Automated and Electric Vehicles Bill — House of Lords, 2018-05-09
Topic: Mixed Topics
Bryony Worthington (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I support Amendments 8 and 10 and the associated Amendment 22. I feel that I need to declare my interest as I am an employed member of the Environmental Defense Fund Europe, an advocacy group that promotes solutions to climate change and air quality While I am speaking to this part of the Bill, it is fair to say that my interest lies in Part 2, but I feel that the Bill ought to be seen in its entirety as a tool that the Government can use to reach their aspirations to see a huge transformation in the transport sector. We are anticipating and looking forward to the publication of the government strategy, Road to Zero. We hope it is a road to zero, not a road to nowhere; I hope it contains ambition. We hope the narrow parts of the Bill are stepping stones and that additional policies and consultation will be launched with the document, which we hope we will see before Report Amendment 8 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, covers a very important aspect. I hope and suspect that the Minister will be able to reassure us that the consultation will indeed be forthcoming in the documents that we expect from the department. It is really important that we have that debate about how we are helping the Secretary of State to ensure that he or she is drawing on the very best information available, as this is quite a complex and technical area. There must be wide consultation on definitions in order for this list to be relevant and useful for every part of the community, including the insurers but also the users of the cars On Amendment 10 and the associated Amendment 22, many of us have been playing a game with the clerks in order to enable us to have a debate that is broader than the clauses before us. The short title of the Bill appears very wide but when it comes to it we are allowed only a very narrowed-down debate. I have put my name to Amendment 10 just to be able to talk about standards for autonomous vehicles. I understand that the nature of our debate, because it is linked to insurance, means that it has been mainly about the fear of accidents and safety, but there is an important additional element to autonomous vehicles, which is their environmental value. If we do not consider this at the outset then there is a chance that, no matter how well meaning we are in encouraging the use of autonomous vehicles and transport as a service more generally, we could see a period when these vehicles are overlapping with existing vehicles and we see more congestion, higher quality impacts and indeed greater impact on climate change I have a question for the Minister. Clause 1 of the Bill says: "The list may identify vehicles … in some other way" When considering the list, could we interpret that as meaning we will have additional information about the environmental impact of these vehicles? There is an assumption that autonomous vehicles will be cleaner—and indeed that they will be electric, which would speak to both parts of the Bill—but there is no requirement or necessity for that to be the case. In the setting of and consulting on standards for these vehicles, could we include from the outset environmental standards that mean we do not have unintended consequences? Through our efforts to boost this industry, see inward investment and create jobs and financial flows, we do not want inadvertently to encourage lots of highly polluting vehicles using as many cheating devices as software engineers could come up with, in delivering the service through autonomous vehicles. We saw this in our drive to try to increase the efficiency of vehicles that has led to a big push to diesel.