What is lost when the government sells its own brain?

In today's Interchat with TRL CEO Paul Campion, we discuss the privatisation of Britain's transport research laboratory and what is about to happen when autonomous vehicles arrive on London's streets.

Paul is generous about the gains from privatisation: agility, commercial discipline and the freedom to change. What went was the peer relationship with the DfT, because public sector procurement is a search for a predefined answer rather than a search for a better question.

We also discuss his real worry about autonomy, which is not that the vehicles will crash but the risks of zero-occupancy vehicles.

Interchats are a series of short conversations recorded on the conference floor at Interchange 26 in Manchester.