Taxi and Private Hire Licensing Reform

Daniel Zeichner Excerpts

Thursday 3rd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

I very much appreciate your giving me permission to speak, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will be very brief. I thoroughly endorse the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting): this is absolutely about safety.

I just want to raise the professor’s report. He came to the Transport Committee and was questioned about it. He told us:

“The main takeaway from my point of view is that currently the public is at risk.”

That is a very strong thing to say, and I cannot understand why the Government have allowed this to run for so long. I am grateful to the former Minister, the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes). We worked in a cross-party way to produce a private Member’s Bill that was ready to go, but it was talked out, unfortunately. It is still there; it is still alive; and it would deal with driver licensing and enforcement. I plead with the Minister to keep it alive in the next few days. It is there to be done. Given that this has been running since the Law Commission report four or five years ago, it is quite extraordinary that we can allow the public to be put at risk in this way.