MPs call for urgent action on transport discrimination, and tell industry: ‘Accessibility is a human rights issue’

Disabled campaigners have welcomed a “fabulous” and “validating” report by MPs that calls on the government and industry to “urgently” recognise that the “regularity and severity” of public transport access failures is a human rights issue.

The long-awaited report by the Commons transport committee says that access failures are “commonplace” when they should be “vanishingly rare”.

The committee says there is a “very substantial gap” between the “rights and obligations that exist in theory”, and the daily experiences of disabled people who rely on pavements, buses, taxis, trains and planes.

It concludes: “A change of mindset throughout the transport system is urgently needed, recognising that accessibility is both a non-negotiable matter of human rights and discrimination, and a health and safety issue.”

The committee’s report, published this morning (Thursday), says “meaningful involvement” by disabled people which is adequately funded and planned is “central” to addressing the problems across the transport sector.

It says the current system places far too great a burden on individual disabled people to hold individual transport operators to account for their access failures due to “opaque and ineffective” complaints processes, and the frequent need to take “costly, stressful and uncertain” legal action.

Among its recommendations is for the Department for Transport (DfT) to work with disabled people’s organisations to set up a single service that would receive all accessibility complaints and ensure they reach the right operator, authority or regulator, “and follow them up if not resolved”.

The committee also says the collection of laws and regulations around accessible transport, and the organisations that are supposed to enforce them, is too “complicated and fragmented”.

And it criticises regulators for failing to take enough formal action to reflect the “regularity and severity of access failures experienced by disabled travellers on a daily basis”, which results in “operators getting away with repeated poor practice”.

It says that accessibility “urgently needs to be recognised as an issue of human rights and protection from discrimination, not as an optional customer service matter”.

The cross-party MPs call in the report for the government to take steps to ensure that transport operators know that “every instance of not meeting accessibility obligations constitutes a serious failure, for which they will be held accountable”.

They say DfT must set out a new inclusive transport strategy within 12 months, which must be backed by a “costed, practical plan that will close the gap between rights and reality” and “concrete timescales for achieving independent accessibility across the rail network”.

But they also say that the government’s starting point “must be that accessibility has to be delivered, not that it will only be delivered if other factors do not get in the way”.

They also call for a review of transport accessibility laws, with involvement from disabled people, to see how it can be “streamlined, clarified and updated”, and for a review of regulators to assess whether a single enforcement body would be “more effective at asserting disabled people’s rights”.

The committee’s inquiry was launched more than two years ago, but its completion was delayed by the general election.

Among those disabled campaigners quoted frequently in the report is Alan Benson, who died 15 months ago.

He had told the committee in his evidence: “Journeys for me are journeys that will go wrong. I expect something to go wrong. It is just how badly it goes wrong. Does it mean I am delayed 10 minutes? Does it mean I am delayed three hours?”

Another disabled campaigner quoted often by the committee is Christiane Link, a consultant and adviser on accessibility, who welcomed the report, which she said showed that “accessibility and equality need actions beyond party politics and that it’s possible if decision makers are passionate about it”.

She told Disability News Service (DNS) yesterday (Wednesday): “Now it’s time for the current government to use the recommendations in this report to drive action.

“This report should be just the beginning of improving accessibility, especially in railway and public transport.

“Those in charge – in politics but also operations and governmental departments – should be judged by the improvements they will deliver for disabled people and everyone who relies on accessibility.

“It’s overdue. The priorities were not right for far too long.”

Emily Sullivan (née Yates), a disabled researcher in equality and human rights and co-founder of the Association of British Commuters, played a significant part in persuading the committee to launch the inquiry with campaigning through 2022 and into 2023 on key human rights issues around accessible transport.

She said: “Rail accessibility has finally been recognised as a fundamental human right, and the DfT, Office of Rail and Road (ORR), and the Equality and Human Rights Commission shamed for their years of inaction on systemic discrimination.

“The publication of the report at this time is a bold move and of immense political significance.

“For the committee to be this critical of the DfT and regulators while the Great British Railways consultation is underway presents an unmistakeable message: turn back now from the obsession with deregulation and build a proper equality and human rights framework for the railway.”

Doug Paulley, a high-profile accessible transport campaigner whose evidence was key to the report, said the publication was “fabulous”.

He said: “It is great to have an official publication that is so comprehensive, accurate and validating.

“It can be used to challenge the individualisation, gaslighting and victimisation that we disabled people experience on a daily basis when we dare to challenge discrimination on public transport.

“I’m so glad that they published it, especially after we thought the general election meant that they wouldn’t.

“The timing is really interesting too, in the middle of the Great British Railways consultation which they have openly criticised as having insufficient focus on accessibility and reneging on previous commitments.

“In the face of wholesale government assaults on disabled people’s rights to exist and basic human dignity, this report is really positive.

“There needs to be a cultural change in government such that accessibility is treated as an essential ‘must have’ throughout public transport.

“I hope that this report goes some way towards that.”

Labour’s Ruth Cadbury, who chairs the transport committee, said: “It should be a source of national embarrassment that our country’s transport services effectively treat disabled people as second-class citizens, denying them access to jobs, leisure, support networks and essential services – denying them their rights.

“This inquiry worked on the premise that people are disabled by barriers in society, not by their condition or difference, and that services should be designed to enable disabled people to travel independently, not reliant on others.”

She said that disabled people seeking redress or compensation for access failures “face a spaghetti junction of complaints processes that either fob them off or lead them on a road to nowhere.

“Even when complaints are resolved, lessons aren’t learnt, changes aren’t put in place, and it’s tempting to think that the small and occasional penalties for failure are accepted by providers as a mere cost of doing business.”

Local transport minister Simon Lightwood said in response to the report: “It’s clear that accessibility has been an afterthought in developing transport services and there is more to do to ensure everyone can travel easily and with dignity.

“That’s why we have clear ambitions for a transport network that works for all and have already worked quickly to put accessibility at the heart of our bus and rail reforms, as well as continuing work to make hundreds of train stations step-free and launched an accessible aviation expert group.

“We continue to work closely with a range of people, including disabled people, to help us develop our policies, and we will consider these recommendations carefully and respond as soon as possible.”

Picture by ORR

A note from the editor:

Please consider making a voluntary financial contribution to support the work of DNS and allow it to continue producing independent, carefully-researched news stories that focus on the lives and rights of disabled people and their user-led organisations.

Please do not contribute if you cannot afford to do so, and please note that DNS is not a charity. It is run and owned by disabled journalist John Pring and has been from its launch in April 2009.

Thank you for anything you can do to support the work of DNS…