Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Disabled Persons) Bill

Debate between Simon Baynes and Jeremy Wright

3rd reading
Friday 18th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Wright]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who I know has shadow ministerial experience in this area. He is right: there is more to be done in relation to the taxis and private hire vehicles that we all use, not just those of us with disabilities. However, the Government have already taken steps in this area. I hope and expect that the Government will support this Bill, and I think there is more to come. I hope, for example, that my hon. Friend the Minister will say something about the training that taxi and private hire vehicle drivers ought to receive in order to ensure they have basic disability awareness that will help to reinforce some of the duties that this Bill seeks to set out. I do not think the hon. Gentleman should take our advocacy for this Bill as an indication that we believe this is all that needs to be done. Clearly, more does need to be done.

As I have already said, the duties in section 165 of the Equality Act only apply if a passenger is a wheelchair user and is accessing a designated wheelchair-accessible taxi or private hire vehicle. Those are two specific criteria that exclude many. This Bill would level the playing field for disabled people by creating new duties at section 164A for drivers to carry and reasonably assist any disabled person without charging extra. It would also place duties on drivers to carry a disabled person’s wheelchair and mobility aids and provide reasonable assistance. Those duties would therefore apply to a wheelchair user who intends to transfer to a passenger seat of a non-wheelchair-accessible vehicle and, beyond that, to any disabled person who is not a wheelchair user who wishes to access any taxi or private hire vehicle.

The objectives of this Bill would, of course, be diminished if a disabled person were prevented in practice from accessing the vehicle because they could not easily find it when it arrived. Therefore, the Bill would create new duties at section 165A for drivers to assist a disabled person to find and identify a hired vehicle. That would apply to any taxi or private hire vehicle and to any disabled person, provided that the driver is aware that the person requires assistance to identify or find the vehicle.

This Bill would also create new duties for private hire vehicle operators at proposed new section 167A of the Equality Act 2010 by creating offences for refusing or failing to accept a booking from a disabled person.

[Simon Baynes (Clwyd South) (Con)]

I very much commend the content of my right hon. and learned Friend’s Bill. For balance, does he agree that, while this Bill is vital, a great many people running taxi and private hire vehicles actually go out of their way to help disabled people? What we are doing is building on the generosity and kindness of that sector to further improve the service provided to disabled people across the country.

[Jeremy Wright]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who made that point with great force and clarity during the Bill’s previous proceedings, for which I am grateful. He is absolutely right: it is necessary to recognise that a huge amount of good work is already being done by taxi and private hire vehicle drivers. No part of this Bill’s provisions is designed to suggest otherwise but, as he will recognise, a minority of drivers and operators do not yet comply with the expectations that we would all have as legislators and, frankly, that the good taxi and private hire vehicle drivers he talks about would also expect as a basic provision for their disabled passengers and clients. It is no reflection on those who do a good job, particularly those who moved people around over the pandemic when they would otherwise have been unable to be moved. I hope my hon. Friend will be reassured that we are seeking to strike that important balance, and I will come on to talk about that.

Before I do, I will finish my earlier point about sections 165A and 167A, which provide rights and protections to ensure that disabled people are not, by default, prevented from benefiting from the rights and protections provided in sections 164A and 165. To reiterate an earlier point, the fundamental intention of this Bill is to ensure that the Equality Act 2010 works more comprehensively for the millions of disabled people in this country.

To come back to my hon. Friend’s point, the Bill must also work for taxi and private hire vehicle drivers, many of whom already do what this Bill will require of them. The Bill simply would not work if it did not consider the range of people and situations that it could have an impact on, from both a passenger and a provider perspective. I believe that the duties, offences, defences, and exemptions in this Bill effectively balance the rights and protections for disabled people with the reasonable duties on drivers, operators, and local licencing authorities.

For a driver to assist a disabled person to identify or find their vehicle, the driver must be made aware before the start of the passenger’s journey that the passenger requires assistance to identify or find that vehicle. In order to carry a passenger in safety and reasonable comfort, the driver must reasonably have known that the passenger was disabled. For a driver to carry a disabled person’s wheelchair or mobility aid, it must be possible and reasonable for the wheelchair or mobility aid to be carried in the vehicle. The House can be satisfied that where a driver has a genuine reason why they could not fulfil the duties specified in this Bill, the defences provided would be adequate to avoid their being penalised unfairly.

This Bill would also amend driver exemptions from duties under the Equality Act. Currently, drivers can apply for an exemption on medical grounds or grounds related to their physical condition, which exempt them from all the duties in section 165. This Bill would ensure drivers are exempt from the appropriate sections by expanding the exemptions to cover some of the duties that would also be applied in proposed new section 164A.

It would also amend the driver exemptions so that they apply only to the mobility assistance duties in proposed new sections 164A and 165, thereby directly closing a loophole that enables a driver issued with an exemption because they cannot provide mobility assistance, to accept the carriage of a wheelchair user none the less, but to then, in theory at least, charge them more than they would other passengers. That cannot be right or the purpose of the exemption.

It is, as I said, a daunting task to create legislation that impacts millions of people, but the provisions in this Bill intend to do just that, ensuring disabled people have rights and protections when accessing taxis or private hire vehicles that work practically and across a multitude of scenarios. The Bill has been developed with disabled people’s step-by-step use of taxis and private hire vehicles at its core, from the booking stage, to finding the vehicle, to accessing and travelling in that vehicle.