Plans to cut red tape for taxi and private hire drivers risk increasing incidents of people being raped and sexually assaulted after a night out, Police and Crime Commissioners across England and Wales have warned.
Dorset PCC Martyn Underhill has joined forces with a cross-party group of commissioners, led by Greater Manchester Police and Crime Commissioner Tony Lloyd, to lobby Ken Clarke to remove a series of measures from the Deregulation Bill, which is currently going through parliament.
The concerns are backed by licensing officials, police, the taxi trade and organisations that work with victims of rape and sexual assault. The Commissioners are calling on the government to ensure that people can be “Be Sure, Be Safe” when getting into a private hire cab.
Martyn Underhill said: “People need to be sure that when they get into a marked private hire vehicle they know it’s genuine and driven by a licensed operator. These new measures put people at risk which is why we have written to Ken Clarke, to urge him to introduce a dedicated Taxi Bill.”
Currently, only licensed private hire drivers can get behind the wheel of a marked private hire vehicle; drivers have to be regularly relicensed and there are restrictions on vehicles operating across local authority boundaries.
But under the Deregulation Bill, these limited safeguards are to be swept away, opening up the prospect of a private hire free-for-all, with no guarantees that the driver of a vehicle are who they say they are.
The PCCs who have so far joined the campaign are:
Tony Lloyd, Greater Manchester (Labour)
Martyn Underhill, Dorset (Independent)
Sir Graham Bright, Cambridgeshire (Conservative)
Vera Baird, Northumbria (Labour)
Kevin Hurley, Surrey (Independent)
Alan Charles, Derbyshire (Labour)
Martin Surl, Gloucestershire (Independent)
Richard Rhodes, Cumbria (Conservative)
Jane Kennedy, Merseyside (Labour)
Mark Burns-Williamson, West Yorkshire (Labour)
Ron Hogg, Durham (Labour)
Sue Mountstevens, Avon and Somerset (Independent)
Jane Kennedy, Merseyside (Labour)
Anthony Stansfield, Thames Valley (Conservative)
Winston Roddick, North Wales (Independent)
Stephen Bett, Norfolk (Independent)
Barry Coppinger, Cleveland (Labour)
Simon Hayes, Hampshire (Independent)
John Dwyer, Cheshire (Conservative)
Katy Bourne, Sussex (Conservative)
Clive Grunshaw, Lancashire (Labour)
Tony Hogg, Devon and Cornwall (Conservative)
