The Amber Nectar
No one likes me, I don’t care
By
Wayne Casey Just when I think I can put my feet up a few days before Christmas, just when I think I can relax a little, just when I think my plans for world domination are back on track. What happens? I open my mailbox and read Derek Cummins part of the editorial for this issue. Thankfully I now have tablets to stop me jumping up and down, and naturally, a limited stock of ‘Fosters’.
Ordinarily I wouldn’t let such delusional fiction bother me. I have the right of reply at a later date. But this seems unfair on you the reader. You may not get the February issue, you may not get the January issue and of course Armageddon may well occur in between. So it’s surely far better to read both stories in the same issue and make up your own mind as to who is right.
Sideshow Bob & Marouane Fellaini
So here goes. Firstly, let me clear up one key issue, Derek seems a little confused, being a staunch Evertonian, I do suppose he’s used to that, after all they did sign Marouane Fellaini for £15 million.
Sorry to shatter any illusions here, but I don’t write on behalf of the National Taxi Association. Those people have enough to worry about, let alone little auld me, with my somewhat provocative writing style and views.
As I’m sure Derek is aware from the taxitalk waste paper bin, (better known as the right to reply section), I upset councillors, licensing staff, Institutes, Associations, unions, Government and virtually everyone else I may have missed. I never knowingly miss a decent insult, words such as ‘window-licker’, ‘bonkers’, ‘whacko’ and ‘stupid’ are usually deployed with alarming regularity in everything I write.
To be honest, I don’t really give a damn. But I do take umbrage when the co-editor also gets confused.
So, moving swiftly along.
Let’s look at the events of the past few months. Firstly we had the House of Commons (and it couldn’t be more common if they decorated the outside with Christmas lights) transport select committee look into the issues surrounding taxi licensing, in particular the cross border debacle. This was brought to their attention by Unite the Union. I wrote at the time, in this very magazine no less, and I still maintain, they (Unite the Union) were opening one massive can of worms and let’s face facts, they just kept right on opening.
The Department for Transport also invited the Law Commission to review taxi laws. To which, from Derek’s remarks, should be construed as a good thing. Shortly after the Law Commission advised of their intentions the government responded to the select committee, basically saying the law commission will sort the mess out.
Since September I have personally been in 3 meetings with the law commission, the NTA have attended 6 meetings. My view is well known, this thing is going to end very badly for the taxi trade. Rather than bore readers with details I suggest you look at the law commission website and find out what their remit is (mind you, I have been suggesting this for 6 months).
So we’ll now consider some of Derek’s points in the prosecution against me. He pours scorn on my point that current law works well in the majority of the country.
Murkyside
In order to do this, I fear I may upset a few people, because to know where the law works well, you have to consider where it is working badly. This takes me to Murkyside. Now, I have been in meetings where both trade representatives and licensing staff have praised the licensing system across Murkyside as the veritable beacon of hope as to how the rest of the country should operate. They have driver training, cross border co-operation between licensing staff, indeed a licensing official from one area can cross a border and prosecute in another district. Things are just fine and dandy.
Unfortunately the reality is slightly different. To understand my view you have to accept in a place like Merseyside, with all the surrounding boroughs, Liverpool City is the central hub. People from outside areas get taxis from their own districts and go to Liverpool regularly.
It is similar in the Greater Manchester area, where the City of Manchester is the central hub. In the North East it’s Newcastle & Sunderland. In the West Midlands it’s Birmingham. In South Wales, it’s Cardiff. In the South East it’s London.
Where’s the surprise in large Cities attracting people from suburbia? They’d be completely knackered if people stopped going wouldn’t they?
Yet it is a section of the Liverpool trade who are, perhaps justifiably, upset with Sefton licensed vehicles and drivers regularly doing work for Liverpool based clientele. This situation isn’t new, in actual fact it’s been going on for the best part of 30 years. I mean, a customer from Liverpool, picking up a phone and pre-booking a private hire car from another area…..how dare they! But the 30 odd strong unite section in Liverpool want this situation addressed, so addressed it will be.
Okay, so what do we do? Do we make it compulsory for them to return to their own district?
That’s a good idea, so how do we police it? Do we ask all private hire cars (2000 of them from Sefton alone) what they are doing sitting here, do we employ a few more licensing officers to enforce it, thus increasing license fees?
An NVQ yesterday
Indeed, I would actually question the standard of NVQ’s and BTEC’s across Murkyside, because if trained drivers don’t know where they should pick up and whether or not passengers need to be pre-booked, god only knows what it’s like in areas where there’s no training.
It seems to me that everyone knows the problems, but there’s very little thinking through of solutions.
He mentions a chap from Barnstable licensing himself in Berwick and working the vehicle on a private hire circuit some 440 odd miles away.
As Derek will be aware from the Berwick judgement, a local authority is entitled to refuse an application if a person intends to use the vehicle in another area. It’s as simple as adding a question to an application form.
He also points out that whilst some local authorities have strict policies on ‘fitness and propriety’ of drivers, others are more lax, indeed he points out to the vehicle criteria.
I personally have no problem with this at all. Carlisle (for example) has probably the newest fleet of taxis in the UK (we make no money but boy are our cabs shiny), we have a minimum age of 3 and a maximum of 5 on saloon taxis, as well as 3 tests per year. However, will the bar be raised to meet our standards in Carlisle, or will it be raised to meet the standards of somewhere else…..which will effectively mean Carlisle’s standards being lowered?
Of course the upshot of all of this is that the taxi trade appear to be telling government locals are best placed to decide on things like taxi numbers, but not best placed to decide on the type of people who should be driving cabs or the condition that the cabs should be. Somehow I can’t see that argument getting too much credence, either locals are best placed, or they’re not.
He mentions how well the taxi trade saw off the OFT report, a quite delusional view, in my humble opinion (and never has a person been more humble).
From the very outset of the OFT enquiry the best the taxi trade could hope for was no change. It is a fact that less than 10 years ago, the split between local authorities that operated numbers control and those who had no control was roughly 50/50.
The reality is today 75% of local authorities do not limit taxi numbers, this is an unpalatable fact and one to which from at least NTA discussions with the Law Commission, one they are perfectly well aware. If this is an example of taxi trade success, I wouldn’t want an example of failure.
A gross Exaggeration
How Derek can suggest, by any stretch of the imagination, the OFT was seen off (or more laughably OFT KO’d read the headline in Cab Trade News), when government best practice guidance clearly states that they consider it best practice not to control taxi numbers and only 80 odd out of 343 limit numbers is anyone’s guess.
Derek’s critique lists a whole lot of problems with current legislation, which I presume is exactly what the Law commission want. What better reason to devise new taxi law when the current ones are a crock of sh*t? It is however completely bereft of answers. Except of course for the need for new legislation.
I don’t subscribe to Derek’s view, I would go down the route of suggesting perhaps the 1976 act should be completely scrapped and replaced, in part, with vast swathes of the London Private Hire Act, but even then, the situation in London isn’t exactly that much far better than the provinces, and of course, taxi numbers in London are not limited.
Furthermore, to hold up London as a bastion of taxi harmony doesn’t hold up, they’ve had taxi law up dated regularly since 1831 with at least 30 different bits of legislation to get to where they are now, which is of course a situation where taxi drivers regularly complain of minicabs illegally plying, touts and rapists…….sounds almost like the provinces?
When I read pieces using such phrases as ‘singing from the same hymn sheet’ I tend to agree, after all, both myself and Derek have been crying out for the taxi trade to be more aware for years. But the problem with the ‘hymn sheet’ analogy is Derek means his ‘hymn sheet’, which isn’t necessarily the same as mine.
Wayne Casey
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