Lord Lansley (Con)

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, who I thought admirably set out the importance of the case. Frankly, we are only a decade away from the point where we intend that all the new cars that are to be bought are to be electric vehicles. As she rightly said, something approaching 40% of the people who we expect in future to buy cars are in premises that do not have charging facilities, and we want to enable that to happen. It is all part of the green energy transition that we want to support. So I very much support everything that she said and I hope that we can find a solution. As far as I can see, the clause to which this amendment refers intends to support the process of adding public charge points to the road architecture but does not necessarily allow individual householders to be able to find the appropriate cross-pavement charging solutions for this. My noble friend Lord Lucas has an amendment in this group the purpose of which is to give permitted development rights for this. I know that the Government will say, “Well, permitted development rights relate to the curtilage of one’s own premises, they do not extend out into the pavement for this purpose”. But I hope the spirit of this debate might be that we all agree on what we want to achieve—the question is what the best way is to achieve it. I suggest to the Minister that one way we might look at this is to look at Section 50 of the New Roads and Street Works Act, which is about the process of applying for a street works licence. This clause is intended to enable those who have a street works licence to access the necessary works in the street. As the noble Baroness said, that is an expensive solution for an individual householder and not likely to be an easy route. The question to the Minister is whether we might actually find, as he is in the business today of streamlining applications, whether we can streamline applications for street works licences for individual householders, or groups of householders, in order for them to get a street works licence by what is effectively a deemed consent, rather than having to make individual applications. It is a bit like an assumption that the licence will be granted, save if there are particular exceptions or objections. That might get us to the point where householders or groups of householders can get the cross-pavement charging solutions that they require—and I think that it is urgent that we make that happen. So I hope that it is something that we can progress during the course of this Bill. I will raise just one other point, which is about the green energy transition and the amendments relating to HGVs. I ask that we not only look at electric charging points for HGVs but recognise that HGVs—mentioned by my noble friend Lord Naseby earlier—can, very readily and unlike many other road vehicles, use hydrogen cost-effectively as a solution. But they need a network. My Japanese friends have told me that Japan is creating a network of hydrogen refuelling points for its HGV fleet. The Japanese are orders of magnitude ahead of us on this.