Interview
July 2019 | www.taxi-point.co.uk | 6
Wes Streeting MP ”I still have a big health warning attached to Uber and I haven’t seen enough evidence of change to convince me that they should be operating.” Steve Kenton met with Wes Streeting MP on 13th May at the Parliamentary Chambers to find out his views on the current opportunities and challenges facing the taxi trade. With questions from our readers, we found out what Wes thinks about everything from cross border hiring to our regulators, technology, and more. Q. Lee, who is based up in Sheffield, asked: Is there going to be any movement soon in combating cross border hiring, which seems to be affecting both the
taxi industry and private hire industry in a pretty negative way across the country? A. Cross border hiring is one of the biggest issues that we have taken up through the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG), which I set up soon after being elected. Both our report as an APPG and the working group that was commissioned by the Department of Transport to look into the future of Taxi and private hire licensing, both recognise that cross border hiring is a big issue. What is effectively happening is a system where drivers and operators are getting their licences awarded in one authority, but then working in another authority and sometimes not even in the original licencing authority at all. They are only really doing that for one of two reasons: either they have found it cheaper to get the licenses somewhere else, so it’s a cost issue; and/or they have decided that the licensing requirements in certain areas are too stringent and they are trying to work their way around it. This can’t go on, and at the moment we are having a battle with Government. Government says they are going to introduce a national minimum standard which they think will correct the problem. But it’s our view, and this is a view that is shared across parties as well, that we need to have a system where a journey can begin or end within the licensing authority. So what you can’t do is go and drive around somewhere else.
Image: Chris McAndrew (UK Parliament) CC3.0
For me, this is about transparency and consistency, but also congestion as well. One of the issues we’ve got is that there has been an explosion in the number of private hire vehicles, and if drivers can just operate
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