I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

The Committee will be pleased that this is the last of my amendments and my last contribution to the debate. It has been a pleasure to be on the Committee under your chairmanship, Sir Edward; please pass on my regards to Mr Bailey. I also thank the Clerks for their assistance in loaning me a few of their grey cells, from their humungous brains, to draft my ideas for amendments and make them legible; I am very grateful for their assistance.

The Bill attempts to make it easy for an injured party to claim in the event of an accident. That is necessary because we are opening up the insurance industry and disputes in the event of an accident to considerations that have not been part of our road system in the past. That is, we are bringing manufacturers further into the possible area of liability than they have been before, because vehicles will be controlled not by people but by machinery and computer software. Software designers may even be dragged in to these disputes.

As we heard in our evidence sessions, in some circumstances these automated vehicles will be connected and moving in convoy. It is an interesting concept that vehicles moving in convoy will communicate with one another, as is how they will share information and how that information will be used. When we look out of our vehicles, we see the immediate environment around us, but if vehicles are travelling in convoy and communicating with one another, they can see the road ahead exactly as it is seen by the vehicle at the head of the convoy. So, if something is amiss in the first vehicle with the data or the design of the software, or if there is a glitch, that will affect the vehicles further down the line.

When we discussed this issue at our last sitting, the potential hacking of the software was mentioned. If there is hacking, the driver of the vehicle cannot therefore be held responsible—he or she did everything they could to make sure the vehicle was roadworthy—and the manufacturer of the vehicle and the designer of the software may say, “Well, we did everything that was reasonable”. Helpfully, the Minister has written to us to say that in those circumstances the insured person—the person who took the vehicle on the road—is the responsible party.

However, in those circumstances the situation will become more confused and, again, this is an area that the Government need to consider, because who is responsible when we know that the vehicles are not necessarily driving themselves as they are communicating with one another? The assumption in this Bill is that the insurance companies will pay out and it will all be sorted out afterwards, but we know that that is not true.

My daughter had a collision. No one was injured, but her vehicle was damaged. Only when the two insurance companies had sorted out the blame—that is, who had caused the dent in the vehicles—was the claim settled. That took several months, during which time she was driving around in a brand-new damaged vehicle. The insurance company did not pay out straight away, so under circumstances in which consideration of who is responsible could be quite complicated—particularly instances where several vehicles were travelling in convoy—it could take some time for insurance companies to settle who should pay in the first instance. The Bill needs to protect the consumer—both the insured, and the third party, who may be the injured party. We could be creating a situation where no party is paid for some time while those complications are sorted out.

With these automated vehicles, which will be communicating with one another on the road, we are introducing an area that needs further consideration. I am not suggesting for a minute that the Minister should have the answer now—not even on the bit of paper that he may be passed in a few seconds—but I do think that this matter is worth further consideration by the Government, particularly as the Bill progresses through both Houses. We may well come back and look at this complication in more detail at a later date, so that we ensure that we are protecting the consumer—both the insured, and the third party.