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

Shaun Bailey Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 10th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Peter Gibson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. I feel as though I have obtained my proper parliamentary wings, having now taken an intervention from him. He raises an important point on the rights and needs of disabled passengers. The Bill does not deal with access to vehicles, but it does deal with safeguarding. I believe it will help deliver that provision for those who are most vulnerable in our society and require public authorities to ensure that safety is of paramount concern in licensing decisions.

The Bill would give the Government flexibility to designate a database provider or to provide the database themselves. Given the existence of NR3, it would make sense to use that database so that the Bill’s provisions can come into effect quickly. I recognise that NR3 does not currently allow for the recording of suspensions, but I wanted that in the Bill in case such functionality is added at a later date. Many local authorities already pay a fee to the National Anti Fraud Network for use of a wide range of services, including access to NR3.

The ability of the database operator to charge a fee would enable the National Anti Fraud Network to continue to recover NR3’s running costs. Indeed, it is anticipated that rather than starting from scratch with a new database, there will be use of the existing voluntary database operated by the National Anti Fraud Network—of which NR3 forms a part—which is already subscribed to by 256 of the 276 licensing authorities. However, only 138 such authorities use the NR3 element. I am reliably informed by the Local Government Association that, with little or no additional costs, the NR3 database could fulfil the Bill’s requirements if the Secretary of State so designates.

The Bill’s objective can be illustrated no better than through use of the current voluntary scheme. Luton Borough Council recently ran a check on the NR3 database for a driver applying for a licence. The search revealed a revocation in another local authority area, due to a safeguarding concern, which the applicant failed to disclose. Consequently, Luton—rightly—refused a licence due to that deliberate withholding of information.

[Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is being incredibly generous with his time. I commend him on the Bill. I am sure he is aware of the scandalous situation of the special educational needs and disability travel contract in Sandwell, with Sandwell Council having handed it out without checks being conducted. Is the safeguarding of children with special educational needs in respect of large travel firms the sort of thing that the Bill and use of that database would combat to ensure the safety of those children?

[Peter Gibson]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. There are many examples across the country of deplorable practices where the failure to access information is failing to safeguard our constituents. For the same reasons as I gave in response to the intervention on disabled passengers by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), the Bill will help to support and safeguard our special educational needs children when accessing taxis. The Bill will close the loophole that I identified in the Luton case that enables an applicant to obtain a licence from an authority that does not participate in the voluntary scheme, just as my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Shaun Bailey) alluded to.

Since the Bill’s First Reading, I have met a wide variety of groups, from the Local Government Association to operators and industry bodies including the National Private Hire and Taxi Association, the Durham Licensed Taxi Association and the all-party parliamentary group on taxis. I thank them all for their engagement and assistance up to this point. However, the engagement that was organised by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust with Elaine Pickford and Liam O’Callaghan, the mother and brother of Sian O’Callaghan, who was murdered by a taxi driver in Oxfordshire, was the most important to me. I am grateful to them for the time they spent sharing their tragic story with me, and although this legislation can never bring Sian back, I hope it can serve as a lasting tribute to her.

--- Later in debate ---

[Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak on the Bill, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) on introducing a vital piece of legislation.

I want to talk about the experience that we have had in my borough of Sandwell—which I mentioned in an intervention earlier—and the opportunities that the Bill presents in ensuring that issues such as the scandalous transport contract for children with special educational needs, which was awarded by Sandwell Council to “one of their mates”, never arise again. I hope that the information provided on the database has the scope to ensure that that is included in wider procurement processes for larger transport contracts involving the most vulnerable members of our community.

I must pay tribute to two local councillors, David Fisher and Jay Anandou, who led the charge in exposing that disgraceful scandal, which has put at risk some of the most vulnerable children in my community. It is timely that my hon. Friend has brought the Bill to the House today. This is exactly the reason we are here: to protect the most vulnerable in our communities. I thank him for that. I think the Bill is vital because, as the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) articulated so well—as have other Members—we have a patchwork licensing system at the moment and probably an antiquated one, which needs reform. This is probably the first step on that journey. We really need a root-and-branch look at how we are licensing and providing authorisation to private hire vehicles. We see how well that can work when it goes right, and we know the important contribution that taxis and private hire vehicles make to our communities and local economies, as many right hon. and hon. Members have said. Private hire vehicles and taxis are at the heart of keeping us moving so it is important that we ensure, not just for our peace of mind but for that of the industry, that they know they are on a level playing field and that there is fairness.

We also need to ensure that firms that are playing by the rules get a fair go, because it is not right that individuals or firms are gaming the system. We heard some examples from my neighbouring city of Wolverhampton about how that can go to the extreme, to the detriment of people who are working hard. As hon. Members said, taxi drivers have been key workers during the pandemic. We know the important contribution that they have made to ensure that we can keep moving, that our frontline healthcare workers can get to where they need to be, that we can keep our most vulnerable members of our community safe, and that people can get the care, shopping, food and resources that they need. It is important to ensure that the system is robust enough and fair enough to put a level playing field in place.

What will be important in the success of the Bill—I say “success” because I am fully confident that my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington will get this through and I really hope so, because it is vital—is its implementation once it is on the statute book. We have to think about that. There has to be, and I am heartened to see, a degree of a duty for local authorities and licensing authorities to co-operate, because that will be the real success of these measures. It will be important to ensure that we have an obligation on local authorities to share that information. I am very pleased to see that a time limit is in place for local authorities to respond to an information request, because it will be really important to ensure that once these issues are flagged, they are dealt with expediently. We have to ensure not only that issues are highlighted, but resolved. That is key, too; it is about ensuring that we can keep our industry moving by resolving these problems and ensuring that we can keep people safe.

This Bill provides many opportunities and it falls into many different areas. It is not just about what we see on the face of the Bill, but so many different things, because we know how far-reaching the private hire industry is in respect of the work it does in our communities. I do not want to repeat what my hon. Friend said, because he introduced the Bill so expertly and with such precision, and I would not do it justice by doing so.

To keep my remarks as succinct as possible to allow colleagues to come in, I will just say that this is a vital Bill. It is one of those that transcends many parts of our communities and I think it is the start of a wider conversation about private hire and taxi firms. From our experience in Sandwell, there is scope for it to be utilised in the procurement processes of local authorities as well. I thank my hon. Friend for introducing the Bill, because this is exactly the sort of legislation needed for my constituents who have had to go through the scandalous situation of the SEND transport contract in Sandwell, and I wish him every success as it passes through the House.