Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 15th January 2024 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Moylan]

62: Clause 99, page 71, line 1, at end insert—
“(7) Regulations under this section may not be made until the Secretary of State has launched a public consultation for updating the Manual for Streets to take into account the consequences for streetscapes of the introduction of automated vehicles, particularly in urban areas.”

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I realise we are coming to the end of Committee, so I shall endeavour to be fairly brief, but the subject I raise by way of these two amendments is quite important. Generally, this is a good Bill at a technical level, but it assumes that automated vehicles are going ahead and will be deployed. In fact, there has been little debate with the public about what the consequences of this might be for our streetscapes and the urban landscape in which we live. There has been a failure on the Government’s part, in a sense, to sell to and explain to the public what I call the look and feel of automated vehicles, as opposed to the technical matters dealt with in the Bill.

If I may say so, it was a mistake of the Government when they published their policy document on this subject last year not to have brought it to the Floor of the House for debate at some point, so that noble Lords could have commented on what they thought the consequences might be. An illustration of that failure is the debate we had earlier on accessibility. The fact is that disabled people—and the rest of us—simply do not know what the Bill will mean for them in practice. They ask questions of my noble friend the Minister and get very exiguous answers, which do not satisfy them as to what their experience will be when these vehicles are deployed. That is true in other realms as well.

My Amendments 62 and 63 simply probe these questions. This may not be a long debate, but it is important to raise them. Amendment 62 relates specifically to the Manual for Streets, which is to do with how our streets are designed. Amendment 63 is broader and takes account of the operation of the streets, how they function and the legislation that covers that. To a certain extent, the Manual for Streets and design sit within the broader operation, but I have separated them out because there are two different questions.

It is worth saying that, when the Manual for Streets was published in 2007 and its complementary second part published in 2010, it was widely welcomed by people who were interested in this area. It has been due for an update for quite a long time, and I believe that a contract was let two or three years ago to one of the chartered institutes in order to prepare a draft. But, as far as I know—my noble friend will correct me if I am wrong—it has never been republished, and we are still waiting, years on. I do not understand why. Before I go further, I ask my noble friend to give us an indication of when the revised version of the Manual for Streets might be published. Will it take account of any of the consequences for the design of streets that might arise from the introduction of automated vehicles?

I was involved in quite innovative and imaginative—I hope—streetscape design ideas for some 15 years, as the deputy leader of a London borough council and with personal responsibility for that area, as deputy chairman of Transport for London, and during the whole of that time as chairman of Urban Design London, which I helped to found nearly 20 years ago. We were trying to achieve the removal of clutter—particularly guard-rails along pavements—the scrapping of one-way highways through the centre of London, like Piccadilly, and their reversion to more natural two-way streets, and the promotion of shared space. In short, we were trying to humanise the urban experience, which is what we are trying to achieve. How will those ambitions be affected by the introduction of automated vehicles?

The Government have a clear and robust but fundamentally unconvincing response to this, saying that there will be no changes: that automated vehicles will simply have to respond to what exists and, if they do not work with that, they will not be allowed on the road. As I understand it, that is the Government’s position, but this is unconvincing. Take guard-rails as an example. We know that automated vehicles will be designed so that, as far as possible, if somebody steps out in front of them or if a cyclist goes across their path, they will automatically detect the obstruction ahead of them and stop. That exposes the entire urban network of automated vehicles to frivolous activity on the part of people who want to stop them and bring the whole thing to an end, if they choose to do that.

I cannot believe that, with the amount of money that is likely to be required as an investment from the private sector in automated vehicles, manufacturers will not, at some point, turn up at the department, saying, “This can’t go on. We can’t be putting up with all this. We’re not going to invest in a network that can be brought to a stop on this basis. We demand the reintroduction of guard-rails. Let us have designated pedestrian crossing points on the streets that everyone will have to move to”. Potentially, for the first time in England, this would criminalise jaywalking, so that people could be fined for crossing the road. That is naturally what they will ask for.

At that point, I find it difficult to believe that the Government will turn around and say, “No”. They will have taken the bait: they will have sold the idea that there are millions of green jobs—or blue jobs, or whatever we want to call them—in all of this, and that the investment is good for Britain and so forth. We will have put in place the Bill’s legislative, technical and insurance-based risk-management apparatus, much of which is sensible—I know there are detailed questions about its operation, but, fundamentally, I think everyone in the House agrees that this is a necessary component. But it puts the cart before the horse; it puts the framework in place before we know what it will look like when it is deployed. I gave that one example of guard-rails, but I could multiply this; in the interest of time, I will stop with that one example.

However, these are important questions, and I feel fundamentally dissatisfied—not with the content of the Bill and what it is trying to achieve but with the Government’s approach to it, which seems to pre-empt discussion about who benefits from this, its purpose and the attractions we will find in it, allowing us to debate that when the Bill effectively excludes it. My amendments simply open up a brief moment at the very end of Committee—I realise that people are understandably thinking of further obligations in the course of the evening and may not want to debate this at great length, but these are important questions. Any contribution would be helpful, but a response from the Minister that is a little more than what has been said before—and a little more convincing than what has been said before—would be very helpful.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for tabling these amendments and for sharing his perspectives on these issues. I will begin by briefly addressing his point about public understanding and properly communicating what he refers to as the “look and feel” of a world with self-driving vehicles.

In previous debates, I have referred to The Great Self-Driving Exploration. This ground-breaking study was specifically designed to allow people from all walks of life to understand more about self-driving vehicles and to comment on whether they felt their introduction would be beneficial. This is just one example of the work we have been doing in this space.

Amendment 63 looks to require that a statement be made on the necessary changes to highways legislation that may arise from the use of self-driving vehicles. As I set out earlier this afternoon, the Bill does not require changes to our roads, nor are changes considered necessary for the safe deployment of self-driving vehicles. The Bill already sets out the legislative changes that we believe are necessary to enable their use. Local authorities are responsible for managing their road networks, and the existing legislative framework provides them with a wide range of powers to regulate traffic. It also places duties on them to ensure that they do so effectively, for the benefit of all road users. We believe that this existing framework is sufficient to enable them to regulate traffic, including self-driving vehicles, appropriately. Highways legislation is a complex area of law, covering a wide range of powers, duties and responsibilities. For many parts of the Bill, a statement of the kind proposed in the amendment would be irrelevant and would cause unnecessary delay in implementing the new regulatory framework.

My noble friend’s Amendment 62 calls for a consultation on updating the Manual for Streets to take into account the introduction of self-driving vehicles. As I have made clear, self-driving vehicles must adapt to our roads, not the other way round. We would therefore not expect significant changes to the Manual for Streets to be necessary. As was pointed out, the manual was first published in 2007 and updated in 2010. The department is working on bringing together and updating both manuals, which will be published in due course. I will ensure that my noble friend is updated on the progress of this.

Local authorities are responsible for the design and management of their roads, and for setting their own design standards. We have long encouraged them to use the principles in the Manual for Streets in doing so. The department produces a wide range of technical advice documents on aspects of street design and traffic management, of which the manual is just one. There is no statutory consultation requirement for the Manual for Streets, so imposing such a requirement in this case would be unnecessary. However, in line with good practice, key stakeholders have been involved in its development.

Tying the commencement of the Bill to the production of the manual would appear disproportionate, considering there is relatively little overlap between the two. It would therefore cause unnecessary delay in implementing the framework for self-driving vehicles. While I recognise that I may not have been able to provide my noble friend with all the answers that he was looking for, I hope that these explanations have none the less been helpful and go so some way to allowing him to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend has not actually provided the answers to any of the questions that I raised, but I am not wholly surprised by that. I shall say only that it is indeed part of the purpose of the proposals to cause delay to the implementation of the Bill while we work out what we are trying to achieve. My noble friend has acutely put his finger on that point—so we are at odds on that.

However, given the lateness of the hour and the fact that I do not think that further debate would be fruitful in eliciting helpful responses from my noble friend, I ask the Committee’s leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 62 withdrawn.