Private Hire and Hackney Carriage Vehicles

Jonathan Lord Excerpts

Wednesday 29th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Richard Fuller]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point, which highlights the fact that so many authorities are responsible for licensing, and the complexity of various initiatives taking place. I understand that the Law Commission will examine certain aspects of regulation, but he makes an excellent point about the need for best practice to be applied across the country. I shall be interested to hear the Minister’s response and his thoughts on the balance between localism and trying to tackle a national concern.

My view is that it would be unfair to expect drivers to bear the cost of CCTV, particularly if the price of the equipment remains in the hundreds of pounds. I do not expect public money to be made available in these straitened times, but I do know that in 2006 Bedford borough council worked with Bedfordshire police to use some of the proceeds of crime moneys to implement CCTV in a pilot scheme at low or no cost to drivers. In Leicester, funds from the tackling knives action programme have been used. In other local authorities, advertising on cabs has been enabled to fund the cost of CCTV. I ask the Minister to consider the possibility of the more widespread use of proceeds of crime moneys for this purpose.

I mentioned the lack of statistics on crime. I always think that if we do not track something, we will find it hard to make improvements. Therefore, will the Minister work with the Home Office to track more formally the statistics on criminal attacks on private hire drivers, including aggravated racial abuse? Will he also comment on whether he will seek opinions from the private hire and taxi trade as input to the Prime Minister’s alcohol strategy? Unfortunately, so many of these incidents of crime correlate with alcohol and drug misuse.

[Jonathan Lord (Woking) (Con)]

I commend the work of Woking street angels in my constituency, and similar street angels across the country, and also pay tribute to the licensed taxi drivers who have an arrangement with the street angels to take drunk and incapacitated passengers safely home, unless they are potentially violent, in which case the police are called. The drivers sometimes do that at no cost to the passengers. Is that something that my hon. Friend would like to see in more parts of the country?

[Richard Fuller]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. There are many excellent initiatives in towns across the country. They have recognised the problem of growing levels of alcohol abuse and the late night trade generally. We see organisations such as street angels working with the police, local authorities and taxi companies to ensure that towns do not suffer as a result of people staying out too long and that they get home safely. That relates to the point the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) made about the importance of local initiatives being given a national profile so that we can make changes all the way across.

My hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Jonathan Lord) enables me to segue over to talk about the safety of passengers. It is a sad reflection on the taxi industry that, despite the significant efforts made by local authorities, which he mentioned, any cursory review of local newspapers will readily identify cases of assault—frequently sexual assault—of passengers by taxi drivers. That is the flipside of the issue of vulnerability. There is the vulnerability of drivers who are on their own, perhaps with cash, and the vulnerability of people being driven home on their own. In 2002, the Metropolitan police estimated that in London alone 214 women had been raped or sexually assaulted in such circumstances in the preceding year. The figure fell to 93 by 2009 but has recently increased.

There is a range of initiatives that national Government and local authorities are taking to reduce risks to passengers. I will not dwell on those in too much detail, but a particular issue I want to highlight for the Minister is the limitations and availability of publicly held data that might be useful in reducing offences against passengers. There are currently 384 licensing authorities in the UK, each of which will have its own policies on the collection of data on drivers, such as their Criminal Records Bureau checks, and on their vehicles, and each authority will have its own rules about sharing that information. As we know, information is power, and that power ought to be available to passengers, should they wish to have it, when they hire a cab. It would provide reassurance to know that the vehicle and the driver are properly licensed.

Am I safe? is a service that currently operates in more than 50 towns and covers 10% of the UK population, but it reports that local authority information gathering is patchy and that the timeliness of updates varies. I do not know whether that application is the best, but I believe that it makes sense to make this regulated information more accessible and more accurate. Therefore, I ask the Minister for his views on the value of a national registration database of private hire drivers and licensed vehicles and, more broadly, his comments on the need for rigour in data collection and CRB checks.

Often, in towns and villages throughout our country, the only public transport option for getting back home after a night out is a cab—a private hire vehicle or hackney carriage. It is time for the Government, notwithstanding the Law Commission’s review of legislation, to come forward with some initiatives that will make our private hire and taxi sectors a respected part of our transport system—a status that they and we, the public, deserve.

Cycling

Jonathan Lord Excerpts

Thursday 23rd February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Jonathan Lord (Woking) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) on securing this debate and on his excellent introduction.

In September 2008, one of my Woking constituents, Nicholas Wright, was killed following a collision with a heavy goods vehicle in London. His mother recently wrote to me, saying:

“He was on his bicycle cycling, as he did every day, from Waterloo Station to the City where he worked as an IT project manager… He was an experienced cyclist and a volunteer Advanced Motorist Supervisor. Had the lorry been fitted with a mirror that allowed the driver to see directly down in front of his lorry, the death of my son would have been avoided.”

What an awful waste of a young husband, father and loving son. His family still miss him terribly and his wife, Caroline, has been in touch with me in support of the cycling campaign run by The Times. The untimely death of Nicholas Wright is, of course, reminiscent of the dreadful accident that befell Mary Bowers of The Times.

I am delighted by the huge amount of support that campaign by The Times has generated and we should study carefully the 7,000 stories about cycling in this country that have been given to that campaign, to see what first-hand guidance they can give us as we try to make cycling much safer. I broadly welcome most of the key points of the “Cities fit for cycling” manifesto developed by The Times. I was going to quibble with just one of those key points, but I do not think that I have the time to do so.

I want to pick up on the point made by the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) and say that this issue is not just about our cities. Some of the most dangerous roads for cyclists are our rural roads. I do not know what is currently in the Highway Code or the advice given to learner drivers, but we should treat cyclists—wherever possible and particularly on our rural roads—as if they were a young girl on horseback. Cars should slow up and not try to overtake if there is traffic coming in the other direction. So long as the visibility and sightlines are right, they should pull out slowly and purposefully and go into the opposite carriageway if there is nothing coming in the other direction. Our cyclists, particularly our young cyclists, deserve no less.

I am proud to represent a constituency—Woking—that has made outstanding progress on encouraging cycling in recent years. More than 26 km of off-road network has been added in Woking since 2008, including a substantial route along vast swathes of the Basingstoke canal towpath, thus demonstrating that it is often possible to open up significant new routes, even within highly built-up areas. In addition, I look forward to the culmination of the Hoe valley scheme, which the Prime Minister visited recently. Basically, that scheme aims to take lots of homes out of the local flood area, but there will also be new homes, including affordable homes, and new parkland, which will have terrific new off-highway cycling routes.

Many colleagues have said that the promotion of safe cycling is crucial. In Woking, we have had special activities such as “neon nights”, which are supervised evening cycle rides to promote the use of high-visibility clothing and lights, encouraging cyclists to be seen and to be safe.

I started my contribution on a very sombre note, but let me end on a light one. I very much enjoyed the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile), who talked about being a fat man on a bicycle. My younger brother—he is younger than me, but the same sort of age—was getting corpulent a few years ago. Within a year, he had successfully competed in L’Étape, which as I understand it is a stretch of the Tour de France that amateurs can ride. So I say to my hon. Friend, “Set your sights high, my friend”, and if he succeeds in riding L’Étape, perhaps we can go on a tandem together, as my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) talked about, but I would first like to have proof beyond all shadow of a doubt of his stability and fitness for purpose. Given that proof, I look forward to that prospect and perhaps we can do it in aid of charity.