Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, has been put on the spot over the launch of a consultation process being viewed as a crude attempt to curb the explosive growth in London of Uber, the taxi hailing app.

Simon Walker, the director general of the Institute of Directors, said that Johnson, together with chancellor George Osborne and business secretary Sajid Javid, should be reducing regulation in the capital’s taxi and private car hire market rather than bringing in new and stiffer rules. Walker was responding to a set of proposals from Transport for London (TfL), revealed on Tuesday, which are said to reflect the mayor’s concerns about traffic congestion in London. Johnson is the chair of TfL.

The IoD boss called the measures “heavy-handed” and said they would “damage London’s reputation for innovation”.

Walker said: “TfL is right to take an interest in the way companies like Uber have disrupted the way we travel around the capital. But their proposals for further restrictions to an already heavily regulated industry are backwards and would damage London’s reputation as a city which celebrates innovation and embraces change.

Transport for London could crack down on Uber in taxi consultation Read more

“Boris Johnson, George Osborne and Sajid Javid have set themselves up as passionate advocates of the free market. How they proceed from here is a crucial test of those ideals,” Walker added.

Walker’s outburst came as Uber fought back against a possible crackdown on its services with the publication of a petition that was signed by nearly 90,000 Londoners by mid-afternoon.



The measures being considered by TfL could include the introduction of an interval of at least five minutes between a booking and the start of a journey.

Other proposals involve a requirement for drivers to pass an English language test and a map reading assessment, while firms could have to operate a fixed landline telephone and accept bookings up to seven days in advance.

The escalating row over the future of Uber’s service in London took place against the background of further controversies in Europe. Earlier this week, Dutch police raided Uber’s office in Amsterdam as part of a criminal investigation and on Wednesday two executives from the firm appeared in Paris for the start of a trial, facing a range of charges, including some under a law that bans the company’s low-cost Uberpop car-sharing service.

In London, TfL chief operating officer for surface transport, Garrett Emmerson, said: “We are launching a public consultation in order to inform and improve the regulations that govern the capital’s private hire trade.”



Uber is urging its customers to sign the petition, saying “these rules make no sense”. In a statement on its website, the US-backed company said: “TfL also wants to restrict carpooling, including new services like Uberpool.



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“This enables people going in the same direction to share a car, cutting the cost of the trip as well as congestion on London’s streets.

“And the proposed rules threaten drivers’ livelihoods by forcing them to drive for just one operator.”



TfL’s proposals are backed by Sadiq Khan, Labour’s candidate to succeed Boris Johnson as the next mayor of London, and by thousands of black cab and minicab drivers. Khan tweeted: “Welcome news of new proposals to regulate taxi and private hire vehicles. We must ensure we protect Londoners and our historic taxi trade.”



Johnson and TfL have been viewed as soft on Uber over the past three years, during the firm’s explosive growth phase in London. But Johnson has become increasingly concerned about the growth in the number of cabs in London and the congestion they cause.



