Draft Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations
2021 The Committee consisted of the following Members: Chair: Mr
Laurence Robertson † Chapman, Douglas (Dunfermline and West Fife)
(SNP) † Colburn, Elliot (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con) †
Cruddas, Jon (Dagenham and Rainham) (Lab) † Elphicke, Mrs Natalie
(Dover) (Con) † Farris, Laura (Newbury) (Con) † Greenwood, Lilian
(Nottingham South) (Lab) † Harrison,...Request free trial
Draft Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations
2021
The Committee consisted of the following Members:
Chair:
† (Dunfermline and West
Fife) (SNP)
† (Carshalton and
Wallington) (Con)
† (Dagenham and Rainham)
(Lab)
† (Dover) (Con)
† (Newbury) (Con)
† (Nottingham South)
(Lab)
† (Parliamentary
Under-Secretary of State for Transport)
† (Wantage) (Con)
† (North Durham) (Lab)
† (Wythenshawe and Sale East)
(Lab)
† (Easington) (Lab)
† (Rugby) (Con)
† (West Bromwich East)
(Con)
† (Cheadle) (Con)
† (Lord Commissioner of Her
Majesty's Treasury)
† (St Ives) (Con)
(East Ham) (Lab)
Chloe Freeman, Stella Maria Gabriel, Committee Clerks
† attended the Committee
Fourth Delegated Legislation Committee
Wednesday 8 December 2021
[Mr in the Chair]
Draft Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations
2021
14:30:00
The Chair
I remind Members that they are expected to wear face coverings
when not speaking and to maintain distancing as far as possible,
in line with current Government guidance and that of the House of
Commons Commission. Please give one another and members of staff
space when seated and when entering and leaving the room. I also
remind Members that they are asked by the House to have covid
lateral flow tests twice a week if coming on to the parliamentary
estate—either at home or in the House. Will Members send their
speaking notes by email to hansardnotes@parliament.uk? Similarly,
officials in the Gallery can communicate electronically with
Ministers. I call the Minister to move the motion.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport ()
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Electric Vehicles
(Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon,
Mr Robertson. The regulations will be made under the powers
provided by the Automated and Electric Vehicles Act 2018. They
mandate that most new private electric vehicle charge points sold
in Great Britain be capable of smart charging and meeting minimum
device-level requirements. They will play an important role in
helping us to meet our transport decarbonisation targets.
As announced by the Prime Minister as part of the world-leading
10-point plan for a green industrial revolution, the Government
are going further and faster to decarbonise transport by phasing
out the sale of new petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2030. From
2035, all new cars and vans must be 100% zero emission at the
tailpipe. Cars and vans represent one fifth of UK domestic CO2
emissions, and accounted for 71% of domestic UK transport
emissions in 2019. Ending the sale of conventional new petrol and
diesel cars and vans is a key part of the answer to our long-term
transport, air quality and greenhouse gas emissions.
Electric vehicles do not only present a huge opportunity to
decarbonise transport. They also present an opportunity for
consumers to contribute to the efficient management of
electricity and to share the benefits of doing so. Smart charging
will enable that. It enables consumers to shift their EV charging
to times when electricity is cheaper and demand is low. It is a
win-win, both reducing the need for costly network reinforcement
and saving consumers money on their energy bills. Today we are
debating regulations that are essential to drive the uptake of
this important technology to enable the transition to electric
vehicles while minimising costs to consumers.
This instrument could deliver up to £1.1 billion of savings to
the power system by 2050. Through this instrument, the Government
will deliver four key objectives for smart charging policy by
driving consumer uptake; delivering consumer protections; helping
to ensure the stability of the electricity grid; and supporting
innovation.
I will provide the Committee with some details on the key
provisions in the instrument. First, the regulations mandate that
most domestic and workplace charge points sold in Great Britain
will have the capability to smart-charge so that consumers can
benefit from the savings that that offers. Many home charge
points already have smart functionality, so this instrument will
work with the grain of the market and consumer behaviours to
drive significant uptake of the technology and reduce the cost of
EV transition.
It is important to note that the instrument maintains consumer
choice. It mandates that charge points must have the
functionality to support smart charging. Consumers will still be
in control of when they charge, and they will of course continue
to be able to choose the energy tariff that suits their needs and
decide whether they subscribe to smart-charging services.
Some consumers might not engage with smart charging so, to
encourage them to charge at times of low electricity demand, the
instrument ensures that charge points are pre-set not to charge
at peak times. Importantly, the instrument mandates that
consumers must be informed and asked to confirm the setting
during first use and that they must also be able to edit it at
any future point too.
Secondly, the regulations establish new cyber-security and grid
protection requirements. The instrument embeds new and more
robust cyber-hygiene standards into smart charge points to help
mitigate the risk that charge points are hacked and controlled to
the detriment of both individual consumers and the electricity
system. It also requires a randomised delay function to prevent
the synchronised switching on or off of a large number of charge
points—for example, in response to a drop in electricity prices.
This will help ensure that smart charge points support the
integration of EVs into the electricity system and do not
destabilise it.
Thirdly, the instrument sets new requirements on how charge
points monitor and record electricity consumption. This
requirement will help consumers to engage with their energy bills
and usage and ensure a charge point is capable of supporting
smart services. Many requirements, such as cyber-security,
electricity monitoring and the randomised delay function, align
with standards developed with industry, namely the British
standard for energy smart appliances, PAS 1878.
Finally, we are mandating that, in the event that a consumer
switches their electricity supplier, their charge point must
retain its smart functionality. This will ensure that consumers
are not locked into a specific energy supplier by their choice of
charge point. Members of the Committee will note that, across the
instrument, we have taken an outcome-focused approach and do not
prescribe specific technical implementations. This approach will
support ongoing innovation within the charge point market and
will help to maintain our position as world leaders in smart
technology.
These regulations are essential to ensuring the successful uptake
of smart-charging technology and to supporting the electricity
grid and consumers in the transition to electric vehicles. I hope
that colleagues will join me in supporting the regulations, which
I commend to the Committee.
14:36:00
(Wythenshawe and Sale East)
(Lab)
It is pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I
am disappointed that Bolton Wanderers are slipping slightly in
the league table, but I am sure they will turn the season round
before we know it.
I wish to raise a few points about the statutory instrument. We
agree that stopping the sale of non-electric vehicles by 2030 is
the right thing to do, but my colleagues and I are concerned that
there is no legislation governing the resale of diesel and petrol
vehicles in the second-hand market going forward. Another concern
we have raised is that, as the Minister has said, the Government
have finally adopted Labour’s policy of phasing out the sales of
new petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030, but hybrid vehicles will
still be sold until 2035. If it is a genuine commitment, there
seems to be a lack of joined-up thinking from Government in their
policy on this matter. Without sufficient infrastructure and
charging points available to all across the nation, we can see
people using an electric car for day-to-day journeys and
retaining an older, more polluting vehicle for longer trips. I
have not checked with the House of Commons Library today, but we
currently have about 40 million registered vehicles on our roads.
We know our road infrastructure cannot cope with that, but we are
worried that people will retain their old polluting cars and get
an electric vehicle. We know what savage chaos and congestion
that will cause up and down our land.
When we drive our petrol or diesel vehicles 250 miles to see
family or for a holiday in this country, we all know that we will
be able to access fuel on arrival. Can the same be said for
accessing a working charge point everywhere in the country? Fully
electric and hybrid vehicle sales have surged this year, making
up more than a quarter of new vehicle sales in 2021, according to
the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. However, the UK’s
charging infrastructure is falling behind and overall funding for
charging given out to local authorities has fallen from £15
million in 2019-20 to 6.5 million in 2020-21. Many local
authorities are having to use available funds for remaining
schemes and not every dwelling has a parking spot.
I do not need to tell anyone in this Room that Storm Arwen, which
hit this country almost two weeks ago, has wreaked havoc on the
nation’s power supply. This was raised by my hon. Friend the
Member for City of Durham () at Prime Minister’s
question, and I have the massive Durham contingent of my hon.
Friend the Member for Easington and my right hon. Friend then
Member for North Durham behind me in Committee today. There are
areas in the north of England that are still without power. How
can the Government guarantee that in such circumstances there
will be capacity to charge electric vehicles? It goes without
saying that emergency vehicles must be able to charge their EVs
regardless. What can the Government do to provide assurances that
essential car users such as carers, NHS workers, police, the fire
service, hauliers and food deliverers will be able to charge
their vehicles? It has been 10 days since that storm.
We must be mindful of the fact that wi-fi coverage will be
necessary to charge vehicles. What steps will be taken to ensure
that customers will be able to recharge? I am not alone in not
always having mobile coverage in this country. If I want to drive
to holiday in the Orkney islands, as I regularly do, will I be
able to? That is a 500-mile journey from Manchester, and EV
vehicles can currently only cover about half of that journey. In
the capital and other major cities, we have excellent mobile
signal coverage, but is that the same in our rural areas and
highlands? That needs to be addressed by the Minister.
The Government promised a charging strategy by the end of the
year. Today is 8 December. Where is it? We need action to address
regional inequalities and quickly ramp up charging to ensure that
it is both easy to use and accessible to customers. Can the
Minster provide an update on that strategy? She is correct in
saying that the transition to electric vehicles is a huge
opportunity for cleaner, lower emissions, and has the potential
to create thousands of good green jobs, highly trade unionised
across our country. However, the Government need to think bigger
when it comes to charging infrastructure, affordability, and the
supply chain.
14:42:00
(North Durham) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson.
I have a few general points to make that relate specifically to
what the Minister said. The present Government have gone into
some type of academic competition to see who can be greener than
green, and they have set the ambitious target of 2030 as the date
when no non-electric vehicles will be sold. However, let us be
realistic; most of our constituents do not buy new cars. They
will be reliant on petrol, diesel or hybrid cars for quite some
time. Certainly a lot of my constituents, and others in rural
communities, rely on heavier vehicles—diesel, mainly—for work,
farming, and other things.
I have not yet seen a technology that is going to replace some of
those vehicles. We all need to be realistic, and although the
Government’s ambition is to be lauded, the reality is that 2030
will not be a sudden cut-off date whereby everything is going to
change. That will not be the case—in certain areas, diesel,
hybrid, or alternatives such as hydrogen-powered vehicle are
going to be the answer rather than electric vehicles.
The Minister talks about the consumer. In certain areas—take
North Durham and Easington for example—it may be easy for someone
to install a charging point in a leafy, detached or semi-detached
house, but in a terraced street in Horden or Craghead, how are we
going to install an electric charging point without a succession
of cables running across the street to charge people’s cars? I do
not think enough thought has gone into this. Many people will
have to rely on public charging points rather than installing
them in their own homes.
The same applies to inner cities, to people living in blocks of
flats, for example. Are we to have cables dangling from a
six-floor tower block down to an electric car in the car park? Of
course not. If we are to get to a situation where we have only
electric vehicles, how are people going to access those charging
points? That brings us on to the issue about competition, because
those individuals will not have a choice to install a charging
point at home and then look for the cheapest tariff. They will be
reliant on going to a garage, a local council facility or some
other body that sets up charging points. They could be at a
disadvantage, because they will not be able to shop around for
the cheapest tariff. That needs to be thought about as well.
There is not just the added cost, for many of these people, to
acquire an electric vehicle, which they may not do for many
years. As I have said, many of our constituents do not buy
brand-new cars—
(Rugby) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman is talking about people—often living in
terraced houses—being able to charge their cars. Many of them
will be able to charge at work. There are enlightened employers
who are providing charging points. I will give as an example
Cadent, which is setting up in my constituency a new office
development where there will be charging for people at work.
There are ways of getting around this issue.
Mr Jones
I applaud those employers, but let me examine what the hon.
Gentleman is suggesting. Let us say that someone lives in Stanley
in my constituency, in a terraced street in Craghead, and they
work at the local Asda supermarket, for example. Certainly they
could drive their car there, but will all employers be queuing up
to provide charging points? A lot of charging points would have
to be developed. Actually, only certain people will be able to
access such provision. Some enlightened employers may well
provide charging points, but we need to think about the
individuals I am talking about, because there is going to be a
poverty trap for some of these individuals, who will not have the
choice to go for cheap tariffs or deals on their electricity
accounts, because they will not physically be able ever to put in
a charging point at home. That needs to be thought about.
Another issue is that local authorities and car parks are putting
charging points in car parks, but some of them have cut-off times
when those car parks are closed, for perfectly good reasons, so
they will not be open to constituents who do not have access to
charging points at home. That will be a particular issue, I
think, in rural communities.
(Cheadle) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman is developing a really important point.
Has he considered the possibility for the future of people using
community charging points? In exactly the same area that he
describes in his constituency, a member of the community might be
able to rent out their own charging point to enable those who
cannot put one on their own property to use that community
one.
The Chair
Order. Before we continue, I point out that we are getting a
little wide of the motion, which is about the actual make-up of
the points, which involves smart functionality and the specified
cyber-security requirements. I have let this debate go on for a
few minutes, but perhaps we could get back to the main point in
just a moment.
Mr Jones
I would not challenge your ruling, Mr Robertson, but the point is
that it is the smart technology that allows people to get
different tariffs and cheaper rates, and the people I am talking
about will be at a disadvantage.
The hon. Member for Cheadle makes a good point, which I would
support; I would have no problem with what she suggests. But
again, will people have to drive and leave their car overnight at
a community charging point in order to get the cheaper rates from
that smart meter, rather than having access to them? I doubt
whether they will do that, because there would be security issues
in relation to the vehicle and things like that. However, the
initiative that the hon. Lady suggests is a good one.
Before I go on to security, I will talk about wi-fi, because it
is a related issue in terms of smart technology. The explanatory
memorandum says:
“Charge points will rely on a network connection to meet the
smart requirements within the legislation, for example using
Wi-Fi.”
That is great—if people have access to wi-fi. As my hon. Friend
the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East said from the Front
Bench, it is patchy, to say the least, in some areas and
certainly in rural communities. If we are not careful, it will
mean that parts of the country, especially rural communities—I
know certain parts of my constituency where wi-fi connection is
not good at the best of times—might be disadvantaged, because
they will not be able to connect their smart meter to the wi-fi
network.
It is okay to agree on the regulations, and I will come to
electricity grids in a minute, but there has to be a holistic
approach to how things will work. I accept that if someone does
not have access to wi-fi or the coverage is intermittent, the
meter will still work—that is what the regulations say—but some
people will be put at a disadvantage. Again, that needs to be
thought about.
I turn to cyber-security. I accept that the regulations say that
cyber-security needs to be taken into consideration, but I have a
direct question for the Minister. Who is monitoring the
components that are going into the smart technology? Following
Huawei’s involvement in the telephone network, we found that
there could be—I know there is a lot of nonsense said about it—an
issue with cyber-security because of the components. I would like
to understand who is monitoring the components going into the
smart meters, because otherwise we could open up our networks to
potential cyber-attack.
I would also be interested to know what the market is, because
one of the issues around Huawei was that the Chinese had come to
dominate the market over successive years, as Huawei and two
other companies were providing part of the technology. Do we have
robust enough components and smart metering companies providing
the technology, to ensure that there is a real market in which
the consumer has choice, which obviously gets cost down, and,
more importantly, that there is investment in technology and
cyber-security?
The regulations say that the Department for Digital, Culture,
Media and Sport looked at this issue. I would be interested know
whether the components and structure of smart meters have been
looked at by the National Cyber Security Centre to ensure that
not only the components but the technology and how it works are
as robust as possible. That could lead to a vulnerability: if
someone got into a network and could close things down or disrupt
them in some way, that could have a devastating effect like we
have seen recently in the United States, where there was
cyber-hacking of the petrol network that supplies fuel. The
principle is the same. There, the hackers got in and stopped the
pumping of petrol through pipelines. An equivalent of that would
be if someone could get into the network and disrupt charging
points. Their maintenance and ensuring that the components are
safe will be very important for the future; otherwise there could
be vulnerabilities, which would be an issue.
Finally, I want to talk about the resilience of the network. As
my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East said, it
is fine to have electric vehicles and charging points, but it is
no good having an electricity grid that is not robust, as we have
seen in parts of the north-east in the last few days. People did
not have electricity for 10 days, with some even experiencing
their 11th or 12th day without electricity. Again, this is
important, and I would like to understand how the issue will be
linked to the urgent need to look at the resilience of the
electricity grid system, as I have called for this week.
I do not oppose electric vehicles, but we need to get realistic
about how quickly this will happen and how safe it will be. More
importantly, we should not end up with a two-tier system whereby
only some consumers have access to cheap electricity for
charging.
(Easington) (Lab)
I want to briefly raise an important point about that disparity,
particularly in relation to people who are less well off. My
understanding is that VAT is applied to electricity drawn from
community charging points at a rate of 20%, whereas if someone is
fortunate enough to have a charging point on their drive, VAT is
payable at only 5%. That makes a massive difference. I stand to
be corrected, and I look to the Minister for guidance. It is an
issue that should be of concern to us all.
Mr Jones
My hon. Friend raises a very good point. If that is the case, it
is another example of a market where those who can afford least
will pay more. That cannot be right. In the gallop towards the
nirvana of net zero that the Government are trying to achieve, we
cannot create situation where markets will be fixed so that those
who can least afford to pay will pay more. Our considerations
should not be just about charging points but the whole
issue—network security, affordability and some practical issues
about where these charging points will work and where they will
not.
14:56:00
I fear that we strayed considerably from the technical aspects.
As interesting as it was, I recommend that those interested
perhaps attend Westminster Hall debates for a comprehensive
discussion on the wider aspects of EV charging.
To respond to some questions, the regulatory requirements are
aligned with the British standard for energy smart appliances PAS
1878 and build on relevant existing international and European
standards. I am more than happy to write to the right hon. Member
for North Durham with a comprehensive response on the
cyber-security aspects.
On charging, there are 26,000 publicly available charge points,
of which 4,900 are rapid chargers. We know more needs to be done,
but we are working with local authorities, and I encourage
Members across the House to work with me to help their local
authorities roll out the necessary charge point infrastructure,
which must match, as the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale
East said, the considerable interest in electric vehicles.
The draft regulations are an essential step in ensuring the
success uptake of electric vehicles and, therefore, the
decarbonisation of transport. They are particularly about the
technical capability to take part in smart charging and assist
with managing the electricity system, while saving money on
energy bills. This is the first step.
Mr Jones
Will the Minister give way?
I am afraid I will not, because I know votes are imminent. Work
will continue so that consumers can fully access smart benefits
and participate in the transition to a flexible system.
Mr Jones
On a point of order, Mr Robertson. I thought the purpose of
scrutiny was to ask questions that the Minister responds to. She
is just reading out the civil service brief in front of her,
which is not good enough.
The Chair
It is not for me to decide what the Minister says.
I assure the Committee that this is my work. This will include
the continued roll-out of smart meters to households and small
businesses across Great Britain, and implementing further
protections for consumers and the energy system. I hope the
Committee will join me in supporting this statutory
instrument.
Question put and agreed to.
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