Thirty-first Report
Instrument drawn to the special attention
of the House
The Committee has considered the following instrument
and has determined that the special attention of the House should
be drawn to it on the ground specified.
Draft Rail Vehicle Accessibility Exemption
Orders (Parliamentary Procedures) Regulations 2008
Summary: These Regulations set out the basis on
which the Secretary of State will decide which Parliamentary procedure,
affirmative or negative resolution, is to be followed when making
an exemption order from domestic requirements for rail vehicle
accessibility for the disabled. The criteria to be used when deciding
which Parliamentary procedure should be followed include, for
example, the age of the vehicle and the length of time for which
an exemption is requested. We note that the response to the consultation
exercise criticised the complexity of the proposals and that,
although they have apparently been simplified, they are still
intricate. The Department intend to produce guidance for the industry
and we hope that this will make the position clearer; the flow
chart, printed at Appendix 1, is certainly a step in the right
direction.
These Regulations are drawn to the special attention
of the House on the ground that they give rise to issues of public
policy likely to be of interest to the House.
1. The Department for Transport (DfT) have laid
these Regulations under section 67 of the Disability Discrimination
Act 1995 Act together with an Explanatory Memorandum (EM).
2. The Regulations set out the basis on which
the Secretary of State will decide which Parliamentary procedure,
affirmative or negative resolution, is to be followed when making
an exemption order from domestic rail vehicle accessibility requirements.
They also contain provisions allowing the Secretary of State to
decide to adopt a different procedure for a particular order having
regard to representations from the Disabled Persons Transport
Advisory Committee ("DPTAC").
3. The interplay between transport policy and
disability access policy has been of interest to the Merits Committee
since it first took up its scrutiny role. The Committee initially
felt that exemptions from the disability access requirements set
out in the Rail Vehicle Accessibility Regulations 1998 ("RVA
Regulations") were being granted rather too frequently and
without proper balancing of the pros and cons. Following our reports,
the House rejected a proposal in the Disability Discrimination
Bill 2005 (DDA 2005) that the power to exempt vehicles from the
disabled access provisions be removed from Parliamentary procedure
altogether. Indeed, during debates on the Bill, Peers upgraded
the procedure to requiring an affirmative resolution in all cases.
However, a Government amendment to DDA 2005 made a provision to
allow the Transport Secretary to set out conditions under which
minor exemptions, as defined, might be put forward by negative
resolution: that is what these Regulations set out to do.
4. Since the DDA 2005 took effect, European legislation
with the same intent came into force in July 2008[1].
This supersedes domestic regulation for disabled access to heavy
rail vehicles (which covers most passenger services), so the residual
RVA exemption powers now only apply to other forms of rail transport
such as light rail, metro, trams and heritage railways.
5. The draft Regulations currently before the
House set out the criteria which the Secretary of State will use
when deciding which Parliamentary procedure should be followed.
These include, for example, the age of the vehicle and the length
of time for which an exemption is requested. We note that the
response to the consultation exercise criticised the complexity
of the proposals and that, although they have apparently been
simplified, they are still intricate. The Department intend to
produce guidance for the industry and we hope that this will make
the position clearer. In the interim the Department have provided
us with a flow chart that illustrates the decision process graphically,
which is certainly a step in the right direction. The chart is
printed at Appendix 1.
6. The DDA 2005 also extended the power of the
Secretary of State to grant exemptions to rail vehicles used on
named "networks" such as a specific heritage or tourist
line (previously the exemption power could only be used for defined
rail vehicles). This power was introduced in recognition of the
obvious constraints presented by the rail vehicles operated on
these networks and it is understood that further legislation to
exempt a large number of heritage networks will follow shortly.
7. In tandem with these Regulations the DfT have
laid the draft Rail Vehicle Accessibility (London Underground
Victoria Line 09TS Vehicles) Exemption Order 2008 which conforms
to the current arrangements requiring an affirmative procedure.
They seek a short-term exemption from the audio signal requirements
for the period during which they are running old and new rolling
stock alongside each other. They also seek some exemptions to
allow the testing of new technology which may offer a better solution
to the needs of the disabled (see illustrations in the appendices
to the EM[2]). All these
seem a sensible use of the current exemption power.
1 The Rail Vehicle Accessibility (Interoperable Rail
System) Regulations 2008 (SI 2008/1746) transposed the new European
technical specification for interoperability for persons with
reduced mobility (or "PRM TSI") . Back
2
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2008/draft/em/kkdsiem_9780110845579_en.pdf Back
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