Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (Science and Technology Report)

Lord Fox Excerpts

Wednesday 20th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, it is always preferable to speak first in these debates, because to follow such a daunting array of knowledge is difficult.

For anybody who did not sit on the committee, it must be clear by now that this report was not prepared autonomously. It was not a driverless committee. We had the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, at the wheel, for which we are very grateful. We also benefited from the expert navigation of the clerk and the advisers, for which we are also very grateful. I should declare my relevant interest in GKN, which is active in the automotive sector.

The noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, talked about creeping automation. My first car was a Hillman Imp, which had the fantastic innovation of an automatic choke, which, nine times out of 10, automatically flooded the carburettor. I hope that the automation of which we are speaking today will be more successful.

Despite its shelf life, as pointed out by my noble friend, this report has turned out to be well timed, because the government response has been bookended by the industrial strategy and the publication, and imminent arrival, of the Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill. It should be pointed out that the Bill is focused largely on insurance with respect to this issue. The very important point brought out by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, on standards, with which I am in complete agreement, is unlikely to be addressed through that Bill, unless something changes. We need to look for a vehicle—if noble Lords will excuse the pun—which enables that standards issue to be discussed soon, because I know very well that other countries are working on this. Germany, for example, is working very hard in the standards vein to help to rig things in its direction.

This has been a wide-ranging debate which characterises the problems and the challenge that the committee faced in corralling that debate. I will try to stick to the less science fiction aspects and keep at the practical near-term part of the debate around: the ambitions of the industrial strategy; the near sole focus on automotive at the possible expense of other sectors; the role of LTAs, which no one has mentioned today; the huge skills gap, which we have just heard about; and some wider sociological implications. With apologies to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, I will try to do that unreasonably quickly.

On the industrial strategy, in strategic terms the Government seem bent on striking out for global leadership in automation technology. As the noble Baroness, Lady Young, pointed out, this is a creditable ambition but it is also a very tough one. I wonder whether the Government have either understated or perhaps misunderstood the scale of this challenge. Global investment in this area is already on a scale of tens of billions of pounds. To keep up with and match that level is a very tough ask. The artificial intelligence sector deal is clearly a statement that has been made, as was pointed out by the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, but how are the Government really planning to lead in this segment, and what is it that leads them to believe that we can lead in this segment?

On the other hand, it looks as if practical moves have been made to essentially create the UK as a test bed. That has the benefit of attracting in all-comers—that is obviously the idea—but how in essence will manufacturing, the technology and the knowledge then be rooted in this country? What is the Government’s strategy to do that? I should note that the UK is not alone. About six weeks ago, I sat down with the governor of Arizona. That state has entirely the same test-bed strategy and is one of probably at least 30 other US states and half the rest of the world involved in this. Therefore, can the Minister unpick this strategy a little for us today and perhaps set out which technologies in particular the Government will facilitate leadership in? As has been implied, a sector deal is all right, but it is not leadership. The Government need to lead and show where they are leading.

Overall, the focus on automotive is narrow; the Select Committee report also highlighted other opportunities. I understand that it would be unreasonable to expect the Minister to speak about some of these particular sectors, but the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, thoroughly and brilliantly highlighted one area of opportunity, around agriculture. It is also clear that the levels of investment required to gain that leadership in agriculture are much less than the sort of numbers that need to be punted in even to start to compete in the automotive sector. It would be helpful to have some comment on that. The fall-back response from the Government is, “The industrial strategy grand challenge process will deal with this”. It is not clear how that process will be generated after the initial topics which have been set by the Government. How will new challenges be pitched, chosen and moderated? Our understanding is that the Government set those challenges rather than UKRI; how will that process work?

Briefly, on local transport authorities, as the Minister knows, the LTAs are responsible for the vast network of the UK’s roads. While it is clear that our motorways are on the way to preparing for some sort of connectedness, it is absolutely clear that our local roads are not—a point my noble friend Lady Randerson made. So what is the vision for engaging the LTAs in all this? To reflect a theme that has come through from many speakers—the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and others—there is the question of the mixed economy. It is easy to see how a convoy of trucks running up a motorway can work, but how will the mixed economy of autonomous, semi-autonomous, and manual vehicles, bicycles, people on foot, tractors, dogs, cats and whatever you like work on a local road, which currently has about zero connectivity with anywhere? What is the Government’s vision here?

On skills, again, the noble Lord, Lord Mair, absolutely nailed it when he spoke of the huge, stark shortage we are facing. This of course is just one sector and one industry. When we look across all technology industries, the skills shortage is a huge gulf. The industrial strategy response to this was not sufficient. I am something like the ancient mariner who stops one in three on the need for a joined-up UK skills strategy. Skills sits in a variety of different ministries. It has no clear champion across government; a variety of people keep shoving things back and forth. We have to have some sort of national strategy on skills. To focus again on the Ministry of Transport, I understood that next year would be the Year of Engineering. Perhaps the Minister can update us on what this seeks to achieve, how it will be measured and how we will know what a glorious success it will be.

Finally, on what I would call people, I have a sort of cry of the heart that we have to bring out the social implications of this. We have touched on some of those: data, jobs and the wider changing relationship between humans and machines which serve them. On data, my noble friend Lady Randerson and the noble Lord, Lord Mair, made absolutely clear the challenge and the dangers around data. There is a group of companies that will fund vehicles to get that data—it is highly valuable. We have to have a position, nationally and internationally, around that data. Can the Minister explain to us what the steps will be to develop that policy domestically and then to propagate it across a meaningful international platform?

On jobs, again set out by my noble friend Lady Randerson, there is a real challenge. I would like the Minister to commit to working on modelling the impact, because it is not clear to me that any impact study—dare I use that phrase?—has been done on the numbers and types of jobs that will be gained and lost in this process. We on these Benches would also like the Minister to commit to publishing the results of that impact study, so that we do not have to go to a small room and sign a book in order to see them.

Finally, can the Minister, either in her department or across government, undertake some serious social research into how people relate to machines? We heard a number of comments on the interface between automation and human intervention, which is one aspect of the social response, and an interesting part of the challenge is how vehicles will keep their nominal pilots sufficiently interested and engaged. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, talked about people being trained to use the vehicles. Of course, people can spend many weeks of training before undergoing a driving test; perhaps under the noble Lord’s tutorship we should be talking about people taking passenger tests in order to travel in these driverless vehicles.

However, on a more serious note, there is a wider sociological issue, although this is probably not the forum for it. The interrelation between people and machines does not just rewire the hardware of the machines; it rewires the humans. We have seen that in relation to iPhones and smartphones. It rewires the way in which people act and think. More research is needed—as researchers always say—into that whole area of how people interrelate with the machines that will increasingly run their lives.

In conclusion, this report sets a milestone on an exciting, potentially rocky and quite interesting road that will create a different future for many of us, and I look forward to the Minister’s response to this debate. On the pace of the change, I endorse the view of the noble Baroness, Lady Young, that change like this usually takes longer than people expect. However, I am also of the view that, when change comes, it is often more profound and thorough than people expect. With that, I hope that this report helps to mitigate some of the issues along the way. I hope that the Government will use it as a springboard to do some of all that extra research and investigation that is needed in order to smooth our way along the road.