Taxi Driver Online

LTDA calls for investigation into Uber legal bias

https://www.taxi-point.co.uk/single-pos ... gal-bias-1

The Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association has today called on the Lord Chief Justice to investigate accusations of bias in the decisions of Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot around Uber.

Following a front-page Observer article this weekend, more allegations have come to light about the decisions of Chief Magistrate Arbuthnot. While she has withdrawn from presiding over upcoming licensing appeals, significant questions remain about her decisions in recent cases in London and Reading and her unwillingness to recuse herself in cases involving Uber.

Steve McNamara, General Secretary of the LTDA, said:

“It’s appalling that Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot has been involved in so many cases which have backed Uber, without disclosing her links to the company.

“We want the Lord Chief Justice to investigate as a matter of urgency to restore faith in our legal system.”

Significant doubt has been cast over the previous decisions of this judge, due to:

• An apparent determination on the part of Judge Arbuthnot to preside over a number of cases related to Uber. The Chief Magistrate has ordered five matters relating to Uber to be allocated to her for hearing. This includes two prosecutions of Uber drivers for plying for hire which were allocated to her on the initiative and application of Uber-funded lawyers. It also includes the appeals in Brighton and York against refusals to renew Uber’s license, which were transferred to her out of the locality without any hearing in open court.

• It has emerged over the weekend that the Chief Magistrate has assigned the Brighton and Hove appeal to another judge. The LTDA is concerned that this personal selection of another judge represents retention of influence over the hearing of this Uber appeal.

• A rush to complete cases. While five days in court were allocated for Uber’s appeal against Transport for London, it was completed in only two. The LTDA was limited to only five minutes of oral submission in the case.

• Political interference in licensing. Detailed press reports are available on the intervention of 10 Downing Street in Transport for London’s decisions around Uber in 2014 and 2015, when Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson was in post. The Conservative Party ran a petition calling on Sadiq Khan, Labour Mayor of London, to ‘rethink’ his decision to refuse to license Uber in September 2017.

• Family connections. The Chief Magistrate is married to senior Conservative politician Lord Arbuthnot. Lord Arbuthnot is a former director of and current senior consultant to SC Strategy, a company which advises one of Uber’s biggest investors, the Qatar Investment Authority. Despite this connection being a potential conflict of interest, the Chief Magistrate has put herself forward for no fewer than five cases involving Uber.

The brother of the Chief Magistrate, Bartholomew Broadbent, wrote in January 2015 to a regulator in Charleston, South Carolina, in strong support of Uber. He praised Uber in relation to a request for the authority to reinstate Uber services in the city.

At present, there is no mechanism by which the parties to a dispute can be made aware of a potential conflict of interest, such as this family connection, at the outset of a hearing.

The LTDA has been campaigning against the relicensing of Uber in London, on the basis that it is not a fit and proper operator. Its recent ‘Real Cost of Uber’ campaign highlighted issues around Uber’s use of data, its unfair business practices and its record on safety in London.

Another LTDA news release obviously with heavy involvement of lawyers and (possibly) PR types.

Dead giveaway is the use of the word 'recuse', which as far as I can tell is more of a US legal term rather than something used much in the UK, even in legal contexts.

Anyway, according to one definition it means:

"to disqualify or withdraw from a position of judging, as because of prejudice or personal interest"

What magistrates are told, time and time again, is that you must withdraw from any case/hearing that not only has direct or indirect links to you, but any case that Mr Average could even think you would be biased in.

The rules are incredibly strict.

I’m told that’s the reason the Brighton Uber appeal is being held away from Brighton.

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IDFIMH

I was wondering how long it would take the LTDA to jump on this !!!

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

The TaxiPoint site has been given a copy of the LTDA's full letter to the Lord Chief Justice, in picture format below.

If you can't read it then use your browser's zoom function to, er, zoom in a bit. Alternatively, right click and save each picture to your hard drive. You could then open each page in your usual picture viewer/graphics software and enlarge it that way.

Unfortunately the images are pretty low-res though, so even zooming/enlarging won't make them crystal clear, but probably good enough to read clearly without too much difficulty.

TaxiPoint also has a copy of a letter to the Lord Chief Justice from the London Cab Drivers' Club (LCDC), which isn't quite as high-profile as the LTDA, but as far as I know has been around quite a long time, is well regarded and carries a fair bit of clout.







By the way, haven't read this in full, but the LCDC letter refers to a piece in the Guardian 'newspaper'. As far as I know the article was actually published in The Observer, which has been a separate Sunday newspaper for about three thousand years. But The Observer doesn't have a separate website, so it's just published online as part of the Guardian website, hence the apparent confusion

A number of comments have been made that the Chief Magistrate assigned herself to hear the Brighton/Uber appeal.

I'm not sure that is, or ever was, the case.

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IDFIMH

Sort of confirming the above, a good source tells me the Brighton/Uber appeal hearing has been listed for next Wednesday at Brighton Magistrates Court. For Directions.

I’m also told it is being heard by the resident DJ Szagun.

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IDFIMH

House, Trance, Techno, Dub, Dubstep, that sort of thing?

Someone else just said that they thought I was joking about the resident DJ.

But actually for the first time in my life I wasn’t taking the pi**.

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IDFIMH

Uber -v- Brighton appeal listed for 27th and 28th November before the resident DJ.

She announced in court today that following the appeal she would give her decision before the 11th December.

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IDFIMH