My Lords, I must first apologise to the Committee: I was not here for the Second Reading, because transport has never been my top priority in terms of matters that come before your Lordships’ House. Technology has been much more important to me, and it struck me that technology, which is advancing at an incredible pace—its capacity is doubling every two years—affects transport systems almost more than anywhere else.
We think here of the driverless cars that are being trialled at the moment, mainly in the United States, with a certain amount of success. The amount of money that the big tech companies in the United States can put into this means that we are going to get driverless cars within the foreseeable future, and that is going to completely revolutionise the whole business of how our cities operate. The price of taking taxis from A to B is going to come right down, which will affect car ownership. It will mean that people give up owning cars, which are getting more and more expensive, and will rent them for long journeys. At the same time our streets will be much emptier and it may well be, with the introduction of electric cars at the same time, that we reduce the pollution in our cities as well. This is coming whether we like it or not, and we must accept that technology is moving very fast and is going to have an enormous effect.
Driverless cars are tomorrow’s technology. Driverless trains are yesterday’s technology; we already have driverless trains. The Docklands Light Railway, which operates over 24 miles in the East End of London, was introduced in 1987. That is the sort of technology that our new train operators should be thinking of when they start running trains and taking up new contracts. If they do this, it will mean that we can start lowering the costs of operating trains.
I have to say that the history of this is not very encouraging because trains were introduced on new lines on the London Underground, and such was the
trade unions’ opposition that those proposals were dropped and they are still driven by operators. This is not encouraging, but we have to look at the whole situation. There will be a lot of opposition to introducing new technology, and the result will of course be that passengers pay much more for travelling by public transport systems operated by people who need not be there.
We have to think now about where technology is taking us in the future. How are the Government going to resolve the conflict with the trade unions, with which to date they have decided on enormous pay increases for driving operators, when in the near future we are possibly not going to need those people at all? Do the Government stand up for the passengers and lower fares, or will they stand up for the wages of train operators who are not actually needed because technology has taken over their jobs?
The same also applies to passenger aircraft—in most airports around the world, ground control can now take off and land virtually any large passenger aircraft. Of course, people feel much more reassured by having a pilot in the seat. On the other hand, I can see the low-cost airlines coming along quite soon and saying, “Well, if you travel in a pilotless aircraft, we will actually lower your fare”. People will then have to decide whether they are prepared to trust the technology.
The basic story still applies: the amount spent on research and development by the big-tech companies is so great that it makes anything that the Government can spend look like chicken feed. At the end of the day, they will iron out the technological problems, and the safety issues will be resolved. At that stage, we will want to see the dividend that comes with that: the cost of travel coming down. The Government will have to decide whether they back the trade unions or whether they want to see cheaper travel for customers.