Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Disabled Persons) Bill

Chris Loder Excerpts

3rd reading
Friday 18th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Chris Loder (West Dorset) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to contribute to the debate. I pay tribute to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Jeremy Wright) for bringing the Bill forward. I hope that it will make progress and become law. I am delighted that the Opposition are supporting it.

The Bill makes some important changes and improvements to the Equality Act 2010. Those who are wheelchair-dependent or who have assistance dogs have expressed rights in that Act, but others who are in need do not. I am delighted that the Bill will look to address that point. There is currently no requirement for a local licensing list to register and only 70% of local authorities have registered lists. That is a cause of concern for me so I am also delighted that the Bill will make progress to fix that.

Specifically, I draw the House’s attention to proposed new section 167A of the 2010 Act, which brings forward new offences where drivers fail or refuse to accept a booking from a disabled person because of a disability, which is important. I listened intently to my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) and the experiences that she shared. Many hon. Members have also had those experiences shared with them by constituents. It is important that we look to address that and put it right. I cannot commend my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam enough for addressing that.

A theme that has come through so far in the debate is the effect that the Bill will have on those living in rural areas, where taxi drivers have a considerable impact. In many cases, it is regrettable that there is such a high dependency on taxis. It is incumbent on the Government to take note of the fact that bus services in rural areas have not been the highest priority for a while. I hope that that will be fixed through the recently announced White Paper and the work that the Government are doing. When the Minister responds, I hope that she will update us on that, particularly on the effect on disabled access and those needing it.

The debate is about taxi access, however, and I pay tribute to my local taxi firm Beaver Cabs in Sherborne, which does a wonderful job. Those taxi drivers do much more than just drive someone from A to B: they have a relationship and they are often one of the few people that a resident will interact with over a period of time.

Many hon. Members have large rural constituencies. I listened to some statistics from hon. Friends earlier about the size of constituencies and I know that Conservative Members like to have a bit of a competition, but West Dorset is a constituency of 400 square miles and 132 parishes—it is vast and it has 84,000 electors. It is a considerable rural constituency and there are very high levels of dependency on taxi use. Of course, there are also many hidden needs, some of which my right hon. and learned Friend covers in the Bill.

It is key to build on the generosity and kindness of taxi drivers. We have to take care not to portray all taxi drivers in the same way as the few who are perhaps less kind and less generous with their assistance and help. The majority of taxi drivers already do many things. The good thing about the Bill is that it will legislate to ensure that those who do not do these things as standard will have to do so.

In West Dorset, there is a particular difficulty with disabled access by car and taxi to and from railway stations. There are seven stations in my constituency, only two of which are accessible. The other stations that serve the wider area are not accessible either.

[Alicia Kearns]

My hon. Friend has great expertise when it comes to all things choo-choo, I believe. Why does he think those stations have not been given the facilities that they need for accessibility? We have the same problem in my rural constituency.

[Chris Loder]

As in most cases, I entirely agree with my hon. Friend.

I have been actively pursuing this matter at Dorchester West station. Dorchester is the county town of Dorset. Dorchester West is now fully accessible, as a result of one of my many campaigns. However, it has taken far too long. Dorchester South, the county town station from which trains go to London, is not fully accessible. If a taxi for a disabled person pulls up at that station and the train is arriving from London Waterloo, the disabled passenger cannot access the taxi. Yeovil Junction, which is not in my constituency but serves the vast majority of the rural north of it, is not staffed all the time. A disabled person who gets off a train and cannot manage the steps will be stranded. That is unacceptable, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will give due consideration to it—along with many other issues that I must share with her and her colleagues in this context.

[Gareth Davies (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)]

My hon. Friend has great expertise and experience in this field, so I hope he will forgive me if I ask him to acknowledge, at least, that the Government are making investments in our railway network and stations to improve accessibility through the Access for All programme, which will result in £350 million of investment between 2019 and 2024. Perhaps his constituency has not yet benefited from that investment, but he should certainly seek it.

[Chris Loder]

I thank my hon. Friend for his kind intervention. I entirely agree with him: I think that the Government’s work in this field is excellent. Regrettably, however, it is not excellent in West Dorset yet. When a county town station is not fully accessible and the second town of Somerset, on the border, is served by a station at which someone who is disabled and arrives after 8 pm will be stranded, that is completely unacceptable. However, I wholly support what the Government are doing through Access for All, and would warmly welcome more of that investment in West Dorset to address this issue.

[Peter Gibson]

While we are on the issue of railways, on which my hon. Friend is an expert and speaks eloquently, and as we are talking about access to them for disabled persons, may I draw his attention to my campaign for the installation of tactile paving, an essential means of ensuring safety for disabled persons, at Darlington’s Bank Top station? May I also be the first to wish the Minister well with the GB Railways headquarters? We learned today that 42 possible locations had been named; I just want to put Darlington’s bid on record, and to wish the Minister well with that.

[Chris Loder]

I would welcome investment in the tactile paving that my hon. Friend will be receiving at Darlington. I understand that it is part of a £100 million scheme to develop the whole station. That is major investment for a wonderful part of the world, but West Dorset is equally wonderful, and I cannot remember the last time we saw major investment in one of our railway stations in rural Dorset. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for allowing me to make this point. Access for disabled people who need to travel in taxis to and from trains, especially in the absence of rural bus services, is incredibly important, and we often do not pay attention to it.

You may be interested to know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that in three areas in rural Dorset one has to put one’s hand out for the train driver to stop. Those train stations have only steps, and they are completely inaccessible to disabled people arriving by car. I hope the DFT and my hon. Friend the Minister will pursue a wider piece of work to develop connectivity for disabled people who travel by car and taxi to get on a train.

[Gareth Davies]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Does he take comfort from the fact that Great British Railways will have a statutory duty to make train stations more accessible? And will he support Grantham’s bid to host the headquarters of Great British Railways?

[Chris Loder]

I am open to being lobbied to support bids. I hope my hon. Friend will forgive me for not declaring at this moment which bid I will support. We need to be careful not to stray from the point.

My hon. Friend makes a valid point about the future of GBR. He asks whether I take comfort from the fact that GBR will also have the ability to make progress. Yes, I do take comfort, but I do not take comfort from having to wait for it. There is no reason to wait for this to happen to address the very difficult disabled access issues we have today. Many of us, particularly in rural areas, have already had to wait for decades and we should not continually have to wait. I welcome the GBR initiative, which will do great things for the railways of this country. I warmly commend my hon. Friend the Minister and her colleagues for their work.

I am conscious that we are straying into trains and railways. I am delighted to take interventions and questions from my hon. Friends, but I am conscious that I am not at the Dispatch Box. I hope they will bear that in mind.

The absence of rural bus services means that disabled people are much more dependent on taxis. We have to bear in mind the cost to disabled people. It is sad that disabled people, particularly in rural areas, have to pay more to be connected and to go to places because of the nature of their disability. That is something we should note. I am delighted that the Bill looks to address many of those matters.

[Alicia Kearns]

If we are to reduce the reliance on taxis in the most rural areas, perhaps the Government need to consider improving the local government finance settlement and the funding to rural authorities. Otherwise we will have an increased reliance on taxi services, which sometimes struggle to operate in rural areas. We need that funding to ensure that there are adequate buses. The Government should be stepping forward to provide fairer funding to rural areas.

[Chris Loder]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I looked through the revenue support grant list, but I cannot recall how her constituency benefited or not. Dorset did not benefit at all from the revenue support grant—it was zero. That compounds the difficulties we experience, and I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities for meeting my Dorset colleagues and I to look to address that.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton that this is a matter of real concern to many of us in rural constituencies. It is important that the balance is now readjusted, as rural areas are important. We have taken them for granted, particularly on disabled access and disabled transport, for too long. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam is making good progress on that in this Bill, and I am sure the Department will take it further.



I am conscious of the time and I am very grateful for the time afforded to me, but I will just conclude by saying that the dependence on taxis, because of the absence of rural bus services, particularly for disabled people, is an ongoing concern. For the past two and a half years, or just under, since I was elected, we have seen a considerable reduction in rural bus services. That has put undue pressure on those who do not have their own car, particularly those who are disabled, who need to get to the hospital, who need to go to the doctors and the dentists, who need to go shopping—the most basic of things. I look forward to progress on that in due course.

Finally, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam has done a sterling job with the Bill, which will make a huge impact and be of huge benefit to many people who maybe do not even realise that we are talking about it today. I am sorry not to see more Members on the Opposition Benches. This House has talked a lot about the issue of accessibility and equality over many years, and I am very sorry that the Opposition Benches are so free and empty. I just say to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss) that that is not meant to be a political point, but we have talked about this matter a lot in this House. It is important that today we can demonstrate, as the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, that we are making real progress on a matter that will affect a lot of people. I pay tribute, once again, to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam.

[Dr Neil Hudson (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

I rise in support of the Bill and I pay tribute to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Jeremy Wright) for this important piece of legislation which will widen access and improve the Equality Act 2010. I very much welcome that it has support from the Opposition.

As we have heard today, connectivity is a huge issue in rural areas. I do not want to get into Top Trumps on the sizes of rural constituencies, but Penrith and the Border is the largest and most sparsely populated constituency in England. It can sometimes take up to two hours to get from one end of the constituency to the other by car. Having said that I did not want to indulge in Top Trumps, I just have.

[Chris Loder]

We cannot not respond to such points made in the House. West Dorset is 400 square miles and has 132 parishes. I cannot quite remember the statistics for the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns), but I think hers is slightly larger than mine. Is the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson) more beautiful than West Dorset? I am not quite sure on that point.

[Dr Hudson]

Yes, it is more beautiful. [Laughter.] Let us put the Top Trumps to one side now and get to the heart of this very important Bill.

My colleagues in rural constituencies, and also those in urban constituencies, have highlighted the importance of my right hon. and learned Friend’s Bill in connecting people, in getting them from A to B, in equality of access for all people who need it, and in ensuring that disabled people have equality of access. That is so, so important.

Points were made about there being many, many good taxi drivers and private hire vehicle drivers who are doing the right thing. Again, I want to thank those drivers for doing the right thing. The Bill will set the balance and get that to be uniform. For too long, unfortunately, disabled people have been facing behaviour that makes their lives very, very difficult. When there is outright refusal of service, it is incredibly distressing. I welcome the Government’s intention to go further and move towards disability training as part of the standards for licensing. I look forward to hearing from my hon. Friend the Minister on that point.

I also echo the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) on the importance of having a database, so that people hiring vehicles know exactly where and when they can access them. That is a very important point and I look forward to movement on that.

I welcome the important tenet of the Bill to refrain from charging disabled people extra. It is so important to get that on to the statute book.

I very much welcome my right hon. and learned Friend’s work on the Bill. Notably, he has consulted widely with disability groups as well as transport groups, and inserted practical safeguard balances into the Bill so that people providing services will not be penalised. It is well-balanced legislation that will move us forward positively.

As the Bill comes on to the statute book—as my right hon. and learned Friend said, that will be a couple of months after Royal Assent—it will be beholden on licensing authorities to become involved, but as has been mentioned, there are many pressures on local authorities. In Cumbria, we face radical local government restructuring to create two new unitary authorities. I have said many times that I am passionately against the restructuring, which is the last thing that a huge county such as Cumbria needs, and it is the worst possible time to be changing everything as we come out of a pandemic. That said, we are where we are and we need to make it work, but there will be pressures on the Cumbrian system to institute such changes.

I have been concerned about how the restructuring in Cumbria is leading to paralysis and inertia in decision making and in acting on legislation that may come through. To illustrate that, the local Liberal Democrat-led Eden District Council is delaying decisions on waste collections, so some villages in my constituency do not get green waste picked up while others do. The Liberal Democrat administration is blaming the previous Conservative administration and local government reform, and it is blaming central Government for the restructuring, which it cannot do anything about. That is not good enough. We cannot have delays in decision making because of such restructurings.

It is so important that we have connections across my constituency, so taxi drivers and private hire vehicle drivers are really important in that. It is also important, as colleagues have said, to have connectivity to other services. Rural buses have been highlighted often, and we have many fantastic local services for which volunteers have stepped up, such as the Fellrunner bus and the Border Rambler bus. Unfortunately, over the years we have seen increasing pressure on the rural bus network, so we have lost services.

Sadly, in 2014, Cumbria County Council took the retrograde decision to stop using central Government moneys to subsidise rural bus routes and, accordingly, some routes had to close as they were not financially viable. I urge local and central Government to ensure connectivity by working hard together and using moneys sensibly. In rural areas such as mine, people depend on the bus network, taxis and private hire vehicles.

Trains have also segued into the debate and, in my part of the world, I very much believe that we must improve train services. I have been campaigning for the reopening of Gilsland station and for the extension of the Borders railway from the borders down through Longtown in my constituency and on to Carlisle. We need joined-up thinking. The Bill is so important in improving equality of access to private hire vehicles and taxis, but I urge the Government to work with local government to ensure that our rural bus network is improved, bolstered and supported and that the train network is supported as well.

I raised many of those issues a couple of weeks ago in an Adjournment debate on support for levelling up rural communities. Bills such as this are very much about levelling up society, are they not? It is so important that such Bills come together, but we also need joined up-government to ensure connectivity across all walks of life. I firmly believe that this is an important Bill, which highlights the need to join up people in our communities, whether they are urban or rural.

We have highlighted some of the pressures in rural communities. Last night, I chaired a roundtable of rural stakeholders in my constituency. The pressures faced by such people, including farmers, due to the cost of living crisis include increasing fuel and diesel costs and increasing fertiliser costs. People in rural communities also have the cost of putting oil into their heating systems. I urge the Government to listen to those concerns and hope that, in the coming days, the Chancellor will try to mitigate some of the pressures that face our rural society.

In conclusion, I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam on the Bill, to which I give my full support.