Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill

Debate between Steve Baker and Stewart Malcolm McDonald

2nd reading: House of Commons & Carry-over motion: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 6th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Baker]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and makes a good point. As an idea, the fuel cell’s time is still to come. He makes a wise intervention.

On the substance of the Bill, I exercise my pedantry as an Oxford-educated software engineer—not something I have been able to do recently—by saying that in clause 4, on accidents resulting from unauthorised alterations or failure to update software, subsection (1)(a) addresses

“alterations to the vehicle’s operating system”.

If there is one group of people more pedantic than software engineers, it is lawyers and courts. Should an accident arise because of a failure to update software, that definition would be tested in court.

Underneath the operating system is firmware in non-volatile memory within hardware. The operating system is loaded on to volatile memory, and on top of that is application software. A self-driven or autonomous car will probably run on that application software. If it were to be tested in court, I fear we might find problems if the Bill, as enacted, talks about a vehicle’s operating system.

I encourage the Government to consult specialists in the industry, rather than only taking the advice of an out-of-date software engineer, but it is important that the Bill uses the right terminology to ensure that the right software is updated and that, therefore, the law meets its intended purpose of ensuring that people are insured and that liability falls where it should when there has been a failure to update software.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

The hon. Gentleman is perhaps trying to get at the lack of detail in the Bill about the regulation of that software. Given what he has just said, such regulation would surely be enormously important.