Speeches by Greenwood.

“The other thing to say, of course, is that the more requirements we put in, the more cost we put into the system. That has consequences, does it not? We know that a lot of people rely on taxis and private hire vehicles, particularly people who perhaps cannot afford a car of their own, or disabled people who would not b…”

“Frankly, it was rather reluctant about the role it had ended up with. I do not think it was ever the intention to become the go-to licensing authority, and it does not have any choice. If someone turns up at Wolverhampton, asks to be licensed and meets the standards, they will be licensed there. There is a bit of a myt…”

“I agree; that is a fair point.”

“Perhaps we were less worried about carbon emissions, congestion and things. Obviously, one of the other issues is about there being sufficient service availability, particularly when you have major events. When there is a major event happening, particularly in your city or my city, you will get taxi and private hire ve…”

“It is about what the necessary standards are. What is the licensing authority there to do? Clearly, it is about ensuring that the public are safe, have a quality of service, and are not going to face discrimination. To give you one example: there is one local authority that requires that PHV drivers wear shirt and trou…”

“It already does that, precisely for those reasons.”

“No, absolutely.”

“One thing that is quite interesting if local authorities want to take action to discourage out-of-area licensing is to look at what their own requirements are. We had quite an interesting example in Oldham. It was concerned about the number of its drivers who were licensing out-of-area. It looked at its own requirement…”

“I do not think it is a good situation that so many drivers are licensing with Wolverhampton. I would not want to give that impression. I get the impression, just from the conversations I have with colleagues who have not looked into taxis and private hire, that perhaps Wolverhampton was being unfairly penalised as bein…”

“Certainly, I met with Wolverhampton very recently. I cannot remember whether it was just before Christmas or just after.”

“That is really interesting because obviously my experience of using taxis and PHVs is that a lot of them are modern hybrid vehicles. Actually, on certain apps, when you get your choice of vehicle you get the option to take an electric vehicle rather than not, and it might come at a bit of a price point. The public are …”

“The power that is set out in the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill would give us the ability to put requirements on that. I would be interested in the Committee’s view. Obviously, there is a big incentive for local authorities to process licence applications in a timely fashion, particularly if you want…”

“I am absolutely aware of the issues and it is not a good situation. I do not want people to shop around for licences. The idea of introducing national minimum standards is partly because we wanted to act quickly, particularly in response to Baroness Casey’s recommendations, and there was an opportune way to do that. We…”

“Obviously, for drivers, they have requirements on them with the area where they have licensed, but you can always drive to areas outside where you are licensed for the reason that Liz just said. You might be licensed in Nottingham but doing a pickup from Heathrow airport or driving someone to the far end of the country…”

“I rather suspect that the problem would just move somewhere else. When I look at some of the PHVs that are licensed in my local authority area, it is clear that some license with Nottingham City Council, and some with other licensing authorities nearby other than Wolverhampton. It would just end up moving the problem.”

“There are two reasons. Obviously, fees are determined by local authorities in order to be self-funding. I recognise that the cost of operating in a local authority service is not uniform across the country. There will be variations, for example, in wage rates in different places; local authorities will not have exactly…”

“The disadvantage of having local authorities demand a particular sort of branding is precisely because people often work for a number of operators and, therefore, drivers might object to that. Obviously, taxis having a particular livery in their local authority is probably commonplace, but for PHVs if you require a sta…”

“I’ll turn to Liz. I know we have talked about this.”

“Obviously, we want there to be sufficient wheelchair accessible vehicles that serve the needs of disabled people who want them. It is fair to highlight the fact that wheelchair accessible vehicles are not necessarily the best accessible vehicles for all disabled people, because the higher step in and quite large area i…”

“Including wheelchair users, absolutely. We will take that away and look at what more we might do and what the options might be.”