London mayor’s GLA has ‘no idea’ how to co-produce policy with disabled people, says leading Lib Dem

A leading London Liberal Democrat has accused the public body that runs the capital of having “absolutely no idea” how to co-produce policy with disabled people.

Hina Bokhari, leader of the Liberal Democrats on the London Assembly, was speaking at her party’s annual conference in Brighton, just days after the mayor of London published his first disability action plan.

The mayor, Sadiq Khan, said last week that his plan had been “created in partnership” with disabled people, but disabled people’s organisations offered only lukewarm support for its contents.

This week, Bokhari launched a fierce attack on the mayor and his Greater London Authority (GLA) for failing to pay disabled people for their expertise and involve them from the beginning in crucial projects.

She said: “They don’t understand co-production… and I am bloody frustrated at the moment about this, because I have had to work so hard for people to understand what it means.”

She was speaking during a fringe event on Sunday, hosted by the National Centre for Accessible Transport (NCAT).

Bokhari, who has worked closely with disabled people’s organisations in the capital on issues around disability equality, told the meeting that when organisations such as Transport for London (TfL) say they are “doing co-production” they are in fact just engaging with disabled people through an unpaid advisory group.

She said: “They’re volunteers who are then asked to feed back on TfL projects.

“Not at the start, somewhere in the middle, maybe at the end, if you’re lucky.

“This is completely the wrong approach.”

She had campaigned with Inclusion London for there to be both an action plan and a senior disabled person paid to coordinate and develop GLA policies that addressed the barriers faced by disabled Londoners, but those ideas were rejected by Labour assembly members in February 2025.

Instead, the mayor’s GLA developed its disability action plan.

Bokhari said last week that the action plan had lacked ambition.

And she told Sunday’s meeting: “This action plan that was released this last week was supposed to be something that was led by, not just with, but led by the disabled community.

“They should have been paid. Nobody from the disabled community was paid.”

Tracey Lazard, chief executive of Inclusion London*, which supported GLA as an independent partner on its engagement process, said in response to Bokhari’s comments: “We are very clear the engagement in developing the GLA disability action plan was not co-production.

“But we are equally clear it was a significant step on the journey to co-production.

“The GLA were willing to engage and work with DDPOs** and disabled people far more than they have done in the past and far more than most other public bodies have done.

“However, the real test is whether the actions in this plan are implemented and whether the GLA builds on its engagement with our community and begins to co-produce policy that affects us, with us.

“We thank Hina for her tireless work to make sure disabled Londoners’ issues are on the agenda and have no doubt all of us will need to continue to do this and hold the GLA to account so this disability action plan marks the start of a strategic and co-produced approach to policy-making.”

David Buxton, chief executive of Action on Disability (AoD), which hosted the action plan’s launch earlier this month, told Disability News Service after the meeting that it was clear that Bokhari “fully understands what genuine co-production means and the important difference between co-production and consultation or engagement”.

He said AoD welcomed the plan and saw it as an “important step forward”, but he said there was “clearly more work to do to strengthen genuine co-production across the GLA family”.

He said: “AoD remains fully committed to supporting the GLA to engage and co-produce more effectively with Deaf and disabled people and our organisations.

“We also have an excellent team at Inclusion London, with considerable expertise in this area, who can work alongside London’s DDPOs and the GLA to help develop stronger co-production practice.”

But he said there was an opportunity for GLA to “invest further in training and support so that genuine co-production becomes embedded in the way it works with us.

“Genuine co-production means involving disabled people from the very beginning, identifying the issues and priorities, designing policy, making decisions, implementing the work and monitoring the outcomes.

“It should not simply mean consulting us once proposals have already been developed.”

Buxton said there was “an important principle that disabled people should not routinely be expected to provide their expertise and lived experience for free.

“Where people are contributing substantial expertise to policy development, appropriate payment and accessible support should be built into the process.

“Our message to the GLA is simple: work with us, not for us.

“AoD, Inclusion London and London’s DDPOs have considerable experience and expertise to offer.

“Together, we can make the action plan deliver real and lasting change for disabled Londoners.”

NCAT’s disabled chief executive, Dr Emma Partlow, had told the meeting that her organisation’s evidence showed that 92 per cent of disabled people face barriers with at least one form of transport.

She said that transport was the “gateway and the glue of society” and “if people are traveling less often, that means they’re not accessing opportunities within society”.

And she said that making transport more accessible could generate £72.4 billion a year.

Partlow also spoke of how there were still “really harmful training methods” that were being used around accessible transport.

She said: “Sticking people in wheelchairs, blindfolding them to simulate [being] blind or visual impairment… these don’t make people good at their job.

“They actually evoke feelings of tragedy and pity.

“That doesn’t give you a good feeling of what it’s like to live with an impairment.”

*Inclusion London and Action on Disability are DNS subscribers

**Deaf and disabled people’s organisations