Chancellor’s plans for driverless car trip hits buffers
PHILIP HAMMOND’S plan to take a trip in one of the driverless cars he wants to become commonplace on British roads was killed off by Downing Street and the Treasury over concerns of a pre-budget photo op disaster.
The Chancellor wants fully driverless vehicles on the UK’S roads by 2021 but he admitted yesterday he had never been in one and intended to remedy that during an official visit today.
But aides apparently wary of photo- graphs which could be used as metaphors for a “driverless” Government just days before Wednesday’s Budget have insisted Mr Hammond will not be allowed to use one of the vehicles.
A Downing Street source told The Daily Telegraph “he is not going in a driverless car” while a Treasury source echoed the same sentiment and said “he is not getting in a driverless car”.
It came as Mr Hammond made a prebudget gaffe when he said “there are no unemployed people” in the UK and as Theresa May prepared to unveil plans to increase spending on research and development by £80billion over the next decade.
Mrs May believes Britain’s economy can thrive through investment in artificial intelligence, clean energy, self-driving vehicles and other cuttingedge business to make it “fit for the future”.
Ministers want to halt the trend of British innovation being picked up and exploited by foreign companies because of a lack of investment at home.
Research and development (R&D) currently accounts for 1.7 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) but Mrs May wants to increase that to 2.4 per cent of GDP by 2027, through direct government investment and financial incentives. Mrs May will unveil her plans during a visit to the West Midlands today with Mr Hammond, during which they will be given a demonstration of the latest autonomous driving technology.
Reforms for the on-road testing of driverless cars will be included in the Budget as part of plans to put the vehicles on UK roads in the next four years.
However, Mr Hammond’s praise for the technology came as Jeremy Clarkson claimed he was almost killed on two separate occasions during a single journey in a vehicle with an autonomous capability.
Mr Hammond said the UK needed to “embrace” driverless vehicles but admitted he had never been in one as he appeared on the Andrew Marr Show.
When he was told Mr Clarkson believed the vehicles to be dangerous, he replied: “I think I am promised a go when we visit the West Midlands.”
It requires an element of bravado for the Treasury to pre-announce the promotion of driverless cars as a key component of Wednesday’s Budget. The symbolism will not be lost on the Opposition. With the Government lacking an overall majority in Parliament and assailed by Brexit difficulties, the last thing the Chancellor needs is any suggestion of not being in control of events.
Labour is pressing for an emergency package, which, given the reasonable health of the economy, is mere gimmickry. What is required is something that Mr Hammond is not often given credit for – a vision of what Britain will look like in five, 10 or 20 years from now.
Chancellors are criticised, often with good reason, for looking no further than the next general election. Mr Hammond’s most immediate challenge is Brexit, and we report today that he is keen to commit the Government to a withdrawal payment that would unblock the stalemate in the current negotiations. But agreeing any further sum on top of what has been already promised by Mrs May in Florence would need to be matched by cast-iron trade offers from the EU, otherwise we would be throwing away our best card.
Budgets can make the political weather, but Mr Hammond’s first in March was a missed opportunity to begin equipping the UK for life outside the EU and it unravelled rapidly. It also lacked any real sense of the purpose that supposedly underpinned it. Mr Hammond ended with a peroration that the country needed to “look forward, not back”, and yet the Budget had a retrograde feel to it.
So it is perhaps deliberate that special mention is being given to driverless cars, since robotics and artificial intelligence are self-evidently the things of tomorrow. We would need to prepare for the future whether we were staying in the EU or not; but Brexit gives an added dimension to everything in politics at the moment.
Moreover, increased automation will boost productivity and help push up wages that have remained stagnant for so long. Mr Hammond is clearly planning to relax the restraints on public sector pay, but he must not do so at the expense of the majority of workers, who are employed by private companies or self-employed.
The Chancellor seeks to belie a reputation for being downbeat. On Wednesday, he has the chance to give us all something to look forward to and demonstrate that someone is behind the wheel with a sense of direction.