Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill (Second sitting)

Rob Marris Excerpts

Tuesday 14th March 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Andrew Selous]

Q Thank you. I have a final question for Mr Nash. Hearing about the training needs of the industry, what preparation is going on in schools and further education colleges to set up courses so that we have enough skilled technicians to service these vehicles in future?

Steve Nash: There are plenty of places around the country that can train people in the technology. Obviously, over time, the new apprenticeship standards will evolve, but it has to be remembered that an apprenticeship is a start, not a finish—we are talking about lifelong learning here. Apprentices will not come out of their apprenticeships ready and available to work on the high-voltage electrics. That will take time, and that is additional training that will come as they develop their career. We as an organisation, a professional body, work with a network of 600 FE colleges, training companies and manufacturers’ academies around the country, many of which are capable of delivering this kind of training. As I said earlier on, it is a sort of chicken and egg situation—a question of supply and demand. They are ready to offer it once people have moved in that direction, but it will not happen on its own.

[Rob Marris (Wolverhampton South West) (Lab)]

Q I want Ms Sayers to clarify a bit. The supermarket I go to every week is, I suspect, like quite a lot of them. It has a large car park—it is one of the major multiples—and alongside but distinct from that car park is a petrol station, which is branded by the supermarket but is a Shell station. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) said, the Bill gives “large fuel retailers” certain responsibilities. Would your members prefer the wording, “large retailers”, to make that clearer? In the supermarket car park, people may typically leave their car for 30 minutes. I am thinking of those old westerns where people hitch up their horse outside the saloon—people hook up their car, grab a trolley, go in to do their 30-minute shop and, when they come out and unplug it, they have had a fast charge. The charging points would therefore be better placed in each parking bay for the supermarket proper, which is not a large fuel retailer at the moment. Is that more consonant with the way in which your members are thinking?

Teresa Sayers: Very much so. Our apprehension about the wording is all about the location of the EV charging point on a forecourt, for the reasons we have discussed.

[Rob Marris]

Q The word “fuel” in “large fuel retailers” is causing you to scratch your head a bit?

Teresa Sayers: Yes, absolutely.

[Rob Marris]

Q “Large retailers” would be more palatable for your members. Am I right?

Teresa Sayers: Yes.

[Rob Marris]

Thank you. That is very helpful.

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[Mr Baker]

Fine. Thank you.

[Rob Marris]

Q I have three quick points for Mr Howarth. First, the Bill talks about the vehicle being insured as opposed to what currently happens, from my understanding, which is that driver is insured. So I have policy motor insurance that enables me to drive certain vehicles, including my principal one. Is the insurance industry happy with what appears to be a change in focus—that is it now on the vehicle rather than the driver?

Ben Howarth: I think it is not a huge change in focus. In practice, the enforcement that industry currently does—via the motor insurance bureau—to check that you have insurance is done via the vehicle. It is done by checking licence plates. The responsibility is on the human driver, but the practical enforcement is to check whether that car, on the road, at that time, is covered by insurance. This Bill is primarily designed for vehicles that will be manually driven some of the time and automated some of the time. It is just the practicality that, once you are switching to an automated car, you need to be thinking about the car rather than the driver.

[Rob Marris]

Q On that basis, is the industry also happy that the insurer is liable rather than the owner-driver, which is currently the case?

Ben Howarth: Again, it is a practicality that we are essentially stepping to the front. We are coming into the sun.

[Rob Marris]

Q Yes, you used to be behind the scenes. For these vehicles, you would be up front. That is all right with the industry?

Ben Howarth: The whole purpose of the legislation is, I suppose, to be an enabler and say to people, “You can be confident using this technology, because you will not have to worry about getting into complex battles with your manufacturer.” We do not know for certain that that is what will happen. Some manufacturers have given positive statements about it, but if that does happen, the insurers will step into the front of the system and say, “We are actually going to take these on. We are the first port of call, even in the case where the person to whom we have sold the insurance policy to is not directly liable.”

[Rob Marris]

Q The third point is on the software updates. From memory, when I bought my car, which has a touch screen on it for the radio and things, it would have cost me an extra £600 to have sat-nav put in. That is just the software because it already has the screen and the buttons and everything. I am thinking about software updates, which we have talked about, and a failure to install software updates could invalidate the insurance policy under clause 4. I understand that, but I am a bit concerned that the Bill appears to have no provisions to cap the charges for software updates. For the sake of argument, I have just spent £15,000 on a two-year-old automated vehicle and then some software update comes in that is £1,000 and a month later they want another £1,000 out of me. If I do not do it, the thing is useless, because it is uninsurable and therefore undriveable. Do you think there should be provision for a cap on software update costs, so that vehicles do not become uninsurable and therefore driven without insurance?

Ben Howarth: I have not really got a view on a cap, per se, but I have got a view that if it is a fundamental safety upgrade and it will change the functionality of the vehicle significantly, there needs to be an arrangement in place to make sure that is not optional. It is probably for other stakeholders to say how we make that affordable to the public. From an insurance perspective, we do not want cars to be unsafe simply because people cannot afford safety upgrades. That is true today, thinking about automated braking: it would be great if that was a standard feature of all new cars because it is proven to be safe. It is optional and it is often not taken up because it is too costly.

[Rob Marris]

Q This stuff would not be optional, would it? The software update, effectively, would not be optional.

Ben Howarth: No, where it is fundamental to the car’s safety, it needs to be non-optional. We are hoping for a system where it is impossible not to get the safety-critical upgrades. I cannot really comment on how much to charge for them.

[Andrew Selous]

Q I just want to return to two groups that miss out on the freedom and opportunities of being able to drive. We talked about older people and disabled people but also young drivers, for whom insurance is often prohibitively expensive, running into many thousands of pounds. What analysis have you done of the advantages of connected and autonomous vehicles over and above taxis, private hire vehicles, getting an Uber? What extra benefits do you see those two groups being able to derive once this technology is established and there is widespread take-up? Have you done any analysis or thinking on the social benefits for those two particular groups?

Iain Forbes: We have not done a research project on this, but I am aware that new products enabled by connected systems are opening up the ability to drive to a wider range of people. For example, younger people now have access to a wider range of insurance products enabled by telematics than was the case previously. Certainly, there is innovation within the industry that I am aware of, which is opening up options for accessing insurance to younger people as well as to some other groups as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kit Malthouse]

Q Would it be fair to say that level 5 cars might be the saviour of the rural pub? Can I drink and drive a level 5 car?

Ben Howarth: I am a big fan of the rural pub, but I do not know the answer for certain. That is probably also an infrastructure question: I can see the cars working in certain inner-city areas, but personally, I am not 100% sure whether level 5 is ready for some rural roads yet. I think evangelists for level 5 technology will say that it is.

[Rob Marris]

Q One for Mr Howarth. What will the industry do about Northern Ireland and automated vehicles? That is not covered in the Bill.

Ben Howarth: Is there any particular aspect of Northern Ireland that you think is not working?

[Rob Marris]

I do not know. I wondered whether you guys discussed it because the automated vehicle elements of the Bill do not apply to Northern Ireland, yet one would expect people in Northern Ireland, as elsewhere in the United Kingdom, to wish to have automated vehicles available to use.

Ben Howarth: I am not aware of any problem with Northern Ireland.

[Rob Marris]

From an insurance point of view?

Ben Howarth: I am not aware that we have any particular concerns about Northern Ireland, but I am not sure why it is not in the Bill.

[Rob Marris]

Okay, but from an insurance point of view, you have no concerns about Northern Ireland?

Ben Howarth: Not that I am aware of.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Q I assume that you looked at other countries as you prepared for the Bill. Will you say a little bit about how other countries are addressing the insurance and regulatory challenges?

Iain Forbes: The legal frameworks in different countries are often specific to those countries, so it is not possible to do an exact read-across, but we are looking at what people are doing to see whether there are broad lessons that we can learn. For example, in California, if you want to test automated vehicles, you have to put up a surety bond to ensure that there is a provision to cope with any accidents. Looking at that and other systems, we felt that the system in the Bill was appropriate for the UK and how our insurance system operates. It builds on a system that people would recognise, so it would look similar to what people do now, and it targets an important policy, which is to ensure that innocent victims caught up in an incident involving a vehicle in automated mode can get quick access to claims.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Tugendhat]

Q It does not matter which hand drive a car is, does it?

Iain Forbes: Which is part of the reason why it is important for some of the discussions about the regulatory framework to take place at international level, under the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe or other bodies that regulate how vehicles operate to ensure that, where possible, we have interoperable systems.

Ben Howarth: If you are thinking about cross-border insurance, as long as the broad principles are united—there are already big differences between the UK and other parts of Europe and how they insure vehicles; we have a driver-centric version whereas a lot of other European countries have a vehicle-centric system and a form of strict liability with various definitions—one would hope that we could evolve a system that gives at least minimum cover on a unified basis. We should not therefore have too much of a problem.

[Rob Marris]

Q Mr Tugendhat made an interesting point. It had not occurred to me, but if I am in my automated vehicle, which I have taken through Eurotunnel, and I am driving down a road in France and a non-automated vehicle is coming at me in the middle of the road, I do not want my British automated vehicle diving off to the left—which is what you would do to take evasive action in this country—

[Tom Tugendhat]

Presumably, you have got GPS—

[Rob Marris]

This is a serious point in the context of Mr Forbes’s discussing interoperability. I presume there has been a discussion about the coding—I would like reassurance about this—so that the evasive action that automated vehicles might take when faced by unsafe manoeuvres by non-automated vehicles is appropriate to the side of the road on which one drives. Otherwise, we will have a big problem, as Mr Baker will know, with software coding and so on.

Iain Forbes: These are the sorts of challenges that you have to work through when you sit down to think about how the system will operate in practice. We are still at the stage of the technology where the developers are making sure that they can get their systems to work in particular locations—particular cities or areas. If the developers want to sell products and services that can be used in more than one country, that is something we will have to bear in mind when taking forward our development programmes. Indeed, if they are going to operate in accordance with the right regulatory framework, they will have to have discussions with regulators about how that will operate in practice.

[Rob Marris]

Q Do we need legislation now, in the United Kingdom, to assist that process?

Iain Forbes: From my perspective, it feels a bit early to take forward regulation in that space, but we should definitely be involved in the discussions at international level and with developers, to make sure that those issues are dealt with in due course.

[The Chair]

If there are no further questions, may I thank the witnesses for their evidence, time and co-operation? We will move on to our next panel.

Examination of Witnesses

Richard Moriarty and John de Vial gave evidence.