PARLIAMENT

Labour MP Andrew Gwynne talks to PoliticsHome about closing a loophole in nineteenth-century taxi licensing laws which currently enables previous offenders to drive cabs unchecked.

What do you do if you’ve been refused a taxi licence by your local authority for a history of violence, or even child sexual exploitation? For thousands of would-be cab drivers, the answer has been “Rossendale.”

Thanks to a loophole in hackney carriage law that dates back to 1847, a small local authority in Lancashire is handing out taxi licences “like sweeties” to anyone rejected by their own council, as a way of generating extra income.

While the hackney carriage licence stipulates that drivers must only operate as a hackney carriage - able to pick up customers from the street or taxi ranks - within the boundaries of the issuing authority, they are permitted to operate with a private hire company, such as Uber, anywhere in the UK.

“Its an abuse of power, and the consequences are really quite serious,” said Andrew Gwynne, Labour MP for Denton and Reddish, a nearby constituency. “Not just for local taxi companies - because it’s flooding the market with Rossendale taxi plates - but also because passengers are effectively getting into cars with people who their local authority have deemed unsuitable to have a taxi licence.”

“In Tameside, and other Greater Manchester authorities, they have stringent checks for people who apply for taxi licences. They look at criminal records, incidences of violence, child sexual exploitation, all those kinds of things,” he added.

“Yet there’s a local authority, Rossendale, that’s basically handing out taxi licences like sweeties as an income generation scheme, and it’s a problem for every other local authority.”

According to figures released today by Tameside Council, Rossendale issued 2,500 hackney carriage licences in 2015, for a population of around 70,000; one taxi for every 28 people and, more than all ten of Greater Manchester’s metropolitan authorities put together.

In contrast, Tameside Council has a population of 220,000, and only 150 hackney carriages.

Rossendale taxi plates have been spotted operating as far away as Bristol. This alternative route is so well-known in fact, that when typing ‘hackney carriage’ into Google the first suggested search term is ‘Rossendale.’

“The fact is they’re using it as income generation, to subsidise their libraries and swimming pools and council services,” Gwynne added. “That’s great, but actually it’s really destroying the taxi business across Greater Manchester, which is the nearest neighbour to Rossendale, and it’s also undermining some of the fundamental principles of the taxi license regime.”

He gave an example from one of his constituents in Tameside, who after being racially abused by a private taxi driver, took down the taxi plate and reported the incident to Tameside Council. It later emerged the driver had been refused a licence by Tameside for ‘legitimate reasons,’ but then received one from Rossendale without the same checks.

“If you decided that you wanted to be a taxi driver in Bristol and you’d been turned down by Bristol Council for various reasons - it might be a history of violence, or because you have racist views, a variety of reasons you’d be refused - but you know that you can get one from Rossendale and operate on the streets of Bristol, you’re going to do it.”

With the rise in app-based private hire companies, such as Uber and Lyft, the need to update the licensing regime is even more urgent.

“This applies to Uber in exactly the same way,” said Gwynne. “They’re private hire vehicles that come to pick you up when you order a taxi through Uber. In terms of public safety and assurance, you want the confidence that the person who’s come to pick you up to take you wherever it is you’re going, actually has been subject to the appropriate checks, and not just been given a licence willy-nilly.

“The rules need tightening up,” he added. “I’m sure in 1847 when these rules were drafted nobody appreciated all those years later that Rossendale Council would be exploiting what they’ve found is an income generating loop hole.”

https://goo.gl/5qRMFY
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 CHICAGO

 A federal judge who has written that Chicago's differing rules for taxis and ride-share companies "appear utterly arbitrary" reiterated that view in a recent ruling but expressed reluctance to step into the fray, saying it seemed to be an issue for Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the City Council to resolve.

U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman last week rejected another attempt by the city to dismiss a lawsuit filed by taxi interests who say less stringent requirements for Uber, Lyft and other ride-share services are driving the highly regulated cab industry to financial ruin.

In October, she made a similar ruling that included the "utterly arbitrary" phrase. But this time she expanded on that, saying a new regulation allowing ride-share services to pick up passengers on the upper arrival level at O'Hare Airport, while requiring limousine and taxi drivers who arrange pickups through a smartphone app use the lower departure level, made a valid claim for "disparate treatment."

Coleman, however, declined to grant a preliminary injunction that would have prevented the city from enforcing its taxi ordinance and also allow taxis and limos to pick up passengers on the upper O'Hare level.

The taxi and limo companies "are essentially asking the court to dictate the city's transportation policy," Coleman wrote. "The court declines to grant such an extraordinary remedy."

Even if the taxi interests that filed the lawsuit end up winning their case, they "will have to address their concerns to the City Council because it is clear that monetary relief will not resolve the ultimate problem for the plaintiffs," Coleman added. "It is the City Council that has the authority to remedy the situation at hand, and not this court."

Mara Georges, an attorney for the taxi interests, said an ordinance proposed by Transportation Committee Chairman Anthony Beale, 9th, "makes strides" toward addressing her clients' concerns.

Beale's ordinance, backed by a majority of the city's 50 aldermen, would require ride-share drivers to be licensed, fingerprinted, pass a background check and go through a day of training, like limo drivers. But Emanuel continues to defend his current approach to regulating ride-share companies.

Emanuel has taken a dim view of Beale's ordinance, saying he wants to foster competition, allow the ride-share companies to create part-time jobs and give consumers more ride choices.

Asked this week why he is working to kill the alderman's proposal, the mayor said he doesn't "agree with the characterization," before pivoting to talk about how he says the ride-share companies are doing a better job of offering rides in Chicago's minority neighborhoods.

Uber has launched a public relations campaign in opposition to the changes.

Coleman instructed attorneys in the case to return to court Friday. Georges and her colleagues "should be prepared to address what remedy they are in fact seeking that this court would have the authority to impose," she wrote.

http://goo.gl/yfkrol
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 UBER/ ALIPAY Worldwide.

 Taxi-hailing service Uber and China's e-commerce giant Alibaba Group have agreed a deal that will allow Chinese travellers to pay for a taxi in any country where Uber operates.
It means they can pay for their rides in yuan using their Alipay accounts.

US car sharing service Lyft and China's Didi Chuxing recently launched a similar service.
The growth in smartphone transport services is encouraging firms to build international partnerships.

Before the agreement, mainland Chinese travellers using the Uber app overseas needed to connect a dual-currency credit card with their Uber account and were billed for their journeys in US dollars.

Alipay is the online payment service of Ant Financial Services, an affiliate of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba.

Alibaba is an investor in both Didi and Lyft, on top of its partnership with Uber.
Uber said its customers had been able to use Alipay for their journeys in mainline China since 2014 and in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau since early 2016.

The San Francisco-based company said the cross-border payments arrangement would cover mainland Chinese travellers in 400 cities.
Uber and Alibaba said they intended to expand co-operation in India through Alipay's links with Paytm, which is India's largest mobile payment provider.

Early last year, Ant Financial teamed up with parent company Alibaba to invest more than $500m (£341m) in Paytm.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36192471
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 THE SHARKS ARE CIRCLING UBER

 Uber Technologies grew to a $60 billion market value by disregarding just about every law, regulation and entrenched special interest standing in its way. But the car service is finally up against a wealthy special interest it probably can’t get around: The class-action bar.

Late last month Uber tentatively agreed to pay as much as $100 million to settle lawsuits covering drivers in California and Massachusetts that were filed by Boston attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan.

Yesterday Uber was hit with another lawsuit in Illinois, this one intended to cover the rest of the country. Think of Uber as a company in play: Having offered $100 million to make one lawyer go away, it opened the floodgates for similar claims. Another case in Florida also purports to represent drivers nationwide and there surely will be more.

Settling cases “is a business decision they’ve made” on the march to a multibillion-dollar initial public offering, said Richard Reibstein, a partner with Pepper Hamilton in New York who advises companies on labor issues. “They can afford it as a cost of doing business.”

The Illinois case was filed by Milwaukee attorney Brian Mahany, who boasts he got a piece of the largest whistleblower settlement in history, $16.6 billion Bank of America paid to settle fraud claims that generated $170 million in bounties. It’s a little different from Liss-Riordan’s case because it is a collective action filed under the Fair Labor Standards Act and requires drivers to opt in, meaning Mahany will have to recruit a critical mass of drivers who believe they are being ripped off by Uber in order to produce enough leverage for a any big settlement.

But that may not be so difficult, Reibstein told me, even though Uber maintains 90% of its drivers don’t want to be employees.

“The standard expectation is you get 25-33% of former employees and 10-15% of current ones” in an FLSA collective action, Reibstein said. “I’ve seen enough collective actions where you are absolutely stunned by the number of people who are active employees and opt in.”

http://goo.gl/tN3Luv