Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill (First sitting)

Oliver Letwin Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 31st October 2017 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

If the questioners and the panellists could be very pithy and pointed, that would be helpful.

[Sir Oliver Letwin (West Dorset) (Con)]

Q My first question requires just a yes or no answer, and I am interested to know whether the answer is the same from all of you. As has been mentioned, in clause 2(1)(b) there is a reference to the vehicle being insured, which is a new concept, and at the end of clause 2(1), as David Williams said, strict liability of the insurer is established. Do you read that combination as meaning that strict liability attaches to the insurer of the vehicle?

David Williams: Yes.

Iwan Parry: I am not an insurance professional, so I will not answer that question.

Ben Howarth: Yes.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

Q My second question: do you agree that it is perfectly possible that the person who is the passenger/driver, who is in the vehicle, might have a different insurer?

David Williams: They may have another motor policy that would cover them for driving other vehicles. That is common practice in the UK but not every policy provides that.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

Q No, but it could happen.

David Williams: There is a chance, I suppose, but I do not think that we would have a dual insurance situation, because the other insurance would insure the actions of that individual, whereas the autonomous policy would cover the actions of the autonomous vehicle. If the vehicle is operating autonomously, it is not being controlled by that driver and therefore they would have no liability.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

Q I understand that logic, but if I have understood you, both of you are accepting that the driver/passenger—the person—could have a different insurer.

David Williams: They may have, but it may not apply in the event of an accident.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

Q Indeed. My third question: do you accept that strict liability would operate for the insurer of the vehicle, even if the driver had inappropriately transferred control of the vehicle to the vehicle?

David Williams: Transferred control of the vehicle to the—

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

Q Yes, so the driver is sitting there driving the vehicle, and he does whatever it is that you do to switch it to automated use, but does so under inappropriate circumstances. Do you accept that under clause 2(1), as it is written at the moment, strict liability would nevertheless attach to the insurer of the vehicle and not to the insurer of the driver?

David Williams: I think so, because if the vehicle is operating autonomously, strict liability applies. If it is about to crash into a wall and he has flicked the vehicle into autonomous mode, but it has not had the opportunity to take control, we come back to one of the earlier questions—

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

Q No, I am assuming that it has had the opportunity to take control.

David Williams: So it has taken control.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

It has taken control, so strict liability attaches to the—

David Williams: That is my take on it, but I would say that it is difficult for me to imagine circumstances where doing that would be inappropriate and where someone would still be able to switch a car into autonomous mode.

Iwan Parry: I think it is unlikely that an autonomous system engaged in that kind of transfer would accept control in a situation where it was then unable to avoid a high-risk scenario of some type, resulting in some kind of incident.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

Q But if I have understood you, that would entirely rely on whether, as a matter of fact, the technology had that effect. In other words, there is nothing in the Bill to prevent that situation.

David Williams: But we want the man in the street to know that if a vehicle is operating autonomously, compensation will be available. That is why there is strict liability. We might not like the particular scenario, if we can think of one that might happen, but I agree: my interpretation is that strict liability would apply.

Ben Howarth: The difference being that the driver might not have the same rights.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

Q If we go back to control of data, Ben, you said that more clarity is needed on what data will be kept and shared. David, you said that the Bill does not look like a robust enough framework, but that you would not want it to be held up. Surely if it is believed that the Bill does not provide a robust enough framework we should look at making amendments, rather than holding the Bill up. Are there amendments that we as parliamentarians should consider?

David Williams: I am not aware of the planned timetable. There are two aspects: first, the vehicle has to get on the list and insurers then need to decide whether they will insure those vehicles. If, for some reason, a motor manufacturer decides they are either not capable of making or are not going to make any of that information available even if it ends up on the list, it will struggle to get insurance in the UK market.

There are lots of things that do need further discussion. These vehicles are not really going to be on the road for a number of years, so setting out the UK’s intention from a headline regulatory view and commenting that data need to be available while we work on that is one thing. I am not fussed as to whether or not it is an amendment, but it would be sad if the amendment took two years to get through because the motor manufacturers’ lobby blocked it.

Ben Howarth: I would also point out that a lot of the technical side will be taken up at a UN/ECO global level, so it might not be feasible to define it in the Bill and then have to change it. The more sensible route might be to see how the technical discussions go at global level and ensure that the way the list operates is robust, rather than put it in the Bill.

Iwan Parry: There are also a number of projects going on right now that will be helping insurers and safety experts to define what those kinds of criteria should be, and the data that should be retained. It would be worth giving those projects time to report on those requirements.

Ben Howarth: If you are interested, we have put a report out and defined what data we think we would want as part of this Bill for the insurance industry, and we have published that.