Cameron aide’s secret lobbying to keep Uber cars on London’s roads
A SENIOR aide to David Cameron was secretly helping Uber almost two years before Downing Street launched a lobbying campaign to protect the online taxi firm, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Emails reveal how Daniel Korski, one of Mr Cameron’s special advisers, lobbied the Greater London Authority – then led by London Mayor Boris Johnson – after Uber complained that it was at risk of losing its licence to operate in the capital.
Mr Korski urged Kit Malthouse, then London’s Deputy Mayor for Business, to ‘look into Uber’s case and see what we might do’. Critics last night said the intervention laid bare the influence Uber had with the Cameron administration.
The former Prime Minister and George Osborne have faced persistent questions over their efforts in 2015 to lobby Mr Johnson against introducing a string of proposed curbs on Uber.
The Mayor and his aides received angry messages from No 10 and ‘ forthright texts’ from the then Prime Minister and his Chancellor.
At the time, Rachel Whetstone, a then friend of Mr Cameron, was a senior Uber executive.
The internal emails show that lobbying for Uber began earlier than previously thought.
The online taxi firm had been given permission to operate on London’s roads in May 2012 but by 2014 Transport for London had launched an investigation into whether it was complying with laws governing private hire vehicles.
In particular, there were concerns that smartphones used by drivers to pick up customers were acting as taximeters, which private hire vehicles are banned from using. On January 3, 2014, Corey Owens, Uber’s then head of global policy, emailed a senior Foreign Office diplomat in San Francisco warning that ‘TfL has threatened to revoke our licence to operate in London’.
The diplomat forwarded the email to another senior official who flagged up Uber’s concerns, asking: ‘Do you have any advice on how we might help or someone they can speak to about this?’
That day Mr Korski emailed Mr Malthouse and Julian Glover, a special adviser at the Department for Transport.
‘Could I ask you to take a look at a problem Uber seems to be facing with TfL?’ he wrote.
Seven months later, TfL decided not to revoke Uber’s licence, helping its expansion in the capital.
Grant Davis, chairman of the London Cab Drivers Club, which obtained the documents under Freedom of Information laws, last night said: ‘These emails confirm that David Cameron’s office made sure that Uber had a clear path to operate in London. The impact this has had on what is regarded as the finest taxi service in the world is nothing short of devastating.’
Mr Korski declined to comment.