ERIC BARRY
IN the Evening News last week, Councillor Iain Whyte set out to correct the "deliberate misinformation about taxis" and regrettably ended up being the greatest contributor of misinformation so far.

The first half of his article repeated the same tired arguments that Margaret Thatcher's government gave when they introduced deregulation legislation in 1984. So quickly was the theory proved wrong in practice, that just one year later, Mrs T gave the overturning opt-out back to any council which measured and matched supply with demand. How many "U-turns" does Cllr Whyte remember "the Lady" making? The fact that she U-turned and U-turned so quickly proves how wrong his party got it back then.

The second half of his article praised the Office of Fair Trading 2003 report on taxi supply and its conclusion on quantity deregulation. What he failed to tell you was that it was, most unusually, rejected by parliament in the most scathing of ways.

The OFT report manifestly does not contain the evidence required to support its only proposal for legislative change: the abolition of quantity regulation. Its figures only support its case with considerable "adjustment" (which is never explained). Its statistical and survey evidence are flawed, and it fails to consider the relationship between the taxi and the private hire vehicle markets. Nor does the OFT explain why the taxi and PHV market has been the fastest growing form of transport over the last 25 years, and has grown by more then 40 per cent in real terms since 1994, if quantity restrictions have been so detrimental. Its recommendations on quantity control should be rejected.

Cllr Whyte implies that the taxi trade is a cartel, a monopoly or a restricted practice. Taxis are nothing of the sort. Cartels and monopolies set their own prices and control the product supplied. With taxis, elected councillors, himself included, set the price of taxi fares to ensure that the public are not exploited, taxi drivers have no deciding voice in setting taxi fares. Councillors also set the conditions that taxi drivers operate under and the type of vehicles they are allowed to use. All the control of taxis rests with the council. Thankfully, most councillors have bothered to look into the facts before they decide on the taxi trade and aren't just desperately electioneering ahead of May.

Deregulation was tried in Edinburgh from 1986 to 1990. It was stopped in 1990 because the experiment had been proved a failure of flawed theory. Edinburgh does not need to revisit a failed experiment just to prove its failure again for the good councillor. It was not possible to reverse some of the other failed deregulation experiments.

Edinburgh did not deregulate its buses, Glasgow did, and Edinburgh buses are newer, better routed and lower priced, while Glasgow's deregulated/privatised buses are, in general, tatty and more expensive, as well as clustering on to the most profitable routes at the expense of a broad network.

• Eric Barry represents Edinburgh Cab Branch TGWU

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