I think Brighton and Hove has some of the best taxi drivers in the country. I’ve used their cabs for years. We’ve talked and complained together about the state of the world and put the local council to rights.

The vast majority of these drivers are competent, honest and trustworthy. This is a good thing because many of them know more about my family than I care to think about - and that’s not just names, addresses and phone numbers.

Some of them have driven my daughter since she was a baby. They’ve taken her to school and to hospital and her first parties. They know what schools she went to, the university she chose and even what she studied. They’ve taken her and her father to the cricket and me to my mother’s nursing home. They took my late father to hospital and, after my mother developed Alzheimer’s, helped her to continue picking up my daughter from school. As her condition worsened, they helped her in countless ways.

Such drivers are pillars of the community, public servants carrying out an essential service. For this reason it’s vitally important that they are trustworthy, not just because they have access to information, but above all because they transport people who are vulnerable - children; nervous, troubled or drunken teenagers; lone women late at night; disabled and elderly people; and - as cuts to services for vulnerable adults and ambulance services bite - more and more who are sick, confused or demented.

Sadly, some drivers across the country may not be so trustworthy and in such cases may be very dangerous indeed. It is an unfortunate fact that driving can be an attractive occupation for abusive or criminal individuals, precisely because it provides mobility, independence without accountability and information about, and access to, vulnerable potential victims. It’s no accident that many serial sex abusers – from so called ‘grooming’ gangs preying on vulnerable teenagers through to individual predators like the convicted rapist John Worboys – have worked as taxi or delivery drivers. This is one reason why it is essential that drivers are properly vetted, trained, police checked and monitored.

It makes me feel safer to know that all Brighton and Hove drivers are police checked and I was delighted when the city’s cab firms were obliged to have cctv in their cars - although I would much prefer it if spoken exchanges were also recorded. I can’t help thinking that recording would protect both customers and drivers and would weed out any ‘bad apples’ that we might have. I also believe increased council monitoring, including spot checks and late night ‘mystery shopping’, would help.

I am aware that there are rumours of non-licensed drivers ‘covering’ for others in the city and that some of these drivers are unchecked and untrained. Certainly, there are one or two that I have met who showed a remarkable lack of knowledge of the area. One for example asked me to direct him to the Children’s Hospital. Another barely spoke English. I would like to see far more female drivers and it disappoints me that so little council effort has gone into encouraging this.

However, such examples, though deeply worrying, almost pale into insignificance when set against the danger posed by the possible introduction of Uber cabs. Uber’s safety record as an international company from India to the USA to the UK is dire. There have been repeated, well publicised, complaints of sexual assaults and criminal activity by unchecked drivers and of fraudulent misuse of credit card details. Though Uber’s drivers are overwhelmingly male, a huge number of alleged victims have been female.

As I understand it, if Uber comes to our city, its drivers may be licensed elsewhere. They need not be police-checked, they may not know the area and their cars may have no CCTV. They will ply their trade in a city which already has a problem of late night drunkenness and widespread dangerous drug abuse; Where there are thousands of vulnerable students and a high incidence of sexual assault, especially of young women. The risks are obvious.

Earlier this month a female lecturer allegedly received a threatening message on her voicemail from an Uber driver in London after she cancelled a car.

I hope that our council will do all it can to block Uber’s ambitions in the city and that its officers will increase, not slacken, their oversight of the local trade, in order to improve safety for vulnerable people and drivers. I hope too that all Sussex MPs will work together to ensure that, at a national level, the taxi and private hire trades are regulated with a primary view to public safety not profit.

Here in Brighton and Hove we have taxi firms to be proud of. We should keep it that way.