I beg to move amendment 4, in clause 10, page 6, line 34, at end insert—

‘(2A) Regulations under subsection (1) must provide exemptions for retailers and operators in instances where adhering to such regulations would—

(a) require an expansion of land, or

(b) result in any other disproportionate costs for retailers and operators.’

This amendment ensures that there are exemptions for operators with limited forecourt space who are unable to accommodate public charging points without an expansion of land and that retailers and operators do not incur disproportionate costs for complying with regulations.

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 5, in clause 10, page 6, line 36, at end insert—

‘(4) The Secretary of State must publish, in draft, the criteria and definition of “large fuel retailers” and “service area operators” at least six months before regulations under subsection 10(3) are made.’

This amendment would require the Secretary of State to consult on and publish criteria to be used for the definitions of “large fuel retailers” and “service area operators”. This will make clear to the industry which kinds of companies are covered by these regulations.

Amendment 4 would ensure that there are exemptions for operators with limited forecourt space that are unable to accommodate public charging points without an expansion of land, and that retailers and operators do not incur disproportionate costs for complying with the regulations.

As it stands, the Bill allows the Government to impose requirements on what are described as “large fuel retailers” and “service area operators”, but the problem is that Ministers have yet to define or outline the criteria for what those actually are. The requirements will apply to large fuel retailers and service area operators, and the definition of those is what the Government say they are. Amendment 5 is designed to resolve that issue by requiring the Government to publish in draft the criteria for and the definition of large fuel retailers and service area operators that they intend to use.

It is just as important to consider how charging infrastructure can be expanded in supermarkets, shopping parks and workplaces. Those are all points that have been raised by my hon. Friends and others. All those things seem to go well beyond the kind of charging infrastructure it is envisaged the Bill covers. In the meantime it is worth putting on record that businesses are concerned what the Government taking the kind of powers conferred by the Bill will mean for them. I think, for example, of a small fuel retailer in my constituency. It is a small business that is very important to the local economy and to local people, but the investment that it would have to make might be absolutely huge and the business might not be in a position to make that financial commitment.

These are much more immediate, practical issues, but the Government’s impact assessment lays out the potential significant costs to the operators affected by this part of the Bill, which could run into many millions of pounds. The Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but I think that the average cost of installing a charge unit runs up to about £50,000.

I hope that the Minister can provide greater clarity on these issues, so that operators of motorway and other service areas know a bit more about who is likely to be affected, what will be required of them and how much it will cost. In Committee on the Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill, the Minister gave assurances that he would consult and introduce draft regulations on the matter as soon as possible. I hope that he can do that again today. On that basis, I will not press the amendment to a vote.

Amendment 5 would require the Secretary of State to consult on and publish criteria to be used for the definitions of “large fuel retailers” and “service area operators”. That would make clear to the industry which kinds of companies were covered by the regulations. Fuel retailers, particularly those with limited forecourt space, are worried that they simply will not be able to meet the requirements of the regulations that the Government bring forward, particularly if they have to accommodate a variety of charging and connecting points. Inevitably, some fuel retailers will not have the space to implement the changes without expanding the land that is immediately available to them. The amendment would provide an exemption when meeting the regulations would result in disproportionate cost to the retail business.

A number of operators are concerned about the costs involved. They are also concerned that they will not have the forecourt space to install the charging infrastructure. They are very worried about this issue. I hope that the Minister will acknowledge the need to give them greater clarity and certainty on such matters. On amendment 5 and the broader question of the scale and scope of the powers that the Minister seeks, I hope that this will help to clarify things and that the Minister will ensure that before the powers are enacted, there is full consultation of all stakeholders.

I hope that the Minister will use this opportunity to address some of those concerns. As I said, I do not intend to push amendment 4 to a vote.

The Minister talks about Ruskin, and a quote from Rousseau comes to mind:

“What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?”

That probably sums up the Minister’s efforts in Committee, and I greatly appreciate the tone and manner in which he always conducts Bill Committees in which he leads for the Government.

I want to take up the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham, who said, “Why just fuel stations?” It seems a good question. If the Minister and the Government can regulate for the imposition of charging points at fuel stations, why not do so for other places? My hon. Friend talked about workplaces, which seem an ideal location, for many reasons. They may be able to capture renewable energy, for example—and people spend a lot of time at workplaces. Why not retailers? If we are going to have fast charging, why not in a big car park, with plenty of space? Sometimes fuel stations are a bit more limited in the space that they afford the motorist. In fact, they are very limited in some cases, particularly in metropolitan areas. Why not public spaces? Why not encourage a whole new enterprise culture whereby people provide, in open spaces, charging points? Why is it just fuel stations?

I am concerned that this seems like a restrictive practice. We are accelerating an advantage for fuel stations, rather than thinking about the benefit to the nation of rolling out as many charging points as possible, as the right hon. Member for West Dorset has said numerous times this afternoon.

There is another disadvantage that ought to be mentioned in restricting the acceleration of charging points. For those homeowners, middle or upper class, who have off-street car parking, a drive and a garage, and are probably charging off the solar panels on the roof or can even afford to charge out of the mains grid at home, that is fine. However, restricting access will result in poor people in my constituency paying a price. If those in a detached or semi-detached house with off-street car parking are charging a vehicle using renewable energies or using the grid, then they will be doing so at a cheaper and more affordable price. Over 50% of my constituents live in terraced properties, and there is no way that they can access a domestic charging point. It is not there. They would have to use a commercial charging point, and there is a cost to that. We are imposing a cost on the poorest people: the cost of moving the vehicle to the location wherever that is, the cost of leaving the vehicle there, and then the cost of paying for that service. The middle-class or wealthy person in my constituency with a drive and off-street car parking can, however, enjoy all the advantages of a home consumer.

We are making regulations for only a few places, but I urge the Minister to see that there are far-reaching consequences to the policy. My hon. Friend the Member for Eltham made this point: we ought to be rolling out charging points everywhere. We should be mindful, as I have said previously, that we are not doing enough for some of our poorest constituents in some of the properties least able to be adapted. Those people are going to end up paying higher premiums should they wish or be able to acquire an electric vehicle. This restricted availability is wrong. It does not allow for social mobility and it denies some of the poorest people access to the market. I would ask the Minister to reconsider and—when he wants to encourage or even mandate retailers or anyone in society that can afford and offer a charging point—to think positively about how many charging points we can achieve over the period of time, how many opportunities there are and why we are restricting it to just a single section of the market.

The cynical person might say that this is the petrol retailers, that as the market changes from fossil fuels to electricity we have to give them some kind of commercial advantage. Perhaps it is in the Government’s mind to say, “Let’s give them a heads-up and a lead on this issue.” I would say that it is not right, that electric charging points should be made available to all and that we should be thinking about the nation and the national interest, not a limited commercial interest that seems to be in clause 10. I would urge the Government to rethink this clause.

There are two specific points that I would like to raise in relation to clause 10, but before I do so I would like to explain why they arise.

As I understand it, about 90% of charging for current electric vehicle use goes on at home, largely overnight at low voltage. In trying to achieve the Minister’s aim—which is the Government’s aim and the cross-party aim of the House of Commons as a whole—of achieving a step change in which we move from 100,000 electric vehicles to tens of millions of them, one of the things that needs to be addressed is what we were discussing a moment ago: the issue of overnight, on-street parking. However, there is a paradox.

Even if there were 10 million on-street parking charging points working beautifully, unfortunately, there would not be very many electric cars using them because there is range anxiety. That is another limiting factor in the expansion of electric car take-up. That range anxiety may in due course be resolved by the advance of battery technology, the introduction of solid state batteries and so on—I very much hope that it will be. The Minister, I and the Committee as a whole recognise that we cannot predict the speed at which battery technology will advance to the point at which relatively cheap and light batteries can carry someone for 400 or 500 miles on a reliable basis. The overwhelming majority of journeys per day are 20 miles and under in the country and do not actually cause any range problems.

I am sure that other Committee members feel, as I do, inhibitions about purchasing a vehicle that will run out of charge if I am trying to make the journey from London to my constituency, then travel around my constituency, if I cannot find a point at which to charge it. Unlike the position on the overnight charging, range anxiety can be cured—unless we adopt the Israeli model, which I am not recommending—only by very high voltage, fast charging at points on the journey that are not too far from the start and are interspersed at relatively short distances. We could debate whether that distance is 50 miles or 100 miles, but if we fixed in our mind the importance of making sure that nobody who started in London and was trying to get to any point in the country would find that it was more than 50 miles before the next fast charging point was actually available—I do not mean was sitting there and being occupied by some other car, but was actually usable at the time they wanted it and could charge their car in five or 10 minutes, at a reasonable price, while we went to buy the paper, went to the loo and did the other things we do at service stations on motorways—range anxiety would be at an end in the UK. Is that achievable, and does clause 10 allow the Government to ensure that it will quickly be achievable? Those are the questions that we need to address.

The answer to the first question—is it achievable?—is yes, it is abundantly achievable. The National Grid is conducting a trial with UK Power Networks to show the cost of stringing lines from the nodes on the high-voltage network to service stations, which will establish the cost of a core network of 50-mile spaced service stations, on the motorway network in the first place and, quickly thereafter, on those parts of the trunk road network that are necessary to cover in relation to, say, Cornwall or Scotland.

I stress that it is all about Highways England, the National Grid company and a few of the DNOs from time to time. Nobody else needs to play a part. If they were all working together to install the relevant infrastructure quickly, it is perfectly doable and not terribly expensive. I have spent time talking to the National Grid company about the likely cost of this, and even if we take quite a high estimate, the effect on bills for customers buying electricity would be in the order of 0.1p per kilowatt hour. It is very small beer. I cannot overemphasise the importance of curing range anxiety early—if we do, we will get scale, and if we get scale the price of electric vehicles will drop, then we will get demand. We would get a virtuous circle. The speed with which we do that will very much influence the future industrial history of this country, because if we do it quickly enough, so that we get scale in electric vehicles before other European countries do, we will be ahead of the market and all sorts of investment decisions will flow to the UK. If we are slightly behind them—and I welcome what the Minister said about being ahead of the curve—it will have the opposite effect. They will be built in Germany and later exported to the UK. That must be our aim: to establish a national network of fast charging points, supported by very high-voltage cables, quickly installed at distances along our motorways and trunk roads, which enable people to make a journey from any point to any point in the UK without anxiety about range, even if their vehicle only has 75 miles of battery range.

Two items are missing from clause 10 that would enable the Government to achieve that. First, there is no power to compel the National Grid company to install such links. It goes back essentially to the same kind of structural point that I was making about DNOs in relation to on-street charging, although the item here is quite different: we are talking about a big, heavy-duty, high-voltage cable. However, the principle is the same. At the moment there is no knowing whether Ofgem would allow NGC to charge to its regulatory asset base such links, because there is no power in the Bill or anywhere else that allows the Minister or the Secretary of State to mandate the creation of such links. That is another item that I strongly hope the Minister will consult his friends at BEIS about and, in due course, come forward in the other place with appropriate minor amendments.

There is a second lacuna. We heard in the evidence sessions a pretty strong plea from the representative of service stations and petrol retailers that the Minister should not regulate them as suggested in clause 10. The more I heard of that plea, the clearer it became that the Minister was right to take the powers he is taking in clause 10. It seems to me abundantly clear that if someone is running a motorway service station that is a monopoly franchise, and if there is in that station a provider of charge points that is in itself a monopoly franchise—for reasons that defeat me, that is how it has grown up—it is absolutely right that the Minister should have powers to regulate them into providing, once the cables are there from NGC, the right kind of charging equipment in the right quantities to cure the range anxiety.

However, as I said, there is a lacuna. If a monopolist is told by a Minister that under a regulation, they have to provide those things, they will consult their economics textbooks and discover that they can exact a monopoly rent. They can charge an unlimited amount of money and thereby seek to prove to Ministers that they should not be telling the monopolist to build too many of the charge points because, at the exotic prices being charged, not many people are using them. The only problem with all that is that we would not get the electric cars.

In order to complete the circle, the Minister needs a power not contained currently in clause 10: the power to impose price caps on the provision of these services. Those caps ought to enable providers to earn a normal return on the asset, as in any other utility transaction. Ofgem is quite capable of adjudicating those matters, but it needs some primary legislation enabling the Minister to impose those price caps or to impose on Ofgem the duty to construct such price caps. I neither know nor care which way it gets drafted, but it needs to be drafted to the effect that, one way or another, NGC puts in the high-voltage cables in the appropriate points to give us the appropriate network, and the providers of the charge points in those service areas in the motorway and trunk road network have to provide them at a capped price. Then all the other things the Minister has provided for in the Bill about making regulations to ensure that the charge points are of the right kind, are paid for in the right way, are uniform in their connection to cars and so on would apply. We would close the circle and get the golden combination of enabling our population to charge up at home overnight at low voltage, cheaply, and curing range anxiety by charging very fast at relevant points on the trunk and motorway networks when making long journeys.

Does my right hon. Friend not accept that the argument he is now developing applies today to retailers of petrol and diesel on our motorways, some of which charge exorbitant prices because they are in a monopoly position? Should the price cap not also apply to them?

I think it is an academic point, but my right hon. Friend is completely right. I have always regarded the regulation of motorway service stations in Britain as an abomination. In terms of both quality and price, they do not compare with their properly regulated counterparts in many European countries. However, I am not sure we ought to detain Parliament by legislating for the past when we can now legislate for the future. I think this will be much quicker than many people think. My guess is that about 20 years from now, we will not have very many petrol vehicles on our roads. I would much prefer to persuade the Minister to regulate for electric charging points, but if he is minded to pay attention to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire and fold in a power to regulate for petrol too, I do not mind.

The last thing I want to say about clause 10 is that I think there is a missing entity, as well as missing powers. Interposed between the service station provider and the motorist lies the bizarre phenomenon of the national monopolist who provides the power points at service stations. That is a very odd feature of the scene. I do not understand why it has grown up this way, but we need to make absolutely sure that the powers in clause 10 can apply to anybody who holds any kind of market power over the provision of the charging points in the service stations, and not just over the service station operators. Parliament often legislates and thinks it has legislation that will have the effect that it intended, then discovers that it is not there. This could be such a case unless the lawyers have thought about all that. If they have and it is drafted appropriately, no one will be more delighted than me.

I will deal with the last point first: yes, it does apply in the way my right hon. Friend said.

Let me now deal with the issue of motorway service areas, about which I have very strong views. I am the Minister responsible for motorway service areas, so I am in regular dialogue with them. I visit them with alarming regularity—from their point of view, not mine. I am determined that we can do more and better, and so are they, by the way. They are committed to building on the progress that has been made in motorway service areas over a considerable time, but we can do more. I want more particularity, more local source of supply and better design. I want them to be places that people choose to go to rather than have to go to. I want the quality of motorway service stations and their connection to the localities to be a thing of style and grace, and that includes the provision of electric charge points.

The reason we have spoken about major retailers is very much as a start. This is not a reason that limits what we might do later. In fact, we will need to do more later. It is an attempt to make an important start in providing more charge points. Highways England has already committed £15 million to ensure there is a rapid charge point every 40 miles on the strategic road network in England. That picks up the point about battery life, of course, because this is about the regularity of provision. People need to know that, on a major route, they are never more than 40 miles away from a charge point. Highways England is running a procurement exercise as we speak to fill the gaps to achieve that end and it expects to deliver on that commitment as soon as possible. That was part of the road investment strategy, which I launched when I was a Minister in the Department on a previous occasion. I have been a Minister in the Department on many occasions, and when I launched the road investment strategy, that was part of it and one of the commitments we made then.

I know that the good point that my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset made about the link to Ofgem is a particular concern of his, as he expressed it in an earlier part of our debate. It is important that we facilitate the kind of work with the providers of power that he describes. I am determined they should not be a barrier to growth in the number of charge points. As I said earlier, and I do not want to become tediously repetitive—repetitive while it is exciting, but not tediously so—we will make sure that those discussions are exaggerated helpfully as a result of this short debate.

We have spoken already about our determination to grow the number significantly. My right hon. Friend poses an interesting challenge: that we should lead the field internationally and be ahead of our principal competitors. That is a perfectly reasonable challenge and one I am happy to meet. I am determined that Britain should be a leader in this field. We have often led in the field of technology and we can again. As I said, it is a challenge I welcome and which I am determined to meet.

With regard to the amendment, which the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East spoke to, I am going to abbreviate my remarks a little. I have quite a long speaking note, but I want to come to the core elements that address the arguments the shadow Minister advanced. The shadow Minister drew attention to our debate in the Vehicle Technology and Aviation Public Bill Committee, on which some members of this Committee sat. They will remember the helpful debates we had then and how we have moved on in a sense, although we set out our ambitions in that Bill. I committed to be more precise about the regulations and the shape they might take by publishing a draft. To be helpful today, I ought to say what that draft is likely to contain in respect of the specific circumstances that any regulations would need to take account of in mitigating the effects of the obligations that we are creating in the Bill to make charging points available.

Certainly, where the commercial viability of fuel retailers, their forecourts and service areas and the effect that mandatory electric vehicle infrastructure would have upon that are concerned, we would need to be mindful of the interests of retailers. We are not in the business of creating such a burden that people, first, will not do it and, secondly, will be compromised by it.

Secondly, there is the issue raised by the hon. Gentleman about places where there is not space available and the total land take makes provision impossible. Thirdly, there is the point about the impact on the local electricity grid. Fourthly, there is the proximity of other charging points, which relates to the consideration we enjoyed earlier about concentration. We do not want a cluster of charging points in a small area and yet no charging points for a long stretch. The proximity of the electric vehicle infrastructure and of other fuel retailers and service areas also seems to be salient.

The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East was right in moving the amendment to say that we need to be mindful of the practical effect of the obligation we are creating. It must not be crude in its effect; it must be measured, and the regulations will ensure that. They will certainly contain the elements that I have set out. The hon. Gentleman is also right that clause 15(3) specifically commits the Secretary of State to consult with appropriate persons before making regulations under this part of the Bill. Given that the effect of the Bill is to make the provision of charging points mandatory, it is right that we should consult.

Equally, we should be bold and ambitious. I think it was Ezra Pound who said that when faced with two options, choose the boldest. That is very much the recommendation of my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset and the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East. We do need to be bold and ambitious, but we need to be measured. We must not create an obligation that is heavy handed in its effect. I want to achieve what the Committee has recommended to me, which is to lead the field. The best way to do that is to put in place regulations that can be effected quickly, efficiently and effectively.

We will consult. The consultation needs to be wide ranging and thorough, and we would like to commence much earlier, so that the regulations come into force after proper reflection—probably earlier than the six months proposed by amendment 5, but not so early that I do not have time to consider the results of the consultation.

Clause 14 already allows for exceptions to the requirement imposed in the regulations under this part of the Bill. Those exceptions, as I have already described, can be incorporated into the regulations in the manner I described. There are promising signs already—for instance, there is a charging point in the vast majority of motorway service areas—but we do have this continuing challenge of ensuring that they are consistent, accessible, easy to use and have the same payment methods.

My right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset was right: if there was a monopoly provider with a particular kind of charge point, people might turn up at the service station only to find that they could not plug their vehicle in, did not know how to pay or did not have the means to pay because of the particular regime that applied in that location. That would be intolerable and certainly inconsistent with our desire to make these things as straightforward as possible.

With the assurance I have offered that we will ameliorate these obligations in the way I have set out, I hope that the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East might withdraw the amendment.

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 10 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 11