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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 352-iii HOUSE OF LORDS House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE Joint Committee on the Draft Disability Discrimination Bill
Draft Disability Discrimination Bill
Wednesday 25 February 2004 MR ALAN SCOLES and MR STEVEN SALMON MR NEIL BETTERIDGE, MS ANN BATES and MR GRAHAME LAWSON Evidence heard in Public Questions 64 - 144
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Joint Committee on the Draft Disability Discrimination Bill on Wednesday 25 February 2004 Members present:
Memorandum submitted by CPT Coach Commission
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Alan Scoles, Chairman, and Mr Steven Salmon, Operations Director, Confederation of Passenger Transport, examined. Q64 Chairman: Mr Scoles and Mr Salmon, thank you very much for joining us this afternoon. I hope you have had a statement of the relevant interests of the members of the Committee. As you know, we are charged with reporting on the Draft Bill, and you are here to speak particularly about transport issues. Would you like to say anything at the beginning before we start to ask questions? Mr Salmon: No thank you, my Lord Chairman. Q65 Chairman: In your submission you highlight the potential difficulty for your members arising from confusion over what would be considered "reasonable" adjustments for transport providers to make to their services. How should your concerns about the practical implications of the proposals be addressed? Mr Salmon: We see a central role for guidance, for codes of practice, applying the kinds of principles which have already come out in guidance for the 1995 Act, but making them specific to the kinds of issues which face us, and in particular we might be interested in advice and guidance on how far in advance operators need to know about special needs, in order to deal with them. That is what we would see as the main way of trying to reach consensus. Mr Scoles: My Lord, Chairman, the confusion that the industry has comes from the fact that there is inconsistency, whether to do with the different definitions of disability and how we can tackle them, and of course the information that we are provided with up-front as to how it is interpreted. Q66 Chairman: Can you give us an example of that? Mr Scoles: Yes, for example, what is the definition of "physically disabled"? Many operators, particularly the big operators, would quite responsibly make more effort, and have got more resources, to invest in training or whatever, to understand the issues that a disabled person is suffering from, rather than a small operator who might have had a bad experience and who is very frightened of suffering that issue again. Q67 Chairman: If you are relying on guidance and/or a code of practice, would you expect that to be legally enforceable - in other words, a Bill might say that you should have regard to something which virtually makes it legally enforceable? Mr Salmon: I think we would expect it to have the same standing as other guidance under the existing Act. Q68 Chairman: You have half answered this already, but what are the boundaries that you think should be set? How far should the guidance go? What are the things that should be excluded altogether, do you think? Is there anything? Mr Salmon: In our written submission, we gave some examples of the kinds of adjustments which might be requested, and we did not place boundaries round those because we feel that that needs quite careful analysis in terms of the costs and benefits of doing these things. Clearly, there are some things that we do already. We already have a substantial number of disabled people who use transport services; but there are other things - for instance somebody coming on a coach holiday who might require more or less constant care, which we would probably think is almost certainly not a reasonable adjustment to make. We are in quite early stages of trying to fix where between those two extremes the "reasonableness" boundary ought to lie. Q69 Chairman: You said in your written evidence, which I found surprising: "Our members are concerned that they may have to take on the task of giving information on the presence of a public facility such as toilets." Surely, you say that anyway to all the passengers, do you not, where the toilets are when you stop? Mr Salmon: Well, my Lord, we have a specialised all-modes nationwide integrated travel information service called Travel Line, which is run from, from memory, six or seven call centres up and down the country. They have very sophisticated information on transport timetables, but have less sophisticated information on when, for instance, the toilets are open at particular interchange points. It is quite a step from being what we saw as providers of information about transport to providers of information about everything that some of our passengers might need to know during the journey. Q70 Lord Tebbit: I have a bit of sympathy with that point of view, although I must say my sympathy for you was not improved by your memorandum when you observed that car drivers and car passengers do not have to bear the cost of making adaptations for the needs of disabled people. Come on; tell my wife that when she buys a new car! Having said that, I have some sympathy with you over your difficulties in knowing, for example - let us put it at is most basic - not only where there are toilets which are wheelchair accessible, but the times at which they may be open or closed in some cases, and how long it may take a passenger to use those facilities as opposed to the other passengers and the effects on the timetable. I think they are very real difficulties; but I do think that in general you might consider making it plainer in advertisements, particularly for coach travel holidays, whether or not they are at all suitable for people with severe difficulty in walking. My experience is that you do not. Mr Salmon: Can I deal with those points in reverse order, my Lord? Alan works for a coach operator, so he can explain what his company does to show how accessible or suitable particular holidays are. Mr Scoles: We have for Shearings Holidays a special help-desk with five people fully employed on mixing the information from the customers of their special needs and of the hotels that we visit, and matching them to find what is suitable. We have a database of 15,000 people, with all sorts of disabilities - physical, sensory, the lot. I have an example of people that we deal with that perhaps another operator did not that was in the press recently, the national media - the three ladies from Blackpool. It was a case brought by the Royal National Institute for the Blind. It was a mother aged 82 who was not specifically immobile - but at 82 you are not particularly mobile. She had a daughter who was physically handicapped but not completely wheelchair-bound, and another daughter that was very severely blind. As it happens, we take these people on holiday regularly; they have no complaints, and if we ring them up there is no problem whatsoever. On this particular occasion they went with another operator, and they had a problem because the operator dealt with it differently. The points I would like to raise from that is the issue of inconsistency, which is where it would help us with some standards; and it is easier for a larger operator with more resources who can put all the effort into it than it is for a small operator. Let us face it, the coaching industry in particular, and the bus industry to a degree, is very much a cottage industry. You have not got the specialisms. I am responsible for planning and travel around the country and can see some of these places; but a small operator hasn't a clue. That is the problem we are up against. To go back to the issue of toilets, in the depths of Scotland in winter you haven't a chance to find suitable toilets for the able-bodied let alone the disabled-bodied. There are very, very severe problems. The reason you see coaches in every motorway services - and probably if you go as a passenger you dread the idea of seeing them in motorway services - but those are the only places that you can literally guarantee 24 hours a day are open, to have the resources, and want you. I can give classic examples of some important trunk roads like the A303 where there is virtually nothing on the whole length of that road for a coach and a group of passengers, whether able-bodied or disabled-bodied, to stop; because there are only Little Chefs and BurgerKings that do not accept coaches. Q71 Lord Tebbit: How would you like to see the regulations covering these matters framed? Mr Scoles: I would like to see some consultation for a start. Without boasting, the leisure side of the industry - and remembering we are entirely commercial - likes to woo as many passengers as we possibly can, and we do not have interest in putting anybody off. The way to do it is to try and meet with some of the people that want to use the services and come up with a framework that we can agree is acceptable. Q72 Tom Levitt: I think we are in danger of creating a few Aunt Sallies here. In Mr Scoles's opening remarks he talked about the fear of the industry about the possible consequences of this legislation, and yet the industry is already covered by the obligation to make reasonable adjustments as employers. Even the smaller companies will have that obligation as from October, when the small employers' exemption is lifted. Providers of static goods and services will have that obligation from October as well. So I do not really see why there should be more fear for the provider of a mobile service than for a static service. Let me give you the example of the motorway services and see how you respond to this. Surely, on the motorway services, the obligation to provide reasonable adjustments to access those services will come in from this October on the providers of those goods and services; and that is their obligation rather than the coach driver's obligation, is it not? Mr Scoles: Agreed. That is not the problem. I was not actually saying that. It is from the point of view of being allowed to stop there in the first place. We do not have a problem with motorway services. There is a distinct lack of places to stop that will accept a coach. A Little Chef might have disabled toilets but that is not much use if they will not accept the coach in the first place. Q73 Tom Levitt: I understand that. Mr Scoles: In our industry we get round that because we have toilets on the coaches. On every tour in Scotland - virtually every coach you see in northern Scotland will have a toilet on it so if everybody is caught short, there is not a problem. Chairman: We have the point about Scotland. That is what comes of devolution! Q74 Lord Swinfen: Are on-board toilets accessible? Mr Scoles: No. Mr Salmon: They are not accessible in the wheelchair state. They have handrails and so on, so people with moderate mobility can use them. They are not wheelchair friendly. Q75 Mr Williams: There is an ongoing debate about the definition of discrimination triggers that will require a reasonable adjustment by providers of goods and services. The Disability Rights Commission has proposed that a new trigger "substantial disadvantage" be set at the point where a disabled person is entitled to this reasonable adjustment. The recommendation has not been included in this Bill. What is your view on this proposal in relation to the transport provisions in the Bill? Mr Salmon: My Lord Chairman, if we have the kind of guidance and codes of practice that we were talking about at the beginning of this session, that should make it fairly clear both where the reasonableness of adjustment lies and where the trigger for making those adjustments lies. I would hope to see those things covered as a piece. I think there is a certain nervousness that on the one hand you have - I will not use the word "imprecise" term if I can think of a better one - if you have got the reasonableness of the response on the one side and whether a disadvantage is substantial on the other, you have almost compounded the questions you need to address when you are doing something or not doing something. But I hope that that will in fact become clear through guidance, codes of practice and so on. Q76 Mr Williams: You are saying that timing is the essence here; that you really need to see the codes of practice and regulation. Mr Salmon: Yes, it is about a common understanding; that the suppliers have the same understanding about what they are expecting to supply as the customers, the users, have about what they are expecting to be able to buy as a service. Q77 Lord Rix: Leading on from that, can you give a view on what you mean or what coach operators mean by "fully accessible public transport services"? Mr Salmon: We are very conscious of the need not to immediately jump to a mental picture of a person in a wheelchair when disability is being talked about. There is a very active debate in the bus industry at the moment about whether you can put equipment on buses to announce both audibly and visibly the next stops. In our view, fully accessible transport would include those kinds of adaptations. It would include systems for the basics of using transport, like paying for it, like getting information for getting on, like interacting with the staff, which throw up as few barriers as possible to people with any kind of disability. That would certainly be our definition of an accessible transport service. Q78 Lord Swinfen: We are talking about reasonable adjustment, but do you think that that varies between the sizes of the operators, because there is a financial cost to the operator on this adjustment? Should it be exactly the same for all, or should the larger operators make more in the way of adjustments? Mr Salmon: Given that there may be adjustments that for some operators, in particular sets of circumstances, meant that they could no longer trade and no longer have a business if they had to make them. Let us take two approaches to coach tourism for the moment. We have some members who buy new coaches and run them for about five years, and then sell them on in the market; we have other members who buy five-year old coaches and run them for maybe ten years. They both offer an attractive service, but it may be easier to specify some kind of adaptation or adjustment, if we are talking about vehicles, in the new vehicles, than it would with the old ones; but, equally, we have had a debate within the industry about whether it is fair for companies to make adjustments if they happen to have had a profitable year before, and not if they are on the brink of disaster. It is a very difficult issue for the industry, and that is probably reflected by the lack of clarity in my answer, I am afraid. Q79 Miss Begg: Are you in discussions with the coach manufacturers and builders to ensure that all new coaches are easily adaptable and already fully adapted. Mr Salmon: We are coming to a matter that we were expecting to cover within this session, which is to do with when all new coaches, and particularly touring coaches, should be accessible. There is a particular problem with coaches, not so much with buses or trams, but with touring coaches; that the currently available solution for getting wheelchairs on to coaches available from the manufacturers is felt by the majority of the operators to be unsatisfactory. So we are in a very odd situation that we would love the manufacturing industry to invent something which does the job better, and I know that there are some good brains at work on that; but at the moment if you want to buy a coach which you can put a wheelchair on, it is loaded by a lift which goes up the side, and there are lots of unsatisfactory aspects to it. We would love, as purchasers of these coaches, for the manufacturers to invent something better which enabled more or less the same number of people to be carried in the same degree of comfort but with less obvious and less embarrassing-to-use adaptations for particular users. We would much rather meet the needs of disabled people discretely within the mainstream of what we do than have these extraordinary things climbing up the sides of coaches; but at the moment we have not got it. Q80 Lord Rix: Would you not consider that audiovisual signs in buses and coaches would be very useful not just for disabled people but for a great number of your passengers, particularly the elderly like me? I would have thought it was a useful thing to wake you up and tell you that you have arrived at the place where you want to be. Mr Salmon: I am pleased to say that Arriva, our member that has been involved in a pilot of these, has done some research around their introduction. Certainly, the visible announcements are liked by all. The audible announcements though have been divisive, between both the passengers and the staff. Some of the passengers find them intrusive, some of the staff do not like having them on all day; and bus drivers being the people they are, some of them, I suspect, have tried to find ways of turning them off. The visual side of it has proved to be useful and uncontentious to the extent that I know several operations are looking at specifying that for the future. Q81 Lord Tebbit: Particularly in the event that there was a difference in the degree of regulation of major companies and small companies, how would you react to a requirement that any advertisement either for a holiday or for a transport service should list any categories of people for whom it was not suitable? Mr Scoles: As an operator - and we advertise quite regularly in the national press - I wonder whether that sounds a bit too negative. We actually try to include people, so by putting "not" in an advert, you are turning them away beforehand, whereas we would rather be in the dialogue and then agree between ourselves, "there is a bit of a problem with this one; we recommend that you do not go on it". Q82 Lord Tebbit: It would be rather sharp medicine to force people to think how they could avoid putting such caveats on their advertisements, would it not? Mr Scoles: Yes. Q83 Baroness Wilkins: The Disability Rights Commission, amongst other groups, has proposed that the definition of disability should be extended further to include people with mental illness, who are currently not included under the DDA. They find it difficult to prove their disablement to the DDA. Would this cause your members problems either as employers or providers of a service, if the definition were extended to include them? Mr Salmon: When we thought about this aspect, my Lord, we felt that we were getting into one of the most difficult areas in this whole question. There is not particularly a problem for us as employers as far as we can see, but we do have people who come on coach holidays in particular. I do not think it would be a problem across the bus sector either particularly, but we do have people who come on coach holidays who unfortunately generate complaints from the other customers. It is difficult as a commercial service provider to be in what you might call the vanguard of public reasonableness, and at the moment the operators have the ultimate sanction if a number of people write and say that X and X did not wash from the start of the programme to the end: at the moment, operators can write to the people concerned and say, "we would rather you did not come with us again". That, clearly, would be discrimination within the terms of the Act, and some of the people who might be brought into the definition if this were to happen might be some of the kind of people who would generate those kinds of complaints. I am very far from saying - and I want to make this absolutely clear - that I am not trying to tar disabled people with any kind of brush, or even to suggest that there is a strong correlation between people who generate these kinds of complaints and disabled people; but the fact is that these complaints do arise, and at the moment coach operators have a means of dealing with them. In a new world, where we do not or might not, that would be quite difficult. Mr Scoles: I think the biggest issue is not necessarily the types of disability; it is down to the individual in the end, and their behaviour as part of the holiday. Arguably, it is not relevant whether or not they are disabled. The behaviour within a group of 50 people who are thrust together for a week - they all need to be able to mix together. There are certain aspects of people's behaviour - for example, somebody who is completely drunk - we have thrown people who are alcoholics off holidays because of the disruption they have caused to other people in the hotel. I do not know whether they would be classified as disabled or not, but I am trying to say that it is down to the individuals. It is the problem of the words "reasonable" and "unreasonable". The industry deals with a lot of people with all elements of disability, but as long as they are reasonable we do not have a problem with them; it is when things go a bit pear-shaped. Q84 Chairman: Surely, if you were excluding them on grounds of their disability, that would be an offence; but you would have, like all operators, the right to refuse people if, as you say, their behaviour was ----- Mr Scoles: It can be, my Lord, but the behaviour can be related to the disability. Q85 Lord Addington: Are you confusing mental health here - somebody who is depressed and is not washing for instance and will not take instruction? Mr Scoles: There is that aspect of mental health, but there are obviously other mental illnesses where somebody is not quite compatible. We have lots of examples of people that are in care home that have total care all the time and are then sent away on a coach holiday on their own. We had two people who had epileptic fits last summer, which created an issue obviously, not just for the person themselves but for the other people. Q86 Lord Swinfen: Your coach holidays do not just take place in the United Kingdom. Mr Scoles: No. Q87 Lord Swinfen: They start and stop in the United Kingdom, but they go abroad. Mr Scoles: Yes. Q88 Lord Swinfen: As far as I understand it, once you are across the Channel the Disability Discrimination Act stops operating. Mr Scoles: Yes. Mr Salmon: It is outside of the United Kingdom. Q89 Lord Swinfen: Would it be helpful, or a hindrance to you, if a provision was brought into this Bill to make it operate with British operators when they were taking people from this country and they were abroad, and bringing them back again? Mr Salmon: It would require us to make arrangements with attractions, hotels, outside the UK that do not have the same statutory obligations placed upon them. It would essentially have to be done by contract, which would be very difficult. For instance, we use a lot of small hotels as an industry in the Rhineland. They are very nice, small family-run hotels, but they are not well adapted to the needs of disabled people. If, by placing an obligation on us to sell holiday packages which had all the necessary adjustments, we would have to make those adjustments through the contractual chain to the Rhineland hotelier, which might be quite difficult. Q90 Lord Swinfen: You would be covered under the advertisements you placed in this country in any case, would you not, because you have to be accurate in your advertising on what you are selling, even outside the United Kingdom? Mr Salmon: We would not seek to mislead anybody, no, that is true. Q91 Lord Swinfen: But you would have to be accurate. I know you would not seek to be misleading, but surely you would have to be accurate? It is not quite the same thing? Mr Salmon: I do not think there is any contest there. Q92 Lord Tebbit: I think we need a little legal advice as to whether the contract having been made in Britain would still be enforceable in Britain even if part of it were being supplied overseas, but that is another matter. I wonder if it might be easier in some of these discussions if we looked at the example of somebody who was an alcoholic passenger, which would enable us better to distinguish between the disability that is alcoholism and the behaviour that could be a problem, which would be drunkenness. Presumably, you would have no objection to being obliged to take an alcoholic. Mr Scoles: I would not know that they were! Mr Salmon: We probably do already! Q93 Lord Tebbit: The only objection is if the driver was one! You have obviously a legitimate interest, which is that of your other customers, in moving against that person if their behaviour is of drunkenness. I think there is a clear parallel similarly with mental illness or disability. Mr Scoles: Yes. Q94 Lord Rix: That leads on to the question that I was going to ask. I am not representing mental illness; I am here representing learning disability obviously. The majority of people with learning disability are extremely socially aware and capable of boarding your coaches and having a perfectly comfortable journey; but it is possible that visually they might not be within the normal pattern recognised by your coach operator or by the driver, or whatever it be. Would you exclude people on a visual assessment as to their social attributes? Mr Scoles: In principle, no, we would not. We accept guide dogs, for instance. We all have a problem where - and this is any disability - the person needs additional help to what the other passengers on the coach require, bearing in mind that the driver is responsible, apart from driving, for everybody. He cannot become a carer. If someone can generally look after themselves, but needs a little bit of guidance or even help down the steps and pointing in the right direction, there is absolutely not a problem with that. There would be a problem unloading the coach and then leading them 200 yards to the hotel, if they could not do that on their own. I would have to say that on holidays in a lot of cases we are quite lucky because people go as a couple; so normally the husband or wife is looking after them, but it is not always the case, and we do have unfortunate issues. Q95 Mr Levitt: What do you think are the advantages or disadvantages of the proposal to use regulations to bring providers of transport services within the DDA? Mr Salmon: The advantage is that it enables proper analysis of the costs and benefits in great detail of the particular measure, but the disadvantage is that it can take a long time. If we are keen to see something clarified, that can be quite a time-consuming business. Q96 Tom Levitt: The time element is obviously important. The Disability Charities Consortium for example has called for the immediate lifting of the transport exemption, rather than a more gradual introduction of regulations. What is your response to that suggestion? Mr Salmon: From our reading of the Bill, there is an element which immediately comes into effect, and that is stripping away transport operators' exemption for things other than those relating to the vehicles; and then when you are left with the vehicles, as far as buses are concerned and coaches on regular service, there are already regulations in place which have started for new vehicles and have an end date. The Bill would, as far as we can see, enable the Government to bring forward regulations, maybe bringing forward those end dates or dropping them further; but it would also bring in additional categories of vehicle for which there are not currently regulations, such as touring coaches. So long as there is proper analysis and proper consultation, we do not have a problem with that. Q97 Tom Levitt: Picking up another point from the Disability Charities Consortium, they point out the possibility that happens now of good intentions being frustrated by the middleman. For example, if the regulations are not in force, if a coach operator provides a disabled access bus but the driver chooses not to operate the ramp, there is no redress from the passenger who is disadvantaged unless the regulations are in force. Do you think that would be a problem, for regulations that are delayed too long? Mr Salmon: I am afraid that I am going to have to plead the need for detailed legal scrutiny of the effect of the current regulations because I am not sure from what has been done with the regulations which govern the conduct of bus drivers, whether that is illegal now and it is a matter of enforcement, or whether it is legal now because of the exemption but would cease to be illegal if the Bill becomes an Act in its current form. I can give you supplementary answers on that, my Lord Chairman, if you wish. Q98 Lord Addington: We have information that it is legal now to refuse somebody. I would like to bring in a question I was going to ask slightly later on because you have referred to it several times, about the timescale. What would you consider to be the quickest that you could bring the physical nature of the vehicles in, and any other thing? The whole timescale question is vitally important here, and I am wondering if, between the two of you, you could deal with that. We have gone round it several times, and it would be interesting to know. Mr Salmon: In terms of buses and coaches that operate on regular services, there are already regulations which have an end date. It has become clear, as we have moved along the road between the implementation of the regulations, and the end date, that the end date is likely to provide something of a cliff edge for the industry, and there will be firms who will go to the end date with their old assets and decide to sell up, retire or whatever, and that will be that. It will be a very significant event for the industry. Those end dates in the existing regulations were quite logically derived from the lifespan of vehicles and an intention not to scrap good assets. I think we would like to see as an industry that same principle followed if we were to bring things like coaches for hire and touring coaches into the equation; in other words, to have a start date and to have an end date which did not require operators to find overnight that an asset which they thought they had bought and were expecting to use for 15 years was only going to be good for five. We would be looking for end dates for touring coaches and hire coaches at least the same time after the start dates as we have had with the buses, which is somewhere between 15 and 20 years. I come back to the point which we made earlier on; that despite the best will in the world of both the buyers of coaches and the designers of coaches, there is not yet a satisfactory practical solution to deal with the particular kind of accessibility which is needed by people in wheelchairs in coaches. Q99 Lord Addington: To follow on from that, it tends to be the case that the longer the run-in time, it basically means that you go from a thing that has become a long-term problem, then panic. Would you say there would be an arguable case for forcing people to at least do something on a quicker date, or having some staged implementation level running through? This is what tends to be happening in this area: "We will deal with it in X amount of time", panic. That tends to be something we are dealing with here, and this is something that I am becoming increasingly irritated by. If it is forgotten about and then something has to be done, then certain people will just get out and certain people will make adaptations. Do you not think that there would be a case, if we do have a 15-year run-in that there should be certain stages of development which we could insist upon going through, and say "after five years you will have done X, after ten years you will have done Y" et cetera? Mr Salmon: We start from the helpful situation that buses and coaches are not like buildings and they do actually wear out comparatively quickly. I know 15 years sounds like a long time! There is an inbuilt compliance in that you cannot delay renewing your entire fleet for 15 years, and when new vehicles come on-stream they have the necessary features. Although in principle if the bus industry and the coach industry were one, two or three large firms, you might say "let us have some staging posts and agree that we will have done this by this stage and this by another"; but the industry is not like that; it is made up of many hundreds of small enterprises, some of which have big fleets but some of whom have very small fleets. It is extremely difficult to fairly translate an interim target of the kind that you have broached into something that would work for somebody who owns two coaches, or maybe just one that he owns and drives himself. Q100 Lord Rix: The official question is that you comment on training in relation to local public service transport, but do you think there are training implications in the Bill for other sectors? Do you think the industry will have any difficulties in responding to these implications? I would like to ask a supplementary. Evidence to this Committee and evidence to Mencap from groups of people representing people with learning disability suggests that current disability awareness training is woefully inadequate, and that people with a learning disability are regularly discriminated against, even bullied by transport staff - again, I am coming back to appearances among other things - particularly when they try to board a bus? What else do you think public transport operators can do to improve the disability awareness training for their staff, and what are you doing in this respect? There are two parts to the question. Mr Scoles: I think sometimes perhaps we get discrimination against the disabled mixed up with discrimination against the passenger. My own experience of getting on buses at Euston Station would back that up. Some of them do not want anybody on their bus, whoever they are! Q101 Lord Rix: In my days in the theatre, I welcomed coach operators! Mr Scoles: I am probably slightly biased because I do think from the coaching side our drivers are trained constantly to welcome people, because there is not much point in them being there because it is an integral service and they have to have a smile on their face from the minute the person gets on to the minute they get off. From those sorts of aspects, they are doing their best to look after all customers. You could then ask if they are trained on specific elements for aspects relating to specific disabilities. There is some training, but it will be totally inconsistent and may well be inadequate because there are not very many laid-down procedures. I do not believe the industry generally has a problem with general awareness of dealing with disabled people and the skills that a bus driver is required under the Act to undertake should not be a problem for the bus industry, and it is certainly not a problem for the coaching industry. However, one has to recognise that at the end of the day the guy is a driver. That is what he is there for and when you start getting into the skills of a carer, that is a more unique business. Mr Salmon: If you go back five years, disability awareness training was rare. Now, the training is really a matter of course for new entrants into the bus industry. Over the next five years, and hopefully a bit quicker, the thinking firms will be looking at the effectiveness of that training. It is one thing of course to do it, and it is another thing to monitor whether what you have trained suffuses through the organisation and into the culture of what goes on on the road. We are part way along that process, but I would not claim for a moment that we have got there yet. Q102 Lord Rix: Training videos are easily accessible for everybody, small operators or large ones. Training videos might be of some use to help matters along. Mr Salmon: They are used already. There has been quite a lot of progress on that. However, these things can always be reviewed and improved upon. Q103 Lord Swinfen: Turning to finance, can you outline the areas where your members face significant additional costs to implement the Bill's proposals, and which have not been covered by the regulatory impact assessment? Can you estimate those costs? Mr Salmon: I would like to give two examples. We discussed in our written evidence this rather arcane question about whether a trailer is a vehicle for the purpose of these regulations, in other words, whether somebody with a powered scooter which could be accommodated in a trailer but cannot be accommodated in a coach could suggest that it would be a reasonable adjustment for the coach operator to provide a trailer to take the powered wheelchair in. We have done a little bit of work on this, both in terms of the costs of the trailers, the cost of driver training and the small cost arising from the fact that you cannot go so fast if you have a trailer behind you. We think that that measure alone for coach tourism, if it did turn out to be a requirement of the Bill, would cost the industry of the order of £1 million a year. In other areas though there are things which we do not think the RIA has identified but which are to a large extent happening already. The example I would like to give is that of giving assistance at interchanges on long-distance services. It would seem to us to be quite a reasonable adjustment to expect operators to make if you were somebody like National Express, and I am pleased to say that they already do, and they are able to advise customers who need assistance at interchanges where that assistance is available. It is not available absolutely everywhere but if you make the change at one of their main points, then that assistance is there. But it is not an additional cost to us because it is a cost that we are in fact bearing already as part of the accepted cost base of the industry. Q104 Chairman: Is there any danger that there could be any services withdrawn as a result of this Act when it comes in? Mr Salmon: There may be, particularly on the coach tourism side with firms saying "if I am going to have to do this, it is time to retire; I am not going to be in this market any more". Of course, coach operators retire every year, but this might be a stimulus for some. It is hard to judge elsewhere because with bus services there is a mechanism if something ceases to be a commercial proposition; there is a mechanism for public authorities to step in and buy it back. I would say that the adjustments we have already made in respect of buses are more significant and more costly than what is proposed in this Bill. The changes will impact on coach tourism and coach hire, which are essentially commercial operations and do not have recourse to public funds. This might have some effects at the sides of the market, and it may be that some larger operators find themselves offering a slightly smaller portfolio of tours, perhaps slightly more expensive because of the need to spread the costs of what is happening. Mr Scoles: A lot of these questions depend on the features that are eventually required. For example, taking the National Express experiment, assuming it was followed through, there would be a loss of four seats, which is something like 8 per cent of the road fare possible. That is obviously a lot of potential revenue because every trip that is lost, whether the disabled seat is used or not; and there is potential for a heck of a loss. Q105 Chairman: Are there any other comments you would like to make about the Draft Bill? We have had an extremely useful session but are there any other points? Mr Salmon: I would like to make two brief remarks, one of which I would be surprised if you did not hear from others, and it is all about the transport chain. On the face of it, a coach holiday within the UK - let us avoid the complication of going to the Rhineland for the moment - involves a coach, some attractions and a hotel; but there are other things; there are ferries even within the UK. What we do not want to find is that we are being expected to deliver something which, due to some weak link, we cannot do. We are very keen that the whole chain is looked at, and that includes things like local authorities accepting that it is their responsibility to enforce the parking restrictions which they put in place so that coaches with disabled people on can stop at the kerb and the disabled people can get off. It is all part of the same thing. The second aspect I would like to return to, in a response to a remark that Lord Tebbit made earlier, because we may not have made it clear enough in our evidence, is this question of costs of adaptation. The point we tried to make was that if I go and buy a car tomorrow, which as it happens I almost am, I will not pay the costs of any adaptations because it has not got any; whereas if I go on a coach holiday when these things are in place, I will bear a share of the cost of the adaptations which the operator has made. Lord Tebbit: Point taken; understood; I think we are now at one. Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. There will be a transcript of the evidence sent to you next week, and it is also available on audio. It will be on the website within the next week or so. Having read the transcript, if there is anything that on reflection you would have liked to have said to the Committee, by all means write to us.
Memorandum submitted by Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Neil Betteridge, Chair, Ms Ann Bates, Chair of Rail Working Group, and Mr Grahame Lawson, Chair, Local Authority and Personal Mobility Working Group, Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee, examined. Q106 Chairman: Thank you very much for coming in this afternoon. Would you like to introduce yourselves? Ms Bates: My name is Ann Bates. I am the Chair of the Rail Working Group, DPTAC. I am a member of the Rail Passengers Committee for Southern England, and I am involved in the Accessibility Working Group at the Rail Passengers Council. In short, I am the trainspotter! Mr Betteridge: My employer is Arthritis Care but I am here today representing DPTAC as its Chair. Mr Lawson: I am also a member of DPTAC and have been since 1996. I am head of Planning and Transportation with North Lanarkshire Council local authority. Q107 Chairman: Would you like to start with an opening statement? Mr Betteridge: Thank you. I would simply like to say that in our view the importance of transport to the disability rights agenda is difficult to overstate and that the disability rights issue for disabled people is equally difficult to overstate, so while many disabled people would say that the measures contained in the Draft Disability Discrimination Bill are long overdue ‑ and they may be right ‑ we have a view in DPTAC that we warmly welcome the package of measures as a whole contained in the Bill, and are delighted to see, now, opportunities to implement the Disability Rights Task Force recommendations. Q108 Chairman: To what extent do you think the draft will achieve the DRTF's recommendations that the DDA "access to services" duty should be extended to transport operators, and are there any ways in which the Bill could be improved in terms of achieving this recommendation? Mr Betteridge: I think the answer to both questions is "Yes". Clearly there will be a lot of importance in the detail which accompanies the way in which these recommendations are carried forward, monitored and evaluated, and this is why I think it is so important that we do take time to ensure that regulations and the accompanying codes of practice are developed with the input of all relevant stakeholders, disabled people, industry, transport providers and so on to make sure we get it right. We have waited an awfully long time for these measures ‑ centuries, some would say ‑ and in this window now over the next year or two we have the opportunity to make sure that the spirit behind these welcome measures is effectively implemented, and that will only be effective if all parties can begin now to agree what would be reasonable in some of the specific circumstances, for example, that you have been discussing already today. So we do agree, I think, with the previous witnesses that the advantage to some of the regulations is the flexibility it provides in allowing specific modes of transport to be given due consideration individually, and equally share the view expressed that the disadvantage or danger attached to that is one of slippage whereby we may see further delays which could otherwise be avoided. So there is a balance to be struck there but on the whole we believe that the advantages for transport service providers at this point is that there is an awful lot of learning to be had from the way in which Part 3 of the Act has already been applied in other service provision areas, and there is a lot of sensible extrapolation we can do from that, I believe, in order to determine what would, and would not, be reasonable which of course is the key concept in all of this in future circumstances which are specific to transport. Q109 Chairman: When you refer to "flexibility" you are, I presume, referring to timetable? Mr Betteridge: Both timetabling and the differing modes of transport because, as we know, in terms of timetabling, in terms of agreeing how service provision can be described as reasonable, what is true about trams may be very different, for example, with small private eye vehicles. Q110 Chairman: In terms of operation you will find the code of practice will be more flexible than a parliamentary regulation? Mr Betteridge: I did mention that the two needed to be developed in conjunction with each other, absolutely. They need to be complementary so we all have more clarity and consistency about what the Act requires in terms of both rights and responsibilities. Q111 Miss Begg: On the difficulties that I would like to explore I am assuming you think there should not be any difficulties but I suspect that the transport operators think there will be difficulties. What difficulties do you think they are going to bring up about extending Part 3 of the DDA to them, and what do you see are the solutions to those difficulties? Mr Betteridge: One Committee member has already raised the notion of some Aunt Sallies which exist in the way in which the existing Act is perceived and understood, and I think that is right. There is a fear largely born out of ignorance, I believe, because many of the importance aspects of getting this new set of measures right relate simply to bringing transport into existing auspices of the DDA so, referring back to my previous comment about learning from our recent past and looking at hotel accommodation, for example, and arriving at your first point of departure on your journey, many of the issues around those and, indeed, employment have already been addressed by the earlier stages of the Disability Discrimination Act. We are really looking, therefore, at fear around some of the issues to do with staffing, training and disability awareness, but we do know that in many other areas of legislation, whether it be race relations or health and safety, staff that need to be trained in those areas to understand their responsibilities have been successfully trained. What we need to ensure now is that operators and providers of services generally in transport understand the law, understand that it needs to be applied consistently, and then train their staff to deliver on that because many of the other infrastructure aspects have, as I said, been picked up by the early parts of the DDA. Q112 Miss Begg: Some transport operators are probably already fulfilling the new obligation that will be put on to them by the draft Bill because they are already fulfilling what would have been an obligation under Part 3 had it included transport. Have you examples of that kind of good practice, or of operators that are already there, who are not going to be affected by this Bill because they are already doing it? Conversely, have you examples of where there is a long road to travel because the operator really has not addressed any of these issues at all? Ms Bates: In the train world there are some really good examples of good practice and one of my worries is that the train operators have known since 1995 that this was coming, and I am very keen to see that people who have been working since 1995 who have been putting in the time are not penalised against the sort of companies that are leaving it to the very last minute. South West Trains in particular have got very robust disability awareness training. They work very hard on wheelchair access on their trains; they have tried to do a disability awareness training that covers the whole range of disabilities; and in some ways they are very far forward because from 1995 they have been working on this. Q113 Miss Begg: Can you give examples of the bad practice? I could probably give you half a dozen myself! Mr Betteridge: Only half a dozen? In the following examples the purpose is not to cite or point the finger at individual companies because I think most companies would have distance to travel to improve practice, etc, but I can give some specific illustrations. At the moment, for example, DPTAC and the Department of Transport are in informal consultation with Brittany Ferries over a policy of not carrying assistance dogs unless the dog is confined to the car for the whole journey. Now, clearly this is an area not covered by the existing legislation but it would seem somewhat unfair and potentially discriminatory not to allow someone who has a need to be with the dog for a journey to do so. There was the Ryanair case recently, where the case was taken on behalf of the Disability Rights Commission of the man who has arthritis and cerebral palsy who was one of many people charged by that company for use of a wheelchair at the airport. That has attracted a lot of national publicity recently and does highlight some of the glaring weaknesses in the Act as it stands now, something which this Bill really has the opportunity to put the spotlight on to identify that this is one area where we can generate consistency and clarity, so this would be illegal in the future. Q114 Miss Begg: I realise you have other examples but can I be clear that the draft Bill we are considering today will not include aircraft themselves; that is still outwith the scope of this Bill? Mr Betteridge: Correct. Aviation and shipping at the moment are subject to voluntary codes. The Government have indicated that they will move to legislate in those areas if the voluntary codes are not found to be working effectively, and DPTAC believes that by the end of 2005 we should have enough evidence to know whether it would be necessarily to legislate in those areas. You are quite right to point that out. Q115 Chairman: Would you assume, then, at the end of the voluntary code, that the Bill should include a regulation‑making power, because you would not want another Act of Parliament to do it presumably? If it is shown at the end of 2005 that it needed legislation, you would expect the Bill to provide a regulation‑making power to enable that to happen? Mr Betteridge: I think at this point that would look like the most likely and reasonable way forward, yes, because we need to move as quickly as we can and as practicably as we can, and given we are here with this Bill that would be a logical next step. I do have just one or two more examples where policy and practice, which at the moment is legal, may not be in the future if this Bill has the teeth that many would like. British Airways, whom many disabled people describe as generally excellent in many aspects of its service delivery, recently were the subject of a court case whereby a disabled person who had requested extra leg space for the duration of the journey was told their ticket allocation procedures could not allow that sort of flexibility, and that prevented the person making the journey. Similarly, with easyJet, the pilot asked a group of deaf people to leave the plane because he considered them to be in some way obtrusive or a nuisance for the purpose of the journey and that seemed to be based, going back to the point on whether it is behavioural or the impairment, largely on assumptions about behaviour than facts. So there are a number of areas where we are looking to this Bill to really make a difference to strengthen the law we already have. Q116 Lord Rix: There was a question in the Lords I think just before the recess as to whether, once you left British Airports Authority land where regulations might apply, they would apply on particular aircraft, and because this was an overseas carrier operating from Heathrow, they were told that the regulations could not apply once they stepped on board that aircraft. Would that continue to be the case? Mr Betteridge: Clearly the national Government in the United Kingdom can only legislate for its own nation ‑‑ Q117 Lord Rix: But once the aircraft is on English territory or British territory, does that not apply? Once you have gone through the door you are on foreign territory, as it were? Mr Betteridge: It is a little bit like the question previously about holiday and coach tourism. What the company can do is fall within the requirements of United Kingdom legislation, and that already applies to the physical design of various modes of transport so aircraft could be tackled in that way in terms of physical access, but what we are specifically looking at here, I think, is service provision. So a British company would be subject to the British law and would therefore need to have trained its staff to make them aware of what is expected, reasonable and responsible in terms of the new legislation. On those issues it will even be irrelevant as to where geographically that took place if discrimination occurred. Q118 Lord Tebbit: Do you regard it as reasonable for an airline operator to place a limit on the number of people either incapable of walking or walking only with great difficulty being put on any one aircraft? Mr Betteridge: We have had very similar discussions in relation to trains. We do have to constantly return to the key, first principle of reasonableness which underpins everything in the Disability Discrimination Act. I would say that it is not reasonable for any employer or service provider to incur significant and severe financial loss as a result of some concepts of adjustment, but at the same time what is reasonable is something which needs to be explored practically and with those issues in mind. Again, we had many of the same concerns raised by, for example, companies who ran hotels, restaurants and so on before the 1999 ‑ and, indeed, this year's ‑ parts of the Disability Discrimination Act took force, and the codes of practice which initially the National Disability Council and the Disability Rights Commission have produced have taken great pains to highlight what would and would not constitute reasonableness. That is the sort of process that DPTAC can help facilitate in this next period. We need to talk to disabled people and industry to get some shared sense of what would constitute reasonableness, and that I think would answer your question, so at this moment one could not reasonably put a number on it but that discussion needs to be had. Q119 Lord Tebbit: I am quite clear that would differ for various aircraft but you must clearly be aware that there is a requirement on the operator to demonstrate that the aircraft can be evacuated in an emergency in a given period of time. Do you think if the operator feels that that ability would be impaired by carrying such passengers, he would be discriminating against such passengers by refusing to carry them? Mr Betteridge: No, because that would be reasonable. It is already a fact that the Disability Discrimination Act cannot overrule existing legislation such as health and safety legislation, and therefore it would be entirely reasonable not to make a particular adjustment if it in any way compromised health and safety. That is not the sort of thing disabled people want out of the new measures. We want what is reasonable. Q120 Lord Tebbit: You do, I hope, understand that it is almost impossible in any serious emergency to remove people who cannot walk from an aircraft? Mr Betteridge: Precisely. That is why in my previous answer I agreed with your implication that in those situations it is not reasonable and therefore would not be a part of the new legislation for companies to do that, because it would compromise health and safety. Q121 Lord Tebbit: So it may be unreasonable for the operator to carry the people at all? Mr Betteridge: If they had data to demonstrate that it significantly compromised health and safety, then that would be a significant part of how reasonableness was assessed, yes. Q122 Lord Tebbit: I think you should be extremely careful because, if I may say so, you may be in danger, if you push it too far, of finding that we cannot have wheelchair bound passengers on civil aircraft at all. Mr Betteridge: The aviation group working within DPTAC is talking to industry, of course, all of the time and taking on board these considerations. We are not pushing in that direction: we are listening to what disabled people say and transport providers say to get a shared sense of what would be reasonable in those circumstances. I do not disagree with anything you have said there. Q123 Lord Rix: Supplementary to Lord Tebbit's question, in June last year easyJet refused to take on thirteen students from one of our colleges at Pengwern because they had not got sufficient careers with them. Eventually various passengers offered to be carers but they would not take them unless they had one carer for every two passengers with a learning disability. Obviously we are worried that a court eventually could rule that a person with a learning disability could not fly unless they were escorted by a carer, which is obviously going to double up on costs and going to make it almost impossible for that person to travel by aircraft. I suppose it could be applied to other means of transport too, but certainly aircraft. Do you not think that would be unreasonable? Mr Betteridge: You know better than probably anybody else in this room that, especially in terms of learning disability, people are very quick to make assumptions and they are usually negative. When the Disability Discrimination Bill was first brought forward in the mid‑1990s, we had many similar conversations with providers of insurance services and the depth to which assumptions pervade into people's concept of disability is hard to exaggerate. In that particular instance actuarial data was the answer, whereby insurance providers needed to establish facts in the matter before they could construct policies around what otherwise might just be assumptions, and I think the same principle applies there. The onus of proof, if you like, needs to reside with the service provider. There needs to be a demonstration, as with the previous example of health and safety, that to carry out something which would be classified as a reasonable adjustment for the purposes of the Act would in some other way damage them in terms of their cost or would undermine their safety or whatever that aspect of reasonableness may be. If they can successfully demonstrate that with the evidence then it becomes reasonable not to make that adjustment, but without the evidence we only have assumptions and that is where the Act needs to be strong. Q124 Tom Levitt: You have already touched upon the use of regulations once or twice. Could you lay down for us what you think are the advantages and disadvantages of the use of regulations to implement the measures in this Bill, and what is the balance of advantage and disadvantage? Mr Betteridge: I briefly referred to that in a previous answer where I agreed with previous witnesses that the flexibility, both in terms of timing and differing modes of transport, was one major advantage. At the same time the major disadvantage is the risk of slippage in terms of the scheduling. On balance we are very pleased to see regulations being used to actively carry forward many of these measures. The key to that is going to be how robustly they are monitored, evaluated and ‑ where necessary ‑ enforced, so that is the particular reason we believe the Government should lay out its timetables as far as it can on differing modes of transport, so that those such as the Disability Rights Commission, ourselves and others can simultaneously work on the codes to accompany the regulations to make sure they are monitored robustly. On balance, therefore, we are in favour of using regulations where possible. In fact, we even go further and make the point in our written submission about the definition of disability as contained in the draft Bill, whereby it can become invidious to start naming particular conditions or impairments because once you start a list you really have a duty to complete it and it is difficult to get an exhaustive list. Regulations might be one way of dealing with some of those difficult issues around the definition. Rather than naming specific things such as multiple sclerosis, HIV or cancer on the face of the Bill or Act, it may be helpful in terms of the speed at which this can be reviewed or changed in the future to do that through secondary legislation or regulations also. Q125 Tom Levitt: You say quite rightly in your submission that the regulations must address the needs of the widest range of disabled people. You also say there is a risk that some categories ‑ and you highlight sensory or learning impairments and mental health problems ‑ can be excluded from consideration. Do you think there are inherent weaknesses, therefore, in the proposals in respect of those categories of disabled people? Mr Betteridge: No. Many of the suppositions that the general public have about disability and transport are rooted in thought around physical access but the way in which, for example, information is arranged and provided and made accessible or not is very important for people with learning difficulties, of course, and with mental health problems too in many cases, and these can be just as much barriers to travel as a flight of steps can be to a wheelchair user. So the concept at the heart of the Disability Discrimination Bill about whether your impairment is severe, adverse, long term and whether it interferes with day‑to‑day activities, are key and I think should be universally applied to understanding how the legislation can best serve all disabled people whatever their type of impairment. Q126 Tom Levitt: Is there anything else the regulations particularly need to address? Mr Betteridge: If the way in which the regulations are devised allows both the flexibility to take account of the different modes of transport and also enables us to develop schedules which mean that we would lose no further time in turning ideas into practice, then the regulations will be of the highest quality. Q127 Lord Addington: What do you think would be a reasonable timescale for the different forms of transport to be covered by the proposed regulation? Also, we have heard in previous evidence the suggestion of a chain of transport. How would you think that is going to fit into any timescale if we try to get that idea going, and what would you say is reasonable here, straight away removing all exemptions? What is your position on this? Mr Betteridge: The current schedules are quite complex because each mode of transport currently has a different schedule. The complexity is added to by the fact that each mode has had to date a differing level of discussion and consultation, therefore the two areas in which DPTAC makes specific recommendations are around the voluntary code on aviation and shipping ‑ and, as I mentioned before, we believe that the end of 2005 is a reasonable time for Government to decide on whether legislation is necessary ‑ and on compliance with the rail vehicle access regulations, and on that 2017 is our preferred end date. We would believe we were failing in our duty as the statutory adviser to Government on these issues if we second‑guessed the result of discussions that we need to have over this next period with transport providers in the other modes where that level of detailed discussion has not yet taken place. So with that in mind we have limited our specific recommendations to 2005 for aviation and shipping in relation to legislation and 2017 to rail. Ms Bates: We are trying to take a pragmatic view about railways in that, if you listen to a rail company, they will say that they need until at least 2035 and if you listen to a lot of disabled people they will say they want it tomorrow and they are entitled to access tomorrow, but we need to work with the train companies and the train manufacturers and the ROSCOs, the leasing companies. We are not interested in anyone having an unreasonable burden of cost, and we need to work with the rail companies to make sure that whatever we ask for is achievable. I take as an example the Mark I guards vans. People in wheelchairs are still sitting in guards vans even though dates have long gone past, and I think we need a blend of a date and working carefully with the train companies and the manufacturers to make sure that at least reasonable provisions are allowed for. We support the Menu Plus idea in here to make sure that, when refurbishment happens, it is like‑for‑like but with a plus for toilets and visual display units and so on, to make sure that, as time goes on, even refurbished trains come up very close to the rail vehicle accessibility regulations. Q128 Chairman: Other areas affect disabled passengers like 24‑hour notice for assistance, for instance. Would you like to comment on that? Ms Bates: Yes, very much so. As someone who needs to book rail travel myself it is very close to my heart. We have been working very hard and have some figures from 1992 to say that over 30 per cent of booked journeys fail, and I think what happens is that people have experience of a booked journey, it fails, and it destroys people's confidence in travel. Q129 Chairman: When you say it "fails", what do you mean? Ms Bates: The booked assistance does not turn up. We are working with the SRA at the moment who are doing a much larger scale survey about this, and there are two main reasons that I am wanting to get involved in it: we need to emphasise to the rail operating companies that there is a large market out there especially for non‑peak travel amongst people with disabilities. Rail is an ideal way to travel if you can be sure that your booked assistance will turn up, so we need to make people more confident about using the Disabled Persons' Reservation System (DPRS). Also, from a train company's point of view, if a booked service does not turn up it results in great losses for the train company. As an example, I travel up from Brighton on the main line and if I go to change at East Croydon and the ramp to get me off the train does not appear it can take five or ten minutes to find a ramp, and the penalties for that train and the trains that are clogged up down the line behind me are huge, so I am trying to make a point to the rail companies that it is in their financial interests to make this service work better. Q130 Miss Begg: Is there something inherently difficult about getting particularly people in wheelchairs on to trains which means it needs 24 hours' notice? I ask that because I travel regularly by British Airways and I often do not give them 24 hours' notice. I can book a flight with less than 24 hours' notice; sometimes I am on my way out to the airport if my plans have changed and they can always accommodate me and get me on that flight, yet not on the railways. Why? Ms Bates: From a personal level I would like to see a turn‑up‑and‑go service tomorrow on the railways, I agree, but the nature of the infrastructure is that we have a lot of unstaffed stations and a lot of unsuitable stations, and from a disabled person's point of view I want to build up somebody's confidence in using the service. Everyone who uses a wheelchair knows lots of people who have tried it, it did not work, so they are not going to do that again, and in that way I would like to personally see an 0800 number for the DPRS service. If we can get more people booking ahead, then the people on the stations will get more confident about how they deal with disabled people and there will be more of a call for really good disability awareness training, because that is a huge component. If a ramp turns up and the person with that ramp is unpleasant and does not greet you in a way that makes you feel welcome, it can really destroy your confidence. If it turns up late and somebody says, "Oh, well, I did not know you were coming" it can make a big difference, so I think we need a pronged attack here and my eventual aim is to get a turn‑up‑and‑go service. Q131 Miss Begg: Are you confident that the regulations that will be passed, along with what we are considering today in the draft Bill, will ensure that there are enough legislative teeth, if you like, to make sure that the train operators do fulfil their obligations under the Act to make sure that these booked assistance places do not fail in the future? Ms Bates: I think it needs a robust enforcement system and I think, as it stands, any Bill is not worth the paper it is written on unless there is a properly funded enforcement system. I can give you examples of the Rail Vehicle Accessibility Regulations (RVAR) where you can see non‑compliant trains on the network but they need to be reported in, and we need a much more proactive system that perhaps uses disabled travellers to report in things that go wrong. Some of the people who take the bookings for the disabled are now operating a callback system because one of the problems we have had is that there are lots of people's tales out there but very little hard data, so after a person who has booked a journey has travelled they get rung back, asked how the journey went and what went right or wrong, and this is presented in data which can go and be worked on, because until you have the data it is very difficult to enforce. Q132 Miss Begg: And are you saying that the enforcement system should be within the scope of the regulations in this Bill? Ms Bates: I would very much like an enforcement system in there. Mr Betteridge: The spontaneous journey is something that most people in society take for granted and disabled people cannot take for granted, and there are ways in which the new legislation can specifically address that. We need greater clarity, for example, about who is covered in terms of public authorities, what that means in terms of the practice, and specific issues such as what happens when a journey begins to fail the disabled person rather than the person not turning up. For example, if your journey is disrupted or you arrive at a train station but actually there is a coach replacement for the first leg of it, if the coach is not accessible to you then your journey becomes difficult or impossible, so we can through the regulations focus on specific issues such as breakdown recovery, for example, so if a disabled motorist breaks down, if it is a private hire vehicle especially, can they be reasonably sure they can get an adapted vehicle pretty soon to replace it or are they going to be rendered immobile? Certainly in terms of the new duties for public authorities one of the things which stops disabled people getting from A to B is the fact that every journey begins with a single step, and immediately outside your home you may have a terribly inaccessible environment before you even get to the first bus stop, or the rail station. Mr Lawson: Just adding to that, we heard evidence earlier regarding the chain of the journey. It is important that the whole chain is accessible from beginning to end and without that there is no confidence for any passenger. Q133 Miss Begg: Coming back to the reasonableness in all of this, I have an example from my own experience when I got on a train at Glasgow expecting to get off at Montrose to be told at that stage that I was too late for it to be manned to get off, but the train company did get me off it at Arbroath and provided a taxi which got me home. Now, I thought that was a reasonable adjustment. I would have perhaps been happier had I known in advance because then I may have changed my travel plans but at least they made that reasonable adjustment. Would you interpret that as a reasonable adjustment as well? Mr Betteridge: Yes. Q134 Miss Begg: Making sure the system works, but not necessarily in the same way as it works for everyone else? Ms Bates: The DRC are at the moment looking at a reasonable adjustment involving a taxi with a train company who are refusing to get a taxi for somebody to get from one platform to the other where there is a footbridge. One example is in Winchester where there is a stepped access, and South West Trains ‑ I sound like an advert for South West Trains! ‑ will provide a taxi from one platform to the other because it is unreasonable to have to go round, and I know the DRC are looking at another rail company that is refusing to provide that now. Q135 Mr Williams: On the issue that every stage of the journey should be accessible if it is going to give confidence, we have also got examples, especially in very rural places, of people who are unable to change platforms and who have been advised to travel in the opposite direction until they get to a station where they can do it. I cannot think of anything more discouraging than setting off on a journey and going in the opposite direction from what you want. Also we have examples of bridges over tracks that are listed buildings or structures which cannot be demolished. But surely reasonable adjustments must be made for people to have confidence to go through the whole journey. It is not just the trains but the stations as well. Mr Betteridge: Yes. Q136 Lord Addington: Going back to the idea of trying to link what else is going on in the journey, you suggested 2017 as being reasonable. Taking the whole chain of transport that we have just been hearing about, do you see any heavy engineering work or any other reason that would mean you could not have an integration and everything being available by, say, that date? To be perfectly honest it has been pointed out that you cannot rely in public transport on one mode of transport, so is there any reason why one date could not be applied to all? Mr Betteridge: The various end dates have various strands of logic to them - Q137 Lord Addington: But can you push them? Is there any reason physically? Mr Betteridge: One of the strands of logic that determines the end dates which are suggested at the moment is around the expected life of the stock. Trains last approximately thirty years and it is a 1995 Act and therefore we have a suggestion of a 2025 end date, but I think we have to transcend some of those issues, important though they are, and do some of the joining‑up that you suggest is so important and we would agree is very important. For example, one of the reasons we suggest 2017 as the end‑date to meet the rail vehicle access regulations is because 2017 is also when buses must be fully accessible, and although buses and trains are only together two parts of the whole chain they are two very important parts, and if you cannot join up everything for reasons to do with stock decay and so on, we can at least make some of those important connections. Whilst I understand the concerns around the refurbishment issue we would suggest that, if train operating companies can demonstrate that if they were to be allowed to refurbish in order to go beyond 2017 that refurbishment would produce demonstrable improvements to access, there would be a case for exemption provided the exemption mechanism was robustly monitored, and DPTAC have a role to play in that. Q138 Mr Williams: The Disability Discrimination Bill at the moment imposes a duty on organisations providing services and goods to anticipate what reasonable adjustments must be made for the needs of disabled people, but it balances that with a high trigger, which is "impossible or unreasonably difficult". In your submission you say that the draft Bill should clearly state that public authorities must anticipate what reasonable adjustments they ought to make to their functions in order not to discriminate against disabled people. You also recommend that there should be a low trigger for this duty, perhaps if a disabled person would otherwise be "adversely affected". What problems might public authorities face in attempting to anticipate the need to make changes to any of their functions with such a low trigger? Mr Lawson: The whole issue of definition is a question of "adversely affected" rather than "very much less favourable". "Very much less favourable" ‑ from my point of view as a practitioner, and I am head of service in a local authority ‑ is shades of grey whereas "adversely affected" to me is much more positive statement, and I have a much better idea of what I am expected to do. Going back to my role, what drives me as a chief officer in a local authority are the Acts of Parliament, I have to make sure the Council complies with those, and any regulations that derive from them. There are also performance indicators put in place by Government which are becoming very extensive. In England we have the CPA, comprehensive performance assessment, for councils as such so my salary depends on how well I perform. So I have an interest in making sure we do comply with regulations but, in terms of the anticipatory question the Disability Discrimination Bill came in in 1995, so we have already had nine years to think about where we go with it and, again, the local authorities have a dual role. We are a service provider but we are also an enforcer through our responsibilities for the planning regulations and for body control regulations, for licensing of premises, etc, and it would be unfair of us to enforce regulations on others if we are ourselves are not anticipating and if we are, if you like, leading by example. Q139 Lord Swinfen: Are you satisfied that the measures in this draft Bill can be adequately monitored and enforced? Mr Lawson: Yes, there is no reason why they cannot be. I have already mentioned the fact the Government itself sets performance indicators, and it is certainly a question of ensuring that the correct indicators and monitoring mechanisms are put in place, but I think the emphasis has to be on the user. Too many of our current indicators relate to provisions ‑ outputs rather than outcomes ‑ and I think it is very important that any measure of achievement itself is in terms of the user and user satisfaction, rather than us having an indicator, for example, that says, "We are aiming to have one hundred per cent low‑floor buses". Even if we have 100 per cent of low‑floor buses we have failed if people are not using these buses, so again the emphasis has to be on the user. Q140 Miss Begg: Moving on to the Blue Badge, I chair the Traffic Management Bill and I was very aware that there was an amendment down which was withdrawn because the Minister did give an assurance that he would come back. I spoke to the Minister the other day and he reiterated that there would be the changes to the regulations governing the Blue Badge, particularly on enforcement. Would you prefer to see that kind of provision or these changes to the Blue Badge scheme through the Traffic Management Bill or the Disability Bill? Mr Betteridge: Going back to the point about outcomes being more important than outputs, as long as it happens is one answer! We know that the Government have accepted the recommendations made by DPTAC around the Blue Badge scheme which do need primary legislation. There are three main issues that need to be picked up through primary legislation, and I think the Traffic Management Bill can provide an ideal home for at least one of those. However, we cannot be sure and if you cannot be sure certainly we cannot, so I think it is important that that does not disappear from the agenda of this piece of legislation because we cannot miss two opportunities to find long‑awaited legislative homes for recommendations that are so important in making sure the Blue Badge scheme recovers some of its robustness and how it operates. Q141 Miss Begg: So it is a case of warning this Committee to keep a watching brief on what happens at the first stage? Mr Betteridge: Yes. Q142 Miss Begg: My worry with the Traffic Management Bill is that there is the odd bit that applies in Scotland but the vast majority of it does not. Would there have to be extra provisions to make sure that obviously the section on the Blue Badge did apply in Scotland? Mr Lawson: There are three points that we believe require primary legislation. Certainly in terms of creative powers inspection that would seem to sit readily with the Traffic Management Bill if the Government were so minded. Regarding an alternative wording to the use of "institutional" and the creation of a national database, there may be some question about where these two particular aspects lie but the key point from our point of view is that all three are covered one way or another within one or more of these two Bills because there has been a commitment by Government to early action on this. But going back to the issue of enforcement, my Lord, the powers of enforcement do exist in Scotland already. We did talk about anticipating, and I am pleased to say that the Scottish Parliament anticipated this recommendation from DPTAC and made provision for it in the 2001 Transport Act, and the regulation relating to it was brought in at the end of last year and came into effect, in fact, on 1 January this year, so police and parking attendants in Scotland do now have the powers to have inspection. Miss Begg: Well, they have not asked me yet! Q143 Chairman: I understand that the Traffic Management Bill is still in Committee in the Commons so there are a further four stages if you include the Lords in which the Bill can be amended, so there is time to do it if the intention is there. Are there any comments you would like to make, other than those you have already made, about the draft Bill? Mr Betteridge: If I may, just to conclude, there is one point of process. DPTAC was extremely disappointed that it took four to six weeks for the Bill to be put into accessible formats ‑‑ Q144 Chairman: You are entitled to be; that is quite right. That is a matter for the department and not this Committee, but I am pleased you said it. Mr Betteridge: More positively, we believe now the important opportunities are around practicable yet urgent implementation of these measures. Further delays really cannot be accepted, certainly by disabled people, and I sincerely believe that industry now wants some clarity and specific timetabling, and that the Government has a leadership role to play here in putting forward at least provisional timetabling and scheduling that we can consult all the relevant stakeholders on. So we do make this a practicable as well as an aspirational exercise. Finally, there is not just something in this for disabled people ‑ which there is, of course, if we improve mobility; not just something in it for industry ‑ which, of course, there is if we increase their customer base; but something in it for all of us including Government, because if disabled people cannot travel and if mobility continues to be severely hampered in comparison with other members of society, then other Government policies, ones which are likely to remain whatever the political hue of the Government of the day is, will be undermined, whether it is prompt hospital discharge, independent living, healthy ageing or welfare to work. All of these policies will be significantly undermined without effective legislation relating transport to the understandable and very reasonable wishes of disabled people to have the same rights to travel as everyone else. Chairman: That is an excellent summary, thank you. I think we can all agree that if you ask any disabled person which area of this Bill has the most day‑to‑day and practical effect on the way they live, it is transport. Thank you; you have been extremely helpful. |