With the long awaited consultation of private hire underway the London Taxi trade has the opportunity to speak with one voice and seek the closure of the sub/satellite mini-cab office.
Under a previous Mayor/administration a "safer travel at night" initiative was set up/introduced which placed mini-cab offices within bars/clubs and led to lines of illegal mini-cab ranks. How do we know these lines of mini-cabs are illegal? Well virtually none of them have bookings and the majority are "ranked" on the public highway with those in authority turning a blind eye.
TFL and the Met Police have failed the public, the London Taxi trade and to an extent private hire. Case/common law is on the side of the London Taxi trade and this case/common law will form a major part of the RMT London Taxi branch response to this consultation.
Those in authority hide behind the lack of funding/resources however we see no reason why parity exists with our licence fee, and if TFL/TPH need extra funding/resources to crack down on the illegal activities of parts of the mini-cab trade that funding should come directly from that trade and not the self employed London Taxi-cab driver.
If TFL/TPH can't deliver well it must surely be time to split this directorate in two and divest the PHV operation into a stand alone body that understands clearly its role and remit within TFL. PHV's/mini-cabs do not have the right to "ply for hire" and TFL need to clarify what they define/understand "plying for hire" to mean. TFL and PHV's/mini-cabs need to understand only Taxi-cabs have the right to "rank" and therefore "ply for hire" our trade is built upon this very right and to allow anything other than a Taxi-cab to ply for hire is effectively making all 24,000 of us redundant. The right to rank is earned by every single Taxi-cab driver and we expect the licensing authority to do the job we pay them to do and part of that job must include a duty of care towards our industry.
The RMT London Taxi branch seeks to split the TPH directorate in two, we note that the chairman of the LTDA recently stated this also. Whilst the authorities bundle us together the lines will blur even further and along with it our good name.
Let us hope the London Taxi trade can speak with one voice on this long overdue consultation.
