Autonomous Vehicles

Lord Ashton of Hyde Excerpts

Thursday 16th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, am grateful to my noble friend Lord Borwick for initiating this important debate and for his kind welcome. I also thank the noble Viscount, Lord Younger, and the noble Lord, Lord Young, for their kind remarks. This technology will cause powerful changes in the years to come, and we will no doubt return to this subject in the future.

Sustainable transport of people and goods is key to economic growth. I agree that the UK cannot afford to sit back and watch. Autonomous vehicles will play a central role in future mobility. We must grasp the opportunities they present and be at the forefront of their development. The UK is the place to develop exciting and cutting-edge technologies such as autonomous vehicles. Formula 1 is an exemplary story of how the UK leads on state-of-the-art technology. Eight out of the 11 Formula 1 teams are based in the UK and 75% of global motor-sport R&D takes place here. The UK has a world-class science base and testing facilities, some of the most productive automotive plants in the world and a highly skilled and flexible workforce. There is much to attract companies to invest here. We have competitive labour costs, an adaptable workforce and our already competitive rate of corporation tax will be the lowest in the G20 by 2015.

Through our automotive and industrial strategy and the Automotive Council UK we have built a strong and lasting partnership between government and the automotive industry in the UK. Together, we are investing in the automotive industry of the future, ensuring that it is competitive and delivering the right conditions for growth and innovation in the sector. Every 20 seconds, a vehicle rolls off a UK production line. The UK automotive industry is on track for record production, exceeding 2 million vehicles in the next few years, and a total of £1.7 billion was invested in R&D by automotive companies in 2012 alone. Clearly, vehicle manufacturers value what the UK has to offer.

The Government’s support for autonomous vehicles was mentioned by many noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Giddens and Lord Young. We are already seeing UK automotive manufacturers making great strides in autonomous technology. My noble friend Lord Borwick highlighted the progress of Nissan and Ricardo. Nissan had a successful collaboration with the University of Oxford on the autonomous robot car, and Ricardo, a leading UK automotive design consultancy, has played a pivotal role in the European Commission’s safe road trains for the environment project, which has been developing vehicle platooning technology, as mentioned by my noble friend Lord Borwick. The outcomes were positive. As a result of this, the Department for Transport concluded a feasibility study earlier this year on turning this research into a reality on British roads and I understand that DfT is considering a further programme of new research for heavy goods vehicle platooning.

Secondly, in November 2013, the Government announced £1.5 million of investment in the pathfinder project in Milton Keynes to test driverless vehicles in a pedestrianised area for the first time. The pathfinder will see driverless pods operating on pathways shared with pedestrians within the next three years. As my noble friend Lord Younger pointed out in his question, it is imperative that Whitehall works together to support this objective.

In July, the Department for Transport and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, working together, launched a £10 million co-funded competition for collaborative R&D projects to research how driverless cars can be integrated into everyday life in the UK—that addresses the point made by the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, and the noble Lord, Lord Giddens. This goes beyond simply pure technology and the automation of individual vehicles. It must be integrated into normal life and will lead to big changes in the years to come. I know that my colleagues in the Treasury are taking a keen interest in this programme—that also goes towards the point made by the noble Earl, Lord Erroll. It is not only an exciting prospect, but one that provides a potentially significant opportunity for UK businesses, and it is right that we join up those interests across government.

I understand the concerns of my noble friend Lord Younger and the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, about whether there is enough investment. We are in the early stages of developing this transformational technology. The initial government support will enable the sector to reach a tipping point at which private investment and the market take over. I am not sure that I can give a long list of exactly how much investment is taking place, but perhaps I may write to the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, with the exact figures as far as possible. However, I can give some examples: £150 million is to be invested in research into training robotics autonomy; £500 million in the Advanced Propulsion Centre, which is to be matched by industry, so that will be £1 billion-worth over 10 years; £60 million into smart and connected transport; the £1.5 million I mentioned into driverless pods in Milton Keynes; and £10 million into driverless cars. These figures show that quite a substantial amount of investment is being made. Whether it is enough—it is probably never enough, if we are truthful—it is the case that we are investing significant amounts. Above all, private industry is investing alongside us.

The competition I mentioned earlier will identify up to three towns or cities to host trials of driverless cars and other road vehicles in a real-world environment. The competition is now closed and we expect the winners to be announced next month. These projects may see driverless cars on UK roads from as early as January 2015. That will put the UK at the forefront of this transformational technology and open up new opportunities for our economy and society.

In parallel with the competition, the Department for Transport is currently undertaking a review of the relevant regulation and legislation to ensure that there is a clear and appropriate regime for the testing of driverless cars in the UK. I appreciate the concerns of my noble friend Lord Borwick about increased regulation. It is clear that what we need is appropriate regulation rather than more regulation or, indeed, less regulation. The Government have a clear deregulatory ambition, but in this case we must undertake the review and then decide how to proceed. The review is well under way and an open consultation was held during the summer months. In answer to a question from the noble Lord, Lord Young, the findings will be reported by the end of this year, and those findings will include the insurance and liability issues identified by noble Lords: who is liable in the event of an accident and what does it mean to be “driving” such a car or ceding control of a vehicle?

As we have heard, automated driving offers a significant opportunity for our society. It paves the way to saving lives—potentially many lives—to helping the environment, increasing efficiency and reducing human effort through enhanced mobility, connectivity, comfort and convenience. My noble friend Lord Borwick helpfully looked across at the different types of vehicles and cast a vision of fully automated trucks on the motorway network. As a vision, I fully share in it, but the challenge will be turning that vision into a reality. The Government are taking on that challenge, and I mentioned the truck platooning trials earlier.

My noble friend also suggested a link between HS2 and autonomous vehicles. I do not share his optimistic view on this. Independent studies have looked at the alternatives to HS2, including building new motorways or more air travel, and they show less than half the benefit of HS2. Of course, these studies did not predict the use of autonomous vehicles in the way that the noble Lord mentioned, because the technology is some way off and untested so far. The Government’s approach to HS2 is therefore the right one in the light of available knowledge.

There has been much comparison with the Google self-driving car, and I thank my noble friend Lord Younger for asking how the UK compares globally, as did other noble Lords. Google is testing on American roads, but subject to certain restrictive conditions around liability. These rules are set by state legislatures rather than at a federal level and they differ between states. We understand that the liability bonds required in some states are at a level that small companies cannot afford, which stifles innovation.

We have the chance here in the UK to establish a much more open and competitive national environment for such technologies. We can become the global hub for the R&D and integration of driverless cars into society. The UK has not ratified the 1968 Vienna convention on road traffic safety, so we can start trials on real roads now, taking technology from the test track to the urban laboratory. In fact, the Oxford Robotics car mentioned earlier is already out there. While other jurisdictions will be grappling with their own restrictive national rules over the next three years, companies can come to the UK and get on with the job of trialling their technologies in real-world situations. We, too, will learn from these trials to enable us to develop and implement the appropriate regulatory framework for autonomous vehicles ahead of the competition.

Driverless vehicles are just one element of the UK’s automotive technological journey. The Automotive Council’s technology group is identifying opportunities for intelligent mobility more widely—this was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Giddens—looking at how we integrate into society and take advantage of such technologies and how they can be connected to an intelligent transport infrastructure.

As part of the automotive industrial strategy, government and industry will invest around £1 billion over 10 years in the Advanced Propulsion Centre to research, develop and commercialise the next generation of low-carbon technologies. Over time, it will be important that cars of the future are not only intelligent but green as well.

The noble Lord, Lord Young, asked what the Government are doing to support skills in the automotive industry. This is one of the focuses of the industrial strategy. For example, through the employer ownership pilot, we are providing significant matching funding to support the automotive industry to take ownership of its skills agenda. On 30 April, the Government announced a £20 million employer ownership fund for automotive supply chain companies to support the skills essential for the continued growth of the automotive sector. Other opportunities through the employer ownership fund include £10 million funding for firms seeking to establish training programmes to boost the number of women in the profession. In the autumn, a further £10 million will be available to help smaller firms tackle their engineering skills challenges.

The Transport Systems Catapult forecasts that the global market for driverless vehicles will have grown to £900 billion by 2025. If government and the private sector take decisive action now, we will be the ones designing and making these systems for the rest of the world. The Government are aware of the opportunities and doing their bit to help this happen.

I am getting to the end of my time, so I will have to ask noble Lords whether I can write to them to answer the remaining questions—in particular, I have some from the noble Lords, Lord Giddens and Lord Young. The Government are aware of these opportunities and are doing what they can to make them a reality.

House adjourned at 7.09 pm.