The government is considering making CCTV mandatory in taxis as part of new national licensing standards, Transport Minister Lilian Greenwood has told MPs.

Appearing before the Commons Transport Committee, Greenwood said she was “absolutely open to considering” a requirement for in-vehicle cameras in taxis and PHVs citing safety benefits for both passengers and drivers.

While acknowledging the measure could be controversial, she said MPs could not be “complacent” about the need to strengthen safeguarding laws.

Her comments came during a government review of taxi licensing in England, prompted by Baroness Casey’s report into grooming gangs.

The review suggested PHVs had been used by offenders across the country and warned that weaknesses in the licensing system may have allowed perpetrators to evade tougher local rules.

At present, private hire drivers can obtain a licence from any local authority in England but work elsewhere. Critics say this has encouraged “licence shopping”, with drivers choosing councils where standards are lower, fees are cheaper and enforcement is lighter.

Rotherham Council was highlighted in the Casey review as an authority that had gone “above and beyond” following its own grooming scandal. Its so-called gold-standard licensing scheme includes mandatory CCTV in vehicles, tighter safeguarding checks and stricter enforcement.

However, the report said such measures were being undermined by looser standards elsewhere and urged the government to act “immediately” to close legal loopholes.

Greenwood told MPs she did not want to “demonise the trade” but said it was clear that “a small number of people in the sector played a role in the absolutely awful abuse of girls in our communities”.

“I think there’s an argument that CCTV should be a national requirement because of the potential safety it provides for passengers but also for drivers as well,” she said. “I can absolutely see why [Rotherham] mandate CCTV, and I think it’s worth us considering as part of national minimum standards.”

Concerns were also raised about Wolverhampton City Council, which licenses nearly 40,000 private hire vehicles, despite fewer than 4% operating within the city itself.

Labour MP Laurence Turner warned that the dominance of a single council’s licensing system risked a “race to the bottom”, with other authorities reluctant to impose tougher standards for fear of losing drivers.

Greenwood said she was concerned by the scale of licence shopping, even while acknowledging that Wolverhampton carried out some strong safeguarding measures, such as daily checks against national databases.

“I don’t want people to be shopping around for licences,” she said, adding that national minimum standards were needed to remove incentives for councils to undercut one another.

The government plans to introduce powers to set those standards through the English Devolution Bill.

Greenwood also confirmed that funding had been allocated in the spending review for a new national database to improve security checks and help councils enforce rules across local authority boundaries.

David Lawrie, Director of NPHTA, told PHTM: "I watched yesterday's Transport Committee session with interest and took notes of the comments made - not only around CCTV, but also licence shopping and the apparent unwillingness for "national standards" to also include efficiency measures, "turn around time" and fees being mandated.

"The concerns around CCTV were only raised about data security and privacy related issues, when in reality, those issues are already covered by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) regulations and oversight, as they are the regulators for UKGDPR.

"When asked about "support for this measure", the response given was "issue guidance", when let's be honest, the question was about financial support - funding - in the interest of both public AND driver safety.

"The NPHTA will be submitting additional further evidence based on this hearing, and the previous hearings with the Institute of Licensing, transport for all, Uber and Bolt."

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