Clause 1 - Carrying of guide dogs, hearing dogs and other assistance dogs
Private Hire Vehicles (Carriage of Guide Dogs etc.) Bill
11:00 am
Mr Neil Gerrard (Walthamstow, Labour)
That is very helpful. Every time that I have come across guide dogs they have been well behaved and gentle. A dog that is not reasonably well behaved would be unsuitable as a guide dog or assistance dog.
There are bound to be problems, for example, with a person who has a single-car business and is covered by an exemption certificate. Someone may make a booking and have the unfortunate experience of such a driver turning up who cannot take the individual because of his exemption. That would be an inconvenience and a fresh booking would have to be made. However, the number of such occasions will be small; we know that exemption certificates that have been issued to licensed taxis are very few, and I do not expect huge numbers of exemption certificates to be issued in this case. I cannot remember the exact number, but we have something in the order of 6,000
assistance dogs of one sort or another. We also have about 150,000 private hire vehicles, so we will not be placing a huge burden on operators and drivers.
I understand the point about passengers and allergies. That is a difficult problem. Anyone with an allergy could get into a private vehicle after someone else had just been in it with a dog, or after someone had been in it wearing perfume; it would be terribly difficult to legislate against such possibilities. On the issue of local authority hire vehicles, local authorities that are hiring vehicles would in most cases have contracts with the companies from which they hire. It should be possible, through those contracts, for local authorities to think about the various possibilities and ensure that they do not create a difficulty where one should not exist. In most cases in which there are contracts with local authorities, the contract will be the mechanism through which problems are dealt with, rather than through legislation, which cannot cover every single possibility that we think of.
I have tried to address some of the concerns, and I shall reflect on the points that have been made. The amendment will work, but I shall reconsider some points because we do not want to produce something that does not work properly.
Amendment agreed to.