Deregulation Bill

Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, it is in the knowledge of this House that I very often find myself on the same side as the noble Baroness, but on this occasion I suggest that she is wrong, because she is unbelievably out of date. A good deal in this Bill is out of date as far as what is happening to the private hire and taxi business. One would have thought, from these amendments, that modern technology had not ever entered into the world. If you travel by certain companies, which shall be nameless, you are safer than you have ever been before, because they know exactly who you are, exactly who the driver is and exactly what the route is, and they can check these things. That makes people much safer. They do that without any regulation at all, without any local authority and without any of the people who know best entering into the discussion.

It is called the market. It works extremely well and it is much safer. I just hope that my noble friend will not be moved from the current situation, except perhaps to remind those who wrote this part of the Bill that it is already out of date because the technology has moved on. That does not mean that I am not entirely supportive of it, because it is better than what went before. But these are old fashioned proposals that have been put down as amendments. They will not achieve what they suggest, and it would be good if we could be a bit more digitally savvy when we come to find a way through the clear issue that the noble Baroness has put forward, which is the real desire to protect passengers—women in particular, but not just women—from the dangers that arise. I just wish that we did not sound a bit as if we did not know what was happening in the world outside.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

My Lords, I do not think that the noble Lord lives in the same world that I do, where many people are not digitally savvy. In some rural places in the north, they travel in taxis which appear out of the blue and feel extremely unsafe. I say that before saying to the noble Baroness that I hope this is not a matter of political process. I hope it is something where we think about those things which matter to this Government, which are safety and choice. I know that choice means that you have a range of options—I think that the noble Lord was indicating that we are moving towards that—but should we not wait for the Law Commission’s report, so that issues such as changes in digital technology can be taken on board and that we might recognise that the situation is not the same right across the country?

In many of my roles, I travel all over the UK in taxis. When I choose to travel by a taxi, as a consumer I expect that what I telephone for will turn up. Having worked in the vulnerable adult and child protection area for many years, I know that alternatives might turn up in which I or the child whom I want to be transported might well not be safe. We want to be absolutely sure when we make such a choice—as simple consumers, we have a right—that what we have asked for turns up at the door or we know that it is an alternative so that we can make an alternative choice.

Equally high on the agenda is safety, particularly as we have had so many situations up and down the country, and we await reviews and more inquiries about the protection of children and vulnerable adults. This is a measure where you could really make a difference and listen and look again at these issues, rather than looking at it simply as a deregulation issue.

The Minister said earlier that this legislation is about getting rid of unnecessary burdens. I absolutely agree, having worked in a number of fields where there are such unnecessary burdens, but I do not think that this proposal is either unnecessary or burdensome. It is quite straightforward that if people want to provide a service they should be licensed.

The noble Baroness mentioned the situation in Rotherham, the report on which highlighted significant concerns in relation to taxis. That is quite recent—so the world out there is not safe. We have also had reports that many disabled and elderly people find it very difficult to deal with digital technology. Where I come from, in a large rural area, the only way of travel for some disabled and elderly people to their hospital appointment or somewhere else is by taxi because the bus comes twice a week. It is not a luxury; it is an essential way of travelling. They want to know that the taxi that turns up at their door is a taxi in which they will feel safe. Even if the contractor is safe, we know the anxieties that elderly, disabled and sick people have in terms of looking after themselves. Therefore, they have to be absolutely safe.

I only hope that if we have another child abuse inquiry, or an inquiry where something has happened to a vulnerable adult—God forbid, but that is the world out there—the Government will not find themselves in difficulty because they failed to take note of these voices of caution. It is only caution, because there are ways of thinking through this matter so that we do not reduce the capacity for business but we ensure that people are safe.

[Lord Skelmersdale (Con)]

My Lords, I regret that the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, has not split this amendment into two parts, which it is quite possible to do, because I am fairly certain that a person who has made a booking would not on average ask the taxi company where the taxi was coming from. It may be that they envisage—rather like, I suspect, my noble friend Lord Deben—that, when they book a taxi online, they will get a questionnaire, one of the questions in which will be whether they consent to the taxi coming from another local authority area. That is all very well, but I live in Taunton—not Yorkshire, like the noble Baroness over there.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Kramer) (LD)]

For a moment, I thought your Lordships would have a very enjoyable debate with no opportunity for me to speak. Let me start by responding to the issue of why we are moving clauses ahead of our response to the Law Commission and—undoubtedly, some time in the next Parliament—primary legislation dealing with the much broader issues of the changing world of private hire and taxis. That is a huge area and there is significant work yet to be done.

There are two reasons for going early with these clauses. The first is safety. I point out to the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, that subcontracting within a licensing district is permitted for everybody and has been for years and we know of no issues arising from it. In London 10 years ago this place and the other place agreed to subcontracting across districts to help deal with the problem of unlicensed cab drivers behaving in a criminal way and putting the public at risk. The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, gave some numbers for sexual assaults in London but the category she described included unlicensed drivers as well as taxi drivers and licensed private hire drivers. Unlicensed drivers have been the real problem within London. Permitting subcontracting so that someone calling up a company can be assured that a car will come and get them instead of being told, “Sorry all our cars are taken”, makes them far less tempted to get into an unlicensed cab crawling along the street attempting to get their business. That was the driver behind subcontracting in London and those who talk to people with experience of this in London will recognise that it has indeed been helpful in increasing safety. However, one sexual assault is always too many: we have to be vigilant and there is a great deal more to do.

One of the reasons I support moving ahead with this is my own experience of being out in more provincial areas, calling every number I could find for local taxi firms and finding not a single car available. This happened to me when I was going to visit a friend in a nursing home in a country area. I was very glad that it was not dark, that I was not standing there with several small children and that it was not pouring with rain because I think that had an unlicensed cab come by and offered me a lift I might well have been desperate enough to take it. That is not a situation we want. This measure is largely designed to make sure that there is a car available when someone calls a reputable licensed operator.

The other thing I want to clarify—I think there is real confusion over it—is subcontracting from an operator in one district to one in another district. Each operator has to be licensed in their own district and each of them can give the job only to a driver and a vehicle that are both licensed in their same area. So if you call an operator in District A and they give the job directly to a driver, both the driver and the vehicle have to be licensed within that area as well as the operator. If Operator A were to subcontract to an operator in District B, as would be permitted under this change in legislation, then Operator B could give the job only to a driver who is also licensed in District B with a vehicle licensed in District B, so the chain of accountability remains. I want to make that clear because it seems there has been incredible confusion.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

Can I just ask the Minister an honest question of clarification? In this age of technology, why can the person who has called the taxi not be told—because that is all that is being asked—that there is a different company coming and make the choice at that point that that is what they want to happen?

[Baroness Kramer]

Let me move on to exactly that issue because it refers to the first part of Amendment 4. We looked at this very seriously because consent is attractive. First, we looked at the existing situation. As I said, subcontracting across districts in London has been going on for a decade. We have never heard—and we genuinely asked around as much as we could—of anyone complaining that a car came to get them which was not from the firm that they called. You call the Yellow cab company in your area, and a cab from Sun arrives to pick you up. We have never found any complaints that people were not asked for their consent before that happened. So the question arises: is there a problem? Again, within individual districts, subcontracting has been permitted for as long as anyone can remember. We have not had any complaints and cannot find anybody saying “I wasn’t asked before the subcontracting happened within this licensing district”.

Then we looked at the practical application. The big companies—my noble friend Lord Deben underscored this—could probably handle it quite easily. For people who go to a website or an app to book a cab, some additional lines somewhere in the terms and conditions would probably cover the consent issue—not that I have ever met anyone who has ever read the terms and conditions. The burden will fall on small companies which rely on the telephone. When we first started to look at this, I was quite hopeful that a casual question such as, “Do you mind if we need to bring in a cab from another area?”, would do, but in this day and age, to be legally secure, in effect the operator would have to read out something very like those six or seven lines you would find in the terms and conditions. I suggest that would drive everybody batty. Small companies do not have legal staff on hand and creating that and having to say that routinely every time would be an imposition, particularly when we can identify no problem.

We want to make sure that small companies have flexibility. This brings me to the second reason why we have adopted these clauses because it is particularly important. It is that these are changing times. Small players will be able to create collaborations with other companies in another district to be sure that they will have a larger pool of companies. Their reputation is on the line and the original operator is always on the line for the booking. Having that greater reach of cars gives them the ability to compete against the big boys who, I suspect, would like to see many of them out of business. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Ridley for enumerating the many other business benefits—not running empty cars et cetera. It is particularly important for small players to have that flexibility, and it is another rationale for bringing this forward ahead of the Law Commission.

I have covered some of the reasons why we are concerned about the consent language. It appears attractive on the surface, but when we looked at it, it was becoming an impossible burden, particularly on small players. The enforcement clause raised more questions. First, it is only with regard to a vehicle. We currently have that chain of accountability—operator, licensed vehicle licence, driver licence—within the same enforcement authority, which is important. This clause deals only with the vehicle licence. It also fails to recognise the reality on the ground—I am sorry; I have forgotten which noble Lord made this point. Local authorities can delegate enforcement powers on this issue to other local authorities. With increased subcontracting, which will primarily be across the borders of neighbouring districts, we would not be at all surprised if various local authorities decide to collaborate or to delegate enforcement powers. That has some economies for them and will streamline enforcement.

At the moment, cars constantly cross district lines. It is quite possible that the car you get into is taking you shopping in another licensing district or to see Aunt Sally in another licensing district, so local authorities are very used to having to deal with the fact that cars are coming from other licensing districts and to communicating with the licensing district for enforcement purposes. Therefore they have experience in this area and deal with it on a regular basis. I therefore suggest that we do not have a particular problem here, and that what has been presented is a rather clear and narrow power that, frankly, would not contribute very much to effective enforcement.

Food: Adulteration

Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts

Monday 17th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, I am glad that the noble Lord has given me the opportunity to answer that question. I have seen no evidence to suggest that the machinery of government changes had any material impact on the response to the horsemeat fraud incident. That incident was fraud on an EU-wide scale and had nothing to do with changes in responsibilities between UK government departments.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

My Lords, the food chain is complex and long. As the Minister knows, it has been decided not to show all the countries of origin on meat labelling because the costs for small businesses would be too high. So how will consumers know what they are eating when they buy compound meat?

[Lord De Mauley]

The noble Baroness raises a very complex issue. Consumer protection continues to be the key priority for the FSA and local authorities. In recent years, tackling the problems in the food chain that can make people ill has been a priority. However, sampling programmes have continued to include the sampling of foods for mislabelling and adulteration. Although the number of tests carried out has decreased, enforcement officers are working to target areas most likely to be at risk.

Food: Waste

Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts

Tuesday 29th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, retailers are already reporting their food waste figures to WRAP under the voluntary Courtauld commitment, so legislation specifically is not needed. Tesco’s initiative, which I warmly welcome, shows that the voluntary approach is working. Retailers like Tesco recognise that food waste is a global issue. Knowing where the waste is occurring is the first step to dealing with it and means they can focus their efforts in the right places.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

My Lords, as this is a global issue, and indeed a European issue, what are we doing with Europe to look at the framework and to develop that in a European context?

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, we are working extremely closely with the EU. EU drivers of food waste policy include the landfill directive’s targets to reduce biodegradable waste going to landfill and the revised waste framework directive’s requirements to manage waste according to the waste hierarchy, recycle 50% of household waste by 2020 and ensure that biodegradable waste is treated sustainably. We will continue those discussions.

Subsidiarity Assessment: Food Distribution (EUC Report)

Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I remember when the UK last participated in this scheme because I benefited from it. Before I receive commiserations from noble Lords, it was not because I was a poor member of the public who received the unfrozen butter that came out of cold stores in the south-west, but because I was a Member of the European Parliament representing Cornwall and Plymouth and it was a fantastic photo opportunity around Christmas time, when these schemes, whether at European or UK level, strangely came out. I was able to do a press release, and I was reported in the press as securing the south-west’s share of this bounty from the European Union. Unfortunately, I was not pictured distributing our share as Father Christmas, but it was a good wheeze then.

Things were very different at that time. There were surpluses within the common agricultural policy, and rather than export them and destroy the third world’s farming populations, we instead decided to try to save some of our own populations from poverty and starvation at Christmas, which I suppose was not a bad objective. Despite being one of the most pro-European Members of this House, I would say that one of the most important things about Europe is that it knows its limits. Certainly, even when I was a Member of the European Parliament, I voted against things like the working time directive and the drinking water directive, not necessarily because I was against them but because they were things that the European Union should not have been involved in. They should have been left to the member states, which were best placed to decide what was right for them. There is no better example of that than this regulation which is being discussed at European level. I should be very interested to hear from the Minister as to where those negotiations have got to.

I raise one other question, which perhaps is more to do with the administration of the House. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Roper, can inform me as to whether he believes that we now have procedures in the House suitable to ensure that whenever an issue such as this comes up again—exercising our judgment in terms of the yellow card procedure—we can do this quickly enough so that we can raise support among other national Parliaments within the European Union to make sure that our message is heard. I am disappointed that it is just the Swedes who are following our example—that is not a good sign—but I do not commiserate at all with the Members of the European Parliament in the UK this Christmas who will not have the opportunity that I had back in 1994.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I declare an interest as new girl on Sub-Committee D, although I have spent a number of years on Sub-Committee G and on the Select Committee. One of the other things I have done in my life is to look at institutions and large organisations. One of the cultural problems of institutions is the difficulty they have in moving forward when times change. That is particularly so when there is no check on personnel or financial commitment. It is even more difficult to make organisations change when the issue looks like “a good thing”, such as this one; the distribution of food products to the most deprived persons in the Union. For someone like me from a social care background, that looks like a good thing. However, as we have heard, the programme began at a time when the excess of food stocks was purchased into public stores under the old common agricultural policy scheme and the temptation to continue the intervention into the affairs of member states by purchasing food from markets for distribution through the EU food programme is almost irresistible, certainly for those committed to work within the Commission.

However, as I said, having spent some years as chair of Sub-Committee G, and now as a member of this committee, I am more than aware of the danger of the Commission moving into areas best served by member states themselves. In Sub-Committee G, we were constantly on the alert for encroachments into health and consumer issues. I spent more than one afternoon thinking about the working time directive. Not to be misunderstood, I am a committed European. There is much we can do as a community to further the lives and interests of our citizens. Food safety and security are clearly such areas close to this debate, where the wider community can and does add value, but some things are not only the right and responsibility of member states, but are local within that state. The distribution of food to poor citizens is one of these.

Tim Lang, professor of food policy at the City University, defines food poverty in the UK as follows:

“Food poverty is worse diet, worse access, worse health, higher percentage of income on food and less choice from a restricted range of foods. Above all food poverty is about less or almost no consumption of fruit & vegetables”.

Other factors include access to a range of healthy foods in local shops, transport, fear of crime, knowledge about what constitutes a healthy diet and the skills to create healthy meals. Is that really an issue for Brussels?

For many years, I was a member of the board of the Food Standards Agency, the independent department set up to protect public health and consumer interests in relation to food. The FSA runs the annual Dame Sheila McKechnie awards for community food groups. I have seen at first hand what local action on food can achieve. Community food projects work to tackle food poverty in their local areas, giving the power of choice and change back to local communities. Projects include food co-ops, community cafes, cooking and nutrition programmes, and courses, markets, breakfast or lunch clubs, school tuck shops, peer training and any project which improves people’s access to healthy, affordable and sustainable food. It is about as local as local action gets.

Community food mapping can identify where food poverty exists. The technique uses local people’s knowledge to map food availability in a specific area. The results can be combined with data from other organisations, such as local authorities, the NHS and business—again, all local. The results can then be used to implement solutions to food poverty by designing initiatives tailored to those local needs.

One example is the North East Food Access Network, which is,

“a network of organisations and individuals promoting access to fresh, affordable, sustainable and culturally appropriate food in the North East region. It is a forum for the exchange of information and advice between projects and networks in the region. It aims to have an influential regional ‘voice’ on addressing the issues of ‘good food’ access for all in the North East and seeks to develop a co-ordinated regional approach to work around food and health”.

At times of austerity, such projects as these are vital to the life of local communities. Certainly, they could use more funding. One of my questions to the Minister is about how local community groups are going to be supported in the future. That would be of great value if it came direct without the added expense that must be involved in the Commission buying goods on the open market for redistribution, which, in addition, can easily distort the markets.

If we are to convince our citizens of the benefits of Europe, rather than it being seen just as an additional drain on the nation’s purse, we should focus EU efforts where they bring best value and doing those things that sovereign states cannot achieve alone. Food networks are local, direct and know their communities. They are not overbureaucratic and, consequently, are flexible in responding to need. Above all, they are transparent. We should leave them uncluttered by intervention by the Commission, however well intended. After all, we know that this kind of centralisation by any institution leads to more money being spent on staff to make assessments to decide on criteria, more forms, applications to be vetted, assurance schemes to prevent fraud and so on.

I would conclude that not only does there appear to be no compelling argument to suggest that the Union is better placed than member states to ensure a food supply to its most deprived citizens, it appears to me that to do so would divert resources from those in non-governmental bodies who do it so well. I support the Motion to issue a reasoned opinion.