Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill — House of Lords, 2018-05-17
Topic: Energy
Jennifer Elizabeth Randerson (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I rise to speak to the amendments in this group in my name. I cannot see much of a theme between them so I will deal with them separately Amendment 95 addresses the issue of smart meters. We all know that smart meters are in the Bill because the Government believe, or have reason to believe, that there could be issues with pressure on the national grid. They are dealing with, or planning to deal with, that pressure through the use of smart meters. My amendment intends to ensure that smart meters really are smart, and very sophisticated. When we have talked about them before, people have said, "It’s really important to charge at night when there is not great pressure on the grid". In fact—my amendment deals with this—specific groups of people have very good reasons for not charging at night. Some people cannot charge then because they are out at work and have taken their car with them, and some people, such as people with solar panels—I declare an interest because I have them on my house—have a good reason to charge during the day. I am keen to charge my car during the day, whenever possible, because that is when my panels are generating electricity I am probing the Minister to find out the Government’s view on this and whether the concept of smart meters can now take that kind of thing into account. It would be frightfully unfair if night shift workers, such as NHS workers, had to pay a higher price for their electricity just because they have to charge their cars during the day. I would hope that we had moved on a long way, technologically, from the days when night storage heaters imposed a blanket situation where you charged at night, dispelled your heat during the day—whether you were there or not—and had no control The national grid has assured us that there is enough overall capacity, but I fear that it is similar to the mobile phone companies saying that 95% of the population has a good signal. We all know that 5% of the population lives in a large geographical area known as the countryside, so there are great swathes of the country where mobile phone signal is very poor. Already, the national grid is overreaching full capacity in some areas such as south-east England and many rural areas because there are no links with the grid Amendment 103 is intended simply to make sure that the regulations that spring from the Bill are dealt with in the appropriate manner. I have tried to reflect the views of the DPRRC that there should be some affirmative resolutions Amendment 68 refers to the need for consultation with fuel retailers. Here, I am probing the issue of the definition, and how the Government will reach a definition, of "large fuel retailers". The Association of Convenience Stores was rather worried that it would be forced to have electric charge points in inappropriate places. My view is that fuel retailers need to look 10 years ahead. If this revolution has taken place, they will not be selling loads of diesel in even five years’ time, nor loads of petrol. They need to think about how they will diversify. Consultation would help not just to produce good regulations, but to raise awareness among fuel retailers that they will need to consider the future When the consultation takes place it will also be important to consider the capacity of the grid. We have talked a lot about motorway service stations. They generally have an electric charging point. In the great and glorious future we hope they will have several electric charging points, but they are usually in the countryside. It might be that the grid does not have the capacity for that in that area. Things such as consultation would help to unravel that spectrum of things and make it clearer for the Government, as well as for those who have to supply the electricity. Very briefly, Amendment 87, which I have added my name to, relates to data. I will leave the issue of data largely to the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, as the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, has spoken already, but I am seriously concerned that this is yet another gaping hole in the Bill. We dealt with it in Part 1 on automated vehicles, but electric vehicles have the same data collection capacity. There are serious issues that the Government need to grapple with to reassure the public that the data being collected about their movements is dealt with responsibly and not used just as an easy marketing gambit.