captain cab wrote:
Except for the fact Warsaw didn't have its own act?
Perhaps that is the way forward, a campaign for every licensing district to have its very own Act. The Lawyers who have lost all that income from Legal Aid could recoup it all by becoming Taxi Law specialists for one area. Court precedent that carries weight everywhere would be a thing of the past, each event would generate a local only precedent. The same battles could be fought again and again.
Having our own Act in Plymouth has got a few advantages - no immediate revocation with employment opportunity removed until appeal holds no weight here. But there can be downside too, what if a driver here really should be revoked for public safety?
I noted that in the Committee Stage, the feeling was that Plymouth would be excluded. The Solicitor General could have pointed out that with a stroke of a pen the Plymouth City Council Act 1975 could have been included as an Act being revised. Instead it was said that Plymouth City Council could, at their own behest, adopt the Miscellaneous Provisions Act 1976. Why, with the Law Commission (fairly imminently) about to report would PCC do something that would generate a significant cost for absolutely no benefit?
I honestly believe that, due to an accident of history, we have ended up with a Trade (Taxi) that finds it hard to deal with colleagues next door as it is always felt that next door will "poach" all the work. Yet we team up and agree with colleagues further away who are not "Fishing in our pond". This was caused by Local Authorities being individually responsible. All this was set up in the mid Nineteenth Century and the current position could not be foreseen, the mileage limitation of the one horsepower engine being considered enough to prevent "Poaching" by Hackney Carriage Drivers.
All this was compounded by the mistake of legalising in 1975 and 1976 the minicab and calling it "Private Hire". If in the 1970's the Act(s) so carefully crafted had stopped "Minicabs" and insisted on Taxis being the only Hire and Reward vehicles, what a different world we would live in.
Perhaps you could revisit your Poland invasion plan and ask Mr Putin if we could have half of the Crimean peninsular instead?