Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]

Lord Ranger of Northwood Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 28th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to take part in my first Second Reading debate, and to follow my noble friend Lord Lucas. I was not going to mention it, but he raised the issue of standards, which is critical, although we should never let a standard stand in the way of innovation. I take that lesson from my time in industry. A long time ago, when we were working on the platform to deliver the Oyster card, a European standard was going to come through on how contactless technology could work. There was a debate about whether we should wait for that standard. Most people were saying that we should, as it would allow interoperability across Europe. I had other thoughts: that it could take a significant amount of time and delay the programme. We pushed through and used our standard. At the end of the day, if we had waited, we could have been waiting the best part of a decade for that standard to be ratified—something to consider as we look at standards and the speed of innovation.

As I say, it is a great pleasure to take part in this debate. I acknowledge my interests, particularly as a board member of techUK and a senior executive at Atos. My noble friend Lord Moylan and I share many transport-related interests from our time at City Hall and working with TfL, and I will echo a number of the comments that he made. The immense amount of work that I acknowledge the Law Commission has put in over the last four years is demonstrated by the quality of the Bill, but it does focus on legislation and is quite narrow on some things. That is why we meander across to other areas such as usage, and maybe even more so the commercialisation of the technology.

To balance things out, I did take note of other reports, such as the excellent report by the APPG for Self-Driving Vehicles, The economic, environmental, and safety benefits of self-driving vehicles, techUK’s consultation with industry and what it sees as opportunities, and Innovate UK’s report on connected and automated mobility. All of these look at innovation and opportunity in particular, alongside the need for safety.

I will take noble Lords back a little bit to an early point in my career in 2008, when I first drove an electric vehicle in San Francisco, in California, which has been mentioned a few times in this debate. I was there and driving it because it was new technology, because of the obvious issue of sustainability, and because it was exciting. We saw then the potential of this technology. It was undefined—I think they were still using laptop batteries stuck together in the boots of these cars, the early Tesla Roadsters—but there was such potential.

That was the point when we realised at City Hall in London that we would establish the London Electric Vehicle Partnership to look at the potential of this new technology—not just through the prism of legislation, but we would identify challenges in collaboration with industry, policymakers and manufacturers, so that we could understand the challenges, the operational designs that would be required, the infrastructure requirements and the potential commercial models that would be appropriate. It would still take time for this to come to the fore, but some of what we see in the adoption of electric vehicles in the UK was based way back then in our collaborative approach with industry and how we developed policy. In the deliberations on the Bill we should work extensively with industry around its developments and thoughts, as well as internationally on how use cases have been developed for automated vehicles.

I would like to highlight various comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, about some of the challenges that may occur. This is not an either/or solution as technology moves forward and we move towards a digital society. I can be a slight use case here. I have one car now whereas, with two children and a wife, we may have had two cars in years gone by. I can honestly say that my second car is an Uber because I have moved to that flexible mode of technology and it provides an element in the multimodal mix that I use. Travelling to various parts, I will potentially walk to a metro station, then take an Uber at the other end and take a bus when possible. We are looking at the maturity of the mix and where these automated vehicles could play in the mix and, I hope, not add to the vehicle fleet but become part of it and reduce the need for people to own their own vehicles.

I feel great confidence in the technology. The reason I say that, to be fair, is that the technology is already here. It is being used and tested. We quite rightly have a focus on the safety element and how we will ensure that we can convince the public that this is safe to use. That is the priority because safety leads to confidence, confidence leads to adoption, and that will be the success. That will lead to other areas of innovation because the tip of the iceberg is what this technology will do to the transport mix and to general industries across the board.

My noble friend Lord Moylan mentioned pods. What will they become? Here I would like to make an analogy with the smartphone. We can think of these automated vehicles as the equivalent of where the smartphone has now taken what used to be a phone. There will be apps and different commercial ways of using them. All kinds of services will be developed that we possibly cannot even imagine right now, but they will benefit personal mobility as well as public mobility; safety, inclusivity and sustainability will be increased. They are all within our grasp through the development of this technology. Let us not forget that if we look at mobile phone technology, we saw acceleration in the ability to ensure connectivity and avoid bugs in the system, but when we look at that technology, on which life almost depends, we do not find those difficulties as much as we thought.

I am hugely supportive of the Bill, if noble Lords could not tell already. I look forward to taking part in Committee. There are many lessons for us to learn. I ask the Minister that we look at how EV operating models have developed because—my noble friend Lord Lucas highlighted this—there will be much synergy between electric vehicles, the usage of electric vehicle technology and automated vehicles. It remains unsaid whether they will be together as a technology. They may still be separated, but the win for us will be when the technologies merge and therefore their operating models will have some alignment.

Finally, on use cases around non-user involvement with the technology, we need to look at separating this more from the user-included technology approach. There will be more use cases around the non-user approach than the user approach. When reading the Bill, I thought that part was something we could look at separating further and digging into more; I look forward to doing that in Committee.

Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]

Lord Ranger of Northwood Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 15th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con)]

My Lords, I want to make a few brief points on what we have discussed today and what I have read in the Bill previously. It is seen as a very legally descriptive Bill. Some of the challenges and questions that we are raising in our conversations are around use cases, applications and geography, including how this will shape the future in terms of not just mobility but society. These are quite large concepts for us.

My recommendation to the Minister and the Government is that different phases and parts of the Bill addressing specific use cases and their applications may evolve as we go forward, be they about where automated vehicles may be used in railways, rural life, emergencies or the as yet innovative opportunity for such vehicles in commercial applications. In a previous debate on the Bill, I spoke about how we should potentially view automated vehicles as the equivalent of a smartphone, as compared with the mobile phones that we had originally. A smartphone is no longer just a phone; it enables us to do so many other things. These vehicles have the opportunity to become so many other things that we probably cannot define them to the nth degree yet; it is therefore difficult for the Bill to work against that. However, if we can start to scope out additional use cases and see how they would affect the legislation, that may be the way to go.

Let me make a point or two about the points that have been made, for example about the challenges around road signage and automated vehicles. We are already stepping towards an environment where sensors and smart vehicles acknowledge the changes that happen on the road and the speeds on the road around us. This will be another phase of that evolution. Funding for that is a good question; we should discuss in more detail where we will look at providers, digital technology suppliers and the other opportunities that they will provide from that kind of implementation of technology.

We should look at making sure that charging points are integral and standard for usage with automated vehicles as well. I helped the then Mayor of London set up the London electric vehicle partnership in 2008, when we first looked at electric vehicles. We knew that there would be a challenge around standards and charging but we did not allow those challenges to hold us back. We need to think about agile development, failing fast, and enabling trialling and testing to continue so that we do not slow things down as we look for overall international agreement on some of these things. It is a challenge to make sure that we get momentum, which I think we are all looking for.

Perhaps we can identify the use cases that we are highlighting more specifically, then look at how the Bill can address them in its future versions.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall be brief. It has been an interesting debate on this group of amendments because we have started talking about infrastructure separately from what goes on it. That is an important issue to look at because, whether in terms of the comments that I remember the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, making at Second Reading about the benefits of living in the countryside or the comments of other noble Lords who have mentioned the need for proper infrastructure, the key to this—it was in the press at the weekend, I think—is that the infrastructure mapping must be accurate. Who is going to do it?

The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, suggesting putting it on an old railway line. The old railway line is on the maps already, but can you drive down it safely? Is it a guided bus rail, which is another form of getting around? Not only do all these things need to be kept up to date but somebody needs to be responsible for ensuring that they are up to date and for what happens if they are not. I am sure that this is all on Minister’s mind for when he responds, but there is further work to be done here.

Automated Vehicles Bill [HL]

Lord Ranger of Northwood Excerpts

3rd reading
Monday 19th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con)]

My Lords, I echo the thanks to my noble friend the Minister and his team for all the work they have done on the Bill. I also echo the thoughts that this is just one Bill. We are on a journey with this technology and these vehicles, and where it will be going.

I would like to address some of the comments that have been made from all sides of the House, because I hear the fear, worry and concern, as technology takes a giant leap forward. We worry about the implications for the world as we see it now. However, the world changes and adjusts. I understand the questions the noble Baroness had about data, its ownership, its power and the responsibility. When we launched the Oyster card in London in 2003, the first time data would be captured en masse—tracking peoples’ individual movements—I remember similar challenges being made as to what we would do with it.

We have come a long way in 20-plus years. We understand a lot more about the power of data and how it can be used for the benefit of people, as much as the challenge there is to keep it safe. I hope that will be echoed in the usage of data with these vehicles.

Additionally, I hear the voice of my noble friend Lord Moylan. We worked together many a year ago at TfL, bringing in implementations. Back then, there was a significant challenge to another change we were implementing. We were told pedestrians would be vulnerable; we were told accessibility would be reduced; we were told safety would be jeopardised. What was the change we were bringing in? It was bicycles: the cycle hire scheme for London. There are always challenges to bringing in new schemes. They are always seen as having many problems on safety and security, and vulnerabilities. As I say, this is in the context of the world as we see it, not maybe as we can amend it and make it better.

This is the journey. There will be more Bills, and we will scrutinise further the use-cases and the opportunities that this technology will bring, for the benefit of designing the future with safety in mind, I hope.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister and his team for their co-operation on the Bill. I thank my co-spokesman, my noble friend Lord Liddle, and Grace Wright, our researcher.

When I wrote these few lines down, I was full of unbridled optimism for the Bill—but I had better come back a bit. I am sorry that the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, have not been satisfied; they were good and proper concerns, but I am sure that they will be properly considered.

Proceedings on the Bill have been very much the House of Lords at its best, and that was very much facilitated by the Minister. Like the Lib Dems, we had several meetings with him, and issues were generally treated on their merits. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, is not more reassured by the changes we made to the safety standard. I believe that the safety standard that is now in the Bill is a good one that regulators will be able to work with and that is robust enough to stand up to enterprises with a great deal of money. I, for one at least, say that we have a better Bill of which this House can be proud.