29 Sep No Prime Minister, Uber decision has NOT put jobs or safety at risk

Theresa May has been told to “learn more about the private hire industry” following her interview on BBC London where she criticised the decision to revoke Uber’s license in London.

Fareed Baloch, COO of zoom.taxi, criticised the Prime Minister’s insistence that the decision would ‘damage the lives of millions of Londoners’ saying she was “using a serious debate about the future of entire industry to score political points.”

“The Tories have sadly turned the Uber issue into a battle between them and Labour rather than looking below the surface of this complex issue,” he said.

“Uber drivers are self employed firstly, so they don’t have to pay VAT and can be 20 per cent cheaper than rival drivers, but it also means that the decision not to renew their license does not put 40,000 jobs at risks.

“But as a company, what we are looking at here is big business vs small business: these large multinationals with billionaire backers who are putting SMEs – the companies who are the backbone of the British economy – out of business.

“And the British tax payer is not benefiting because Uber use an EU tax loophole to register in the Netherlands for VAT rather than the UK so the exchequer misses out.

“This is on top of the fact that many drivers are also in receipt of in work benefits – so this idea that we have some kind of ultimate laissez faire business model being interrupted by malign anti competitive force is nonsense.

“There were 260,000 drivers in the UK before Uber and there will be after it but if Uber is making it wast for everyone to be a PH driver, it’s not good for the industry because it creates an oversupply and this supply bubble will make drivers’ lives works and push more people onto state benefits.

“If politicians are going to get involved, what we ask is that they take time to research the industry they are talking about rather than read out top lines given to them by staff or lobbyists.”