Lord Addington
Main Page: Lord Addington (Liberal Democrat - Excepted Hereditary)
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, this is one of those debates where you suddenly realise that whatever you were going to say about the theme would probably be said better by other people and you end up repeating certain things.
One such thing is that we have been working on this legislation for a long time. You get an idea that you are getting older when something you were in on is celebrating its 20th anniversary—in this case the initial DDA. That Act goes back 20 years and still we have not managed to get into the infrastructure of the leisure industry most of what we use. Effectively, we are talking about a failure of legislation which, generally speaking, had the support of the entire political structure. I have not heard anyone say that we should get rid of disability access rights, and yet we still have not really got in.
New-build hotels have had a degree of success but we come back to the major problem—I was told at the time that this was the only way we could do it—of reasonable adjustment. When I started looking at this issue I discovered that no one knows what reasonable adjustment really is—end of story. Small hotels do not know whether they are covered by it. What is a reasonable adjustment for two rooms in an old Victorian house? Everyone thinks it is a wheelchair. If noble Lords look, they will see four people in wheelchairs here, but with very different needs. There is no such thing as one person in a wheelchair. The noble Lord, Lord Touhig, has already pointed out that not all disabled people are in wheelchairs. The people we are dealing with just do not know what the law requires them to do.
Are local authorities doing what they should? Apparently, the answer is no. Do all disabled people know what they are required to do? The answer once again is no. The Government really should be doing more to make sure that the information on what is required is passed around, because without it we are going to get nowhere. The legal system is supposed to enforce the law, but if people do not know that there has been an infringement of the law, they cannot possibly take action. If we carry on with this muddled process, waiting for buildings to fall down before replacing them with something that provides accessibility, no one in this place will be alive by then. Indeed, our grandchildren will not be alive by the time it happens—and that is just for physical access. As has already been pointed out, behavioural policies on how to adapt to someone coming to your building is going to change.
I spoke to representatives from the Bed and Breakfast Association and the British Hospitality Association, looking at smaller hotel units. There seems to be a total lack of comprehension that people should be doing something. That can be addressed only by making sure that the Government grab people by the scruff of the neck and say, “You also have a duty. If you cannot provide wheelchair accessibility, do you have good handrails? Do you have a training programme for how to provide for someone who is autistic and does not like a bell being rung for breakfast?”. The answer is not to ring the bell, and if that is slightly inconvenient, the hotel is taking that person’s money and so it can be inconvenienced. The basic interchange on this is not happening.
All of us should be looking at ourselves and saying, “Why have we not done this?” It is probably because it is the boring bit of legislation. The fun bit is having an argument and passing a Bill; the boring bit is going back and making sure that it is being acted upon. It is clear that we have not done that. The vehicles we have put in place have not done it. I hope that the response to this debate will give us at least a start on how to make sure that people are better integrated into society. As has just been pointed out, there is a good reason for a disabled person to say, “I will not get out and find a job, and thus take on all that extra stress, if I cannot actually become a full member of society and use the pay I get”. We have a duty to make sure this happens. I could go on for longer, but I think the point is made.