London Black Cabs

Debate between Sadiq Khan and David Lammy

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) on securing the debate and on his contribution, and I congratulate and commend my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) on his speech. He articulated in great detail the issues and substance of what is now required.

I want to say a couple of things that have occurred to me over the last little while. First, I want to thank a knowledge school called the Knowledge 4 You academy, which sits in Bethnal Green. I paid a visit to that school, which is run by a wonderful chap called Courtney, who is a Barbadian Rastafarian. Every evening in a little portakabin behind Bethnal Green station, about 40 Londoners gather to go through the knowledge. I met those 40 people. They are men and women, from all the ethnic backgrounds that we see reflected in the city. It might be said that they are overwhelmingly from a working-class background. One was a firefighter and another was a paramedic. Some were working in retail, and actually, I met a student there. It was a real reflection of London, going there every evening and studying for up to three years to get that knowledge, all coveting the yellow badge that gives them the entitlement to drive a black cab around London.

I came from the kind of background in the ’70s and ’80s where, if I had come into the centre of town, say, as a 19 or 20-year-old, and then got home and told my mother that I had got into a black cab, I would have got a clip around the ear. “Where the hell did you get that kind of money?” she would have said. However, later, as I became a barrister and had a little bit more money, it was quite nice to get into a black cab in the centre of town. It was quite nice to have the odd date and take one’s girlfriend home in a black cab, and it was comforting to be able to put one’s partner into a black cab and send them home in safety. It is great to be able to get into a vehicle where the driver knows where he is going. I have to say that all these years later, having seen the dedication of those who work hard to get that badge, it is something we should preserve. It is an institution.

All of us in this room will have travelled to cities all over the world, and we will have seen in those cities how people prize this institution, which is the first face that someone sees of the city when they arrive at Heathrow or Gatwick. That should be preserved and the business of plying for trade, which we established, is now something that, as my right hon. Friend said, should be in statute. This House could sort that out pretty rapidly and it would give that institution the reassurance it needs, not just in this city, but in other cities in the country. That is really the centrality of what the Minister has to come to.

I am absolutely clear that the Government’s slightly relaxed attitude to international companies that do not pay tax in this country must stop. Of course such a company can undercut established institutions. It is well known across the world that people can arrive in London, get a second-hand vehicle, jump through very few hoops—the bar is so low—go to the Uber office, get the technology, and for very little training, they, too, can be part of the explosion that we are seeing across the city which is now polluting our young people’s lungs. Of course the city is congested; it is all the private hire vehicles that people are picking up. In this economy, where one in four young people in London is still unemployed, we are seeing many young students doing this as well. Is that right? Is that good? It cannot be.

I wrote to the Home Secretary not so long ago to raise the issues of homophobia, assault and rape—really concerning activity on the part of some of these unregulated drivers. That is the price of entire deregulation, which is effectively what we are seeing through the back door. My view is that despite Transport for London being a great institution, in this area, it has failed miserably. Many black cab drivers expected the Mayor to intervene and to understand fully the difference between a metred cab plying for trade and actually ringing up a company, but that did not happen in a sufficient way. Will the Minister look again at this and at how this was allowed to happen? Unlike in a city such as Paris, where licensed drivers and new technology are able to exist alongside the long-standing institution of drivers in that capital city, how in London have we got it so badly wrong? The black cab is looked at across the world. It is more iconic than the New York yellow cab, and we are prepared to see it dwindle away on the back of deregulation.

There is the issue of who these drivers are. What is their qualification? What is their background? Why are we hearing of so many incidents of really poor, antisocial, dangerous and sometimes criminal behaviour? Who are they and what is the regulation relating to that?

Why are we so relaxed about a company that is not paying tax? Why are we supporting them? Who are the friends that we are hanging out with? There have been lots of suggestions and there has been lots of contact at different places between the Mayor’s office, the Government and some of these new companies that are entering the market. Are we going to make this a statutory base—plying for trade, the hackney carriage—and move it forward into the 21st century so we protect that institution?

Finally, if someone lives in London locally, they want to be able to ring up a minicab office, where there are local drivers who know their local area. That is usually to do regular routes. Lots of old people make short visits to hospitals, GP surgeries and that sort of thing. It is really worrying to see the collapse of minicab offices in London because of the failure to regulate appropriately in this area.

[Sadiq Khan]

My right hon. Friend has touched a nerve with me and with regard to what my constituents have been saying to me, which is that some private hire vehicles are being driven out of the market by the pricing model of Uber. It is trying to gain a huge share of the private hire vehicle market and the worry is what will happen tomorrow when all these private vehicles that he knows about—the minicabs in Tooting and Tottenham—are run out of business.

[Mr Lammy]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Basically, do we want the high street to have a place not only for the supermarket somewhere, but for small independent shops? Very soon in London, those small independent minicab offices will all be gone. There will be no sense of locality. It will all be one big M25 fudge called Uber. That is what we must stand up to. There is room for everyone, but unfairness must be grappled with over the coming weeks and months.

Defamation Bill

Debate between Sadiq Khan and David Lammy

Tuesday 12th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

I am sure that the Justice Secretary has heard the hon. Gentleman’s intervention and will take on board the point he has made.

It is not clear either whether high-profile cases, such as that of Dr Peter Wilmshurst, to which the Chair of the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport referred, or that of Rachel Ehrenfeld, would have been prevented if clause 9 had been in place at the time. If the Justice Secretary or the Minister winding up the debate cannot address this issue, it will need to be looked at further in Committee.

Clause 11 removes the presumption in favour of jury trials in defamation cases. Although this reversal will, we hope, help to reduce costs and improve clarity, there is a danger in restricting jury trials, particularly where the key issue is who is telling the truth. However, the Bill still gives the court the discretion to order a jury trial where it considers that to be appropriate, which is an important safeguard. I note the comments made by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), and we expect that the Committee might want to explore the criteria for the judge to consider when deciding whether a jury trial should be ordered.

[Mr Lammy]

Although much has been said about the cost of jury trial, does my right hon. Friend agree that we would not want to give an indication in the House that this is a slippery slope or that we ought to start thinking about cutting jury trials in criminal cases? The matter was debated at length in the Joint Committee, and there are circumstances where jury trials should remain in defamation cases.

[Sadiq Khan]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention and for his contribution to the Joint Committee. Of course, he is right, and the Justice Secretary will have reassured the House with his comments about criminal cases. My right hon. Friend will be aware that there are still jury trials in civil cases involving what are known as constitutional torts—malicious prosecution and false imprisonment. The provisions in clause 11 still allow a trial by one’s peers in appropriate cases. What the Committee should look into is the comments of the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden about the criteria that one would expect a judge to apply. The key thing is that the presumption of a jury trial has now been removed, which will lead to a reduction in costs and, one hopes, less of a chilling effect than where the “threat” of a jury trial is hanging over a defendant, with all the additional cost that could lead to.