Are you going to make a stand?As the clock ticks down towards your impending doom, at least one local taxi association is prepared to make a stand against the damaging desires of the Law Commission. At least one association has taken the time to not only answer the Law Commission questions, but to provide a tacit rebuff of the Law Commission rationale. I’m not talking of three or four pages of well meaning but unsupported words – I’m talking 25,000 words in a response which picks apart the Law Commission consultation bit by bit with citations and evidence to back up statements.
The following is a preface to a document which is to be sent to the Law commission by a concerned taxi association. Elements have been cut, the location of the association which wrote it is not of great significance.
It is very refreshing to see there are some in our trade with this type of dedication, the question you must ask yourself; are you going to make them stand alone?
A response to the Law CommissionThe general opinion of the association in respect of the consultation by the Law Commission (L.C.) is one of disappointment. It would appear the Law commission has lost sight of their initial aim of reducing burdensome legislation, by suggesting more regulation.[i ]
It would be neglectful of this association to fail to point out that for the Law Commission, a body emanating from the law profession, to point towards unnecessary regulatory burdens in the taxi and private hire industries is ironic in the extreme; the law profession is seemly awash with arguments about minimum wage[ii] and ‘Tesco Law’[iii].
The Law Society stated the following in respect of the minimum wage;
“The Law Society was concerned that the result of this decision will be that trainees who will be offered the reduced minimum salary, who are likely already to have substantial debts, will find themselves in significant financial difficulty and forced to take on other work which will distract them from giving full attention to the training contract. Alternatively, those trainees who have private means will receive an undue advantage over potentially more meritorious candidates. Neither result will be good for the diversity of the profession.”Our association had great misgivings about the remit given to the L.C. at a very early stage, coming into the project with a political theory – the recurring theme of a deregulatory objective – in our belief offered only a dogmatic view and prospective outcome. The remit given appears to be one of the LC being advocates of hard measure, one of seeing the taxi trade as an industry in need of serious correction.
In many respects our initial view appears to have been correct, the almost Machiavellian manner in which the rationale of the documents differ from the provisional proposals reek of a type of voodoo very often associated with politics. In this manner it is difficult to disassociate the L.C. as nothing more than advocates of the pre-ordained political agenda – we have always considered a matter as relatively mundane as ‘taxis’ as reasonably aloof from political aspiration – sadly we find ourselves amidst that particular world.
The laissez-faire approach to private hire, advocated by the L.C. is ostensibly not deemed correct for hackney carriages; the LC cites (quite rightly) local control. This stance does not however extend to locals being best placed to decide on a seemingly more controversial issue such as control of taxi numbers – the stance of the L.C. appears to be – locals are best placed to decide, just not best placed to decide certain things – this would appear to be a somewhat duplicitous position.
We found the consultation documents badly structured, thought out and repetitive, with little rationale between questions, the majority of which were seemingly placed in no specific order, a true rigmarole of documents in the original sense. The questions themselves appear to be based upon presumptions therefore they were difficult to answer and in cases misleading – numerous members advised us they believed this was a deliberate ploy.
The structure of the documents have also created concern, an obvious point is at 1.27 where the L.C. point to ‘grey areas’ in the licensing of limousines, these points are rehashed at various areas in the documents, however limousines are mentioned regularly in many parts, thus confusing many of us 3.63, 3.66, 3.77 – 3.84, 4.49, 4.51, 4.52, 8.15, 13.5, 14.3, 14.23 & 20.10
It is patently obvious to anyone with any degree of knowledge or interest in the taxi and private hire industries, that vast swathes of the consultation documents have not been assembled via the route of discussion with the industries, but via a ‘google’ search facility on an office computer. Not that this in itself is wrong, although the impact assessment is giving links via a ‘Google’ search. We would contend that the cab trade is a very diverse industry, however, we would contend that this type of research is not conducive to the best and most accurate results or opinions.
The above point was summarily confirmed when the L.C. felt the need within three weeks to rehash their impact assessment, they had made an almost elementary mistake in grossly underestimating the turnover of the taxi and private hire industries. The following was stated on the L.C. website;
“Following feedback we produced a revised draft of the impact assessment stripping out the data which appears unsatisfactory or not robust and to ask further questions. We welcome further comment on the data and would be grateful for further information.” [iv]
The updated figure is £2.585 billion, as compared to £1.4 billion previously, demonstrates quite a dramatic miscalculation. It is obviously illuminating to find out where the LC obtained their original figures, a ‘dot com’ website being cited where an interested party would have to pay to scrutinize. There are some that would suggest this was a deliberate ploy, invariably when faced with a website where money requested, the link is usually closed. A further report from IBIS world recently suggested the figure was closer to £8.85 billion[v], further throwing LC figures into ignominy.
We also wish to point out that to allow a mere three months to answer the consultation – given that all members of our association are working taxi drivers is a serious worry – whilst we appreciate the issue of taxis and private hire are of little consequence to the majority of the UK population – it is of great significance to ourselves – ultimately we will be the ones left to work with any future law.
It is amazing that a law that has stood – practically unchanged since 1847 and is perfectly workable some 160 years later – is subject to the (political) expediency it is currently being seemingly exposed to. An extended period of around 6 months would have been (and still is) appreciated from our association – although we understand the L.C. has extended the consultation period by the somewhat miserly period of one month (the new date being 10th September 2012).
The problem isn’t so much answering the consultation, although that will be troublesome enough; it will be collating the answers by our national body.
As anyone who has ever sown a lawn will know, for every few seeds scattered only a few will actually germinate (unless you use some bizarre pre-germination rouse using cold tea), in many respects the LC document is like this. There are a few ideas of very little merit seemingly punted into the document possibly in the knowledge they’ll be dropped in the future. However, it doesn’t take a genius to realize where the sights are actually aimed at.
We also question the L.C. commitment with regards to the retention of the two tier system, although we firmly believe there is a place in the system for hackney carriages. It is reasonably obvious that private hire covers a multitude of differing business models – a miniscule amount of lateral thinking should lead to the realization that to expect a single tier to cover half a dozen or so differing business models under the umbrella of a single license is foolhardy in the extreme. We will raise this question within this paper.
We are disillusioned to read the view of the L.C. in respect of “market failures that are specific to the taxi market”[vi]. The association considers this view demonstrates a rather alarming lack of understanding of the taxi trade. We found it quite amazing that the LC appear to have trawled Europe in their quest for the deregulatory justification in their documents, but have not gone to the same lengths to seek the true socio economic effects of their policy.
Taxis are a localised form of transport, whilst we acknowledge the L.C. would currently like to continue licensing vehicles on a localised level, we view the erosion of local authority powers in respect of licensing private hire on a national basis as extremely damaging – and without forethought to the consequences.
The comments regarding the night time economy show a total ignorance of the night time economy in the majority of the country – they appear to base their views around metropolises as opposed to the vast majority of the country.
The entire vision of the L.C. proposals would appear to hinge on National Standards being set for both private hire drivers and private hire vehicles. It is clear from the documentation the L.C. has little idea of what these national standards may be, this is a worrying position, as unless people are aware of the standards they have little idea what they are in fact agreeing to.
The above being stated, the rationale behind the standards has been thought out, the thought being if all standards are the same there would be little point in licensees ‘shopping around’ for perceived lax licensing regimes. Of course, and as mentioned, by not actually advising what the standards will be, by leaving that area open to differing interpretation (and suggesting a cheap and cheerful), the general view is that the standards will be minimal. A national standard would after all include not only places such as London, but rural areas where businesses may be run without great profit.
Our association believes the standards mentioned above should be set locally; it is locals that have to live with taxi and private hire services and it is equally obvious they are the ones also best placed to determine the purely localised services for both taxis and private hire vehicles. We believe a deviation from this core principle of ‘localism’ is perverse to one of the coalition government flagship policies and we are highly surprised the L.C. would choose to rule private hire direct from Whitehall.
Indeed, we find it astounding that a large proportion of the issues surround the issue of enforcement, yet the L.C. ‘do not think it appropriate to reconsider the issue of cost recovery’[vii]. One has a huge impact upon the other.
Great swathes of the LC documents hinge upon interlinked policy, these include the national standards mentioned above, license fees, enforcement and so on – it is incredibly complicated and like a house of cards, each piece is very much dependent upon the other.
We will in the next few pages carry on dissecting the papers, however it would be folly of us not to point out our belief that this is nothing other than an exercise in futility, we sadly believe the L.C. has a closed mind on many issues and in many respects, irrespective of the persuasiveness of our arguments we face a ‘fait accompli’.
The Law Commission state the customer should be at the heart of legislation; everybody should be free to choose the company they wish to get lost with. In terms of driver safety, the LC appear to have given that the same amount of thought as the bloke on the Clapham omnibus does about his underpants each morning.
It is unlikely, due to the political agenda set out within the remit the L.C. are working to, that they will have an epiphany.
There are numerous difficulties in writing a response, without questioning the reasoning behind the position of the L.C. my association will attempt this over the next few pages. We fear many of those answering will be inadvertently agreeing to statements they do not comprehend, the consultation responses could therefore present a modern day “ragman’s roll” of consent.
Till next month
Wayne Casey--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
End notes
[i] Law Com 330; Eleventh Programme of Law reform (pg 20 para. 2.73)
[ii] Article from Legal Futures website 17 May 2012
[iii] BBC News website story 6 Oct 2011 “Supermarket ‘law shops’ to sell legal services”
[iv] Law Commission website
[v] PR World website; July 2012
[vi] Law Commission Documents 2.32, 2.33, 13.5
[vii] Advisory group document; Nov 2011, page 10
source:
http://www.national-taxi-association.co.uk/?p=3976
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