Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill

Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 23rd October 2024 Lords Chamber

Finally, the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, offered a meeting with me and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. I am sure we look forward to that invitation coming shortly, whether it is from her or from the noble Lord, Lord Hendy. Please can we have that meeting prior to commencing Report? I beg to move.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I apologise for not being able to be in the Chamber at the start of proceedings at Second Reading. I had a long-standing commitment in my diary that meant I was not able to be here. I also draw noble Lords’ attention to my entry in the register of interests. I chair the commission for accessible transport and I attend some of the Avanti accessibility panel meetings as an observer.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, for meeting me prior to the start of this Bill to discuss some of my frustrations about how disabled people are able to use the railway network. I broadly welcome this Bill, and anything we can do to make it better for disabled people is worth exploring. I have lots of aspirations for the various Bills we will see on the railway industry in this Parliament, but my aspiration for the next phase, when I am asked what I want as a disabled person, is just the same miserable experience of commuting as everyone else. I am not asking for any more than that, but it sometimes feels that the way the network is set up makes it incredibly difficult for disabled people.

As much as I used to hate travelling in the guard’s van, at least when I did that as a wheelchair user I was not left on a train. I would like to thank many in your Lordships’ Chamber who came up to me and expressed their disappointment, anger and all sorts of various emotions when I was left on a train just before I went out to Paris for the Paralympics. It was not the first time that it happened and it was not the last: since returning from Paris I have been left on another two trains, but I did not have the energy to post about it on social media. In both cases, the two people who helped me very quickly to get off the train did not have the authority to do so and could have faced penalties within their jobs or even potentially been fired for not being in the position to do so. What has come out of that experience is that a number of disabled people have written to me to explain the issues they face. My feeling is that the failure rate is way too high, and many disabled people do not even try to travel because of the fear of what they expect. Getting on and off a train should be relatively simple, but it is not.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, talked about the booking apps. It is better that it is down to two hours from six, because when it was six hours disabled people needed to know each train company’s operating procedure, and whether it was six hours during the opening times of the call centre or six hours before the train they wanted to catch. I imagine that some of the failures have dropped. I do not think it is realistic to expect disabled people to know every single train company’s process before they book a train. The promises of not just the best priced ticket but the in-person comms would have made a real difference to disabled people being able to travel. Personally, I use five different apps to buy tickets. Prices are hugely variable and, bizarrely, it is sometimes cheaper to use one train company’s app to buy a ticket when you are travelling with a completely different train company and then book it a different way.

I felt the noble Baroness’s pain when she talked about the wheelchair space. It became clear through Covid that the wheelchair space does not appear to be on the booking system as a seat, so when I tried to travel at the back end of Covid, when we were able to, I was not able to count it as a seat. You would turn up at a train station and, even though you booked the wheelchair space, they would refuse to sell you a ticket. Even now, I feel terribly guilty, when I buy a ticket from various different apps, that I am allocated a seat that I have no intention of ever being able to use. It just does not make sense that this is still the case, especially on busy trains and when we are trying to make it easier for everybody to travel.

I am also really worried that the train operating companies and the Rail Delivery Group are forgetting that people have a legal right to turn up and go. When we see posts online or articles written, they are always about booking. If there is an assistance failure, the first question the disabled person is asked is: “Did you book?” If I am on a train and I am not helped off it, booking is completely irrelevant. It is quite annoying that I am asked the question, because I did not magic my way on to the train without anyone else being involved in the process: somebody helped me on and somebody knew that I was on the train. The failure is communication somewhere along the line: people did not look at the app or nobody picked up the phone. I am really worried about the victim-blaming of disabled people. This, again, discourages people from travelling.

We really do need accurate data on failure and how the app is used needs to be properly recorded. I have been told that people who turn up and go are put into the app and the assumption is made that they booked, so although the booking numbers look like they are going up it is not fair to lump the two sets of people in together. We have to be able to accurately measure the number of people who do not know what time they will be able to travel because of work, or because they just do not know. Not everybody can set out their schedules according to what the rail companies would like to happen; I am sure they would like everybody to book two hours before they travel.

What happens when assistance fails? Disabled people are actually just quite tired of complaining. They are constantly fobbed off and told it will never happen again. The train companies are always very sorry, but nothing really seems to happen to bring about change. The Office of Rail and Road following up a couple of months later, asking whether you had a good journey, does not seem the most accurate way to track some of these issues. Quite frankly, I really dislike having to book, but I cannot face having to turn up at a train station and almost feel like I am begging to be allowed on the train. I also have to feel very apologetic: “Do you mind if I get on? Is it possible?” I never expect to get on a train that is leaving within the next 15 or 20 minutes, although I have had some fantastic experiences at Waterloo—and I have had some not so great experiences there. It comes back to how disabled people are made to feel welcome, or not, when they want to travel.

Too often, failures are described as an inconvenience rather than something that can affect people at quite a devastating level. South Western Railway recently posted that if someone books assistance and did not get it, they might be entitled to their fare back. This is inaccurate for a number of reasons. First of all, it ignores our legal right to turn up and go, but just saying you can get your fare back seems a bit weak when, if somebody successfully sued that company, it would be a minimum of £1,200 on the Vento scale for a single failure. Again, disabled people are meant to feel grateful just because they get a few pounds back for what they experienced. There are a number of disabled people who are not particularly liked by the railway industry because they very successfully sue, but they are able to do that because they constantly experience really appalling treatment.

I have always recognised the huge privilege I have, either of being an athlete or from being in your Lordships’ Chamber. I experience way better treatment than any other disabled person I know. Since the failure I had a couple of weeks ago, I now have two or three people meet me off the train. I feel like a member of the Royal Family; it is absolutely wonderful. People ask me if I am okay. I am now shown the app and that I am on the app. I am given the name of the person who is there to meet me. That is lovely: I can welcome them by name when they come to meet me. But this is not real; this is not the experience that disabled people are having.

There is still too much inaccurate information out there about whether lifts are working. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, raised toilets. We are meant to be told whether they are working on trains; we are not, so it is always a mystery, when you get on a train, whether you can use the bathroom. I already control what I drink before I get on a train to make sure I do not have to use it. These are the things that disabled people just do not complain about because it is too confusing.

The accessible transport policy rules are way too confusing. On the impact of derogations, I have a friend who cannot travel on Northern Trains because he has a mobility scooter. They are banned from travelling on trains in the north-east, as the class 158s have no entrance vestibule and they restrict manoeuvrability into the wheelchair area. ScotRail has a different set of policies about what mobility device you can use on trains. This all has to join up, because you could end up going to Scotland as a scooter user and not being able to leave because you use a different way of getting back.

We need reliable data on assistance fails. I am at the point of believing that we now need significant financial operator penalties for failures. The D50 tickets need to be available online, in vending machines and onboard. Actually, we need more training, because people at some stations do not even know what a D50 ticket is. The failure data then needs to be analysed for failure hotspots, which I know has been done at Euston and has had a positive impact.

The staff app needs to be sorted out. At the moment, as I understand it, not all TOCs use it and there still needs to be union agreement involving the technology payment.

There is loads that we need to do to make things better for disabled people, and I look forward to working with the Minister as we progress the Bill.