THE WAY I SEE IT: NPHTA


As part of our cam- paign to encourage PHTM readers to contribute to your national newspaper,


we invited NPHTA board members to share some of their views this month.


WE START WITH: IAN HALL FROM SOUTHAMPTON


In January on behalf of the NPHTA, I attended a Joint Air Quality Forum in London which is part of the Government’s department Defra.


There were prominent members of the road transport industry present. Road Haulage Association (RHA), Freight Transport Association (FTA), British International Freight Association (BIFA), plus other attendees. The combined membership of these associations is somewhere in the region of 25,000 members. I believe this was the first time these groups had taken part in one of these forums.


This was the first series of forums in the run up to the launch of the Charging Clean Air Zones (CCAZ); apparently Birmingham and Leeds are going to be launched in July 2020; that is the plan anyway. The object is to tackle roadside nitrogen dioxide and to supposedly achieve compliance in the shortest possible time. However, local authorities with the most persistent pollution problems are required to consider introducing these CCAZ for older and more polluting vehicles as well.


So far 36 local authorities have been targeted with loans and grants for hackney carriage and private hire vehicle upgrades. Some of the areas mentioned in this report, such as Bath and North East Somerset, have a target date to go live by November 2020 or January 2021, Sheffield and Greater Manchester planned for some time in 2021. Other areas mentioned were Bristol, Newcastle, Coventry, Bradford, Liverpool, Leicester, Portsmouth, Broxbourne and Stoke.


The controversial topic at this meeting was centred around the haulage industry and charging zones they will enter on a day-to- day basis in the process of delivering goods. Unless the road haulage industry is treated fairly, which is of the utmost importance, the price of goods in shops may very well rise. The Road Haulage Association and their partners present were extremely concerned about European trucks delivering in the UK, “How are you going to charge them?”. This was an important point: Defra officials need


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to investigate how this charging system could be implemented. It would not be correct and proper to charge English registered trucks, ignoring a charging system for foreign competitors, would it?


Drivers of all vehicles in the charging categories will be able to access the vehicle checker and supply their registration details which will check the charging status of their vehicles. This checker will determine if the vehicle is subject to a charge or not.


These are increasingly challenging times for drivers and operators; the last thing we need is more expense, more confusion and more uncertainty.


NEXT UP IS: STEVEN TOY FROM CANNOCK CHASE


DEHUMANISATION - REHUMANISATION


In recent years I have visited two concentration camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Dachau. One particular concept or notion that I learnt from going to these places was the one of dehumanisation and its various stages. These death camps were, of course, the final stage but what is actually really important is knowing not just the endgame in this particularly ghastly period in our history but that it starts with the premise that we are not equal as humans. Some mere mortals are more ‘mere’ and lowly than others and this very notion then becomes a barrier to empathy as it becomes much easier not to be empathic to those whom you don’t consider to share all of your human traits. The dehumanising labels then appear: vermin, scum, letter boxes etc. It is then more socially acceptable to abuse those with such labels attached.


Taxi driver or private hire driver are also such labels. Now, I’m not going to compare the plight of our trade with that of WW2 victims of genocide as this would be crass and distasteful. I’m merely providing the most poignant illustrative reference to the notion of dehumanisation. We are not even remotely near to being pushed into ghettos


before being herded onto cattle trucks headed for death camps.


It is obviously more subtle than that and ranges from a conversation between our passengers about the tip they left the waiter before not giving us a tip even though the service we provided was exemplary, to


arguing about the fare, littering or soiling our vehicles, being abusive or even violent for no reason other than the fact that we are licensed drivers.


Oh, and in some cities we get our windows smashed too as we drive by - with or without passengers and all too often, the police do very little. It’s almost our own Kristallnacht.


The poor perception of us on the part of the general public is not a recent phenomenon either. I also doubt that it has anything to do with race.


Charlie Hawkins, played by Sidney James in the 1963 film Carry on Cabby (with an all- white cast) said: “When you get to be a cab driver you cut yourself off from the human race. Everybody’s got it in for you and nobody loves you. You are about as popular as a wickerwork seat in a nudist camp!”


The question is, what can we do to improve popular perception of us?


It would help if licensing authorities and those who draft licensing policy did not simply mirror public opinion in their regulatory approaches, for that only reinforces the negativity. The legal equivalent of dehumanisation is disproportionality where one group may face tougher sanctions than another for the same or equivalent contravention.


A prime example of this is the proposal in the Institute of Licensing Safe and Suitable Guidance 2018 document for local authorities written by the Institute of Licensing, which states that licensed drivers with seven or more points on their DVLA licence be banned from driving a licensed vehicle for a minimum of five years. This is despite the fact that a PSV driver who is licensed to carry up to 73 passengers on a double-decker bus faces only a one-year ban on accruing 12 points.


This draconian proposal is also a clear violation of Section 1.1 of the Regulators’ Code 2014 which requires regulators to “choose proportionate approaches to those they regulate.”


MARCH 2020


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