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Unmet
demand?
(4/8/2004)
Woking's
recent unmet demand survey underlines
the uncertainty surrounding the
Government's Action Plan. Our
current de-limitation news roundup (Mixed
messages) provides an interesting comparison
between the situation in Woking and
Wycombe. While committee members
in the former recommended retaining
restricted taxi numbers, in the latter
councillors voted to de-limit.
This
juxtaposition is particularly
interesting as these two authorities
were cited in the Office of Fair
Trading's report as being host to
particularly high plate premiums; while
the £50,000 premiums in these areas are
not the highest in the country, the
OFT's main report only mentioned one
other area in this regard.
More
interesting still is that the survey
used to justify the status quo in Woking
found no significant unmet demand at
all, thus allowing the committee to
resolve that taxi numbers are maintained
at the current 54.
This
underlines, a fortiori, what we
said recently about the apparent
contradiction between the Department for
Transport's claim about a correlation
between the presence of high plate
premiums and significant unmet demand (SUD),
and the £40,000 premiums evident in
Brighton even after the issue of new
plates that in theory should eradicate
any SUD, with that process described by
Transport Minister Tony McNulty as
'exemplary'.
While
there seems little point in saying any
more on this issue, it is also
interesting that the minutes of the
Woking meeting show that councillors
appear to have taken little cognisance
of what the Government required in
relation to its Action Plan with regard
to maintaining restricted numbers, in
particular its core requirements to
outline specific local circumstances
requiring the policy and an explanation
of how restrictions benefit
consumers. Of course, the process
in Woking and elsewhere is far from
complete in this regard, but it is disappointing
that there was no mention of these
matters in the minutes, despite a
specific mention of the DfT's letter.
However,
Mr McNulty's statements in Parliament
did suggest that these ostensibly more
onerous requirements might not amount to
very much at all, or at least nothing
more demanding than the usual misleading
nonsense disseminated by the snake oil
salesmen of the T&G.
After
the publication of the Government's
response to the OFT's report we said
that its 'fudged and indecisive'
response would lead to 'continued
uncertainty and even more bureaucracy',
but we should have also included
'increased confusion'.
Symptomatic
of the various themes that we have
highlighted over the past few months is
one statement from the lead story in the
T&G's latest Cab Trade News publication:
"...Tony McNulty went to great
lengths in explaining that the
Government has no problems whatsoever
with restrictions policies."
This
fundamentally contradicts several
Government statements made as part of
its OFT response and which we
highlighted recently, but whether this
is due to confusion on the issue, a
Government U-turn or the often clearly
deliberate attempts by the T&G to
mislead, is not clear.
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