English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 13th April 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Borwick’s amendment. He has done as much to empower disabled people when it comes to transport as anybody in this country, not just in Parliament.

To continue my noble friend Lord Shinkwin’s theme, this is about the unacceptability of waiting—not waiting for legislation to pass but waiting on the kerb-side for an accessible taxi which may never come and waiting on the phone to be told there are no accessible cabs in your local area. Imagine that being told to any other group in society and it being accepted and acceptable for 31 years. It is not even a matter of passing legislation; it is on the face of a Bill—though after 31 years, I imagine the text is already rising off that vellum as we speak. How many more years do disabled people have to wait on that kerb-side or in their homes, or on the end of a telephone, to not get an accessible taxi?

The Government talk about growth as their overriding principle for government, and quite right, but if that is their overriding objective then policy across all departments has to be focused on that. If the Government want more disabled people in work, we need accessible taxis; if the Government want greater health equality and health outcomes for disabled people, we need accessible taxis; and if they want bright, diverse, talented, disabled people to be fully empowered to bring those talents to bear in their local communities, we need accessible taxis.

There is nothing overreaching about these amendments from my noble friend. They are modest and merely seek to bring about something which should have happened not years but decades ago. The noble Lord, Lord Hendy, has the great good fortune to have the power of a Minister of the Crown. I suggest that he uses that power to empower disabled people and accept these amendments. If he will not do that, who will? If not now, for all those disabled people who have waited for 31 years, when?

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I want to make a very brief contribution to this short debate. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Borwick for his tireless advocacy for improved mobility for those with a disability. It is sad that we will no longer have that advocacy available at the end of this Session.

I want to pick up three points arising from the Minister’s response when we debated this in Committee. First, he said that there would not be enough time. He said:

“We will need to consult on them”—


that is, the new standards—

“and there is a risk that setting a deadline could negatively impact our ability to undertake a meaningful consultation”.

The deadline in the amendment is three years. The Cabinet’s guidance for a consultation period is actually 12 weeks. Honestly, to plead the lack of time is not a good excuse for resisting the amendment.

Secondly, the amendment was criticised because it applied only to taxis, and therefore it potentially excluded disabled people in those parts of the country where there was reliance on private vehicles. It seems to me that that is an argument for actually extending the provisions to private hire vehicles, rather than using it as an excuse to resist the amendment.

Then we had an argument which I simply did not understand. It says in Hansard that

“the noble Lord’s amendment would require every taxi in England to comply with a single set of standards, taking no account of the variety of access needs that disabled people have”.

The position in London is that we have a standard for the whole of London—we have had that for 30 years. I believe it is the case that, within London, we have the same range of disability as exists elsewhere in the country, so I did not follow that argument. The Minister then said:

“This approach would not only be exclusionary but would risk infringing the Government’s legal public sector equality duty to consider the impact on people with all protected characteristics”.


I do not believe that any case has been raised in London that the existing single standard for taxis is in breach of the Disability Act. I did not follow that at all.

Finally, I appreciate that the Minister wants to do the right thing, but his response was simply to rely on that fact that:

“Existing government ‘best practice’ … recommends that each licensing authority develops an inclusive … plan”.


He went on to say:

“I encourage them to act to ensure that there are sufficient wheelchair-accessible vehicles”,—[Official Report, 5/3/26; cols. GC 547-49.]


and that they will look again at “other accessibility standards”. But there was nothing in his speech that gave any certainty or guarantee at all that the position would change by a specific date.

Unless the Minister can move a little from what he said in Committee, I again will be with my noble friend in the Division Lobby if a Division is called.