Proportion of Uber drivers that appear on another taxi service providers driver/vehicle lists
Request ID: FOI-0119-2223 Date published: 15 June 2022
You asked
F/on from FOI-2923
We understand that, on a weekly basis, operators of taxi services in the London area must submit a ‘Driver List’ to TFL. This list is submitted as a .csv files, which contains three fields.
• PHV Driver License Number
• First Name of driver
• Surname of driver
With respect to the most recent weekly submission, please tell us what percentage of PHV driver license numbers submitted by Uber were also submitted by either of Bolt or Ola in their submission of the same week?
Please note that we are interested to know if the identifier appeared in the lists of any these other provider of PHV services. Therefore, if e.g., a PHV driver license number appeared in both Bolt and Ola’s lists, this should be counted only once.
Please provide the information in the form of a .xlsx file where, for example:
• Column A gives the date of the Monday of the week in which the information was submitted to TFL
• Column B gives the proportion of PHV license numbers submitted by Uber, which were also submitted by one of the other PHV providers mentioned above expressed as a percentage, with each row giving the proportion for the submission week reported in Column A
We answered
Our ref: FOI-0119-2223/GH
Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 21 April 2022 asking for information about Uber drivers that appear on another taxi service providers driver/vehicle lists.
Your request has been considered under the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and our information access policy.
I can confirm that we do hold the information you require. However, we are not obliged to provide you with this information as it is subject to a statutory exemption to the right of access to information under section 43(2). In this instance the section 43(2) exemption has been applied as disclosure would, or would be likely to prejudice the commercial interests of Private Hire operators.
TfL request this information from operators for the purposes of data analysis in our role as regulator of the industry and the operators are under an obligation to provide it. Disclosure would be likely to cause detriment to operators. The private hire business is competitive, with a small number of Pan-London operators. At any time an operator may be expanding their operation, or facing a shortage of drivers and licensed vehicles. Disclosure of this information would be detrimental to some operators. We know that information about market share is commercially valuable and that operators have sought both to obtain and protect similar information in other locations.
On a more local level, we would expect that some operators, who may be considering expansion would place a value on knowing the number of drivers their competitors had used the previous week, their competitors would therefore consider disclosure of this information to be detrimental. Indeed the larger operators, either across London or in a particular geographical area, are the most likely beneficiaries of information about the emergence of competitors or the weakness of rivals. It would be a reasonable assumption that private hire operators would take advantage of information showing the expansion or contraction of a rival’s fleet size, whether through targeted marketing or approaches to recruit that operator’s drivers.
The information requested relates to notifications that private hire operators make relating to the number of drivers used by them. It has previously been accepted by the Information Commissioner that this information is provided by the individual operators in confidence and that the information provided by individual operators is exempt from disclosure in accordance with section 41 of the FOI Act: https://ico.org.uk/media/action-weve-taken/decision-notices/2017/2172517/fs50676040.pdf
The use of this exemption is subject to an assessment of the public interest in relation to the disclosure of the information concerned. We do not consider that there is an overriding public interest that would justify disclosing the driver returns submitted by operators. We acknowledge the continued public interest in the competitiveness of the private hire industry but we consider that the public interest in maintenance of the exemption is based on the assumption that effective competition between operators will lead to lower prices and better services for private hire customers, and fair reward for operators. Providing recent, accurate information about the number of drivers an operator used the previous week will allow firms in a dominant market position to maintain their advantage by using loss leading tactics against emerging rivals and weakened competitors. Whilst this might be expected to lead to some localised short term gains, the operator statistics will also inform operators of circumstances where there is lower local competition, which would incentivise higher pricing and lower service standards, particularly if repeated acquisition and the presumed publication of the dataset allowed the dominant operator to survey the horizon for competitors.
If you are not satisfied with this response please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.
Yours sincerely
Graham Hurt FOI Case Officer FOI Case Management Team General Counsel Transport for London
