Extracts from second reading debate (Commons) on the Automated
and Electric Vehicles Bill Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham)
(Con):..As I said earlier, international progress is going to be
rapid. My hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom
Tugendhat) mentioned China, and it is worth taking a few minutes to
look in more detail at what is happening internationally. In the
UK, the Government have confirmed that they will ban the sale of
new petrol and diesel vehicles...Request free trial
Extracts from second
reading debate (Commons) on the Automated and Electric
Vehicles Bill
Mrs (Chesham and Amersham)
(Con):..As I said earlier, international progress is going
to be rapid. My hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling
(Tom Tugendhat) mentioned China, and it is worth taking a few
minutes to look in more detail at what is happening
internationally. In the UK, the Government have confirmed that they
will ban the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles without a
battery element by 2040. France has done the same. The Netherlands
have confirmed their plan to ensure that all new vehicles are
emissions free by 2030. That will effectively be a ban on the sale
of new diesel and petrol vehicles. Germany is considering banning
new petrol and diesel cars by 2030. That would certainly require
the upgrading of the country’s entire manufacturing processes and
supply chain by that date. China is considering a ban similar to
the one being introduced in the UK, but it has yet to announce a
timeline. I think that that will be highly significant. Moving on
to another country with a vast population, India has announced that it wants all new
car sales to be electric by 2030...
(Warwick and Leamington)
(Lab):..In summary, I welcome the Bill, but I urge more
ambition in certain areas and more caution in others. In
implementing the regulatory framework and incentives to accelerate
electric vehicle adoption to arrest serious air quality problems
and climate change, we must be as ambitious as India, the Netherlands and others in
banning new petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030—2040 is too late. In
considering the merits and needs of autonomous vehicles, I urge
legislative caution. Yes, the legislation must be enabling, but as
we see with sat nav systems even today, the concern is about the
data and the software’s interpretation of it. By way of example,
around the corner from where I live in my constituency is a narrow
cul-de-sac called Clapham Terrace, which is regularly used
erroneously by continental articulated lorries to access a local
industrial estate. They must then reverse 300 metres back down a
narrow street with a school on it. Finally, will Ministers ensure
that the Bill is clearer about different types of vehicles? It
should include lorries, buses, motorbikes, scooters and electric
bicycles. In all other respects, I welcome the intent of the
Bill.
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Extract from short debate
(Lords) on the Science and Innovation Strategy
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for
Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Prior of Brampton)
(Con):...The story may be apocryphal—if it is, no
doubt the noble Lords, and , will tell me afterwards—but
soon after India became independent in 1947,
Nehru asked John Kenneth Galbraith, the great American economist,
for advice on how to modernise the Indian economy. The great man is supposed
to have replied, “Establish an independent flourishing university
sector and wait for 800 years”. Of course you do not have to wait
that long, and Warwick and Bath are two universities that are
testament to that, but it is perhaps no coincidence that our two
oldest universities, Oxford and Cambridge, are ranked first and
second in the world. It has been said that in the Dark Ages the
monastery kept alive learning, progress and civilisation; in the
Middle Ages the centre of gravity moved to the castle; and in the
industrial age the factory became the epicentre of economic growth
and power. In today’s age, the age of information and knowledge, it
is the university that stands centre stage—not some gleaming
academic ivory tower but a seat of learning, driving ideas,
innovation and science into a connected ecosystem. This is the
magic that has created the world’s most powerful economic ecosystem
in Silicon Valley, an alchemy that brought together great
universities such as Stanford and Berkeley with great
entrepreneurs, with enlightened government support—we have already
talked about DARPA today—and with intelligent, long-term, patient
capital, as my noble friend stressed in his speech. As
the noble Lord, , said, it is bringing together,
fusing science and entrepreneurship, that makes Silicon Valley,
Boston and those other great ecosystems around the world so
successful...
...If we come down from Warwick, we find what is possibly the
most extraordinary research institute in the world: the Laboratory
of Molecular Biology at Cambridge, the birthplace of modern
molecular biology, with 11 Nobel prizes to its name. It is led, of
course, by a Nobel prize winner, Venki Ramakrishnan, and, of
course, we should pay tribute today to Richard Henderson for his
Nobel prize this year for his work on electron cryo-microscopy. I
note in passing that Richard Henderson shared his Nobel prize with
a US and a Swiss researcher, and that that Venki Ramakrishnan was
born in Tamil Nadu in Indiaand shared his Nobel prize with two
scientists from the US and Israel. Science is international, and
respects no boundaries. If we in our country do not accept that and
welcome people from abroad, we are cutting off our nose to spite
our face...
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