It is, as always, a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman). I thank him for the good-natured way in which he has steered this Bill through a number of sittings on the Floor of the House, and in particular for the very helpful way he has steered through these amendments, all of which relate to part 5 of the Bill dealing with charging points for electric vehicles. They were so ably moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) at the outset of this brief debate.
This whole issue is important on a variety of levels and for a variety of reasons, but particularly because it addresses a growth area. As my hon. Friend made clear in his opening remarks, this is an area that will receive a great deal of attention in the months and years ahead. The sorts of issues we have debated this evening will be debated at length in the years to come and some of the
problems we have identified will be applicable not only to London, but throughout the country, and I regard this Bill as a blueprint for what will follow.
I wonder if it might have been better for this whole issue of charging points for electric vehicles to have been dealt with on a national basis so that we could deal with it across the nation, with a single set of rules and regulations, rather than just dealing with it, as this Bill does, on a piecemeal basis for London alone.
What I call the first sub-group of amendments deals with the provision of charging apparatus within car parks and on the public highway. Essentially, the issue is this: who should have the responsibility for providing these charging points? Should it be, as my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) suggested, purely the private sector, or should it be, as my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch would have it in these amendments, purely the local authorities, or should there be a mix of the two?
If the amendments are agreed to, essentially a monopoly would be created for the London local authorities, in the sense that the permissive nature of clause 16(1) which says they
“may provide and operate charging apparatus for electrically powered motor vehicles”
would be changed, and the provision would state they “shall” do those things . Under clause 16(1)(a) they would be required to provide those charging points in every single “public off-street car park” and under subsection (b), on a discretionary basis, on the
“highway for which they are responsible as highway authority.”
In my view that goes way too far.
On this amendment and consequential amendments, I am entirely with my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East and the promoters of the Bill in that I think the London local authorities should not be forced to provide these charging points. This part of the Bill is entirely superfluous. Given the Localism Act 2011, I question whether there is a need for specific provisions to give London local authorities the power to provide and operate charging apparatus for electrically powered motor vehicles. Under the general power that all local authorities were granted under that Act, they may already have these powers, should they choose to investigate the matter and make use of them.
This should be left for the market to decide, as was made clear by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East. We are talking about providing the energy to power vehicles. Nobody has ever suggested that local authorities should be responsible for providing diesel or petrol and setting up their own petrol stations, so why does this Bill contemplate giving them the power to provide charging points for electric vehicles? Why the difference? At the start of the 20th century were our forebears in this place suggesting that the local authorities of the day set up petrol stations for the newly invented combustion engine? I suggest that they were not. On that basis, I am suspicious about amendment 21 and the two consequential amendments, 22 and 23. I have to inform my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch that if they are pushed to a vote, I would vote against them.
Amendment 24 would remove clause 16(2), which gives local authorities the power to provide for someone else to operate these charging points, and would mean,
in effect, the nationalisation of this scheme. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley, I am surprised that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch tabled this amendment, as it goes against what I would have thought were his normal instincts in these matters. Nevertheless, it has been tabled and we must consider it. It has a number of consequential amendments, all relating to “authorised persons”. Reference has been made to those, so, for speed of debate, I will not go through them again. The point is: if London local authorities are going to be given this power, it is entirely fair and reasonable that they should have permission to allow another authorised person, if they so wish, to do this work on their behalf and operate these charging points.
The next amendments deal with the issue of liability for these charging points, and we have heard a number of arguments tonight as to where that responsibility should lie. I can only assume that the objective of subsection (7), which would be removed if amendment 27 were accepted, is to try to absolve local authorities of responsibility. There can be no other reason for it. If they were not negligent, they would not have anything to fear; there would be no problem. I am suspicious about why the subsection is in the Bill at all and I agree entirely with amendment 27, which I would support if it were pressed to a Division later this evening.
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I would also support amendment 28, which deals with the determination of liability for someone using one of these charging points. The Bill states:
“For the purposes of determining, in any proceedings in a court of civil jurisdiction, who is liable for injury, damage or loss resulting from the presence on a highway or public off-street car park of a connecting cable at or near charging apparatus provided under this section, it shall be presumed that the person in charge of the relevant vehicle at the relevant time had responsibility for and control of the cable.”
In other words, the subsection is very serious, in that it makes a presumption that a charged person accused of having committed an offence under the Bill would find it difficult to rebut. There would be a statutory presumption that they were at fault, that they had responsibility for and control of the cable and that they were responsible for any injury, damage or loss resulting from the cable being there.
As has been evident from this evening’s debate, there is some lack of clarity about exactly what a connecting cable is and whether, for example, it would be connected to the charging point or the car. I suspect that that is the root cause of the confusion. I can well understand local authorities not wanting to be liable for connecting cables that come from the car but, as I tried to point out earlier, that is not the definition in subsection (11). “Connecting cable” is specifically defined as
“any cable…whether provided by the authority or otherwise, used to connect the charging apparatus to a vehicle and that is not permanently attached to the charging apparatus”.
There is some confusion and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch for drawing it to the attention of the House. I hope that his amendments go some way towards rectifying the problem.
The next amendments are all consequential on the removal of the words “authorised person”, so I will not deal with them.
Let me turn now to amendment 37, which replaces the word “consulted” in line two of clause 18 with the words “obtained the consent of”. Clearly, that is an absolutely crucial change. There is no point in merely consulting another authority, and the much more clear requirement that the consent of the other planning authorities is obtained makes much more sense. For that reason, I have no difficulty in supporting that amendment.
As we have heard, the Bill makes no provision for consulting other car park users. It has been suggested that there would be no need for such consultation, but I disagree, because car parks are often full to capacity and if certain sections of a car park are to be cordoned off for use as charging spaces, that will affect other car park users. I could well envisage many disgruntled people who are trying to park driving past a lot of empty spaces that have been kept for use only as charging bays. I fear that the problem in practice will not be people making illegal use of the electricity, which I shall deal with when I speak to amendment 40, but people parking their petrol and diesel vehicles in spaces provided for electrical charging points, yet that is not covered by the Bill. Perhaps that problem has not been thought about, but it represents a real risk, so it would be sensible at least to carry out consultation with other users.
If I had to pick only one of the many amendments in the group on which my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch should test the will of the House, it would be amendment 40. The amendment is simple, given that it would remove clause 19, which will create the new offence of the unlawful use of a charging point. The clause states that anyone found guilty of that offence would be
“liable on a summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 3”,
which is presently £1,000, but might shortly increase to £4,000. I accept that such a deterrent would be sufficient to put anyone off making unlawful use of a charging point, but rather than putting people off, why not encourage them to use the points? Why not say, “Here is an electric charging point, so if you want to use it, do so”? When one pays for fuel at the pump with a credit card, after putting in one’s card and entering the number, a specific amount of fuel—usually up to £99—can be drawn down. There might be a technical reason, but why could we not do the same for electricity? Why could not people enter their card and code so that electricity up to a given amount could be dispensed? That ought to be the way forward because we then would not need to create an additional offence. That explains my rationale for supporting amendment 40, leaving aside the other good arguments that we have already heard, with which I entirely concur.
There is no need to create this new offence when it would already be an offence to damage or vandalise a charging point, as that would be covered by criminal damage. In any event, there is no specific reference in clause 19, as it refers to using the apparatus
“for any purpose other than charging a vehicle”.
I can only imagine what other uses it might be put to—perhaps charging a mobile phone or other equipment, such as a computer or laptop. Who knows what the charging points will be used for. Local authorities could use them as a money-making opportunity if they thought wider than vehicles.
Those are my brief thoughts on this group of amendments. The House should be grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch for bringing the amendments before us today, not least because amendment 30 has been accepted by the promoters of the Bill. This is not the first amendment that has been accepted, so I am grateful to the promoters for having listened carefully to the arguments put forward by my hon. Friend and having paid due attention to his arguments. If I may make a closing bid, I think that of all the amendments, amendment 40 is the one that should be put to the vote. If it is, I can assure my hon. Friend of my support.