Shock, horror, but there’s been no online press articles about the Gatwick Airport dispute for at least a week now. And, as opposed to the earlier stuff about widespread and self-evident illegality involving Uber cars licensed by Transport for London and picking up fares at the airport, the debate seems to have moved on slightly. But, to reiterate the misrepresentation about the apparently widespread breach of licensing rules, it’s perhaps instructive to compare articles published by the two leading national trade publications. A fortnight ago, Private Hire and Taxi Monthly said:
Under licensing laws, Crawley taxi drivers cannot pick up fares outside of their specific area. But London-based Uber drivers can circumvent these rules, coming to the town and picking up passengers.
In reality, it’s very probable that the Crawley ‘taxi drivers’ referred to are in fact private hire drivers. Which, in legal terms, is also how Uber drivers are categorised and licensed. More to the point, there’s no restriction on a private hire vehicle (PHV) picking up pre-booked passengers in another licensing area. Thus, in simple terms, there’s nothing to stop TfL-licensed drivers picking up at Gatwick in Crawley, just as Crawley-licensed drivers can pick up at Heathrow.
By the same token, TaxiPoint said this:
Unite the Union suggests that Uber enjoys an unfair advantage over Crawley’s private hire vehicles by bypassing local licensing regulations. This allows Uber cars, often registered by London regulator Transport For London (TfL), to enter Crawley and wait for passengers. Conversely, local private hire vehicles cannot pick up fares outside their licensed areas unless pre-booked.
Which at least concedes that the Crawley PHVs can pick up fares elsewhere. So why is it claimed that Uber can’t do the converse? That might depend on the ‘unless pre-booked’ qualification. But this is irrelevant – by definition, PHVs must be pre-booked. On the other hand, perhaps claiming that only Uber can ‘wait for passengers’ is the salient point – it’s implied that the Crawley PHVs must have a specific booking. But, again, this does not seem relevant – PHVs can collect passengers anywhere as long as the trip is pre-booked. Waiting until a pre-booking is allocated is not relevant.
However, despite repeating essentially the same argument several times, more recently TaxiPoint has stated:
Cross-border hire rules allow drivers licensed in one area to operate in another. This is controversial as it can lead to regulatory inconsistencies and perceived unfair competition. Local operators must adhere to often stricter local rules set with the resistants needs in mind, while out-of-town drivers might exploit more lenient regulations.
At last – the ‘regulatory inconsistencies’ aren’t about who can pick up where, as opposed to different qualitative standards applying to the licensing regimes in different areas and how this might affect competition and fairness in view of the fact that PHVs can effectively work anywhere once licensed by a particular licensing authority.
To be fair, to a degree both publications are simply rehashing or regurgitating stuff from other sources, but it’s not clear why they can both publish stuff like the above without comment or qualification. TaxiPoint has a decidedly London-centric and taxi slant, which might rationalise a lack of knowledge regarding provincial private hire matters. PHTM has no such excuse, has been around for 30 years, is the self-proclaimed “most influential trade newspaper in the UK for the private hire and hackney carriage industry”, and is associated with The National Private Hire & Taxi Association.
Another explanation is perhaps the ongoing propaganda technique of portraying Uber as something different, as opposed to a competing private hire operator under the same licensing and legislative framework as those complaining.
But as regards moving the arguments on slightly, the GB News website has joined the party, with the likes of this:
Under the licencing rules, Uber being a private hire vehicle is unable to loiter in the taxi rank to pick up fares.
So at least that’s a slightly different argument – the accusation here is that Uber cars have been plying for hire, which only proper taxis (hackney carriages) can do.
Uber can only move over to the official taxi area once they have accepted a job and are ready to pick up passengers.
Er, not really – if it’s about ‘taxis’ in the sense used earlier in the context of a rank, then it’s almost certainly about moving to some kind of pick-up area for pre-booked customers, thus not a ‘taxi’ area.
GB News also quotes a Crawley licensing councillor:
“No ride hailing app, including Uber, should be behaving in a way that a private hire vehicle is not permitted to behave.
“Anything else from Uber, would be touting for business and would be a breach of their licence.”
As usual with the nonsensical ‘ride-hailing’ term, its use here serves no obvious purpose other than to ‘other’ Uber(!) and detract from the fact that the operator simply needs to comply with the same rules as other private hire providers.
Then there’s another of those oft-used but probably misleading phrases – ‘touting for business’ – which is often conflated with ‘plying for hire’ or simply means conducting business legally, but in a manner obviously considered undesirable, but not necessary illegal, but made to sound that way.
However, in the specific context of the industry, ‘touting’ is the criminal offence of actively approaching customers, which neither private hire nor taxi/hackney carriage drivers can do.
‘Plying for hire’ means accepting un-booked customers in a public place (the ‘rank and hail’ markets, to put it succinctly) which private hire is by definition excluded from doing, while taxis/hackney carriages can only do in the specific area they’re licensed in.
But it looks like the complaints have basically been narrowed down to allegations of touting and/or plying for hire by Uber drivers at Gatwick.
The GB News site includes a brief précis of Uber’s online procedure for collecting pre-booked customers at Gatwick. But any breach of this could well be more about Uber’s internal procedures and its arrangments with Gatwick Airport rather than licensing and illegality.
On the other hand, such arrangement could intersect with licensing matters – most obviously possible plying for hire – but assuming Uber cars aren’t waiting in a place where the public have unrestricted access to (a basic test with respect to plying for hire), then it’s probable that Unite the Union and Crawley Council are clutching at straws. The other basic thread about the whole thing – fair competition, basically – is clearly not the same as the illegality claim.
And it’s perhaps also instructive that GB News uses the generic term ‘taxi’ to refer to the competitive threat from Uber to the local Crawley trade. In fact, it seems that the main threat is to the dedicated ‘taxi’ service contracted to work from Gatwick Airport, which – as is so often the case with such arrangements – are private hire vehicles. Thus private hire vehicles like Uber. To that extent, those investigating the complaints will no doubt be looking closely at how the provider Gatwick Cars engages its customers and comparing that with Uber’s modus.
For example, the Airport Cars Gatwick website states: “Our Meet and Greet services are available on special request. Our driver will meet you at arrivals with a name board and a smile.”
Oh, dear – sounds suspiciously like touting. Except that the customer will be pre-booked, therefore just like Uber’s drivers being required to “park their car before walking to the designated pick up area to meet a rider”.