Andy Peters Brighton & Hove Cab Trade Association
info@bhcta.co.uk www.bhcta.co.uk
Thanks to having being alerted by PHTM via Facebook as to when Harlow MP Chris Vince was going to raise the issue of ‘cross-border hiring’ (the wrong term in my view) in the Commons as being scheduled for Monday October 21 at 10:38, I was able to eagerly listen to it whilst sitting on a rank, and what a let-down!
All due respect must be given to Mr Vince who raised the issue and put some good points across. However, unfortunately there were errors in his presentation. Such as referring to the matter being ‘taxis’ and not specifically to PHVs, which is where the major problem is (depending on which side you sit on) as well as the Deregulation Act 2015, drivers failing to get/losing a licence in one area but being successful in another and a lack of criminal records checking.
There was also the minefield of bringing up minimum standards which is something of a bug-bear of mine for many years. The issue being that it is all well and good having minimum standards but you cannot then have LAs adding more and more local conditions on top of that because that completely defeats the intended purpose of having “…an even playing field…” as quoted by Mr Vince.
Mr Vince did speak with passion but was also very misguided by, as it appeared, his own local trade and you can watch this here:
www.tinyurl.com/vince211024.
I will make it very clear yet again that the issue the trade faces is not ‘cross-border hiring’. This has been going on for years and has to be in place otherwise working in this trade would be extremely restrictive. The issue is ‘POoAW’ which is ‘predominant out of area working’ and something I have previously written about and the trade must get use to referring to the issue as such, otherwise we just go round and round in circles. So it’s ‘POoAW’.. get it… now use it!
There were some good ‘interventions’ by MPs, but one calling for the repeal of the 2015 Deregulation Act was nonsense as we all (should) know that this was about ensuring the ‘triple lock’. Again, a well-intentioned
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proposal, but an uneducated one which didn’t do the debate any good.
Fortunately, Simon Lightwood MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport) was able to address those errors. Firstly, he was absolutely correct in making specific reference by differentiating that there were ‘taxis’ and ‘PHVs’ which is something that Mr Vince failed to do.
He made it clear that ‘cross-border hiring’ has always been in place and it would be extremely restrictive to stop it. That the Deregulation Act 2015 was about sub- contracting between operators with the ‘triple lock’ being in place and that there is now data sharing (NR3S Database) between councils for checking on whether drivers/potential drivers have had licences revoked/refused. Most importantly is where he properly referred to the matter as being under ‘POoAW’.
Sir John Henry Hayes, the Minister of Transport 2016/18 mentioned that he commissioned a non-partisan 2019 ‘Task & Finish Group on Taxi and Private Hire Vehicle Licensing’ under the Chair, Professor Mohammed Abdel-Haq, of which Mr Lightwood appeared to be unaware. In that report there were various recom- mendations. See:
tinyurl.com/task-finish-2019-basic and
tinyurl.com/task-finish-2019-report, so hopefully Mr Lightwood will familiarise himself on this.
I won’t go into the full response by Mr Lightwood which was actually a full statement of defence of where we are now! But my conclusion is as follows:
Labour has absolutely no intention of changing anything that would stop ‘POoAW’ and actually Mr Lightwood went into great detail as to how any change to this would be restrictive, even citing ‘higher fares’ and ‘non-availability’! It is clear that the response from the minister is that this is a local council problem to resolve so suck-it-up, but there may be extra powers given to LAs to deal with it.
However, no mention on how that would be funded and of course no doubt such extra powers of enforcement would be funded by the local trade via the licensing fees. But even so, we all know that we are stuck with many lazy licensing enforcement departments that don’t really care based on the social media stories that are posted by drivers.
NOVEMBER 2024 PHTM
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