Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill — House of Commons, 2017-10-23
Topic: Mixed Topics
Justin Piers Richard Madders (Labour, Centre-left): I shall develop that point, because we need to address some challenges relating to investment in manufacturing. The move to the manufacture of electric vehicles is going to require huge investment in plant machinery if we are to maintain our manufacturing base. The majority of engine plants in this country are still building combustion engines, so we need to think about what assistance we are going to give to those companies so that they can make the change to manufacturing electric engines. The Bill is pretty comprehensive on the infrastructure for consumers, but I am not sure there is the same level of commitment to the idea of the country as a producer of these vehicles We have heard that the Government intend to cease the sale of all petrol and diesel cars by 2040. The temptation might be to think that that is a couple of decades off so we do not need to worry about it now. However, if we are serious about it, the major manufacturers will begin to shift production to the new model types within the next one or two production cycles, particularly if consumer trends accelerate that. People will begin to look at the resale value of their vehicles, and if they see that petrol and diesel vehicles lose their value at a much quicker rate than electric vehicles, they are bound to purchase electric vehicles in much larger numbers. The right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) mentioned some studies that suggest that the Government’s predictions on electric vehicle take-up are possibly a little on the conservative side. We need to be ready to intervene swiftly when decisions are made on new-vehicle manufacturing so that we have the best possible conditions for companies to invest in their production lines. For example, Vauxhall tells me that every time it looks to invest in new machinery, that has a negative consequence for its business rates Of course, at the moment the real challenge to the automotive industry—to all manufacturing—is the uncertainty created by Brexit. Investment in the automotive sector has halved over the past 12 months. We need to reverse that trend as a matter of urgency; otherwise, the new vehicles that it is hoped the Bill will facilitate will be manufactured elsewhere. A big part of that is reassuring as much of the car-manufacturing supply chain as possible. Too many parts needlessly travel back and forth across the continent. In the long term that makes little economic or environmental sense, and in the short term minimising it will lower the risk of a hard Brexit There is an immediate short-term need to proactively support UK car manufacturers, and I hope we will hear some good news in next month’s Budget. There is also the bigger long-term issue of how the Bill might affect employment levels. There are plenty of predictions out there about how many jobs will be lost to automation, and I know that there is always the argument that in the past technological advances have always created more jobs than they have caused to be lost, but this revolution is going to be on a scale and at a pace for which we are still quite unprepared It is estimated that 1 million driving jobs could be lost within the next 10 to 15 years. With some studies indicating that up to half of all jobs could be lost to automation and artificial intelligence in the next 20 years, there needs to be a twin strategy for dealing with the economic impact of the proposals in the Bill. To that end, I would have liked to have seen an economic impact assessment on the likely job changes that will occur because of the Bill. Even in the optimistic scenario that lots of new jobs are created following this revolution, what do we know about the sort of jobs that will be created and where they will be based? A report published last week looked into the impact of automation constituency by constituency. It said that the worst-performing constituencies were set to lose around 40% of their jobs within 15 years. Although there were plenty of constituencies throughout the country at the top end, the pattern was clear: the biggest losers tended to be in the midlands and the north. I would like to see a similar study that shows the pattern of job creation in the new industries, but unfortunately none yet exists. If we did one, I rather fear that it would tell us that the new jobs created are not going to be in the areas that are set to lose the most. I do not want to see a repeat of the 1980s, when industry outside the south-east was subject to catastrophic losses of jobs that simply were not replaced Although I have painted some rather gloomy pictures, I am not a Luddite; I am a realist. I realise that the genie is out of the box and that there are tremendous advantages, and several Members have referred to the positives that driverless technology can bring to society, but we should not be blind to the consequences that these changes may bring. We need a fundamental debate about what we are trying to achieve here. The manufacturing infrastructure is just as important as the consumer infrastructure. The impact on existing jobs needs to be considered as much as the tremendous opportunities that this new technology brings. Finally, the new legal framework that we are setting up needs to be considered in the context of the moral framework that underpins it.