My Lords, I thank the Minister for his responses. At this stage, of course, everything is probing. I possibly still entertain a hope that we can have some little light-touch mentions that are not overbearing somewhere in the text. Maybe we will return to some of these issues on Report.
There are one or two things other noble Lords have said that I would like to touch on. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, mentioned connectedness. We are falling into a bit of a trap if we start talking about the connectedness of automated vehicles, because the big prize is the connectedness of all vehicles—those which are driven and those which are automated. That is where the real benefits to traffic management and the economic benefits reside. That is a much bigger scheme of interconnectedness, and we are doing ourselves a disfavour by almost sidelining the connectedness and connected car issues as if they are something small and of less importance than the big goal of automated vehicles. In the near term, connectedness is a lot more relevant and moves into what is happening with automated vehicles. We should try to think of it as more of a whole.
I am aware on the simulation aspects, which were addressed, and that we cannot have millions of hours of road driving. Simulations are important and it is an iterative process between simulated tests and road tests. I am perhaps reassured that that is what is in mind. I still do not like the vision that, sometime in the future, it might happen that there are absolutely no road tests—even small ones. Maybe it is wrong to try to insert “substantial”, implying that—this is not what I intended—it would be more than the simulated tests. I still think there should be a significant amount in there for a very long time into the future.
The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, said that his main interest is safety. Certainty is quite fundamental to safety. There is lots more to get to, so I will not say any more now. With the notion that I might return with this in a gentler form on Report, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.