Deregulation Bill

Debate between Graham P Jones and Grahame Morris

Monday 23rd June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Graham Jones]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. People might be expecting a vehicle that is perhaps five years old at most, and that has been crash-tested for safety, from an operator they are familiar with and a local authority that has a very robust licensing system; but the vehicle that turns up may be from another authority, or could even have been licensed in the far ends of the United Kingdom. It could have no age restrictions on it, and be poorly MOT-tested, or its tests may not have been as frequent as they would have been under the local authority. The vehicle may not be as robust or as sound—it is only as good as it was on the date on which it got its MOT—as a vehicle that their local authority would permit. People could end up with a vehicle that is unsatisfactory, compared with what they would expect in their local authority area, because of the cross-border taxi proposal.

[Grahame M. Morris]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. He makes a very sensible point. Apart from choice and preference, and whether a cab or a private hire vehicle is adapted for the disabled, there are also issues about levels of maintenance, and different standards in different local authority areas.

On the Opposition side of the House, and on my part, there is agreement about the need for reform of the industry. However, there is consensus across the trade that this piecemeal approach is not what is needed. What is different since the Westminster Hall debate a couple of months ago is that the Law Commission has now reported. In his opening statement, the Minister said that the Law Commission agrees with clauses 10 to 12; well, that is not quite the whole truth, is it? What the Law Commission has advocated—and for the life of me, I cannot understand why the Government are not following through on this—is a comprehensive review to get rid of the inconsistency in standards across the country that my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn and others identified, and to deal with the concerns about inadequate enforcement. The idea that we can cherry-pick three proposals for deregulation and that there will be no consequences flies in the face of what the Law Commission is about, and seems rather contrary.

As my hon. Friends have indicated, the Law Commission’s July 2013 interim statement said that if reforms were to be implemented, they must be underpinned by tougher powers for licensing officers. I do not see why the proposed reforms are so urgent that the Government should bypass meaningful consultation; in doing so, they are undermining the work of the Law Commission that they initiated.

We must have a holistic approach; changes to regulation should be considered in the context of the legislation as a whole, rather than in a piecemeal fashion. Failure to do so not only disregards the trade and other stakeholders, but may put passenger safety at risk. The reforms look set to endanger the travelling public and ignore stakeholders. I do not believe that they are fit for purpose, and they should be removed from the Bill.