I was also a member of the Select Committee on the Equality Act 2010 and Disability, and our report, The Equality Act 2010: The Impact on Disabled People, was published at the end of March. We are still awaiting the response from the Government, and we look forward to that coming—fairly soon, I hope, in the autumn. There is an entire chapter on transport in that report, because access to transport is one of the main blockages that prevents disabled people from living active and independent lives. It is of note that, of the speakers in this Second Reading debate, just under a quarter are people with visible disabilities—there may be others with hidden disabilities that we cannot see—so it is clearly an issue for the disabled community.
The ability to travel freely is one that most of us take absolutely for granted. However, for those of us who have barriers in various forms, travelling on a bus can become a complete nightmare. I pay tribute to Doug Paulley, who has taken a case right the way through the courts; it is due to be heard in the Supreme Court on 15 June, and we welcome the outcome of that. Obviously, I do not want to prejudge that, but the issues that are raised here are reflected in some of those that he has raised in his case.
Bus travel from a wheelchair perspective is a very mixed experience. I absolutely accept the Minister’s point that 89% of buses are now compliant; the problem is that you cannot tell when a bus is coming towards you whether it is going to be compliant or not, whether the bus driver and conductor will have had training, or whether the audio and visual guidance support is going to work. How on earth can we enforce the regulations that the Driver & Vehicle Standards Agency has been responsible for not delivering over the past 16 years to ensure that, by the end of this calendar year, that figure is 100% compliant? I shall come on to training in a minute. What is the government role in ensuring that the DVSA ensures full compliance? I understand from evidence taken by the committee that some action has been taken, but it is way too late and has now become a problem for bus companies to have to make major capital changes at what they perceive as short notice, because they were not reminded since 2000 that the deadline was the beginning of this calendar year just past. I wonder if there is also a role for local government. Much of the Bill talks about the role of local government in commissioning services,
but perhaps local government should report to the DVSA when it is commissioning services but they are not fully compliant. I am not aware that there is any reporting structure, and that may be one helpful route.
I shall just explain the practicality of the problem. I tried to hail a bus on Gower Street that was three-quarters empty on the ground floor, but there was a buggy in the entrance to the wheelchair space. It was one of the few buses with a conductor, and the conductor and the driver both tried to speak to the father of the baby in the buggy, but he absolutely, point blank refused to move. He just would not give at all, even when I explained that it was perfectly possible, if he just pulled the buggy back for me to reverse into the space, for him then to put the buggy back in front of me. He still refused to move. That is the fundamental problem. At the moment, although the spirit of the law says that wheelchairs should have priority, the right of refusal by the person responsible for a buggy is absolutely paramount.
In the Paulley case, there have been a couple of comments from some the judges, at various stages. Lord Justice Lewison said that,
“the criminal law (in the form of the Conduct Regulations) gives the company—in practice the driver—no reliable means of enforcing any ‘requirement’; still less would introducing an explicit contractual term in the conditions of carriage do so. In truth a ‘requirement’ has no more teeth than a ‘request’. To hold that FirstGroup”—
the bus company in this case—
“was in breach of its duty to make reasonable adjustments because it did not have a policy of enforcing a requirement to vacate the wheelchair space is in those circumstances unsustainable”.
Lady Justice Arden concurred. She said:
“Parliament has not given bus drivers any power to compel a person to move from the wheelchair space. A rule of ‘wheelchair first in the wheelchair space’ would not carry the force of law. In those circumstances, in my judgment, the duty to make reasonable adjustments does not require the bus company to have such a rule”.
This is a complete nonsense, especially where there is no flexibility on the part of the buggy user, so my first question to the Minister is: do the Government have plans, in the light of what was said in the earlier court judgments on this case, to make the clarity between the requirement and the request to ensure that a wheelchair can have access to the designed wheelchair space and cannot be barred from using it by the will of another passenger?
The Arriva booklet for disabled passengers, which was published in 2011, is extremely helpful—I think it is important in this debate to hand out bouquets as well as brickbats. The only problem is that nowhere does it refer to the fact that there are other people with priority over using the wheelchair space. It would be extremely useful if in communicating with disabled users it was absolutely clear whether the rights of a bus user are a matter for government, local government or the bus companies.
That brings me to people with hidden disabilities. The noble Baroness, Lady Campbell, and I had a meeting with Transport for London, mainly but not only about Tube use. A suggestion—one that we know we are not the only people to have made—is that in addition to the button badges that pregnant women
wear saying “Baby on board!”, a button badge saying “Hidden disability. Please offer me a seat” would be extremely useful. I am glad that TfL is seriously looking at taking that up, but it would be really useful if the message went out to all the bus companies and if people with disabilities were able to access that sort of thing for train companies as well.
In the past 24 hours, I was concerned to discover from talking to another disabled person that apparently most bus companies’ insurance companies provide insurance cover for only one wheelchair on a bus at any one time. She and another colleague, both in wheelchairs, were told that they could not travel together, even when she offered to get out of her wheelchair and sit in a seat. She can do that with her wheelchair whereas the person she was with has an electric wheelchair, as I do. She was told that was not possible because of the insurance cover. This is complete nonsense. It goes to show that the myths that abound about what you can do with the number of wheelchairs on the ground floor of a bus need to be exploded.
Audio and visual guidance issues are important. I know that the noble Lords, Lord Low and Lord Holmes, will speak from experience. One of the frustrations of being in a wheelchair space in a bus is that you are often facing the rear of the bus. I travel on buses around the country a great deal, and when I get on to a bus, I have to say to the driver, “I don’t know where I’m going, but I want to get to X”, and I am entirely reliant on the driver telling me because the visual guidance is usually behind me behind the driver. Unless there is audio guidance, I have no idea where I am going, if I am getting near the stop at all. That is not universally true. The bouquet I would like to offer today is to Manchester, where I was over the weekend, and where the buses and the trams were extremely good on audio and visual guidance, ramps and ticketing. That was extremely helpful and shows it can certainly be done. However, it is not universal, and one of the particular problems is services that encompass town and rural areas, not principal cities. Will it be made clear to all bus companies that they must have these user priorities and accessible guidance notes, even if it costs them money? Here I differ from the Select Committee: there needs to be audio and visual guidance on all buses and there should not be any further delay.
That brings me to my final point: training. It is always instantly apparent to me, as I am sure it is to other disabled people using buses, if a driver or a conductor has had training. They understand the issues that you face and the space that you have to move in. They know how to ask passengers to move so that you can get into the required space. They often also offer guidance about whether or not you need to pay, because not all areas make disabled people with a blue badge pay, as I discovered to my delight in Manchester over the weekend. However, it is also painfully clear when they have not been trained. For example, there is a lack of understanding that you do not want an electric wheelchair to be pushed by a helpful driver; that is actually the last thing that should be done. Training would cover the difference between manual and electric wheelchairs.
In the Paulley judgment, Lady Justice Arden also made a comment about training. She said that,
“provisionally I consider that the bus company must provide training for bus drivers and devise strategies that bus drivers can lawfully adopt to persuade people to clear the wheelchair space when needed by a wheelchair user”.
This is important because the training guidance for buses differs completely from that for train operators. My next question is: when will the bus guidance, on training in particular, be brought into symmetry with the train operating guidance? While the train companies are not perfect, it is clear what their duties are under the law.
In conclusion, 89% compliance with the 2000 regulations is still not good enough; it should be 100%, and 15 or 16 years is more than enough time for companies to come to that compliance. There remains real concern about who is actually ensuring that things are compliant, and I look forward to the Minister’s response on the DVSA and its role in making that happen. On compliance on audio and visual guidance, and on training for bus drivers and conductors, by what date will bus regulations follow the rail regulations and make this training compulsory for staff?
The most important point is understanding that access to buses is not something that has to be balanced with the Red Tape Challenge, with capital costs for bus companies, with training costs or with the needs of other bus users. It is self-evidently discriminatory to keep treating people with disabilities less well than other bus users, and the Bill is a perfect opportunity to remedy those deficiencies.
5.17 pm