National Taxi Association

National Taxi Association

Conference Manchester 2012

Presentation (and Q & A)

Mr James Button, President of the Institute of Licensing

Good afternoon, ladies and gentleman. Thank you very much indeed for inviting me here. My name is James Button, I am here in my capacity as President of the Institute of Licensing and as the Chair of the Taxi Consultative Panel for the Institute.

By profession I am a solicitor, I have my own practice, James Button & Co. and one of the areas that I specialise in is taxi law.

What I have been asked to do this afternoon is tell you about the Institute’s response to the Law Commission consultation on the reform of taxi law.

That is what I am intending to do.

The Institute is an organisation that is there to support everybody involved in licensing: local authorities who regulate activities, people like myself who act for the trade and for local authorities, barristers who do the same sort of thing, licensing consultants and licensees. Licensees, hackney carriage drivers, private hire drivers, private hire operators can all join in the Institute.

So it is there for everybody. We have a lot of liquor licensing members. We don’t have a lot of taxi members although we do have a few, it would be nice to have some more.

We are there above all, as an organisation to help. To help try and make sense of extremely complicated legislation across 30 or 40 different areas of activity. You are only interested in taxis and I understand that. So, that is what I am going to look at this afternoon.

What we had from the Law Commission was exactly what you had. We have no further insight, no greater connection than you have. So, we approached it in two ways, we did a member survey via our website via a gadget called survey monkey which enables you to create a survey which then produces results that you can make sense of and that was available to all our members.

We also, formed, or not formed because it is already there, we convened a taxi consultative panel to address the issues and to look at it and in both cases, what we did was look at all the questions.

Now the first thing that I would say on behalf of the Institute is that we were surprised, and I think quite a few other people were surprised that in a document that is concerned with reforming the whole organisation relating to hackney carriage and private hire activity the question of whether or not there should be a single tier or two tiers was dealt within one question, and then 72 other questions all hinged on the idea that it was going to be a two tier system, which does seem a slightly odd approach and we wait to see what the Law Commission are going to make of that.

Having spoken to the Law Commission, and I am sure that some of you have as well, they have had over 2,000 responses to this consultation which is more than they have ever had before.

So it is going to be some while before they formulate their views but they are determined to stick to their timescale, you have got somebody from the Law Commission coming tomorrow and I am sure they will reiterate this, of having a draft bill sometime around the end of 2013.

So we addressed all the questions and the member’s survey came up with this. 58% were in favour of single tier licensing 41% were in favour of retaining the existing two tier system but the big concerns, the big themes, out of the member survey, were a need for greater consistency.

The idea that you can have very low standards in one authority, very high standards in the next door authority, which ultimately is going to lead to licence shopping is not something that seems a good idea. There was also concern about what these proposed national minimum standards are going to be and I am sure you have the same concerns because that’s not indicated anywhere in the consultation document. Is it simply going to be an MOT? Is it going to be a MOT Plus and, if it’s Plus, plus what? How often is it going to be as well? None of that’s addressed.

Now, OK, that may be that it will come out in the woodwork but those are mainly the concerns that we got from the member survey.

In relation to the TCP, what we said was, and I will explain this in a minute or two, we believe there should be a single tier system and we also, because of the way the thing was formulated, then answered all the questions in relation to a two tier system.

Now you will all be able to read all this in due course because everything that has been submitted to the Law Commission is going to be published although it is going to be a fair old task to wade through 2,000 responses, but it is all going to be available and it is all apparently going to be available on-line.

So, our starting point was we felt that there should be a single tier system. Because the Law Commission had not suggested how that could work we decided that is what we would do.

In relation to the vehicles, the idea is that all vehicles would be able to stand for hire, ply for hire within the district in which they are licensed because of the view that it should remain a local authority activity. Whether those local authorities should be bigger for taxi licensing with an amalgamation of existing councils, I think is something that is open to some debate. I think there is a good argument for saying that in some parts of the country, it would make sense to have, for example, a West Yorkshire taxi licensing regime but we wait to see. But that is something the Law Commission were talking about anyway but, in fact, the existing law allows that, if the politicians could get their head round it you could have a joint board for taxi licensing consisting of two or more districts. That’s there in the Local Government Act 1972.

They could all stand or ply for hire in the district in which they’re licensed, they could be pre-booked in that district or anywhere else. Vehicle and driver have to be licensed by the same authority.

So, if it’s a Manchester taxi, you need to have a Manchester driver but they could then use it for pre-booked work anywhere but could only stand or ply in Manchester.

The national minimum standards. We tried to expand on the idea and say that there is a difference between safety standards and comfort and suitability standards. Now that is something the Law Commission did not really seem to address and that is something that we wanted to tease out of it. So, in addition to the safety standards, which I am assuming are things like brakes, then there may also be suitability standards like how much space per passenger. On the basis of localism which is clearly a very important Government concept, a local council could set higher standards if it wished. So, the national minimum standard is going to be the same across the country but if one particular council wanted to go for a higher standard, then it could and that could include, for example, wheelchair accessibility.

Conditions could be attached to individual vehicle licences in the same way as they are now.

What would encourage wheelchair accessibility type of vehicles? Well our idea is that any wheelchair accessible vehicle could use any of the ranks and the starting point is that the ranks would only be for wheelchair accessible vehicles. If the local council wanted to, they could then issue permits to use all of some ranks to non-wheelchair accessible vehicles but that would be a local council decision.

Fares would be regulated and the councils would set the fares. For hailing or a rank hiring that would be the fare subject to any discounts you might wish to offer but you could not charge more. But for a pre-booking, it could be by negotiation as it is now. So, it could be any fare you like for a pre-booking but if it is a hailing or ranking, on the basis that the customer has not got a great deal of choice at that point, then it will be on the meter and the fare will be the maximum fare which will be set by the council.

All journeys should be recorded whether they are pre-booked or not. The purpose of this legislation is public safety and if the public need to be safe by having their details recorded and the journey recorded for private hire, we couldn’t see any reason why that should not be the same for hackney carriages.

It’s a safe vehicle, a safe driver, a safe means of transporting people and if there are problems, if there are complaints, if there are situations that lead to investigation, those records can be vital.

A receipt should be given to all passengers and with the technology that we have got now and certainly in the next few years, that receipt and record could all be combined. No ability for the authority to limit the number of vehicles. Now, at this point, I have to say, one of our members dissented and said “no” he thought that perhaps there should be an ability to limit vehicle numbers so that is what the response has been.

Generally, we think there should be no limit but, there is a view that in some places a limit might be applicable but, I have my suspicions that the Law Commission would not be recommending that and I am not certain that any Government would recommend that either.

In relation to drivers, again we are at the view there should be a national minimum standard. The idea that you can be refused a licence in one district because they don’t think you are in the current parlance “fit and proper”, in what I think might be the future parlance “safe and suitable”, and then you simply go next door and get granted a licence, seems ridiculous. You are either safe to drive a taxi or you are not and that should be a national standard.

You would be licensed by the authority in whose area you are going to work and in whose areas’ vehicles you want to drive. So, if you want to drive Manchester vehicles, the fact that you live in Liverpool is neither here nor there, that is your choice. You want to be a Manchester driver you can be and you could also be a Liverpool driver. There would be no reason why you could not have more than one licence because the standards are the same but going back to the concept that the vehicle and the driver must be licensed by the same authority you might need more than one licence.

And, again, the local council could apply tests above the minimum standards. So the minimum standard is, if you like, the bedrock, but if they say we want to have a sophisticated knowledge test, then they are entitled to do that.

And then in relation to operators we thought about this and we came to the conclusion that the way that it could work is that anybody who is taking bookings for more than one vehicle would need an operator’s licence. If all you are doing is taking bookings for your own vehicle you would not need an operator’s licence because you would have to take the records for those journeys anyway so, there will be no need to double up but once you have got somebody who is saying “yes ok I am going to despatch a vehicle that I am not driving to pick somebody up on a pre-booking”, you would need to have an operator’s licence.

There would be minimum requirements for the information that needs to be recorded. Again, on the basis of public safety, what are the elements that are required to enable this system to be safe? And you know as well as I do, that operators hold an awful lot of very sensitive, very useful information and on that basis not only would the operator have to be licensed but all the people who worked for the operator would have to be vetted as well.

As it stands at the moment, and this is a real problem in some places as I am sure you will know. You can have an operator who’s fine because he’s got his operator’s licence because he’s a fit and proper person but then the people he employs are villains, simple as that, but there is no control over that because the operator has got his operators licence and unless that comes to light and the authority decides to take action on the basis that the operator is no longer a fit and proper person because he should not employ villains, then the safety element, the safe guarding of the public element disappears.

So, that in a nutshell, was our response. The thing we don’t know, the thing you don’t know and the thing that nobody out there knows is what is going to happen.

Clearly, the Law Commission are going to come up with their proposals and I have no doubt that they will do so either within their timescale that they have set themselves or within a very close period of time because they are extremely capable and adept individuals.

Then, it all goes into the melting pot because it goes to the Government, and then there are so many ifs and buts along the way. Is a Government going to promote a bill reforming taxi law? If you look at the timescales that would be going in in 2014, and we are scheduled to have a general election now on our 5 year plan, in 2015. Is a Government of any complexion, and the last thing I am is a party political animal, but is a Government of any complexion going to think that reform of taxi law is the thing that will win them an election? I don’t know, they might, I mean they have done other things that have surprised us in the past. So, there is no telling because you can never tell with politicians. So, they might decide to promote the bill, they might not, that is the first hurdle.