argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Safeguarding and Road Safety) Bill — House of Commons, 2021-09-10
Topic: Transportation
Peter Alexander Gibson (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is correct. The Bill does not change the existing licensing authorities regime and does not affect the appeals process, appeals panels or applications to the magistrates court The relevant information that led to the decision would not be recorded on the database but kept by the licensing authority and shared with other licensing authorities if they requested it. The information on the database would simply flag instances of applications for a driver’s licence being refused or of the suspension or revocation of a driver’s licence.
Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Safeguarding and Road Safety) Bill — House of Commons, 2021-09-10
Topic: Government Operations
Peter Alexander Gibson (Conservative, Centre-right): That very point is considered in the Bill, which gives local authorities a time limit for the entering of such information on the database. In that way, playing one local authority off against another—that circumnavigation, loophole or lacuna—is effectively dealt with To achieve its aims, the Bill enables the Secretary of State to provide or designate a person to provide a licensing information database. It enables the database operator to charge a fee in respect of the costs of the database, but such a fee will not be levied automatically I risk repeating a mantra, but better decisions are made when more information is available. The existing legislation enables only the authority that issued a licence to take action against it.
Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Safeguarding and Road Safety) Bill — House of Commons, 2021-09-10
Topic: Transportation
Michael Jon Wood (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate my hon. Friend on bringing this important Bill to the House. Of the 15,000 private hire licences issued by City of Wolverhampton Council in 2019, many were for drivers spread across the United Kingdom, including at least one as far away as Perth, which is quite some taxi drive. Does my hon. Friend think that the Scottish Government and other devolved national Governments should, following what will hopefully be the Bill’s passage, work with the UK Government to reciprocate the flow of data to ensure that all authorities throughout the United Kingdom have access to the best possible information?
Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Safeguarding and Road Safety) Bill — House of Commons, 2021-09-10
Topic: Government Operations
Simon Robert Maurice Baynes (Conservative, Centre-right): To follow up on and clarify that point—I am from a devolved nation—would the Bill only require licensing authorities in England, not those in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland, to input the information, but they would have the benefit of that information? Has my hon. Friend had any discussions with devolved authorities about whether they would adopt a similar approach to the inputting of the information?
Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Safeguarding and Road Safety) Bill — House of Commons, 2021-09-10
Topic: Transportation
Peter Alexander Gibson (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is correct that the devolved nations would be able to access the database. I am not aware of discussions among or engagement between the devolved nations and the Department for Transport As I was saying, the existing legislation enables only the authority that issued a licence to take action against it. The Bill will enhance safety by requiring licensing authorities to report information on certain serious safeguarding or road safety matters to the authority that issued the licence.
Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Safeguarding and Road Safety) Bill — House of Commons, 2021-09-10
Topic: Transportation
Peter Alexander Gibson (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. I feel as though I have obtained my proper parliamentary wings, having now taken an intervention from him. He raises an important point on the rights and needs of disabled passengers. The Bill does not deal with access to vehicles, but it does deal with safeguarding. I believe it will help deliver that provision for those who are most vulnerable in our society and require public authorities to ensure that safety is of paramount concern in licensing decisions The Bill would give the Government flexibility to designate a database provider or to provide the database themselves. Given the existence of NR3, it would make sense to use that database so that the Bill’s provisions can come into effect quickly. I recognise that NR3 does not currently allow for the recording of suspensions, but I wanted that in the Bill in case such functionality is added at a later date. Many local authorities already pay a fee to the National Anti Fraud Network for use of a wide range of services, including access to NR3 The ability of the database operator to charge a fee would enable the National Anti Fraud Network to continue to recover NR3’s running costs. Indeed, it is anticipated that rather than starting from scratch with a new database, there will be use of the existing voluntary database operated by the National Anti Fraud Network—of which NR3 forms a part—which is already subscribed to by 256 of the 276 licensing authorities. However, only 138 such authorities use the NR3 element. I am reliably informed by the Local Government Association that, with little or no additional costs, the NR3 database could fulfil the Bill’s requirements if the Secretary of State so designates The Bill’s objective can be illustrated no better than through use of the current voluntary scheme. Luton Borough Council recently ran a check on the NR3 database for a driver applying for a licence. The search revealed a revocation in another local authority area, due to a safeguarding concern, which the applicant failed to disclose. Consequently, Luton—rightly—refused a licence due to that deliberate withholding of information.
Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Safeguarding and Road Safety) Bill — House of Commons, 2021-09-10
Topic: Transportation
Peter Alexander Gibson (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. There are many examples across the country of deplorable practices where the failure to access information is failing to safeguard our constituents. For the same reasons as I gave in response to the intervention on disabled passengers by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), the Bill will help to support and safeguard our special educational needs children when accessing taxis. The Bill will close the loophole that I identified in the Luton case that enables an applicant to obtain a licence from an authority that does not participate in the voluntary scheme, just as my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Shaun Bailey) alluded to Since the Bill’s First Reading, I have met a wide variety of groups, from the Local Government Association to operators and industry bodies including the National Private Hire and Taxi Association, the Durham Licensed Taxi Association and the all-party parliamentary group on taxis. I thank them all for their engagement and assistance up to this point. However, the engagement that was organised by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust with Elaine Pickford and Liam O’Callaghan, the mother and brother of Sian O’Callaghan, who was murdered by a taxi driver in Oxfordshire, was the most important to me. I am grateful to them for the time they spent sharing their tragic story with me, and although this legislation can never bring Sian back, I hope it can serve as a lasting tribute to her.
Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Safeguarding and Road Safety) Bill — House of Commons, 2021-09-10
Topic: Transportation
Richard John Holden (Conservative, Centre-right): As my hon. Friend knows, in County Durham we have a lot of cross-border travel, particularly involving my constituency—with Newcastle and Gateshead—with drivers travelling on both sides. Standards are different across the board, but I welcome this Bill as a real step in the right direction. What further could he say about how this cross-border issue will be addressed by the Bill?
Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Safeguarding and Road Safety) Bill — House of Commons, 2021-09-10
Topic: Transportation
Peter Alexander Gibson (Conservative, Centre-right): We have a situation where 276 licensing authorities have individual discretion to apply the standards they wish to see locally. Although this Bill does not seek to impose a set of national standards or national licensing—we know how important the income from that licensing for their local drivers is to local authorities—by sharing this data and information we seek to get to the position where good practice is spread out across the country I hope that hon. Members from across the House will support this Bill, which will bring about a real improvement in the regulation of the taxi and private hire vehicles sector. So many of our constituents, particularly those with mobility difficulties, rely on the sector in their daily lives—to go to the shops, attend hospital appointments, get to school and get out of their homes, as we return to normality. It is important that they can do that safely, and in the secure and certain knowledge that those in authority have done all they can to ensure that the person driving the vehicle they travel in is a fit and proper person to do so. We should do all we can to ensure the safety of our constituents where we can, and this Bill does just that.
Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Safeguarding and Road Safety) Bill — House of Commons, 2021-09-10
Topic: Transportation
Christopher Mark Clarkson (Conservative, Centre-right): As a former member of a licensing panel, I completely agree with what the hon. Gentleman just said. Does he agree that the Bill is a valuable first step in bringing uniformity and rigour to how different authorities license their taxi drivers? I think particularly of Rossendale Borough Council, which is next door to Rochdale Borough Council, where I am an MP. They have completely different standards, so we see a preponderance of Rossendale licences in our area, rather than Rochdale ones. There is clearly a disconnect between how they license their taxi drivers, and people are exploiting that.
Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Safeguarding and Road Safety) Bill — House of Commons, 2021-09-10
Topic: Transportation
Alun Craig Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): The hon. Member makes the point that until this is universal, there will be a way of gaming the system. As a Member from Wales—a cross-border one—it strikes me that, if this database does not cover Wales and England at the very least, there will still be that opportunity. Most taxi drivers in Montgomeryshire go west and east; they do not go north and south.
Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Safeguarding and Road Safety) Bill — House of Commons, 2021-09-10
Topic: Transportation
Mark Ian Jenkinson (Conservative, Centre-right): I rise to dedicate my wholehearted support to the Bill. It will help increase accountability, raise safety standards in the industry and ensure that licensing authorities have access to the same pool of data, which will be valuable in my constituency of Workington and for my borough council, Allerdale. Let me take the opportunity to thank the licensing officers and the councillors on the licensing panel in Allerdale for their continued hard work in this area I applaud the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) in bringing these measures to the House, and I have no hesitation in endorsing them; they will foster better working practices based on reliable and accessible information. As colleagues have explained, the Bill will help to prevent unsuitable individuals from working the current system to their advantage. By closing the gaps in the information available, local authorities will be in a much better position to make sound decisions. I accept that most local authorities already adhere to good practice when considering whether to grant or revoke licences, but they do not have access to all the data and in many cases they do not share the data on refusals and revocations with other local authorities. This important legislation will change all of that by helping to ensure that local councils are in full possession of the facts that they need Currently, licensing authorities are unable to take action against the licence of a taxi or private hire vehicle driver issued by a different licensing authority, even if the driver implicated is working in its own area. Since there is no obligation on licensing authorities to report concerns about drivers to the licensing authority that issued the licence, concerns over safety are often not acted on due to a lack of knowledge on the part of the home licensing authority. This cannot be allowed to continue. This Bill is a huge step in the right direction when it comes to addressing these issues and providing additional assurances when it comes to the safety of the travelling public The statutory standards issued in 2020 are absolutely unequivocal about the public safety benefits of information sharing, and in particular of the use of the national register of taxi and private hire vehicle driver licence refusals and revocations. I thank my hon. Friend for his incredibly important work on this issue, and I offer him my unwavering support as this Bill progresses.
Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Safeguarding and Road Safety) Bill — House of Commons, 2021-09-10
Topic: Transportation
Lia Nici-Townend (Conservative, Centre-right): I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) for bringing forward this incredibly important Bill. As quite a few colleagues have said, when we use taxis generally, the taxi driver, as a professional person, is potentially in a position of power. We get into their car. Quite often, they pick us up from our homes, our work or places that we are visiting. We need to make sure that those professional taxi drivers are protected from that very small minority who may not be acting professionally. We need to remember that taxi drivers are vital in our communities and in our workplaces, and also vital for our visitor economy. Quite often, they are the first person somebody will meet if they are leaving a train station or a bus station or when they are going to visit somewhere Taxi drivers are a mine of information. With my background in education and as someone who was young once, I know that we might use taxis when we are not in our best frame of mind—if I can put it like that. We might have been to various hostelries as young people and it is then that we put our trust in taxi drivers. As students, young women will pile into a taxi together and there will always be one friend left at the end of that taxi journey. They need to feel confident that the taxi driver has at heart not only their best interests, but their safety. It is not only the safety of the vehicles and the safety of the driving that is important, but the safeguarding of the individual as well I have had reasons to use taxis in recent years. I was not visiting hostelries, because those days are over, but receiving treatment for an eye condition. When people need a taxi driver to take them to hospital or to pick them up after treatment, they are in a very vulnerable situation. They might not be steady on their feet or able to see, or, as has been pointed out, they might not have the best mobility. This is a vital piece of legislation and I wholeheartedly support it.
Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Safeguarding and Road Safety) Bill — House of Commons, 2021-09-10
Topic: Transportation
Alun Craig Williams (Conservative, Centre-right): It gives me great pleasure to support my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson). He introduced the Bill with aplomb, and went into all the technical details, saving me a good 10 minutes’ worth of my speech. I thank him very much indeed This important, timely and overdue Bill seems to have cross-party support. I echo the concerns raised by my constituency neighbours and colleagues, my hon. Friends the Members for Clwyd South (Simon Baynes) and for Vale of Clwyd (Dr Davies). Perhaps on Report—it seems that the Bill will go through at pace—those on the Front Bench could consider whether they could reach out to the devolved Administrations, especially the Welsh Government, and see whether the database could be made cross-border, either through a legislative consent motion or some other form. That seems to have consensus in this House, and I implore Labour Members, if they have the phone number of any Welsh Labour Government Ministers, to join that lobbying charge. In Montgomeryshire we look east and west and, like other cross-border constituencies and counties, someone is more likely to receive a taxi from Birmingham than from Cardiff. That is just the nature of the economy, the traffic flow, and the public services I welcome the Government’s recent introduction of new robust standards for taxis. That was on an England and Wales basis, and it meant that disclosure and barring service criminal record checks were recommended every six months. I understand that the constitutional settlement of this place means we get these questions of who is responsible for what and times when this House introduces English and Welsh legislation and we question whether it is England-only. The Bill must apply to Wales; otherwise, we will have the gaps that we have been talking about I am conscious of the time and that there are other private Members’ Bills to consider, but I echo the supporting evidence that I have read from stakeholders. It is great that my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington and other Members went out there and really engaged, and the LGA made some sensible suggestions. I have done my own stakeholder engagement: Elwyn the Taxi—for the uninitiated, he is the Uber of Llanfair Caereinion—takes not just me but my whole community from A to B. In rural areas, we rely on our taxi network, which is made up of small businesses. He has assured me over and over again that because of a lack of data sharing, we see bad actors in this space, and people can abuse the system by going from one licensing area to another. The database would therefore be a great step forward. I implore the Minister—it is great to see him in his place—to reach out to colleagues in the devolved Administrations, and I will implore anyone to see what we can do on Report to make the Bill apply to England and Wales at the very least.
Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Safeguarding and Road Safety) Bill — House of Commons, 2021-09-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Simon Richard James Fell (Conservative, Centre-right): I will be brief, because I know that other hon. Members want to come in. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) for this excellent Bill and to the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) for all his work on it in the past. The Bill takes a crucial function and makes it universal so that if someone has been disqualified from driving a licensed hire vehicle, that passes on across all local authorities. It also means that people have will confidence in the private licensed hire vehicles they are getting into, which is a key point I was privileged to attend the parliamentary taxi awards arranged by the hon. Member for Cambridge, through which we heard incredible stories of the role that these vehicles and their drivers play in keeping our communities together. They have done remarkable things all through covid, from picking people up from hospital to picking up their prescriptions and carrying their bags to the door. It would be remiss not to name Lee Smith from 24/7 Barrow who won the award for Barrow and Furness. Licensed hire vehicle drivers are a key part of our community, and it is essential that we do what we can to strengthen them and give the community faith in them. The Bill goes a long way towards that I am delighted that the LGA, with which I have worked extensively, is backing the Bill. I declare an interest: before coming to this place I worked in data sharing in fraud and financial crime, so I have some experience in the area. I have some recommendations, the wonkery of which I will not go into right now, but I will happily meet the Minister on issues such as data matching and speed of processes that we could look at and strengthen—I recognise that he may not want to meet me Finally, on the system’s governance framework, we need to be assured that if mistakes are made—hopefully they will not be—there is some comeback so that if someone is impugned unfairly on the database, they can seek redress. Similarly, if bad data is put on to the database, the licensing authority who did so should have a penalty put against it. I fully support the Bill and thank my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington for bringing it to the House.
Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Safeguarding and Road Safety) Bill — House of Commons, 2021-09-10
Topic: Law and Crime
Sally-Ann Hart (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) on this vital Bill. As a former district councillor for Rother District Council—part of the constituency that I now represent as MP—I welcome this Bill, which will improve safeguarding and data sharing across local authorities’ licensing authorities. This is essential. I am not going to go through what the Bill does, but there are two points that I would like to highlight to the Minister. The Bill makes enormous improvements to passenger safety, but it does not go far enough. When I was a district councillor sitting on a licensing panel hearing, there was a situation where the taxi driver had not informed the licensing authority, as he should have done, that he had been arrested for stealing tens of thousands of pounds from an elderly customer. He was later convicted. I understand that the police are not under a duty to—or cannot—inform the licensing authority because of issues with data sharing, ongoing investigation, innocent until proven guilty and so on, but I would like the Minister to think about how we can improve this kind of data sharing even further The question to ask, of course, is whether we would allow our son or daughter, spouse or partner, mother or father, grandson or granddaughter, or any other person for whom we care, to get into a vehicle with this person alone. The driver I mentioned had been driving around other elderly and vulnerable people, who might have been at risk from him. Data on taxi drivers should be shared between agencies, including the police, to ensure the highest possible standards of safeguard I want briefly to highlight Rother District Council’s innovative penalty points scheme, which was introduced by the excellent Andy Eaton, a licensing and litigation lawyer and deputy legal services manager for both Wealden District Council and Rother District Council. He is also a fellow of the Institute of Licensing for his outstanding contribution to the field of licensing The aim of the penalty points scheme is to work in conjunction with other enforcement options. The purpose of the scheme is to record offences, and to act as a record of a taxi driver’s behaviour and conduct so that the licensing authority can find out whether the applicant is a fit and proper person. The primary objectives of the scheme are to improve levels of compliance, improve standards and ensure the safety and protection of the travelling public. The scheme operates without prejudice to the council’s ability to take other action that it is entitled to take under legislation, byelaws and regulation. It is an excellent scheme that other licensing authorities could use to improve the safeguarding and protection of passengers I understand that the Local Government Association welcomes the Bill. I absolutely support it and commend it to the House.