I joined Berwick in June 2004. The first out-of-town hackneys were not licensed until October 2006, so hardly closely linked in time to my arrival. It was, however, very closely linked in time to another council refusing to licence Polish applicants, which was discriminatory and contrary to EU law. It was that fact that resulted in a number of private hire operators visiting every council for miles around, with the result that they then licensed drivers and vehicles with Berwick and Eden Valley councils.
No-one would ever have come to Berwick if they hadn’t been pushed away by other councils – although once pushed away, they were drawn to Berwick, because of the conditions that had largely existed since adoption of the ‘76 Act in 1979. In the two and a half years I’d been at Berwick, I’d tightened some of the previous conditions so as to raise the standards, because before I got there vehicle testing didn’t even need to be done at an MOT testing station, let alone by an authorised MOT tester.
Whilst I was certainly the officer with responsibility for taxi licensing, I don’t really think its fair to hold me responsible for conditions that had existed since 1979 or for the discriminatory actions of other councils.
I don’t propose to enter into the debate over one or two-tier licensing, but acknowledge that those who fail to comply with the law do exacerbate the tensions that tend to exist in a two-tier system of any kind.
In every case in which Newcastle or North Tyneside prosecuted a Berwick driver, assistance was given by Berwick. Berwick would have been ‘happy’ to prosecute, but the offences were generally ones that could only be prosecuted by the police or the council in the area in which the offence was committed. We did take enforcement action against drivers, and such action was swift, because I had the delegated authority to suspend and revoke licences; and did so, even before conviction. If I was satisfied of the position, I did not have to wait for a conviction.
I agree that things could have been better managed by the councils, which is why Berwick offered to pay other councils for any enforcement they did on Berwick’s behalf. This would have meant that the local trade in any area wasn’t subsidising Berwick. Newcastle refused, because they didn’t want to weaken their arguments in the High Court case, which wasn’t an unreasonable decision, but didn’t help to resolve the problems that arose. Discussions with North Tyneside were more positive, but ultimately the government’s decision to unify Northumberland resulted in a lot of time being devoted to that, and not to implementing enforcement arrangements with North Tyneside.
As I’ve said in a previous post, so far as I was concerned, the High Court case was never going to produce a decision that I would like, so there was never a good reason to get into the position into which Berwick got in the first place, except for doing as we believed the law required.
Until the out-of-town situation arose, I had a job that was manageable and reasonably well paid for what was involved. As a result of the out-of-town situation, I had a massive job, which necessitated the recruitment of additional temporary staff and made me “public enemy number one” with a large proportion of the trade and many councils and council officers (albeit not all, to be fair to those who agreed or disagreed with me, but who respected my judgment and the unenviable position the council and I was in). And no, I didn’t get a pay rise, so I had all that grief for the same money as I got before.
It’s always easy to blame the person in charge of anything at the time that something happens that we don’t like, but I think the facts here demonstrate that the same situation would have existed no matter who was in charge, because of the actions of other councils and the conditions that had largely existed in Berwick since 1979.
With hindsight, I could have refused to licence all of these drivers and vehicles, and probably wouldn’t have been challenged by the operators. However, I had no way of knowing that when I was first asked the question, so I did what the law appeared to require, having consulted with the Council’s Borough Solicitor, Jim Button and others, including the Department for Transport (DfT).
To be honest about the DfT, they expressed the view initially that it was unlawful, but their reasons for saying so was based on DPP v Computer Cabs, which concerned the legislation that applies in London, which has different terms to that which applies in the rest of England and Wales. Until the judgment in Newcastle v Berwick, there was nothing in the legislation or case law to establish that our interpretation was incomplete. I’m probably in the minority, because I accept the judgment and the logic of the decision, but the fact that most regard the judge as having “bottled it” or having “fudged the judgment” seems to demonstrate that his decision is one that was not held by anyone beforehand. The truth is that everyone’s view of the law and how it should be interpreted and applied was wrong – Berwick was wrong, Newcastle was wrong, Berwick Borough Taxi Association was wrong, Blue Line Taxis was wrong, and so was everyone else who ever expressed an opinion about it –no-one anywhere ever predicted this outcome!
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