NEVER MIND #theforgottenindustry – NOW LET US EXAMINE SOME MORE FACTS:
• Over the last 30 years there have been 66 drivers mur- dered or otherwise have lost their lives at the hands of passengers while on duty: hacked to death with an axe in the middle of Bodmin Moor; strangled and left in a car boot; killed at the wheel when a passenger forcibly took control of the vehicle and it hit a tree.
• The loss of life for our taxi and private hire drivers is more than the total number of UK police officers killed while on duty during the same 30-year period – which sadly totalled 45. However, for the most part the deaths of those police officers caused outrage and serious coverage in the main- stream media. The loss of our drivers rarely made the local press, let alone the national dailies.
• It has been well documented within the pages of PHTM dur- ing this period that attacks on licensed drivers quite severely outnumber the total of attacks on passengers. A multitude of attacks on drivers are not documented because the drivers believe the police will not act on their case – which for the most part is the truth…..or even worse, they’re afraid their issuing authority will get involved and the driver could have his licence revoked or suspended, (yes we have seen that happen) even though they were the victim - yet another example of the sheer lack of support for our industry!!
• Whilst not at any time wishing to minimise the horrendous nature of the child sex exploitation cases often quoted by Government, it is only fair to put the figures in proportion. According to the latest DfT industry statistics (March 2019) there are 412,317 licensed taxi and PHV drivers in England, Scotland and Wales. There are 362 local authorities across the UK, each with hundreds if not thousands or tens of thousands of licensed drivers in each district who are all decent, hard-working individuals who go above and beyond the call of duty on a daily basis to protect the pub- lic and provide an excellent public transport service. You can only quote four of those local authorities as having had an issue…EVER ….and of those, only a small minority of those licensees were accused, many of them acquit- ted!!
.....how’s that for proportionality!!
- The Rotherham case – by far the worst – resulted in 67 licensed drivers declared “not fit and proper”; the major- ity were revoked. A further 171 drivers were suspended until such time as they completed a safeguarding course….and yet most of those accused were found to have done no wrong in a court of law!!
- The Oxford (Bullfinch) case involved seven men having been jailed; most of those were not drivers, but “a lot of the time the victims were transported by taxi”.... so why not bus drivers or train drivers? Transportation can be and is provided in many different forms….so why is it that
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the only ones targeted and accused are the taxi and pri- vate hire sector?
- Under Operation Sanctuary in Newcastle, 60 taxi drivers suspected of sexual exploitation were suspended.
- The Rochdale case resulted in nine men being impris- oned; only six of those men were involved in the taxi trade at all.
• The above figures represent less than 0.06 per cent of all UK licensed drivers having been involved in such heinous crimes; yet the Government has now come out with this set of Statutory Standards which introduces our drivers in the most uncomplimentary terms possible, and tars them all with the same brush – the self-same brush that has been used to airbrush our industry out of existence during this Covid pandemic…the brush of complete ignorance and lack of awareness of how the industry actually works on a day to day basis!
• Is the Government’s total lack of regard, understanding and empathy for our entire industry during Covid some sort of punishment for Rotherham, Oxford, Newcastle and Rochdale? If so, they’ve got some explaining to do to jus- tify letting the entire orchard rot for a few bad apples…
• Following the Bullfinch expose of child exploitation in Oxford, a “Joint Operating Framework for Transporting Children/Adults with Care and Support Needs and Taxi Licensing in Oxfordshire” was issued jointly by Oxford, South Oxfordshire, Vale of White Horse, West Oxfordshire and Cherwell councils, as well as Thames Valley Police and Oxfordshire County Council. The report stated clearly their position on cross-border hiring: “The biggest risk to the safety of the public and the reputation of the taxi and pri- vate hire trade is the legal loophole that allows a driver and vehicle to be licensed as hackney carriage by one Licensing Authority and operate as private hire vehicle in another authority’s area.” This of course grew further out of propor- tion with the advent of private hire operations working hundreds of miles from their licensing area. And yet this Government specifically refused to consider taking mea- sures to resolve this “biggest risk to the safety of the public” - cross-border operations - in last month’s announcement.
• Incidentally, the same 2013 joint operating framework stat- ed that “Taxi drivers will be expected sign up to the [DBS] Update Service.” Yes, that’s right – seven years ago, a ser- vice which means that licensing authorities can check the DBS status of drivers 24 times per day if they like, long before any of Grant Shapps’s “new” measures.
So Mr Shapps, you claim to have issued this “new statutory guidance” in order to “protect the public”, right? So what exactly have you done to protect these members of the pub- lic?? The victims of attack – such as these licensed drivers:
AUGUST 2020
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