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Private Hire and Hackney Carriage Vehicles

My hon. Friend makes a good point. There are many excellent initiatives in towns across the country. They have recognised the problem of growing levels of alcohol abuse and the late night trade generally. We see organisations such as street angels working with the police, local authorities and taxi companies to ensure that towns do not suffer as a result of people staying out too long and that they get home safely. That relates to the point the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) made about the importance of local initiatives being given a national profile so that we can make changes all the way across. My hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Jonathan Lord) enables me to segue over to talk about the safety of passengers. It is a sad reflection on the taxi industry that, despite the significant efforts made by local authorities, which he mentioned, any cursory review of local newspapers will readily identify cases of assault—frequently sexual assault—of passengers by taxi drivers. That is the flipside of the issue of vulnerability. There is the vulnerability of drivers who are on their own, perhaps with cash, and the vulnerability of people being driven home on their own. In 2002, the Metropolitan police estimated that in London alone 214 women had been raped or sexually assaulted in such circumstances in the preceding year. The figure fell to 93 by 2009 but has recently increased. There is a range of initiatives that national Government and local authorities are taking to reduce risks to passengers. I will not dwell on those in too much detail, but a particular issue I want to highlight for the Minister is the limitations and availability of publicly held data that might be useful in reducing offences against passengers. There are currently 384 licensing authorities in the UK, each of which will have its own policies on the collection of data on drivers, such as their Criminal Records Bureau checks, and on their vehicles, and each authority will have its own rules about sharing that information. As we know, information is power, and that power ought to be available to passengers, should they wish to have it, when they hire a cab. It would provide reassurance to know that the vehicle and the driver are properly licensed. Am I safe? is a service that currently operates in more than 50 towns and covers 10% of the UK population, but it reports that local authority information gathering is patchy and that the timeliness of updates varies. I do not know whether that application is the best, but I believe that it makes sense to make this regulated information more accessible and more accurate. Therefore, I ask the Minister for his views on the value of a national registration database of private hire drivers and licensed vehicles and, more broadly, his comments on the need for rigour in data collection and CRB checks. Often, in towns and villages throughout our country, the only public transport option for getting back home after a night out is a cab—a private hire vehicle or hackney carriage. It is time for the Government, notwithstanding the Law Commission's review of legislation, to come forward with some initiatives that will make our private hire and taxi sectors a respected part of our transport system—a status that they and we, the public, deserve.