Month: February 2019

Yes – Taxi Driver Qualification could be tighter, but further centralisation of the rules will discriminate against good driver applicants as well as bad

One of the most tragic ways that MPs and Politicians fail the Electorate, is by giving excessive weight to the advice and input from membership organisations that sell and portray themselves as representative of entire demographics or communities, when they aren’t.

Regrettably, such organisations are susceptible to the very same biases, tunnel vision and levels of self interest on the part of their representatives and leaders, and MPs would probably benefit from talking to any one person who works in the industry, alone.

All too often, Ministers who have little or no real-world experience of their brief or the wherewithal to understand how lobbyists and activists operate will respond in knee-jerk fashion to what they are told and act on the basis that they are being informed by experts – no matter what the biases at work might be.

They are under the misapprehension that the words of such representatives genuinely reflect the will and desires of whole swathes of the Electorate, when reality is that they rarely do so.

With four years experience as a Licensing Chair that ended in 2015, I was intrigued to hear the news that the Government is now to Consult on changing the qualification rules for Taxi, Hackney and Private Hire Drivers.

The direction of travel indicated openly, suggests that the rules governing their Regulation should become more uniform, and therefore centralised, so that an applicant or driver dealing with one Licensing Authority would now be effectively be dealing with them all, as one.

In principle this sounds good. There is definitely a disconnect between the reality that Drivers are often only Registered or ‘Licensed’ by one Local Authority. Yet  in almost every case other than a large Licensing Area such as London, they will cross into the jurisdiction of at least one and possibly many others, every day.

This does leave grey areas over infringements in the regulatory sense. But where existing Taxi Drivers and their Operating Companies are concerned, there is a big issue over outsiders treading on toes.

Vehicles from other areas can be perceived as stealing business from ‘local firms’, with the subsequent suggestion that the Licensing Authority concerned employs a policy where anything goes.

Because Taxi Licensing Policy is open to localised tweaks, additions and therefore non-adoption of policies which might have been adopted elsewhere, it is easy to give fictitious credence to the arguments built upon the myth that every Local Authority is run differently.

The reality is that the rules governing all forms of Licensing are already heavily centralised, have been set in London and that basic issues like driver qualifications, are almost universally consistent wherever you might go.

Unfortunately, the Taxi Lobby has form when it comes to influencing Politicians to change rules for their own ends.

A decade ago, changes to the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976 closed a loop-hole preventing private car owners from attracting a fee for transporting Special Educational Needs Students between their homes, schools and colleges.

Sold as a way to raise safety standards, the outcome of this ring-fencing of local authority contracts to the closed audience that lobbied for it, landed Local Educational Authorities with an average additional annual bill of at least £1 Million. There was no indication that the benefit to the end user was in any way improved.

Yes, there is always a need to make sure that the rules are tight, especially where public safety is concerned. But rules can also be twisted to benefit those with the most to gain whilst no consideration is given to the significant cost to others.

We should all be very concerned about the potential for further regulation, sold as being in the best interests of the Public, that may only favour certain operators, whilst having the potential to price others out of the marketplace and put prices up for all customers.

All this comes at a time when Taxis are increasingly the only lifeline available for people disadvantaged by the remote nature of their communities, where the commercialisation of public transport services has failed them more than most.

Like Planning Law, which is wrongly perceived as being set locally by District Level Authorities, Licensing is predominantly set centrally. It is only interpreted by Local Licensing Authorities.

In a quasi-judicial setting that some would recognise as being very similar to the Magistrates Court, License applications and reviews that cannot be determined by Officers under delegated powers are heard by a panel or bench of three of the Council’s Licensing Committee Members.

Such settings are not perfect and there is regrettably always a chance that because of the inconsistency in the quality, approach and motivation of local Politicians – as within Parliament – you will get a different outcome from a hearing. It is very much dependent upon who is sitting, who is chairing and facilitating, how they interpret the evidence given, how they are advised by Licensing Officers and yes – just because it’s the way that everything went that day.

It is here that the real inconsistency within the Licensing system is at work.

This inconsistency needs to be tackled with measures put in place to ensure that there is consistency in determinations. That impartiality is the guiding factor in all outcomes and that nobody sitting in ‘judgment’ is allowed to influence a decision because of personal bias, experience or because they are on a power trip and want to get their own way that day.

The risk in moving towards a national form of Licensing administration is that the process will remove what little flexibility is left within the system. Flexibility that needs to be monitored and improved, but not overlooked, forgotten or ignored.

Not everyone wants to be a Taxi Driver. Many people take on the role as an in-between job to keep themselves working, whilst the move between more substantial roles. Some take on the work because they do not like being employed, but do not want the responsibility of being self-employed in the generally accepted sense. They are literally making the very best of things that they can.

Yes, there have been some very serious cases of Taxi Drivers abusing the responsibility and the trust that they have been given. 

What those individuals have done may be wrong. But the cases now being used as a reference point for changing a whole industry are statistically very few. And like many areas where Government Policy is being used to pursue the passions of the few, there is an inherent danger that the tail is being used to wag the whole dog.

By tightening up rules which are arguably already working well – when you consider that you will never create the perfect system, there are many would-be Taxi Drivers who could be assets to an industry facing challenging times, that will be denied entry to these roles, at an incalculable cost.

Dehumanising the system might be reflective of the world at large. But the disadvantage and cost of such steps will be much more far-reaching than what will only ever be a perceived and tangible benefit to a few.

A job may have responsibilities but political responsibility is not just a job

Despite the reality that the coercive undercurrent of all legislation to uphold rights in the workplace and in just about every other area of life overlooks and simply redirects the true nature of the problems to even greater depths, we should at least be grateful that the existence of issues has been recognised and that that in itself is a positive step.

Recognising that rights legislation simply encourages people in positions of influence to hide prejudices which very few people would find themselves without, should they be facing precisely the same decisions in the same circumstances, is in itself controversial. It gives the lie to the premise that the way we all think can be conditioned by forcing us to behave in particular ways.

Regrettably, the passion for rights implementation, whilst full of the best intentions, is nonetheless a highly quixotic pastime. Not least of all because it overlooks the intricacies of every circumstance, attempting to whitewash every situation as being fundamentally the same, just in the very same way that the legislation used is flawed because it doesn’t allow for the potentially infinite number of ways that each and every person thinks.

Workplace legislation is neither friend to employee or to employer once you look beyond the universality of the rules and focus on the different circumstances of the individuals and the specific organisations or operations concerned.

There is absolutely no doubt that the way employees have been treated in less enlightened times has been terrible and the source of much fear. Yet we have moved on considerably from the point where a sensible balance was reached.

We have now entered a dangerous period of having laws for laws sake. The areas of life, business and government where the champions of social justice are now taking aim may gain a superficial benefit for the few, but it will inevitably result in a much higher cost for us all.

With the ongoing debate over the status of those ‘self employed’ involved in the gig economy, we are seeing the damage that can be done to whole business ecosystems by new market entrants who exploit loopholes in law to create what appear to be industry changing business models. Technology based wonders that are little more than modern day exploitation or slavery models which make massive profit whilst their true nature remains unaddressed. Meanwhile destroying the ability of traditional providers to continue in legitimate marketplaces being destroyed by business models only sustainable because they can undercut as they exploit.

The cost is immeasurable. In a society increasingly obsessed by the drug which is supply and response at the touch of a button, with no requirement for physical journeys or interaction in between, we are indeed sleepwalking into a nightmare scenario akin to a cultural prison, where the unscrupulous will remain anonymous as they inflict great pain on others as part of what we are being sold as the ‘consumer society win-win’.

Our social justice warriors, focused rightly but nonetheless superficially on changing the rules to create rights for these exploited employees who are technically self employed, do not look beyond to address the model of industrial tyrany which sits beyond it. Nor do they consider the inevitable impact of what their new rules will have upon real life for others who neither want nor can afford to operate and develop real businesses with the shackles placed around their business which are being created by everything that do-gooders have idealistically done.

The greatest level of responsibility any one person can have in business is to be a sole trader, responsible for every aspect of a business, including the delivery of the service or product, the time and effort expended – all of which forms the basis upon which success or failure will be built and what the future fir them and that business will become.

Restrictions placed upon these entrepreneurs, professionals and tradespeople by people who have no understanding of what the life choice of self employment actually requires of them in what they do, will restrict creativity and the viability of small businesses and with it, everything they do for us as a society beyond.

Giving rights to everyone in every situation without thinking through the consequences is a danger to everyone. The example of being a sole trader demonstrates the existence of a job which isn’t and shouldn’t be treated as a job, but there is another example which exists where the misplaced implementation of ‘workplace rights’ has an impact upon everyone and not just those directly involved.

Perhaps the greatest responsibility that anyone can have is that of being elected on behalf of and to represent others.

Being a Councillor, Mayor, Police & Crime Commissioner or MP is a significant, potentially open-ended responsibility and so much more than a job.

Yet these Public Roles are positions increasingly treated as simply being jobs and therefore worthy of attracting the terms that a normal employee would expect in the workplace, when the responsibilities which come with the Role go way beyond those which any employee would expect or have.

Some of the similarities between self employment and being an elected representative are striking. The reality is that either are what we would ever call 9-5, 5 day week with bountiful holiday roles. Yet that is exactly how they are now viewed and are being treated. And when it comes to those with the responsibility for legislating on behalf of us all, simply treating being an MP as being nothing more than a career or a job is a frightening endorsement of how trivialised the responsibility of being a Representative of the People in this Country has now become.

The difference between them is that when you become a Representative of the People, you should put others before yourself in every sense.

Such responsibility requires a level of flexibility and commitment which overrides all the normal trappings of being an employee. The fact that many of our Westminster incumbents now treat the whole experience as being about their own working conditions and the privileges that they can secure speaks volumes about why Brexit has become such a ridiculous mess.

This is simply not what being an MP or Politician in a democracy is about. It’s not the way that good Government works and how meaningful things which affect everyone get done.

A job may have responsibilities but responsibility itself is not just a job.

MPs need to stop thinking about themselves, remember how to represent the People who Elected them and get on with doing whatever is necessary to get this Country sorted, no matter the time or commitment needed.

The responsibility of being an MP must come before anything else. It is not a job. It is an Elected role and the People have the right to expect 100% commitment from incumbents.

Otherwise they should stand aside and let others stand in their place who will be dedicated and put others first. Not simply treat the role as being all about them, which is what Parliament to current MPs who think they have a job is all it has become.