Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill (Sixth sitting)

Debate between Tom Tugendhat and Richard Burden

Tuesday 21st March 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

Given that the Minister has conceded that there will be a strategy, may I urge the hon. Gentleman to do as little strategising as possible and perhaps to include corporates as much as possible? My experience of watching Governments strategise, whether in the military or the civilian field, is to see what is charmingly known as a cluster emerge from the ideas of Whitehall and get thrust on corporations and individuals who then have to untangle whatever came out. I urge him as much possible in our process to act simply as a receptacle of ideas, rather than as a preacher of doctrine.

[Richard Burden]

In many ways, I think that is what we are getting at. Throughout Committee we have emphasised the importance of consulting stakeholders, and listening to and involving them. The corporate sector, particularly in the automotive industry, is central to that. Automotive is one of those areas in which partnership between Government and industry has been at its most successful. The Automotive Council, established by the previous Labour Government—but I am pleased to say continued by the coalition and this Government—has been held up as a beacon for a non-bureaucratic way to bring Government and industry together to lay out where we want to go and the kind of road map needed to get there.

Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Tom Tugendhat and Richard Burden

Tuesday 14th March 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Richard Burden]

Q Perhaps you could answer a question about the idea of Government action on consumer incentives. Is there more that could be done? What should be the targets?

Quentin Willson: There are simple things like free on-street parking everywhere in the UK for electric vehicles, use of bus lanes and some form of priority. The Americans have had huge success with priority lanes for electric vehicles. We need to think about the stuff that you cannot buy, the things that give people an advantage in city centres if they drive an ultra low emission or electric vehicle.

Robert Evans: The other alternative is low emission zones, and we could do that. London’s low emission zone, followed by an ultra low emission zone, is the direction of travel that a lot of cities would like to take. They want to do it in a staged format, working to national guidance as to what constitutes the standards you would set for access, so that a motorist travelling in the UK can know whether they can gain access to the low emission zone and the ultra low emission zone as they move from city to city. That is a particularly important activity. It is not covered in the scope of this Bill as such, but low and ultra low emission zones are one of the key ways of incentivising the right kind of behaviour. The second-hand market is incredibly important, and it makes those vehicles more accessible.

Company car taxation is a particular favourite that helps to drive electric vehicles into a market where others would not. The lightbulb has gone on with fleets. Previously, they would operate a diesel-only policy. “You never got sacked for buying IBM,” was the traditional term, then, “You never got sacked for buying diesel,” and that has now switched. They can see that the motor industry is not going to support that in the long term and that they need to make a change. They are now embracing what they can see is the future that they need to have in their fleet.

Quentin Willson: Any benefits in kind that the Treasury can keep going must be kept going if possible. The plug-in grant has been really significant.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Q Forgive me; in relation to the cycles that we are talking about in introducing new technology, as you correctly identified, Quentin, the way we are going is towards transport as a service rather than as an item. If that is so, then presumably automatic vehicles will, rather like those vacuum cleaners you get in homes, be able to drive themselves to a car park somewhere, charge themselves up during the downtime and come back out again, at which point we are talking about investing an enormous amount of public money into an infrastructure system that will, within 20 years—you were referring to 2040—be redundant. That is quite a short timescale for large-scale infrastructure investment to be redundant.

Quentin Willson: But that infrastructure investment will also be used for this new breed of autonomous cars, because they will all be plug-in. They will all be electric.

Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Tom Tugendhat and Richard Burden

Tuesday 14th March 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Richard Burden]

Q What kind of consultation would you expect the Minister to go through before producing his or her list? At the moment, the Minister has complete discretion. There is nothing in the Bill that says he or she has to consult anywhere.

Iain Forbes: I would anticipate quite a lot of work at international level to set the regulatory framework and technical standards that will underpin the safety framework for approving these vehicles. When that happens, there will be a decision for Ministers to take about how they consult with stakeholders in the UK to make sure that people are comfortable with those definitions before they are transferred into UK law.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

Q May I ask a couple of questions relating to the way that you have looked at the insurance? It seems to me that you are treating the concept of ownership as it is today, rather than as it is likely to become; transport is likely to become a service, rather than a commodity. Is that fair?

Iain Forbes: The policy aim of the Bill was to set up a framework that protected innocent victims of incidents relating to these vehicles in such a way that it felt similar to the current framework. We can have a framework around vehicle sale that is based on current patterns of ownership. In future that might change, as you say, in which case we would have to review the framework to make sure that we were making appropriate provision in law to allow people to operate the system safely.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Burden]

Q At the moment, there is no need to do that because the action of pointing a laser, however strong it is, at a vehicle is the offence. Presumably, without reclassifying them as offensive weapons, if you got your power of stop and search, that would be because of suspicion that the laser would be used for—or had been used for—that purpose. But if you were simply going to say that the possession of a laser could be the possession of an offensive weapon, would that need to define the strength of the laser?

Simon Bray: You would have to have the definition of what is an offensive weapon clearly in the process of stopping and searching or when trying to work out whether it is of that type. You would not know unless you had the laser tested afterwards to see whether it met the criteria.

Richard Goodwin: I am trying to rack my brains about reasonable excuse and lawful excuse, which is in the current offensive weapons legislation—why someone in a park at 10 o’clock at night has a laser in their pocket. I am slightly reluctant to go down the route of power because that is difficult for an operational officer at the time to understand and define. Some lasers come in as one thing and then turn out, when they are tested, to be something completely different. For me it is more about what that person intends to do with any laser, rather than about some of the more high-powered ones.

Paul Watts: It is not necessarily the power that is causing the threat, but the dazzle and the distraction that we spoke about. That effect would come from a very large power range of lasers.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Q Given your point that the power is not entirely relevant because the dazzle is so important, can you talk about the other equipment that exists with lasers today? Surveyors use lasers, and presumably there is a risk, so they must be cautious about how they use them. Driverless vehicles are likely to use lasers in different ways and various autonomous measuring equipment is likely to use lasers. Can you talk about the dangers that they pose and how they might be mitigated?

Steve Landells: Public Health England says that lasers under about 20 milliwatts will not cause any eye damage—so, provided that they are not pointing up in the air, they are not going to dazzle and distract, and they will not cause eye damage if they happen to strike your eye. A normal blinking reaction will take into account a 20-milliwatt laser, but the problem is that the ones we are seeing now are 2,500 milliwatts or 4,000 milliwatts. They are the problem. Depending on the uses that they are put to—astronomers use them as well—and providing that they are at the lower end of the power range, if they are not being pointed in the air with driverless cars and things like that, maybe that is not an issue.