Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]

Lord Holmes of Richmond Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 28th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the Bill, and it is a pleasure to take part in this Second Reading debate. In doing so, I declare my technology interest as adviser to Boston Ltd. I congratulate the Law Commission on its excellent work on the Bill. It has done a significant suite of work across many new technologies and delivered Bills, commentary and reports to Parliament of excellent quality; long may that continue. It enables us to have better initial legislation and a sense of the depth and breadth of the issues involved when we try to make optimum use of and deploy all the new technologies we currently have in our human hands.

I would like to touch on five principles: safety, transparency, accessibility, public engagement and power usage. First, on safety, it seems a useful discipline that, before embarking on any programme of automation or autonomous delivery, we should consider what can be done to improve the current situation. The Government state that the overriding objective here is better, safer journeys. What can currently be done with what we currently have?

When he winds up our debate, I would welcome comments from my noble friend the Minister on a number of examples. First, e-scooters: what do they add to better, safer journeys? What do they add to a healthier population? They certainly do not take cars out of the mix for the kind of journeys they do. What is the Government’s current position on further e-scooter experiments? What role do they think e-scooters play in a multiple, accessible, safe, healthy transport ecosystem?

There has been an extraordinary spike since Covid of cars and vehicles shooting red lights, even those on pedestrian crossings. Does my noble friend agree that, with very minimal technology investment—the cameras may well be there on many of these crossings and lights—government and local authorities should look to those cameras and that evidence to clamp down on and put an end to cars shooting red lights, as though red has suddenly become a soft amber simply to sail through? Can he confirm that, in major cities, these crossings are all likely to be currently monitored through the main transport control centres, such as Palestra in London?

Nothing is achieved by a planning folly to take away all road markings, all crossings, all traffic lights, all signage, and put cars and pedestrians, tankers and toddlers in a so-called “shared space”. What is the Government’s position on existing shared-space schemes? How are they helping to deliver the rightly set out overriding objective of safer, better, more accessible journeys?

The Minister stated in his introduction—and it is in the notes to the Bill—that autonomous vehicles “will not be distracted”. That is certainly true if one considers distraction from a human perspective, but what about all the things that can easily confuse, make the system not work as intended and have tragic consequences, as has sometimes been seen in other jurisdictions?

What have the Government made of the evidence from experiments from around the world? I will draw on one example, from California, where it was reported in evidence that 40 incidents of autonomous vehicles interfering with emergency services vehicles had been recorded. Does my noble friend the Minister think this a high or low number? What are the consequences? What analysis have the Government made of that evidence and how has that fed into the Bill before us? In short, what is the Government’s safety ambition for autonomous vehicles? In no sense do I advocate this or even suggest it, but to put it at its most extreme, if it was evidentially proven that autonomous vehicles with no user in charge were significantly safer than human drivers, would the Government move to ban human driving? I merely put the question as it seems a logical conclusion to the arguments set out in much of the Bill’s documentation.

Turning to transparency, will the data gathered in all these experiments be available? Will it be open for third parties to analyse, consider and look at? Transparency is critical if we are to have increasing engagement, comfort and confidence in these new technologies. Will the Government look to have accredited third-party professionals to review, opine on and accredit these systems—the systems much more than the vehicles themselves?

The Bill sets out that there will be an ongoing review of the vehicles, but it should be more a review of the vehicles, the software and the technologies. How regular is that review to be? For it to be optimal, it needs to be done in real time and second by second. What learnings have the Government taken from other industries, such as the airline industry, including the approach that Rolls-Royce takes with its sensational Trent engines?

On accessibility and inclusion, can my noble friend the Minister confirm that all development in this AV space will be inclusive by design? If it is, that will resolve so many of the issues of access and equality which will otherwise impact later down the track. Again, what learnings have been taken from many of the rollouts, not least in San Francisco, when it comes to accessibility? To what extent and in what way have disabled people been involved in the experiments in this country? What plans do the Government have to ensure that disabled people are involved—indeed, that the whole diversity of people are involved through every level and stage of this experimentation, development and deployment?

Building on that point of broader public engagement, I say that if we are to achieve the optimum outcomes from any of these new technologies, public engagement is absolutely critical. We have seen examples from the past where public engagement has been good: the technology has been taken on and largely melts into the background. It just becomes a positive part of our everyday lives—and indeed, vice versa. What has been done so far by the Government to have meaningful public engagement across the country when it comes to autonomous vehicles? What is the plan to further push for what is, from my point of view, dramatically increased public engagement to ensure that we take people, at every stage, on all these autonomous journeys?

On power usage, what analysis have the Government undertaken on the impact on the grid? It is clear that this is going to be part of the electrification of our transport provision, but how is that going to roll out? We can currently achieve all our mobility needs with but 15% of the existing fleet. How will the Government ensure that bringing autonomous vehicles on stream will not simply add more vehicles to the road, causing more congestion and difficulties? What is the plan to ensure that there is substitution and multiple usage of AVs, rather than this simply being additive?

Alongside that, where do the Government see the power source for this coming from? Where will that energy come from since, as has already been noted, electric vehicles are only as green as the fuel that powers them? Do we currently have the resources that we need and a plan for long-duration energy storage? When it comes to the batteries in vehicles, do we have resilience of supply? Where are we prepared to look to develop the battery technologies from? Are we looking to still have some potential UK sovereign battery production?

I welcome the Bill but, like all Bills, it will benefit from some work. If we can have something, by the time the Bill leaves us, which really moves us forward in terms of better and smarter journeys—more accessible and more inclusive journeys—who would not want to get on board?