Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Rob Marris and Alan Brown

Thursday 16th March 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Alan Brown]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan. I will mainly speak to amendment 21, and I will be brief. To remind the Committee, the amendment relates to clause 4. The title of the clause, “Accident resulting from unauthorised alterations or failure to update software”, implies that software that has not been updated causes an accident. Part 1 of the Bill is about defining the liabilities and responsibilities needed to make insurance practical and able to be rolled out, and to facilitate the roll-out of autonomous vehicles. On that basis, amendment 21 makes a lot of sense to me. In defining liability and responsibility, it clearly sets out that manufacturers have a responsibility to try to make sure that vehicles are updated with the latest software. That is important, and I do not think it should be left to the small print of individual insurance policies. If we are trying to improve consumer confidence going forward, placing an onus on manufacturers to fulfil their responsibilities make sense, and putting that in the Bill would help that. It would facilitate that for insurance companies as well.

New clause 9 complements amendment 21. I take on board the comments about incorporating terminology such as “safety critical” in the new clause; that is something that should be considered going forward as well. I think there is merit in the amendment and the new clause.

[Rob Marris]

As you know, Ms Ryan, Labour Members are particularly sensitive to getting the wording of clause 4 accurate. On new clause 9, I think the hon. Member for Wycombe is quite right; it would be better if, at the end of it, it said something like “up to date as regards safety”, because of the points that have been made on the difference between safety-critical updates and leisure or convenience updates or whatever.

On amendment 21, it may be that the Minister will be able to assure me that we already have a suitable system. I am thinking, for example, of the system in which, providing they can be traced, the current registered keeper of a vehicle in the United Kingdom gets a safety notification from the manufacturer. For example, my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and I are pleased to drive Toyotas, but Toyota and a number of other manufacturers have a problem because the Japanese supplier of airbags and their ignition devices supplied about 15 million duff ones around the world. Those are gradually being replaced. As the registered keeper of a Toyota, I get a letter from the manufacturer—not from the mainline Toyota dealer from whom I bought it, but from the manufacturer—telling me that in due course this problem will need to be sorted out.

We are all familiar with that process now in relation to safety-critical updates for software introduced by the manufacturer, presumably as a result of its discovering a bug in software, which occasionally happens. We already have a system—for shorthand, “the airbag-type system”—that might read across in terms of the software system, and therefore we would not need amendment 21. However, I would like the Minister’s reassurance on that point, or his acceptance that we do not already have that kind of system as regards safety and therefore we need either amendment 21 or something akin to it.

Bus Services Bill [Lords]

Debate between Rob Marris and Alan Brown

2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 1st March 2017 Commons Chamber

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

I rise to say a few words on clause 17, which is the only UK-wide provision in the Bill. I am going to start by doing something that I have not done before, which is to commend the Government and the other place for agreeing to amendments that brought in clause 17 and the provisions on accessibility. This is a victory for common sense as well as for equality. It makes no sense that train operators have had to provide audio-visual information for years, yet bus companies are under no such obligation. By default it is clear that more people use buses and that people with visionary or sensory impairment are likely to require access to buses far more frequently than to trains.

As part of the Talking Buses campaign, I wrote to the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), and also used my first question to the Prime Minister to raise awareness of the campaign, so I am well aware that at that point the Government were not for moving on this matter. The Transport Minister’s response stated:

“Such systems are expensive to install, potentially creating a disproportionate financial burden to bus companies”.

He also stated:

“We propose that franchising schemes could require the installation of equipment to provide accessible information on buses where the local authority feel this is appropriate”.

We cannot have the Government putting out the message that these provisions would be too expensive for them, only to ask local authorities to deal with them instead.

[Rob Marris]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that some of the concerns about the cost of these proposed measures are entirely misplaced? When I drove a bus, it was a requirement of my job that I announced every stop as it was upcoming. Most bus drivers have a voice and can announce these things as part of an audio-visual information package for people with disabilities without spending any more money at all.

[Alan Brown]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for passing on his experience. That makes sense. In fact, the Department for Transport’s own figures suggest that the provision of audio-visual information would cost less than £6 million a year, which in terms of its overall expenditure is absolutely nothing.

The Government have previously suggested that phone apps might be the way forward. While apps have benefits, they cannot be the only solution. I was contacted by a company that gave me a phone to trial, so I handed it over to a constituent with a visual impairment. They told me that the app was fine as far as it went, but it could not be relied upon 100%.The app’s functionality also depends on the type of phone being used, so the Government cannot use that sort of technology as a way around the problem. We need audio-visual technology on buses.