Finding reported misinformation about the cross-border ‘taxi’ issue is like shooting fish in a barrel. Following the stuff about Blackpool and Lincoln the other day, another couple of good examples have appeared online.
First, Unite the Union has issued a press release about a protest due to take place today in Crawley, West Sussex, outside a council building. The union is complaining about Uber (who else?) cars apparently operating illegally at Gatwick Airport, which lies within the Crawley Borough Council area. Unite opines:
Currently, Uber has an unfair advantage over Crawley’s private hire taxis because it can circumvent the local authority’s licensing laws, resulting in Uber cars registered in London entering the town and waiting for passengers. Private hire taxis, on the other hand, cannot pick up fares outside of their licensing areas unless they have been pre-booked.
The situation has led to an in-flux of London-based Uber cars into Crawley which are then parking up to poach private hire car business. Uber’s growing encroachment into Crawley’s taxi sector is damaging livelihoods and undermining the local economy, which is heavily dependent on Gatwick.
Leaving aside the usual misleading ‘private hire taxi’ and ‘taxi sector’ terminology, the complaint is basically about Crawley-licensed private hire vehicles (PHVs) objecting to Uber cars taking bookings from Gatwick Airport. But, in particular, the highlighted text above represents a false Uber/private hire dichotomy, because the “Uber cars registered in London” are in fact licensed PHVs, thus are perfectly entitled to (using Unite’s phraseology) “pick up fares outside of their licensing area” because they have “been pre-booked”.
So, unlike the Blackpool stuff which posited that ‘taxis’ can’t work outside their licensing area at all, Unite does acknowledge that cross-border working by PHVs is possible. But, as is so often the case, the misinformation depends on portraying Uber as something substantively different in economic, business and licensing terms (“on the other hand”) whereas both Uber and the Gatwick Airport cars are PHVs. Portraying the Uber cars as “London-based” and “London-registered” is obfuscatory – what it means, essentially, is that the Uber cars are licensed as PHVs in London, thus by licensing authority Transport for London.
(Also slightly misleading is Unite’s claim that PHVs cannot pick up fares outside their licensing area unless “they have been pre-booked” – in fact, by definition PHVs must be pre-booked wherever they’re engaged – that’s the very essence of the public/private hire difference regarding the method of engagement. Again, this may also represent an indirect attempt to portray Uber as something different for propaganda purposes.)
Unite concludes:
“Ultimately, it is Gatwick and Uber that are causing this through the business model they have set up at the airport. Crawley council has the power to stop this by sanctioning Gatwick and Uber for deliberately breaking their taxi licensing laws.
“Crawley council must clampdown on London-based Uber cars picking up fares booked while they parked up in Crawley and clampdown hard.”
But there’s no evidence presented that Uber is “deliberately breaking” Crawley Council’s licensing laws, thus nothing for the authority to “clampdown” and “clampdown hard” on.
To repeat a couple of press excerpts from elsewhere in the country:
City of Lincoln council said that national regulations now mean that all private [hire] vehicles can work without geographical restrictions.
And from the Blackpool press:
A change in the law in 2015 allowed private hire drivers, who must be pre-booked, to operate in a different area from where they obtained a licence.
(Edit: An online Sussex World piece conveys Gatwick Airport’s opinion that the disputed practices are perfectly legal, and uses the phrase “Passengers who chose to use Uber or other private hire vehicles…”
Thus the word “other” confirms that the disputed Uber cars are in fact PHVs, effectively dismantling Unite the Union’s entire case.)
The second example concerns actual illegality at the Reading Festival, which takes place within the Reading Borough Council area, and the Reading Chronicle says:
Muhammed Shahzad, of Regent Street, Reading, is licenced by South Oxfordshire District Council. This means he can only work as a cab driver in that council’s area.
As should be clear from the forgoing, that is incorrect. However, the illegality concerned plying for hire, thus attempting public hire (thus without pre-booking) rather than private hire (which would be legal with pre-booking).
However, another complication is that the typically generic use of words like ‘taxi’ and ‘cab driver’ means it’s not clear whether the plying for hire was undertaken by a PHV (which is always illegal) or a hackney carriage (HC), which can only legally ply for hire within the area it’s licensed in. Therefore the culprit here – who was licensed by South Oxfordshire District Council – could, on the information reported, be either a PHV driver illegally plying for hire, or an HC driver illegally plying for hire outside the area he is licensed in.
To that degree the Reading Chronicle’s passage above can be vaguely reconciled with the legal position if the words “work as a cab driver” are construed as “legally ply for hire”. And, like PHVs everywhere, HCs can also collect pre-booked passengers anywhere – the geographical restriction applies only to plying for hire/public hire.)
(Apart from the above, mainstream media journos who dismiss all us blogger types as disinformation disseminators and conspiracy theorists should note the likes of an alternative report on the driver caught in Reading, which headlines:
Unlicensed taxi driver fined more than £1,500 for plying for hire during Reading Festival
Leaving aside some of the stuff addressed above, the driver was not actually an ‘unlicensed taxi driver’ as opposed to a licensed driver acting illegally. The £1,500 ‘fine’ was in fact outlined in the Chronicle’s pieces as a £922 fine, £200 in costs, and a £369 victim surcharge. Thus describing the whole lot as a ‘fine’ is a stretch. And the total sum is £1,491, thus not the £1,591 stated in the article. One or other of these sources is therefore out by £100.
The latter piece also quotes a slightly overdone statement by a councillor with a slightly overblown job title:
Cllr John Ennis, Lead Councillor for Climate Strategy and Transport, said: […] “The Reading Licensing Team worked tirelessly to bring this complex case to court, and I am pleased the Magistrates recognised the importance of it. […]
It’s not clear precisely what was so “complex” about this case that it required the licensing team to “work tirelessly” to bring it to court (PR/comms cliche alert!), but the article earlier said, “The case was brought by South Oxfordshire County Council”.
Shame that the latter’s licensing team didn’t also get the credit for “working tirelessly” on such a “complex case”. (In fact it seems more likely that it was indeed Reading Borough Council who brought the prosecution rather than South Oxfordshire County Council, which had licensed the driver. Indeed, the latter couldn’t have, because there’s no such entity as South Oxfordshire County Council – county councils don’t normally license ‘taxi’ drivers, as opposed to the likes of South Oxfordshire District Council.))