Railways Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 7th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, it is good to follow the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, even if I think that processes have been somewhat neglected in the privatisation of recent years, often to the detriment of passengers. I want to echo the thanks that have been made to the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton, as he leaves this House. His distinguished experience has been of great value to the House over the years and I wish him well.

I thank the Minister and his officials for a meeting with disabled Peers prior to this Second Reading. For those of us who were involved in the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act, the paving bill for this one, which was in your Lordships’ house 18 months ago, this is a welcome day. Along with other noble Lords, my focus is to ensure that the strong promises from the Minister and the Labour Government to improve rail services for disabled passengers and others who need assistance become a reality. The Minister knows that we will hold him and his Government to account to ensure that the improvements that I know he wants actually happen. We need to ensure that the warm words spoken here turn into reality for every disabled person’s journey.

Clause 3 is vital to ensure that Great British Railways runs passenger services effectively for all passengers. For passengers who require assistance, whether with infrastructure or practical arrangements, far too often the service is not good, creating barriers for those who just want to get on a train to go from A to B.

I will start with infrastructure. In 2024, the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee, DPTAC, commissioned a survey with Omio which found that UK stations were the worst in Europe, having alarming accessibility inadequacies. A couple of years earlier, in 2021, the Department for Transport commissioned AtkinsRéalis to assess every station in the UK for accessibility. I note that it had completed over 1,000 by 2022, but I cannot find an overall publication of the findings, nor any further report on stations now fully accessible after improvements have been made. Can the Minister say whether such a report on the overall condition has been published and whether there will be updating as stations are improved?

It is not just older stations. In 2023, Thanet Parkway opened in Kent for the first time. The website Every Last Station quoted LordOrk, a disability campaigner, who said:

“Regrettably, NR have again cut costs by treating PRM”—


passengers with reduced mobility—

“compliance as a target rather than a minimum standard. Disappointingly disabled people have been treated as an afterthought at this new station and will suffer the consequences. For example, it is outrageous a new station has no accessible or changing places toilets, no EV chargers in the blue badge bays, platforms are narrow so wheelchair users and scooter users have reduced turning circles for boarding and their legal right to TUAG”,

or turn up and go,

“has been eroded at this unstaffed station”.

This Government have started to improve matters. I see it at my local station, Watford Junction, with BSL-interpreted videos alongside some key station announcements, for example, but these are now urgent everywhere and must be part of any new station. Can the Minister say that this Bill will ensure that, from now on, no new station will be built without lifts, level boarding and fully accessible features for those with mobility, visual and hearing impairments? I agree with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, about solutions for level boarding.

The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, referred to the assistance app and I echo every single one of her points. I say the assistance app, but the reality is that a number of operating companies still run their own apps which do not always have access to book, say, wheelchair spaces on another line. That is my experience on a regular journey I do leaving Watford Junction on the west coast line to travel to York via King’s Cross. I have to use the LNER app or phone number, because, if I do not, no wheelchair space will be reserved for me on that leg of the journey. It was good to hear the Minister talk about just one app that will cover buying tickets and assistance. That was promised years ago but never appeared.

Can I check that passengers with a range of disabilities will be involved in the development of that app? Booking a wheelchair space on an app is useless unless the train staff ensure that the space is free of large suitcases. It is not too bad when you get on at King’s Cross, because wheelchairs are usually first on, but, at a station further up the line, assistance staff with the ramp often have to leave swiftly, leaving a wheelchair passenger to have to shout down the carriage to ask for cases to be moved. It is funny how deaf people get when that happens.

I turn now to a key element of support for all passengers, but essential for those with reduced mobility, and that is staff on a train and at the station. I will now do anything I can to avoid travelling on Southeastern trains because there are no staff, and most stations do not have staff either. This means that your journey time is in the lap of the gods. The journey time from Charing Cross to Lewisham could easily be doubled because there is nobody at Lewisham to provide help with a ramp. I have to get off at Hither Green and wait for staff at Hither Green to be free to take me on to the next convenient train for Lewisham. It is even longer in reverse, when you have to phone to ask Lewisham to find someone to get on a train from Hither Green to come and collect you.

Staff are needed on stations to help with ramps and to guide passengers who may not know how to get off the platform safely. They are needed, just as train staff are, for protecting and guiding all passengers, whether because of an emergency, as in the recent crash near Bedford, or, as I have seen, a crime with a dangerous weapon. I have also witnessed the enormous bravery of staff jumping down off the platform to rescue a passenger who jumped off a platform in great distress. That staff member did not think of his safety, only of the passenger. This bravery is extraordinary, but those stations and trains without staff can put passengers at risk.

I echo the frustration of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, with failed lifts. For six months at my local station, trains had to be brought into a different platform whenever there was a wheelchair on board because two lifts were out. That affected the elderly too, but they were not in a position to ask for a train to be rerouted. What was the problem? It was exactly the same as the current lift problem in the House of Lords: the lift companies do not keep spare parts at the factory in Italy and they have to be made each time. I find it extraordinary that Network Rail, which holds the contract for all station lifts, cannot insist on a better service. Under the old system, passengers had no voice on this. Will this change under GBR? I can tell you that six months without a platform lift affects everyone’s journey and morale.

Finally, a while ago, when my train from Edinburgh came into King’s Cross two hours late after midnight on a Sunday, the train staff dashed off to hand out taxi vouchers at the exit gates to all passengers, not realising that no assistance staff were left on duty. I and another wheelchair user realised, when everything went quiet, what had happened: we could not get off. The assistance phone line at the station was not answered, nor was the station general number. What would noble Lords do in this situation? It clearly was not a 999 matter; the 111 line was not staffed that late and the other passenger was getting very anxious. Was it scary? It certainly was not much fun—but not unusual for wheelchair passengers when they get left on trains.

So I tweeted. The disabled community is always helpful with suggestions, but one person went even further. The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, saw my tweet and passed it on to the chief executive at LNER at about 1 am—of course, she had his number. It was helpful that he knew how to find someone to come to our rescue. However, if the noble Baroness had not been so well connected, I think my fellow traveller and I would have greeted the early shift of cleaners—thank you, Lady Grey-Thompson. To the Minister, I say: the aspirations of GBR should mean that this sort of problem of abandoning disabled passengers is a thing of the past. That would be a good yardstick of accessibility.