Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Tuesday 29th April 2014 Westminster Hall

[Grahame M. Morris]

I did have a debate this morning with a representative of Blueline Taxis from Newcastle. One of my hon. Friends wants to talk about some of the problems that have arisen, so I will leave them to respond on that.

There is a consequence to what we are doing. I hold taxi drivers in the highest regard. I socialise with a number of taxi drivers. I count them among my best friends, and I want to keep them. I do not want their status and prestige to be undermined by unlicensed taxis and the potential consequences of rushing this ill-thought-through legislation through Parliament.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a consensus across the trade that this piecemeal approach is not what is needed? We need to wait for the Law Commission to bring forward holistic legislation, as the hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) said. Contrary to the views of the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), that holistic approach will lead to safer taxis and more jobs for people than the Government’s piecemeal approach.

[Grahame M. Morris]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend’s point. There are dangers, not only to the trade, but to the safety of the travelling public. I mentioned some of the campaigns that have been run, which I support, on alerting people to the dangers of unlicensed and unauthorised taxis. Police figures show that 214 women were sexually assaulted in London last year after getting into illegal minicabs and unlicensed taxis, and 54 were raped. My concern is that new clause 8 would increase the number of unlicensed drivers pretending to be legitimate and make the enforcement process against the illegal use of licensed vehicles almost impossible. In particular, when we factor in the subcontracting amendment, the taxi might well be from another area, if we are looking outside London.

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[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to be able to take part in the debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) on securing one on such an important issue. I also declare that I am a proud member of Unite the union, which has an interest in the taxi trade.

Two weeks ago, my two Bolton colleagues and I attended a meeting in my constituency, which had been called by the National Association of Licensing and Enforcement Officers. In attendance were people from the Law Commission, the Local Government Association, the National Taxi Association, the National Private Hire Association, Unite and the GMB, the police and crime commissioner for Greater Manchester and councillors from a number of Greater Manchester authorities, including Bolton, Oldham, Rochdale, Trafford, Stockport and Salford. It was interesting that those attendees, from a vast range of different backgrounds, all spoke with one voice. They did not understand why the clauses affecting taxis were being rushed into the Deregulation Bill. They wanted them to be withdrawn, and instead wanted holistic legislation, focused on the Law Commission review. In a meeting of such a diverse group of people it is unusual for them all to speak with one voice.

We know that there are already problems in the system. For instance, in the north-west, Rossendale has licensed over 1,000 hackney carriages, most of which are being used not in Rossendale but elsewhere. Where are checks carried out, and by whom? We do not have national standards, so we could have a situation in which a taxi that is licensed in Rossendale but would not reach the standards required by authorities in Bolton is driving around in Bolton, and a passenger in Bolton who wants to complain about the taxi cannot do so to officers in Bolton, as they have no right to inspect the vehicle or check the driver.

Let us look at the situation in Sheffield. North East Derbyshire district council has licensed a Sheffield-based operator that uses hackney carriages licensed by Gedling borough council. Effectively, no council has regulatory control. Sheffield council is particularly powerless when there are complaints from Sheffield residents about taxis overcharging or poor driver behaviour.

[Rehman Chishti]

There is a similar situation in Medway in Kent. Drivers from Tonbridge and Malling are operating in Medway, which according to my local taxi drivers is exceptionally unfair. The local authority has said that it makes enforcement difficult. Does the hon. Lady agree that taxi drivers should operate in the area in which they are licensed? That makes enforcement easier and makes things easier for the people who use taxis.

[Julie Hilling]

The interesting question is why Rossendale, for example, is licensing so many taxi drivers. Why is that happening—why are firms going to Rossendale or to Gedling for licences? Is it that the regimes in those places are much easier to get through or that it is cheaper to get vehicles licensed there—what is it about the system there? When the system as a whole is fractured, there are all sorts of ways through it for disreputable drivers, disreputable companies or people who are simply trying to make the cheapest buck they can.

There is also the question of whether operators should be able to carry out journeys across local area borders. The legislation does not solve that problem. We need to look holistically at what we do about those cross-border journeys to ensure that there can be enforcement of regulations. Wherever a taxi was licensed, if is operating in Bolton why cannot Bolton enforcement officers be allowed to enforce regulations on that vehicle? I am not sure that the answer is necessarily to say that it is not possible. We need a framework in which it can happen, under which local authorities can get remuneration to enable them to carry out checks when licensing has been carried out by a different authority. The situation is complicated and is not solved by the legislation.

This issue came to my attention when the parents of a 13-year-old girl came to one of my constituency surgeries because they were concerned about a specific incident that had happened to her. She had taken a taxi. To start with, she was going into Bolton, but part of the way through the journey she received a call from her friend to say that they needed to meet elsewhere. It would appear that at some point during the journey the taxi driver turned off all his monitoring equipment—his GPS and everything else. The 13-year-old was taken to quite a remote estate in the constituency. The taxi driver parked up there and said, “I’m just waiting for a friend to bring me a phone charger—we just have to wait for them to turn up.”

The girl started to get agitated. She had told the taxi driver that she was 16, because her mum had said that she should tell people that she was a little older, thinking that that would protect her—in fact, in the circumstances it appears to have done the opposite. The girl became concerned about the questions the taxi driver was starting to ask her about her social life and so on. Fortunately, she had the nous to get out of the taxi. She played a ruse; she said, “I just want to pop to the shop over there,” got out of the taxi and ran like hell. Fortunately she met a bystander who listened to her, took her to a McDonald’s, called the police and waited with her until they turned up.

It transpired that the taxi driver had a record of past misdemeanours. He was taken through the tribunal system and lost his licence, so is now unable to operate in Bolton. But, like me, the girl’s parents were absolutely horrified to learn that although the driver is banned in Bolton he could become a taxi driver anywhere else, depending on whether another local authority were to do a police check—and because he was not actually prosecuted, a police check may not throw up the fact that he is a danger to the travelling public and, it would appear, to young women in particular.

I asked the Department a written question on what proportion of local authorities in England and Wales require a disclosure and barring service check on applicants before issuing a taxi or private hire vehicle licence. I have received this response:

“The Department for Transport does not hold this information. Local authorities are under a statutory duty to ensure that any person to whom they grant a taxi or private hire vehicle driver’s licence is a ‘fit and proper person’. As part of this process they can undertake criminal record checks on applicants but we do not keep details of the assessment policies and procedures adopted by local authorities.”

That “can” seems inadequate. I have asked questions about whether all local authorities carry out police checks, but as nobody holds the information we do not know. That is another reason why we need holistic legislation that ensures that licensing authorities carry out proper checks on drivers. We need a system in which if a person is banned by one local authority they are banned, full stop. The changes proposed in the Deregulation Bill will make the situation worse, not better.

The hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), who is no longer in his place, asked why family members should not be allowed to use a taxi when it is off duty. I was puzzled myself about that when I met operators and others involved in the industry, and was not wholly convinced by the answers I got, so I asked about whether taxi markings could be removed. I was told, basically, that that would be extremely difficult for taxis operating in my own local authority area—I would guess that would also be the case for all those operating outside London—because they are marked clearly as taxis. Another issue raised was what would happen in areas where taxis are allowed to use bus lanes. What happens to an off-duty taxi then—how would we enforce proper use of bus lanes?

We already have a massive problem in all of our areas with unlicensed taxis touting for business, particularly late at night. I am not often in city centres late at night, but I have been there in the past, and it has to be said that one becomes quite desperate for a taxi. In particular, when young people have perhaps been drinking more than they should have, they will not be rigorous about checking the identity of the driver or the car. In those circumstances people are simply pleased to get a lift home. We should not bring in any measure that weakens regulation and makes it more likely that people will be in a vehicle that is driven by someone who is not the licensed driver.

There are real problems with the system as it is. I ask the Minister to look seriously at removing the provisions from the Bill and to make sure that we have holistic legislation based on the Law Commission report. It seems a nonsense that we are looking to pass the Bill with those provisions, and I ask him wholeheartedly to remove them.

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[Stephen Hammond]

As I have set out, we are looking at commencement orders that will set out some details and obligations more carefully.

There has been a huge amount of talk this afternoon about the trade, which many of us rely on heavily on for our everyday lives. The sector is also made up of thousands of small businesses; indeed, the single owner-driver is a typical feature of the industry. As the hon. Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) said, these businesspeople are experts who often go the extra mile. That was something I certainly agreed with him on, although I suspect that the hon. Gentleman and I did not agree thereafter.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) made the point that it has been clear for some time that the law covering this transport mode is both archaic and complex. In many ways, it has not kept up with a number of other pieces of transport law and more importantly, it has placed a number of unnecessary burdens on small businesses. That is why the Government asked the Law Commission to carry out a comprehensive review of the law. As has rightly been pointed out, it will present its report—it will not be presenting a Bill; it will be presenting a report in the next few weeks—and at that stage, as with all reviews and reports, the Government will review the whole of those detailed findings and recommendations.

We gave the Law Commission a simple instruction, which was that it should carry out a review with a clear objective to deregulate as far as possible, and after careful consideration, should the Government decide to take forward legislation arising from the review, we will do so in a way that removes burdens and ensures that safety is still paramount. The publication of the Law Commission’s report has been delayed by several months, so there was no chance to have a dedicated Bill in the final Session in order potentially to introduce some of the wider reforms that the Law Commission will shortly recommend.

[Julie Hilling]

I wonder what the point of the Law Commission report is if the clauses are put in the Deregulation Bill. What if they are contradictory and what happens to the rest of the Law Commission’s work? I would be grateful if the Minister could explain to us what will happen with the Law Commission report if it comes up with some really positive suggestions.

[Stephen Hammond]

I expect the Law Commission to come up with a lot of positive suggestions and a lot of recommendations on removing some of the more archaic aspects of the existing legislation. I do not expect any of what is being proposed to contradict in any way that report. We have had to weigh up the case for finding a suitable opportunity to look at pragmatic changes in the immediacy rather than looking at the possibility of waiting until everything is reviewed. The Government have chosen to operate and act pragmatically, and to introduce limited measures at this point, because it is clear that the care we are taking to introduce the amendments will make life easier for small businesses and allow them to remove some restrictions that are completely unnecessary. That opportunity has been presented by the Deregulation Bill. It allows us to make immediate progress to assist both taxi and private hire businesses.