Asked by
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to increase
the number of charging points for electric vehicles.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for
Transport () (Con)
My Lords, the Government and industry have supported the
installation of over 29,500 publicly available charging devices,
including over 5,400 rapid devices. The Government have also
supported the installation of over 300,000 charge points in homes
and businesses and have announced over £1.3 billion to further
accelerate the rollout of charging infrastructure.
(Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that information.
However, do the Government accept that if the target of switching
to electric cars is to be met, at least two things must happen?
When an electrically powered car driver goes any long distance,
he or she is nervous that they cannot charge to come back. Even
more importantly, even in areas where there are plenty of
charging points, they are nearly always taken up by cars that are
not charging. That is a complaint from electric car drivers. The
charging points are there in parts of London, but they cannot get
to them because other people are using them as parking spaces.
Can we do something about that?
(Con)
I recognise the point raised by the noble Lord; there has been
some media coverage about that recently and we are looking at
what we can do. However, people are never more than 25 miles away
from a rapid charger on the strategic road network, which is
particularly good for long distance journeys. The Government have
done an enormous amount of consultation over the past year on how
we can mandate for new standards and for reliability, ensure that
consumers can access support if they have trouble charging, make
it easier for consumers to find the right charging point and its
availability by publishing open data, and ensure that the costs
are published as well, so that consumers can compare the costs of
different chargers.
(LD)
My Lords, as we might be working late, I decided to drive in
today. The first three public EV chargers were broken. I finally
found a free and available fourth. Does the Minister understand
that many people who have bought EV cars are now starting to
regret it, and can she step away from this market-driven approach
to rolling out infrastructure which at present is random,
unreliable, and desperately inadequate?
(Con)
I cannot agree that it is unreliable and desperately inadequate.
We cannot control from Whitehall where EV chargers are—that would
be utterly mad. We must work with the local delivery partners—the
local authorities—and the private sector. At the end of the day,
it will be the private sector which puts these charges in place.
It will not be Whitehall, so we must ensure that the local
authorities have the skills to figure out where their communities
need their chargers. We are particularly concerned about those
who do not have access to off-street parking, and we will be
asking local authorities to focus on those people.
(CB)
My Lords, as a Westminster resident I enjoy access to a
fast-growing network of relatively inexpensive and efficient
chargers fitted into existing lamp-posts, in a partnership
between the city council and ubitricity. How many towns and
cities benefit from this very practical approach? What can the
Government do to incentivise these partnerships between local
authorities and commercial providers?
(Con)
The noble Baroness is right: there are some excellent
interventions. That is why we must upskill the local authorities
and increase their knowledge of what is going on. The Department
for Transport has funded the Energy Saving Trust. It runs a local
government support programme and provides free impartial advice.
There are webinars on best practice, particularly in rural areas,
and we are about to publish the EV infrastructure guide, a
technical guide which will cover the sorts of things which the
noble Baroness talks about. It will enable local authorities to
find the right solution for their area.
(Con)
My Lords, how many charging points are to be found within the
Palace of Westminster and available to noble Lords and noble
Baronesses?
(Con)
Sadly there are not enough. I understand that there are some
available in the car park for another place. As I have said
previously, it is not for the Government to install charging
points in the Palace of Westminster, although I encourage the
authorities to do so.
(Lab)
My Lords, about a third of households have no access to
off-street parking or a personal garage and miss out on lower
costs from charging cars using cheaper overnight electricity.
While 76% of the richest households have access to off-street
parking, the same is true for only just over half of the poorest
fifth of households. Put another way, only 51% of private
renters, 38% of housing association tenants, and 26% of local
authority renters, have access to off-street parking, compared
with 81% of homeowners. What do the Government intend to do, and
by when, to address this charging divide which works against the
less well off, and to reduce the disparity in prices across the
charging network? We have heard a glowing picture from the
Government just now about what is happening. They say that they
have spent a lot of money. It seems to have been a lot of money
that has created a charging divide, and from what the Minister
has said, it is largely the fault of local authorities. I think
that it is the fault of the Government.
(Con)
My Lords, the Government have already taken action—
(Lab)
What is it?
(Con)
One moment; the EV home-charge scheme, which the noble Lord will
know was previously focused on single-unit owner-occupied
households, is now being closed to those households and is
focusing entirely on those people who are in rented or leasehold
accommodation, specifically without their own designated parking.
We are switching that very important source of funding to ensure
that those who do not have the luxury of off-street parking and
home ownership can get a charger.
(Con)
My Lords, can the Minister please confirm that users of the new
charging points will be paying for the electricity they consume?
I was surprised to learn from one London borough that initially,
the electricity was provided free when they installed charging
points.
(Con)
I would have thought that the users would be paying for the
electricity that they consume, but if people want to offer
electricity for free, they are perfectly at liberty to do so.
(CB)
My Lords, does the Minister recognise that the reliability of the
charging points, particularly on the motorway network, is a real
problem? Has she had a chance to consider the idea that I put
forward a couple of months back about increasing the penalties on
providers, so that they are properly punished and incentivised to
provide a decent service to EV motorists?
(Con)
This links into the measures that we announced in December 2021,
when we said we were looking at a mandate for new standards for
reliability. Obviously, if there are new standards for
reliability, there will have to be penalties if companies do not
meet those standards.
(LD)
My Lords, the increasing number of charging points for electric
vehicles and the demand for heating homes through heat pumps will
add quite a lot of extra demand on the national grid, which is
currently ill equipped to meet it. What urgent attention is being
paid to managing demand—for example, by increasing insulation in
homes and perhaps by reducing speed limits?
(Con)
My Lords, we recognise that there will be an increased demand on
energy infrastructure, both overall and particularly during peak
periods. We are confident that the existing operators will be
able to meet that demand, but of course we are working with the
sector to ensure that it is efficient and sustainable. One of the
things we are doing, for example, is looking at V2X technology,
which is when you export energy from a vehicle back into the grid
when it is not being used. Indeed, we have invested £30 million
of funding in V2G projects—from the vehicle to the grid—and that
is one of the ways in which we will ensure that our energy
networks can cope.
(Con)
My Lords, the aforementioned electricity lamp post system is of
course excellent when there is not another car parked there that
is not charging. The reason it is excellent is that every model
of car can use the lamp post. Are the Government considering
legislation such that there is complete compatibility in the
charging stations, so that every model of car can use every
charging station, which is not the case at the moment?
(Con)
The Government take the issue of interoperability of charging
points very seriously. We are seeing the market moving towards a
smaller number of varying charges, and we will consider how we
take that forward.
(Lab)
My Lords, I am just old enough, as the House was reminded
earlier, to remember us being told by my Government what a great
idea it was to move to diesel. My question to the Minister is
about electricity consumption. Given the commitment to
all-electric cars by the middle of the 2030s, plus
cryptocurrency, plus the exponential growth of smart technology,
plus 5G—I could go on but I will not—can the Minister assure us
that a very solid impact assessment has been made of the
aggregate demand of these technological developments on the
requirement for electricity generation in 15 years’ time? Can she
tell us where it is going to come from?
(Con)
Unfortunately, the noble Lord’s question goes a little bit beyond
my brief today, and indeed beyond my department. However, I will
be very happy to speak to my colleagues in BEIS, who have
responsibility for energy demand in the future, and ask them to
write to him to set out exactly how the forecasts are being made
and how they will be met.
