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

Debate between Sarah Champion and Daniel Zeichner

Wednesday 3rd November 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Bardell, and a pleasure to find myself in this Bill Committee some three and a half years late—a long wait for a cab, one might say. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Darlington, who has elegantly explained the issues and proposed solutions. I hope that in a cross-party way we can see the Bill through to fruition. I strongly echo the wise words of the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings, the long-term author of many of the proposals, but, as he says, there is much more to be done.

I will not repeat the points that I raised on Second Reading, but will make a few observations. I looked back to see the minor differences between the two Bills, and will seek an explanation as to why there have been changes, which might give some pointers to the Department’s thinking. I am not sure whether they came from the Minister or the hon. Member. There are minor changes in the short title, or is it the long title?—I can never remember which—of the Bill. There might be some thinking in the Department as to why that was done.

I have already mentioned the fees that have been introduced into the Bill this time, which seem a sensible addition. There is a subtle change in clause 5’s terminology from “out-of-area” to “licensed in other areas”. I am not sure whether that represents a change in the Department’s thinking. It is obviously a vexed issue with changing technologies. As we have all observed, much of the legislation was created at a time when things were genuinely local. In the modern world of apps it is very different, so the change in terminology might be telling us something that we should be aware of.

I particularly wanted to refer to the excellent Library briefing by Dr Roger Tyers, issued some months ago. I was interested in that briefing because there is reference to the short debate three and a half years ago on a Friday, when the Bill was talked out. Many of us who have witnessed Fridays in the Chamber will recognise that it is not the most uplifting way of discussing legislation. I was slightly frustrated that, as promoter of the Bill, I never had a chance to respond to some of the points made that afternoon, so, three and a half years later, I shall use the Library briefing to pick up the thread.

Very subtly in that Library briefing on page 11 there are references to some of the points made by the hon. Gentleman who talked it out, which were quite sensible. It was not just a question of filling the time, because important points were raised around proportionality and the definition of relevant information. One point made was about whether the measure was far too draconian, so that we were in danger of potentially punishing people in too dramatic a way for a relatively minor misdemeanour. It is important to put it on the record why that is not what the Bill tries to do. There are some answers to that in the Library briefing in a reference to the National Anti Fraud Network data-sharing agreement, which I doubt is background reading for most people, but I dug it out.

A long time ago, as a local councillor, I was on the licensing committee. People here in Committee have served on licensing committees and will know that the area is very complicated. There is guidance from the Department, but there is also local discretion. This is one of those issues that are sensitive, because there are different issues in different areas—sadly, as we know—and very good reasons why some authorities would want to have higher standards, so although there is a debate about national standards, it is not a simple debate. What really struck me in the data-sharing notice from the National Anti Fraud Network, which I think is worth quoting, was where it says:

“Every application must always be considered on its own merits. A licensing authority must not fetter its decision-making, or appear to have simply relied upon the previous decision of another authority. The purpose of the register is not to mean that an applicant who has been refused a licence on one occasion will always be refused.”

In other words, all that is happening here is that as much information as possible is being made available to those making decisions. It is not pre-empting the decision. That document goes on to make the very sensible point that

“it will always be relevant for an authority to consider a previous refusal or revocation, and the reasons for that decision.”

I will not labour the point, but I think the answers to the issues that were raised in the few minutes at the end of the debate to which I have referred can be answered, and I put it on the record that they have been answered. This raises a further, technical set of issues, which I suspect the right hon. and learned Member for South Swindon is far better placed to have a view on than I am, in relation to the complex relationship between the police and local authorities, in terms of what they can and cannot tell local authorities. Certainly when I was researching this legislation some years ago, I was very struck by the expertise of some of the licensing officers, who were explaining the nuances of this. Of course, there was a time when, in local areas, people knew their patch: the police knew their patch and the council knew its patch. It is sometimes quite hard to write these things down, but they would know who were the people whom it would be absolutely right to give another chance and who were the people whom we would not ever want to take a risk on. Trying to codify that is hard but I believe that, in the complicated web of legislation that we have, we may be getting closer to something that works. In the end, the real aim here must be passenger safety; it has to be. This goes right back to the professor’s point that he remains worried that, in the current situation, people are still at risk.

As ever, none of this is easy. We are trying to balance protection of the public with being reasonable to drivers, who may sometimes make a mistake and deserve a second chance—I think we would all want that. But I think that this Bill does no more than stop the gaming of the system, and that it is absolutely to be commended.

[Sarah Champion]

I begin by thanking the hon. Member for Darlington for bringing forward the Bill. It is much needed and very sensible. Of course, I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge for all the work that he has done and thank the hon. Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani). When she was the Minister for this subject area, she was going to bring forward some more comprehensive taxi legislation. I hope that the present Minister will consider the work that she has done and consider finding time to bring that forward.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Swindon spoke about the long relationship that we have had on this topic, and I want to bring a bit of that to the debate, so that everybody, but particularly the Minister, knows why this legislation is so important. I learnt about taxi licensing because Rotherham Council got it horribly, horribly wrong. I am delighted to say now that because of how wrong we got it and because of Government intervention, we now have some of the highest standards in the country. That is important because taxis, by their very nature, tend to be transporting, in a real position of trust, some of the most vulnerable people in the country. It is taxis that are commissioned to take children to school, and to take children and adults with special needs to where they need to be. We put our most precious loved ones into the back of a cab, on the assumption that the person will take as much care with their transportation as we would. Sadly, as we discovered in Rotherham, that was not the case. Children were known for their vulnerabilities, picked up because of that and exploited—sometimes in the taxi by some of the taxi drivers. But sometimes they were being commissioned from place to place and taken by the taxi drivers to do it. And they were doing all this in plain sight, because taxis, by their very nature, are transporting vulnerable people around, so it was not discovered in time.