31/03/2017 Inside Out North West

Hello and welcome to Inside Out North West,

We investigate why some councils in our region have approved licences

for taxi drivers with previous convictions, some

Would I put my children in that vehicle with that

If the answer to that is no then they are not fit and proper

As more and more of us meet our partners online,

It's expected that people online date.

It seems more unusual for people not to online date these days, I think.

And we delve beneath the streets of Liverpool to explore the mystery

It is not knowing what you're going to find next, it's a mystery.

There is so little known about Williamson's underground world,

because he didn't tell anybody about it.

It is more than 20 years since Salford University student

Rachel Thacker was murdered by a bogus taxi driver.

Since then the number of taxis and private hire cars

in the region has grown, so do we know who is

driving them and if they've been vetted thoroughly?

Taxis and private hire cars are everywhere.

There is a huge choice for revellers but how safe is it to get in these

Does it matter that you are not booked or is that all right?

It is illegal for private hire vehicles to tout the business.

Drivers are not insured and there will be no

We secretly filmed in Manchester City centre to find out

Is it all right for us to get in if we're not booked?

We found five drivers over a two hour period were willing to break

the law and offer an unbooked lift home to two members of our team

It is over 20 years since Salford University student

Rachel Thacker was murdered by a bogus taxi driver.

Police are appealing for information after an alleged rape in the city

centre by a man who claimed to be a taxi driver.

Two reports of rapes within 24 hours.

The first involved a woman who got into a car purporting to be a taxi.

But the man behind the wheel wasn't a taxi driver.

As these headlines show, attacks on passengers have not

It was her last night out in Manchester before she came home

And she came out with two friends, male friends, and unfortunately

she had had too much to drink and got into this car and asked

to go back to Salford and he drove off with the door open before

the boys had got a chance to tell her to get out.

It did, in the most horrendous circumstances.

So that's what you get for getting into an unlicensed car,

And there are now concerns it has become easier

for possible predators to become drivers, anywhere.

So right now we are going through a very busy,

bohemian part of Manchester, the Northern Quarter.

It is also a hotbed for touting and illegal private hire activities.

This is where round about 2am it is literally a free for all.

It is literally like the Wild West then.

Bob Azam has been a black-cab driver for 15 years.

He is concerned about cars that haven't been licensed in the city.

There's such an influx of out-of-town taxis or private

hires coming in because of companies like Uber and private hire

operators who allow out-of-town drivers to work on their system,

and they have literally flooded the city with their cars.

You see the word taxi and you think, that's an illegal

Bob thinks this could be potentially dangerous the passengers.

It is in my view just a matter of time, it is a ticking time bomb,

that somebody soon is going to get seriously hurt or

It was the 2015 Deregulation Act that made it simpler for drivers

to obtain a licence in one town but to work in another,

where licensing rules might be stricter.

MP Andrew Gwynne called for an urgent debate

We now have a problem in the North West where one

particular local authority is handing out hackney taxi

The problem we have got is that once you have a hackney licence you can

operate as a private hire vehicle anywhere in the country,

so there are now taxis from this local authority operating as far

afield as Bristol without appropriate checks and balances.

Andrew discovered the issue when a young woman reported

a private hire car licence taxi illegally touting

The taxi driver, it was alleged, had been inappropriate

in their behaviour to the passenger and that was when it was alerted

to Thameside that this person had actually been turned down for a taxi

licence by the local council but had subsequently been granted a taxi

licence by another local authority in the North West.

What shouldn't be allowed to happen is that people who have been refused

for legitimate grounds can scurry off to a neighbouring local

authority where they have lesser standards and successfully apply

for a licence that they have no intention of using in that local

area but using in the area they have been refused.

Rossendale has the highest total number of drivers across England,

with one driver for every 28 people in the borough.

According to the official statistics there was a rise of over

A Freedom of Information request to the council says they now have

In a statement, Rossendale Council said...

The council says it has now introduced new policies which mean

taxis will have to predominantly work in Rossendale.

They expect a decline in the number of applications.

People responsible for licensing drivers,

if there are concerns about the driver the council only

has the powers to deal with licensed drivers from their own area.

There is no national information sharing network so if we refused

a licence to an individual here who then went to Birmingham

to apply for a licence, unless Birmingham picked the phone

up and knew he had been a driver with us previously then

it is unlikely they would make that check with us.

He says that the current legislation needs updating.

The legislation says we can't grant a licence to somebody

unless we are satisfied that they are a fit and proper person

but it doesn't then tell us how we define that.

So how can someone with a serious criminal conviction

We found out that across the region one in five drivers applying

to the disclosure and barring service had previous convictions.

Nevertheless, through a Freedom of Information request,

we found out that six councils in the North West had approved

These were Blackpool, Burnley, Cheshire East, Eden,

The offences ranged from indecent exposure and indecent assault

to sexual-offence charges, including one driver

We asked all of these councils how the drivers had passed the fit

The key question we ask them to ask theirselves is,

would I put my children in that vehicle with that individual

unaccompanied and let them drive the children from A to B

If the answer to that is, no, I wouldn't, then they are not fit

and proper and shouldn't have a licence.

So, how easy is it for a potential predator to pretend to be a driver?

Now I have discovered you can buy Uber car stickers

from ?40 to as little as ?10, which is confusing to the passenger.

The traffic is really starting to build up now.

Licensed drivers like Bob are now using instant-messaging groups

as alerts if they spot so-called pirate drivers.

We have just had a notification come through from one of the drivers

that there is a Vauxhall Vectra estate working in the city

centre in town with no plates and no stickers,

Members of the public are being put at risk on a daily basis,

There are calls for a national database of licensed drivers

to increase information sharing between local councils and to

ensure that loopholes in the legislation are tightened up.

I urge the government to take the bull by the horns and make sure

we have a taxi licensing regime fit for the 21st century.

It seems not enough has improved since Rachel Thacker was murdered

by a bogus taxi driver over 20 years ago.

For her mother, Gill, it is important to keep Rachel's

memory alive and warn others of the dangers of

We still hear stories, don't we, of nights out that end in tragedy?

How is it for you when you wake up to news like that?

It just brings it all back again and you think that somebody else

is going through the same things that you are going through and their

What is the message that you would like grandparents

and parents watching this to remind their kids about?

Try and make sure that they are aware that they need

to arrange their transport home, not get into unlicensed cabs, else

30 years ago most people would meet a future partner through work

or through friends or maybe down the local pub.

Today one in four people meet somebody new through online dating.

We investigate dating in the digital age.

Swipe left and the love of your life could be on the next screen,

But is the use of online dating apps leading

Is there something about the ease and disposable nature of encounters

online that means people should be more wary

The dating world has completely changed over the last few years.

Wwhenever anything gets popular the criminals

Police have attributed 500 crimes to two of the biggest social media

162 of those were sexual in nature and alarmingly 58 of the offences

But can we lay the blame on the apps themselves?

The internet has made the world go faster and usage of dating apps

It's generally quite an accepted way of meeting people.

People are a lot more laid-back about it now.

It seems less weird now that people are so active on the internet.

It is kind of expected that people will online date.

It seems more unusual for people not to online date these days.

When I became single there were lots of things happening

on dates that I thought other people were going through.

This is Vix Meldrew, a dating expert and online blogger.

She thinks that connecting online is not very different

The digital age we are in is all about that fast

consumption of things, so whether it is online shopping

or any of those things, if you want something you get it

quickly and if you don't want something you can send it

It is all about that instant gratification.

But I don't think it is that different from dating,

If you meet somebody and you have that connection,

you will want to go out with them whether you met them

Some dating apps have become synonymous with hook-ups,

which is expressly meeting people online solely for sex.

But do you think that dating apps almost encourage people to meet up

because they want to hook up rather than because they want

How do people manage that expectation?

I don't think that people have wanted more hook-ups

since online dating, I think if people wanted to hook

up, you would want it whether you were online dating or not.

The danger with some internet dating apps and some people who do

it is that they wouldn't present themselves in that way

They present themselves as wanting relationships or wanting to go

on dates and take things further because they think that that

would make them more successful, and that is where trouble

Stranger rape is statistically very low but last year's

National Crime Agency figures brought up an interesting

Only 16% of the people convicted of stranger rape have no

For those suspected of stranger rape where the initial contact

It would appear that something about dating online is causing

people with no criminal record to commit sexual offences.

We spoke to one woman who was attacked by a man

she met online who had no previous convictions.

When I first started online dating my friends were all on it.

I had been single for quite a long time.

I went on to see what the big deal was.

I had been speaking to people for a couple of months.

I went on a couple of dates, always met them in public,

had a meal or a drink and stayed local to my area.

This one individual I started talking to,

we had been speaking for about two months and he invited himself

round, offered to bring a bottle of wine

My friend lives next door, and having her so close,

if there were any problems I knew I could just bang on the wall.

So this one time I let him come round to my house.

I had built up confidence meeting people online in the past.

He sat next to me, he pulled me, tried to kiss me.

He had a front about him, it were like talking to a brick wall.

He came round knowing what he wanted to do.

After it happened as he was walking out the door he said he would be

back the same time next week to do it again.

The man, Scott Lazenby, was arrested and sentenced

Increased expectation may be part of the reason for the rise

in the statistics but it is not the full story.

The most popular dating app for the gay community is Grindr

and at the LGBT Foundation Jessica White thinks there's a much simpler

One thing that is particularly true for the LGBT community is that a lot

of people are more comfortable now going to the police

if they are the victim of a crime, attacked by somebody they have met

If you go back even ten years ago, using these apps was quite taboo

and also a lot of LGBT people maybe didn't have the best

relationship with the police, so people wouldn't have come forward

to report that they were a victim of a crime.

Things have changed a lot in society, people

going forward to report and to access support.

Whatever the cause of the rise, the crimes are real and one sexual

So are the dating apps themselves doing anything to promote safety?

All of the main players have safety information on their websites

but as the majority of users access the service on their phones they may

We asked two of the biggest dating sites, Tinder and Grindr,

if they would consider putting safety adverts on their apps.

Grinder came back to us and this is what they said.

We also contacted Tinder and they declined to comment.

When discussing rape prevention, the onus is usually put

onto the victim to stay safe, meet in public and take precautions.

But ultimately it's about educating everybody about sexual consent

and making sure nobody gets into a situation which could lead

I certainly think that the incidence of people who have met people

online is so much higher than what we actually know and...

Duncan Craig is from the charity Survivors.

He meets people affected by sexual violence and helps

I think we still need to recognise that not everybody is comfortable.

I think there is a population that is comfortable but specifically

I'm thinking about older people, older people who may

have been in a marriage and are having a second love life,

if they are meeting people online, they are kind of not

used to those online worlds and when something happens to them,

in my experience, and again we are talking about colleagues

in other organisations, when it is older people

there is so much shame and we know that shame creates silence.

We need to do more education with young people but also public

information campaigns to talk about consent and make sure that

everybody knows that consent is not a fixed-term thing,

it is a process, and that at any point somebody can say no,

It is important to get some perspective.

Stranger rape is still incredibly rare and only

accounts for a very small fraction of all of the rapes reported

to Greater Manchester Police every single year.

In fact Tinder and Grindr could only be linked to ten rapes

in Greater Manchester out of nearly 2000.

Dating apps are not the cause of sexual violence

now using online dating the issue of consent is now as important

Liverpool has one of the most recognisable skylines in the world.

People come from all over to visit the city's World

But it is just as dramatic underground, with a series

of previously hidden tunnels being uncovered by local history

Edgehill, an area steeped in history.

It is from here that the first passenger train service ran

But it is also home to one of the North West's biggest

mysteries, because under the ground, littering this whole

area, there are a series of tunnels and chambers.

Nobody knows how many there are, where they go

What we do know is the tunnels were commissioned by Joseph Williamson,

a tobacco merchant and property developer who lived in Edgehill 200

years ago, when much of the area was sandstone quarry.

Williamson built arches on top of the quarries to create

The facade of his house can still be seen today.

Stephen, this is all that remains of what I am guessing would have

What else would we have seen on this street at the time?

It would have been quite a picturesque little meandering road.

Long Broom Field it was called when he bought it.

And there were also other houses, which are long gone,

OK, so he was creating kind of his own Eden overground and yet

spending so much time and endeavour underground.

He was following the tradition of other people who tunnelled.

We know that even back in classical times people tunnelled, you know,

the Emperor Hadrian, the catacombs in Rome.

You can go through all sorts of things, it's a classical

He was really showing himself as being aware of the cultural,

our cultural history, and bringing it here to Edgehill.

It was as simple as that, really, and he had the money to do it.

The existence of the tunnels has been known since Williamson's time

but what we don't know is how many there are, because lots of them

For the past 20 years the Friends of Williamson's Tunnels have been

giving up their weekends to pull out the debris and rediscover

I am absolutely staggered at how primitive this is.

Are you telling me that everything that has been dug out of these

We have been doing this for years, yeah.

It turns out that this is the most straightforward way of doing things.

Just plain ordinary picks, shovels and plastic buckets, up

on the rope here and into the skip, and we have been doing this

at our other site for four years and digging 60 feet down

What motivates you on a Sunday morning to come and stand

That is quite easy, really, we are all mad.

We are every bit as mad as the man who was responsible for digging

We don't understand what he was about so I don't expect

you to understand what we get out of it.

It is not knowing what you are going to find next, it is the mystery.

There is so little known about Williamson's underground world

because he didn't tell anybody about it, he didn't leave plans,

It was just him and the men who worked for him and we don't know

As I'm down here, shall I give one of the lads a break?

Honestly, there are different ways to spend Sunday mornings, you know!

Twice a week we are down here, Wednesdays and Sundays.

Is this the grandest of the structures you've

It is a bit special because of the quality of the workmanship but, no,

We have something rather more special round the corner,

on a very much larger scale, and we are going

Yeah, we are, because I've had enough digging.

What you just walked through is called the gash.

And visitors are usually pretty impressed when they step

The workmanship in the brickwork, look at that one there.

It's lovely workmanship but totally unnecessary,

Yeah, because he is an enigma, isn't he?

There might have been a good basis for how he started this

arch and tunnel building, to provide nice gardens in front

I think what has happened is he has had more and more men hearing

about him and coming to see him, Mr Williamson, will

He wasn't a soft touch, he would never give hand-outs

to people who were starving, he would give them a day's

And these people were learning some fantastic crafts,

everything from quarrying to building houses to building these

Who knows, they probably went on to work on the docks and the dock

buildings and the railways, it was all happening at that time,

Yes, if you kind of look at that arch there and

the brickwork in here, it evokes the Albert Dock almost.

You can imagine the people, having been trained here

We like to think that a lot of the men who started off

with Williamson and learned their trades with him did

go on to build these structures all over the city.

All that rationalises what is still an incredibly

Oh, yes, it doesn't get any more eccentric than this.

It took four years for this tunnel, the Paddington tunnel,

to be completely emptied out, and they found plenty

The volunteers believe there are still many more tunnels

Who knows, one day they might get to the bottom of why these enigmatic

If you have been affected by issues in this programme,

details of organisations offering support and information

with sexual abuse are available at the website above.

Or you can call for free at any time to hear recorded

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