Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill

Vicky Ford Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 23rd October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hayes]

My right hon. Friend makes a bold case on behalf of rural places. Given that I represent Holbeach Marsh, Gedney Drove End, Sutton St James, Tydd St Mary and many other glorious places that can only be described as essentially rural—in fact I represent one of the most rural constituencies in the country—she would hardly expect me to neglect the interests of those who live there. We will do our utmost to ensure that they are not disadvantaged by any of the changes that are part of the Bill or any of the things tangential to it.

As I said, the Bill contains several new powers to seed more charge points across our kingdom. I have talked about common technical standards, but we must go further. There are already charging points at virtually all motorway service areas. Just last week, Shell chose the UK as the first market in which to roll out its forecourt rapid chargers, the first 10 of which will be operational by the end of the year. We may not have to use the powers in the Bill if industry progress continues at this pace.

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

I want to raise the issue of technical standards. My constituency has a small business that is very successfully retrofitting delivery vans with battery power when their old diesel engine has reached the end of its life. Can we look at standards for retrofitted vehicles?

[Mr Hayes]

Retrofitting is an important way in which we can improve the existing fleet of vehicles. As my hon. Friend will know, some of the money that is being invested in low emission vehicles is going towards changing the existing fleet, so she is right about that.

I thought of Disraeli as my hon. Friend rose, as I am sure did she. Disraeli said:

“Man is not the creature of circumstances. Circumstances are the creatures of men. We are free agents, and man is more powerful than matter.”

What we do in the future about these things is in our hands. It is in the hands of Governments and Parliament. We can create the kind of future we want and, in embracing this technology, ensure that it is harnessed to best effect. As I have said, not all technological change is implicitly virtuous, so people must not assume that all technological development is, by its nature, efficacious. It has no intrinsic moral aspect. It is for us to decide how the best outcome can be achieved through the kind of technological changes we are considering tonight. That will be done across the House, I know, by people of good will.

We need also to think about what workplaces can do. I want to help workplaces to provide charging facilities for fleets and employees’ cars. I want to ensure that vehicle charging is flexible to meet the demands of the grid and avoid extreme peaks in demand. It is in everyone’s interest to make the running of an electric vehicle as easy as possible and to get more of them on our roads as quickly as possible. In that vein, the Government will be—

--- Later in debate ---

[Clive Efford]

Yes, but driverless trains drive on a dedicated track. My point is that such technology is not being implemented in an area where the possibilities already exist—pilotless planes. Yet we are prepared to roll out that technology on our streets and our roads, where quite a complex range of incidents could occur and where vehicles being driven by software will come into contact with humans. I accept that the technology is here. We will have to accept that there will be demand for these types of vehicles, not least driven by the huge companies such as Uber, which already has driverless cabs on the streets of Pittsburgh. We are seeing technology driven forward by these large companies, but we as legislators have to start looking at some of the issues that arise around the moral questions that may have to be answered by machines.

[Vicky Ford]

On the point about safety, nine out of 10 accidents today are caused by human error—often because the two drivers miscommunicate with each other. Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that one advantage of automated vehicles is that they can communicate with each other, thus avoiding accidents and making the world a safer place?