The ‘accessible queue’ for the Queen ‘was discriminatory and a shambles’

Disabled people who struggled for hours to queue to pay their respects to the Queen at the lying-in-state in Westminster Hall say the government treated them as an “afterthought” and that its “discriminatory” arrangements were “a shambles”.

Many disabled people travelled from across the country to reach the Tate Britain art gallery in central London, where they queued for hours for a wristband that only allowed them to join the “accessible queue” to view the Queen’s coffin hours later, and sometimes not until the following day.

By the weekend, disabled people were reporting having to queue for up to eight hours (pictured) just to obtain a wristband.

They then faced another wait before they could join the accessible queue to enter Westminster Hall at the allocated time.

There was also anger and frustration when the accessible queue was closed permanently at 4.30pm on Saturday, more than a day before the main queue was closed to new arrivals on Sunday evening.

The arrangements meant many disabled people had to wait longer than the non-disabled people who were waiting to pay their respects in the main queue that started miles away on the other side of the Thames.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), the government department responsible for organising the accessible queue, was also heavily criticised for the quality of information it provided.

Disabled people highlighted its failure to publicise the locations of a first aid point at Tate Britain and a building where disabled people were able to leave their bags and wait for their time slots.

Most of the useful information that did emerge was crowd-sourced and provided by a disabled person who set up the @AccessibleQ Twitter account.

DCMS is now facing questions over why the accessible queue appeared to have been an afterthought, when it is believed that years of planning went into the Queen’s funeral.

Many disabled people who tried to access the lying-in-state said the arrangements made for the accessible queue demonstrated the daily discrimination disabled people face, although many also praised the support offered by volunteers and members of the armed services to those who were queuing.

Sonay Erten, who travelled with her husband from south-east London, said the government’s arrangements were “definitely discriminatory” and that disabled people had clearly been “just an afterthought”.

She told Disability News Service (DNS): “The accessible queue was not accessible at all.

“The government website promised toilets, quiet spaces and a route for those who don’t queue for long periods.

“I have autism and ADHD, so without that support I would’ve missed out. That is not what was provided.”

She and her husband arrived at about noon on Saturday, but did not receive their wristbands until 6pm, and finally arrived at the lying-in-state at about 11.30pm.

She said: “We queued for six hours, they ran out of chairs, there was no water apart from a 250ml bottle at the start, no toilets and no information.

“I was exhausted and burned out and about five hours in managed to find a chair in a shaded area to calm myself down a bit.

“There was no [online] tracker, no information provided [about waiting-times]. No consideration of different disabilities.

“I will never forget the scene of people with mobility issues squeezed into some steps as we got to Tate Britain, absolutely exhausted.

“As I didn’t have mobility issues, I felt the need to support those with mobility issues around me: carrying a chair for them and telling them to sit down instead of me. That made me even more exhausted.”

But she added: “Whilst the whole journey was exhausting, it was absolutely worth it.

“Although I’m not sure I’d do it again, I feel so privileged to have been able to visit the Queen lying-in-state.”

Her husband, James Carter, told DNS that the arrangements made by DCMS were “an absolute shambles”, with just four people handing out wristbands to a queue of thousands.

He said many people had to perch in bus stops or even sit on the ground because there were so few chairs available in the queue for the wristbands.

The portable toilets outside Tate Britain were closed because they had been soiled and then not cleaned, there were no quiet spaces for those who were neurodiverse – as both he and his wife are – and the information provided by volunteers “was sketchy at best”.

He said he believed the decision to close the accessible queue a day earlier than the main queue was “discrimination”.

He said: “The whole thing was a mess from start to finish. DCMS treated the whole thing like an afterthought without any real consideration of the diverse needs that people have.”

Disabled lecturer Dr Julia Ouzia, in a detailed blog, listed multiple concerns she noted when she attended the lying-in-state via the accessible queue on Saturday, although she was another who praised the work of the volunteers.

Among her concerns were the “lacklustre” communications from DCMS, its failure to estimate queue length and waiting-times, the “basically non existent” accessible toilets along the route, and the decision to close the accessible queue permanently more than 24 hours before the main queue.

Jade, an occupational therapist, had been repeatedly told by DCMS in advance that she would need to join the main queue, as she was not a wheelchair-user, even though one of her health conditions means she can pass out if standing too long in a static position.

She drove to London, but by the time she arrived at Tate Britain she was told the accessible queue had closed for the day and she would need to return the next day.

She told DNS: “I don’t know how they expected disabled people and carers to just pop back home and come back again, using all their energy, being in pain and managing fatigue levels.

“I was also advised at that point that the main queue was still open and had many provisions – plenty of food, toilets and water points.

“In essence, disabled people were being told to go home as they couldn’t be catered for and non-disabled individuals were okay to carry on through the queue.”

She added: “I’ve never felt so disabled and such a lesser individual in society. I felt like I had come up to a massive brick wall that I couldn’t get around.”

Another disabled woman who contacted DNS said she had travelled from Brighton and arrived at 11pm on Thursday, expecting a slot two or three hours later, only to be given a time for between 3pm and 4pm the following day, 16 hours later.

She said: “It’s an absolute disgrace. Other people in the queue were as horrified, as they too were under the same impression.

“Some people had travelled long distances and were faced with having to drive back home and then decide whether or not they would come back tomorrow, and it sounded like many were choosing not to.”

Others spoke on Twitter of the organisational “shambles”, with one reporting how they arrived at 1pm on Saturday, queued for nearly seven hours and were then given a slot of 2-3am the next morning.

Another of those who survived the ordeal described on Twitter how they had to sit on the pavement or lean against walls because of the lengthy walk between Tate Britain and the Houses of Parliament to reach the entrance to the lying-in-state.

They said: “Anybody who meets mobility criteria for PIP/DLA on physical grounds couldn’t walk it without pain.

“Surely an accessible queue should be accessible to people who meet the criteria of disability benefits that the state uses to define the threshold for disabling mobility difficulties?”

A disabled Jewish woman said she had been offline for 24 hours because she was marking the Sabbath and had arranged for her daughter to support her to attend the lying-in-state the following day, only to discover the accessible queue had closed early.

Sally Lester, from Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, who has invisible impairments including long Covid, had researched the queue, travel arrangements and the information provided by DCMS before deciding to catch a train to London on Friday.

She arrived about 4pm and waited in the queue for an hour, receiving “various messages” about waiting-times from police officers and volunteers, before being told it was closing until the next day.

She said: “I was going up and down the queue trying to get some information.”

She was eventually told the earliest slot available was for 2am the next morning, and she decided she was not equipped for staying overnight.

Lester said she believed the failures, particularly in providing accurate information about the accessible queue and the lack of planning, were discriminatory.

She visited Green Park to view the flowers that had been left to honour the Queen, and to lay a wreath she had made herself, and then returned to Warwickshire on the train without attending the lying-in-state.

She said: “I was disappointed and upset. It would have been a most extraordinary honour to be able to bow before her coffin, but I came home and curtsied in front of the television instead.”

Lester said there was a marked contrast between the faultless organisation of the Queen’s state funeral and the way the accessible queue had been run.

She said: “They have had years to prepare for this. It was an afterthought and that’s not good enough in 2022.”

Kamran Mallick, chief executive of Disability Rights UK, said the decision to close the accessible queue more than a day before the main queue was “potentially punitive” and felt like “a lack of equitable planning”, particularly as many disabled people would have paid personal assistants to support them on the journey, without realising the accessible queue would be closed by the time they arrived.

He said: “To waste a journey as a non-disabled person is a waste of time and money, and an inconvenience.

“To waste a journey as a disabled person is to expend time, money, energy we may barely have and often [experience] physical pain, for no outcome.”

He said the information released about the queue by the government was “inaccurate from the start, and the situation has gone from bad to worse”.

He added: “The government must embed qualified access professionals within its ceremonial departments to ensure that future events of this magnitude do not turn into such a disappointment and fiasco for disabled people.”

Some disabled people did report good experiences in the accessible queue, particularly those who arrived near the start of the lying-in-state period.

Access campaigner Sam Jennings, who attended last Thursday, said she found the queue “perfectly accessible and very well mapped out”.

She arrived at Tate Britain at 10.30am and was given a wristband for the 11am-noon slot.

At that stage, she said, there were people from the armed services on hand to help, offering wheelchairs for those who needed them, while chairs were placed near the queue, umbrellas were available if needed, and water was being handed out.

She told DNS: “We went to the actual queue with our wristbands just after 11 and went in at 12.45pm.”

She said it was “wonderfully planned and thought-through”, although she accepted that the queue had obviously become busier later in the week.

The BBC’s security correspondent, Frank Gardner, a wheelchair-user, described his seven-hour wait in the accessible queue as “well worth it”.

He said on Twitter that that there was a “huge sense of togetherness” in the queue, something other disabled people had also reported, although he also pointed out that there had been “mixed messages” from officials about the availability of wristbands.

He appears to have had to leave the queue on Friday and then return the next day, when he eventually secured a wristband.

After he had paid his respects in Westminster Hall on Saturday, he tweeted: “I know this might sound like a bit of a cliche but filing past the Lying in State in a hushed Westminster Hall yesterday you really did feel like a part of history.”

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) declined to say if it would carry out an inquiry into its failures; whether it accepted that disabled people were forced to wait too long in the accessible queue; and if it accepted that the arrangements for the accessible queue failed to meet the government’s duties under the Equality Act.

It also declined to say how many people accessed the lying-in-state through the main queue and the accessible queue; and when DCMS had started planning the accessible queue.

But a DCMS spokesperson said in a statement: “We wanted as many people as possible to be able to pay their respects to Her Majesty the Queen and worked round the clock to facilitate it.

“This is the first time we had an accessible queue for lying-in-state, and it was for people with a disability or long-term condition which meant they were unable to queue for an extended period of time.

“To ensure that accessibility requirements are properly catered for, we worked with expert advisory groups and relevant charities throughout the planning process.

“Wristbands were given out for time slots in advance in order to reduce the time physically waiting in line.

“The accessible queue was closed on Saturday to new entrants once it was assessed that capacity had been reached.

“Decisions in relation to the queue closure were made in conjunction with partners, including the Metropolitan police, with safety and security paramount.”

Picture by James Carter

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