National standards are the solution

The Government’s response to Baroness Casey’s report into Child Sexual Exploitation should have alarm bells ringing throughout the taxi and private hire trade.

Discussions within the House of Commons seem to suggest that major changes to the Deregulation Act, ending the principle of “cross-border hiring” should be made, with the implication that doing so would increase the safety of children being transported by taxis, and avoid a repeat of the appalling Rotherham grooming gang scandal, where a group of paedophiles used taxis to pick up vulnerable children from schools.

But hang on. The Rotherham scandal took place between 2007 and 2013, pre-dating the Deregulation Act and its well-meaning provisions that allow drivers licensed out-of-area to pick up pre-booked fares.

More than 20 people were jailed for their involvement in Rotherham, and it is clear that those who were licensed as taxi drivers were licensed not “out of area” but in Rotherham.

Since the scandal, the government has introduced safeguarding guidelines which should be part of every licensing application. This, along with extended DBS checks, should ensure that potential paedophiles are identified and taken out of the licensing process.

This is what should be happening. But it is clear that not all licensing authorities are as rigorous as they should be in this process. Meanwhile, the Deregulation Act, which allows drivers to apply outside their home area for a license, has had an unintended consequence. Councils, notably Wolverhampton, seized on the inefficiency of other licensing authorities and geared up to offer a licensing service to the wider trade.

By providing a more efficient service, thousands of drivers from other cities such as Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool flocked to Wolverhampton to get licensed. Why? Because their own local councils are so inefficient and slow that it takes up to 10 months to process a license. We’re seeing it now with crumbling TfL, which cannot cope with a licensing backlog that has been building up since 2023.

When Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham – in political terms, one of the good guys – started shouting about the number of Wolverhampton-plated cars in Salford and Stockport, he immediately equated this with a claim that Wolverhampton was somehow offering a less rigorous service than Manchester councils.

This is clearly not the case. In fact, Wolverhampton has one of the strictest set of criteria and one of the most active enforcement operations. It can afford to have – as it is legally bound to reinvest the proceeds from licensing into licensing.

Burnham’s ire should be directed at the inefficient licensing operations in Greater Manchester, whose slow service opened the door to a more efficient rival.

Of course, this whole issue could be solved by introducing full, comprehensive national standards for taxi and private hire licensing. Just like there are national licenses for truck, bus and coach drivers. A full, strictly enforced national standard would mean that it does not matter where the drivers get licensed. They would have to undergo the same check and safeguarding procedures wherever they went to get their license.

A council that refused to adhere to the standard would not be allowed to issue licenses. It would create a streamlined system where councils such as Wolverhampton handle the bulk of the work, and it would be up to other councils to provide a service with equivalent speed and efficiency.

Regardless of the licensing issue, cross-border hiring has been a real benefit to the industry, not least in environmental grounds, where sub-contracting jobs has eliminated thousands of “dead miles” where cars trundle back to base, empty.

That TfL should again be proposing the genuinely stupid “ABBA principle”, is shocking. This is not going to make any child any safer. It is not a “loophole”. It is a useful tool in the age of apps and advanced booking technology. And how is reintroducing such a backward-looking concept going to work for chauffeurs who are booked by the hour or by the day and work “as directed”?

Recent parliamentary debates on the taxi sector highlighted the lack of comprehension about the sector. This results in kneejerk reactions when major issues – such as grooming gangs – touch on the taxi sector.

Of course, the safety of children has to be paramount. But fiddle-faddling around with the nif-naf of regulations is not the solution. Proper, well-devised and strictly applied national standards is. Yvette Cooper, please take note.