Maybe I am out of date but, even so, that is not a lot. It will come, but there are technical complications. The battery electric cars are the ones that are going to proliferate first.

[The Chair]

Do Members have any further questions for this panel? No? I thank the panel for their time and co-operation.

Examination of Witnesses

Ben Howarth and Iain Forbes gave evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy McDonald]

Q Really, what the manufacturer would say is that if a vehicle has not been updated for one reason or another, or if they discover some other technical reason to shut it down, they will make sure that vehicle does not shift. Is it within the contemplation of the industry to take it that far?

Iain Forbes: What we need is systems that are transparent to people who are using them and that provide appropriate protections so that they feel confident using them. That is part of the discussion that we are having internationally at the moment.

[Kit Malthouse]

Q I have a couple of questions. We have a problem in this country with uninsured cars. Given that these cars are likely to be connected to the matrix in some way, do you think that it would be sensible for the Government to take a power to require that the car has to check whether it is insured before it moves? When I go and buy my tax disc, the system checks that the car is insured before it allows me to do so. Should these cars be required to do the same?

Iain Forbes: We are at too early a stage in the development of the technology to be able to consider that, but it is certainly something we could look at.

[Kit Malthouse]

Q Why?

Iain Forbes: It is not clear exactly how those systems will interact with a wider data network to enable the system to work.

[Kit Malthouse]

Q It is technically possible, right?

Iain Forbes: Many things are technically possible, but we do not know exactly how it will come to market and how the systems will operate.

[Kit Malthouse]

Q You seem to imply, Mr Howarth, that the insurance industry would be indifferent to the characteristics of the passenger, who need not be the driver of a level 5 car.

Ben Howarth: That seems reasonable to assume. As I understand it, a level 5 car will not even have a steering wheel so the driver will have a pretty minimal role in how the car performs.

[Kit Malthouse]

Q Would it be fair to say that level 5 cars might be the saviour of the rural pub? Can I drink and drive a level 5 car?

Ben Howarth: I am a big fan of the rural pub, but I do not know the answer for certain. That is probably also an infrastructure question: I can see the cars working in certain inner-city areas, but personally, I am not 100% sure whether level 5 is ready for some rural roads yet. I think evangelists for level 5 technology will say that it is.

[Rob Marris]

Q One for Mr Howarth. What will the industry do about Northern Ireland and automated vehicles? That is not covered in the Bill.

Ben Howarth: Is there any particular aspect of Northern Ireland that you think is not working?

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Burden]

Q May I move on to another subject? In the previous panel I asked Mr Moriarty to comment on the fact that there is nothing in the Bill relating to the regulation of drones. It is an omission from the Bill that has been commented on in a number of quarters. Do the rest of you have any observations on whether the Bill could be usefully extended to say something about drone safety? If so, what?

Steve Landells: From BALPA’s point of view, we would like to see the Bill extended to include drones. The prime thing we would like to see is a mandatory registration process for drones. At the moment, anyone can buy a drone and fly it anywhere, and they do not have to take any responsibility for it. At the moment, if the police find a drone inside the environs of an airport or on the runway, they have no idea who that drone belongs to. We would really like to see a compulsory registration process.

Perhaps before first flight you would have to go online to get an unlock code. During that process we could get exposure to the rules and an online test for a drone operator. That would also mean that the operators would have an idea of what the rules were. A lot of the problems being caused by drones are through ignorance— 17 near-misses were reported between manned aircraft and drones last year—so we need to educate the people flying the drones that there are rules and regulations in place. It is a dangerous thing to do, and we think that a compulsory registration scheme would address a lot of the problems.

Simon Bray: We would not disagree with that. We are mindful that there need to be restrictions around particular locations, as there are currently. However, in the case of aircraft, it matters not hugely where you put in those restrictions; it is the whole bit about the flight paths in and out that we have concerns about.

[Kit Malthouse]

Q I have a couple of quick questions. I was slightly concerned about the definition of a vehicle. In the Bill it says that it means

“any thing used for travel by land, water or air”.

Do you think it might be sensible to extend that slightly to include vehicles that are not used for travel such as bulldozers and very tall cranes in the scope? Does a police horse used for travel count as a vehicle? If a police horse in a public order situation were to be dazzled by lasers, should it be included? The definition is quite specific, so do you feel it might benefit from being widened a little?

Simon Bray: I think it would be worth looking at. Things like police horses could be dealt with in different ways—cruelty to animals, assault of the police officers riding them and so on. It would be worth looking at that to ensure that the definition is suitably inclusive of some of the things you just mentioned.

[Kit Malthouse]

Q I do not know if you have had instances of people in tall cranes being dazzled, but tall construction cranes heave tons of stuff and could be quite dangerous. We have seen collapses in the past if someone has been distracted and got the angle wrong. It might seem obscure, but the purpose of the law is sometimes to deal with obscure situations.

Simon Bray: Yes, indeed.

[Kit Malthouse]

Q It might be worth having a look. The other issue was on the definition of an aircraft being in flight. The Bill defines an aircraft as being in flight from

“the moment when it first moves for the purposes of take-off”.

Presumably that is from push-back and includes taxiing to the runways. However, it then says

“ending with the moment when it next comes to rest after landing.”

There can often be quite a lot of taxiing after it comes to rest. It waits five minutes for its gate to come free and then it taxis for 10 minutes—or 25 minutes if it is the wrong end of Heathrow airport. Do you think that definition is a problem? Obviously taxiing is not as dangerous, but it is a dangerous moment as well.

Martin Drake: We did discuss that. The issue with taxiing is that you tend to taxi aircraft at a maximum speed of 10 to 15 mph and, if you do get dazzled, you can put the brakes on and stop. At that point, you can bring the whole thing to a graceful halt.

The definition of flight is a tricky one. If you look into it, I think there are about seven or eight definitions of flight. The current one that I think the International Civil Aviation Organisation accepts is doors closed for the purposes of a service to doors open at the end of that service. I think that covers all aspects of what you are considering.

[Kit Malthouse]

Q It might be easier to say “Any vehicle that is moving.”

Martin Drake: It might very well.

[Kit Malthouse]

Q As you say, with a stationary vehicle there are dangers, but at the moment it moves and there is danger, there is a problem.

Martin Drake: Indeed. I take on board what you said about the cranes. That is something that had not occurred to us, I must confess. In our research we have come across train drivers being lasered—apparently it is great fun to let them go through a red light and watch the brakes come on. The Seacat, coming into Holyhead harbour, was lasered a couple of years ago. Again, I do not know why. They were trying to hit the bridge.

[Kit Malthouse]

Q Yes, hovercraft are covered as a vessel.

Martin Drake: Yes. These are not in the scope of the Bill, but we have come across goalkeepers being lasered when an important penalty is to be taken, and we have heard of referees being lasered. It is a transport Bill, so it is not within the scope of that, and I know the police have powers to deal with it, but it is a growing problem.

[Mr Baker]

Q Captain Drake, you mentioned that you have got windows in your office from which you have had spectacular effects when you have shone lasers at them. For the purposes of public education, have you considered letting some videos go out there to wherever to show us what happens?

Martin Drake: We have, yes. There is some nervousness about publicising what happens because countries where that has been done have seen a spike in events. That may be a cost we have to bear: we may have to see a spike in events then to see a contraction. We could do that—it is a very sensible idea.