Lord Hampton (CB)

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 235BA, 235CB and 235CC, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, to which I have added my name. I associate myself with all the amendments in this group. I must also apologise that this is my first intervention in this Bill. A mixture of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill and my own children’s well-being, I am afraid, has precluded me from taking part so far. As this is my first time speaking on this Bill, I must declare, as ever, that I am a teacher in a state secondary school. As we have heard, there is real concern from local licensing authorities that, nationally, cross-border hiring generates serious public safety issues while undermining local licensing regimes. The TaxiPoint website says: “The Casey Report highlights what has been evident for more than a decade: in a small minority of cases, taxis have played a role in the exploitation of children. Vehicles have been used both to traffic victims and to introduce them to perpetrators. This was identified as early as the Rotherham inquiry in 2014, where Professor Jay found that taxi drivers were a ‘common thread’ in abuse cases. Subsequent reports from Oldham, Newcastle and Telford reinforced these concerns”. The scale of the cross-border hiring problem has been magnified significantly in recent years through the advent of new technology, with many taxi and private hire customers now mainly being through app-based services. This also restricts the enforcement capabilities of local licensing authorities, as they have only limited powers to enforce against out-of-town vehicles. Cross-border hiring in the taxi and private hire industries has been commonplace for many years, which has resulted in localised issues, particularly in areas where there are a number of licensing authorities in close proximity. This is coupled with a significant and rapid growth in the number of private hire drivers and vehicles, and all these issues have exacerbated cross-border hiring concerns. The noble Baroness, Lady Pidgeon, talked about Wolverhampton Council, which has issued in excess of 40,000 private hire licences, far exceeding local operational demand. The proposals considered by the Law Commission review in 2012, in respect of addressing cross-border hiring, are now considered by TfL and other stakeholders to be out of date. Urgent legislative reform is required to address these issues. The Metropolitan Police Service has said that cross-border hiring is the single largest risk to policing nationally. Amendments 235CB and 235CC would go a long way to solving these issues, and Amendment 235BA would strengthen enforcement. They have been needed for far too long, and I urge the Government to accept them.