My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lady Vere of Norbiton, I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time. Self-driving vehicles offer an unprecedented opportunity to improve the safety and connectivity of our road network. Unencumbered by fatigue, distraction, frustration or intoxication, and built from the ground up to obey the rules of the road, self-driving vehicles could one day far exceed the standards of even the safest human drivers.
With 88% of road incidents currently involving human error, the potential for these technologies to reduce injury and save lives is plain to see. Self-driving vehicles could also improve connectivity across the country, opening up new options for travel and connecting people to amenities, jobs and education. Indeed, it is those currently at greatest risk of isolation—the elderly, those with disabilities and our rural communities—who could see the greatest benefit from some of these new technologies.
The international self-driving market has vast growth potential. Playing to our strengths in research and innovation, and with a robust regulatory system in place, the UK could capture as much as £42 billion of that market by 2035. Thanks to close collaboration between government, industry and academia over the last decade, we are already well on our way. We have worked with developers to launch trials across the UK, including self-driving bus services in Edinburgh and self-driving heavy goods vehicles in Sunderland. These trials are taking place with safety drivers on board, and they provide proof of concept for a technology that is coming into maturity.
We have also worked to set a clear direction of travel for the sector. We were an early mover, in 2015 launching a code of practice for trialling self-driving vehicles on public roads. In 2018 Parliament passed the Automated and Electric Vehicles Act, ensuring that there is a clear and direct route to compensation for any harm caused by a vehicle when driving itself. In August last year, we published the Connected & Automated Mobility 2025 paper, setting out the Government’s vision for bringing the benefits of self-driving vehicles to the UK.
As the technology continues to mature, and trials look to advance beyond the need for safety drivers, we need to ensure that the UK stays ahead of the curve. We must support the deployment of self-driving vehicles with a comprehensive legal framework, one that can deliver high standards of safety, ensure clear accountability and win the confidence of both the public and the sector. This Bill provides that comprehensive legal framework.
At present, responsibility for safe and legal driving rests solely with the human driver. This is the case even when they employ one of the many advanced driver assistance features currently available on the market, such as adaptive cruise control, automatic parking or automatic emergency braking. When these features advance beyond mere assistance, and truly self-driving technology becomes a reality, it will no longer be reasonable to hold the human driver responsible for the vehicle’s behaviour.
My Lords, I welcome the introduction of this long-awaited Bill to regulate self-driving vehicles. It introduces a legal framework to enable this developing technology in the UK, building on the insurance measures for automated cars in the Automated and Electric Vehicles Act 2018 and policies set out in the August 2022 paper.
Unfortunately, this Bill is not enough to give the public or industry confidence in the emerging technology. Its bare-bones regulations allow driverless cars on our roads, set minimum standards and make manufacturers responsible, but it fails properly to prepare for the transition period when some vehicles will be automated and others not. The Government need to prepare for the transition with a plan to monitor and prepare for the rollout, to give industry the certainty that it needs to invest and the public the confidence that they will be safe on our roads.
I am also concerned that the Bill offers no protection for the jobs that could be lost during the transition, which is why these Benches will call on the Government to engage with trade unions and workers to make sure that automation creates jobs rather than loses them. What assessment have the Government made of how many new jobs could be created in the self-driving vehicle industry? What preliminary discussions has the Minister had with trade unions about the rollout?
There are also missed opportunities in this Bill. Throughout its passage, I hope the House will consider potential loopholes in the legislation. For example, why does it not cover autonomous robots such as personal delivery devices? To turn briefly to the marketing restrictions, can the Minister explain what instances have led to these clauses? Are misleading marketing practices for self-driving vehicles commonplace here in the UK or elsewhere in the world?
I move to the liability clauses. The Bill outlines a provision for an independent inspector who is able to investigate collisions and incidents involving automated vehicles to assess what technology may need to be improved but not to indicate blame or cause. However, given that the Bill outlines specific legal accountability depending on whether the driver or automated vehicle is in control in order to assign cause, does the Minister believe that the inspector should have a similar, though non-legally binding, power to independently report to Parliament on the effect and safety of automated vehicles on Britain’s roads?
My Lords, I declare my interest, as a member of my family works in the vehicle connectivity sector, but I have no financial interests. I have migrated to this Bill from my usual territory of financial services, business and intellectual property, and it is those aspects which I will mainly cover.
At present, there is a thriving ecosystem in the automated and connected vehicle sectors, including small and innovative businesses, especially on the software side, and whose protection and income streams are based on intellectual property and data. While I understand and appreciate the work that has been done by the Law Commissions and the legal framework in the Bill, I have questions about its impact on that ecosystem for small businesses in particular, and for the preservation of intellectual property rights and rights to monetise data.
My concern is heightened by the already prevalent tendency to default to big-name providers, including large overseas technology companies winning government contracts. There is already an unlevel playing field caused by “play safe” selection of dominant companies, and that dominance is further reinforced by the acquisition of data for themselves when they are selected for important UK projects. Government has a role to play here if it wants to emerge with any UK champions. That includes government having the expertise to analyse bids from less obvious sources, and without forcing commercial disclosures of a type not normally sought from large entities. I have also noted the announcement that the Government may be amending the National Security and Investment Act regarding mergers and acquisitions, which may also further benefit big-name companies from abroad.
Turning to the Bill, I wonder how the present ecosystem will be affected by the conditions surrounding the new regulated entities. This is a point where information requirements could force disclosures or distort contracts, essentially stripping supply chain companies of their commercial, IP and data exploitation opportunities. It would be unfortunate for smaller companies to be forced into a choice between ultimate liability and massive insurance costs, or contract and licensing provisions that leverage away their own data exploitation possibilities.
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness and particularly to hear some of her insights on the insurance industry. I congratulate my noble friend on his appointment to the Front Bench in the transport portfolio; we go back a long way, and I am delighted that he is in this role. I declare my interests as set out in the register.
I am very supportive of this legislation. It is excellent and very necessary. AI and automated vehicles present great positive opportunities for our country and for the people who live here, including workers. Properly grabbed, it should mean an increase in the number of jobs in the United Kingdom and this is what the legislation is all about. For the individual, it is the opportunity for people being transported to enhance relaxation in a vehicle or to work in a vehicle while it is being driven. Properly handled, it will improve road safety, with fewer accidents. I know that is something we will want to look at as the legislation passes through your Lordships’ House.
I do not want to go into any detail on particular provisions at Second Reading but just to talk about the general principles of the legislation. It will allow non-drivers, older drivers, partially sighted drivers and blind people the freedom to be driven. It will allow freight to be transported at non-peak hours more easily. Properly handled, it will reduce carbon emissions. It will reduce the need for roadside assistance for accidents. It will lead to lower insurance premiums for vehicle owners who are being driven. This is the golden inheritance we will have if we tackle this legislation in the right way. Of course, I appreciate that the devil will be in the detail, but this legislation is important.
Moving away from the individual, there will be massive possibilities for the UK economy, as well as for other countries which will necessarily be our competitors such as the US, Israel, China and those in Europe. No doubt, there will also be the facility for co-operation, and I wonder whether my noble friend will be able to indicate whether there have been discussions with other countries. I had the opportunity of corresponding with John Aquino of Cruise in Silicon Valley—I think Silicon Valley is where there has been the most progress—to hear about some of the insights there and the possibilities. He has told me of work happening in our own country—Wayve AI in Cambridge and London in particular.
My Lords, I support the Bill. It is right that as a nation we should signal our acceptance of this technology, even if it is not quite yet oven-ready or mature enough to be properly rolled out. We are a nation whose future will depend on our ability to adapt and harness new technologies, so we must signal to the entrepreneurial businesses of the world that we are open for such business. “Come and build here” is the message we are giving, and I thoroughly approve.
I also support this Bill in my capacity as an occasional spokesman for both rural Britain and an ever-greener Britain. It will help to improve connectivity and reduce the isolation of the rural elderly, while ensuring that all generations have better access to training, work and leisure. Initially, my thinking went along the lines of each parish having a self-drive vehicle for use by its parishioners, but then I realised that you would not need to do that; you would just need two or three privately owned self-drive cars which could be rented out to parishioners to go to the hospital, shops or even the local evening football training—all cars properly licensed, of course.
Elon Musk believes that not only will self-driving cars be 10 times safer than manual cars but they will, in his words, develop “massive fleet learning”. He also believes that, bearing in mind that we use our car for less than 10% of our waking hours—I am surprised it is that much—just by tapping a button, we will be able to add our car to, say, the Uber 2 fleet and have it earn income for us when we are at work or on vacation. In my case, of course, that would mean I would have to remove my golf clubs from the boot, not to mention the rubbish that always seems to accumulate in my car, but maybe it will be worth it.
Going back to village transport, I fear that it is unlikely that at present the Uber fleet—either manual or self-drive—will be available in most rural villages, but the existence of self-drive vehicles within a community will mean that Mrs Smith, who owns such a car, will be able to lend it out to her neighbours without having to drive it herself or having to worry about the driving skills of old Mr Jones going to the hospital, or even young Master Jones going to football training. As a result, connectivity in rural areas will be dramatically improved—and, believe me, after the lack of housing, the lack of public transport to shops, health services, leisure and even jobs is one of the most serious shortcomings of current rural living if your income happens to be in the lowest quartile.
My Lords, I first declare my interest as an officer of the APPG for Self-Driving Vehicles and a business lifetime spent in the vehicle industry. I am also the father of a son who has learning difficulties and could, like many disabled people, certainly benefit from these vehicles. I have also been the chairman of the Greenwich trial technical committee. I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, that the pedestrian schoolchildren in that trial who thought it would be useful to leap out in front of an autonomous vehicle to see whether it stopped tried it two or three times and found that it did stop. After that, they found the whole experience extremely boring and stopped taunting the vehicle in this way—so in fact it was perfectly safe.
This is an enabling Bill, to enable what I hope is a great industry. We cannot be certain about the future, of course, but we can be fairly certain about the present. The present state of cars cannot be optimum. They are driven badly by humans who get bored, smoke, chat or argue with their family, get drunk and certainly produce urban pollution by accelerating too fast and braking too hard. Computers will be better drivers because they have more varied input than humans, and much better ability to concentrate on the problems. The question of the moment is: when did you last enjoy driving? Was it when there was less traffic and when there were fewer bicycles and bus lanes? Would we enjoy driving more in an autonomous vehicle? This Bill is quite wide in its power to demand information. The danger is only that too much information is delivered. If the department gets terabytes of data following an accident, will it realistically be able to cope?
There are people working on digital commentary systems, which tell the listener what is being observed and why the vehicle is doing something. The systems are analogous to the way of teaching a young driver to improve by getting them to comment on their driving decisions. How much useful information comes out will depend on the detailed decision process, but it certainly can be considered. The alternative is that, following an accident, somebody issues terabytes of data and we are no further forward in working out how to stop other vehicles with other systems repeating the accident. That happens now, because human drivers are very fallible in remembering their own faults. In general, the sooner we can get this Bill into law, the better.
My Lords, it gives me pleasure to take part in this debate and I declare an interest as a member of the all-party AV group. I am also grateful for so many members of the industry who came and briefed us last week. We also need to thank the House of Lords Library, which has produced a comprehensive summary of the issues, and of course the Law Commission, which has spent four years looking at it. I think it is a really good Bill and it is going to help us a lot, as many noble Lords have told us.
It will be good for the concept of who is in charge. I like this idea of a user-in-charge; that is a really important issue. But, given the fact that the Bill has, I think, 77 clauses, it is going to take some studying when we get to Committee. One of the issues is going to be, as one or two noble Lords have said, the question of interfaces between when you are on automatic mode, if I can call it that; when you are not on that; where you are when it happens and who else gets involved, or should not do. The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, talked about the importance of having some self-drive capability, especially in the country, and he is absolutely right. To some extent, we could be using scooters or electric bikes—self-drive cars probably have a benefit of being more weather-resistant than my electric scooter, my electric bike or anything else—but the idea of individual transport is something we seem to have talked about a lot at the moment. It has to be good for everyone, efficient, convenient and a good investment.
I would like to spend a few minutes talking about safety. As the Minister said in his excellent introduction, safety is very important. But, like all things that are mechanical, when they come into contact with pedestrians, cyclists or other non-motorised users, the safety debate gets a little bit unfair. The AVs will probably be better than humans at avoiding collisions with other motor vehicles, but when it comes to humans on the road, or cyclists or whatever, there are a few questions we need to address. I was impressed by the background briefing that noble Lords will have received for the King’s Speech quite recently, which set out the requirements that came from the Law Commission:
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, particularly because it was he who encouraged me to take part in this debate. I acknowledge that self-driving vehicles are an exciting technology, with considerable advantages and implications for distribution, deliveries, and public and personal transport. It is partly the reason why 5G rollout is an object of government policy. To get ahead of that, we obviously need legislation and a framework for the future. I commend the all-party parliamentary group on its work and on setting out a very useful shopping list of criteria. I found that most helpful.
Any policy in this area must consistently apply core principles or it will fail, which is why Part 1 of the Bill is so important. But before the Government get too misty-eyed over the seductive technology and the benefits claimed by protagonists, I just suggest a slight reality check. This is also in the hope that someone will tell me that there are answers to all my reservations.
First, there are some claims made for AVs that I respectfully challenge. One is that AV technology is greener. It transpires on closer examination that this is largely hypothecated on the use of battery electric vehicles, a development that already exists and is not intrinsic to self-driving vehicles. Another is that it might be expected to reduce congestion. On that, too, I am not entirely convinced. Even in a fully digitised, connected and traffic management-ordered world, and even if the numbers of vehicles are reduced, peaks of congestion, unplanned events, inadequate capacity and progressive devotion of urban road space to other priorities are likely to persist. However, the idea of instantly directing approaching vehicles away from traffic incidents would be extremely welcome and, I am sure, benefit emergency services. That said, if the traffic jam-avoiding algorithms of some of the more hyperactive satnav systems are any indication—and I have used a few—significant additional road miles by way of diversions through previously quiet residential streets may be one rather negative outcome.
My Lords, I welcome the Bill, and it is a pleasure to take part in this Second Reading debate. In doing so, I declare my technology interest as adviser to Boston Ltd. I congratulate the Law Commission on its excellent work on the Bill. It has done a significant suite of work across many new technologies and delivered Bills, commentary and reports to Parliament of excellent quality; long may that continue. It enables us to have better initial legislation and a sense of the depth and breadth of the issues involved when we try to make optimum use of and deploy all the new technologies we currently have in our human hands.
I would like to touch on five principles: safety, transparency, accessibility, public engagement and power usage. First, on safety, it seems a useful discipline that, before embarking on any programme of automation or autonomous delivery, we should consider what can be done to improve the current situation. The Government state that the overriding objective here is better, safer journeys. What can currently be done with what we currently have?
When he winds up our debate, I would welcome comments from my noble friend the Minister on a number of examples. First, e-scooters: what do they add to better, safer journeys? What do they add to a healthier population? They certainly do not take cars out of the mix for the kind of journeys they do. What is the Government’s current position on further e-scooter experiments? What role do they think e-scooters play in a multiple, accessible, safe, healthy transport ecosystem?
There has been an extraordinary spike since Covid of cars and vehicles shooting red lights, even those on pedestrian crossings. Does my noble friend agree that, with very minimal technology investment—the cameras may well be there on many of these crossings and lights—government and local authorities should look to those cameras and that evidence to clamp down on and put an end to cars shooting red lights, as though red has suddenly become a soft amber simply to sail through? Can he confirm that, in major cities, these crossings are all likely to be currently monitored through the main transport control centres, such as Palestra in London?
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To address this fundamental change, the Bill will, for the first time, provide for corporate entities to assume responsibility for how self-driving vehicles behave, underpinned by a robust framework of safety standards, monitoring and enforcement. This legislation implements the recommendations of a four-year review by the Law Commission of England and Wales and the Scottish Law Commission. Their joint report draws on countless hours of expert legal analysis and three rounds of public consultation yielding hundreds of responses. I am grateful to the commissioners for their work, and for providing such a robust set of foundations for this Bill.
I move on to the main measures of the Bill, beginning with the issue that I know, rightly, will be at the forefront of noble Lords’ minds. Safety will be baked into every facet of this new regime from the very beginning. Only vehicles that meet the self-driving test will be authorised as self-driving. To satisfy this test, they will need to meet rigorous standards and be capable of driving safely and legally without human intervention. The test will be informed by a statement of safety principles, published by government following consultation and setting out the behaviours that self-driving vehicles should be expected to achieve. We intend that these safety principles will be drafted in line with the Government’s safety ambition: that self-driving vehicles should meet an equivalent level of safety to that of a careful and competent human driver. Perhaps regrettably, I should stress that this is in fact a much higher standard than that of the average driver on UK roads.
A new authorisation scheme will supplement the existing vehicle approval process and apply the self- driving test. The scheme will guarantee that there is an authorised self-driving entity, or ASDE, associated with every self-driving feature deployed in vehicles on our roads. The ASDE, likely a corporate entity such as the manufacturer or software developer, will assume responsibility for how the vehicle drives when the self- driving feature is activated. Once authorised, the vehicle and the ASDE will be subject to ongoing safety monitoring under the in-use regulatory scheme. Any safety-critical changes to the self-driving feature will require reauthorisation.
The Bill distinguishes between two types of self-driving features: those that can complete an entire journey in self-driving mode and those that can complete only part of a journey, thus requiring the option of handing back control to a human driver in certain contexts. In the latter case, while the vehicle is driving itself, the driver assumes a new role, which we call the user-in-charge. The Bill shields the user-in-charge from prosecution for offences relating to the driving task. The user-in-charge remains responsible for other elements not relating to the driving task, such as roadworthiness and insurance. Naturally, they are required to resume control if directed to by the vehicle, subject to being given sufficient time to regain awareness.
On no-user-in-charge, or NUIC, some features will allow the vehicle to complete an entire journey without needing the option of handing back to a human. These features will not require a user-in-charge. People in the vehicle, if indeed there are any at all, would all simply be considered passengers while the self-driving vehicle is activated. We refer to these as no-user-in-charge features.
The Bill creates a new legal entity for these circumstances: a licensed no-user-in-charge operator, also known as a NUIC operator. The NUIC operator will be comparable to a fleet operator; responsible for overseeing the vehicle and responding to incidents such as breakdowns. As always, the ASDE retains responsibility for how the vehicle drives.
The Bill includes a strict obligation on both these new entities, ASDEs and NUIC operators, to disclose safety data as part of in-use regulation, with criminal penalties for managers if they fail to comply. The Bill also grants powers to investigate incidents and issue regulatory sanctions. We will be able to direct entities to take certain actions to prevent future incidents, to issue compensation to those impacted or to pay fines. The Secretary of State will have unilateral power to suspend or alter any self-driving authorisation rapidly, if necessary to protect public safety. The Bill also contains measures to allow for safety investigations to be undertaken by independent statutory inspectors. These inspectors’ reports will not apportion blame or liability, but instead will make recommendations to improve safety in the sector as a whole. Together, the individual elements of the safety framework—approval, authorisation, in-use regulation, operator licensing and incident investigation—will form a safety feedback loop so that learning and improvement is baked in.
The Bill represents a major step in creating a full legal framework for self-driving vehicles, but it is not the only step. As with any new technology, we must regulate alongside its growth, building in the right checks and balances and the flexibility to respond to new developments and new use cases. The Bill will be followed by consultations and secondary legislation on the core elements that I have outlined. The statement of safety principles will be subject to parliamentary scrutiny, as will the authorisation and approval requirements and the in-use regulation scheme.
All the secondary legislative elements that make up the cohesive whole will be consulted on following Royal Assent, bringing in the views of the public, industry and academia. They will be delivered through secondary legislation or statutory guidance, which can be developed over time and subsequently amended as the technology evolves. Policy scoping notes relating to elements of the secondary legislation programme have been published, and I encourage noble Lords to review them ahead of Committee. I am also happy to arrange in-depth briefings as required.
Before I conclude, I would like to clarify the extent of the Bill. The scope of the Law Commission’s review was
“self-driving regulation in relation to road vehicles”.
Therefore, the Bill does not deal with other forms of self-driving technology, such as drones, aircraft or sea-craft. The Bill will extend to Great Britain. Self-driving vehicles which are authorised under the new regime can be authorised to use their self-driving features only in England, Wales and Scotland. While there is no explicit legal prohibition on their use if they cross the border into Northern Ireland, they would be operating without the clarity of legal responsibility that the Bill will provide. Operation with a safety driver or in conventional, human-driven mode will still be possible.
I conclude by highlighting again the opportunities here, for they are threefold. The first is road safety. Over 1,500 people are killed on our roads each year; each one a tragic loss felt so keenly by friends and family. There is now an opportunity to start to reduce that loss. The Bill is explicit that our safety principles must be framed with a view to improving road safety, and our safety ambition goes beyond this, setting a standard well above that of the average human driver.
The second opportunity is connectivity. Self-driving vehicles could significantly improve the efficiency of passenger and freight traffic on our roads while offering new travel options to those most at risk of isolation.
Finally, there is the economic opportunity. Recent years have seen astonishing leaps forward in the UK’s homegrown self-driving vehicle sector. The Law Commission’s thorough and detailed review of this subject lasted four years. In that same period, the UK self-driving sector generated £475 million of direct investment and created 1,500 new jobs. With the Law Commission’s work as its foundation, this legislation will deliver the vital legal clarity that the UK needs to retain its position at the global vanguard of this new technology. I beg to move.
I turn to the clauses highlighting the differences between user-in-charge vehicles, which require a legal and fit driver to assume vehicle control for parts of a journey, and non-user-in-charge vehicles, which can operate entirely autonomously for an entire journey. The Minister will know that non-user-in-charge vehicles do not require a legal and fit driver to be in the vehicle at any point during the journey. Will he therefore outline the safety regulations should a non-user-in-charge vehicle suffer a fault during a journey, given that there may be no legal and fit driver present to assume control of the vehicle?
The passage of this Bill will have the support of these Benches, but I hope the Minister will work constructively with Members from across the House to address any deficiencies or shortcomings. Autonomous vehicles present an exciting opportunity, which, if properly utilised and regulated by this Government, could create a safer and more prosperous way of living. Unfortunately, the transition and the rollout of this technology could also pose serious challenges to public safety and jobs.
Only vehicles which are safe for drivers, passengers and pedestrians should be allowed on our roads. Ministers must review all available evidence to ensure this remains the case. I finish by urging the Minister again to take steps to guarantee that the introduction of autonomous vehicles brings decent new jobs here in the UK. Automation has an incredible potential to make our lives simpler and more prosperous. However, if not properly managed and regulated, it could create greater risks than opportunities.
I now turn more specifically to insurance. At the commercial level, the London market is well placed to develop cover for the UK and elsewhere, so I noted with interest that the Government announced a consultation on captives: that is, an insurance company which is a wholly owned subsidiary providing insurance to its non-insurance parent company or companies. Somewhat ironically, London has the best experts for this underwriting, but we do not have any captives within the UK. Captives might be attractive for the automated vehicle sector, with their associated commercial considerations, including as a part of providing “good financial standing”. However, will the UK regulator, the Prudential Regulation Authority, take exception to the monoline nature of captives and make life difficult? Has the Minister any information in that regard, and have there been cross-departmental discussions?
The other insurance aspect is for the consumer, with a particular point of interest being when a driver becomes liable after a transition from automated driving. Naturally, insurance companies are interested in data on those transitions, including how many times those instances happen and in what circumstances and where, as well as driving patterns and so on. That is commercially useful to insurance companies for the purposes of assessing risk, getting the prices right and ascertaining whether someone is liable, and who. My question is: should they get it all for free? Some insurance companies are already involved in funding developments; others are not. Should their positions be the same? Over time, information will derive naturally from actual claims, but, more generally, this is an area where the entitlement to benefit from or monetise data resides elsewhere.
Some of this kind of information may also be delved into for other investigatory purposes, including authorisation and licensing. For the consumer, there is the dangling threat of insurance companies having to analyse whether the response at handover was what a competent driver would do.
Putting a simple time limit for the liability switch is making light of a difficult situation. Fighter pilots are trained in handovers—and I doubt that they are doing crosswords in the meanwhile; but that is the position envisaged in the documents I have read. I have spent a lot of time being driven around, rather than driving, as a safety precaution. Many times, I have looked up from reading a brief to wonder where on earth I was and felt quite disoriented—and that was in a constituency I was supposed to know and was representing. Regrettably, we will need statistics before we know the interval after handover that is fair to compare with a competent driver in ordinary circumstances—even if we can define that—because it will be different on a straight road with no manoeuvring expected, compared with a much more complex layout or circumstances when the AV cannot cope any more. Potentially, this puts a lot of uncertainty on the consumer, as well as insurance companies, and there may be a role for a levy and compensation model around the transitions, at least initially.
Clause 14 allows access to data for insurance purposes, but it is not clear to me whether that is intended to be free, so perhaps the Minister could shed some light on that. Already, there is lobbying to make the wording mandatory. That is relevant because provisions in the Bill acknowledge commercial rights—in this context, Clause 42(7), which applies to the whole of Part 1 —but that does not protect commercial rights where the disclosure and use by third parties is considered necessary. Clause 14 already seems to imply that information disclosure to insurers and others may be necessary—regulations might make it so—and the industry lobby wants to make it so in the Bill. Either route to mandating puts it outside the commercial harm provision in subsection (7). That needs more examination, and I suggest something along the lines of fair and reasonable compensation for the commercial use of information.
Finally, I have some interest in proof of safety and proof of concept, as it takes a vast amount of data to prove statistically that something is safer than something that exists already. Road fatality in the UK is 5 per billion miles driven. If you were to compare that with, say, a statistically significant number, you might have to look at the number of driven miles per 50 deaths. However, that would be 10 billion miles driven, which could be 100,000 AVs driving 10,000 miles, or 10,000 AVs driving 100,000 miles. That is an awful lot of miles, and we only have about 100 to 500 vehicles that could do that, so that converts to 20 to 100 years, depending on which end we are at.
I am interested to know how we are going to get this kind of mileage done. Will it be all in the UK? Will we accept evidence from other countries? Will it be for each AV, because why should you have your statistics marred by a bad apple? If we are going to accept evidence from other countries, can we be sure that it will be from similar driving conditions? A lot more could be discussed around that, but it is a very big statistical job to prove that something is safer than something else.
I recognise that the Bill is the start of constructing a framework and not the end, so I look forward to exploring its effects and some of the things that I have raised further at Committee stage.
Since 2015, the Government have funded the new Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles and I would be keen to hear from my noble friend what the budget is and what work has been done. Work is being done as we speak on ensuring that we grapple with these opportunities. It is a government body with scientific and technological expertise, and it would be good to hear from my noble friend what precisely it is doing and, as I say, about the budget and what liaison there is with other countries.
The Government deserve enormous credit for this legislation. It is important. We will need a budget and it will be good to hear how that works out. I realise that this is essentially reserved legislation, but it is important that we liaise with Wales and Scotland and, where appropriate, Northern Ireland—I appreciate that it is outside the legislation, but no doubt it would want to know how things could be developed there too. I am also keen to hear about that.
Passenger transport is obviously a particular challenge. My noble friend mentioned what is already happening in Edinburgh, and it would be good to hear about that experience. I appreciate that drones and waterborne vehicles are outside the scope of the legislation, but there is obviously work to be done there as well, so it might be good to hear what the Government propose in the long term in those areas, while noting that they are not subject to this legislation.
Safety must be paramount in the legislation—it goes without saying that that is the most important thing—and no doubt we will be looking at that in detail as it passes through your Lordships’ House. I would also be keen to look at the sanctions, both criminal and civil, and what existing legislation we would want to make use of and how that works in with this.
In concluding, I think the Government deserve credit and I trust that we will all get behind this legislation and improve it as it passes through your Lordships’ House.
I have to admit, and I apologise for it, that I was not able to attend the various briefing meetings that have been held in anticipation of this Bill, so I may have missed something, but I have one or two minor concerns that I do not think are touched on in the Bill. They probably fall into the category of ancillary legislation, which the Minister mentioned. As I said, they are not serious concerns, but I hope they are worth mentioning.
For instance, we might have to change the Highway Code and even the law to stop jaywalkers. In certain self-driving vehicle trials in Italy, people tended to walk out in front of automatic vehicles and behave irresponsibly—to challenge them, as it were. I am not sure what that says about the average Italian pedestrian or their current expectation of Italian driving abilities, but my point is that when we have self-drive cars on our roads, it may be that, as in the USA and Switzerland for instance, UK pedestrians should be able to walk across urban roads—I stress urban—only at certain points and when permitted. We do not want early accidents undermining the success of self-drive vehicles— I speak as an inveterate jaywalker.
On the other hand, on the assumption that all AVs will have permanently functioning all-round cameras and even black boxes, people will soon learn. Everything around a self-drive car will be recorded. You might even think twice about smacking your child near a self-drive car.
One other aspect occurred to me. I do not expect an answer as it is probably again an ancillary matter, but there are times when one is driving along and the police wave you down to tell you that there has been an incident of some sort and that you will have to wait or find another route. Clearly, a self-drive car will have no problem either waiting or finding an alternative route, but how will the policeman communicate with a self-drive car and how will the self-drive car know that this is a policeman and not some random joker, trouble- maker or car thief? As I said, neither of my concerns represents an insurmountable problem.
Finally, I have an extra reason to support this Bill. It is the hope that it will encourage the development of the same self-drive technology in other fields, off the road. I realise that the noble Lord has excluded these from the umbrella of this Bill, but I want to state them anyway. I have long had this vision of all farming in the world, particularly on smallholdings in sub-Saharan Africa, being carried out by myriad small, connected and automated tractors—CATs, I call them—about the size of a garden tractor or smaller. They are beginning to be developed. These CATs, I hope, will soon be nurturing the crop in their field carefully, day and night, using their own artificial intelligence and awareness of the weather forecasts, with only the minimal use of sprays and fertilisers, to produce a crop without the need for the farmers themselves to be expensively trained, because that expensive training is in sub-Saharan Africa the major blockage to optimal food production.
The other area for AVs is on the high seas. Rolls-Royce is on record as saying that a greater use of autonomous marine vessels could save the global marine industry up to £80 billion per annum in potential reductions to capital costs, manning costs and fuel costs. However, all that is in the future and, as the Minister said, not particularly relevant to this Bill, even if the technology implicit in the Bill is what is going to make it happen. So I conclude by repeating that I thoroughly approve of the Bill and I look forward to us all ironing out the inevitable potential problems as we take it forward.
“Only vehicles that can drive themselves safely and can follow all road traffic rules without the need for a human to monitor or control the vehicle … will be classified as self-driving and allowed on our roads”.
It carries on to say:
“Companies will have to meet safety requirements from the point a vehicle is introduced onto our roads or face new sanctions and penalties”.
We then come to the definition of what is safe: what are the safety principles that the Minister mentioned? We are told that road safety in Great Britain is better as a result of the use of authorised automatic vehicles on roads than it would otherwise be. I challenge that. This country’s road safety record is a lot worse than many other countries’. I am sure we will go into this in Committee. It is worse than Sweden, which had a target about 10 years ago of not having any road deaths at all in a year. It has not got there, but it is still better than us.
We have to get this safety rule better defined somehow. I am sure I shall have some amendments when we come to it. It is also a question of where we do it. If one is driving up a motorway, or your vehicle is, that is probably quite a good place to start the trial because there would be no pedestrians or cyclists, we hope, on the motorway. I expect that is one of the things that went quite well in the United States until recently. But when you get to narrow roads—maybe in the village that the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, mentioned; I do not know—or to towns and cities, it will get much more difficult. I will not read out my definition of safety now because that will come in Committee, but we can do a great deal better and have a target of making our road safety even better than it is at the moment.
On regulation, or how this will be policed and enforced, I recall proposing an amendment to some transport Bill a long time ago that suggested that the Office of Rail and Road should be responsible for road safety as well as rail safety. It does a good job on rail safety, as we all know, but it is not allowed to do much on road safety because that is thought to be the role of either the Department for Transport or the police. The ORR has a technical expertise that is well worth looking at. It would be quite nice if we had a consistent structure between these various transport modes—I include air as well as rail, road and sea—so that we have a safety regulator and, separately, an accident investigation branch that also does a blame-free investigation. We have a lot to learn, and it would be really good to bring in a bit of consistency.
Finally, I ask the Minister how this Bill and what we aim to do compares with what has happened on the continent in France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain or wherever. Are we ahead or behind? If I want to drive my car to France, will it work on AV mode there or do we have a long way to go? I look forward to his comments and to this Bill’s passage through the House.
The AVs that replace conventional vehicles may also be on the road for longer hours, so there are numerous other factors to be considered before some of the claims are entirely credible to me. Safety, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, seems to be at least partly a factor of road design as opposed to the intrinsic error of the human.
Secondly, I believe it is an acknowledged fact that for an extended period of time—possibly several decades —there will be AVs with artificial intelligence and smart sensors, and conventional vehicles driven by fallible mortals, all sharing the same space. This was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe. This requires an artificial intelligence that can cope with the irrational. I am a driver—that is the only interest I need to declare for this purpose—and I can usually tell whether a motorist in front of me or in another lane is distracted, looking for a destination, diffident or nervous, likely to cut in or pull out with little warning, or just plain aggressive. However, if I live long enough to be a driver faced with general AV use, I would like a visual warning of the fact so that I can make due allowance. Maybe a little flashing light could do that job for me.
Thirdly, there is the technology itself, which—leaving the matter of 5G rollout to one side—still has some way to go, in my view. I drive a vehicle that has certain automated assistance functions; noble Lords will be familiar with these. It has an automatic braking system that I cannot disable. A bit like a flighty horse, it is liable to screech to a halt for a plastic bag blowing across the road in front, an uneven roadside kerb or even pedestrian railings on a bend. It is only a matter of time before another driver goes into the back of me because of this. It also warns me fairly frequently that this function has become inoperative due to external conditions. It did not react to a deer that crossed the road immediately in front of me on the A24 the other night, which I hit a glancing blow.
The lane change warning is, however, something I can disable; it takes the form of a rather unnerving wobble in the steering that could, of course, mean other things to an experienced driver. On satnav, I frequently find that the speed limit, road priorities or even roads and junctions themselves have not been updated, despite a recent software download. Sometimes the system does not even know where I am, for admittedly short but potentially critical periods—there is one junction on the M25 that is like that. I predict that it will be some considerable time before the communications network is robust and comprehensive enough and has adequate reserve capacity—emergency capacity in particular —for general AV use. For a while, I suspect that greater differentials will arise between those areas where AVs can be used successfully and those where they cannot. We should not be blind to that.
Of course, there is the issue of suitability, to which Clause 1(3) of the Bill refers in terms of vehicle credentials. It should also take account of the road environment in which these vehicles operate, which is often of very variable quality. AVs may operate successfully somewhere such as Milton Keynes, for instance, on a coherently designed and well-constructed street layout. But get to, say, the rural West Country, an area that I part-time share with the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, and it is a rather different matter.
So, even without erased road markings; signage hidden behind vegetation or too dirty to read; the odd failed traffic light; roads with hidden potholes, anything but conventional width and—my noble friend Lord Cameron will understand when I say this—with or without large farm vehicle usage on narrow lanes; and no 5G or indeed any G at all, there are potential limits to where AVs may be safely used, apart from the general competency of the vehicle itself. I do not see this expressed clearly in Part 1.
While on that subject, I note a peculiarity in the definition of a road, which in 2021 was the subject of a legal case on the Isle of Wight and caused me to contemplate private roads where Street View does not penetrate and which may have novel street finishes, furniture, strange demarcation and so on. Two recent road schemes on public roads near my home are clearly defective. One is affected by appalling visibility for traffic approaching from the right, and the other is a new staggered junction of such appalling geometry that you cannot negotiate it without seriously cutting the corner. That does not matter if you are in smart car, but it does if you are in a delivery truck.
I entirely take the point made in an email I received from the cycling lobby that its members, plus, of course, the elderly on scooters, pedestrians, pets, deer, foxes, badgers and preferably hedgehogs, need to be recognisable by this evolving technology.
I have a particular worry, which has been expressed by other noble Lords, about this hybrid driver in control who is none the less able to allow automation to take over, subject to immediate human intervention where necessary. I sense this may become a commonplace halfway house, which is why I mention it when other noble Lords have also done so. I am not a behavioural scientist, but I wonder how quickly human attention returns to effective and possibly emergency reaction if, given conventional distractions inside or outside the vehicle, focus has wandered elsewhere once automation takes over. Avoiding danger is often a matter of intuitive prediction and behavioural clues, not always achieved in the last resort by sensors suddenly deciding they are going to apply the brakes.
Finally, a cautionary tale. In a previous attempt to improve highway capacity and safety, the Government invested in—noble Lords will know this—smart motorways. But, seemingly in an effort to reduce costs, they decided to omit the safety camera system designed to detect vehicles stopped in the slow lane—with tragic consequences. I am no longer happy simply to allow a Government driven by the politics of presentation and the balancing of finances, possibly in priority over safety, a completely free hand in such matters. I want an entity with comprehensive focus, independence, status and determination, equivalent to something like the Health and Safety Executive, to have oversight of how this technology is rolled out. I am not clear that the Bill adequately deals with that.
Therefore, while welcoming AV technology and the necessity of this Bill, I do not see it as addressing all essential aspects; and there are a lot of caveats to this, with critical elements left to subsequent regulation. I simply suggest proceeding with some caution lest we act in haste only to repent at leisure.
Nothing is achieved by a planning folly to take away all road markings, all crossings, all traffic lights, all signage, and put cars and pedestrians, tankers and toddlers in a so-called “shared space”. What is the Government’s position on existing shared-space schemes? How are they helping to deliver the rightly set out overriding objective of safer, better, more accessible journeys?
The Minister stated in his introduction—and it is in the notes to the Bill—that autonomous vehicles “will not be distracted”. That is certainly true if one considers distraction from a human perspective, but what about all the things that can easily confuse, make the system not work as intended and have tragic consequences, as has sometimes been seen in other jurisdictions?
What have the Government made of the evidence from experiments from around the world? I will draw on one example, from California, where it was reported in evidence that 40 incidents of autonomous vehicles interfering with emergency services vehicles had been recorded. Does my noble friend the Minister think this a high or low number? What are the consequences? What analysis have the Government made of that evidence and how has that fed into the Bill before us? In short, what is the Government’s safety ambition for autonomous vehicles? In no sense do I advocate this or even suggest it, but to put it at its most extreme, if it was evidentially proven that autonomous vehicles with no user in charge were significantly safer than human drivers, would the Government move to ban human driving? I merely put the question as it seems a logical conclusion to the arguments set out in much of the Bill’s documentation.
Turning to transparency, will the data gathered in all these experiments be available? Will it be open for third parties to analyse, consider and look at? Transparency is critical if we are to have increasing engagement, comfort and confidence in these new technologies. Will the Government look to have accredited third-party professionals to review, opine on and accredit these systems—the systems much more than the vehicles themselves?
The Bill sets out that there will be an ongoing review of the vehicles, but it should be more a review of the vehicles, the software and the technologies. How regular is that review to be? For it to be optimal, it needs to be done in real time and second by second. What learnings have the Government taken from other industries, such as the airline industry, including the approach that Rolls-Royce takes with its sensational Trent engines?
On accessibility and inclusion, can my noble friend the Minister confirm that all development in this AV space will be inclusive by design? If it is, that will resolve so many of the issues of access and equality which will otherwise impact later down the track. Again, what learnings have been taken from many of the rollouts, not least in San Francisco, when it comes to accessibility? To what extent and in what way have disabled people been involved in the experiments in this country? What plans do the Government have to ensure that disabled people are involved—indeed, that the whole diversity of people are involved through every level and stage of this experimentation, development and deployment?
Building on that point of broader public engagement, I say that if we are to achieve the optimum outcomes from any of these new technologies, public engagement is absolutely critical. We have seen examples from the past where public engagement has been good: the technology has been taken on and largely melts into the background. It just becomes a positive part of our everyday lives—and indeed, vice versa. What has been done so far by the Government to have meaningful public engagement across the country when it comes to autonomous vehicles? What is the plan to further push for what is, from my point of view, dramatically increased public engagement to ensure that we take people, at every stage, on all these autonomous journeys?
On power usage, what analysis have the Government undertaken on the impact on the grid? It is clear that this is going to be part of the electrification of our transport provision, but how is that going to roll out? We can currently achieve all our mobility needs with but 15% of the existing fleet. How will the Government ensure that bringing autonomous vehicles on stream will not simply add more vehicles to the road, causing more congestion and difficulties? What is the plan to ensure that there is substitution and multiple usage of AVs, rather than this simply being additive?
Alongside that, where do the Government see the power source for this coming from? Where will that energy come from since, as has already been noted, electric vehicles are only as green as the fuel that powers them? Do we currently have the resources that we need and a plan for long-duration energy storage? When it comes to the batteries in vehicles, do we have resilience of supply? Where are we prepared to look to develop the battery technologies from? Are we looking to still have some potential UK sovereign battery production?
I welcome the Bill but, like all Bills, it will benefit from some work. If we can have something, by the time the Bill leaves us, which really moves us forward in terms of better and smarter journeys—more accessible and more inclusive journeys—who would not want to get on board?