More than 10,500 London black-cab drivers have launched a £250m lawsuit against ride-hailing app Uber for alleged unlawful operations in the capital from May 2012 until March 2018.

When Uber arrived in London in 2012, the San Francisco-based tech company had its sights set on a share of the thousands of taxi rides that crisscross the capital every day.

Soon commuters were opting for the convenience of hailing an Uber via an app rather than hanging around a street corner waiting for a black cab to pass.

This invasion of Uber into the capital started off a long-simmering battle between the tech company and London’s black-cab drivers.

This was largely based, according to Warwick Business School, on Uber’s early “cavalier approach to rules around insurance and driver ID”, which led to Transport for London (TfL) withdrawing Uber’s licence to operate in 2017 and then again in 2019.

Black-cab drivers alleged Uber deliberately misled TfL about how its operating system worked so as to obtain its...