Draft Taxi and Private Hire Vehicle Bill

The licensing regime today operates on three layers. The base is the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976 for areas outside London and the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Act 1998 for London — neither modernised for app-based and cross-border hiring 1. The middle layer is the 2020 Statutory Taxi and Private Hire Vehicle Standards 2, issued under s.177 of the Policing and Crime Act 2017, which binds licensing authorities to a safeguarding floor (enhanced DBS + barred-list checks, DBS Update Service, biannual rechecks, NR3 use, overseas Certificates of Good Character, and 48-hour self-reporting of arrests). The top layer is the November 2023 Best Practice Guidance 3, which is non-statutory and extends to accessibility, Inclusive Service Plans, WAV uptake, fees and cross-border hiring — and the Government response to that consultation 4 sets out where DfT moved its position on ISPs, disability awareness training and test purchasing. The Safeguarding and Road Safety Act 2022, fully commenced on 27 April 2023 by SI 2023/460 5, adds statutory information-sharing duties and is the operational backbone of NR3. The structural question — who licenses — is being re-opened by the January 2026 consultation proposing transfer to upper-tier local transport authorities 6, following the December 2024 English Devolution White Paper. The draft Bill announced in May 2026 7 is the first Government commitment to legislate.

Three developments in the last six months frame the build. First, the King's Speech 2026 on 13 May 2026 named the Draft Taxi and Private Hire Vehicle Bill 1 as a King's Speech commitment, locking in primary legislation as the Government's intended route. Second, the DfT consultation on making local transport authorities the licensing tier for taxis and PHVs closed on 8 January 2026 2 — the response is due and will shape whether the Bill is a single 'codification + structural reform' instrument or two parallel workstreams. Third, the Transport Committee held formal oral evidence sessions on 15 October 2025 and 14 January 2026 3 alongside its written-evidence collection 4, and published a letter from the Minister for Local Transport dated 11 December 2025 5. PQs in March 2026 (PKs 60130, 60131, 60132, 60124, 60123) bring increasing specificity: a national driver database (60130), a single national fit-and-proper definition (60131), a national taxi-standards timetable (60132), cross-border hiring reform (60123) and the application of Baroness Casey's National Audit on Group-Based Child Sexual Exploitation to the licensing question (60124).

The three near-term watch-points are the Government's response to the LTA-transfer consultation 1, publication of the draft Bill text itself 2, and the Transport Committee's report 34. The structural choice is the largest: if the Bill simply codifies the Statutory Standards 5 and puts NR3 on a statutory footing without changing which authorities licence, it will close the safeguarding-floor gap but leave the cross-border hiring problem intact — exactly the gap PQ 60123 flags. If the Bill also adopts the LTA-licensing model from the January 2026 consultation 1, roughly 280 district-tier licensing authorities collapse into a much smaller number of upper-tier transport authorities, and the cross-border problem largely solves itself by enlarging the licensing footprint. Second, watch for the Bill's treatment of the four specific reforms canvassed in March 2026 PQs: a national driver database 6, a single national fit-and-proper definition 7, a national standards timetable 8, and explicit response to the Casey National Audit findings on group-based CSE and taxi licensing 9. Third, watch DPTAC and disability-sector engagement: the 2023 government response 10 adopted a partial accessibility package (ISPs recommended but not mandated; reference-wheelchair specification but no larger-wheelchair mandate); the Bill is the moment to harden any of these into statutory duties. Fourth, watch the Surveillance Camera Commissioner's position on any mandatory CCTV-in-vehicles provision 11.

The principal corpus gap is that the draft Bill text and its explanatory notes are not yet published — every characterisation of scope in this brief is inferred from the King's Speech notice 1 and the surrounding policy stack rather than the Bill itself. A second uncertainty is the interaction between the Bill and the LTA-transfer consultation 2: the Government has not yet committed to sequencing or combining them. Third, the corpus contains no Transport for London or Mayor of London position; any national reform must engage with the parallel London regime under the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Act 1998 and the corpus is silent on this. Inferred from corpus gap: the Transport Committee inquiry report 3 has not yet been published, so the principal pre-legislative scrutiny output is still pending. The 2018 Task and Finish Group recommended a single national licensing body 4; the 2026 consultation proposes a different model (LTA-tier transfer), and there is no Government explanation of why the national-body route was dropped.