AN IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS
It was what’s known as, a Christmas Tree Bill, where MPs (or departments) could throw their own ‘bauble’ onto the Bill and therefore the national issue of controlling the minicab trade was attached because it would save a lot of time (that the House of Commons couldn’t afford) and a lot of money (that each local council couldn’t afford) and the LGMP Act 1976 (76 Act) was passed for the private hire industry.
Due to the size of this bauble it was given its own part of the Act, titled Part II.
Adoption is the key in this discussion because by being an adopted Act and not a national require- ment, it left each authority to decide what conditions were required in each area because a rural area differed from an urban one in local requirements.
What was unanimous in this decision as the most effective way of policing the minicab industry was localism, the same way that Plymouth had intended when they first introduced their Bill the year before, where vehicles licensed by the authority that adopted the 76 Act could be enforced by that authority.
While it was evident during the discussions that vehicles licensed in other areas would on occasion travel through the area or pick up/drop off in that area, most of the work would be local in nature and therefore best regulated by the local authority to ensure the safety of the public, which was the ulti- mate intention of the 76 Act.
When the bill reached the House of Lords it was still debated when and where the vehicles were allowed to be when they accepted a job from their operator.
Lord Airedale said this:
“Now we come to the third element: if a vehicle is not made available for hire within the district. Think of the mischief that could cause! Somebody in Bas- ingstoke marries somebody who lives in Aldershot. They have a wedding in Aldershot. There is a huge coming and going of friends and relations between Aldershot and Basingstoke. Somebody hires a car from Basingstoke and it goes to Aldershot. They say, “Now will you take somebody else back to Bas- ingstoke? The answer is “No”. It cannot be done; it does not come within this subsection because they are not allowed to make the vehicle available for hire within thedistrict. So what happens? The car from Basingstoke has to go back empty from Alder- shot, and another car has to be hired in Aldershot to go to Basingstoke. It comes back empty to Alder- shot. That does not help the energy conservation programme, does it?”
This shows that Parliament quite clearly knew exactly what it meant when it decided to include section 75(1)(a) of LGMP Act 1976, and although it was considered objectionable, even at the final stage of the parliamentary process with the House of Lords, it still made it into the statute books.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1976/57/ section/75
[The National archives]
Section 75: “Saving for certain vehicles etc. (1) Nothing in this Part of this Act shall- (a) apply to a vehicle used for bringing pas- sengers or goods within a controlled district in pursuance of a contract for the hire of thr vehcile made outside of the dictrict if the vehicle is not made available for hire within the district.”
To be clear the views expressed in this article are those of the authors and may not necessarily be those of of the publishers.
See Part 2 in the April issue of PHTM [Parliamentary Hansard archive] MARCH 2022 9
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