Wes Streeting
MP for Ilford North · Labour · United Kingdom
“We hope for the best and plan for the worst in terms of the continuation of this war, but we are also actively working to prepare for conditions in which a ceasefire has been agreed by Ukraine, with Ukraine and, from our perspective, for Ukraine.”
“The threats we face are not only evolving; they are getting closer to home. Every day, the UK and our allies encounter espionage, cyber-attacks and military posturing by hostile states.”
“One discipline I have to bring to the Ministry of Defence, drawing on my experience at the Department of Health and Social Care and the NHS, is to ensure there is no culture of routine overspending, that we are improving productivity, that we deliver value for money and that we recognise that the money we are investing in defence comes wi…”
“With permission, I will make my first statement to the House as Secretary of State for Defence on Ukraine, the ongoing threat from Russia and the Government’s approach. It is not yet clear whether freedom or tyranny will define the 21st century. What is clear is that the United Kingdom will not be a bystander in that struggle.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that very serious and important issue. She will understand that, as a matter of policy, I will not comment on intelligence, but I will address the reports she has raised.”
“We know that this Prime Minister and this Chancellor are both fully committed to funding our nation’s defence, including meeting our NATO commitment of 3.5% by 2035 and setting out an earlier 3% commitment at the next spending review.”
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“It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge). I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) on her moving, personal and powerful maiden speech, and wish her well for what I hope will be her long and distinguished service to the House. The late, great Ron Dearing set out in his compact a clear route map for how higher education should be funded. Ultimately, it was to be funded by the beneficiaries. Graduates should make a contribution as beneficiaries; business should make a contribution, because it benefits from well-educated graduates; and society, as taxpayers, should make a contribution, because collectively we benefit from the contribution our universities make, both through learning and teaching, and through their wider impact on our country.”
“In addition to the shocking record on part-time and mature access—students in those cohorts tend to be from non-traditional and under-represented backgrounds in higher education—the Government are hugely complacent about the extent to which working-class young people are being deterred from accessing higher education by fear of tuition fees and debt.”
“As someone who has always campaigned for wider access to higher education and who believes strongly that we should have more, rather than fewer, better educated people in our country, I welcome the fact that more students are in higher education than ever before. I am glad that the hon. Gentleman raises that point, because it brings me to the issue of Government complacency. It is not really a surprise that more young people are going to university than ever before: there are more young people than ever before.”
“Theirs may be the largest party, but there is a reason for their failure to win a majority at the general election, and that is their deep detachment from the everyday lives of most people in this country.”
“The policies of successive Conservative Governments have led us to a point at which we are disrupting children’s education by moving them from pillar to post in temporary bed-and breakfast accommodation, with huge consequences for their education today and their life chances tomorrow. If the Government were serious about social mobility, it would be an overriding priority running through every single Department. However, their policies and their pet projects—grammar schools, free schools and everything else—are so far removed from the reality of most people in the country, and from policies that would genuinely make a transformational difference, that they really ought to be ashamed.”
“I will certainly never forget another mother who came to me, a victim of domestic violence living in Ilford with three children, two of primary-school age and one teenager. Her daughter had admitted that she had considered taking her own life because her circumstances were so appalling. That family do not live in Ilford any more; they were moved to Harrow in west London, and then to Wolverhampton. This is what really upsets me, as someone who grew up on a council estate and did not enjoy the experience: however bad I thought my childhood was—growing up in poverty and relying on the benefits system; living in a council flat that was not nice and to which I did not want to invite friends round to play, because it was not the sort of environment in which they would feel welcome—I realise how lucky I was now.”
“As I said in Communities and Local Government questions this week, I did a school visit last week, and at the end of the Q and A with a group of year 6 students, I was pulled aside by an 11-year-old boy who told me that he, his mother and his two brothers have been living in one room in a hostel, in so-called temporary accommodation, for more than a year. I will never forget the conversation that I had in my surgery with a mum and her teenage daughter. Again, they were living in one room, in a bed and breakfast. The daughter has to do her homework under the covers at night, with a torch. She does not want to disturb her mother’s sleep, because her mother works all hours to try to make ends meet—evidently not very successfully, which is why they are stuck in poverty in a single room in a hostel.”
“Having been awash with cash, thanks to higher fees, in a way that the rest of the public sector has not, universities have not demonstrated the duty of care or responsibility to students that I would expect for the fees that they charge and the level of debt that results. We have to be much firmer with universities. My final point is a broader one about where social mobility in this country is headed and the state of political debate about that. I am horrified by the number of housing cases that I deal with involving children, and the impact on their education.”
“Students believe they get less value for money than they did before. Frankly, looking at retention rates and graduate destination data for certain courses at certain universities, those vice-chancellors who continue to award themselves inflation-busting pay increases should be ashamed. The truth is that if people from a disadvantaged background take the plunge, go to university, take on the risk of the debt and, for whatever reason, are unable to complete the course, the cost to them is far higher than if they had never been to university—not just in terms of the debt that they still have to repay, but because on their CVs they will forever be branded failures by employers.”
“They have been consistently complacent about it since they decided to treble fees. If they were not complacent, they would never have abolished the maintenance grants, which was one of the most terrible policies of the last Parliament. It is not surprising that so many people—not just young people, but parents and grandparents—are angry about the extent to which students and graduates have been plunged into record levels of debt. It is not surprising that the issue has hit the top of the political agenda. It is not only Ministers who are to blame; university vice-chancellors should take some responsibility, too. There is scant evidence that trebling university tuition fees has led to a better quality of experience for undergraduate students. In fact, the student experience survey suggests the opposite.”
“The Minister is right that there has been progress—I do not doubt that—but once again he underlines my point about complacency. Research published by the distinguished academic Professor Claire Callender of University College London warned: “When we compared working and upper-class students with similar GCSE results, taking account of differences in gender, ethnicity and type of school attended…a lower percentage of working-class students had applied to university…compared with those from an upper-class background…because of these fears. Our study is an important reminder that academic achievement at school cannot adequately explain the lower proportion of students from poorer backgrounds. High fees and fear of debt play a crucial role.” I caution the Government against complacency on this issue.”
“Does not the Minister accept that what he has outlined of this process really does underline the stupidity of some of the arguments around sovereignty? He says that we can now impose our own sanctions regime, but we are less powerful and less influential acting alone than we would be acting through the European Union.”
“Breakthroughs in technology offer unlimited potential to improve our quality of life and revolutionise the way we travel, but we have seen on the streets of London and other major cities around the world how technological advances can be exploited by multinational companies that seek to drive competitors off the road with a business model based on poor pay and conditions for drivers, exploitation of regulatory loopholes and predatory pricing that is made possible by huge venture capital and aggressive tax avoidance.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered the future of the taxi trade. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Wilson. The black hackney carriage is one of the great icons of our capital city, the knowledge of London produces the most qualified taxi drivers in the world and the licensed taxi trade is a mainstay of public transport systems in towns and cities across the UK, but unless action is taken, London’s famous black taxi risks being driven off the road altogether. The taxi and private hire industry is, in many respects, at the cutting edge of an industrial revolution that is sweeping the world at unprecedented scale and pace.”
“It is a source of regret that, although Uber was invited to give evidence, it chose not to, because it has a direct role and responsibility in many of these issues. I hope that its level of engagement will change.”
“I want to place on the record my thanks to that wide range of stakeholders, which included the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association; United Private Hire Drivers; Transport for London; the GMB and Unite trade unions; Addison Lee; Gett; mytaxi; the London Taxi Company; Guide Dogs UK; and the Chair of the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts). I also want to say a particular thank you to my constituents. It would take some time to name all the constituents I have had conversations with about this issue—as many people know, Ilford North still has a reputation for being “green badge valley”—but I particularly thank Danny Fresco, Jim Ludlow, Steve Kenton and Sean Harris for the time they have taken to engage with me throughout my time as their Member of Parliament.”
“I will focus on that report and its recommendations. I am glad to see the Minister here. I know that he takes an interest in the future of the trade and in these issues, and I look forward to working with him. He will be pleased to know that, during our inquiry, we engaged with a wide range of stakeholders in and around the industry to look at issues such as passenger and public safety, the effectiveness of regulation, and the future of the taxi trade. I was delighted that an APPG inquiry, as opposed to a Select Committee inquiry, generated such interest. We received 115 pieces of written evidence and heard from a wide range of witnesses at three oral evidence sessions.”
“I wholeheartedly agree. My hon. Friend can be proud of the role that Coventry’s manufacturing plays in the licensed taxi industry. My argument is that there are two possible futures, both for the manufacturing of vehicles and manufacturing jobs, and for other areas of the taxi and private hire industry: a bright future or an existential crisis. The Government have a clear role in ensuring that we head towards a bright future rather than a bleak future. The all-party parliamentary group on taxis, which I am proud to chair, was founded with that in mind, to ensure that the trade has a strong voice in Parliament. For the past six months we have conducted a wide-ranging inquiry on the future of the trade, which led to the publication of our report, “Lessons from London: The future of the UK taxi trade”.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I really welcome his engagement with the inquiry as a Cardiff Member. In many respects, London bears the brunt of these issues, but many other towns and cities across the country are equally—if differently—affected. Our intention when producing the report was to ensure that we learned lessons from London but also addressed issues that apply across the UK.”
“My hon. Friend leads me neatly into the inquiry’s first theme: the effectiveness of regulation. Some taxi and private hire vehicle legislation is more than 100 years old. It includes the Town Police Clauses Act 1847 and, in London, the Metropolitan Public Carriage Act 1869 and the London Cab Order 1934. I should probably declare that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association and an elected member of the London Borough of Redbridge. I strongly agree with the Local Government Association and the Law Commission that we need a taxi and private hire vehicle licensing reform Bill. There have been sweeping changes across the taxi and private hire industry, and legislation and regulation have not effectively caught up. That is causing a wide range of issues.”
“I am in no way opposed to competition, and I strongly encourage innovation, but the Minister and licensing authorities need to address the issue of fair competition. There have been calls for improvement. The APPG took evidence about the impact of the considerable growth in private hire on congestion on the streets of London. Similarly, many passenger groups and drivers complain about the erratic driving of people who are not properly qualified to drive cabs. I commend to the Minister the recommendation in our report that licensing regulations for private hire vehicles should be updated to include mandatory enhanced topographical tests for PHV drivers, so that they have some awareness of the local community in which they operate.”
“I wholeheartedly agree. Rickshaws are not just a nuisance on the streets of central London that add to congestion, but given some of the exorbitant prices that their riders propose to charge, they increasingly also rip off tourists. I saw a rickshaw outside Parliament the other day whose rider was proposing to charge £10 for a cycle up the road from Parliament Square to Trafalgar Square. That is terrible value for money and reflects badly on our city. If tourists want an expert guide to take them around London, they should hail a black taxi. Turning to the need for effective regulation, there has been an explosion in the number of private hire vehicles on the streets of London, and new entrants to the taxi and private hire market have emerged.”
“I wholeheartedly agree. In fact, many passengers have experienced the frustration of being in a car where the driver has their nose in the sat-nav, rather than concentrating on the road in the way they ought to. Often drivers choose to take routes that the passenger, who lives in the area, knows full well will be heavily congested, but because the driver lacks basic awareness of the roads around them they end up taking routes that are inefficient and add to congestion, which delays passengers. That is why we recommend in our report that the licensing authorities should produce a code of conduct for the use of apps by taxi and private hire vehicle drivers, and that the Government should consider introducing a national code of conduct with basic minimum standards for drivers in all parts of the country to adhere to.”
“Members will know that under existing regulations licensed taxi drivers in London have to undergo about 8,000 hours of training to pass the knowledge, and only licensed taxi drivers are allowed to ply for hire by picking up from a rank or in response to someone hailing a cab. With the introduction of new technology, there are people effectively hailing private hire vehicles all the time through the click of a button, and that is causing real anger and anxiety on the part of licensed taxi drivers. It is not simply that people feel that the existing law is being flouted. There is a lack of clarity about how we move forward when things have changed, with new technology platforms.”
“I strongly agree with my hon. Friend, and I welcome him to his place in the House. He brings with him considerable expertise on this topic and others, and he will be a great representative for the people of Bedford. He anticipates what I am going to say about cross-border hiring and the cap on private hire numbers. However, before I do that, I want briefly to pick up one issue that has been floating around for some time but has yet to be addressed properly. The Government recognised that the pace of change in the taxi and private hire industry necessitated some change to legislation and regulations, so they asked the Law Commission to do some work on that. In 2014, the Law Commission produced a report, including a draft Bill, in which it identified plying for hire as one of the grey areas in need of clarification by legislation. Many hon.”
“I agree. Actually, in some cases, Uber cars use taxi ranks constantly on the streets of central London. There are real issues about how the existing law is enforced and there is a need to clarify it. In our report, we strongly supported those who made representations, particularly the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers and other trade unions, including Unite, for which Mike Hedges gave evidence to our panel. We need Ministers to clarify their position on the two-tier system by issuing a formal response to the Law Commission’s 2014 report and by introducing a legally enforceable statutory definition of plying for hire.”
“We set out a common-sense approach to dealing with this problem: to create a statutory definition of cross-border hiring under which a journey must begin or end in the licensing authority where the licence was issued. That would be simple and easy to enforce and would solve the problem instantly.”
“Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) about the risks presented to the people of Rotherham because those robust standards are being undermined. Rotherham is the most serious example, but it is not the only example. Reading Council decided not to grant Uber a licence, yet drivers from Uber license themselves in London and drive around the streets of Reading. I was struck by the evidence provided to my office by the Mayor of London about the number of TfL licences granted and where the drivers live. For example, 747 people have TfL-issued licenses but live in Birmingham, 260 people live in Manchester and yet have licences granted in London, and 378 people live in Bristol but have licences granted by TfL in London. That is clearly flagrant abuse of the system.”
“Members will be acutely aware that in response to the terrible child sexual exploitation scandal, Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council rightly introduced one of the toughest licensing regimes in the country, including the requirement for drivers to have a recording device—either a camera or audio equipment—in operation at all times when someone under the age of, I think, 16 was travelling in the vehicle. However, the council found that private hire drivers could flout those conditions by licensing their vehicle in another part of the country. They could then operate on the streets of Rotherham quite legally and the council could do nothing about it. We heard compelling evidence from my hon.”
“I strongly agree with my hon. Friend, who leads me directly on to cross-border hiring. He is correct that, although the Government have not formally responded to the Law Commission report and have not introduced as anticipated a new licensing reform Bill for taxi and private hire vehicles, the Deregulation Act 2015 meant that private hire vehicle drivers operating in one area could be licensed in a different area: an issue known as cross-border hiring. In practice, that means that where local authorities have rightly and appropriately determined specific licensing conditions suitable for their local community and population, drivers can abuse the patchwork quilt of licensing regulations across the country to flout rules. Most alarmingly, we saw evidence of that happening in Rotherham. Right hon. and hon.”
“My hon. Friend again makes a powerful point, which was very much reinforced by the evidence we received during our inquiry. I really hope that the Department for Transport acts on cross-border hiring; I think measures on that will be welcomed by local authorities across the country. I am conscious of time and the fact that several hon. Members wish to speak, so I will canter through some of the report’s other recommendations, but I will indulge my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin) before I do.”
“Secondly, the Government and the licensing authorities should require all private hire and taxi drivers who are given a licence to undertake mandatory disability equality training and take an associated test to make sure that they can properly support disabled passengers.”
“I am proud that black hackney carriages are accessible and are a key part of the disability transport network of this city and many others across the country. However, there is still further to go on this. Some 42% of assistance dog owners were refused by a taxi or private hire driver in a one-year period, so although I strongly welcome the action that the Government have already taken in this area—introducing a £1,000 fine for taxi and private hire vehicle drivers who refuse to transport wheelchair users—there is a lot further to go. First, we need to make sure that all drivers can communicate with passengers and understand their disability access requirements. That is why I strongly support the measures that the Mayor of London is trying to introduce on English language testing for drivers before they are able to take a licence.”
“However, we found during our inquiry that licensing authorities had no way of confirming whether a private hire vehicle had a hire and reward policy in place after its initial licensing, and that police and enforcement officers were only able to tell whether a vehicle was insured or not, rather than what type of insurance the driver held. We recommend that the Government legislate to require all private hire vehicles to have full hire and reward insurance for the duration of a licence, and explore the potential for private hire vehicle operators to have their own hire and reward fleet insurance, to cover all their registered drivers and vehicles. We also heard powerful evidence on accessibility.”
“The Government should be permissive in this area, trust local authorities to make appropriate decisions and give them the power to cap the number of private hire vehicles where appropriate. Of course, such a cap would only work if the Department for Transport also tackled cross-border hiring. I hope we will see effective action in both of those areas. On passenger safety, I have already talked about cross-border hiring and the flouting of local licensing rules, but there is also the issue of insurance, which has already been referred to. All taxis and private hire vehicles are required to hold hire and reward insurance whenever they are carrying a passenger.”
“A report by the London Assembly, “London Stalling”, found that the number of private hire vehicles entering the congestion zone had increased by 54% since 2013, and that private hire vehicles are a cause of rising congestion. Those are not necessarily the most polluting vehicles on the streets of London, but the congestion to which they contribute means that more toxic fumes are being pumped into the air. There are two aspects to that. One is that Transport for London and the Mayor of London have been clear that they would like to cap the number of private hire vehicles on the streets of London to tackle the problem, but that they do not have the power to do so.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that point, and I will pick it up when I talk about passenger safety. He is quite right that driver safety is something we should take seriously. We heard compelling calls from a range of stakeholders, particularly people from London, about the need for local licensing authorities to have the power, to be exercised when they need it, to cap the number of private hire vehicles on the streets of a particular town or city. In London, we have seen an explosion in the number of private hire licences to around 120,000—up from 60,000 in, I think, 2010, which is a huge increase. Those private hire vehicles contribute to the congestion on the streets of London, which is filling our air with toxic emissions that result in the preventable deaths of more than 9,000 Londoners each year.”
“I strongly believe that, with smart and effective regulation and new national standards, the taxi and private hire industries can succeed. I say to the Minister, who is a good man, that many small businessmen and businesswomen and their families are counting on Ministers to act.”
“As I have demonstrated this afternoon, the taxi drivers I represent are not afraid of innovation or competition; increasing numbers of drivers are embracing new platforms such as Gett and mytaxi. Many cab drivers also accepted card payments long before it was mandatory, and a great many more are keen to get behind the wheel of the new generation of carbon neutral, electric-capable taxis to play their part in improving air quality and protecting our environment. However, the consistent theme I found as a constituency MP during our inquiry was that taxi drivers find it increasingly difficult to compete with both hands tied behind their backs in a changing marketplace. Our challenge now is to make sure that the trade enjoys a bright future as well as a proud history.”
“That affects not just licensed taxi drivers but private hire drivers, including Uber drivers, who have seen their incomes fall in recent years because it is in Uber’s interest to flood London with as many drivers as possible to maximise its revenues, even if that is at the expense of fast journeys and decent pay and conditions for both taxi drivers and private hire drivers. We need to approach this from the point of view of fair competition, rather than the elimination of competition. Action by Ministers is long overdue. The debate about the future of the taxi trade has often been unfairly characterised as a debate between those who support competition and innovation and those who want to cling to the past. That is a lazy analysis.”
“I know that the Government are already looking at grants, as is the Mayor of London, but we also need to look at exemptions from vehicle excise duty. I know that we will have to make that case to the Chancellor and the Treasury, but exemptions would make a real difference to drivers’ ability to take up that challenge. We also need to have a serious discussion on the fares regime, particularly in London, and the extent to which taxi drivers are heavily disadvantaged by fares, which are often set without adequate consultation with the trade. We also need a discussion about the extent to which competitors—particularly Uber—are able to offer artificially low prices and flood the market with drivers in order to drive their competitors off the road.”
“Drivers put themselves at risk, and we might want to look at increasing the penalties and sentences for people who abuse taxi drivers in the way we are considering for other public sector workers. On the future of the taxi trade, it is often said that taxi drivers are not interested in modernisation and are stuck in the past, but I have not found that to be the case. Drivers are keen to drive the new zero emission capable taxis and are excited about the opportunity to reduce polluting emissions from their vehicles. To ensure that they are able to drive them, we hope that the Government will put in place an adequate rapid charging infrastructure to support their use. We also need to make sure that those cabs are affordable.”
“I will have to make progress, otherwise I will encroach on the time for other Members to speak. I have talked about the need for taxi and private hire drivers to undergo topographical training, so that they are better drivers and have better skills. However, my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford—he is no longer in his place; he has another commitment—made a powerful contribution on driver safety, and we really need to look at that, particularly since card payment machines have been put in the back of black taxis. Drivers in my constituency feel more vulnerable than ever if something goes wrong with that machine, because they have to get out of the vehicle to deal with an issue in the back. I have heard stories of drivers being abused or people not paying their fare.”
“One ongoing concern that is still with the courts is working conditions and rights for taxi and private hire drivers. We touched on it to some degree—”
“I am glad that he has offered both open-mindedness to the range of issues presented and the various challenges of solving those problems and, most importantly, an open door to discuss each of the recommendations, as he has generously offered, so that we can feed back to the thousands of drivers across the country who are following the issue. Of all the issues that I hear about as a constituency MP, there is more, and more consistent, engagement among members of the public on this issue than on any other. As the Minister acknowledged, the drivers whom I represent are more interested in what will be done; I hope that in the autumn, we will start to see some progress. I am glad that work is under way in the Department to secure progress. I am reflecting on this debate.”
“I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions to this debate. Having listened to others’ remarks, I am minded to draw attention to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I thank all members of the all-party parliamentary group on taxis, the secretariat for their hard work and the sponsors, Gett, mytaxi and the Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association, which are reflected in our group register, for making all the work possible. I am grateful to the Minister for how he summed up and responded to the debate. All that we can ever hope for as Back Benchers putting the case to Government on various issues is open minds and open doors.”
“I agree. Similarly, we did not want to pre-judge the courts when we did our work. I am none the less glad that GMB is pursuing a test case in the courts about the legal status of many private hire drivers. Self-employment is a great thing; exploitation of self-employment rules by private operators is something else entirely. That is where the tension lies. With just a few seconds left, I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions to this debate. I look forward to meeting the Minister, and I know that my constituents will be glad to hear about progress thereafter. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the future of the taxi trade.”
“Unsecured borrowing has rocketed, and lenders warn that default rates on credit cards and other products this summer will be at their highest level at any point since the height of the financial crisis. Instead of simply passing the buck to the Financial Policy Committee, what are the Government going to do in public policy to alleviate the serious risk of a household debt crisis?”
“When I was growing up, I had the security of the roof of a council flat over my head. I wonder what the Secretary of State would say to the 11-year-old boy in my constituency who pulled me aside after a classroom visit just last week because he, his mother and his two siblings are living in one room in a hostel, as they have been for more than a year. What message does the Secretary of State have for such children in my constituency who no longer have the security of a decent place to live?”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. In my capacity as a Labour councillor in the London Borough of Redbridge, I currently chair a cross-party working group on the future of A&E provision in north-east London. One frustrating thing is that all the local health leads in the area are working to a decision made by a previous Secretary of State. That ministerial decision still stands and the leads have to work towards it. They do not believe that is achievable or clinically sound. Yet, they point to the Secretary of State when pressed to abandon the plans. I hope that the Minister might be able to reverse that ministerial decision and remove the sword of Damocles from our A&E department.”