Examination of Witnesses (Questions 55-59)
1 DECEMBER 2004
MR WILLIAM
BEE, MR
NEIL BETTERIDGE,
PROFESSOR PETER
BARKER OBE, MRS
ANN BATES
AND MR
DAVID CONGDON
Q55 Chairman: Good afternoon, ladies
and gentlemen. May I ask you first, from my left, your right,
to identify yourself for the record?
Mr Congdon: David Congdon, Head
of External Relations at Mencap.
Professor Barker: Peter Barker,
member of the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee.
Mr Betteridge: Neil Betteridge,
Chair of the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee.
Mrs Bates: Ann Bates, Rail Working
Group Chair and member of the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory
Committee.
Mr Bee: Will Bee, Wales Director
for the Disability Rights Commission.
Q56 Chairman: Am I to take it that you
are prepared to go straight to questions, or did any of you have
anything you wanted to say? Let us start off by asking you if
there has been any noticeable improvement in access to public
transport since we looked at this issue a year ago?
Mr Betteridge: There have certainly
been some modest improvements. I think many disabled people and
others are still frustrated at the painfully slow pace of change
in many areas. If we were to highlight a couple of the areas where
we have seen progression, the accessibility of buses for mobility
impaired people, for example, is something where we have seen
a slow and steady increase of something like a 4% annual rise
from 14% to 18% of accessible buses for people who use wheelchairs
and have other mobility issues; that is leaving aside sensory
impaired people who have seen no progress on issues such as audio
visual information. We heard earlier from the Minister about modifications
through primary legislation to the Blue Badge Scheme, and that
has been very welcome. There are many other improvements to the
Blue Badge Scheme which do not require primary legislation and
on which we still require political will to see those go forward;
so that is another area of frustration. We still operate in a
system whereby significant areas for disabled people, like the
use of taxis, are still on the whole unregulated, but in some
contexts we are seeing developments, so it is a mixed picture.
Q57 Mrs Ellman: What are your views on
the problem of lack of coordination of access to trains and stations?
How do you see that problem and what do you think should be done
to improve the situation?
Mr Betteridge: I will ask my colleague,
Ann Bates, to answer that.
Mrs Bates: I think we need to
make sure that it is really important that a journey is seamless
for disabled people. I think there is no point being able to get
on the station at one end and not being able to get off at the
other. Personally, I am not a fan of, but I would see the reasoning
behind, booking ahead. I think we need to look at it from a different
point of view and I am encouraging train operating companies to
make their booking lines into 0800 numbers so it encourages people
to book ahead. So rather than just wring their hands about the
people who turn up, they should be making active encouragement
for people to book ahead; then they can make robust plans about
what would happen to people at stations and on trains. I believe
that in my lifetime not every station will be accessible, but
I think they need, again, robust plans to transport people who
find difficulty at stations too. Personally, I do not want to
get on at an unstaffed station; I would much prefer to be taken
to my nearest staffed station that has refreshments, a toilet
and staff, and go on my way from there, but it should not be at
my cost, it should be at the train operating companies' cost to
take me there.
Q58 Mrs Ellman: How big a problem is
this? You mentioned the difficulties of disabled people to get
on a train at one station but not being able to get off on arrival,
or not being able to move around the station. Is this a very regular
problem?
Mrs Bates: Yes. Habitually there
has been a lack of information about each station. I think Railtrack
and Network Rail have not had a terribly good grasp of what facilities
there are. A start was made on this with the Disabled Persons
Protection Policies, where train operating companies looked at
all the stations that they ran and looked for step-free access
at those stations. I think it is important that we get a proper
database about what stations have what facilities, and then we
can work from there. At the moment, although some work has been
done and John Yunnie at ATOC has produced a step-free map, I think
there is still a lot of work to be done about the details of what
facilities there are at each station.
Q59 Mrs Ellman: You are saying that there
needs to be more work on providing accessible information?
Mrs Bates: Very much so. The booking
service, although I use it, I think is far from robust as well.
I also work for the Rail Passenger Users Committee, and we have
figures that suggest that for at least 60% of journeys the booking
fail. We are looking to get the booking system vastly improved
so that people can have confidence, because at the moment, especially
for wheelchairs users, there are new trains running around with
wheelchair spaces but not enough wheelchair users confident enough
to use them.
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