Daniel Zeichner, Member of Parliament for Cambridge, spoke in a Westminster Hall debate on Tuesday about the future of the UK taxi trade and the complexities of the regulatory system as shown by the Law Commissioner’s Report and its 300 pages.

Bashing the ‘almost total’ confusion in the mind of the public between Private Hire Vehicles and taxis, Mr Zeichner commended the work done by Cambridge Labour, in particular by Councillors Jeremy Benstead, Kevin Blencowe and Gerri Bird, who were of great help, and thanked local taxi and PHV drivers and community, especially Paul Bradley and Rashel Mohammed.

Mr Zeichner highlighted problems with the Deregulation Act 2015 especially when it comes to bookings being handled by a third party: “Booking can be passed on to someone else, which may seem like a good idea in terms of efficiency, but it means you just don’t know what you’re getting. Frankly, if you go to a supermarket checkout with a box of jaffa cakes, and they were substituted for an own-brand at that point, and you were told it was the same thing, actually, it’s not. It’s not what you bought.” 

He spoke about the difficulties facing guide dog owners and referring to the speeches and work done by colleagues Wes Streeting MP and Andrew Gwynne MP he called on the Government to do more to ensure taxi drivers welcome everyone in their cabs.

Ending by saying that he hopes to see “a substantial piece of legislation” to deal with issues of cross-border hiring given the consensus on national standards both in the LGA and the relevant APPG, Mr Zeichner announced that he is presenting a Private Member’s Bill “to make provision about the exercise of taxi and private hire vehicle licensing functions in relation to persons about whom there are safeguarding or road safety concerns.”

You can watch Daniel Zeichner MP’s speech here: https://goo.gl/cPN7wQ