English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Hampton Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall be very brief for the reasons that we all know about—the number of votes that have taken place in the House this afternoon.

I offer my support to the movers of the amendments that have just been spoken to, first on accessibility. It is fairly close to my heart. Even with a high national profile, I have sometimes had real problems with accessible transport because of having a guide dog, and it is a nightmare for those who are wheelchair users. I hope that we can do something that is within the practicalities of protecting those who are prepared to have the vehicles and pay the extremely substantial investment that is needed to have accessible vehicles when Uber and other operators clearly do not.

I also give my support to the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon. An issue has been rumbling along for years in relation to the licensing shopping scheme, where people have been able to license a taxi and then rove around the country, which certainly put people at risk. In my own region, that applied to Rotherham. Apart from Wolverhampton, my city of Sheffield seems to have an inordinate number of taxis licensed in Kirklees in West Yorkshire; we clearly need to do something about it. There would have to be flexibility.

In my Amendments 235CA and 235E, which I speak to this afternoon, I am trying to say that there should first be a recognition that devolution and local empowerment means that there should be continuing engagement of elected members. That is not easy in strategic authorities that are combined authorities, because although we can proclaim elected mayors, the engagement of those who know the localities within which those strategic authorities are placed is left out.

First, we need an accountable input and, secondly, we need national standards that apply right across England and deal, in part at least, with the correct assessment that the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, made of the difficulties and dangers. There should be some flexibility: if you are genuinely licensed in Wolverhampton but the license authority becomes the West Midlands Combined Authority, you need to also be able to use your licence in Telford in Shropshire. I know it quite well and I think that people in Shropshire county are quite bereft of taxi services as it is. There needs to be flexibility that allows the licensing authority to specify very clearly and then, as the noble Baroness rightly said, to actually have some enforcement powers.

But local authorities also tell me that we need transitional arrangements. We need to assess the costs and ensure that there is that genuine local input. There is a serious issue here. I know my noble friend very well and know he will be incredibly sympathetic to the points that have been made this afternoon and, overcoming internal bureaucracies within government, will seek to find a way forward on Report, should we reach it.

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 235BA, 235CB and 235CC, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, to which I have added my name. I associate myself with all the amendments in this group. I must also apologise that this is my first intervention in this Bill. A mixture of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill and my own children’s well-being, I am afraid, has precluded me from taking part so far. As this is my first time speaking on this Bill, I must declare, as ever, that I am a teacher in a state secondary school.

As we have heard, there is real concern from local licensing authorities that, nationally, cross-border hiring generates serious public safety issues while undermining local licensing regimes. The TaxiPoint website says:

“The Casey Report highlights what has been evident for more than a decade: in a small minority of cases, taxis have played a role in the exploitation of children. Vehicles have been used both to traffic victims and to introduce them to perpetrators. This was identified as early as the Rotherham inquiry in 2014, where Professor Jay found that taxi drivers were a ‘common thread’ in abuse cases. Subsequent reports from Oldham, Newcastle and Telford reinforced these concerns”.


The scale of the cross-border hiring problem has been magnified significantly in recent years through the advent of new technology, with many taxi and private hire customers now mainly being through app-based services. This also restricts the enforcement capabilities of local licensing authorities, as they have only limited powers to enforce against out-of-town vehicles. Cross-border hiring in the taxi and private hire industries has been commonplace for many years, which has resulted in localised issues, particularly in areas where there are a number of licensing authorities in close proximity. This is coupled with a significant and rapid growth in the number of private hire drivers and vehicles, and all these issues have exacerbated cross-border hiring concerns.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, talked about Wolverhampton Council, which has issued in excess of 40,000 private hire licences, far exceeding local operational demand. The proposals considered by the Law Commission review in 2012, in respect of addressing cross-border hiring, are now considered by TfL and other stakeholders to be out of date. Urgent legislative reform is required to address these issues. The Metropolitan Police Service has said that cross-border hiring is the single largest risk to policing nationally. Amendments 235CB and 235CC would go a long way to solving these issues, and Amendment 235BA would strengthen enforcement. They have been needed for far too long, and I urge the Government to accept them.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, I associate myself with all the speakers and amendments so far. In making my comments, I would like to focus on just one word. It is in the title of the Bill: “empowerment”. I ask this very simple question, not only on taxis but on transport in this country: if you are a disabled person, where is the empowerment? That is true with so-called shared space—completely inaccessible and excluding to large swathes of the community—and so-called floating bus stops, ditto. When it comes to taxis, having an integrated transport strategy that does not consider the key role of taxis at key points in people’s journeys means that there is no integrated transport strategy and there is certainly no inclusion.