Equality Act 2010 (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Friday 21st November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome my noble friend Lord Blencathra’s Bill to amend the Equality Act and his eloquent explanation of why it is necessary. Access for those with disabilities, principally but not only those in wheelchairs, is not just nice to have, it is essential if the Equality Act is to mean anything today. People offering services of any kind or running a public building should make adaptations wherever possible, as their responsibilities under the Act are clear. However, the policing of adaptations is often poor.

My noble friend is too kind. I do not want just six inches; I think that 12 inches is an absolute minimum because technology has changed. It is possible to buy properly constructed sturdy ramps in a range of sizes for permanent installation or, where that is impossible, portable ramps for staff to bring out. I cannot access a large number of shops. Therefore, there are a large number of shops where I will not spend my money. Others have spoken of restaurants. I despair of some restaurants, especially those where staff think that they are accessible until you turn up and the penny drops.

However, I do not want to be entirely negative. There are some very good examples of small shops in listed areas. One example is Bravissimo in Covent Garden. No permanent ramp is possible because the shop is right on the corner of Covent Garden, with a tiny pavement in front of it. What is really noticeable about Bravissimo is that all its staff are well trained in helping women with disabilities, and it shows. That extends beyond having the obvious accessible bell and responding to it, putting the ramp down and not serving one behind a high till, which too many shops just forget about, to include help with selecting items to try on, taking them down from higher hangers and to fitting too. You know that this is an organisation that really cares, and that is why they get my business. Sadly, that contrasts with the poor examples—organisations that do not provide or highlight their arrangements. How often have people in wheelchairs turned up to discover that there is no bell and no sign to the disabled access around the back.

Earlier this month, I booked into a small hotel in Ebury Street. After checking that it was accessible when the room was booked, I rang again on the day to let the hotel know that I would be arriving very late and to check that the night porter would have access to the ramp. I was assured that he would and that the hotel was fully accessible and had a proper disabled bedroom and wet room. It sounded good. I arrived in the taxi, which sped off. As the night porter came out, it was immediately apparent that the step, which was probably just under 12 inches high, was completely unsuitable. The ramp that arrived was for a sack barrow—far too steep. The staff kept insisting to me that the ramp was fine but two of them could not push the chair up the ramp, which I had said they would not be able to, and after 15 minutes they abandoned this. I was kept on the pavement in the cold at 1.30 am for 45 minutes while they tried to find a better ramp from another hotel, could not do so, and then tried to find me another hotel. To say I was unimpressed was an understatement.

The noble Baroness, Lady Flather, referred to disabled rooms in hotels. Premier Inns has a special line in disabled rooms. I have been offered accessible rooms previously and the bedrooms are fine. The rails around the toilet are fine. The shower over the bath is less impressive. When I mentioned this to one receptionist on the morning I was checking out, she said, “We provided a little platform at the end of the bath to help you slip in”. When I asked, “How do I get out?”, she looked rather perplexed.

For grade 1 listed buildings, not small just businesses, the poor examples are legion. A particular bugbear of mine is the glamorous London Marriott County Hall Hotel. I am afraid that I have no compunction in naming and shaming the wrong ones. The main entrance is a sweep of wonderful steps. The hotel always uses the excuse of being listed not to vary the front. I shall come on later to those hotels that do. I have been invited to dinner there on a couple of occasions, and the contortions to get in are Byzantine. You have to travel down the street on your own, wait outside the security entrance of the next organisation in County Hall and wait for the security guard to come from his tour of the building. Last December, it took well over half an hour on a very cold evening, making me late for the dinner I had been invited to. When he arrived, the stair lift up the steps was excellent. What was less good was the unlocking of a series of sets of doors between the hotel and other organisations in County Hall, one of which was encircled by the most enormous chains I have seen in a while. It began to feel like something out of Dracula, with chains and dark, poorly lit service corridors. By the time I finally arrived at the dinner, I felt extremely unwelcome. The organisation I was with will not use that hotel again. I wonder whether the hotel knows how damaging this is, not just to its reputation but to its bottom line.

There are ways of making adaptations even in these listed buildings. I excuse small enterprises from this but anyone who has seen the arrangements at the front door of the Institution of Civil Engineers in Great George Street, opposite the Treasury, knows that it can be done elegantly and practically. It can be viewed on YouTube, but for those that do not know, the white stone steps are divided by a balustrade. Half the steps elegantly retract underneath the building and a stair lift emerges from the cavity underneath. You are made to feel really welcome, whether you are in a wheelchair or find the steps too difficult if using a walking stick. Contrast that with two other buildings in its vicinity. The Institution of Mechanical Engineers on Birdcage Walk is, frankly, an insult to use. A scissor lift behind a steel door on the pavement takes you down to a door into a meeting room that is let out. I have been escorted through other people’s meetings. They have to get up and move themselves and their chairs away so that I can get through to use the accessible lift. Then there is 8-10 Great George Street, where the Liberal Democrats have their headquarters. The landlords provide access through a car lift into the basement behind the building, with two sets of industrial gates to get through on the ground floor and the basement. There is then a very narrow doorway access to the lift and security to get through before I even get to my party’s headquarters.

Technically, both those buildings comply with adaptations under the Equality Act, but they are not disabled friendly and they say a very large amount about the landlords’ attitudes towards people with disabilities. I have even been told, at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, to wait, as the maintenance man was not free to take me down—just like a parcel.

The issue of inappropriate ramps is not just for fixed buildings. There is a real problem with taxi drivers who claim to drive accessible taxis, with the blue wheelchair sign in their windows. I need to make it clear that London, Glasgow and some other large cities that insist all Hackneys have a single ramp are not the problem; it is the many smaller cities and towns where taxi driers in accessible vehicles—including, I am afraid, older black cabs—have only to produce evidence of ramps: note the plural. It is possible to purchase cheap parallel track ramps that are not suitable for people in electric wheelchairs because the ridges are incompatible with the base and shape of electric wheelchairs. They are also often too flimsy and probably would not sustain the heavy weight of an electric wheelchair, some of which weigh 85 kilograms before the owner is in it.

I travel extensively, and I now dread waiting for an accessible taxi. Too often, even when I have asked for a single ramp for a wheelchair, the one that arrives has two. Both the driver and the customer are irritated, but the dispatcher at the firm does not care. At Watford Junction station, my local, where the drivers are as regular as I am, I am afraid to say that there are a handful who do not even lower their window to tell me that they have two ramps. They know my face and they hold two fingers up to me, from which I am meant to deduce that they are a two-ramp cab, not a one-ramp cab. I appreciate the Bill’s constraints and I understand that we must be realistic about achieving change, but I would love to see a condition for the licensing of accessible taxis that the driver should have a single ramp, and that it is tested at the same time as everything else to ensure that it works.

To return to the substance of my noble friend Lord Blencathra’s Bill, I support it and understand its limited scope, but I am reluctant to accept his new idea that we can do further things with regulation. I hope we might consider some minor amendments to it to provide a level playing field for those in wheelchairs trying to live an independent life. Frankly, hotels, restaurants, shops and offices can make life an absolute misery. A few small, compulsory, not expensive adaptations will not only help those with disabilities, but increase business for the public buildings supplying them. Something that benefits the bottom line should always be encouraged. Making people independent is beyond price.