English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Borwick Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 8th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Borwick (Con)]

My Lords, I think I might have discovered why Governments of all flavours make their legislation so heavy and long—in the case of this Bill, 371 pages, 93 clauses and 34 schedules. It is to enable any Peer to speak about the one subject they know about at Second Reading. That is very generous, because several clauses are to solve long-term problems in the taxi industry and that is what I want to talk about.

I must first declare my interests. I have been connected with the taxi trade for about 45 years and I own my own wheelchair-accessible licensed taxi. Historically, I was the group CEO of Manganese Bronze Holdings plc, which voluntarily introduced the first production wheelchair-accessible London taxi in 1997.

I want to mention the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. Thirty years ago may seem to the young people in the transport department to be legislative archaeology, but the wonderful Library here has dug out the history of this legislation. Section 32 of the 1995 Act says that the department

“may make regulations … for the purpose of securing that it is possible … for disabled persons … to get into and out of taxis in safety”

and

“to be carried in taxis in safety and in reasonable comfort”.

The Government did not actually make the regulations, and the DDA Act was repealed and replaced by the Equality Act 2010. The same clauses were carried through in Section 160 of that Act, but the same inactivity was carried through too. The House of Lords did post-legislative scrutiny on the Equality Act and disability, and the Liaison Committee did so again in 2021. I think that both said the provision should be commenced without further delay. The Government leaped into action, agreed with the committees, and did nothing. So, I believe that the words in Section 32 are still relevant 30 years later. The department “may make regulations”, but has not bothered to do so, and still disabled people with flat batteries are pushing their wheelchairs uphill.

These words pose an obvious question: why have they not been actioned? Is it because there has not been the time in 30 years to action them? The Conservative Party was in power for 16 years, the Labour Party for 14 years, and the Liberal Democrats in coalition for 5 years. All of them have had the power to do something, but nobody has actually done anything. The blame should be shared among the parties represented here; there is ample obloquy for everyone other than the Cross-Benchers to take their fair share.

This is a shameful history, and it should stop. Essentially, Parliament decided to do something and the department decided not to do it but did not have the courage to repeal the legislation. Thirty years is enough. In those 30 years, the number of people who use wheelchairs has grown enormously as longevity has increased. Indeed, I can point out that all of us have used a wheelchair; it is called a baby buggy, and we are very fortunate if it is only at the beginning of our lives when we use a wheelchair.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, made a speech on 4 March 2022 that impressed me. She mentioned that she had arrived at her local station, Watford, after 11 pm in sleet and snow, and only a very few of the taxis were wheelchair accessible. She had a flat battery, so she had to push her heavy wheelchair because there was not an accessible taxi available. Why did any party in power not do the small work required to get the statutory instrument in place?

I have enormous respect for the Minister the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, who I know is enthusiastic to solve this wheelchair accessibility problem. I ask the Government two questions: has the department already drafted the statutory instrument needed by the previous Section 32? I presume that that was 30 years ago. When can we see it proposed?

On the Bill itself, where there are new clauses on the licensing of taxis and private hire vehicles, I ask: why not set a timetable for these excellent clauses, which I thoroughly support? Why does it say “may” and not “must”? Are we debating a 30-year timetable to get these changes done?

The largest problem in the taxi industry is cross-border hiring, which was mentioned earlier. It was a problem mentioned in the Casey report. If a taxi driver can be caught in a crime and lose his licence but carry on working the same place with a new licence from somewhere else, this change to enlarge licensing areas should be made.

There is clearly something suboptimal about the knowledge in London. Butter boys—the London trade’s name for newly qualified drivers—spend three to five years memorising knowledge which is inherently computable. It can be done better on an iPhone than in a brain, because the answer to the question, “How do I get from the House of Lords to Carey Street?”, changes from day to day, depending on who is digging up which road and then staring at the hole.

There may well be significant problems with the rest of the legislation, but I support the taxi clauses. I will propose amendments to compel the Government to bring forward the inclusion of wheelchair accessibility to taxis—a matter agreed no less than 30 years ago.