Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Safeguarding and Road Safety) Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 4th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and as a disabled person who uses an electric wheelchair. I have used taxis across the United Kingdom. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, Peter Gibson MP and, before him, Daniel Zeichner MP on this Private Member’s Bill, which will make a key improvement to the experience of vulnerable passengers and to how licensing authorities can keep them safe. I shall focus on two areas: passengers assaulted by drivers, and disabled people refused a service by drivers despite the requirements under the law.

Assault by a driver is a very serious offence. Drivers are in a position of trust but too often there are incidents that have placed passengers at risk, or worse. I am sure Members of your Lordships’ House are aware of the cab driver John Worboys, who received two life sentences for a number of rapes and assaults: it is now believed he committed more than 100 offences against women using his cab to trap them. More recently, a predatory London private-hire driver raped a passenger and sexually assaulted two other women, and in 2019 police were looking for a London taxi driver who allegedly assaulted a passenger by braking excessively and causing them to fall off their seat during an argument in his cab.

I now turn to disabled people. Watford Borough Council—my local council— has an excellent public notice on the legal rights of disabled passengers using taxis and minicabs, which followed a series of complaints that drivers were refusing to take disabled passengers. It then surveyed disabled passengers and ran a mystery-shopper exercise to test the system. It was shocked at the results, but I am not surprised.

My own experience occurred about five years ago after leaving your Lordships’ House one cold winter’s evening. I live one mile from Watford station, and I arrived after 11 pm. My wheelchair battery was too low to get me home and it was sleeting. There were two wheelchair-accessible taxis in the queue, and both refused to take me, the first saying that he did not want to get out of his cab and get cold and wet, and the second saying that it was not worth it for such a short journey. There were no other accessible cabs available. One of the other drivers remonstrated with these two, who just refused to help, and I had no option at that hour but to go home, very slowly, pausing for long periods to try to preserve the battery life. It died around 250 metres from home, and I then had to get out—luckily, I can walk—and I had to push my big, 90-kilogram chair home. I am sorry to say that my experience of being refused a journey was not unusual, and I have travelled around the UK relying on taxis that frequently ignore the law. I am looking forward to hearing the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, who may well have similar experiences where guide dogs have been refused.

Watford Council’s problem is that these drivers were not licensed by their own authorities, for reasons set out very helpfully in the briefing from the Local Government Association. Can the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, tell us if the breaching of the law on taking disabled passengers is enough to qualify for this Bill? I am rather hoping that it is.

The wider safeguarding issues relating to drivers who assault or threaten passengers, which I raised at the start of my speech, are equally important: every other part of our lives aims to provide safeguarding practice to prevent people who are known to provide a risk to the public from being put in positions of trust. The reporting of drivers of concern has not kept pace with the lifting of restrictions for taxis plying for trade, which used to do so only in their licensing areas. This Bill will change that. A duty will be placed on local authorities to report serious safeguarding or road-safety concerns relating to a different council that has licensed that driver. I particularly want to see a formal—not voluntary—central register of drivers who are thought to be a sufficiently credible and serious risk that would put the driver at risk of having their licence suspended or revoked, or who have had their licence revoked, to prevent drivers trying to play the system, as outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Borwick.

This Private Member’s Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, will close this loophole; but I also agree with the LGA’s proposal that the Department for Transport should bring forward a taxi and private hire vehicle licensing reform Bill to replace all the current outdated legislation and to modernise the licensing system for taxis and PHVs. This is vital for both passengers and drivers. I recognise, however, that this is not a matter for today, and I support this Bill’s clear and limited aims, and wish it well in its passage to becoming law.