David Lepper

Labour Party | Brighton Pavilion

Debate on the OFT Report on Taxis

House of Commons – 24th June 2004

Earlier this year the Office of Fair Trading issued a report on the taxi trade which was severely criticised by the House of Commons Select Committee for being based on poor research which showed a lack of understanding of the taxi and private hire trade.

I was one of the MPs who also sent criticisms of the Report to the government. In March I met a delegation of over 30 local taxi drivers in the House of Commons.
I am glad to say that the Government did not agree with most of the views of the Office of Fair Trading.

On 24th June a debate on the issue took place.

Mr. David Lepper (Brighton, Pavilion) (Lab/Co-op): I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody), who is the Chairman of the Transport Committee, and the members of her Committee on their work—I was going to say, "for the demolition job that they have done", but it is, in fact, not a demolition job but a systematic, step-by-step taking apart of a wholly unsatisfactory piece of research by the OFT. We are all indebted to my hon. Friend and her Committee for the way in which they have approached the OFT report.

I will declare an interest. I am one of the few people in the country who not only does not drive, but has never learned to drive. I imagine that that can be said of few hon. Members. So to do my job—and, indeed, to do the job that I did before I was elected to the House—I have had to rely on public transport. I welcome the fact that the Government say in their response to the report that they consider taxis and private hire vehicles to be an integral part of local transport provision and that proper account should be taken of them in the local transport planning process.

Like many other people, I regard taxis and private hire vehicles as important parts of public transport.

I echo the comments that my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Linda Gilroy) made about the investment that so many taxi drivers have made in setting up in the trade that they are engaged in. Given that investment, they must pay huge attention to the quality of the vehicle and its maintenance. The job that they do can be risky. My hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) mentioned the ridiculous proposals about haggling over prices that were recommended as part of the OFT report. I would recommend that members of the Office of Fair Trading group that carried out the report come to West street in my constituency on a Saturday night and try to haggle at the taxi rank. I wonder how long they would last and whether they would be successful in getting a cab or would be set upon by others in the queue.

For taxi drivers themselves the job can often be risky. They do not know who they will be picking up late at night in our big cities—whether at a rank, when they are hailed or when they are sent in a private hire vehicle in response to a telephone call. All of us may well have heard from taxi drivers who, having taken a fare to a destination, are told by the passenger, "Sorry, mate. I haven't got any money with me." They can then get into difficulties trying to get the fare that they are rightly owed.

The OFT report shows no understanding of what the taxi trade is about and totally disregards the work that is going on locally in so many places to ensure that the quality of service offered by the taxi fleet is high.

Let me put the report into the context of what has happened in my local authority area. Over the past three or four years, the taxi trade in Brighton and Hove has been through two upheavals. Two licensing authorities—Brighton and Hove—were eventually brought together uneasily when we became a unitary authority. Some leeway in the time scale was given for that process, but it caused concern and disruption to the livelihood of some taxi drivers.

Just a year or so ago, the licensing authority commissioned Halcrow to carry out research into significant unmet demand in the Brighton and Hove area. As we have heard, Halcrow not only carried out some work for the OFT but usually conducts research for local licensing authorities. There was haggling locally between the trade and council officers, but a plan was agreed as a result of the Halcrow report for the managed growth of the trade over the following few years. That agreement was not necessarily reached easily, but everyone knew where they were.

Then, in a matter of months, the OFT's report came along, disregarding completely the detailed local negotiations that went on all over the country of the kind that I saw from a slight distance in my constituency. The report caused a shockwave sufficient to bring out 270 drivers in the Brighton and Hove area in a convoy in protest through the city. I am not sure whether that was the best way for them to make their point, but that was what they decided to do. Some 30 or 40 came up here to discuss the report and my views on it with them.

Managed growth is the key to a successful taxi fleet as part of the public transport network in any area. The people best suited to make decisions about the form that that managed growth should take are those on the local council and the local licensing authority, in consultation with local representatives of the taxi trade. In that way, we can end up with a system that is more likely to best suit the needs of the area. The underlying mistakes of the OFT's report—there were lots of mistakes—were to assume that one system was right for everywhere in the country, and to overlook totally the likely negative results of the delimitation of numbers.

I welcome the response to the OFT report. I also welcome the Department for Transport's decision that the delimitation recommendation at least should not proceed and its adoption of a more cautious approach than the OFT would have liked to many other recommendations. The taxi trade—I include in that the private hire trade—wants some certainty about the future. It does not want to think that every two or three years there will be another revision of how it does things. I think that local authorities want that certainty as well so that they can truly make their taxi fleets and private hire vehicles part of their local public transport network.

This is the second time in a couple of years that the OFT has considered an activity that is a business and a service. I also have in mind its report on community pharmacies. There are serious questions to be asked about the way in which it considers service industries of any kind. It shows glaring ignorance in both reports of the impact, or the likely impact, of its recommendations on the lives of the communities that we are here to represent. Although I welcome the response and, more cautiously, the approach adopted by the Department, there are wider issues on the remit of the OFT that might also need consideration.

 

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Extracts from the reply to the debate on behalf of the Government by Tony McNulty MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Department for Transport

Our response to the OFT included an action plan for taxis and PHVs that we are now taking forward. Although we accepted many of the OFT's recommendations, we concur with the Transport Select Committee that local authorities are best placed to make local decisions in the light of local needs and circumstances. Many colleagues made that point in a far more erudite fashion than me.

I was struck by the experience of hiccup and disruption outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Lepper), first through the merger of Brighton and Hove into one unitary authority. The new joint unitary authority conducted a survey of unmet demand, but there is a fear that the Government's response will cause great disruption for the third time. We shall send a letter to all local authorities and, without wishing to pre-empt Brighton and Hove, I should think that, given the detailed work that was conducted last year on a managed growth strategy and the amount of local detail in it, the Government would not seek to change the position that prevailed under it after the survey of unmet demand. Brighton and Hove's strategy appears exemplary and something that we would request of all local authorities that would like to retain quantity controls.

We start from the premise that quantity controls are appropriate given local circumstances and that any change to the position should be in local hands and determined by local people. It is entirely justifiable to say to local authorities, "You know the local market far better than we do and the unmet demand that exists in your area. Please tell us in simple language, because we are simple folk at the Department for Transport, why you think restrictions should remain." In most circumstances, that should be a straightforward exercise for most local authorities.

We therefore concluded that it was not the role of central Government to take away local discretion on the number of taxi licences granted by local licensing authorities, as the OFT recommended. For the reasons that I have outlined and that have, I believe, all-party support—local knowledge and autonomy for local government—it is appropriate for local discretion to remain. However, it is right and proper that local authorities first justify maintaining the restrictions. I stress that approximately half of all local authorities have such controls. I make it clear that the power to restrict taxi licence numbers in England and Wales outside London will stay with local government. I emphasise a point that perhaps the OFT overlooked. There are already two or three discernibly different sorts of market for taxis and PHVs.

Mr. Lepper: I hoped to catch the Minister before he left the issue of disabled taxi customers. Many of my disabled constituents who use taxis feel that one style of vehicle is not necessarily appropriate for all disabled travellers. Many people with disabilities would prefer and find it easier to use a saloon car than, for the sake of argument, a London-style black cab. Does the Department accept that that is so?

Mr. McNulty: We do. That is absolutely right, and the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee and others who have done significant research would say quite freely that although the London hackney-style configuration is very useful, certainly for wheelchair access and a range of other disabilities, it is not the 100 per cent. all-singing, all-dancing, all-purpose vehicle for every single form of disability. Without going into the matter too much, that is why I profoundly disagree with the suggestion of a one-tier taxi. My hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Lepper) is entirely right, not least in that the design of some saloons—those taxis that are more like people carriers—is far more appropriate and convenient for those with impaired mobility but who are not in wheelchairs. The whole array of different saloons that are on offer means that it does not follow that only one model is appropriate.