Asked by: Lord Browne of Belmont (Democratic Unionist Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what safety and background checks are carried out on people renewing taxi driver licences or applying for new taxi driver licences in the UK.
Answered by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Government is responsible for setting the regulatory structure within which local licensing authorities in England and Wales license taxi drivers. Regulation of taxi drivers in Scotland and Northern Ireland is devolved to the Scottish Government and Northern Irish Assembly respectively.
Local licensing authorities in England and Wales have a duty to ensure that any person to whom they grant a taxi driver’s licence is a fit and proper person to hold such a licence.
Although the term ‘fit and proper’ is not defined in legislation, the procedure for assessing a driver’s fitness will typically involve a criminal record check, a medical check, a local topographical knowledge test and possibly a special driving test. The inclusion of any or all of these elements and the stringency thereof is a matter for the licensing authority. However, the Department for Transport publishes Best Practice Guidance to assist licensing authorities when setting standards.
Asked by: Lord Browne of Belmont (Democratic Unionist Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the effectiveness of road safety awareness educational programmes in reducing accidents.
Answered by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Road safety education includes a range of interventions including educational courses and publicity campaigns.
The Department funds the THINK! road safety publicity campaign. We evaluate the campaign to ensure it is effective, that we continually improve performance; and that we ultimately deliver value for money for the taxpayer.
Prior to each campaign we set communication objectives and key performance indicators. We measure progress against these by running surveys with our target audience before and immediately after the campaign. We have seen positive shifts in key performance indicators for the majority of our campaigns. All of our recent campaign evaluation reports are published on gov.uk[1].
In the long run, positive changes in key performance indicators on campaigns such as speeding, drink driving and seatbelts have correlated with fewer drivers exceeding the speed limit, fewer accidents involving drink driving and higher seatbelt wearing rates; and ultimately to fewer road casualties.
Publicity campaigns are part of the solution to reduce road casualties and work best when used alongside enforcement and engineering interventions. Due to the multiple factors affecting casualties (weather, road conditions, traffic levels, the economy etc.) it is difficult to demonstrate a causal relationship with a specific intervention. However, in 2012 the department commissioned an independent agency to evaluate the impact drink drive campaigns have had on casualties. They used econometric modelling to estimate that over a 30 year period, drink drive communication campaigns have saved almost 2,000 lives and prevented over 10,000 serious injuries[2].
In 2013, the Transport Research Laboratory published[3] a review and synthesis of evidence on the effectiveness of pre-driver education and training for those under 17 years of age which was undertaken for the Coalition Government. The findings showed that very few interventions had been robustly evaluated and that the evidence base around pre-driver interventions was weak. The Government recently commissioned an evidence base review, to build on existing work, to help us to understand the effectiveness of a range of pre- and post-test behavioural and technological interventions for young drivers. The Government is currently also funding an evaluation of the effectiveness of speed awareness courses.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/think-communication-activity
[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/drink-drive-30-years-of-communication
[3] https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/249282/novice-driver-research-findings.pdf