Taxi and Private Hire Licensing Reform — House of Commons, 2019-10-03
Topic: Transportation
Wesley Paul William Streeting (Labour, Centre-left): As a member of the all-party group on taxis, I am delighted to see you in the Chair for this debate, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am sure that many of the themes and issues that I raise will be of enormous interest to you as a constituency MP and neighbour, as well as being in the Chair in your usual fair-handed and fair-minded way It is a matter of some regret that I need to stand up once again and make the case to the Government about the urgent need for reform of our taxi and private hire licensing laws. I think we are now on our third Minister since I first raised these issues and founded the all-party group, and I pay enormous tribute to the two former Ministers with whom I had the pleasure of dealing—the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), and the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani), who remains in the Department but has moved to other matters. I hope that we will get an open mind and a fair ear from the new team, which I am sure will be the case when the Minister replies There is enormous consensus about the need for reform and about the kinds of reforms that must take place. Some years have passed since the all-party group published "Lessons from London: the future of the UK taxi trade", which made a number of recommendations to the Government and set out the compelling case for change. That led the Department for Transport to commission its own task and finish group to look independently at those issues I commend to the House the excellent report, "Taxi and Private Hire Vehicle Licensing: steps towards a safer and more robust system". It was produced by Professor Mohammed Abdel-Haq, who I am delighted has joined us and is watching our proceedings in the House today. In his foreward to the report, he said: "It is clear that the status quo whereby taxi and PHV licensing is inconsistent, ineffective and incompatible with the protection of vulnerable people must not be allowed to continue. Alongside other incidents of criminality, the events in Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford and elsewhere have brought the fundamental flaws in the licensing regime into the sharpest possible focus; these oblige uncompromising determination to make taxis and PHVs safe for all." Many of the recommendations in his report to the Department for Transport echo those made on a cross-party basis by the all-party group. They include the need for national minimum standards, so that any passenger in any part of the country can get into a taxi or minicab, safe in the knowledge that the laws and safety regulations governing their journey will keep them safe wherever they travel and in whatever type of vehicle It was acknowledged that we have a ridiculous patchwork quilt of varying standards and regulations across the country that national minimum standards would help to reinforce. It has also been recognised that in some places, often for tragic reasons, licensing authorities have gone further, as Rotherham Council did following the appalling role that the local minicab industry played in the terrible sexual abuse and exploitation of young women in that town It was acknowledged, from the work we did on the all-party parliamentary group and in the working group, that too many drivers and operators are flouting the rules, taking advantage of loopholes in the law and the patchwork quilt of safety regulations that exist to get their vehicles licensed in authorities with much less stringent safety regulations to undercut the more robust regulations that have been put in place in other towns and cities.