Taxi Driver Online

Daniel Zeichner
There are over 360,000 licensed taxi and private hire drivers in England, and the sector has been very hard hit. What assessment has the Secretary of State made of the impact on the sector, and will he tell us how he plans to measure the impact of his rather disappointingly weak statutory guidance issued back in July?

Grant’s reply
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about the impact, and the same is true of many other forms of transport. I pay tribute to the work of taxi drivers and private hire vehicle drivers, who have been incredible during this crisis and have often provided the only form of transport available for people in certain areas.

The statutory taxi and private hire vehicle standards have considerable teeth, because for the first time ever we will have national databases, and we will put enormous work into ensuring that all local authorities and hackney carriage authorities sign up to those and use them. I will say more in the not too distant future about our support for taxis and private hire vehicles through the pandemic.

Well hurry up.

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IDFIMH

I see that Train companies are getting £3.5 billion of our money to offset any losses due to the pandemic....Maybe they'll get round to us in the end

Very much doubt it, still waiting of a reply from Shapps to an email sent 6 months ago.

watched a documentary about public transport the other night and it was made clear that the transport department is ALWAYS bottom of the pile for money.

That is why the Transport secretary has the highest turnover of ministers of any government department!

Shapps is unusual in that he is a fan of railways not an oil and construction industry lackey. That probably has a lot to do with the fact the railways are being kept afloat apart from the massive compensation bill that might accrue if they didn't.

I doubt he'll last long enough in the job to do anything for us nor will the treasury countenance spending money on taxis and PH. After all we are a commercial operation not a subsidised local or national operation. It would be unprecedented for government to start subsidising taxi and PH provision!

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

The train companies were a commercial entity until yesterday when they were renationalised by the back door with a guarentee that they will not lose money by providing taxpayers money to them.

But are we really after cash from the gov?

We just want laws that allow us to earn a reasonable living and keep punters safe, nothing more.

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IDFIMH

Yes

But most of us have had quite a lot already. And doubt we'll be getting more