Speeches by Arthur.

“If you include waiting time, are drivers’ earnings rising or coming down in relation to inflation?”

“But waiting time is important, is it not?”

“So no face-to-face opportunity?”

“It crossed my mind earlier when Kimberly was speaking, but if a driver is struggling to earn money on your service, do you have limitations on how long they could work on a shift? Is that a limitation you place on your app?”

“Very quickly, James, before I was elected here last year I was a councillor in Edinburgh and I sat on the committee that dealt with taxi drivers. I thought that the flow of information between the police and the local authorities was very good and the police were quite precautionary in their approach. They would tell t…”

“That driver could run 10 hours with your app and then switch over to Kimberly’s app.”

“But there is nothing to stop them from doing that?”

“If your business model is making it harder and harder for them to earn a living, those temptations will always be there, will they not?”

“Independent analysis suggests that drivers are earning much less than that, but I guess we can disagree about that. Can we move on to deactivation? Kimberly, you raised a good example of when you would deactivate a driver who is accused of not respecting the rights of a disabled person. You said you would deactivate an…”

“Yes.”

“Let us pretend the complaint is malicious. You have deactivated the driver. Do they get compensation for that?”

“I think this was covered earlier to some extent by Emma’s comments about wheelchair-accessible vehicles. My question was whether you think we should mandate these in local authorities. I think you already said yes to that earlier, but I guess it is about how we do that. First, do you have some idea in mind of what prop…”

“Yes, so it is a spurious—”

“Because there is loss of earnings there, and that is fundamentally unfair on the driver.”

“If the money is restored, that is great.”

“That would be interesting. Emma, what is the threshold in terms of a complaint from a customer for deactivating a driver? It is obviously a big step, is it not?”

“Thanks for making the point about video, Saskia. I am now kicking myself for not asking this in the previous session where video and audio recording came up. I do not want to lead you too much in your answer, but what access arrangements do you want around that recorded data? If you have a taxi or an Uber where you are…”

“That is a good point, because there could be quite serious allegations against a driver, and you are saying there could be a delay. It is a good point.”

“What a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Jonathan Davies) for so ably introducing the debate. The old and new towns of Edinburgh are designated a UNESCO world heritage site. My constituency includes just a small corner of the UNESCO designate…”

“I grew up just four or five miles from the plant, and I have to say that it is an area still recovering from Thatcher’s economic vandalism. I thank the Minister for his statement and for the work he has done over many months, as well as my hon. Friend the Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy (Melanie Ward) for her work…”