I urge the House to support amendments 61 and 1, and to reject clause 35. I will not rehearse the strong arguments comprehensively and ably made by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool South (Mr Marsden) about the safety of seafarers.
I want to say a few words about the Government’s proposals on taxi deregulation. In April, I held a Westminster Hall debate on their proposed reforms to
the legislation on taxis, private hire vehicles and hackney carriages. Incredibly, there was near-unanimous support across the Chamber, even from Government Members who seemed to agree that the reforms were poorly drafted, rushed, and involved risk and unintended consequences. Taxis and private hire vehicles form an essential part of our national transport system. Indeed, for many of our elderly and disabled constituents, they are often the only form of public transport; that applies particularly to those of us who represent rural or semi-rural areas. I fear that in the rush to deregulate, changes are being proposed that may well endanger public safety.
Those concerns are being expressed not only by me and by other Labour MPs but by, among others, Unite, my union; the RMT; the GMB, which represents thousands of drivers of private hire and hackney vehicles all over the country; the National Association of Licensing and Enforcement Officers; the Local Government Association; and the Suzy Lamplugh Trust. I have met all those bodies, or they have been in contact with my office to express their worries about the nature and implications of these proposals for the deregulation of private hire vehicles.
Opposition Members have expressed a particular concern about clause 10, which will enable people who do not hold a private hire vehicle licence to drive that vehicle when off duty. The reform will surely lead to an increase in the number of unlicensed drivers posing as legitimate drivers, if there is very little that policing or licensing authorities can do, in practice, to identify bogus drivers.
Following the Westminster Hall debate, I conducted a consultation exercise with taxi and private hire vehicle drivers in my constituency. One of my findings was that passengers very rarely, if ever, ask drivers to show their licence badge. Drivers made it clear that they felt that the operation of unlicensed taxis in their area risked damaging the reputation of, and confidence in, the firms they worked for.
I want to draw the Minister’s attention to the concerns voiced by some 19 police and crime commissioners around the country, including mine, Ron Hogg, the police and crime commissioner for County Durham and Darlington. His view is that an inevitable consequence of this deregulation will be an increase in the number of people attacked after a night out.
For the sake of the record, I want to make the Minister aware of police figures showing that, in London alone, 214 women were sexually assaulted last year after getting into an illegal minicab or an unlicensed taxi, and 54 were raped. The Suzy Lamplugh Trust, a leading independent women’s safety charity, shares my concerns. It has said that clause 10
“will provide greater opportunity for those intent on preying on women in this way.”
None of us wants our constituents to be put at risk—I do not believe that the Minister does, either—but passenger safety and public confidence in the taxi and private hire vehicle industry should not be undermined by the Government’s mad dash to deregulate.
There are concerns about clause 11, which will set standard durations of three years for taxi and private hire vehicle driver licences, and of five years for private hire vehicle operator licences. The industry and trade unions expressed concerns on that point during the limited time available for the consultation. The National Private Hire Association and the Institute of Licensing
have said that the clause will remove flexibility from councils, and there are already concerns about how effectively drivers are scrutinised.
Although local authorities impose licence conditions on private hire vehicle drivers and operators that require them to report criminal convictions and changes to their medical status within a specified period, in practice such conditions are often ignored. Even in the case of driver licences, although the police are supposed to inform the local authority of any recordable convictions—indeed, the police have the discretion to inform the local authority of minor matters—information is often given haphazardly.
Some local authorities get information directly from their local police force, but—for the Minister, it is a big but—in very few instances do local authorities receive information from police forces outside their area. My hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones), who is sitting alongside me, made that very point. It is important, because one of the Bill’s provisions will allow subcontracting, so a taxi or private hire firm might come from another area and be covered by a different police force.
I remind the House that effective implementation will require local authorities to sign up to the Disclosure and Barring Service in order to receive information about convictions during the term of a licence. The Minister has said that he does not see any problem, but the service is relatively new, and how it will work in practice is not yet known. We know that local authorities have inadequate control over, or powers for, effective policing or enforcement, so how will the extension of cross-border work that the provision will bring in be properly licensed and controlled? The lack of confidence in clause 11 is further evidence, I believe, of the rushed and piecemeal nature of the reforms.
5.15 pm
One of my principal concerns relates to the Government proposal to allow private hire vehicles to subcontract and book an operator in a different licensing area. When I re-read in Hansard the Minister’s response in the Westminster Hall debate, and indeed on Second Reading and in Committee, I saw that he said that the change would give customers more choice—that was part of his justification—and that it might be advantageous, in that passengers could ring up their local provider if they did not know who to call. However, passengers may well not want to use the subcontractor that has been sent to their door. At the moment, they have some degree of control over that.
Quality is an issue, and in some cases, the name of a company is important—a Government Member raised that point during the Minister’s opening statement. People may book on that basis, and may choose not to book others on the same basis. A customer might choose a local operator because of their local knowledge, because they like those particular drivers and feel comfortable with them, or because they have experienced problems with another operator. A member of the public might call a specific operator because they feel that they are reliable and safe to travel with. I am thinking specifically about women travelling home. They might not be travelling back from a night out; they
might be nurses or home care workers travelling back from employment. They might have a preferred operator because they know they will be transported safely. A disabled passenger might know their preferred provider to be competent in assisting disabled passengers, and they may have confidence and comfort in the knowledge that a particular provider will take them home safely.
My consultation found that drivers appreciated those concerns, and as a consequence, were overwhelmingly opposed to the reforms. Particularly in relation to subcontracting, there is a risk in passing jobs from one company to another. It is not the wonderful panacea that some advocates of deregulation, such as the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood), who is no longer in his place, would have us believe. The House really should think about some of the consequences, including the unintended consequences, of the proposals.