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Anarchy in (part of) the UK?
By
Wayne Casey
Bearing in mind this article is about the Taxis Act (Northern Ireland) 2008 I suppose the title I chose will not endear me to some across the water, although, my poor sense of humour apart, I sincerely hope it gives my Northern Irish brethren a view on the course they appear to be taking. That aside, the Sex Pistols never sang about Anarchy in Ireland did they?
With the Law Commission currently working out what to put in their consultation in respect of English & Welsh taxi law, it had been mentioned to me to take a peek at what’s about to be implemented in the North of Ireland. You will all hopefully be aware of the sad state of taxi affairs in the South of Ireland, yet some representatives in meetings with the Stormont government were actually holding up the taxi regime in the Republic as a veritable beacon of light. I suppose if you were a manic depressive sado-masochist that may well be the case, however, if you’re of sound mind, I don’t really think the Republics taxi regime is a particularly good example, other than a fine example of how not to do things.
The taxi regime in the Republic is, as we all know, is a disaster area, there have been numerous taxi trade related - debt ridden – suicides.
On a recent trip to Dublin my daughter was warned by one decent taxi driver of the cabs she really should avoid. Being a Casey she obviously didn’t listen to the sound advice given, she doesn’t listen to me so the cab driver had little chance, she duly hired a cab where the driver was eating raw fish, couldn’t speak English, and who seemingly charged her an extortionate fee for a fare which was a relatively short distance and to which she had to give directions (I would say her geographic knowledge of Dublin is as limited as her common sense).
The plan for the North is not too dissimilar to what the Institute of Licensing (IOL) proposed for this side of the Irish Sea, and if you consider Mr Button of the IOL is an ‘expert’ consultant to the Law Commission we could well be seeing the fiendish master-plan designed for us develop before our very eyes. The conspiracy theorists out there have already mooted as much – pointing out echoes of the Thatcher regime test bedding the infamous ‘poll tax’ on the Scots.
The system of licenses can be broken down into the following; ‘Operators’ License, ‘taxi’ license and ‘taxi-drivers’ license.
Whoever drafted the rather simply titled “Taxis Act (Northern Ireland) 2008” doesn’t appear to have had much experience with anything ‘taxi’ whatsoever, there are errors in the document from the first few descriptions. For example, in the “Requirement for operator's licence” section there appears to be a written exemption for ‘taxi drivers’ yet even at this stage there are those that suggest the ‘operators’ license must be obtained by drivers in order to accept bookings, this may or may not be the case and perhaps might be sorted in driver conditions. But even now, the fact there is such uncertainty amongst people who really should know, wouldn’t appear to bode too well. As you will recall, we had a court case regarding this in 2004 which finally put the issue to rest – not that we can claim any particular acclaim from this – 2004 was some 28 years after the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976 became law.
Primarily the ‘Taxis Act’ it is a single tier system, all vehicles are ‘taxis’ and allowed to ‘ply for hire’, however the only ones permitted to ‘rank’ are those that are ‘wheelchair accessible’, unfortunately, in all the excitement they seemingly forgot to exclude wedding and funeral cars, they subsequently spent a year or so discussing this, much to the annoyance of wedding companies and funeral directors, who presumably don’t want taxi roof-signs and identification plates – although I would envisage the number of people hailing hearses may be limited. More seriously, such an obvious omission does suggest, they haven’t actually thought this thing through.
The chairman of the Committee for the Environment is on record as stating; “The Department (DOE NI) has indicated its intention to introduce, under the Taxis Act (Northern Ireland) 2008, a single-tier system that would allow all taxis to pick up on the street and only disabled-access taxis to sit in ranks”. This is designed to reduce public confusion and obviously welcomed by Northern Ireland’s Consumer Council. The thought doesn’t seem to have occurred to the consumer council that the fares system in the province will ultimately be left to those granted ‘operators licenses’, so whilst the public can hail any type of ‘taxi’ in the street, they will have very little idea what the fare charged will be.
I am suggesting by the above that there isn’t public confusion already, because there certainly is. Licensed vehicles across the provinces currently work on a plate system where the different colour of plates mean the vehicle is subject to certain regulations. As the chair of the meeting stated “Northern Ireland currently has a four-plate licensing system. There are green, yellow, white and blue-and-white plates, each of which depicts a different category of licence.” Yet even the chairs eloquence had me confused as a delegate pointed out; “We now have vehicles working in private hire depots in Belfast with green, black-and-white and yellow plates. We also have vehicles with black-and-white, green and yellow plates that supply taxi-bus services.” I must admit, I am now officially confused about Northern Irelands current licensing system. So yes, the current licensing regime needs looked at and addressed.
In a long line of probable disasters they are placing, through ‘operator’ licensing, great trust in those people who on the whole seem to, if not quite illegally ply for hire, certainly flirt with the possibility – however they seem to be blind to the prospect that they are about to give the fox the keys to the chicken coop – although this suggestion was actually made to the committee during the course of the past 12 months. If you have a PC handy I suggest you check the fares charged by some of the (what we would call) ‘private-hire’ companies in Northern Ireland, and if you can figure them out, I’ll willingly shake your hand.
There appears to be little incentive for those who currently have wheelchair accessible vehicles to carry on buying them and the possibility of wheelchair accessible vehicles disappearing completely from ‘public-hire’ remains distinct. I suppose if they were part of the NTA – or indeed knowledgeable - we would have seen the Oxley report furnished with wanton abandon.
Curiously the media have reported upon one ‘private-hire’ firm making an ‘out of court’ settlement to a disabled woman in August last year, the equality commission believe she was discriminated against and charged a higher fare than an able bodied customer would have been. The ‘out of court’ settlement (some £2000) was without admission of liability. Am I being controversial when I write, that this is perhaps the one place in the Country where any form of discrimination should be taken with the utmost seriousness?
The only part of Northern Ireland which has ever been similar to the rest of the UK’s cab trade is the fine City of Belfast. The public hire trade there seem to be the target of the rest of the province, who appear to have their greedy eyes on a market they cite as a monopoly. The cab trade of Belfast appear to want the local authorities in the rest of Northern Ireland to adopt a two tier form of licensing, similar to England and Wales, and controlled by local councils. This seems to be opposed by all other stakeholders, who presumably cannot see the point in purchasing wheelchair accessible vehicles, or indeed, knowing their way around Belfast. As you would probably guess, I think the Belfast ‘public-hire’ trade have a point, I tend to believe we have on the mainland, the best taxi and private hire system in the world, it’s just that we’re too dumb to realise it – and of course enforce it.
It would certainly appear from the act that the larger private hire companies in Northern Ireland are about to be lawfully granted the largest ‘taxi’ monopoly in the history of the UK, it will very possibly signal the end of the ‘musher’ which some might see as progress, but could also be seen as selling out – and ending what can only be described as free enterprise.
The most frustrating part is the Northern Irish government appear to have taken their own path in this venture, perhaps rightly so, but the avenue they appear to have taken is one of seemingly adopting a system based upon systematic market failures, based upon this it is difficult see how the system will work.
It could for example be argued the oversupply of vehicles in the private hire sector leads to illegal activities by private hire cars looking for work – this is one concept even the government on the mainland have difficulty accepting – as they are still convinced that the market is god and always correct. (If the market is right then why did the Prime Minister suggest releasing reserves of oil to ease the burden on the consumer?).
What if the brave new world of a single tier leads to intrinsic market failure?
What if and as previously stated, the current ‘public-hire’ cab trade of Belfast decide to dispense with WAV’s? The wheelchair bound will go from having a service of sorts (and by this I mean not perfect), to no service at all – albeit the one currently provided by private-hire operators with large fleets of vehicles which – according to the equality commission - charge exorbitant rates to wheelchair bound passengers.
Unless the ‘taxis’ which can be hailed but not rank are sponsored by someone like OPEC it naturally goes without saying they will have to park up at some point – you can see from here what’s going to happen. The chances are current ‘private-hire’ already illegally rank, so if the DOE think that’s going to change they really do need a reality check. Indeed, they can promise as much enforcement as they wish – the rest of the UK have heard this consistent line each time a passenger is raped by the driver of an illegally hired vehicle – yet it hardly ever comes into fruition.
The normal forces of competition cannot apply to the street hail market – the customer hails a cab and merely hopes the fare charged by the driver is the correct one. For the existing private-hire trade to suggest this will be overcome by ensuring the booking would be recorded via ‘blowing in’ the hire to their office is quite bizarre and does suggest the anticipated private hire monopoly they believe will prevail from the new system. Indeed it actually shows a breathtaking arrogance that if a person sticks their hand out it will be their vehicle, with their procedures – epitomising the envisioned lack of competition.
The experience in the UK with a free market, in respect of taxis, is a substantial increase in the prices charged to the consumer – this doesn’t appear to have been surprisingly considered by the Consumer Council or equally considered by the DOE – they are adamant they will control fares – just not ‘private hire taxi’ fares. Again, this type of information is available in a few ‘Google’ searches – it doesn’t need me pointing it out.
They also appear to not consider that they could well be in the throes of creating a virtual monopoly situation in respect of the larger private hire companies, they are the ones ultimately coming into the single tier from a very powerful position – as Darryl Biggar wrote;
“Larger cab networks have more available vehicles and are likely to be able to offer short waiting times on average. At the same time, since customers are attracted to calling a network that offers the shorter waiting times, the larger networks are likely to have more customers, thereby attracting more taxis to join their network.”
The above statement has borne true in numerous areas of the UK – it creates a perpetual monopoly, which ultimately decimates competition.
The seemingly acclaimed ‘operator licensing’ system appears to make the operator liable for any law breaking by vehicles under their control – great play is being made of this – yet I do wonder – as it seems a flawed prognosis to the extreme – for example, can an operator be made liable in situations where a driver might simply switch the radio equipment off – a situation which is commonplace across the UK – during periods when street and rank work is in abundance? I seriously don’t think so.
To make an operator accountable for the checking and maintaining records of motor insurance for further example is as laughable as it is dangerous – any person can get a motor policy one day and cancel it the next – how can an operator be liable for such fraud?
In simple language – an operator cannot be held responsible for such fraud by people who are under his control – but in essence free spirits – no judge would place that kind of liability on any operator – and quite rightly so.
Again – if I’m thinking this then surely it cannot have been missed by others. I get the distinct impression that Northern Ireland are attempting to instigate a taxi licensing regime ‘on the cheap’ – and my guess is – if a person with a couple of CSE’s can work this out – what’s those intelligent people with ‘O’ levels going to do?.
It’s not as if the taxi licensing system needed an entirely new model; there all ready is one for all its faults, in the rest of the UK.
I therefore have a rather outrageous suggestion to the Northern Ireland Government, for heaven’s sake stop the madness you are about to create, don’t feel bad it – at least you tried. Phone me up and give me a week at the Hilton Templepatrick (at your expense obviously I’m not made of money ffs), throw in a few rounds of golf and a few pints of Guinness, I’ll sort your taxi legislation out by the end of the week (I’ll sort it out on the ferry from Cairnryan to Belfast in all honesty, but I need a break).
My best guess is what’s planned at the moment won’t work because there’s no way it possible can, and you will completely ruin the taxi system for generations to come.
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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin
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