The
Committee consisted of the following
Members:
Chairman:
Mrs.
Janet Dean
Bailey,
Mr. Adrian
(West Bromwich, West)
(Lab/Co-op)
Cairns,
David
(Inverclyde)
(Lab)
Clark,
Paul
(Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for
Transport)
Cox,
Mr. Geoffrey
(Torridge and West Devon)
(Con)
Davies,
David T.C.
(Monmouth)
(Con)
Hammond,
Stephen
(Wimbledon)
(Con)
Havard,
Mr. Dai
(Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney)
(Lab)
Hepburn,
Mr. Stephen
(Jarrow)
(Lab)
Hunter,
Mark
(Cheadle) (LD)
Ingram,
Mr. Adam
(East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
(Lab)
Leech,
Mr. John
(Manchester, Withington)
(LD)
Mahmood,
Mr. Khalid
(Birmingham, Perry Barr)
(Lab)
Seabeck,
Alison
(Plymouth, Devonport)
(Lab)
Tami,
Mark
(Alyn and Deeside)
(Lab)
Timpson,
Mr. Edward
(Crewe and Nantwich)
(Con)
Wright,
Mr. Anthony
(Great Yarmouth)
(Lab)
Mick Hillyard, Committee
Clerk
attended the
Committee
Second
Delegated Legislation Committee
Monday 3 November
2008
[Mrs.
Janet Dean in the
Chair]
Draft Rail Vehicle Accessibility (London Underground Victoria Line 09TS Vehicles) Exemption Order 2008
4.30
pm
The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Paul
Clark): I beg to
move,
That
the Committee has considered the draft Rail Vehicle Accessibility
(London Underground Victoria Line 09TS Vehicles) Exemption Order
2008.
The
Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the
draft Rail Vehicle Accessibility Exemption Orders (Parliamentary
Procedures) Regulations
2008.
Paul
Clark: It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship,
Mrs. Dean, especially on my first statutory instrument
Committee as a Minister. I have been on the receiving end in the past
as a
Whip.
We
have taken strong action to provide a public transport system that
increasingly allows people with reduced mobility the same opportunities
to travel as other members of society. We have led the way among our
European partners by introducing regulations requiring all new rail
vehicles, buses and coaches to be accessible. There are already around
4,700 accessible rail vehicles in service, which were introduced under
the Rail Vehicle Accessibility Regulations 1998, widely referred to as
the RVAR. Many thousands of older rail vehicles have also been made
more accessible through refurbishment, and we have also established the
access for all fund, which is improving accessibility at all stations
across Great
Britain.
Our
leadership in this area has been recognised at European level. The
commissioners come forward with new standards for train accessibility
based largely on the RVAR, demonstrating how far ahead of mainland
Europe we are in that respect. As it would not be desirable for a train
to be subject to two different accessibility regimes, and as the new
European standards automatically take precedence, since July of this
year the RVAR have been disappliedwith Parliaments
agreementfrom trains operated for passenger services on the UK
mainline railway system. We also took the opportunity to set an end
date of 1 January 2020, by which time all these vehicles must be
accessible. The RVAR remain the accessibility standard for light rail,
tram, metro and underground
systems.
The
RVAR were introduced under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. That
Act also provided for an exemption process, which allowed rail vehicles
that did not comply fully with the technical standards to enter service
by means of a statutory instrument considered under the negative
resolution procedure. The RVAR regime was further strengthened during
the passage through Parliament of the Disability Discrimination
Bill in 2005, in that in certain circumstances an exemption order would
need to be approved by the draft affirmative resolution
procedure.
4.33
pm
Sitting
suspended for a Division in the
House.
4.48
pm
On
resuming
Paul
Clark: As I was saying before the Division, the RVAR
scheme was strengthened with the passage of the Disability
Discrimination Act 2005 so that in certain circumstances an exemption
order would need to be approved by the draft affirmative resolution
procedure. That Act also contained regulation-making powers allowing
the Secretary of State to set out the basis for making a decision as to
which parliamentary procedure should be used for individual exemption
orders. Until those regulations are in force, all RVAR exemption orders
are automatically subject to the draft affirmative resolution
procedure.
The
Disability Discrimination Act provisions require consultation with the
Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee, more commonly known as
DPTAC, and the Governments statutory advisers on the public
transport needs of disabled people, before each decision is taken on
which procedure to use. Those provisions are the subject of the draft
Rail Vehicle Accessibility Exemption Orders (Parliamentary Procedures)
Regulations 2008, which set out in detail the criteria which the
Secretary of State will use when deciding which parliamentary procedure
should be followed. They are explained further in the accompanying
explanatory memorandum, but in general terms, the criteria which
trigger the draft affirmative resolution procedure will take
precedence. They might include exemptions for brand new vehicles
providing public transport services; orders that have no expiry date or
that run past the end date of 1 January 2020, by which time all rail
vehicles must be accessible; requests for extensions to existing
exemptions; or whole network exemptions, such as for a heritage
network. Such transparency is necessary to ensure that both the rail
industry and disabled people understand how exemption applications will
be treated and, in particular, under which circumstances the draft
affirmative resolution procedure is likely to be
chosen.
Revised
guidance will be available to assist understanding of the new
provisions in due course. Parliament agreed that the Secretary of State
should retain the discretion to adopt a different procedure for a
particular order, having regard to representations from DPTAC. Such
cases may include a negative resolution procedure for an exemption for
rail vehicles if the same issue has previously received the explicit
agreement of Parliament via the draft affirmative resolution procedure.
That will avoid the unnecessary programming of parliamentary time,
although Members will, of course, be able to scrutinise orders laid
under the negative resolution procedure.
The draft
Rail Vehicle Accessibility (London Underground Victoria Line 09TS
Vehicles) Exemption Order 2008 is fully supported by DPTAC, London
TravelWatch, the official organisation representing the interests of
transport users in London, and her Majestys railway
inspectorate. It will allow London Underground
to introduce new trains on the Victoria line with features not currently
permitted by the RVAR, but which benefit disabled people. The order
will also allow London Underground to resolve some of the challenges
that the regulations present in the short term to a deep-level metro
service with a high frequency of services, inaccessible stations and a
mix of old and new
vehicles.
The
new trains will be the first of London Undergrounds fleets to
be covered by the accessibility legislation. Until all the new trains
are delivered, they must run alongside existing vehicles, which were
designed in the 1960s and, consequently, fail to meet many modern
accessibility standards. For example, the warning given when the doors
are about to close lasts for one and three quarter seconds, but new
vehicles complying with the RVAR should have a three-second warning. As
there will be a mixture of new and old vehicles on the Victoria line
until 2011, it will be confusing to have two different durations of
audible warning on the same route. At this late stage in their life, it
is difficult and potentially extremely costly to change the warnings on
the existing trains. Allowing London Underground to continue with a one
and three quarter second warning on all Victoria line trains until the
old ones are withdrawn provides consistency and allows disabled people
to be confident about what the warning means.
Once all the
older vehicles are withdrawn, London Underground will begin to use
three-second warnings on the new vehicles. The order allows London
Underground to revert to the shorter warning temporarily, if the
three-second warning has a negative impact on the service, provided
that that does not disadvantage disabled people. However, London
Underground would need to apply for another exemption and to provide
justification to extend the exemption further.
The second
exemption under the order concerns the announcements made on board a
train at each station. The RVAR require both the next stop and the
terminating station to be announced. That was included so that
passengers could distinguish between a fast train, which skips several
stations, and a slow one calling at all stops. Since the Victoria line
has no branches and does not mix fast with slow services, the
announcement would not serve the same purpose of assuring passengers
that they are on the right train. The exemption allows London
Underground to omit one of the two mandated announcements while the
train is at the station. Instead, London Underground will provide extra
information about connections and places of importance, which
passengers are likely to find more useful on the underground. To ensure
that passengers are still provided with the mandated information, it is
a condition of the order that the omitted announcement is made shortly
after the train leaves the station.
The RVAR
require that the first capital letter in a regulated announcement be no
less than 35 mm high. That requirement was principally aimed at
overground trains which often have only two displays, one at either end
of the carriage. However, the new Victoria line fleet will have six
displays in each of the carriages, which are themselves much smaller
than those of overground trains. That means that the maximum distance
any passenger is from a display is much reduced, calling into question
the need for such a large size of text. Indeed, under these provisions
no passenger will be more than 3 m from a screen. The
provision sets minimum letter
heights to ensure that the regulated information still meets the Royal
National Institute of Blind Peoples best practice on text size
relative to reading distance. The reduction in size will also enable
each station name to be shown in full without the text scrolling across
the screen.
In addition,
London Underground is using new technology for its display screens
which means that the text itself is much clearer than the dot matrix
displays with which we are all so familiar. The new displays will also
enable pictures to be used, which will be particularly useful for
people with learning difficulties and those for whom English is not
their first language.
The final
exemption concerns wheelchair users access from the platform on
to the train. London Underground believes that it is impractical to use
manually deployed boarding ramps on a frequent metro service because of
the restricted space on the platforms, the limited amount of time that
each train waits in a station and the huge numbers of people that the
system handles, which is the equivalent to the whole of the national
overground network. Instead, London Underground will provide platform
humps, which are raised areas on the platform positioned to allow level
access to the wheelchair space. Wheelchair-users prefer level access
since there is no need to involve staff and it permits genuinely
independent travel.
London
Underground wishes the installation of platform humps to happen with
its ongoing step free programme, which is providing access to
wheelchair users and others from street to the platform. That not only
reduces the disruption caused by engineering work, but reduces the risk
of a disabled passenger being stranded at a station with no step free
exit. The order provides exemptions for each station on the Victoria
line, which will expire on the dates given for each station as it gets
the step free access either to the street or to the platform, as laid
out in schedule 2.
Humps have
already been installed at Brixton and Tottenham Hale in readiness for
the new trains as these stations already have step free access. They
are not therefore covered by the order. There are currently no plans to
make Pimlico step free, so no expiry date has been included for that
station. However, there are alternative stations nearby which will have
step free access and the order ensures that the Pimlico exemption will
fall automatically when it is made step free.
We and DPTAC
believe that that is a sensible approach which, subject to
Parliaments views, we would expect to maintain as London
Underground introduces new vehicle fleets and as the step free network
expands across the entirety of the Victorian and Edwardian
infrastructure.
Both the
draft instruments before us have already undergone scrutiny and have
been agreed in the other place. On that basis, I believe that they set
the right way forward and I recommend them to the
Committee.
4.59
pm
Stephen
Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con): It is a pleasure to serve under
your chairmanship, Mrs. Dean.
The
Conservative party recognises that the ability to travel on public
transport is particularly important for disabled people, a number of
whom are completely reliant on public transport to get from their homes
to
their places of work and leisure, shops, friends, family, health care
and education. Having a public transport system that is fully
accessible and safe for people with disabilities is an essential part
of the countrys transport policy, so I am happy to support what
the Minister said.
The power to
set minimum accessibility standards for all rail vehicles, buses and
coaches was granted under the 1995 Act. The directives specifically for
rail vehicles were introduced in 1998 and applied to all vehicles first
brought into use after 31 December of that year. Additional provisions
were made in the Disability Discrimination Act 2005 to ensure that
national fleets of buses also met accessibility standards by 2017 and
2020. We recognise that good progress has been made on that front
since.
David
T.C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con): Does my hon. Friend applaud
that progress but accept that we still have much further to go? That is
particularly true at Abergavenny, where a lift is needed to enable
disabled passengers to get from one platform to the
other.