Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 10th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I want to make a brief intervention on this group of amendments. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, for raising the important issue of an advisory council. The disabled community talks about the importance of co-production right from the start to make sure that there is not consultation at the end when it is really too late to do things. I hope that the Minister will take that on board. The Government have finally begun to understand the importance of co-production with disabled people. You can never have just one representative and it is important to understand all the issues. But as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, said, that also applies to other users, so an advisory council is going to have to cover a fairly broad range of interests. As the Minister reminds us continually during the course of the Bill, we are in new territory and design is inevitably going to have to change, so I hope that he will support these amendments.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I will intervene very briefly and apologise for being late. I support my noble friend Lord Liddle in his comments on Amendment 49 and the need for an advisory council. We have come across this before in many other Bills and Ministers always seem to say, “We don’t want to list those people who might be on it, because they might change”. I just draw the Committee’s attention to the news, which I think came yesterday or today, about the new board for Channel 4. The comment was made that the only person who had any experience in diversity had been rejected. Whether it was because of that or because she was female we do not know, but everybody else—except for one—was a white male. The Government may say these things, but they do not always appear to do it.