CABBIES faced with a new honesty and behaviour code cannot complain - for the scheme planned by Blackburn Council to improve standards will not just protect passengers, but also benefit taxi owners and operators.

That is because it aims to drive out the "cowboys" who blight the trade and harm the reputable cab firms and their drivers.

It is all part of the slow catching-up operation begun by the authorities after the taxi trade, particularly the private hire sector, became a virtual free-for-all.

And as subsequent crackdowns on vehicle safety and comfort, and stricter vetting of applicants for licences has shown, passengers were getting a raw and sometimes dangerous deal. Now, the emphasis is on protecting them from the cabbies who overcharge, are rude, turn up late, overload their vehicles and so forth, with offenders collecting "penalty points" that could deprive them of their licences.

Quite right too.

The previous lack of proper supervision plunged the taxi trade into the murky fringes of the black economy, to the extent that instances of uninsured drivers and even sex offenders at the wheel were combined in East Lancashire with repeated discoveries of unsafe vehicles being used.

All this has proved that controls are necessary.

But only the cowboys need fear this latest crackdown.

And they are not owed a living by the council or cab-users.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.