I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this short debate on these regulations, which relate to electric vehicle charge points. I take seriously many of the issues raised by noble Lords.
My overarching observation is that the consultation for these regulations took place in the first half of 2021 and, since then, we have had to reach a balance and work hard with an industry that is, in some cases, quite nascent and, in others, made up of fast-growing businesses. We need to balance the burden that we put on business, its cost and the maximum reasonable utility to EV drivers. That balance is quite difficult, which, to a certain extent, is why there are delays in introducing some of these things. One needs to give the industry some time—for example, the two years to sign up to a third-party payment roaming provider. Of course, other interventions are within one year.
In positive news, we are already seeing a significant movement from the charge point providers because they know that this is coming now. These regulations have not yet been through the House of Commons but they will, and the providers know that they are coming. We are seeing movement and we have had to reach that difficult balance. A number of noble Lords have highlighted particular issues where they feel that further changes might be made, for example in certain circumstances where a charger is 7 kilowatts and the new requirement is 8 kilowatts, for contactless; that was brought up by the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer. We will do a consultation later this year.
The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, asked me to recognise that this is the start of a journey. It is very much so—I expect us to develop the requirements over time—but we absolutely do not want to stop the industry in its tracks by getting these charge points out there when it is very much helping the Government and the country.
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The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, spoke about 99% resilience for the network as a whole. Again, that was one of the things we changed following the consultation. We moved from individual charge points to the network as a whole because we felt that that was more reasonable. I think he will probably not be surprised to learn that there are certain exemptions to that. Obviously, it is beyond the operator’s control that the Great British public unsupervised occasionally does things that it should not. In those circumstances, that would not count, although we would expect very quick repairs.