The debate provides me with an opportunity— [Interruption.] After you have been congratulated again by the Members who are at the Chair, Mr. Speaker, the debate provides me with the opportunity to wish you well. I understand the congratulations, and I wish you well in your very difficult task and recognise the courage that you have displayed in taking it on. My job tonight, however, is to talk about assaults on taxi drivers and the need to protect them further than we might have done so far.

I set the scene by pointing out that violence against taxi drivers has increased sizeably over the past decade. To be fair to the Government, they have recognised that on a number of occasions. I might add, however, that the increase is linked—there is now some evidence of the linkage—with the rise in late-night drinking in our major town centres, given the unsociable hours that taxi drivers work and the fact that people come out of clubs at 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning and then spend perhaps another half an hour in the kebab house before seeking a taxi. Those two factors are important in the increase in violence.

I do not need to tell the Minister about the vital importance of taxis to the transport industry. However, that importance is not well understood by many in local government. For instance, five or six years ago, Northamptonshire county council undertook a multi-modal study costing some £750,000. It might surprise the Minister to know that taxis were not included in that study, yet we are talking about an industry that employs 340,000 people. The latest figures to hand show that there are 71,500 Hackney cab drivers and more than 250,000 private-hire drivers. The industry makes about 700 million taxi journeys a year, which means an average of roughly 11 journeys for each member of the population. About £3 billion is spent on fares each year. We are therefore talking about a sizeable industry that plays a major role in our public transportation. It is important to recognise that.

I do not need to tell the Minister that taxi drivers are often alone with their customers in their cabs, and are therefore highly vulnerable. We need to bear that in mind quite seriously. Taxi drivers work on the front line of transportation and in the late hours, not least because no other transportation is available then. Their customers are unknown to them and they often pick them up in the very dimmest of light. Whereas the Minister and I might be able to spot an undesirable customer in the light of day, it is difficult for taxi drivers to do that.

Taxi drivers also take home groups of more than one person. Late at night, their customers are often the worse for drink. Those are difficult circumstances for any service provider to deal with customers in. Taxi drivers carry out a vital function in some of the most difficult circumstances that we might imagine, and they pay a price. Taxi drivers are under attack. The figures are not only clear; they are quite horrifying. There were 51 murders in the private-hire and Hackney cab industry over a 15-year period, which means an average of a little over three a year. That is a frightening figure in an industry that is about providing a service during antisocial hours to a customer base that often has no alternative. In truth, that might be a comment on our society, although it is not my purpose to talk about that this evening.

Let me give some examples of taxi drivers who were murdered. In May 2006, 37-year-old Mahmood Ahmed, a family man, was found stabbed to death in a country lane in Keighley. The post-mortem revealed that he had been hit hard on the head with a blunt instrument from behind—that is an important fact. In May 2007, in Gravesham, Kent, a 70-year-old grandfather, Gian Chand Bajar, was attacked and had the proceeds of that evening's work stolen. The attackers then took his taxi by force, ran over him and left him to die in the street. He died in hospital, and his car was found abandoned, having been set on fire, a mile from the site of the attack. In 2005, Mr. Colin Winstone, aged 44 and from Bristol, was found dead after being stabbed outside the Old Fox Inn at Easton, Bristol. Those three cases illuminate the fact that these are family people doing an important job, who meet a violent end that horrifies us all.

In addition to murders, there are thousands of attacks. Only last month in the Halifax area, a taxi driver named Amjad Farooq, aged 35, was violently attacked. He sustained serious head injuries, was beaten unconscious, had his car stolen and was hospitalised for a considerable time. In June 2009—only this month—another driver, whose name I was unable to get, was robbed at knifepoint by three men in Burnage, Manchester. In November 2008, another taxi driver recovered at home after being struck over the head with what was believed to have been a handgun. He was attacked by two men in Normanton, Derby, who then drove off in his taxi.

Those are just three examples—six altogether, including the murders that I have mentioned—of the thousands of incidents that are inflicted on taxi drivers every year. I would like to make the point that race is a major factor in this issue. Although only one third of the trade's drivers are from our ethnic minority communities, two thirds of the attacks are on people from those communities. I know that the Minister does not need me to underline that point to him, as he is aware of it and understands the horror of that aspect of these crimes.

Sadly, taxi drivers lack faith in the justice system, and many attacks are not reported. A survey carried out in Portsmouth in 2008 showed that, of the 396 drivers who responded, 60 per cent. had been a victim of crime in the past 12 months. It also showed that 70 per cent. admitted not reporting incidents to the police, and that the most common reason for that was that they did not think the police would be interested. We need to take that on board. Rightly or wrongly, that is the general impression that people have, and we have to deal with that. We cannot afford to have a sizeable part of our community believing that the police are not interested. Action needs to be taken in that regard.

As I have said, taxi drivers do not have faith in the justice system. Equally, the evidence suggests that, in certain parts of the country, the relationship between police and taxi drivers is simply not good enough. That is a pretty disturbing indictment, yet that is what the evidence shows. I fear that we are not in a position to refute it, but we are in a position to try to do something about it.

The cost to the nation of dealing with attacks on taxi drivers is remarkably high. The estimated cost of investigating the 51 murders over 15 years was £77.7 million. The cost of each investigation of violence against a person in relation to taxi drivers was £3,036 for each attack. That is quite a lot of money but, bearing in mind the crime, it is a price that we have to pay. It is, however, a price that we would wish not to pay. I know that the Minister feels the same. If we add social security and loss of earnings, the total cost to the country over those 15 years is sizeable. I have been given a figure, but I think that it is a mistake, so I shall not read it out, because I do not want it to go on the record. A sizeable amount is involved, nevertheless, and we need to take that into account.

There is action that we can take to help taxi drivers. There is a need for automatic protection between taxi drivers and their customers. That means screens in hire cars. Screens could be purchased to stop attacks from the rear, which is where many attacks emanate from in non-Hackney cab taxis. There would be a double benefit because, sadly, there are reports of unwanted sexual approaches made to young ladies late in the night and screens would stop that happening. There are good social reasons to encourage a simple answer for authorities that give licences to taxi cabs, and it would be easy to introduce a requirement to ensure that screens were fitted in non-Hackney taxi cabs—if we were willing to do so.

In March, Mr. Bryan Roland, general secretary of the Private Hire Association, fully endorsed in an open letter Safe Shield or shield-type products in cabs for those very reasons. However, and surprisingly, some councils will not permit the use of screens. That is quite remarkable. The Minister looks quizzical, but that is the information I have. I will write to him about it, although I am glad that he was as surprised as I was when I learned of it.

Screens are an aid to cutting violence against taxi drivers, as is CCTV. In Sheffield, a local taxi company had problems with assaults on its drivers. Over Christmas 2006, it suffered 400 incidents of violence. It was so worried that it paid for in-car cameras—an expensive exercise. The result? In 2007, only six incidents occurred. What a tremendous deterrent and a 98.5 per cent. reduction on the previous year thanks to CCTV. In Blackburn, Lancashire, there were 140 crimes—one for every five such vehicles on the road. Fourteen cars were fitted with CCTV equipment as part of a pilot scheme, with council help. That increased security for drivers and passengers.

There are ways to deal with these problems, therefore, and the London Taxi Network is another. The Minister will know that 4,500 London taxi drivers signed up to Dial-a-Cab and Radio Taxis Group, which provided enhanced security. I could go on. He will also know about the Taxi Marshals scheme. It is another way in which local authorities in particular can help in this respect.

I bring your attention, Mr. Speaker, to an Adjournment debate that I held on this very subject on 1 May 2008. On the point about CCTV, I said:

"There are problems, however. The units cost between £700 and £1,000 a car, and we know that most taxi drivers are self-employed and do not have that sort of capital. I am told that the cost of production is only £80 and that the rest is maintenance and back-up."—[ Hansard, 1 May 2008; Vol. 475, c. 547.]

I asked whether the Government would look into that. I did not receive an answer at the time, so I hope the Minister can come back with information that would be encouraging to taxi drivers vis-à-vis the cost and perhaps with ways that we can help to encourage the purchase of CCTV cameras.

A year ago, I asked the Minister who responded to the debate about local authorities encouraging the use of screens. It might almost be in the Government's thinking to say that screens ought to be fitted as a basic requirement in non-Hackney cab taxis. Will this Minister be kind enough to come back to me on that issue?

I ask the Minister to consider ways to improve relationships between taxi drivers and the police, if only to get rid of the perception among taxi drivers that the police do not care. Perhaps the police could do a little more to protect both the safety of taxicab customers and, equally important, that of their drivers.

As I said at the beginning of my speech, I feel that the Government have a responsibility. The drinking laws changed, and the House quite properly accepted that, but that change has had results with which most other people must be unhappy. We must address the side-effects of the increasing late-night drinking in our towns and cities, which has led to more attacks on taxis.

I believe that taxi drivers seek real and meaningful answers and, perhaps, action from the Government. I hope that the Government will be able to give us some reassurance, and give the taxi drivers who serve our community in such an important way a little confidence that we may do a bit more to minimise a problem that is clearly of great import to their industry.