 Good morning and welcome to the third meeting of the committee in 2015. Everyone present is asked to switch off all mobile phones and other electronic equipment as they affect the broadcasting system. Some committee members will refer to tablets during the course of the meeting because we provide papers in digital format. We can move to agenda item 1 today, which is the consideration of a negative SSI. That's the Freedom of Information Scotland Act 2002, Scottish Public Authority's amendment order 2014, SSI 2014-354. Members have a cover note from the clerk explaining the instrument. As you will note, the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee did not have any comments to make on the instrument. Are we agreed not to make any recommendations to the Parliament on the instrument? Agenda item 2 is our sixth oral evidence session on the Air Weapons and Licensing Scotland Bill. Today, we are taking evidence from witnesses in the provisions relating to taxi and private car hire. We begin this morning with evidence from Dr James Cooper of Edinburgh and Napier University and the University of Missouri and the USA. We will then hear from a panel of witnesses from the taxi and private car hire trade and then from licensing authorities and hire car service users. Before we start, can I point out that witnesses don't need to press the buttons on the consoles, because the microphones will be operated by the sound engineer? Can I welcome Dr James Cooper to the meeting? Do you have any opening remarks that you would like to make, Dr Cooper? Thank you very much, chair, for inviting me to give evidence. I have prepared a short presentation for you and would be delighted to take questions to the extent that I am able to answer them. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much for inviting me. My presentation will address issues specific to taxi licensing, which in my definition will include hackney carriages, private hire cars and other vehicle types offering a comparable service, which have been titled in some places as transportation network companies and include examples of this being UberX, Lyft and various others who provide services in a taxi-like way. If I do mention specific trade names and company names, this is specifically to give you an example of a service type. It is not intended to single out any particular company in my commentary. I want to commend the Parliament and the Government in the desire and effort to develop taxi and private hire car legislation. This is both appropriate and commendable to provide a legislative framework that facilitates and protects in the public interest. It is my belief that this needs to be aware of the current market, current change in the market and future activities that may impact upon the effectiveness and implementation of the legislation. It is my contention that the bill as stands fails currently to address the needs of a transformed market, which is likely to emerge in the very near future. I also need to highlight the view that, in framing legislation, it is quite easy to suffer from a belief that the legislative framework itself is sufficient to ensure appropriate supply. Evidence from locations where the market has been transformed does not uphold that many of the new entrants sit between legislative instruments. It is important that that point is made clear, the best that I can, that the market in its transformed state will be very different to the market that we see now. I suppose that the most important question is what is a transformed market. I would like to highlight that this has been the opposite of the legacy market, the one that we know and has operated successfully for a significant amount of time, with legislation dating back to 1847 and even prior to that still being enforced in some places in the United Kingdom. The transformed market will include new technology operators, predominantly those associated with smartphone applications, otherwise known as apps, and these exist in a number of generations and have been present in the taxi-like industries for about five years. Having said that, we are currently even in six generations of apps, which must suggest a very rapid evolution within that market of one revolution per eight months or thereabouts, as opposed to one revolution in legislation for taxis in every 80 years or so. This difference is a significant one. The transformed market will also include quasi-taxes, vehicles that operate within the taxi market and operate a taxi-like service, often indistinguishable to those choosing to use them. It is these vehicle types that have been main transportation network companies in the United States of America, often abbreviated to TNCs. New services will spread across licensing categories, offering services from a variety of traditional licensing distinctions and many which sit currently outwith current legislation. This transformed market will facilitate service provision by private individuals offering trips in their own private cars under an effective private contract. However, that does not fit readily into the distinction of ride-sharing, a term that has been applied in some locations. My definition of ride-sharing is a positive public contribution in offering a ride for a part of a trip that would exist in any case, whereas TNCs and quasi-taxes provide ride-sharing on a commercial basis for profit. It is also worth noting that the transformed market and specifically the apps that facilitate transportation will often obscure the category of vehicle that you are engaging and thus its legality, or otherwise, from the user. It is my belief that to frame legislation currently is appropriate but needs to be done in a sustainable manner. The Government and Parliament need to be aware of the transformed market in developing its legislation and legislate to an extent that supports policy in the new market dynamic. I am going to touch on taxi and private car distinctions and I highlight that hackney carriage and private car services are distinct only in the legacy market. They are consistent only in their legislative differences. Apps effectively provide electronic hail to quasi-taxes, removing one of the few distinctions of the hackney carriage. Number constraint, which is a part of some hackney carriage markets, may become ineffective under its current testing if the regulation that allows for it is unenforceable. It may also be that number constraint become irrelevant if its market impact is lost. I will highlight that the measurements applied to number constraint, commonly known as a measure of significant unmet demand or SUD, will become impossible in its current form in a transformed market. That does not exclude the possibility of testing and measurement but requires change. This will have an impact on all other areas of regulatory control, to which quality control and economic constraints, fares and leases, as those three elements of quantity, quality and economic controls are completely interlinked and cannot be divorced from each other. I will touch briefly on taxi numbers and quantity constraints. Dr Keatburgers, we have quite a lot of questions to get through as well. I will highlight that the concept of quantity restraint has been based on a view of market failure and a lack of equilibrium. Those concerns do change when the market is transformed. I would also underline that the concept that is being proposed for the licensing and regulation of private hire car numbers appears to me to be unenforceable in a transformed market and is not measurable for quasi-taxes. I would also note that the cost for studies indicated appears to me to be completely incorrect. I will touch very briefly on two further points. Market transformation. I will highlight that there has been and continues to be a clear demand for app-based booking. This has not been and has not been predicted in any SUD study to my knowledge to this point. The transformed market has grown but also impacts on traditional hackney carriage use between 20% and 40%. That is a 20% to 40% loss in taxi use. There is evidence that cities and governments may find it easier to recast legislation than seek to enforce it. My final point relates to accessibility. To date, no TNC fleet vehicle is accessible at all using the term related to wheelchair-accessible vehicles, which I believe is well-defined. This is because the companies providing these services primarily rely on private individuals to supply vehicles. This is an UberX type of service, which negates any desire for equality and access at the same price. My will, if I may, finally point out on one area that relates to market manipulation. This concept in this licensing review discusses cost neutrality to councils in that the cost of any tests applied are covered through the fees of the private heights and taxi industries. A TNC does not need to win any legal challenge. It simply needs to push the price to the taxi industry beyond a tipping point, at which point taxi supply becomes an uneconomic and non-commercial venture. You have highlighted some areas that the committee has already asked the Government for clarification on. In terms of the growth of mobile phone apps and Uber, we posed some questions to Government and have had a response back from civil servants, which states that, while the taxi and private hard-car provisions in the bill do not specifically address technological developments, the Civic Government Scotland Act 1982 already provides considerable scope for secondary legislation to address such issues. We also have the ability to provide the clarification and best practice guidance for local authorities. Can you give us an indication of what you think of that response from Government? It appears to me that the technology has moved so very quickly that any response needs to be aware of its current and future developments. It is true that the taxi industry has provided apps and app-based bookings. The relative effectiveness of those services pale in comparison to the TNC operations and are restrained by the commercial operations in which they fit. In short, the technology is advancing at such a speed that it may not be possible to fully understand its impact prior to its application. Uber this week has tried to be somewhat conciliatory in response to some of the criticisms that have been made. Obviously, they are facing legal challenges in a number of countries at this moment in time. They have been accused of, of course, of flighting competition rules and there are major concerns in places about lack of sufficient safety checks on drivers and their vehicles. How can we ensure that those companies in future, if and when they enter the Scottish market, cannot fly safety rules and regulations? It is a very difficult question to answer. As evidence suggests that most cities and Governments have been powerless to control some of the excesses of some of the TNC companies. To my knowledge, the most common response is one of finding and placing citation upon Uber drivers. There is a difficulty in that the company providing the service does not consider itself to be a transportation company at all, but rather a technology company and therefore outside of the regulation of transport, which applies to the drivers that happen to use its service. Therefore, citations and fines are placed upon the drivers. The most common response by Uber has been to pay the fine, as it effectively is a cost of entering a market. The only really successful action against Uber has been by the Spanish Government, which has been by the Spanish court, I apologise, which has been to remove telecommunications access to its app, effectively preventing anybody from getting to Uber through their smartphone. This comes at a very high price in that not everything that technology allows is a bad idea. Perhaps its application is bad, perhaps its application is illegal, but the concept behind it may be harmed by the removal of the service. It is very, very hard to accommodate Uber. Cities in the US that have done so have done so by changing their laws, changing their chapters and codes in a way that is satisfactory, if you will excuse the term, to the companies that have wanted to change. That has been effectively the only method by which the services become fully legal. In terms of those changes in laws, do you think that we have the flexibility with current legislation and the proposed draft bill to make those changes if Uber or others decided to try and enter the Scottish market? No, I am afraid that I do not. I believe that the bill, as it stands, reflects the legacy market alone and will not be fit in terms of its following market. You would disagree with the statement that I read out earlier from the civil servant in response to our question now. I am afraid that I do. You are reasoning for that. I believe that there is a positive benefit accrued by Uber in being seen to be the wrong side of the law, that it gains notoriety amongst its user group and it will benefit from that position. It is also my contention that the market that this will facilitate, the market that we are heading to has inherent problems in itself that will require further addressing. We are heading towards a monopolistic provider based on app provision that in itself will require considerable review in the future. I fear that the concepts that are set out in the bill and the ability to control technological developments do not foresee the extent to which the market will change. I am going to take in Mr Riley in a minute who wants to supplement you to that, but in terms of the monopoly of the application of the app, I this morning took a taxi into Parliament, I should say at my own expense, before anybody says that I am abusing my position in terms of transportation, and sitting in the taxi there is an advert for the app of that taxi company, which I could download to my phone. I can order that taxi on that app and I can track the taxi and where it is on that app or so the advert says that I have not used it. You are saying that Uber has a monopoly in terms of these applications or is monopolistic. How can you say that when all of these other apps are being developed? The contention chair was that it may become monopolistic. If you have looked at any of the Edinburgh Hackney carriage apps, I do recommend them. They are extremely good. It is worth highlighting the fact that the benefits of this technology should not be underestimated. They are very good reasons for having apps of this nature. It is the nature of the market where Uber sits and others of the same type in terms of its market dominance and its market share. For the first time, we are dealing with a company that is not local but global. We are dealing with an app that is transferable without any penalty between location. It is an app with a great deal of power. I would suggest that of the six generations, while the taxi companies have a very good product even now, they are still behind where the TNCs sit. Primarily because the nature of their product is distinct to one form of transportation alone whereas the TNC product crosses multiple distinctions in multiple vehicles at multiple prices. You will see that, if you choose to look, you may slide between vehicles of different types on the Uber app and others without really being aware of the distinction of licensing and legality that that choice results in. Alex Rowley, please. If one does not reflect the transform market, the question is what does it need to do to reflect that market? Is there examples of legislation in other countries that we can perhaps look at? There are examples of legislation in a transformed market, and I will point you to both the Washington DC, Chapter 31 and the code in Houston, Texas. That exists post-app development. A significant difficulty arises in the testing and assurance of driver safety and the testing and assurance of vehicle safety and various other issues around quality and age of vehicles. That will often be handled by external third parties against the will of the licensing authority and the traditional taxi industry, in that the taxi industry fits in a very, very distinct, this is how we do it, this is what is illegally required, and the newcomer tends to be seen as not following the same rules at a significantly lower cost. It is a competitive issue as well as a legislative issue. Would it be fair to say that here in Scotland at this moment in time, we have not entered what you term as the transformed market? That is a fair comment. It is my belief that Scotland is on the brink of entering the transformed market, and it will develop exceptionally quickly once it starts. On the brink, do you have any idea—I know that that is a very difficult question—when the transformed market is likely to happen here? It is my understanding that Uber Britannia has applied for licences in Glasgow and Edinburgh currently. I believe that they will be granted, and that company will begin to operate a variety of services in Scotland, starting with those that fall under private hire car legislation, but rapidly expanding in other locations suggests rapid expansion into other forms of Uber. Uber is not a single product, it is about seven products. Both Manchester and London, London for example, has five Uber products, including something that it calls Uber taxi. The most contentious of which will be UberX, which is the private individual providing transportation, and it is that product that has the most concerns to me in its legislative standing, and also the power to change the market to the greatest extent. If you ask for a timescale from launch to UberX, it is probably six months. Thank you very much indeed. Do you consider that the underlying reasons underpinning the need for the licensing of taxis and private hire cars is necessary? You said in your submission that we should probably recast legislation. Does that mean that we should abandon this for the moment because the technology is moving too fast and we only covered half the problem? If we wait until the market is settled, we will be seeing five or six more generations. The problem here is that the technology will continue to change and what we see now will be followed by innovations, which I feel may be around lying, planned, right sharing. No, it is a simple answer. It is my view that there should be current legislation, but that current legislation should provide sufficient power and regulatory authority to address changes that are currently foreseen. What do you see as the advantages between the two-tier system that we have at the moment with private hire and hackney carriages, as you call them? Is there any advantages? Today, 2015, yes. Tomorrow, 2015, no. No. Sorry, do you think that we should be recasting this or slightly changing it, maybe taking it out of the bill in order to reform it or tighten it, if you like? I would certainly agree that it needs tightening. I don't have an alternative text for you, if I apologize. The single-tier, dual-tier system question is a significant one and it is one that in effect may become irrelevant however many tiers you choose to have if you have somebody who ignores the tiers altogether, which is where you are going. The tiers that the dual-tier system that we currently have serves a purpose and has served a purpose very well, and that purpose will remain. Reasons for that distinction will remain. It is then a need to go back and ask, well, why do you regulate in the first place? What is the purpose of having regulation? In a purely commercial market, there is very limited control, but the taxi market has not operated in that way for hundreds of years with good reason. The question is why do we control and what potential benefit is there to maintaining that? What potential disbenefit is there in the loss of that control? As you said, technology is moving so fast. If we do not take this bit out, should we therefore make it a bit looser so that it covers all aspects? That is what is really meaning, I think. I think it is appropriate to cover all aspects. I think it would be a loss of opportunity not to address the aspects that we foresee in transformed markets elsewhere. If we talk about one of the fundamentals of taxis being street art applying for hire and operating in a restricted market in some locations, there is a question around the validity of tests applied to maintaining that market once the market has transformed. We see this as the significant unmet demand test that, if it were to move as suggested from taxis alone to taxis and private hire cars, would require significant renovation to remain valid and even further renovation in a fully transformed market with players that do not abide by it anyway. John Lawson, please. Good morning, Dr Cooper. The issue here in taking on board the transformed market that you are relating to, surely the issue in terms of legislation should be to make sure that all cars and all drivers are licensed. Would that not be a way of getting round Uber and UberX is to turn around and say, if you are providing a service for profit that you should be licensed, the car should be licensed, and the appropriate insurance should apply to the delivery of that service? Rather than just saying that we are moving towards a transformed market where anybody can use an app, hail a car to come and pick them up and that the individual is not aware whether or not a person is a licensed driver, whether the car is licensed, whether the car is fully equipped to deal with the passenger's concern and, more importantly, it is ensured in the event that there may be an injury or other factors involved in the use of that car. I think that I need to preface the answer by saying that it is essential and there is no question in my mind that vehicles need to be ensured and tested. Drivers need to be safe, ensured, licensed, controlled in the public interest and I have no hesitation in saying that that is the correct outcome of a licensing and regulatory regime. That is the role of Government and its regulators. I said that as a preface because I have observed multiple cities and too many to count where the belief was that regulation and laws were sufficient to that purpose. Effectively, my city has laws that are sufficiently good and why would anybody break them? Why would anybody attempt to twist them? Time after time, that has proven wrong that there are determined companies with huge resource who seek to achieve reform or change that reduces and makes unenforceable the legislation of that city. I will give you the example of Houston, Texas, with which I am aware that a year ago, a year and a half ago, that was the view that our regulations were strong enough and the regulations were effective and strong in an industry that chose to obey them, chose to follow them. The moment a player comes in with massive numbers of operators, 2,000, 3,000, 10,000, private individuals, that law becomes unenforceable simply through the mechanics of its enforcement regime. If you were to see the same thing in Scotland where Police Scotland were seeking to prosecute tens of thousands of drivers and a company that would be prepared to cover fines applied to those drivers, I think that it begins to paint a picture of a less enforceable regime. It is a perfect storm, if you like. It is one that you cannot solve while you have an entity that chooses to go a different route, which is why so many cities answer the problem by changing their laws to reflect the demands of the incoming player, much to the complaint of the existing players who have done nothing wrong and actually much to their harm. When we have an income that takes up to 40% of the market, the traditional market will be different. It will be a poorer market. The quality of services will be poorer. One of the outcomes of regulation as it stands are very, very high quality taxis in this city and others in the country. The impact will be a negative one on users of that service. I could talk about relative qualities of service, and I think that in Scotland there is a large advantage to the traditional taxi trade in that it is better than its US counterparts. It is much better than some of its US counterparts, but that in itself may not be sufficient a distinction to maintain the market share that it enjoys currently. Dr Cooper, you have made reference to the enforcement regimes and you have also made reference to the fines applied. You gave examples that Uber has picked up some of the fines that have been imposed on drivers and other jurisdictions. The issue that has been put to you is are the fines sufficient? Is there a way—as you say it—under the present regime of international legislation to find a way to find Uber itself? Why have you said that they claim to be a technology company? They are contracting drivers to deliver a service for them, so I do not see them as a technology company. I see them as a business that is using drivers. Therefore, are we tackling the correct individual by just finding the driver, or should, as any legislation is introduced, be able to target the company that is effectively undermining the existing legislation of a region or an area? You are saying that there are new entrants to the market, but effectively what the image that you are giving me today is that they are undermining and acting illegally under the current legislation that exists or potential future legislation. Dr Cooper, I certainly agree with your startlingisation as to what they do. I am not sure that they will agree with it. In my perception, they do no different a job than a traditional radio taxi circuit in Scotland presently. It is purely the way in which it is booked. They will make a very distinct difference. There has been some examples of the company, Uber Technologies, being prosecuted and indicted. The most recent, effectively, is Spain, but a more relevant example may be that in Germany, where they were effectively found to be in breach of regulation, but let off on a technicality, if you like the terminology, forgive me for an American term, in that the wrong company was prosecuted. There are a number of forms of Ubers and others, I have to be clear. It is not simply one company. Beware that the prosecution goes to the right place, which I believe is Uber Technologies Amsterdam, but they may be incorrect in that assertion. The problem that I have seen in the United States is that the extent of fine that can be imposed in terms of its value is not harmful or punitive on the company, but can be very harmful and punitive on the driver. That relates to the actual amount of fine or, in some instances, the removal of the vehicle. To the company's value, which is huge and unbelievably so, it is nothing, and it could well be interpreted as a cost of market entry. To the driver, it is very significant, and were Uber not to pick it up, there would be a change in behaviour. Do I believe that legislation can do it currently? I believe that it is possible, but I think that it is not easy. The extent to which the enforcement regime would need to go after multiple individuals would make it very hard to enforce. In terms of the checks that we have talked about earlier, safety checks, drivers and vehicles, which Uber and their like do not have to comply with, it seems, in many of the areas that they are operating in, or forced regimes to change to dilute those checks. One of the other things that we expect if we go into a cab or a private hire car is that we have an expectation of how much we are likely to pay, how much we are going to pay per mile, how much we have to pay in terms of waiting times, in terms of Uber, and maybe I am a little bit naïve. What is the arrangement for payment? How could anybody be sure that they are not being conned? How could we deal with that in terms of legislation? I will highlight, chair, that private hire cars do not fulfil the same regulatory requirements as taxes, but the point is absolutely appropriate. Uber publishes its fare. It decides upon its fare on a competitive basis and will often set a base fare below that of taxes. In fact, it makes a point of being lower than tariff. Tariff is a very fine system for taxes because it is a distinct and clear measurement of cost, unenquivocable. Uber's fare seeks to mirror that, at least in the first view, it is a defined distance and time cost, and actually it differs in that you pay both distance and time, rather than the taxi tariff, which is distance or time, depending upon circumstance. Uber also practices something which it calls surge pricing. For those very brief descriptions, a surge price is a change in price from tariff, from base fare, above base fare, in what Uber described as a method of ensuring supply. That is its claim. Surge price is not just a little bit more, it is many multiples of fare, and you will see reference in many press statements as to seven times fare. You are not obliged to accept it, so you are effectively not being conned, but it is the price of accepting service. You accept it or you don't get a trip. It's that simple. If you compare the claimed driver income, which is set as almost a job work for us and you get this amount of money with the numbers of trips and base fare, it appears to me a driver would not make the money that is suggested. In other words, there is a requirement at some point that surge pricing is put into effect. It's not an option, it's not an accident of supply, it would appear to be an intentional policy to massage the market or to profit maximise on the basis of the ability to do so. That is purely an interpretation, it is a reasonable statement that fares differ in terms of specific points of demand, and that is the basis of night time fares as opposed to tariff 2, additional fares in the taxi industry, is related to the assurance of supply. That's not an unreasonable argument, but in practice it appears to me to be not only a necessary application but also one that seeks to profit maximise. You said at the very beginning of that statement that in terms of the charging regime, private car cars are not the same as Hackney. In the city of Aberdeen, which I represent, if I order a taxi by phone, I may get a yellow-plate Hackney cab, I may get a red-plate private car and the charging regime is exactly the same. Are you meaning that there may be differences in some areas but not in other areas of the country in terms of that charging regime? That's the correct interpretation, and I'm not aware of Aberdeen. It's up to each individual licensing area to decide what the situation is in that regard at this moment in time. Do you think that that may be because of some difficulty? I believe that local regulation is an appropriate position in terms of fares as they reflect local circumstances and local costs. We have a regime that bases the fare upon a measured consideration of the costs of production, and that is by definition a local activity. You may choose to define local as being a city or seek to have it as a country if it is still related to the measurable costs. There is one aspect in terms of cost that may be worth touching on briefly. The taxi fare models of which I am aware, particularly those in Glasgow and Edinburgh and in Vanessa, and I believe Aberdeen as well, include an element called driver's wages or the amount that driver takes home after everything else is gone. Now in any instance where that exists and a market shift occurs where somebody else joins the market, any additional services of reducing income are likely to result in an increase in tariff to maintain that level? I have one other question about local flexibility before I bring in Willie Coffey. That is round about the distinction that exists between hackney licences and private hire car licences in most areas where a private hire car licencee would not normally have to sit a knowledge test and yet a hackney cab driver would have to sit that knowledge test. Aberdeen has a situation in which, if you apply for a private hire car, you also have to sit that knowledge test, which means that there is no distinction between a private hire plate and a hackney plate. Does that happen anywhere else in the country and does that local distinction cause any tensions at all? I am not aware of the approach of every authority so I cannot give you a definitive answer. I believe that the primary distinction between taxing phc relates to street pickup. The knowledge test or the ability to control drivers of any vehicle type appears to be an appropriate control and power of any authority. In terms of conflict, the only place I can identify is that really being in conflict is on the boundary of one authority to another, where your trip may cross an authority boundary and therefore give you a choice of one system or another. It is my belief that assurance of driver safety and ability is a very logical and desirable outcome. Whether that requires a knowledge test or not currently sits in the power of the authority making the regulation. I am not sure how I could answer better than to say that that should be based on the circumstances of the location. Willie Coffey, please. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning to you, Dr Cooper. As a former software engineer, I look at applications as being a positive development for the customer. It would come as a worry to myself and I am sure to others if the application of this technology was providing opportunities for loopholes or illegality. Is that what you are saying here from what I have heard so far? In terms of established taxi companies, what are they doing in your view to catch up and deploy the varieties of technology that we have heard about this morning, and is that a way that they might overcome this threat that you have described to us? Firstly, I do agree that the technology itself is a good thing. It provides access that has not existed before, makes this market sector more attractive to its users and increases the number of trips being made in the sector. All of those are very, very positive. The taxi industry was slow to respond. They are late entrance to the application concept. While the local companies have got a quality product mirroring many of the benefits of the market leader, the market leader has one legal distinction and one less legal distinction that makes it an advantageous choice to the user. The legal distinction is that it is a multinational product that works across cities regardless of where you are. You get off your train or your airplane and your app works. You do not need to seek out a local app, which is a cost to the user. The slightly less legal one is that it allows for access to a variety of service types that the traditional taxi companies do not. That being whether you sit in the PHC or in the taxi or in the rideshare TNC category, the user may well not be aware of the legal legality of the choice that they make. I believe that that may be intentional. How would we overcome that by defining types of use that the applications could provide services for? One of the greatest marketing coups of this particular discussion is the categorisation of pundits, those providing commentary, to either love or hate the app to have an emotional attachment to the app. I love many apps. They do a lot for me, but this discussion does not fit in emotion. Why I make that comment is that many responses fall into the, I hate this category or I love it, that courts can be stylised as being anti-technology, anti-free market even. It becomes fundamental to the core of market operation that the responses to prevent access, which is our most recent response in Spain, preclude access. Bring with it very large question marks over free market operation, the ability for market to operate because they have taken such an extreme measure because such an extreme measure appears to be the only one that has any effect. I caution against the outright banning of something that brings benefit. I cannot see a very good intermediate step because so far the most intermediate steps have been in reality ineffective. I would for thought there, certainly. Could I switch the conversation slightly convener to take advantage of your experience, Dr Cooper? There is an example in the media this morning of a person, a driver, of dubious reputation, who was able to move from one authority to another to evade his record, for example, in one authority and basically lie about his circumstances prior to that and gain a licence in another authority. Have you got any view about how we could and should close that loophole to protect the public? One of the strongest arguments, one of the strongest opportunities to ensure there is no licenced tourism, if you wish, is to maintain a relationship to Police Scotland in the fit and proper person test, in the ways that we identify criminal backgrounds, and that is a correct and proper outcome of the regulatory structure as it stands. I am not aware of the instance to which you refer, but part of the structure of an authority being the competent authority to determine is that that test is at least possible, if not always applied or always effectively applied. When you lose control to third parties, that opportunity and that certainty is lost as well. You may hear arguments that the third parties actually do a better job, and that is certainly one that we have seen in some United States cities where the authority would seek FBI fingerprinting. The third party's, however good they may be, need to have some relationship to authority to regulation that is sustainable, and I don't believe that that is where they are at this point in time. The short answer is that the competent authority has to be associated with and approved by government, even if it is not government itself. Probably the problem is where the person sought to evade his record, and is there an opportunity here in terms of software and applications and so on for that kind of information to be shared amongst licensing boards so that a person cannot evade detection and to reveal their past history, perhaps? There's a great deal of opportunity. I'm not sure that the will is there to use it, and in this instance it is not just the technology as we currently see it, it's the potential of that technology to provide a linked up service. As a researcher and actually in my role in commissions for regulatory commissions, I would strongly seek to have information fed to me or to the authority from the applications. So far, although there is one instance where it's getting a little bit more friendly, so far the new technology companies have not provided any such feedback despite the obvious benefit of that feedback being made available. I'll mention that point from John Wilson, please. The just to follow up on that, Dr Cooper, do you refer to the competent authority? I think Mr Coffey's example is quite a good one whereby if someone making an application for a car that did not drive to operate a licensed car, I decide not to apply to one authority because they have been told that authority's regime of application is a lot tougher and takes cognisance of reports from Police Scotland. Whereas a neighbouring authority, the licensing committee may not be as stringent in their application of the rules in relation to applying for a license. What would you say in those circumstances and how can we ensure that there is an even playing field being applied by licensing committees throughout Scotland? The example that you give feels to me like a failure in one of the licensing authorities to fully take advantage of national information on drivers. I'm not aware of the example. Does that fully take the opportunity or are they failing to comply with what they should be doing legally? I don't know the answer to that. I'm afraid. Just to clarify that point, my understanding is that if a Police Scotland report appears before a committee, licensing committee, the committee can take a licence of that report or set that report aside at the present time. Is that the situation? I can only assume that it is from what you say. I do not know what the extent to which it can be put aside. That is something of which I'm not aware. The question that you pose is, can we level the playing field for other groups? The answer is no. We are in the best position that we can be where there is a Police Scotland report of which cognisance is taken. Where that decision is given or assumed by a party that does not go through licensing, there is no way of assuring a level playing field. Was yours in this point, Alec, in which case I'll take Claire first, please. The Scottish Government has stated that it believes that services run by the community, social enterprises, voluntary services such as cancer transport services, should still be exempt from the higher car licensing regime. Do you agree with your position for those organisations? I have no view that I can give you helpfully. The only comment that may be helpful is, were those services to be contracted to the taxi or private higher car industry? I've seen no reason why they should not abide by all existing regulations. Would it be fair to distinguish between the urban and rural areas of Scotland in terms of demand? I note, for example, when the evidence has come in, where we look at the removal of the exemption for cars contracted for 24 hours or more, generally whilst that's welcomed, there is a division caused by the notes between urban and rural authorities, where rural authorities are more concerned that that could lead to a withdrawal from the market. I suppose that's really where I'm trying to touch on. Is there a major difference? You talk about Glasgow and Edinburgh and the big cities, but if you look at rural Scotland, there isn't the same demand and therefore supply. No, they're not the same. Urban and rural are different and the markets are different and that is historically why we have rural locations with one form of taxi-type service and urban locations with two. In the evidence that I have for you related to market entrants and TNCs, there will be, I believe, very limited incursion or movement into rural areas by the TNCs simply because the market is not there for them. It's not a profitable venture. Do I see differences as a result of the removal of the 24-hour? It's not a question that I have had in front of my mind and one that I have no prepared answer for. I apologise. I thank you very much for your evidence today, Dr Keithwer, that has been extremely useful. I now suspend for a few minutes for a change of witnesses. We now move on to our second panel of witnesses. I'd like to welcome Kevin Woodburn of Edinburgh City Private Higher, Les McVeigh of City Cabs and Bill McIntosh of the Scottish Taxi Federation. Would you like to make any opening remarks, gentlemen? Mr McIntosh, please. Thank you. Mr Chairman, I wasn't entirely sure what we were coming here for today. I'm assuming that we are given evidence in regard to the issues that arise in the new bill and civic licensing. I can be very brief in that respect. There is an option to remove clause 22C, which allows cars or vehicles and drivers to be hired on a 24-hour basis. We support fully the removal of that particular clause because we have seen attempts by groups and bodies and one particular body who is public funded to use. It's just such vehicles and an effort to get around the issue of licensing and the restrictions that are placed on them. As long as there is some loophole there to allow unlicened activity, then there are some people who are quite willing to take that opportunity and drive a horse and coaches through that. The Scottish Taxi Federation strongly supports the removal of that section. With regard to the matter of driver training being extended as an option to private hire cars and drivers, there are no really hard feelings on it other than that. It is our view that it is unnecessary and it is going to become very, very burdensome for the local authorities involved. I know that my own local authority in Glasgow struggles to accommodate the number of taxi drivers that are applying to have the test before they are to be granted a licence. I can only see that situation getting worse if they include private hire in there. I know that an option in councils may or may not use it, but I understand that, in the responses to the Government, there was quite a high percentage of councils in favour of that. I can also see that this is going to slow up the feed of drivers into the private hire sector and throw them into the taxi business. The one that concerns us most is the option to allow councils to limit the number of private hire cars, not that we object to the limitation of private hire cars. In fact, what we are concerned about is the option in the way that it is being structured and as much as they have decided rather than have unmet demand then it is to be on the basis of over-provision. I think that Dr Cooper alluded to it in his report that there is no measurement available at this time. It is very difficult to imagine how there can be any measurement to understand that there are too many private hire cars in any one area. It seems that this particular section has been taken from the licence in Scotland Act 2005. It is fairly simple to walk down a street in any particular city and see that there are 10 public houses there and they do not need another one. However, it is an entirely different matter when you are trying to measure the number of private hire cars that are going to be available. Our major concern is that the financial memorandum particularly refers to the fact that there are likely to be many more court challenges in respect of this particular part of the legislation. I am not too worried about that because that is going to come back to the licence phase that is being charged to the taxi and private hire trade. I do not think that we should be picking up the tab for what is an inept piece of legislation. The Government really needs to find some other way of safeguarding councils from being dragged into court at every opportunity. I will probably tease some of that out in questioning, Mr Mackintosh. Mr Woodburn, do you have any opening remarks that you would like to make? No, just to say thanks for inviting us this morning. Obviously, I am very interested to answer some of the questions that may well get posed, so no real opening remarks. I would like to say that although I have been asked for a more local aspect, and I am not Professor Cooper who is more global, I hope to give a more positive presentation about the taxi trade regarding what is being done within the taxi trade to meet competition and what measures we take to ensure that our drivers and vehicles are up to a certain standard. Do you want to give us a brief overview of that just now? One of the things that Professor Cooper said was that we were slow to take up the app. We were offered the app by a service provider and we signed up the day after and we have fed it for about two years now. We do actively advertise it on the radio, in the back of the taxis, and recently we have a TV advertisement on the local Edinburgh SCV channel, so we actively add it. It is growing, it is growing from zero to about 6,000 jobs a month now that we use on the apps, but it is something that the public has to take up themselves. Another question about the level of checks on the drivers, we, along with central radio taxis, and I believe in the city of private high, do it as well, we put all our drivers through the perfection of vulnerable groups and they go through that every three years. We get a report back every three years for every driver that works with citycams and no centre will do that as well. That is two thirds of the Edinburgh trade, check the drivers and everything. Going above and beyond the legislation that currently exists. Let us move on to that legislation as it stands and you can talk about the proposed bill too in this regard. Do you think that the current differences in licensing between taxi and private higher cars are justified? Mr McVey, do you want to start? I have been the service manager for the airport regarding the public car rank for the last seven years in citycams two years ago. We were successful in winning the contract for five years, possibly seven. We sat alongside the private higher. Before that contract was awarded, the public, the private higher, sat behind the fence. It was onward travel, which was run by comcabs. In the premise of that was that they would go into a port of cabin and book a taxi, sorry, book a private higher car. The booking was never made, it was a sham. Because it was behind the fence, nobody saw it. This time round, the contract was renegotiated, but it came from behind the fence and they actually sat alongside the public higher and the public have a choice. They come to, we have a rank, the public, the private higher can not officially call it a rank but have an area where they rank up and the public have a choice. That suits the purpose of perhaps coming into Edinburgh, you want a black taxi, the knowledge, but also if somebody is going to Glenegos, a group of people, they are playing golf, they have got the golf clubs, they have got the suitcase, they want a people car, they want a saloon car that is perceived to be a lot more comfortable, but people do have a choice and that is what Edinburgh airport required. On Edinburgh perspective, Bill McIntosh, do you want to give us the national perspective? I think that sometimes it is very difficult for the public to get their heads round the differences between the two regimes. Do you think that the current differences are justified? That evolved with the advent of the 1982 act, as I am sure you are aware, and it has been running since. Over that period of time, there has been a lot of confusion built up, not at least of what is caused by the media, which constantly refers to everything as a taxi because they see the word taxi as being a generic term. The fact is that my colleague has mentioned three of my choices and the current two-tier regime gives the public that choice. For that reason, above all else, I feel that it is very justified in hanging on to where we are at just now. The honest answer to the question is that it really hinges on where you are coming at, the answer to the question from, in the sense that you have a distinct difference in the two trades, albeit as a two-tier licensing system. There are areas of convergence within that, similarities in terms of doing the jobs, but there are distinct differences, and I think you have to understand the historical differences that come to the forefront every single day out there on the streets for drivers. A lot of it hinges around what is it that we really wanted with a two-tier licensing system? If we go back in time, if we could speak to the people that actually put the legislation in place originally, what was their purpose? Was their purpose to have two forms of transportation, two forms of taxi-like situations, and if that were the case, why then has, over the years, the whole thing been eroded? Because now what you have is, and it doesn't be slightly controversial to my two colleagues either side here, but you have a situation where you have public hire vehicles, taxis, to all intents and purposes. Taxis originally were designed to do what? To ply for hire, which is why private hire was brought in because it cannot ply for hire. That's the two differences between the two trades effectively. Therefore, if you have one sector of the trade which is pre-brooked hires only, why would you have the other sector which was designed as public hire therefore allowed to then do pre-brooked hire work? That's where the whole thing got blurred. That's where it all changed. Over the years, it's continued down that path. Now you've got a situation where you're being asked questions about, do you think there's a single-tier licensing system, a two-tier licensing system? The truth is, I don't really think it matters that much anymore, if I'm being honest, because at the end of the day, it will be the market that dictates, it will be the public. Will you respect to this committee and various other committees that I've sat in front of and been questioned of? What gets lost in all of this is that it's about the public. It's the public who will decide what they want. We can talk about apps all day long, we can talk about what we do as companies all day long. The public will decide whether they use us as companies. The public are not stupid and they'll make their decisions based on whatever factors are important to them and whatever area of the country they live in, whether it be rural or whether it be in the centre of Glasgow or in the centre of Edinburgh, they'll decide based on what's on offer to them. I think that it gets lost sometimes. You said that the market will decide and Mr Mattantosh talked about provision in the bill for the limitation of private hard-car licences. We see without the bill reaching the point of legislation that a number of authorities are already using the 1982 act in terms of limiting the amount of licences. Maybe to the detriment of the general public who are not being fully served. Do you think that your comment about the market deciding often is not the case because of the limitations that are put in place by a licensing authority? Do you think that there are any areas, and I know that you can probably talk only about your own locales, any areas that are not being particularly well served at this moment in time because of the possible misapplication of the 1982 act? Do you think that the new legislation may help in that regard? Or is it the case that some of the things that are in place and could be in place make it easier for the entry of Uber and others because the market is not being served? Mr Woodburn, if you would like to start. I am trying to remember all aspects of the various points in the one question there. I think that at the end of the day the market is being served, if you like, in respect of the proposals in the bill to change. The ceiling for want of a better description on private hire, the local authorities having the power to decide within their own locale whether or not private hire should have a ceiling or not, I think, and other colleagues out there within the private hire sector would probably disagree with me, but I will give you my own personal opinion on it. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. I think there's a lot of what you've heard so far today. Without being too nasty about it, there's a lot of scare mongering out there within the taxis to private hire trade. The things that have been discussed today with the app, for example, there's a lot of misunderstandings out there. Mr Wilson pointed out something earlier on, which I thought was very relevant, in that we seem to be targeting Uber and the apps as the big bad wolf coming over the hill, but nobody has actually asked the big bad wolf, are they a big bad wolf? If Uber wants to come into his marketplace and do some of the nasty things that are being described of them, why have they even applied for a booking office licence then? Why have they not just said, you know what, we'll just start taking bookings and we won't comply with the legislation that's already in place in the country that we're going into. But they have. So I think a lot of what goes on within the trade is scare mongering and being honest, from the trade itself. The trade is as guilty as anybody for causing these situations and the legislation is already in place. If a company who takes bookings must have a booking office licence and has a booking office licence and then supplies unlicensed vehicles, then guess what? The licence will be taken away by the relevant authority, whether it be Edinburgh, Glasgow, West Lodian, who's represented here today. All of these things are already in place and I don't really think that, you know, it's a question of, yeah, we need to change legislative issues in some areas, but some of the areas that are already in place, it's how they've been twisted over the years that causes the problem. And again, going back in time and asking the people who put the legislation in place in the first place, what were they actually trying to do might give everybody a clearer picture. Mr McVey, please. I would, again, from a personal local level, I would disagree that there's any scare mongering regarding Uber from Edinburgh taxi companies or the public car trade. I mean, I'm aware of Uber. I know their working practice, I know their strengths and I know their weaknesses as well, and one of their weaknesses will be the price surging that they adapt. There's two situations that I know of in Sydney, where the Sydney, when the seed was in progress, and there was a surge of vehicles being required, whether it was public, higher or private, higher or Uber, and what happens in their system, they have an automatic algorithm that kicks in, and if the surge goes up to a certain level, it then kicks in, as Professor Cooper has already mentioned, it goes up one, two, three, four times, and in Sydney it went up four times to take these people away from that area, the regular customers. I was also sent an email in Hugmanay from Sydney, a guy who lives over there and he uses Uber, and all their customers were sent an email prior to the Hugmanay celebrations, and it warned them and it showed them a graph when the price surge would come into effect, half past 11, right through to four o'clock, and it warned them that a normal $30 fare would go up to over $100, and they asked them to form groups and to share vehicles, so that's the level that they're coming into the market and that's how they price them, and I've watched the guy who runs Uber, Traverse, I forget his second name, and he justifies that, he justifies it along the lines, if you book a hotel during peak times, the price goes up, that's how he justifies it, and he tries to also justify it by getting vehicles from outwards areas to come in to travel to go to that area to pick up taxes. Now, how the public will respond to that in Edinburgh, I don't think they'll take to that too kindly if they're going to be charged two or three times just because the service is failing them. I think that the taxi trade is quite strong in Edinburgh, and I'll give you another example, if you're driving with Uber as a driver, you're charged 20 per cent, so if somebody books a taxi, they pay up front, they pay through their credit card, Uber keeps 20 per cent, the driver gets the 80 per cent. Currently, in Edinburgh, we have two strong associations, Central and City Carbs, and all the drivers are part of that, all the members actually own a share of the company, and it's not a non-profit organisation. I know that this is quite flexible, depending on how many hours, but what we're trying to work out is that a driver will probably pay 10 per cent. If every fare that he gets from City Carbs is probably central, he'll pay 10 per cent. If you go with Uber, you'll pay 20 per cent. The market in Edinburgh, and especially the taxis, I think have moved considerably over the last few years. We've become more responsible, we adapt, we incorporate all the latest technology, we're the first ones to get GPRS, and I know that it's moving on to answering one of your questions, but one of the things that I've got on my mind that I would just like to point out is that, again, in a positive way, if Uber comes in and you start taking if there's an incident regarding a passenger or others such like, who's responsible? At the moment, what happens is that if there's a police inquiry, the police come to the door of the taxi companies whatever hour of the day, we give them full access to all of our information, every taxi is monitored, it's tracked, we know every turn that that taxi driver makes, and we're involved in solving quite a few crimes in the Edinburgh area over recent times, and I know that Central and ComCabs offer that service as well. Who would do that if it was Uber? Mr McIntosh, please. I'm afraid to have lost the three-year question. Okay, it was round about market deciding, and at this moment in time, does the market really decide whether the restrictions that can be put in place by local licensing authorities and do those restrictions maybe make it easier for the likes of Uber to enter the market? Well, there could well be, and there could be an argument there that it is making it easier for Uber to enter the market, but I disagree with my colleague, you'll be surprised to hear that we need a different type of system. I think that the system that we have just now is tried and tested. It's worked very well since 1982, and it's still working very well. Taxis supply both types of service—the radio and the street service—and the street service is unlikely to discontinue, so I can say that there's going to be a need for a foreseeable future to retain a two-tier system, and that's the way I would like to see it go. Okay, obviously, Mr McIntosh, you represent a national body. You say that you operate in Glasgow. Other two gentlemen are from Edinburgh. Throughout the country, in each of the 32 licensing authorities, do you think that the market is well served by the licensing regimes that are currently in place? The short answer is, for the most part, yes. Just sort of linking in with the discussion that we've just had, Bill McIntosh said that the system at the moment is tried and tested, but I wonder what your observations would be on Dr Cooper's comments that the market is transforming in such a way that the two-tier licensing regime might be very difficult to enforce in future and that could be heading towards us as a monopolistic provider. I might be interested in the panel's take on those comments from Mr Cooper. Shall we start with Mr McVay first, please? Monopolistic, as in Uber or private hire, taking over public hire, public hire, taking over private hire. I think that they work well. Uber will come. The only thing that I would ask Mr Wilson to mention is that, if they're coming, they're only allowed to use licensed drivers and licensed vehicles. In some areas in America, they use just people who download their app, run licensed and run licensed vehicle. That is a horror story, as far as I'm concerned. But Uber again will come and it's up to us to pull us rocks up and get on our toes and provide the better service. There's nobody looking for monopoly. Again, it's up to the drivers, whether it's public hire or private hire. There's a situation where city camps have a taxi school and about 40 per cent of the people coming to us to sit and test their private hire drivers. It's the next level up. They want to get the public hire—I don't know if Kevin will disagree with this—but they're going to the private hire because it's easier to go into the private hire. They don't have to sit their brief. They might have no knowledge of Edinburgh City, so they'll go in and they'll study and drive for private hire as well. Some stay with private hire. We've got guys who've left the public hire and went to the private hire because it suited them. Again, going back to the choice, sometimes there is a line where choice becomes confusion and some people get confused and we see that at the airport every day. People like the choice, but other people get confused and I don't know how you would legislate against that. Mr Woodburn, please. It's very similar to Les in that respect. I touched on Uber earlier on Uber's coming. Whether or not we like that or not is to be quite frank, irrelevant. They're a company that's coming into the Edinburgh area, coming into the Glasgow area, and as long as they play by the same rules as everybody else and the obvious legislation applies, then okay, that's fine. It's competition. The difference with Uber is that Uber are different from every other company out there in that Uber don't actually have any vehicles on their circuit, if you like. What they do is they come into our city and try and attract all of the vehicles who are already working in that city, in private hire terms anyway, not in hackney terms, and they try and get them to associate themselves with the Uber app as a driver on the app. So we've got something like 500 drivers in our company. All of those 500 could join Uber and stay with us. At the sort of downtime, if you like, where we're maybe busy and they're quiet or they're busy and we're quiet, the driver will try and feed into both systems. That, in effect, is what this app is about on the driver's side, not on the public side, but as long as the rules are the same and there's licensed vehicles that are being supplied and licensed drivers, I don't think you'll ever get a monopolistic situation. It will come back down to this list, touched on, it'll come back down to price. And yes, there are parameters within the price and structure and there are things that can be done on both sides of the trade, whether or not they would want to do them would be entirely up to the individual companies, as to what they want to do. But the monopolistic side of things, I doubt very much that the public would ever have a monopolistic situation when it comes to surdpricing, for example, and four and seven times the price. Would anybody in this room pay that? No. No, why? Because we all know there are choices. Just because you use somebody once doesn't mean to say you've got to use them 10 times over and you've got to pay whatever it is they want to charge you because we all know there are choices out there and that's the way it should be, that there are choices out there. And again, touching on the single or two-tier licensing system, you could argue the point that there are choices because of the two-tier system. But I think the whole thing, it might change, it might not change and at the end of the day I think there's reasons why it probably should and there's reasons why it maybe shouldn't. But it's going to come down to choice and it's going to come down to choice of different types of vehicles and you touched on it. Does the legislation allow for the market to decide? Very difficult question to answer. Mr Macintosh, please. Will I disagree with Dr Cooper's view that Uber or any other app company for that matter will finish up in a monopolistic situation? I think that what we need to be more concerned about with these app suppliers is that they comply with the current legislation and right now it would look at least if you see the various articles that are available on YouTube and some other sites that they currently don't comply with the legislation in other countries. That may well be different here but that's the main concern that the tax agency has. There's a huge potential with these type of companies for unlicensed activity and I think that the Government has to find some way of legislating for that. We've already suggested that the booking office legislation might be one way of doing it and not necessarily changing the legislation but by making more mandatory conditions which would bring people like Uber under the current legislation that's available. Cara, do you want to come back in? No, that was very helpful. Thank you very much. I want to touch upon something that I did earlier. Mr McVeigh said that some of the private hire drivers use your training school because they want to complete the knowledge. In Edinburgh, private hire drivers don't have to complete a knowledge test. There's no obligation to do so. Is that the same in most local authorities areas, do you know? To my knowledge, yes. Potentially Aberdeen is the anomaly in all of this which is causing me the difficulties that I am. In terms of the application of the 1982 act, Aberdeen is the only place that is currently making private hire car drivers sit the knowledge test. Making them, yes. There are other areas of the country where the individual companies, my own company for example, we have our own training school, we choose to train our drivers, we choose to take them to whatever standard we feel is the appropriate standard for the marketplace that we are in. When it comes to the legislative side of things, again from a company perspective, I have no fear of the being legislation of the training of drivers. My slight concern would be that, are we talking about training a private hire driver to the same level as a taxi driver, and if that is the case, is it just about knowledge or is it much about the other modules that perhaps a taxi driver has to look at, you know, health and safety, that type of training, wheelchair, disability, discrimination bits and pieces. All of those things are important. If that is what we are talking about in training. Again, as far as I understand it, we are only talking about knowledge training in terms of the bill. You touched on the fact that you wanted a level playing field. What do you think of the two-tier system and would you change that with the private hire? The difference with the private hire is that you do not have to have the knowledge in the same way, and there is no buying and selling of a plate like there is in the Hackney cabs. Would you change that system at all? Would you be in favour? I did not gather from your replies that you would want to competition, but do you think that it should alter in any way? I am trying to sit on events. I gathered that from your reply at the beginning. It is a very difficult one to answer, because at the end of the day there are parts of the legislation, which I do think currently a two-tier system works well. There are other aspects to it, which I do not necessarily agree that they do work well. Depending on the new legislation and what, it is not clear as to what exactly is being proposed here. As an example, the numbers game, if you like, and the capping of private hire, allowing local authorities to cap them in any given area, that is fine. Depending on the test that is applied to get the number correct, if everybody agrees in that local area that that is the correct way to go about deciding the numbers, that is fine. However, what is the next stage? Is the next stage then that the plate becomes transferable? Are we then talking about incorporation of private hire plates, which then can then be sold on for a value, or are we saying that no, that is not to happen on this occasion because it is private hire? In other words, we are back into a situation where private hire and hackney are treated differently. That is my concern about all of these things, which is that it is the local authority interpretation of what happens next that concerns me. Excuse me, do you think that it is a good idea to keep this to the control within the local authority? There is a case to be made for keeping it under the control of the local authorities because they are the ones that best know their own local environment, as long as those local authorities are not concerning themselves with the particular vested interests groups that are lobbying them stronger than other groups that may not be lobbying them as strongly. I have concerns about all of these things, but again, slightly more controversial perhaps. In terms of the 1982 act, which does not allow for capping, we already see capping going on in certain local authority areas when it comes to private hire car. Do we not? No, not to my knowledge. Is it not the case that Aberdeen has a cap? Again, I am not intimate when it comes to the case of Aberdeen. I am being a bit surokio here. Legally, they cannot put a cap on at this point in time. They cannot say that we cannot issue any more of a private hire licence, not to my understanding of the legislation as it currently stands. Thank you, Mr Woodburn. Cameron, do you want to come back? They cannot, did you say, legislate as to how many private hire cars? Today, not to my understanding. No. Not when it comes to private hire licence. The bill does that, I know. The moment it does the stand. The test of that would be to go and pick up the phone now to Aberdeen council and ask, can I put a private hire plate on? If they say yes, then there is your answer. Just to pick up on a couple of responses that we have heard so far. I just want clarification from Mr Woodburn on the issue of private hire drivers signing up for Uber. You gave the impression that drivers from private hire could sign up for Uber, as well as being members of Edinburgh City Private Hire. Is that what you are implying? I am implying or I am stating that the way that Uber works is that they come into a marketplace and they attract drivers who are already in the marketplace who are perhaps with other companies. If we have drivers, for example, in our company, we have two different types of drivers. We have owner drivers, guys who own their own vehicle, and pay us a fee, if you like, for the work that we provide them. We have what are the classes of rental drivers who drive company vehicles that we supply to them. The difficulty for us with the Uber scenario is that there is no way that I could easily enforce an owner driver in not covering work, if you like, for Uber or any other company for that matter. I have maybe got a slightly more stronger hand, if you like, when it comes to our own vehicles that we supply to drivers that we can specify while you cannot do work for anybody else. However, the way that the legislation is currently, a private hire driver can work for 10 companies today if he chooses to. He is just having access to the work that those companies have, or he can work for no companies and he can work for himself. He can take bookings himself without having to have a booking office licence. I would burn for that clarification, but our understanding and the misconception of the public material that is out there is that Uber comes in and recruits non-licensed drivers—I will not finish Mr Uber—non-licensed drivers and non-licensed cars. The examples that have been given from other world-wide jurisdictions is that they tend to attract individuals rather than existing drivers, whether that be private hire or hackney cab drivers, to operate the service. Would that not be a major worry for both the black-hack companies as well as the private hire companies if Uber were to come in and say, we are not going to recruit or use any of the existing licensed cars or drivers, we are going to recruit publicly to actually build our own business that has no current association with any of the licensed drivers or licensed cars? Would that be a concern? Yes, of course, and I would suggest that it would be more of a concern to the public than it would be to the trade, because I do not honestly believe for one second that the public would stand for unlicensed drivers and unlicensed cars running around the city, picking them up at two and three in the morning. I just cannot see it happening. I genuinely cannot see it happening. Again, my understanding is that I do not want to sit here and sound as though I am a fan of Uber. I am trying very, very hard to sit on the fence and be objective on this, but at the end of the day, my understanding is that Uber or companies like Uber would be coming into a marketplace and trying to recruit, for want of a better word, licensed drivers with licensed vehicles. Were it not to be the case, we would all be standing here objecting vehemently to any allowance of any company coming into the sector that ran unlicensed drivers and unlicensed cars, and we would be the first to stand up and object to it, but I think the public would be very, very close behind us. Mr Woodburn, you also made reference to the booking office scenario, and Uber would have to operate a booking office. At the present moment, my understanding is that if you operate a taxi firm, whether it be private hire or Blackhack, you have your booking office in the local authority that is actually located and licensed from. Uber, as I understand it, is an app system. It would not have 32 booking offices throughout Scotland to coincide with the licensed authority. They would be looking, if they had a booking office at all, to have one operational centre with the app applied to the whole of Scotland. How do you think that fits in with the current legislation and the proposed legislation whereby booking offices are associated with the licensed authority? Mr Woodburn, if you were correct, and I'm not suggesting that you're not, I don't know the facts, but I can tell you my version of what I think is the situation, but if you were correct, I think that would be a huge problem if Uber were to come in and basically run one, if you like, centre encompassing all 32 licensing authorities, and I think the licensing authorities themselves would have a major problem with that. But that is not my understanding of what's actually going to be happening here. As far as I am aware, at this precise moment in time, Uber have applied for a booking office licence for Edinburgh to run from an office in George Street somewhere, and they've applied for a booking office licence for Glasgow. Now, that would suggest to me that if they were looking to come into other areas of Scotland, they'd apply for booking office licences within those specific licensing authority areas. But I'm not Uber, so it might be a good idea that they're spoken to as a company. But that's my understanding, anyway. John, Mr McBeir, Mr Manktosh, any comments? Well, my understanding is that they've got to apply for whatever cities they're operating from for a booking office licence in that area, that's the current legislation. Again, if they were to move to using unlicensed vehicles and unlicensed drivers, I think that would be a major concern for Police Scotland as well. I mean, they'll thought—and you would have a movement gradually over a period of time of nobody coming in and sitting there brief or nobody going into the private hire sector. I think in Edinburgh at the moment, we have a very, very good market. It's competitive. It's still a point now where there's nobody queuing up for either public hire licences or private hire licences, and that's what we suggest is market forces, and I think that's what everybody's looking for. It's a good example of what happens, and if there is a surge at any place, then people will come in and look to buy public hire licences or private hire licences, but at the moment, there's no movement, and I think that's two reasons. Well, one is the Edinburgh City Council employee, Hal Crow, to have surveys every three years for unmet demand, and that gauges it. Again, it's—I don't know if I'm going to bang the jump for Edinburgh, but it's a very good, healthy market, and I'm aware of Uber, and I'm aware of Uber's strength, and I'm aware of Uber's weaknesses. For me, the Edinburgh trade, both private hire and public hire, have to step up and meet the challenge. That's where the real situation will develop. Again, what Kevin Stewart said before, the public will decide. The public will decide if they want to get into a vehicle and get charged three or four times the amount. I can speak for practical times. I'm not going to—I don't know what time—but we have a situation in Edinburgh, Christmas and New Year, the festive time, where we implement a tariff for. We lose work through that tariff for because it goes up to a certain level, I believe. It was introduced several years ago to try and bring the supply up to meet the demand. All that has reduced demand during that level, and we see a drop. We're trying, through the tariff review, to visit that tariff for and maybe bring it down to a reasonable level to get our customers back, because at the time of year, the most users or the most need us, we're overpricing. Again, that's something that we're looking at to try and get that back down again. John Finch-Mac and Josh, please. Sorry, could you repeat your question again? John. Was that long ago? I forgot myself. It was really about the situation with Uber and the coming in terms of the booking offices, the location of the booking offices, and other issues around that and the recruitment of unlicensed drivers and cars, and whether that's an issue for your members in relation to it. Obviously, it would be an issue for our members. I would imagine it also to be an issue for local authorities because the booking office legislation is quite clear. It applies to every local authority in Scotland, so it's difficult for me to foresee why Uber would be able to operate in the day from an office that was based in Edinburgh. I think that would be a major concern and it would be brief in terms of the legislation, at least as far as the day is concerned. Can I just seek clarification in terms of our booking office? How does that booking office get registered with the licensing board? My fear is that Uber could say that we have got one operator operating from a housing estate in Dundee, and that's the booking office. That's what the register is a booking office because, in effect, they don't need somebody at the end of the telephone because the computerised system will do that all for them. Do you think there should be any guidance or any regulations put in place to say that a booking office should be operating in such a way? Most of the bookings, as I said, will be done through the app. The drivers will use a smartphone rather than a radio-controlled system. How do we make sure that the 32 people employed throughout Scotland are not the limit to Uber's involvement or any other company similar to Uber's operation and services in the 32 licensing board authorities? It's a very difficult question to answer. I hear what you're saying that Uber could, in effect, have a booking office licence in 32 areas, which, in effect, are not working. The fact of the matter is that Uber could probably run their operation from the Netherlands or anywhere else if they chose it because it's all done in cyberspace. It's a very difficult question, and it's very difficult for me as just an ordinary individual to answer what's required in terms of legislation. I agree with Bill, to an extent. We are so-called experts in our field—experts based on 25, 30 years' experience in the particular sector that we are in. Some would say replace expert with dinosaur because, at the end of the day, essentially that's what's all based around the fact that we've had a lengthed time in a certain trade. But when it comes to the specifics of the question, there is absolutely nothing in terms of the checks and balances that are already currently in place in each individual licensing authority to ensure that the rules are being applied accordingly. Some of the stupidity, if you like, of the situations that we are currently in, when you have local cab inspectors who can do nothing about a particular situation that they know is going on because the company concerned that's involved in it is not a licensed company, he has no remit to even go and speak to them because they are a non-licensed company. In terms of Mr Wilson's hypothetical, if you like, situation there, yes, there are concerns and great concerns as to whether or not these things may apply in the future, but as trade people we just have to hope that the legislation is being acted upon that is in place and that at the point where if it needs to change that it's changed quickly. My concern is that we still work on a civic government Scotland act from 1982 and we're talking about little bits of changes here and little bits of changes there. Now, fully understand that in the greater scheme of things in the country, taxi licensing, private hire licensing is nowhere near the top of the tree. Of course it shouldn't be, but for us it is, it is the top of our tree, so we have to fight. We applied for a booking office licence, we received a visit from the council and Police Scotland tonight, we've had two checks since then, I think it's been going for four or five years now, so we do get sight visits from the police to look at our system and they know it anyway because they're up there every second weekend. Again, Uber has been quite responsible in saying that they've applied for it because currently just now, going around the ranks in Edinburgh, there's a company called Get Taxi and they're trying to get our drivers to download their app to take work. Again, I don't think there's been too big a take-up, I can imagine some streetcars would take it up during this quiet period and trial it. Again, it's just choice and they don't have a booking office and that's the problem, that's where the cyberspace comes in or the legislation requires that company. They haven't made any effort to get a booking office licence yet they're out, they're going around their ranks at the moment and we've saw this twice before over the last maybe year, 18 months, where companies have came up and tried to get drivers and there's very little uptake on it. Again, two thirds of the drivers, owners in Edinburgh, the public car, belong to a circuit, either city cab, central or com cabs and streetcars basically are streetcabs for a reason, they don't want to be part of a radio company or perhaps an app company, it depends on what, going back to choice, but there is that difficulty, who applies for a booking office licence, Uber have, Get Taxi haven't and the two previous ones, if I get their names, who went round their ranks and tried to mark their business, they disappeared as quick as they appeared. What was it? No, it wasn't Halo. It wasn't Halo. It's not, the other companies aren't really relevant to us so if you want to send us them later it's fine. No, no, no, I'm just saying an example that Uber actually have applied for a, but the other app companies don't apply so again it's market, for me it's market forces and how the present suppliers respond to the new guys that are coming in. Okay, thank you. Clare Adamson, please. I'm taking us back a bit to an earlier part of the discussion where we were talking about the knowledge test. Given that we are also talking about apps and we have satellite navigation systems in most cars and smartphones now, is the knowledge test still fit for purpose? Mr Macintosh, please. Absolutely, it serves a purpose, yes. Taxi drivers are higher than an instant basis at the taxi stands very often that they are picking up people who have come from abroad who don't know where they're going or how to get there and the taxi driver needs to instantly be able to plot the journey mostly on his head. I'm sure you're aware of the situation in London where it takes anything up to two years to learn the geographical knowledge of London. It's not quite as bad in Edinburgh and perhaps Aberdeen and other places like Glasgow but nonetheless it serves a very useful purpose because if the drivers don't have the knowledge for that instant hire it gets in the door there then where are we sitting pressing buttons and satellite navigation it definitely is required. Mr Woodburn. Thank you for that. Controversial one for me to respond on and I think at the end of the day yeah there is a need for a knowledge test in terms of the hackney trade in terms of the private hire trade do I think a knowledge test is a bad thing or a form of training to be done for private hire drivers anything that raises the standard of drivers has to be a good thing and again it might be controversial might not be to other people within the private hire sector but I don't see training of drivers as why that should be a negative thing my concerns are my earlier concerns that you know if the same testing were in terms of knowledge and street tests were applied to private hire drivers would that be necessary I would say no it wouldn't be necessary to go to that level why because as Bill's already stated a public hire driver a taxi is a there and then hire in a public place etc etc etc so without going into the the current legislation and boring into tears that would be my stance on that. Mr McVay. Definitely yes again okay I haven't just said it installs a commitment and a standard for the people coming into the trade we have to have something like that you know it's not going to be a casual trade we have to have knowledge and routes the whole thing and we teach them at our taxi school all different types of things situations that they'll get involved in to make it more casual I don't know if we just I'm sure everybody getting into taxes in the Enver would start complaining if people didn't know where they were going or they had to turn the sat nav on to find out and we do have instances where guys have followed the sat nav may be new briefs have come in and we have to sit them down and go over it again because they've went round the bypass and at the bypass and it's an extra five or six pounds on the fair they have to have knowledge and that's a key part of our service. Just on that last point there I'd like to share with the committee an unfortunate experience I had when I came to Edinburgh a couple of years ago there was always line eye a particular taxi driver heard me a clue how to get to Easter road stadium I mean it's quite a big structure you know it's been there for quite a while you know and it charged me 20 quid at Harsley driving around in circles and still couldn't find it. Do you have jump in? Is that a black taxi? I can't remember. You can't remember? Anyway let's not deal with the willy stadium problems willy. I wanted to tease out again convener the idea of protection of the public in particular connecting it with the issue that John Wilson raised if somehow unlicensed taxis and drivers appeared on the scene then what do we do under those circumstances do we need to tighten the legislation or is it improving public awareness so if a car turns up at two in the morning I don't imagine people will be looking out the window and they're going oh there's no plate on that car I'm not getting in it what should we do to advise the public about the rights and obligations and so on to protect them getting back to the app this whole app that we've been talking about all morning can the apps somehow not signal to the customer the car that's coming to get you is licensed and your driver is Mr or Mrs X and there like it does do that does it. Mr Mackintosh do you want to go first on that please? I think you're happy you've asked a very difficult question how do you educate the public we've been trying to do that since 1982 and Mrs still hasn't got across I mean there are so many people in the cities at weekends who will jump into anything that's got four wheels as long as you go home that's their main objective and that's their only objective they don't take the opportunity to look and see if it's got a license number and it's or if it says prebooked tyres only or it's a taxi just get me home quickly and I really don't know how to answer that question if we take a major major media campaign to achieve what you're looking for Mr Woodberg totally agree with Bill totally agree with Bill I think if you go into any city centre on a Saturday night you will find a multitude of different vehicles picking people up left right and centre whether they be licensed whether they be unlicensed let's not pretend that Uber coming into the marketplace is the start of potentially unlicensed vehicles going out on a Saturday night and flying for hire it happens in every city across the country every Saturday night in life already you also have situations where you have again you know public hires if you like taxes and you have private hire operators unscrupulous private hire operators who will apply for hire on a Saturday night let's not kid ourselves on it doesn't go on it goes on every single Saturday night in life the companies involved the private hire companies can do their best to tell their drivers you must not do this you must not do that but the end of the day once they're out there driving around the streets it's virtually unenforceable and that's the problem and I think it has to come back to what you rightly said Mr Cofi it is educating the public and and how you do that good luck but at the end of the day I think that's really the only answer and and starting with the younger ones and working your way up to the dinosaurs like us and getting to us eventually is really where it has to start it's educating the public particularly and it does happen and it has happened and we all know instances of it you know particularly young females out at the weekend who you know at the end of the day they are probably the most vulnerable I'm not saying that you know young guys aren't vulnerable but at the end of the day you know young females are probably the the most vulnerable of all and you know to to be in situations where you know they jump into what they think is a private hire car or what they think is a taxi or you know and we have to look at things like better signage more appropriate signage you know you've touched on the apps it may well be that when a response is sent via an app that an actual picture of the driver can be sent with his badge there are all sorts of technical innovations that can be added into apps that make it more public safety orientated and I'm delighted that you know we're sitting here answering questions about public safety because ultimately that's surely what all of the legislation is about you know regardless of what the trade might think it's surely about public safety and that's my concern but all of these things over the years is that we lose track of why we're doing what we're actually doing. Mr McVeithleys was your question about members of the public jumping into unlicensed vehicles and unlicensed drivers or yeah how do we protect them from do you think that that happens every week it used to happen a lot les I don't know it certainly happens in my neck of the woods on a regular basis I have to say well I mean I'd well okay I'm again Edinburgh I deal with the complaints that come into city cabs and I can't remember the last time I had a complaint with somebody that got into it I do recognise the fact that it is frustrating for us as you're so my response when you mentioned Easter road I was quite keen to get some information of you he'll give you it afterwards so I mean it is frustrating for us as a company when somebody comes in it and gives us a complaint and they can't provide a number or a plate number or a registration but what we have in our system is even if again it's a beneficial to Police Scotland even if it's just a pickup point it could pick up at Omnys centre they go to Westerhales we have that information and then we can find out the driver you know if we have that it's exact details for that and it can tell me the route you took it can tell you how much you charge for it we all have that in our system so it's not we don't necessarily need the plate number or the rest but as far as people there have been isolated incidents that raw drivers get in their vehicles and approach people in George Street at 2 or 3 in the morning but I don't think it's a big factor I think it's isolated and I would I'd hate to say once a year of whatever it is but again it's it's the ones that make the press for obvious reasons that I mean we had one a private high guy who'd lost his licence but still had his badge and he was that was a few years ago now though but I mean and he went back to the police were looking for him for a rather unsafe incident. Colin Kerr MSP he runs a campaign every Christmas unfortunately he runs it too late he runs it in the week after all the Christmas parties are gone promoting people to get into taxis private higher and users and we actively encourage them to use our app because it is a great thing especially for a female on her own she can stay where she is she can stay safe she can book the taxi herself and then she can track the taxi and it gives her the name the registration the driver the call sign on the driver and she can see it coming along the road and she can actually physically watch it on the screen and that's what we try and promote Christmas in New Year time and fortunately we've asked Colin Kerr next year to try and get it before the office parties instead of the week after the office parties. I'm sure he'll read the official report and get on to that Mr Mayway. We highlight that. Hi thanks Cymru just one last question please again on public safety. If a taxi turns up and a customer is unhappy about the circumstances are they to use your to benefit your own knowledge and experience as a customer at liberty at that point to reject the transaction of the contract if you like at what point does the contract become valid just so that the public can be aware that if they're not happy with a car or a driver they can reject it when it arrives. Anything they're not happy with whatever reason that they have they can reject the car the driver at anything. Was the contract complete when you've made the journey? The contract's made after the journey is complete either for the driver the driver fails to complete it for any reason if it breaks down then you cannot charge. You couldn't find where he was going? Sorry. You couldn't find where he was going? Yeah well again you've had some bad experiences haven't you? It's very much in the customer's favour the customer couldn't halt the transaction at any time for whatever reason. So the taxi driver can't say to a person or you're rejecting the book and you're still longing the money? I mean tomorrow I'm going down to Peyton's and I hope to be the first taxi driver in Edinburgh that puts CCTV in the taxis and we've tried for this for about maybe five, six, seven years and we've always felt at the last hurdle but now hopefully tomorrow I've got the variation in the licence, some of the data controller and it's all meets the requirements of the Edinburgh City Council so we'll have a taxi, we'll have a CCTV unit in the back of forward facing camera on the driver and the camera in the back for the customers. Mr Wood? Yes I agree with Les's answer on that. The contract is cancelable if you like at any point. Prior to the journey commencing there is a cancellation charge within a tariff sheet that you can be levied with a cancellation charge and so on and so forth so there are elements in there if you like to treat it as a proper contract where you can charge a cancellation fee and whatnot but the circumstances would be unique and individual probably to each and every journey that's out there so it's I think it's probably impossible to have a policy in place whether it be a company policy or a legislative policy that's going to cover every possible eventuality and I think what's already in place services it pretty well. Mr Macintosh please. Well I don't have a lot to add to what's already been said except in my opinion the public when they hire a taxi whether it be the street or through a dispatch company they have the right to terminate that to hire it. At any time it becomes a civil matter between them and the driver concerned and I don't know of any driver who's going to pursue the loss of affair through the courts. As far as I'm concerned they can terminate at any time if they've got good cause. Thank you. Thank you. Cameron Buchanan please. Thank you. I declare I have a contract with the Edinburgh city private hire. The problems I've had sometimes is their lack of knowledge of English. Do you give them either an English test as well as a security test? It's a hypothetical question. Yes it is. I just want to clarify that that was a hypothetical question. Strange realms which is out of the scope completely and utterly I think. You can have that conversation with the gentleman afterwards. If it's another question on another matter yes. Do you think the bill that we're proposing has major flaws or goes far enough the one that we're proposing? Do you think it has major flaws and does it go far enough? I think it probably goes far enough. I think we have a thing best guidance, best practice guidance that councils work within and again you cannot legislate for every area where it's urban, rural or city. It has to be flexible, it has to be flexible for every area. I mean the guy it's operating at pitlockery isn't necessarily doing the same sort of requirement as the people in Edinburgh so it is a difficult one to legislate for every single taxi or private hire service in Scotland. It has to be flexible. Regulation and restriction is good but only if the taxi firms don't try and hide behind that regulation and restriction, if they come up and meet the requirements of the public and obviously meet competition, that's when regulation and restriction maintains a standard. It's a very difficult one to bring in laws to legislate against every single enterprise, taxi or private hire business in Scotland. Mr Woodburn, please. In terms of the three areas of the bill that are relevant to this trade, without knowing the politics behind those being in the bill, not that I'm suggesting there are any politics behind them but if there were to be any and I didn't know the reasoning behind those, it's a very difficult question to answer whether it goes far enough because at the end of the day the three points that are in the bill, do they go far enough for those three points? They probably do, yes. Should there be some form of training? Yes, I would like to drill down into the specifics of that, as I would like to build down into the specifics of the capping of licences, the numerical capping of licences and as to what formula will be used in each individual authority as to how they achieve that. I'd like to drill into that further but is it a bad thing that there is potential capping allowable? No, I don't think it is, so I would say that I'm happy enough with the three things that are on the bill. Could it go further? Could more things be added? Probably yes, but again, without getting into the politics of it all and knowing the motivation behind those three things, it would be very difficult to add anything more to it. Mr Mackintosh, please. I stated earlier that we have concerns in regard to the over-provision clause because mainly because there is no measurement that I am aware of that councils can use to measure whether there are an appropriate number of private hire cars or not and that this will be challenged by some sharp lawyers that have no doubt and that councils will end up in court on a regular basis by refusing. There then is a cost factor to that which ends up on the back of the car in the private hire industry and that's our concerns. It's by no means closed. We did suggest a controversial solution to the Government, obviously, but it didn't find much favour with it. The proposal that we had was that anyone applying for a licence then the burden of proof, whether there is an unmet demand or an over-provision or under-provision, should rest with the applicant and not with the Government or the local authority rather. John Wilson, please. Thank you. It's a great one on that unmet demand. Mr McVey intimated earlier that Edinburgh City Council do a survey every three years. Mr Mackintosh, do you know of any other authority that does a survey in terms of unmet demand? A lot of the local authorities carry out their own surveys. I really don't have any idea, but the only other place that I'm aware of who carries out surveys on a regular basis are maybe Dundee and, to a lesser extent, Stirling. I'm not saying that others don't do it, but it's a very costly exercise. Finally, gentlemen, in terms of the current legislation and the proposed legislation, do you think that there is enough in that dealing with disability access issues? Mr Woodburn, first of all, please. Quite a difficult one for me to delve into too deeply. The way the current legislation sits in terms of disabilities is that, because private hire has to be pre-booked, you'll find that there is a dearth of wheelchair-accessible vehicles within the private hire sector, other than the ones that are currently used for local authority school hires, as an example. In private hire terms, it's extremely difficult for me to really get into detail and comment too much on the disability part, because there really isn't a lot of manoeuvrability within the private hire sector on that, so probably better the two-taxi guys responding to that. Mr Mackintosh, please. There is a major difficulty in terms of access because there are so many differing disabilities. It's not just a case that people in wheelchairs are well-cated for now in major cities like Edinburgh and Glasgow. There are plenty of wheelchair-accessible vehicles, but there are many other disabilities affecting people. The wheelchair-accessible vehicle is not appropriate for their needs, as I have said in my letter to the committee. The costs of the vehicles are prohibitive as it stands. If we were to supply a vehicle that meets every disability or to try and supply a vehicle that meets every disability, the costs would go to an extent where nobody could afford to buy it, and nobody could afford to hire it anyway. There is a lot of difficulty still to be overcome and understood in that regard. I think that Edinburgh was the first city in Britain to supply a fully wheelchair-accessible fleet back in the mid-80s. I think that it was in every public hire vehicle on the road, it has a wheelchair facility. Again, Edinburgh is fine, but for rural areas, as Bill said, the cost of putting a wheelchair-accessible vehicle on for a rural area that might never do a wheelchair or might do one a month of whatever it is, again, it has to be driven by how much of the economics of it. I do not know for a bill to put something in it, but I know Edinburgh and Glasgow are things the same. Glasgow is not full-chair, but Glasgow is the same. I do not know what it is like in Saloon Cars in Aberdeen. Therefore, it is tough to legislate for a different situation regarding the ratio of wheelchair-accessible cars to saloon cars. In Edinburgh, all the public cars are wheelchair-accessible. I will suspend until 5.2, because I think that you might have some conversations with members to have about Easter road and various other things. I will suspend until 5.12. Thank you. We now move on to our third and final panel of witnesses for today. I would like to welcome Mrs Audrey Watson, managing solicitor of West Lothian Council. Welcome back. You were here a few weeks ago. Douglas Campbell, assistant managing solicitor for licensing from Renfrewshire Council and Tom Burnie, chair of the Scottish Older Persons Assembly. Would any of you like to make any opening remarks? Mr Campbell? Thank you, convener. I would simply like to say thank you for the opportunity to come along to tend to the rest of the board on behalf of Renfrewshire Council by having introduction and perhaps also to say that we are the authority that covers Glasgow Airport. We, for our part, have a number of limitations in relation to taxis and a fairly high number of private hire cars as well. We also do have a taxi knowledge test and we have a wheelchair-accessible policy, if that is helpful to members. Okay. Mr Burnie, do you... Just to explain in case people do not know that the Scottish Older People's Assembly is a body that represents all of the major voluntary organisations for older people in Scotland. What we do is we hold an annual assembly, but we also go around the country inviting older people to tell us what they think is important and we then lobby government on those issues. I have to confess that we haven't done too much of that in taxis at the moment, but maybe I'll say that later. Okay. Thank you. Mrs Watson? I'd just like to say thank you for inviting me back. I'm happy to answer any questions on West Lothian submission. We're near an urban area, not quite an urban area. We have a semi-rural area, so I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you for that. Can I start off by asking you what you consider to be the advantages and disadvantages of the current two-tier licensing system? Can you maybe include within your answer whether you think that there are benefits for service users with additional needs? Mr Burnie, first of all, do you have an opinion on that? A little bit different for us, of course, because what we are concerned about, particularly when we ask old people, is the service that they're receiving from taxis, and there's more concern really about that rather than the structure of how they're organised, but I do have comments on that. If I may say so, listening this morning to Dr Cooper and Mr Woodburn was it, and talking about what looked to me like a sort of free market, free-for-all for hiring cars seemed to me quite scary, because what we were talking about as we touched on earlier was that we're putting people, in our case older people, vulnerable people into potentially hazardous situations, and so, in principle, we are naturally in favour of licensing and regulation, and the ong to guide people should be trained. Are we anecdote, maybe, if I could say that? I was in London once in a hotel and I asked them to get me a taxi, and they got me a mini-cab, and they asked the mini-cab driver to take me to the Department of Training industry. He didn't know where it was, so I said to Victoria Street, and he didn't know where it was, and I said, well, it's near Westminster Abbey, and he didn't know where it was, and when in that situation in a driver who hasn't a clue, you realise just how vulnerable you are, and so I think it is important, when you talked about how important is the knowledge testing, I think it is very important indeed, because people want to have the confidence that the driver at least knows where they're going. Now, the kind of things that we've been concerned about is really that a lot of people using taxis in higher cars, it's going to step into the dark because they're not too sure what the rights are and what they can reasonably expect from the driver by way of a service, so what we've worried about is that a thoughtfulness that drivers should take note of the passenger's condition, that they should treat the older people as if it was their own mother or their own father, and we're concerned about the relationship between the driver and his or her performance, and it seems to me that the only way that that can be achieved is by having regulation, testing, or the licensing drivers and so on. A lot of things make a difference, when someone gets a cab, a lot of older people might have arthritis, so they've just been picked up from a hospital when it's painful. Drivers will sometimes drive over speed bumps and stuff like that, which is quite painful for them, so consideration for the passengers. Some drivers, I'm going to give you a list of problems. Bill, we'll get a list of problems as we come through the questions. If we could stick to answering the specific questions, you will get an opportunity, Mr Burnett, to go through all of the other things too. Okay, a specific question on what you needed to do. The specific question was the two-tier licence system itself, and how that impacts on the service users with additional needs. I think that you've given me a fairly lengthy answer there, so we'll come back to you, Mr Burnett. Let me hear from Mr Campbell. Thank you, convener. I suppose that the principal advantage in making the matter or the system one-tier is that there won't be an issue of illegal hires by private hires because everyone will be able to apply for hire, but I do have concerns in terms of the disadvantages that it could bring in terms of inventories. For instance, we have a wheelchair-accessible vehicle policy for taxis, and as far as private hire cars are concerned, they can be saloon cars, estate cars or hatchbacks, or there may be bigger vehicles, there may be MPVs, in which case we would ask them to be wheelchair-accessible, and obviously that would mean that operators may wish to have carry more passengers in those scenarios. However, we have a separate set of conditions, not just in wheelchair accessibility in a number of areas, but in principle wheelchair accessibility in relation to taxis. I would have concerns if that distinction were to be removed. Who runs the saloon cars and who runs the wheelchair-accessible vehicles? Obviously, one is cheaper than the other, and having a taxi accessibility policy for wheelchairs means that we will have sufficient numbers of wheelchairs to serve the travelling public, in particular disabled people that need them. I echo what Mr Campbell has said. Certainly in West Lothian, the policies that the council has put into place in the past few years have meant that taxis and private hire cars complement each other. If you want a specialist vehicle that can carry a heavy wheelchair, for example, you can book one of our type 2 private hire cars. If you want a taxi, then, as from the end of this month, you will be able to know whether you can access that taxi, whether you can hail one in the street or whether you can queue up at a taxi ramp, because you will know what the standard is. Prior to that, we found that a lot of vehicles, bigger vehicles being used by the private hire trade, were eminently suitable as wheelchair-accessible and disabled-accessible vehicles, but there was nothing to compel the operators of those vehicles to put in the necessary requirements to allow disabled people to access them easily. On some of the points that Mr Burnie has touched on, on knowledge tests and all the other things, do you, as licensing authorities, at this moment in time, do anything in terms of trying to ensure that taxi or private hire car drivers take into account the needs of the folks who are using their service, or do you think that that is a matter for them as individual operators or companies? I feel quite strongly about that. I feel that we are in a world that is quite regulated. When I was here last time, we were talking about liquor licensing. Almost everyone in the liquor licensing area needs to pass a test. I think that everyone in the hire car sphere should have a certain level of expertise. In our area, most of those people are self-employed, so no employer is going to come along and say that they need to set a particular test. I think that the Government should set a standard. We were one of two councils that worked with the Scottish Government in relation to looking at testing training for hire car drivers. We worked with people first, and they set up a number of modules covering customer service accessibility, pricing and the legalities. That was certainly very well received. We would like to put that in place, but we would like the Government to say that it should be in place for all areas. In terms of assisting the travelling public in general, we, in relation to taxis, particularly have a condition that reasonable assistance should be given to passengers with luggage. Turning to the point about knowledge test, we also have a knowledge test, and I agree with Mrs Watson that that should be encouraged. Obviously, it is a resource implication for local authorities in terms of the test that has been invigilated. The knowledge test is for hackney and private hire as well. Not only for taxis, but if the provision were to come in, I would give authorities the discretion to introduce such a policy. In relation to that, the numbers would be bigger for private hire cars. For instance, we have 214 taxis, which is our numbers limit. Private hire cars have more than three times that, or almost four times that. It means that that would have to be accommodated. Knowledge tests and sales differ throughout the country, but section 13 of the current legislation is geared towards topography and knowledge of the streets in the area, plus such other matters as the council thinks are appropriate. I accept what Mrs Watson has also said in relation to the people's first training. There probably are difficulties in having that as a mandatory system at the moment, given the current provision. If it is not taken up voluntarily, I think that the devil do perhaps, with extending the training, making it much wider. Although the legislation says that it can cover currently such other matters as the council thinks are appropriate, whether that would be enough to include matters such as child protection and so forth, might be a moot point. We would prepare that private hires were also licensed and had to do knowledge testing and that type of thing. To me, listening to it today, the comments such as how regulations vary around the country, arrangements vary between different companies in the same area. People want clarity about what they are getting into when they hire a car, whether it is a taxi or a hired car. We would recommend that we have some kind of taxi passengers charter where we could then have to tell people—somebody, I think it was Mr Widburn at the end said—important thing was to educate the public about the use of private hired cars one way or the other. Nothing should be important. One thing to have regulations is that the public should know what the regulations are and what the regulations entitle them to. Both in terms of the type of price they are going to pay, the kind of journeys they can make and also the kind of service they expect from drivers. I would like to see us have something where, rather than just us talking about the detail of the regulations and how it is going to work between the two different sectors, I would like to see us publishing guidance to drivers and the public about the type of training. We had to talk, for example, with drivers through training and disability, they have modules in disability, they have modules and other things, but I did not know that. I think that the public should know that. They should know that if the driver has been trained and that kind of thing, the public should know what type of training they have had and what kind of service and understanding they ought to have. Too often, the reports that we get are the... I am not saying that all taxi drivers are bad, by any means, most of them are very good, but you get the odd cases where drivers just do not seem to accept that they do have some kind of responsibility to the passengers. I would like to see, maybe it could be done by having a little press adverse, but this is the charter between the higher company and the passenger of what you are entitled to. Maybe little notices in doctors waiting rooms in community centres. Trying to get people to understand how the licensing process works. Do you think that the public are interested in how the licensing process works? No, they want to know not so much how the licensing process works, but what the implications of the licensing process are in terms of what they are entitled to, which cars they can use, how much they can be charged and what type of service the driver should provide for them, how they went into which kind of cars they can have, which will have ramps to bring. I am going to stop you, Mr Burnie, and I am going to play devil's advocate, because I always say, and probably my fellow committee members are bored of me saying this, sometimes we cannot legislate for common sense and we can create lots and lots of different things. The charter that you are talking about, all of this advertising and the booklets that you have talked about, all of that would have to be covered by the amount of fees that are charged to the trade itself. Then again, that would obviously reflect back on the public, because they would have to pay for that and the fares that they are paying. Do you actually think that to do what you are suggesting would be welcomed by the public, who are likely to be charged for what you are suggesting? When Mr Woodburn talked about a free market and the market would decide and people have a choice, you do not have a choice unless you have an informed choice. We would like to know what actually your book and which one companies differ from another. You have some companies, for example, that advertise that they are women-friendly and that they are going to take particular concern over women. Why not also have companies saying that they are also age-friendly and that they are going to take particular concern for older people? That type of thing. That is up to individual companies and they will gain or not gain from what they do in terms of that. That is again a market scenario. It depends on your view of what the Government should do, does it not? If you think that we are well okay, we are going to have a public service and that is really what taxes come down to in the end, run surely on the basis of what individual companies decide to do, that is one thing. However, I do believe that there should be a Government oversight on the type of, as part of the licensing arrangements, the kind of service and the kind of commitment that the companies are going to give to vulnerable groups. Okay, thank you. John Lawson, please. Thank you, convener. Good morning. It's just that, Mr Campbell, you gave a number and I believe it was 214 taxes and that's the upper limit, that's your maximum number of taxes, but you said that there's about three times as many as private hire cars. Have you an upper limit? No, no, sorry, there are more than three times as many private hire cars because we don't have an upper limit. I would take the view that we can't have an upper limit at the present time. Can I ask why the view of the authority is that you can't have an upper limit on private hire cars but you can't have an upper limit in terms of the number of taxes? Section 10 of the 1982 act specifically allows authorities to refuse an application for a licence, for a taxi licence, where there is no significant unmet demand for those services, for taxies in the area. There is no provision, so effectively one provision is made explicitly and that provision is not replicated in the act for private hire cars. I'm trying to get the issue of why you feel there is an upper limit can be applied to taxies, but there is no upper limit for private hire cars. When we currently see the distinction between a taxi and the operation of a private hire car, the line is being blurred. I was saying this earlier to a couple of colleagues. I remember that I was on a licensing board in 1980 and I vaguely remember part of the reason for the change in the legislation in 1982. It was around the issue of the number of taxies that was felt, the adequate number of taxies in local authorities, but by introducing private hire cars, private hire cars could be used to help service peak time demand for cars for hire. If you are saying that you have as an authority, you have a maximum number in terms of 214 taxies, but there is no distinction in terms of private hire cars. How do you make that distinction between how a private hire car operates and a taxi operates? Thank you for the question. Perhaps I could explain some of the context. We have a number's limitation with respect to taxies. The view that we have taken is that, because the provision is explicit for one and not the other, it would not be competent for us to introduce a process at the moment. Obviously, that would change if the provision in the new bill was to be enacted. However, what happens is that any decision on that has to be evidence-based. Because we have that power in relation to taxies, we get an external survey produced from time to time. That is boosted by the civil enforcement officer that we have on a voluntary basis. It is evidence-based because there is no provision in the legislation at the present time. It is not something that we have saw. I would have to ask at a considerable cost to get that evidence to inform such a policy. The only other things that are perhaps saddened in relation to your question is that, in terms of peak time demand, although there obviously is a bottleneck and an issue peak time demand, the case law under the 1982 act seems to say that there will be periods when the demand does reach a peak and perhaps there will be an eminent of waiting time at ranks, but the guiding principle understands that it is more of a general demand by the public for services. I understand that, Mr Campbell. I am picking your authority in particular because of the distinction that you have made in terms of taxes versus private higher cars. Can you indicate how often the surveys are carried out by your authority? Whether or not there has been any account taken of the increased demand that may have arisen because of the increased number of passengers arriving at Glasgow airport, particularly given that Renfrewshire Council has the authority responsible for taxi ranks at Glasgow airport, and was there any indication of unmet demand or demand peaks during the time of the Commonwealth Games and other events such as that, that the local authority could have taken account of to increase the number of taxi licences? In terms of how often I can say that our last policy in relation to numbers, the last update that was done externally, I think was in 2010, there are periodic inspections by the civic government enforcement officers. I know that there have been from time to time stance observations done, not sure that the Commonwealth Games particular, there was an examination of that, but we do have to work within general demand as well because there will be times of peak business and obviously the private higher cars and otherwise can obviously service the market as well. Just to explain how the process works, if we get a report from an external organisation into numbers, that does not bar somebody from making an application for a taxi licence despite the fact that we may have reached our numbers threshold, what happens to the persons entitled to an application in and that will be considered by our regulatory functions board, which effectively is our civic licensing committee. Just for clarification, Mr Campbell, if you have reached your maximum number of operational taxis in Renfrewshire and somebody makes an application, then that application, based on the average to your maximum number, will be rejected? No, we cannot do that. In particular, there is case law in the mid-notties, if I can put it in those terms, where there is a residual discretion. Because we have a policy, it does not mean that we can rigidly adhere to that policy, we have to be able to listen to people and have exceptions. I am not able to perhaps project what might be a successful act before the board, but we have to put an application before the board. It will be flagged as an issue to the person applying that we have reached our threshold and therefore there is a risk that their application may not find favour with the board, but that is ultimately a matter for the councillors and it is not a matter for me as an officer to bounce an application. Can I take you back a little bit, because you said that, in terms of private hire cars, that under section 10 of the 1982 act that you could not put a cap on numbers? In your opinion, if any local authority was to put a cap on at this moment with the current legislation on private hire cars, would they be in breach of the 1982 act? Do you not be explicitly in breach of it? I suppose that, where I am coming from, there is a specific provision about taxes that has not been replicated for private hire cars. What a court would make of that, I am not sure that the point has been taken. How many local authorities are you aware of? I know that you probably won't be able to answer, but are there many local authorities that you are aware of who have a cap on private hire? I was not aware that there were any, but there may be. In terms of section 10 of the 1982 act, what is your interpretation of that in terms of private hire car caps? I agree with Mr Campbell. I have always thought that no-one had a limit, and I certainly would think that if you had a limit under the current legislation, that would be challengeable on appeal. John Swinney, do you want to come back? I am trying to still understand Mr Campbell's licensing committee remit. If you have reached your cap and somebody makes an application, then the committee can then adjust their thinking on that and grant a taxi licence, which means that your limit would go up to 214 if the committee agreed to grant that licence. On the basis of that, is there really a cap there? The limit would still be 214, but in the situation that you are describing, which is not a situation that we have at the moment, but if that situation arose, the limit in terms of the policy would be 214, but, de facto, we would have made an exception to it, which would take the actual number of licences issued to 215. The point that I am trying to make is that, in the application process, we can have a policy but somebody can still come in. The wording of the legislation is that we may refuse a licence where we consider their significant unmet demand. It does not say that we will because we have found evidence that there is no significant unmet demand. I am just trying to get my head around the flexibility that exists for licensing committees if you have already set an upper limit. I think that the answer to that is really up to the licensing committee, our board will set the limit, and then the licensing committee, our board, then will look at applications that may breach that limit. We have to look at applications and evidence in its own merits, and the board has got a discretion, and it cannot fetter that discretion, and the courts are clear about that. However, that is not to say that a good case might not met an exception. Cameron, you want to come in on this. You mentioned significant unmet demand. That is presumably something like West Lothian, if it was outwith the reach of the centre of West Lothian, then that would constitute significant unmet demand, whether it was not enough if there was a case for it. Is that what your meaning is? No, I think that the test is actually that we can refuse an application for a tax licence where we are satisfied that there is no significant unmet demand, so I apologise that I haven't made that as we seem to have might have. Thank you. Alex Rowley, please. That is the same bit. I mean, it was mentioned, but I would ask both the local authority witnesses in terms of significant costs, in terms of determining what is provision and over-provision. In terms of the types of surveys that you would do, do you see major cost implications in terms of trying to establish private hire? Also, it was mentioned by one of the last witnesses that, how would you measure that? How would you measure for private hire what was over provision? Let's start with Mrs Watson this time, please. Well, in 2009, West Lothian Council decided to do away with our limit on taxis. The reason for that was twofold. One, we didn't think that there could possibly be unmet demand, say there was no unmet demand, when there were new private hire cars being licensed every day. The market must work, and those people must find work in order to remain licensed, and the numbers of private hire cars have gone up steadily through the last few decades. We thought that that was a difficulty. The second one was that having a cap creates a black market for licences. Licence plates change hands on the basis of money. Given that the legislation provides that the licence comes to an end when someone dies, what we found in our area was that Mr A no longer wished to operate his taxis, so he leased it to Mr B, who perhaps provided a new vehicle, but when Mr A died, the licence came to an end, and we didn't think that that was right. We did away with the limit. Mr Campbell, in terms of costs, they are substantial, the costs even for doing a taxis survey, and now that what is proposed for private hire cars, and I have to say anything that gives discretion to localised and authorities are broadly welcome, but it is a different test, so I am not sure whether that would mean basically doubling the costs of surveys if authorities decided to go down the private hire route as well in terms of over provision. I cannot release any figures, I am not aware of any way at the moment, in relation to how much we spend, but it would be a substantial sum on a single survey even just for taxis. In terms of private hire car measurement, it is perhaps more difficult than taxis because you can measure at ranks for taxis for pre-booked cars. I am not quite sure how you establish if there is over provision, which in terms of the proposed legislation requires an examination of demand as well, so you are looking over provision and demand as part of that. I also have some lack of understanding of how it would work in practice. In terms of liquor licensing, there are clear licensing objectives that are sought to be achieved by the legislation such as crime prevention, securing public safety, preventing public nuisance and health objectives that are sought to be achieved by that legislation. I am not sure whether over provision as a test, as opposed to unmet demand, necessarily sits well with taxis, where it would be harder to say that there are too many cars available to take people home at the end of an evening. We are talking about demand and all the rest of it. Mrs Watson is describing an approach in which your authority is letting the market decide that you are paying for surveys and all the rest of it. Mr Campbell just mentioned surveying demand. Local authorities survey residents quite a lot in various ways, shapes and forms throughout the country. Would it be wise in those surveys of residents, whether that be citizens, panels or whatever, to survey the general public and see what they think about taxi and private hire-car provision in their area? We will start with Mr Barney. As a point, of course, I come here with a different remit from others. I am not a local authority, I am not a taxi owner, but we are looking at a point of view of the customer. At the end of the day, the reason that you are tidying up the regulations is to make life better for customers safer and better for the general public. I do not think that you can really make things safer and better for the general public unless you tell them what you have done or what you have achieved from. One of the things that I was asking for—I do not think that I am winning here—was that if we learn, for example, that drivers in order to be licensed have to have a disability training, discrimination training, health training and so on. I think that it would be helpful that the public knew that. I also think that it would be interesting to know, for example, that if taxi drivers have to have that type of particular training but higher drivers do not have to have it, I would think that would be wrong. I think that anybody who is being paid to drive the public around ought to be properly qualified and part of that qualification ought to be that they have had some training in how to deal with disabled people and that kind of thing. I know that you have got views on all of those things and we will get to them. The specific question was round about whether the local authorities should be asking the public in their area about demand, whether they think that provision of taxis and private hire cars in their area is enough or not. If we want to organise a series of meetings around the country, we can make that one of the issues that we discuss with our people. I think that local authorities could organise that. That would be extremely useful. If you want to feed anything back, you would be grateful. Mr Campbell, I think that I can be brief for perhaps the first time today. To answer your question bluntly, I think that it would be wise to survey the public, but to put that in context, in terms of taxes at the moment, what we do is we have an external survey carried out from time to time. It is fairly detailed and thorough. Ultimately, this is all challenged before the courts, so evidence tends to be produced to local authorities that are robust. To answer your question, I am sure that I would imagine that that would form part of it. In our submission, convener, we mentioned a lot of the changes that the council has whistled in a broad instance in 2009. The reason why that happened was that we did a survey in 2008. We got a very good response—over 40 per cent, which is quite incredible for surveys. The biggest response that we got was on disability issues. Whistled in council decided that they would set up a consultative group with representatives of key stakeholders. That is where our changes came from. The biggest fault was the lack of disabled accessible vehicles. Some people found that they had a very good response from the local operators that they used, but the vast majority were saying that there are not enough vehicles that are accessible to us. It is not just about wheelchairs, it is about people who are hard of hearing, people who cannot see properly and people who need ramps and steps. There needs to be drivers trained as well. That is why we think that it is important that the Government brings forward training for all drivers. In terms of demand, what did your survey show? Did that lead to any policy changes or were your policy changes already in place? Our difficulty was that if what the survey was telling us loud and clear was that there were not enough accessible vehicles, then by having a policy that restricted the number of accessible vehicles from being licensed, it was a no-brainer. The limit on taxis had to go. What has happened in the past five years is that the taxi numbers have stayed at almost the same level that the number of private hires has gone down, but the number of accessible vehicles has gone up. That is extremely useful. I wonder if I could come back to the protection of the public issue that I raised earlier and take the advice of particularly my local authority colleagues. In terms of one taxi driver moving from one authority to another where a substantial number of complaints had been raised against a person in the one authority that was not known in the other authority, how can we improve that situation so that we can somehow improve and ensure protection of the public? I know that, in our application forms, we ask if we have applied to other authorities, and that is one aspect of it. Obviously, all applications are sent to Police Scotland, who will comment, and that can include convictions and non-convictions conduct, as well, that have not gone that far. I appreciate the point that you are making. It depends on the particular strength of the information that is available to the police, and ultimately, the presentation that is put before the board. There will always be differences in approach by a board of elected members, because they have a discretion that they are entrusted with under legislation, but I take the point, and it is certainly a concern that local authorities have, but we ask whether they have applied to another authority, and we also take into account information from the police. One of the points that was made earlier in relation to that is that the board would not set aside the police letter. It becomes a matter as to how much weight is given to certain information that is before the board when they exercise their discretion. On concealing and lying about his or her personal circumstances, how are you going to find out about the other authority? I do not mean your two authorities. How are you going to know? Is one authority entitled to pass on to another authority case examples where substantial complaints have been raised about a taxi driver? Are you not permitted to do that? I am not absolutely certain about that, but I would say that the application formed themselves that asked that question and passed on to Police Scotland. They do sometimes raise this person has applied to Glasgow for a licence and been refused. That does happen. Our applications say the same thing, but I am thinking through that. That probably works fine when it is a criminal matter, but where it is more a matter of low-level conduct, I am not entirely sure that we would know that a driver had had problems in other areas short of being suspended. An authority would not necessarily pass that information on to neighbouring authorities that substantial complaints were raised about a particular driver. They would not share that naturally, would they? Not a data protection specialist, but I think that I could see issues in relation to that. One of the provisions is whether you welcome the removal of the contract exemption and what the practical implications of that may be. We have heard from some rural local authorities who are concerned about the withdrawal of the exemption because the additional costs might cause some higher-car operators to withdraw from the market and because there might be an adverse impact on council procurement, for example, to take children to school or maybe older folks to lunch clubs or whatever. Mr Burnie, do you have a view on that? No, I do not have a comment on that. Thank you, convener. I am not involved in the procurement process, but I think that it is part of the standard framework that we have for contracts that hold those sorts of licences anyway, so I do not know whether there will be an implication in that respect. In broad terms, I welcome the proposal to remove the exemption as I have indicated in my consultation response, because I think that it is an enforcement lacuna where unless you monitor a driver that you cannot realistically do 24 hours a day, how do you say, if they say to you, well, I will only take one hire a day, it is a potential loop-pull out of that. I accept that Mrs Watson has put in her response a couple of cases where there may be merit for an exemption that I have not raised in mine, but I think that where you have limousines that have less than or eight or fewer passenger seats, effectively you could have limousine companies saying, well, you cannot licence us. It is an issue, potentially. I think that there could be more control if the exemption were to be removed as proposed. In my response, I say that it would be quite difficult to identify the top-end, the chauffeur-driven vehicles. How would Police Scotland know that they were taking someone on a higher-car journey? There would have to be some sort of signage, and that would have to differ from the private hire signage. As you have heard this morning, a lot of steps have been taken to make sure that the public knows the difference between a taxi and a private hire car. Gently, in Whistley and in Edinburgh, there are door signs. I would not imagine that the top-end market would want that, but if it did not get that, how would you identify how they became the top-end? What markers would you have? I would simply worry about how that would all work in practice. In England, there are plates that they put in the boot so that the passengers can check that it is a licensed vehicle, but I do not see how enforcement officers could check that. Can I ask you if you share the Scottish Government's view that services that are run by community groups or charities, which are not for profit, continue to be exempt from the licensing regime? I do not know whether some local communities have been running their own services. It worries me a bit, because I would want to feel that the people who are doing that have had some testing before they are allowed to do it. It is fun to think for me to say or give somebody a lift, occasionally, which I do to the hospital or something, but if you are running it as a kind of service, as some cases are using it to cover up the lack of public transport, I think that that becomes a worry. I would prefer that there was some sort of testing for people like that too. Do you think that community groups and charities should be included in the licensing regime if they are running services? Possibly a less restrictive licensing regime, but it worries me that someone could just say, well, okay, I am going to start replacing the local bus service. I know a couple of people who are doing that. It is a bit worrying, because I would want to think that we knew that they had at least a PSP licence or something like that. They actually properly qualified for it. Mr Campbell, I suppose that coming at it from a regulation perspective, certainly I would take the starting premise as the protection of the public. I can understand why the view would be held. I do not want to feel like an extra. It is based appropriately for their view on it. Mrs Watson? I would imagine that most of the hires would be covered by the provision of vulnerable groups legislation anyway, so that protects people from the drivers. In relation to vehicles, I am simply not aware if there have been issues with vehicles that are not in a good state of repair taking people around. We certainly would not want to be involved in licensing if they did not need to be licensed. Okay. Do you have any concerns about the operation of the licensing regime that is not being addressed in the bill? In relation to the checking of previous convictions, if you are a taxi or private hire applicant, none of your offences are spent unless they are offences that have been dealt with by ATPs, which are fixed penalties that were introduced a few years ago. I would like to see those not becoming spent for taxi and private hire car drivers. We are seeing some fairly serious offences such as violent disorder and drug offences being dealt with day and daily by ATPs. Those are being spent, some of them immediately are issued and some of them within three months. It means that, if the police want to bring forward a person's entire history, they have to do what is called the two-stage test. It becomes quite legalistic and not necessary for members of committees to have to deal with. First, we have to say that there is something that is not here that we want to tell you about. Will you let us tell you about it and then they need to tell you what it is if they pass that test? I think that your whole record, if you want to transport the public, should be before the committee so that they can decide whether you are a fit and proper person. A lot of the ones that I have concerns with are drug offences. I would echo those thoughts by Mrs Watson. I think that the two-stage test becomes really quite complicated when you get into different regimes because there are exclusions and exceptions in relation to drivers of private hire and taxi vehicles. In effect, it can disable boards as they understand the position, which is not straightforward in relation to looking at those matters for drivers. We have become Spain either immediately, Mrs Watson says, for fiscal warnings or after three months in the case of fiscal fines. We have heard today concerns about companies such as Uber and Halo entering the market. Do you have concerns on those fronts? If so, what are they, Mr Burnie? I am sorry to ask you a question. In terms of Uber and Halo, the app companies that we were talking about earlier, do you have any concerns about them entering the market? Yes, it is pretty much what I said at the beginning. I have an app in my own phone, like most people, and I can contact the local taxi company, so that is relatively secure. The worry was when Dr Cooper was describing a possible explosion in the market, that if we have a few local companies, we can get to know the reputation of the local company, but if we have a complete brief at all where there are dozens of companies and you are not sure who you are getting, that would worry me. I do not think that he outlined in his paper the difficulty of keeping track of that type of thing, but I do think that it is important that the Government takes a grip of the local authority, and we make sure that anyone providing a service is a properly qualified driver. I can see, as he said, the difficulties in doing that. You pick up your phone and dial a number and you get a car. How do you know? Again, that is what I was talking about earlier. The important thing will be to let the public know what the situation is in relation to those kinds of companies. Mr Campbell, I think that there is probably widespread concern about the points that Dr Cooper has made. I think that he has raised considerable concerns. I would perhaps add to those concerns that Dr Cooper is the best place to speak about in detail, given his knowledge of the technology and his particular specialism. I would add to that that is that in the civic government we have level 2 fines, where offences are committed by people who do not have licences, and so forth. Whereas in the liquor licence and its levels 5, perhaps those levels of those penalties might be looked at at some point. Mrs Watson, please. Yes. I was interested in what some of the earlier panels said about booking office licences. Certainly Mr Campbell and I had a quick look at the legislation when we were sitting behind. As far as we could see what the evidence that you heard was not correct, you do not need to be licenced in your area to have a booking office. We certainly have one booking office that operates vehicles from the Falkirk area, which is licenced in West Lothian. There is nothing to say that the booking office and the vehicles and their drivers have to be connected. I know in the cities that most people work for one of the big companies, but that is simply not the case when you get out with the cities. Lots of people are self-employed, they might have their own vehicle, they might not be involved in any booking office at all. As far as I can see, it may not be the case that Uber would need booking office licences. If someone had a booking office in England, for example, I do not think that they would need a licence. I think that that should be tightened up immediately. I think that that is extremely useful. Yes, Mr Burnie? I think that the situation that he was describing worries me is that the way that the internet works is that I could tomorrow open a website inviting people to put their name forward to be a driver and they could then put their name on my website, or they then someone contacts my website, it goes to one or the other of the drivers. Is that how you regulate that and how you make sure that that type of thing is properly regulated rather than just having that kind of random system that the internet lends itself to and that is the type of thing that he was describing was difficult to control? I am not quite sure. I take Mrs Watson's points entirely and we did have a discussion and agree with what she has said. I am not quite sure how it would work if the office was out with Scotland altogether, because it may be theoretically possible. Although it has to be relevant vehicles that are registered at booking offices, I suppose that whether they would be registered in England is perhaps less likely. We have a condition locally, in addition to the mandatory conditions of booking office licence, which states that the holder of a taxi operator's licence shall not have installed in his taxi a two-way radio or similar device, the base of operation or control point of which is situated out with the boundary of venture counsel, so we have done that certainly at a local level and we had done when the booking office regime came in. It may be that, given that there are other mandatory conditions for booking offices, that is something that could be considered. Okay, Mrs Watson? Yes, I would think that that would be an excellent idea. My issue is that we do not have a condition like that, because I am not satisfied that that is a reasonable condition that would stand up to scrutiny by the appeal court. However, if it was in the guidance, it certainly would. I think that things have moved on very quickly and Dr Cooper talked about that this morning. I think that the conditions and the mandatory conditions in the guidance all need to be scrutinised to make sure that they are completely up to date. Thank you very much. Any other questions, members? No. I thank you very much for your evidence today and I suspend when we move into private session.