12:35 Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)

More broadly, the Government should take urgent action and do more to support the wider taxi sector, which has been decimated by covid-19. In my constituency, many hundreds of people are drivers of black cabs and private hire vehicles. Indeed, in London the taxi fleet is now at its lowest number since 1983, at around 13,400 vehicles, a loss of more than 5,000 since the start of the pandemic. We have seen a similar drop across the whole of England. The DFT’s own figures from July 2021 reveal that the number of licensed vehicles in England has decreased by 15.9% since 2020, to just over a quarter of a million. The Government’s apathy towards taxi and private hire vehicle drivers is undermining drivers’ confidence in the future of the trade and deterring many from returning, or—more important, because we want to tackle climate change—from investing in new low or zero-emission vehicles, because they feel that they are being pushed out and overlooked.

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