Taxi Driver Online

Came across this via TaxiPoint - link to the article below, but these are the verbatim quotes referred to...

https://www.taxi-point.co.uk/post/calls ... ft-s-remit

Not sure if it's quite as straightforwad as saying employment law is totally outside the DfT's remit. I mean, the DfT's best practice guidance says:


To be fair, what the transport minister says isn't incorrect in a literal sense, but it does seem a bit of a cop out

I would think that any issue to do with employment etc would be the department for work and pensions and nothing to do with the transport minister.

The precise question was about 'working conditions'.

I keep on reading on here that tariff levels are fundamental to working conditions. I wonder which department is responsible for overseeing tariff levels

(Of course, strictly speaking PH tariffs aren't normally regulated, but would the answer be any different if the MP had asked about HCs rather than PH? I'd guess not. And why ask only about PH and not the other side? Possibly because neither the questioner nor the responder have much of clue...)

And who's also responsible for overseeing restricted HC numbers?

Again, we're told the rationale for that is effectively 'working conditions', so ditto the above.

Also, isn't DfT's best practice guidance fundamentally deregulatory, which feeds through to 'working conditions'? (Or, at least, that's Wolverhampton's interpretation of them, although to be honest I've never sat down and read the best practice guidance all the way through )

But that's why, it would seem, I could get my car MoTd in Dundee, which would mean I could get it plated by Wolverhampton City Council, then go and work in Plymouth, say

Which may seem fantastic for new drivers in the short term, but in the longer term maybe explains why the likes of Uber drivers are on strike and demonstrating etc all over the shop.

(Was thinking of this when having a quick look back at some of the Law Commission stuff, which I'd forgotten was encouraging minimal standards throughout England (its remit doesn't extent to Scotland).

But which in turn resulted in all the cross-border stuff, and the minimal standards which Wolves has effectively extended across much of England

In fact, I was looking back at the Law Commission stuff specifically to work out whether Wolverhampton's claim that the cross-border stuff isn't a loophole has any merit - Wolverhampton's case is that the near-50,000 badge beast they've created is what was intended, and thus it's not a loophole.

Not so sure about that - although the Law Commission wanted to make local authority licensing borders less relevant, I can't see how they wanted an existing licensing authority like Wolves to act effectively as the Amazon of 'taxi' licensing across the whole of England )

That is a simple one. None of them because tariff levels are set by individual Councils for Hackneys in their area and by individual operators for private hire, well they are in England and Wales.

Well, that's the theory in a few words, Grandad, but it often doesn't work that way in practice. For example, I noticed this view in the Law Commission's report the other night:


And, more obviously, there have been numerous examples on here over the years evidencing that. And, in particular, in the likes of Barrow, Blackpool and Brighton I'm pretty sure there are mixed HC/PH despatch fleets, thus pricing is largely similar, or even identical, whether or not the PHVs there have meters fitted.

And, of course, it goes without saying that in numerous other locations there are mixed HC/PH office fleets, thus obviously some congruence between the two codes as regards pricing.

Anyway, even assuming the minister's response was the end of the matter, it's an abysmal way to answer the question. What about the likes of so-called 'joined-up government'?

Although, to be fair, his dismissive response is maybe at least honest - he could have provided a more comms/PR-oriented answer about 'working closely' with other departments, or whatever. But he didn't.

And, of course, with Wolverhampton being the cheap labour capital of English 'taxi' licensing, and the council there being Labour-controlled, all this kind of stuff is maybe a tad awkward for Labour.

I mean, if it was a headline political issue then the opposition and press would be going to town on stuff like that, but because it's well below the radar screen all the government have to do is provide non-answers like this, and it's all done and dusted.

Except for in the nether regions of the internet

I am private hire and our prices are a good 25% higher than the local hackney trade.

Yes, Grandad, I was going to say that you kind of bucked the trend in that regard, but was trying to keep it short as possible

But I'm talking more in terms of generalities rather than specifics...

...but another thing I was thinking in terms of specifics, didn't you have a mixed HC/PH fleet at one point, or did you go straight from all HC to all PH?

We went straight from Hackney to Private hire. This was because it was impossible to get the other drivers in the town to agree to a tarriff increase and the Council officers also making a mess of the proposal that i put forward. Since that time there has been a small increase in the tarriff in 2019 but they are all scared to ask for another review and also they don't have anyone who can put it together in a way that will be acceptable to the Council. I sorted out the last 2 increases but because we are now private hire the hackney drivers will not ask me to help.
I am looking at how much I will need to increase my prices come April to account for the increase in minimum wage. although I don't think the employers national insurance increase will affect us because what we lose on the percentage increase will be offset by the increase in the employer allowance.