Public Bus Collisions

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Monday 13th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, as I have said, road safety is a priority for the Government. The department is determined to make roads safer for everyone, and the delivery of high-quality walking and cycling schemes, coupled with the changes to the Highway Code in 2022, will play an important part in addressing the safety concerns of people wanting to walk, wheel and cycle. Active Travel England is working with local authorities to ensure that walking and cycling infrastructure is of the right quality and in the right places to maximise its value and impact. On the issue of bus companies investigating themselves, as the noble Lord knows from debates on the Automated Vehicles Bill, we have no intention of introducing separate investigation for buses.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that many injuries caused by buses in fact occur inside the bus, especially to the elderly and vulnerable? Care needs to be taken in examining any statistics that suggest how many bus-related injuries arise in a particular period, to ensure that a distinction is made between those occurring inside the bus, often because of excessive braking, and those involving pedestrians in the street.

Transport System: Failings

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Snape, for securing this important debate. He gave us a splendid knock-about speech to start, full of horror stories. These have been added to—stories of failures, inconveniences, cancellations and so forth—in the course of our debate. I would like to take the word “strategy” seriously. Many of the examples that have been deduced today are not pertinent to the question of strategy; they are what I would rather think of as tactical failings. You can have a large number of tactical failings without it necessarily meaning that you do not have a good strategy. That said, I do not think the Government have much of a strategy for transport, but the two are worth distinguishing.

I would like to use the few minutes available to set out some of the principles that ought to underly a transport strategy for this country and the United Kingdom. First, we need to think the right way. We need to think teleologically about transport. The purpose of transport is transport; it is moving people and goods. That movement brings economic and social benefits; these are not inherently the purpose of transport but they are beneficial consequences. Transport also brings pollution, which is not the purpose of transport but simply a negative unwelcome consequence. We need to distinguish between the purpose of what we are doing and the consequences.

Secondly, it is also not the purpose of transport to meet non-transport policy objectives—for example, net zero. As an aside, it is quite interesting that I am probably the first person in this debate to use the words “net zero”. I do not use them in a very positive way; I just give it as an example. Extraneous policy objectives are constraints on how you deliver transport policy; they tell you how you should be doing it rather than why. That is also a necessary clearing of the mind if we are to think about these things properly.

My third point might seem obvious, but it has huge consequences. Public transport works best where you have a concentration of passengers. That means that it works well, largely speaking, in cities and larger towns. Having a density of population is a necessary condition for sustainable public transport. It is possible that transport services can create density, in the way that the Metropolitan Railway created Metro-land, but our anti-development planning policies nowadays sadly make that a thing of the past.

Fourthly, as a consequence of that, we have to be realistic about what we are ever going to be able to offer rural areas in public transport services. The idea that rural areas will have transport services akin to what is on offer in London is simply unrealistic. It is to hold out a pledge that can never be met. This emphasises that, especially in rural areas, there is always going to be a very important role for the private motorcar—and, indeed, for cheap private motorcars. The whole question of electric vehicles and how far we can expect them to spread, especially in rural areas, seems to be determined by their cost. At the moment, they are far too expensive. If we want cheap ones, we are going to have to pay to import them from China. That is basically the dilemma we face. We need to be realistic about that.

My next point might be controversial. Public transport is expensive to run, particularly rail. It costs a great deal of money, and not simply because of the monopoly supply of labour and the way in which the trade unions have been able to extract enormous salaries, especially for drivers, as a result of that. It is very expensive to run and only the fare payer or the taxpayer can pay for it. The money has to come from one of those two sources. It is a profoundly political decision how that expense will be allocated.

My suggestion—unpopular though it may be—is that any national strategy should be directed at maximising fare income. This does not mean high fares for everyone, because transport is a paradigm case of where marginal pricing adds to income—railway operators have understood this since the railways started in the 19th century. The fact is that it costs more or less the same to run the train whether it has passengers on it or not. Even £1 from that last marginal passenger adds to income. Airlines completely understand this. They set and vary their prices from day to day on that basis, in order to maximise revenue—not by having high fares for everyone but by having high fares for some and lower fares for others. We should perhaps learn from that.

I am coming to a conclusion. I would like to say a lot about technology, as my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond has. That would be another speech, as there is a great deal to say on that.

Finally, I will briefly say something about the nationalisation of rail, as announced today. I am not, despite what noble Lords might think, a mad privatiser of every utility. I was deputy chairman of Transport for London, so I can hardly believe entirely in privately running things. But the announcement today will make no difference whatever. Nearly everything you can pick up and touch in the railways is nationalised already, except the trains. If you take over the train operating companies, which are already puppets of the Department for Transport, you will simply have the same people doing the same jobs. Nothing very much would change, but you would run out of capital to invest at some point. That is the great advantage of privatisation.

Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]

Lord Moylan Excerpts

3rd reading
Monday 19th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, I will make a short speech, conditioned by my being a former pilot with experience of Boeing, probably the most sophisticated company in the world on unmanned aircraft. The net result so far has been that 346 people died recently, although, thankfully, nobody died in the Alaska experience. Given that situation, although this Bill is supposedly about safety on the roads, we need to take great care; I recognise that we need a framework here, but I hope my noble friend will listen to what the noble Lord suggested earlier in the debate and have the Office of Rail and Road help oversee this Bill as it is implemented in relation to vehicles on the road.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

I briefly congratulate my noble friend the Minister on bringing this useful, modest and largely technical Bill to its completion. The Government have expressed optimism that the arrival of automated vehicles in large numbers on our roads is going to have no effect whatever on how the rest of the road system and other road users operate. It is the principle on which the Bill is based but, to me, it seems to be credible only in the somewhat artificial reality of your Lordships’ House.

My noble friend the Minister and his department still need to address a worry many of us have. He has stated that nothing will change—that facilities for pedestrians, for example, will not be affected—with the arrival of these vehicles, but it is clear that is not wholly credible. The people who have invested in automated vehicles will find that pedestrians and other road users are obstacles to the rollout of their plans, and they will then turn up at the ministry and say, “We have spent all this money, so now you have to do something to make it work for us”. At that point, officials will roll over, Ministers will wave their hands and the money will decide what the policy is. All of this will happen without a parliamentary debate considering the effect of the vehicles and what they mean for road users, especially in urban environments. I hope my noble friend the Minister will find an opportunity to allow us, and the public, a debate about what the vision of our cities is when automated vehicles are operating in large numbers as the Bill makes provision for.

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, in line with the usual courtesies of the House, I thank the Minister and his team, all of whom were exceptionally helpful and willing to give their time and expertise in some useful meetings with myself and my Liberal Democrat colleagues. I also thank my noble friends Lady Brinton and Lady Bowles, supported by Sarah Pughe in our Whips’ office, for their work. Finally, I thank noble Lords across the House: there was exceptional co-operation in improving the Bill, and one of the outcomes was the amendment of the Minister which clarified the statement of safety principles.

The Bill was a logical progression from 2018, and I would predict that this second Bill will be followed, I am sure, by a third Bill to try and get this right. There are still unanswered questions, and I will briefly list them. There needs to be a fresh look at the legislative framework affecting delivery vehicles that are already on our streets. Those who operate them are concerned about lacunas in the legislation.

We are also particularly concerned about the issue of disabled access, which is where my noble friend Lady Brinton worked closely with the noble Lord, Lord Holmes. As the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, said,

“the promise of automated vehicles is accessible mobility for all”.— [Official Report, 6/2/24; col. 1585]

It is, therefore, deeply disappointing that the concept of disabled access—from the physical space of the vehicle to the software that drives it—is not to be built in from the start. It always costs more to adapt things later, and I believe this is yet another missed opportunity.

Finally, it is a great pity that the vote on the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, was lost so narrowly. It was just the kind of thing an advisory council could provide a sense of direction on. I hope the Minister will reflect on the need for certainty on the future structure of appropriate bodies to provide advice and regulation.

We remain concerned, in particular, about data protection in respect of the Bill, which is predicated on a future conglomeration of personal and commercial data, and data associated with the security of the state. It will come together in an unprecedented way. It would enable a massive intrusion of personal privacy, but in its entirety would offer massive power to a malign foreign power or even to a clever, meddling, individual hacker. Although it is well intentioned, the Bill hardly starts to tackle the dangers of that accumulation of data.

Having said all that, I thank the Minister again for his co-operation, assistance and leadership on the Bill.

Pedicabs (London) Bill [HL]

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 30th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I have considerable sympathy with the argument made by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson. I find it very strange that, in this modern world, it seems impossible to rely on the safety of something as straightforward as a battery. We have known about battery-like things for at least 250 years. I think it was in the 18th century that the first battery was discovered.

Now we have lithium-ion batteries, which appear to be perfectly safe in one’s telephone but not if they are attached to a pedicab. We have a similar problem with e-scooters. On some occasions, the batteries have been known to blow up, which is why they are banned from every part of the London Underground network—platforms and stations as well as trains; they are a fire risk. How has this circumstance come about? I have no answer.

While I have sympathy with the noble Baroness’s argument, I am glad to hear that she is not intending to advance this to a vote. I am not entirely sure that this is the right Bill for the issue to be addressed in. There is a wider question about what the Government are doing to ensure the safety of batteries that are available for consumers to buy as part of equipment. In this case, they are allowed to buy e-scooters, but not to ride them on the public highway. That is another anomaly that perhaps we will address at some stage, when the endless trial the Government have been conducting on e-scooters is eventually brought to a conclusion and some determination is made about their future. There needs to be a measure that addressees the safety of batteries more broadly than simply in pedicabs, as this amendment would.

We will come in the next group to the question of guidance. I will simply say that if my noble friend were to say that safety issues including the safety of batteries would be included in guidance and covered by regulations, I think that would be satisfactory, without the need for the noble Baroness’s amendment. It is an issue that needs to be addressed.

[Lord Borwick (Con)]

My Lords, I entirely agree with my noble friend; it all makes sense. I shall give a little history: at one stage I was chairman of a lithium battery manufacturer. It is possible in the manufacturing of a lithium battery for a little strip of lithium to move from one part of the battery to another during the manufacturing process. That can later cause a fire.

The trouble with this amendment is entirely that, as my noble friend mentioned, if we got it right in pedicabs, we would be getting it right in only a tiny percentage of the total number of vehicles with large lithium batteries. It is a particularly serious problem when fires break out in big batteries in small houses. These pedicabs are not going to be recharged in people’s houses in the majority of cases; it will be done at a depot of some sort.

This is a good provision in the wrong place. I would look forward to supporting such a clause in a different place, if only there was something equivalent. The noble Baroness has grabbed the opportunity and should be applauded for doing that.

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.

Pedicabs (London) Bill [HL]

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Monday 11th December 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, my contribution to this group of amendments is in having given notice of my intention to oppose the Question that Clause 6 stand part of the Bill. In doing so, I take a contrary view to that of all the amendments about how this issue should be dealt with. All the amendments have a centralising thrust, whereas my thrust is for decentralisation. In one aspect, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, that these regulations need to be used to improve the services provided by pedicabs and not to kill them off entirely. We need to use this opportunity to turn the negative into a positive so that they enhance rather than damage the tourism offer in London.

I tabled my notice of intention to oppose Clause 6 standing part of the Bill to probe why the scrutiny of regulations made by Transport for London is to be undertaken by Parliament and not the London Assembly. The legal situation in England is that, outside London, pedicabs can be licensed as taxis. Taxi and PHV licensing is undertaken across England by 262 lower-tier and unitary authorities of a vast range of sizes. The taxi legislation therefore gives licensing authorities significant discretion in vehicle requirements. A taxi driver must be deemed fit and proper to hold a licence, must have held a car driving licence for the last 12 months and must not be disqualified on immigration grounds, which is covered by the right-to-work check.

Some authorities, such as Herefordshire, York and South Lakeland, have policies that detail specific requirements for pedicabs, whereas other authorities state in their licensing policies that they do not license pedicabs. There have been complaints since 2006 about pedicabs in London, but all that time other local authorities have had the powers to deal with this and design and implement their own regulations. That is a satisfactory approach. As I said, there have been complaints over 20 years, but successive Governments have not considered this issue important enough to deal with or they have not had time in the parliamentary timetable to do so.

Now we have this Bill, which has broad support but is, in parliamentary terms, a bit of a sledgehammer to crack a nut. From the point of view of residents in London who complain long and hard about the noise, nuisance and danger of the current situation, regulation and control of pedicabs cannot come into force quickly enough. A single day of delay will annoy them. Why are the Government so intent on delaying things even more by ensuring that Parliament must approve Transport for London regulations?

Across the UK, local authorities consider issues of detail where local knowledge is essential. I would argue that Parliament is definitely not the place to decide the adequacy of regulations that might, for example, stipulate the location of cab ranks. We should not be sitting here saying that a cab rank should not be on this street corner but on another one. That is not the level of detail we should be going into. That sort of thing requires local knowledge and should be scrutinised by the GLA.

It is also essential that we do not clutter our timetable—the Government are always saying they do not have parliamentary time, particularly in relation to transport—with things that can be done better at a different level of government. I argue that Clause 6 should not be part of the Bill.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, in this exciting ideological divide I find myself, curiously, much on the same side as the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, rather than the side of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, or even the Government.

We have been here before. In 1514, we enacted a Bill to regulate the fares charged by water taxis on the Thames and it ran into exactly the same problem that the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, will run into, which was that there was nobody to enforce it. Who in the Department for Transport will turn up and enforce the regulations made by the DfT if TfL, which has an enforcement department, is cut out of it?

The Act of 1514 became, in effect, a nullity. Undeterred, Parliament returned to the subject in 1555 to have another go and this time more sensibly. We delegated the power of setting these fares and enforcing them, as far as river-borne traffic was concerned, to what were known as the rulers of what became the Company of Watermen and Lightermen. The regulation of horse-drawn traffic in London, including things like cabs and taxi meters, has—as far as I am aware, and until the creation of Transport for London under the GLA Act of 1999—always been the responsibility of the Metropolitan Police. Again, that is a local body and one well acquainted with enforcement.

Now, for the first time in at least half a millennium of legislation, we appear to have the notion from the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, that all regulation should be set by the Government and from the Government the not terribly dissimilar notion, as was pointed out by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, that while Transport for London should be allowed to draft, in effect, the statutory instruments and must submit them immediately—“immediately” is the word used—to the Secretary of State, the Secretary of State, with no time limit, requirement or obligation on him or her, then has to approve, amend, change or reject them. Why? What is the advantage to the Government or to the travelling passenger of doing this? Why are the Government not under the same obligation to act immediately, or at least within set time limits, in dealing with the SIs sent to them by Transport for London?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

The only real justification the Minister offered for Parliament retaining this degree of control is the possibility that the Greater London Authority and TfL might want to ban pedicabs altogether. What is his evidence that there is even the slightest possibility of this on the horizon? The present mayor has no intention of doing that—he wants them properly regulated—so is the Minister saying that the Conservative candidate for the mayoral election next year will come out for banning pedicabs altogether? What is the justification for retaining this power? Remember: all this stuff about Parliament retaining the power is nonsense. We know that we have very little control over what happens and over the content of statutory instruments, although we debate them. The power rests with the Minister and the department. Why on earth should the overworked Department for Transport want to spend its time messing around with the detail of whether pedicabs have mirrors and what the level of fines on them should be?

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, it might be helpful if I briefly ask my noble friend a question. As I understand it, statutory instruments fall within the Government’s code on consultation, so it would be normal for them to consult on a draft statutory instrument before it is laid. Does my noble friend believe that these statutory instruments will fall under that code of consultation, and that consultation by the Government will be required? How does he envisage that meshing with the public consultation that will have been carried out by Transport for London in preparing the draft statutory instruments?

Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]

Lord Moylan Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 28th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak after the noble Baroness. Before I come to my main remarks, I have a question for my noble friend the Minister arising from something he said in his introduction. He referred to the scope of the Bill covering England, Scotland and Wales and said that if these vehicles crossed the border into Northern Ireland, they would not benefit from its provisions. I wanted to ask him what border he was referring to, because as far as vehicle regulation is concerned, there is, as I understand it, no border and Northern Ireland is subject to the vehicle regulations in operation in this country. Was it a slip of the tongue or an implication that autonomous vehicles if introduced into Northern Ireland would be subject to the undemocratically made laws of the European Union—undemocratic, that is, as far as their application to Northern Ireland is concerned, whose people, of course, have no say in the legislature which will be making those laws? I would be grateful for his elucidation on that. I am perfectly happy to accept that it was a slip of the tongue and that would end the whole matter, but there may be something behind it he would like to reveal.

On the Bill itself, the substance of my remarks is that this is a piece of work from the Law Commission and is, in essence, to do with warranty, liability and insurance, which is why I thought I would have very little to say which was germane to the text. However, I find that most noble Lords have had very little to say about those issues and we have wandered—I think very properly and inevitably—into a broader debate about the desirability of automated vehicles and their consequences for other road users.

I have great interest in that because during much of my life I have been involved in urban design. I am particularly interested in the urban consequences— I am less interested in what happens on motorways—and how our cities are shaped. I have to admit—I would be in the naughty corner, no doubt, for this—that I have been a great advocate for and implementer of shared spaces, which I would characterise in very different language to that used by my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton.

Let me offer a few thoughts to add to this pile of imponderables that the Bill has given rise to this afternoon. As I say, most of them relate to the way in which cities work. First, I accept on the basis of my experience of railways that it is likely that these vehicles will be safer than those driven by a human. Anyone who doubts this would not get on a Victoria line train, for example; they would take the Piccadilly line on every occasion. The Victoria line train is driven by computers; the Piccadilly line train is driven—currently, sadly, because there is not enough money—by a human being. But which one arrives with a minute interval between each train, safely, every time? Which is the one that can carry those people because of that frequency, that huge capacity, on the Victoria line and which has a three or four-minute interval between trains because the driver cannot stop as safely as the computer-driven trains?

It is worth saying—with every possible respect to my noble friend Lord Naseby—that the comparison with aviation is not appropriate. Rail safety is based on the principle that if something is missing, if something goes wrong or if something is not quite right in the system, the train comes to a stop. The system stops. The electricity is cut off. That cannot possibly be the basis of aviation safety. If something goes missing, you cannot just stop the plane at 30,000 feet and say: “We are going to work out what has gone wrong”. Aviation safety is all about building in all the safety measures from the outset before the plane ever takes off and making sure that they are working. It is a totally different approach. I am assuming that automated vehicles would operate similarly to the rail principle; that is, if something was missing and they could not see something, they would stop. This might cause inconvenience—as indeed it causes inconvenience if a train on the Victoria line stops and people have to work out what has gone wrong—but it is at least a safety measure and a relatively reliable one.

I am very concerned about the point made about the consequences for streetscapes of jaywalking made by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, and to some extent referred to by my noble friend Lord Borwick. We have spent years trying to take railings out of cities and allowing people to cross streets in a more natural, human sort of way—to move away from the Le Corbusier dystopia that arose from separating vehicles and pedestrians at every level. It was a perpetual Barbican vision of our cities. We have moved away from that, and people who want to see it in operation can go to places such as Piccadilly. Only a few years ago, it was a one-way motorway with barriers all along it, and it has been returned to a calm and more attractive street running two ways without all those barriers and so forth.

As the noble Lord rightly pointed out, the very fact that you can walk in front of an automated vehicle, confident that it will stop, means that the manufacturers will quickly say, “We can’t be having that. We will have to have the barriers back. We’re going to have to have designated crossing places for pedestrians, and we will have to have laws that stop them walking out in front of the cars”. That risk balance will have changed. I do not walk out in front of cars generally when they are moving, because I worry that they may hit me, but if I know for a certainty they will stop, what is to prevent me? I will just cross the road. As my noble friend Lord Borwick said, if you are a six year-old, the fun may go out of it after three attempts, but that is not my circumstance. I am not doing it for fun, I am doing it to cross the road, and I shall do it exactly as I want. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, was right to make that point.

The next thing I want to say is about congestion and the consequences for public transport. We are talking about automated vehicles as if they are going to be private possessions. Of course, there is an alternative vision where automated vehicles are communally or corporately owned. They are pods, and they do not belong to you. You summon them like an Uber and they arrive, take you somewhere and then park, vanish or find another passenger somewhere. That is an alternative model. Let us imagine 80 of those lined up nose to tail, very safely moving along Piccadilly from Hyde Park Corner up to Piccadilly Circus, each containing an individual passenger—and bang close to each other because it will be very safe, for the reasons I explained. It will be 80 passengers moving up Piccadilly. What is the difference between that and a bus? A bus takes 80 passengers from one end of Piccadilly to another. I know noble Lords will say, “Ah, but these pods, when they get to Piccadilly Circus, they can split off and all go in different directions. They can take you to your office, the hairdresser or wherever you want to go in that vicinity”. That illustrates what automated vehicles are really addressing, which is the last-mile problem rather than the main trunk problem of transport. It is to get that last mile from the hub that you want a vehicle to be available to take you, but not necessarily all the way along the journey. Why would we be encouraged to do that, given both the effects on congestion and the possible consequence of a collapse in demand—not a total collapse—for public transport?

Finally, what will happen to traffic lights and why are we still investing in them? I think it is public knowledge—I know it to be true—that Transport for London is planning to spend a very large amount upgrading its extremely comprehensive traffic light system that it has rolled out over the years, which still depends on the SCOOT software technology that has been in use for at least 20 years and possibly longer. It is thinking of spending a large amount of money upgrading them, but why will anyone ever need traffic lights? Automated vehicles do not need them. They are there for people such as me to look at something terrestrial in front of them, and see that it is green, red, orange or whatever. If their motion is dependent on their sensing where other vehicles are, together with communication with a satellite at the same time, they will not need traffic lights. What will happen to traffic lights?

I am against traffic lights on the whole. They are a complete misery, of course—we all know that. However, they have some uses—for example, helping people to cross the roads at junctions. What are the consequences for that and for the money that we are still spending, even today, on upgrading our traffic light system if we are moving over to an automated vehicle system?

I am speaking quite late in the debate and there are one or two very interesting speakers to follow. I have a feeling that my noble friend the Minister will not be able to deal with all the questions that we have put to him. I look forward to a more detailed response in writing to some of them, although he may be able to answer the Northern Ireland one. A lot might arise in Committee that I did not expect and there may be amendments that test the scope of the Bill a little. I look forward to them.

Mopeds, Motorcycles and Powered Light Vehicle Industry

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I find it very difficult to follow the acute and comprehensive speech just made by the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, in which she covered a wide range of detailed issues relevant to this topic. I shall say only that the questions that she raises are extremely important, and I hope that the Minister will be able to give comprehensive answers to them, if not today then appropriately in writing in due course.

I find myself, a little bit like the noble Baroness, slightly a fish out of water in this particular debate. Although, unlike her, I would very much like to ride pillion on a motorcycle, my one experience of doing so when I was a teenager was so terrifying that I have never actually repeated it. That has been my sole exposure to riding a motorcycle ever since then. Maybe, as I move into my dotage, I shall take up riding pillion, but I do not bring that particular experience.

What I do have experience of is working with people who are transport policy professionals. When I started working in the field of transport and was involved as a local councillor and later with Transport for London, I was surprised at the comprehensive hostility of transport policy professionals towards the motorcycle sector, which they dignified with the name “powered two-wheelers”, a bizarre distortion of the English language, or even “category L vehicles”. In my few minutes I shall refer to them as motorcycles generally because that is a word that more people understand. Transport policy professionals are very hostile to them and to any suggestion that there should be a privilege for them or special provision. Special provision for push-bikes is absolutely all right, but nothing at all to do with motorcycles. Any suggestion like that is pushed back.

Part of the reason is to do with their safety record. It is true that, if you are riding on a motorcycle and travelling at speed and you come off, you more likely to injure yourself than in other circumstances. That is part of the reason: it contributes to poorer road safety figures. However, it is also worth bearing in mind that motorcycles probably do less harm to other road users in collisions than cars do. When we look at the road safety figures, we do not always sufficiently take account of the fact that making it safer for motorists to drive a car often transfers risk to people who are not in the car—that is, to pedestrians and others who are using the road—because it encourages slightly riskier behaviour on the part of the motor car driver. That does not happen with motorcyclists as one sees them dashing through the traffic.

There is also a sense in which the market is getting ahead of the definitions that the department uses. It used to be clear what was a car, what was a motorcycle and what was a push bike, but we now have all sorts of intermediate vehicles, which are creating a sort of merger between different modes of transport that are increasingly hard to distinguish. We have e-scooters, which are encouraged by the department, at least to the extent that trials have been authorised in certain places to allow e-scooters to be looked at, although no final decision has been taken. We have electric-assisted push bikes, which help you up the hill, and so on, so we are getting this merger of typologies. Indeed, even in the motor car sector, you now see tiny cars that are basically little more than tricycles with a vacuum cleaner engine attached to them going through the streets. The department sticks to very old typologies, which are being set to one side.

In pursuit of that, the Government have their target of non-zero motorcycles by 2035, subject to consultation. I often wonder whether the Conservative Party, the heir to the Cavaliers, has adopted a puritan agenda. Even if one actually accepts that the large-scale destruction of much of our economic capacity is justified by the very serious threats of climate change, it is a net-zero target, not an absolute zero target—that is, it is accepted that there will be some carbon emissions going ahead. Given the very small contribution that this sector makes to our overall emissions, could my noble friend perhaps say when he answers that he is willing to cut this sector some slack?

Pedicabs (London) Bill [HL]

Lord Moylan Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 22nd November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome my noble friend to the Front Bench but also extend my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, on joining the Front Bench opposite. Noble Lords, with their customary acuity, have picked up a whole range of details embedded in this Bill that the casual reader might not have noticed, and I am sure there will be many things for us to explore in Committee. I do not propose to follow that very detailed path in my few remarks. I am slightly more interested in the fact that a sort of ideological split has grown across the House between those who think pedicabs are an absolute nuisance and those, largely sitting next to each other on the Benches opposite, who wish them to be cared for tenderly and looked after and are anxious that they might be subject to excessive regulation. The former position was extremely well expressed by my noble friend Lady Stowell of Beeston and backed up by some fiery and clear remarks from my noble friend Lord Blencathra.

I thought I would share a little personal history in this regard. I have to admit that, on that ideological divide, I sit very firmly in the camp of those who would like to see pedicabs crushed, removed, never seen again, never thought of in the first place, and de-introduced from our urban streets. It was that thought that led me to being an obstacle to the progression of this Bill some time ago, when I was deputy chairman of Transport for London. When they appeared, Transport for London said, “They’re a menace; we must regulate them”. Indeed, the Mayor of London at that time was quite keen on the idea that we should promote a Bill in Parliament to regulate pedicabs. I expressed some caution. I said that the problem with regulating something is that you approve it. You cannot use the law to create a regulatory framework for something and then have the regulator use that framework to crush it and make it impossible, because that is an abuse of what Parliament has expressed a view on—that something should be allowed but subject to regulation. Therefore, I said that the best thing to do was hope that they just go away, because they are so absolutely appalling and cannot possibly attract genuine custom, so they will fail.

My analysis was obviously completely wrong and my approach has failed. So it is that, reluctantly, I come to the view that we might as well accept that this menace and pest is with us for a long time, so I support, belatedly, a Bill that I hoped we would never have to see introduced.

That is my answer, in a sense, to the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, who is worried that TfL is going to use these powers to prevent pedicabs plying their trade. I do not think that can happen, and it would be challengeable in the courts if it imposed conditions that were irrelevant or onerous, because that is not what we are empowering it to do. It cannot set excessive fees because they are specified in Clause 2(4) as being

“set at a level that enables the recovery of any costs incurred by Transport for London by virtue of the regulations”.

There is no power for TfL to set fees that exceed that level, so I do not think that a very likely possibility.

As far as enforcement is concerned, reference was made to the police but there is no policing involvement in the enforcement of these measures. There is a lengthy clause on enforcement—Clause 3—and it is absolutely clear that the powers to enforce are being conferred upon Transport for London, not the Metropolitan Police. In fact, the history of cab regulation is, of course, the history of the transfer of the powers to regulate taxis from the Metropolitan Police to Transport for London as part of the Greater London Authority devolution settlement. The police have been out of taxi regulation enforcement for quite a long time and as far as the powers in this Bill are concerned, they are not being brought back. It is a different matter if a crime is committed by a taxi driver, of course, but the breach of the regulations created here is an enforceable matter not for the Metropolitan Police but for Transport for London.

Transport for London is really rather good at this— I am rather pro-TfL, partly given my previous experience of it. It is good at regulating taxicabs generally, and clearly, to some extent taxi-regulation powers have been cut and pasted into this Bill. I think TfL will probably do this job quite well, although it will be difficult if the drivers it is dealing with turn out to be fly-by-night characters—unlike most taxi drivers, who are solid, sensible people—who are very difficult to catch up with afterwards.

I have a couple of questions before I sit down, though these can be explored in Committee. First, I worry what we will do if this does not work, and if, because of the inherently fly-by-night character of the people doing it, and the nastiness, garishness and ugliness of their dreadful vehicles, it turns out that they continue to be nasty, garish, ugly, noisy and a blight upon our streets. Will we be happy with the fact that we have simply regulated them so that they have insurance, for example, or should the Government be promising to review the operation of the legislation in the fullness of time?

My second question concerns one of those details that has not yet been picked up, even though I am speaking late in the debate. I am a bit baffled by Clause 6, which seems to introduce an unnecessarily elaborate process for the making of regulations. I am willing to stand corrected, but my understanding is that currently, taxi regulations made under the Metropolitan Public Carriage Act 1869 by the board of TfL come into effect immediately and directly. TfL has the power to make and amend the regulations using its normal board processes. Here, what is being proposed, for no reason that has been explained except that it is thought appropriate by the Government, is that the power be made by a statutory instrument.

As I understand it—again, I am open to correction—a statutory instrument has to be laid by a Minister before Parliament, and the Minister may choose not to lay a statutory instrument if asked to do so. In effect, the decision whether a regulation should be imposed will now be taken by the Minister, rather than by Transport for London, to whom we are purportedly transferring these powers. What is the purpose of that, and why would any Minister—I say this with the genuine intention of offering good advice to my noble friend on the Front Bench—want to be involved in this? Surely the whole point of this is to leave it to Transport for London and not have it constantly coming back to your desk, meaning that you are pestered by people to make regulations that may or may not be the same as those recommended to you?

So generally, I welcome the Bill, but not the fact that we are going to have these pedicabs now for at least a century or two while we work out the regulations. I also have a few questions about why the Government feel they cannot just let go.

Railway Stations: Ticket Office Closures

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Wednesday 20th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I hope the noble Lord has fed that back into the consultation, where it will be taken into account by the independent passenger bodies.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that Transport for London introduced an almost identical scheme a few years ago? It went extremely smoothly; nobody noticed or complained about it once it had been implemented, and it has greatly benefitted passengers.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My noble friend is exactly right. It was a former Conservative Mayor of London who took this step for ticket offices in Tube stations. The current Mayor of London came in with great fury and said he was going to review the whole thing and make changes if appropriate—not a single change was made.