Sunday Times Full Article : Uber drivers forced to have new criminal record check

The vetting process for thousands of drivers offering the under-fire service in London has been declared invalid

By Andrew Gilligan

 

September 3 2017, 12:01am, The Sunday Times

Is Uber in trouble?

 

Thousands of Uber drivers are to be made to undergo new criminal record checks after regulators rejected the vetting process used by the cab-hailing giant.

 

Transport for London (TfL), which licenses taxis in the capital, is writing to at least 13,000 minicab drivers — more than a tenth of the total — telling them their background checks are no longer valid. The drivers will be given 28 days to make new applications for vetting or be taken off the road, TfL said. They work for several companies but the largest number are Uber drivers.

 

The move comes after The Sunday Times revealed that police had accused Uber of failing to report sex attacks on passengers by its drivers and of “allowing situations to develop that clearly affect the safety and security of the public”.

 

Last week it emerged the man charged with the Buckingham Palace terror attack is an Uber driver. Mohiussunnath Chowdhury allegedly attacked three police officers with a samurai sword while shouting “Allahu akbar” (God is great).

 

In December 2015 a former Uber driver, Muhiddin Mire, tried to behead a stranger in a London Tube station, yelling: “This is for my Syrian brothers.”

 

Steve Garelick, of the private-hire drivers’ branch of the GMB union, said Uber had put the incomes of drivers at risk by using an inadequate vetting process.

 

“Because of this, there is a chance that some drivers have slipped through the net who will bring a bad name to all the others,” he said. “That is contemptible.”

 

All would-be minicab drivers in London must be checked against information held by the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS), a government agency, for criminal records, unsuitability to work with children or police warnings.

 

Uber worked with a London-based company called Onfido to carry out the checks. Uber referred drivers to Onfido, which would check with the DBS and then issue TfL with a certificate stating the facts about the driver’s background. Onfido describes Uber as a “client”.

 

TfL accepted these certificates until this year. However, it said this weekend that “following a recent review of policy” it would no longer accept them from Onfido or any other “third-party provider” but only its own contractor. TfL declined to describe its concerns about Onfido and other providers.

 

Onfido denied any deficiencies in its vetting process and said TfL simply wanted to maintain an exclusive contract with its own provider, GBGroup. “The only concern expressed to us is about the exclusivity of the contract,” it said.

 

Uber said it did not itself carry out or process any background checks. “Uber does not require potential drivers to use a specific provider and does not have a say in who gets licensed,” it said. “It is ultimately up to the regulator to review the application and DBS check and decide who is granted a licence.”

 

Uber’s licence to operate in London, originally issued for five years, was renewed in May for only four months after Inspector Neil Billany, head of the Metropolitan police’s taxi unit, expressed “significant concern” that the company seemed to be “deciding what [crimes] to report”, telling police only about “less serious matters” that would be “less damaging to [its] reputation”. Its licence expires at the end of this month.

 

Billany said Uber had failed to report at least six sexual assaults on passengers carried out by its drivers. One attacker was able to molest a second female passenger before being taken off the road. Uber said it was up to individuals to decide whether to report such incidents.

 

Uber is trying to stabilise under a new chief executive, Dara Khosrowshahi, after boardroom battles, allegations of sexual harassment, invasion of privacy and bribery, and the forced resignation of co-founder Travis Kalanick.

 

Caroline Pidgeon, deputy chairwoman of the London assembly’s transport committee, said: “The questions for Uber keep piling up. Its licence should not be even considered for renewal until strict employment and road safety conditions are firmly in place to ensure it behaves like a responsible company.”

 

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21 comments

 

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SJR2020 12 minutes ago

 

Read through this very carefully.

 

TFL, the regulator in this case, has previously accepted and approved the vetting information for all Uber drivers (and others) they refer to and allowed them to work as private hire drivers.

 

TFL has now changed the goal posts to restrict the vetting process to one company (I'm not certain this is strictly legal unless a tender for the work has been offered and subsequently won?).

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Alan Harris 32 minutes ago

 

What about checking that they speak and understand English?

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colin james 46 minutes ago

 

Forced ...what rubbish it should be compulsory from the start.

.

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Odin 1 hour ago

 

Just wait for Corbyn,Shami and Abbott  to declare this is an anti Muslim plot.

2RecommendReply

Pam Nash 1 hour ago

 

Uber drivers are a totally unknown, and VERY loosely regulated, body.

 

I've never used Uber, I never will - in London I use black cabs, who are tightly regulated and also actually know where they're going, or the Tube.

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Mrs Miggins 22 minutes ago

 

And sadly they are harder to find on the apps (Gett, Hailo) as Uber prices them out. Uber costs are nothing, with none of the tests and requirements of black cabs and of course none of the U.K. taxes, and it's about time this was evened out. You are always safe in a black cab, no matter how pissed or how late. We can't lose them.

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SJR2020 10 minutes ago

 

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Man on the Street 2 hours ago

 

" Thousands of Uber drivers are to be made to undergo new criminal record checks after regulators rejected the vetting process used by the cab-hailing giant."

 

This is an action that is welcome, better late than never. 

 

This is a refreshing step though the length of contact between the driver and his custome is short.  

 

In contrast, the Sunday Times reports elsewhere that Mr Lammy, MP is proposing that information convictions ought to be withheld from the employers, though the duration of contact beween the past convict and his employer is potential very long.

3RecommendReply

dizzle 3 hours ago

 

My daughter has an Uber account to get home late at night. I have, for some time, been worried about her safety. Can anyone reassure me or should I be right to be worried and should she use a local company ?

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Adrian Haberberg 2 hours ago

 

@dizzle According to the (ex-Uber) driver who brought me home from Gatwick last night, the most worrying aspect of Uber is the long hours that drivers need to work in order to make a living. He talked of colleagues working shifts well in excess of 12 hours. I would not want to be driven by one who was that fatigued.

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B Marchant 2 hours ago

 

As long as there is at least one other person with her, she should be fine. I never use Uber without another person with me. Nothing has happened to me but several friends have been harassed by drivers.

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Mrs Miggins 17 minutes ago

 

You should get her a Gett account, with Hailo for backup. Black cabs, but their prices are often less than Uber, they don't do 'surge' pricing, and they give you the price before you start. For long journeys the Addison lee app has the best prices, and is also 100% safe.

 

It always surprises me when parents think an Uber account for their young daughter is a good idea. No criminal checks and Muslm make drivers who could do anything then disappear into the ether. And a often very pissed young girl on her own. Hm.

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Matthew Sellers 3 hours ago

 

By all means have a level playing field but this smells like a back door attempt to hurt Uber

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1RecommendReply

Ramtops 1 hour ago

 

@Matthew Sellers 

Uber have proved to be quite capable of hurting themselves.

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s tan 3 hours ago

 

On my recent return to London, I reluctantly got an Uber as I am not a fan of their business model, lack of knowledge of London's complex streets, the increased  congestion they have brought on main roads and the behaviour and its attitude of its founder. I jumped in at Pimlico going up to Mornington Cresecent. For some reason, the driver's telephone and sat nav expired on Elizabeth Street near Victoria Coach Station. What happened next left me staggered - the driver asked me to get out and book another ride for two reasons - (1) he couldn't be sure whether he would be paid and (2) he was unsure how to get to the Camden High Road from Hyde Park Corner.

 

 

A quick check of my Pay Pal confirmed that the £16.00 odd had been taken by Uber.  He then begrudgingly agreed to take me to my destination with me guiding him from my own knowledge of Zone 1 and also with my Google Maps activated. He couldn't tell me whether Camden was North or South relative to our location.

 

 

These drivers spend all the time watching their sat navs and not the roads and other road users as they just have no idea where they are without them. The fact that the they are not undergoing  rigorous enough criminal record checks suggests to me that they the previous Johnson City Hall administration was cavalier in its approach to passenger safety by granting tens of thousands of licenses to a company that somehow seems to have been given favoured status treatment and a blind eye approach from TFL.

17RecommendReply

Donald Stickland 2 hours ago

 

@s tan   ... and so: 

 

 

B R A V O  ...  Inspector Neil Billany, head of the Metropolitan police’s taxi unit, who  The Sunday Times  today tells  ToL ...  said Uber had failed to report at least six sexual assaults on passengers carried out by its drivers.     One attacker was able to molest a second female passenger before being taken off the road.     Uber said it was up to individuals to decide whether to report such incidents.

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2RecommendReply

TT 20 3 hours ago

 

In my entire life I have never come across a "cab hailing giant". 

 

Anybody have a picture of this phenomena they could share with us?

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1RecommendReply

BrexITman 10 hours ago

 

How about simply searching their cars at random to see if they have any 4 foot long samurai swords in the front passenger footwell?!

3RecommendReply

Donald Stickland 2 hours ago

 

@BrexITman ... well, BIT - that'll keep you busy ... and perhaps off ToL ?

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