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

Greg Knight Excerpts

3rd reading
Friday 21st January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on getting this far. Only about 1% of all private Members’ Bills make it on to the statute book, so he has done very well. I wish him well as the Bill proceeds.

My hon. Friend referred to the database. May I ask him who is going to fund the costs of that?

[Peter Gibson]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his intervention. He raises a very important point about the cost, which I will address in further detail later in my speech. However, it is safe to say that a notional cost is already being borne by many local authorities as part of their membership of the national anti-fraud framework. It is for the Minister to decide whether to designate that database for the use of this legislation, if we are successful in getting it on to the statute book, and whether the Government fully fund it themselves or pass the relatively nominal cost on to a local authority.

Licensing authorities will then be required to search the database when processing each licensing application to ascertain whether the applicant has had a licence suspended, refused or revoked by another licensing authority. If there is a relevant entry on the database, the authority will be obliged to request further details of that adverse decision and have regard to the information considered by the other licensing authority when making its own decision. To be clear, the database would only record instances in which a licensing authority suspended, refused or revoked a driver’s licence due to safeguarding or road safety concerns: it would not hold details of that decision. The details would remain held by the relevant licensing authority, and would need to be requested on a case-by-case basis where an application is made to another local authority by an individual whose name appears on the register.