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page 9 Summary
THE ROAD TO REFORM From the House of Commons Transport Committee
Our inquiry focused on issues relating to taxis and private hire vehi- cles (PHVs) operating outside of the district in which they were licensed. The principal Acts covering taxis and PHVs date back to 1847 and 1976 respectively. The cross-border hire issues raised with us, and the increasingly complex case law in this area, lead us to conclude that the case for a thorough overhaul of this legislation is irresistible. We are not persuaded that the Government is right to refer the matter to the Law Commission: we recommend that the Government should engage with the trade, local authorities and users about the objectives of future legislation and commit to reform the law in this Parliament. We suggest that this could be done by means of a legislative reform order.
We recommend that the following principles should underpin new legislation:
• Listen to the views of users, particularly vulnerable groups;
• Keep it simple: combine the legislation on taxis and PHVs in one Act. The distinction between taxi and PHV services could be maintained by providing for two types of vehicle licence under the Act; and
• Keep it local: Taxis and PHVs should feature more prominent- ly in local transport plans. We recommend that there are strong arguments for national licensing standards in relation to some issues, such as CRB checks, but other matters are best deter- mined at a local level and licensing should remain a local function.
We make recommendations about making enforcement easier and the potential to create larger licensing districts and we also suggest how cross-border issues could be resolved by permitting local authorities to take action against out-of-town drivers and operators where there is evidence, for example, that they have worked, or sought to work, for a specified period of time in that district.
1 INTRODUCTION
1. Taxis and private hire vehicles (PHVs) are a vital but often overlooked part of the public transport system. They serve a number of functions in different areas, from getting people home from bars and nightclubs in the early hours of the morning to taking people to and from stations and air- ports. They are not just services for the affluent and can be essential forms of transport for people who cannot afford to run a car. In some parts of the country, and at some times of day, taxis and private hire vehicles are the only form of public transport available. Nevertheless, taxis and private hire vehicles are not always recognised as a form of public transport, are omit- ted from many local transport plans, and barely rate a mention in discussions of Government transport policy.
2. We decided to undertake this inquiry in November 2010 after we heard about disputes in different parts of the country involving taxis and private hire vehicles licensed in one district operating in other areas. We asked for evidence on any issues of concern relating to the licensing of taxis and pri- vate hire vehicles but the overwhelming majority which we received concerned cross-border hire. This issue was the focus of our two oral evi- dence sessions on 18 January and 15 March and is the subject of this report. We are grateful for both the oral and written evidence we received.
Taxis and private hire vehicles: a quick guide 3. Taxis—described in legislation as ‘hackney carriages’—operate from ranks, usually situated in city and town centres, and can be hailed in the street (known as ‘plying for hire’). PHVs—sometimes known as mini- cabs—must be pre-booked and cannot use taxi ranks. Taxis can accept pre-bookings and effectively operate as PHVs but it is illegal for PHVs to ply for hire. The Department told us that “there are some 75,000 licensed taxis and 150,000 PHVs across some 300 licensing authorities in England and Wales”.
4. The legal framework within which taxis and PHVs operate is complex. The two types of service in England and Wales are covered by separate Acts—the Town Police Clauses Act 1847 for taxis (the “1847 Act”) and the
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Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976 for PHVs and to some extent taxis as well (the “1976 Act”)—but there are separate Acts for both services in London and the Plymouth City Council Act applies to PHVs in that city. In this report we concentrate on taxis and PHVs in Eng- land and Wales, outside London and Plymouth, although we heard from London witnesses about the situation there.
5. Taxis and PHVs are licensed by district councils and other forms of sec- ond tier local authorities. Both require two licences—for the car and the driver—but, in addition, PHV operators must be licensed. Local authorities have considerable discretion in setting licensing conditions. The Depart- ment for Transport has published voluntary guidance on licensing best practice and we were told that the Department “takes every opportunity to urge licensing authorities to adhere to it”. Local authorities are legally obliged to ensure that money raised from licensing taxis and PHVs is spent on their control and supervision; some witnesses questioned whether councils always complied with this.
Cross-border hire: issues raised with us
6. Several forms of the cross-border hire issue were raised with us. The first involved PHV firms licensed in one district operating routinely in another area. Sefton-based PHV firm Delta Taxis operates throughout Merseyside using “a fleet spread out across the whole of our multi-bor- ough zone that can respond to telephone requests quite literally within seconds”. Without referring to Delta Taxis directly, Unite the Union’s Tommy Mclntyre complained about “a particular company” which, although based in Sefton, did 55% of its work in Liverpool. He said “they are not actually paying any money whatsoever towards the licensing regime in Liverpool”. Numerous similar examples were provided to us, often involving PHVs licensed by rural authorities operating principally in a near-by town or city. For example, Gavin Sokhi of Skyline Taxis drew attention to the situation in Milton Keynes, where he claimed “drivers from other licensing authorities are being licensed at lesser standards and then working in [the city]”.
7. A second issue concerns the activities of the former Berwick District Council (now subsumed into Northumberland County Council) which licensed a number of taxis which were operated as PHVs elsewhere in the UK. The GMB said:
Anyone could have driven a Berwick taxi and that taxi could have been a modernised death-trap, and nobody would have been able to do a thing about it, as some of these vehicles were permanently working hundreds of miles away from their licensing authority.
David Wilson, the former licensing officer at Berwick, refuted the sugges- tions that the licensing standards at Berwick were low and that the local authority did not engage in enforcement activity. He said that, in the local authority’s view, the legislation did not permit a licence to be refused on the grounds that a taxi was going to be operated as a PHV in another local- ity. This issue has been subject to litigation and the court has held that a taxi licence should not ordinarily be granted if the taxi is going to be used in this way.
8. We did not hear of any other examples of the “Berwick” problem, but the GMB raised the issue of Adur Council licensing a PHV operator in Brighton. In GMB’s view, Adur had “licensing criteria of a lower standard to that in Brighton and Hove” and Adur’s decision has enabled a PHV firm to “integrate vehicles into their fleet which are licensed to a lesser stan- dard, drivers who have no knowledge of Brighton and Hove, and/or drivers who can’t be bothered to meet the high entry criteria demanded by the local licensing authority”. Adur and Worthing Councils said there were legitimate reasons for differences in standards between local authorities and pointed out that the law on whether local authorities could license PHV operators in a different district was a “grey area”.
9. Finally, the prohibition on sub-contracting of jobs by PHV firms was raised with us, particularly by Tyneside-based Blue Line Taxis, whose liti- gation established the current case law in this area. The 1976 Act prohibits PHV operators from transferring work to an operator in a different district but this prohibition does not apply to London PHVs. Blue Line Taxis said: If we accept a booking as a North Tyneside Council operator we cannot lawfully request assistance from a Newcastle operator even when it would be entirely in the best interests of our customer for us to do so and despite there being no credible purpose behind the laws which prevents us from
PHTM AUGUST 2011
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