Part of Automated Vehicles Bill [Lords] – in the House of Commons at 3:07 pm on 1 May 2024.
Jesse Norman
Conservative, Hereford and South Herefordshire
3:07,
1 May 2024
May I say that, very far from the sentiments just expressed, the Secretary of State has been a very strong friend to the Bill from the very beginning? Having steered the Bill until the point where the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend Anthony Browne took over, as he noted, I pay tribute, as he has, to the quality of the work done by officials at the Department for Transport and the Bill team. I remind the House that this is an extraordinary moment. We have taken the next step in pioneering a technology, as a single polity, in advance of anywhere else. It builds on the work done in 2019, and presages a very important, safer and, in many respects in transport terms, more prosperous future.
Secretary of State was originally the title given to the two officials who conducted the Royal Correspondence under Elizabeth I. Now it is the title held by some of the more important Government Ministers, for example the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.