Mr. Hugh Creegan:

There has been a lot of debate around these issues, not so much as part of these regulations but as part of the taxi regulation review report a couple of years ago. The Deputy alluded to whether a quantitative limit could be put in place. He is correct that the authorities in some UK locations have found some ways of doing so. However, as part of the taxi regulation review report in this country it was decided that it was not going to be possible and I think that is correct. It would not be legally possible here to do that in the way that people might like. Let us leave that matter to one side as being incapable of being done.

A lot of the other things have been put in place to give some protections to the people who devote themselves to the overall business. Let us consider the decals on door signage. It might not be obvious on first glance but a decal makes a difference in terms of whether a part-time person wishes to use his or her vehicle and have it permanently branded. It means that his or her employer will be aware of it in a way that he or she was not aware of before now. There have been some benefits that may not be obvious at first glance. I accept that the scheme is far from perfect. I do not think that we will ever get perfection but a fair bit of work has been done.

With regard to advertising, neither the current position of being totally uncontrolled nor the position we advocated in draft regulations of full control are the right positions. We want the middle ground of having only a limited number of exclusions which would not affect many people. Most of the advertising that people have on their vehicles would be unaffected by the revised proposals that we are considering taking forward.

I shall repeat what I said earlier about the smaller wheelchair accessible vehicles. For us it is one of the biggest issues facing the industry. The provision cannot serve the needs of the mobility impaired. I am happy that we must keep a watch over the matter in order to make sure that we do not bring it to an incorrect position. The actions that we propose to take are needed and correct.