Lord Blencathra
Main Page: Lord Blencathra (Conservative - Life peer)Equality Act 2010 (Amendment) Bill [HL]
Lord Blencathra Excerpts
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, this Bill is officially called the Equality Act (Amendment) Bill, but that is rather a boring title. I prefer to call it the “Six-Inch Rule Bill” since it simply imposes a duty on all occupiers of public buildings to install a ramp if the entrance to the premises has a step of six inches or less.
Noble Lords may ask why this is necessary since we have the all-singing, all-dancing Equality Act 2010, which runs to 218 sections and 28 schedules and covers all forms of discrimination, including facilitating access to public buildings for disabled people. Indeed, Section 20 of the Equality Act imposes a duty on occupiers of public buildings,
“to take such steps as … is reasonable”,
to remove any physical features of the building that disadvantage disabled people. That wording seemed sensible and should cover all possible situations. It is clever wording and no doubt Harriet Harman MP and the officials thought that by setting down that general principle, the Act would stand the test of time and not require the regular amendments it would need if they had phrased it in more specific language.
However well intentioned Section 20 and the related Schedules 4, 5 and 21 were, the duty to make reasonable adjustments is simply not being implemented on the ground. There are tens of thousands of entrances to public buildings with a step of less than six inches and nothing is being done to grant wheelchair access to them. Clause 1(2) of my Bill states that if the entrance step is of six inches or less, it is cheap and easy to remove the step or make a ramp. If occupiers do not remove or adapt the step of six inches or less, they would fail in their duty under the Act,
“to take such steps as … is reasonable”.
Subsection (3) introduces a duty to introduce ramps for steps of up to 12 inches to be introduced at a later date, but more on that later.
What is the justification for my assertion that no reasonable steps are being taken to enforce the provision,
“to take such steps as … is reasonable”,
to remove any physical feature of the building that disadvantages disabled people? The evidence for my assertion is available for all to see in some stunning examples just a few hundred yards from your Lordships’ House. If noble Lords were to take a short walk down Victoria Street as far as the Army and Navy Stores—now House of Fraser—turn left into Horseferry Road and left again through that wonderful little market street Strutton Ground, they would see more than 40 examples. The vast majority of big chain stores and shops on Victoria Street have level access from the pavement or a lip of about an inch at most. Of course, new-build shops nearly all have level access. However, there are nine shops on Victoria Street with a step of six inches or less. In Horseferry Road, there are about a dozen shops or pubs with a step of six inches or less, and Strutton Ground has 21 such premises. I hasten to add that this is no criticism of Westminster Council, which is particularly good at providing dropped kerbs for wheelchair users; nor is it any special criticism of the shops in Strutton Ground. I mention the shops in this location because they are right on our doorstep 300 yards away, but I could easily take any street in any town or city in this country and find tens of thousands of examples of the same thing.
What is particularly irritating—to me, at any rate—is that many shops have a step of about 2 inches, the thickness of the Companion, and it would take less than £10-worth of concrete to put a ramp in front of them. There are even some shops sharing a double doorway, where one has put in a little concrete ramp and the other right next to it has done nothing and left the step.
What is the point of this? Wheelchairs have little front wheels and if you hit a step of 2 inches, it is the equivalent of a motorist hitting head-on a pavement of eight inches. It is not something you do twice, not deliberately at any rate. I have found that many shopkeepers in those streets and in Pimlico are very kind and offer to serve me out on the pavement. However, I have a principle that if they cannot be bothered to make a slight, low-cost adjustment to let me into their shop, I am blowed if I am going to give them my business, and I will go and buy my sandwich somewhere else. One restaurant, which is very close to the Home Office, suggested that if I came round the back, they could let me in through the kitchen. I thought that being asked to go round the back door last happened in Alabama in the 1960s. Would any other group covered by the Equality Act tolerate the suggestion of going round the back to be served?
I have therefore concluded that an amendment is necessary to deal with the easiest and cheapest problem to solve—steps of less than six inches—and give people in wheelchairs access to tens of thousands of buildings that we cannot get into at present. I am not asking owners of buildings with lots of steps to make changes at a cost of £20,000, nor am I asking listed buildings to wreck their appearance by building ramps instead of steps. I think that all of us in wheelchairs accept that when some of our greatest buildings were erected, wheelchair ramps were not in the architects’ design manuals. For many ancient buildings, it is enormously expensive now to install wheelchair ramps or lifts. If we cannot do it in this House, it seems a bit hypocritical to demand it of others. That is why I am focusing on the easiest and cheapest solutions.
I have checked all this out and have bought some ramps for my personal use; one can get sophisticated aluminium or fibreglass ramps which are suitable for steps of six inches or less and cost less than £100. I ask those of your Lordships who only do metric to look at the steps in the gangways in your Lordships’ House. I have measured them, and the bottom steps are four and a half inches high; the next ones are five and a half inches; then they alternate to four and a half again. I am not suggesting that we install ramps here; I am merely using them to illustrate what a height of six inches is. It is neither rocket science nor expensive to provide ramps that would grant access to buildings outside this place with steps of six inches or less. However, I think that half the places we looked at in those streets I mentioned could solve the access problem with about £10-worth of concrete. I calculate that, if my six-inch rule Bill became law, we could get access to more than 90% of those 42 shops in Horseferry Road, Victoria Street and Strutton Ground. If replicated nationally, this small step for man would be a giant leap for mankind, or at least for wheelchair users—to paraphrase Neil Armstrong.
While there are many buildings with steps higher than six inches, and where it would still be reasonable to make the adjustments I suggest, I do not want cost to be used as an excuse for not doing it. I do not think that anyone with a shop or a pub can complain that a cost of £100 is an unreasonable burden, and I hope that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills will agree with that in any impact assessment it carries out.
I realise that my Bill will probably not become law in this Session, and that if it were to make progress in Committee, I would want to amend it. Clause 1(3) on tackling steps of 12 inches is probably a step too far. I would like to replace that with a regulation-making power for the Minister to be able to legislate for steps higher than six inches in a manner and timescale that would not put a further burden on small businesses. Clause 1(4) makes it clear that my Bill would not apply to buildings with more than one step if the total combined height of the steps was greater than six inches. Thus, if they had two steps of three inches, it would apply, but if they had two steps of, say, three and four inches, making seven inches in total, it would not apply. I think it would be reasonable to do that, but I put it in the Bill to reassure businesses that they would not suffer excessive cost and so they could not complain about the burden placed on them and use it as an excuse to block this legislation.
I am very grateful to the Minister and her officials for accompanying me yesterday on a cold, chilly afternoon to look at the premises in Strutton Ground and get a first-hand look at the problems that my Bill seeks to address. I do not wish to put words in her mouth, but I think we all concluded that in many cases the solutions were cheap and easy to bring about. Indeed, some of the shopkeepers had done it themselves, putting down a little concrete to enable wheelchairs to get in easily.
As I said at the beginning, theoretically, the wording in the Equality Act on disabled access is excellent, but I submit that it has failed and is failing in reality. I also get the impression that disability is very low down the agenda of the Equalities Office. Of the hundreds of announcements made by the office over the whole of 2013-14, I could find only two related to disability—I apologise if I got that wrong. One was that three interns had been appointed to work with parliamentarians, and another that up to 60 people had applied for grants to get involved in politics. Those are no doubt very good things, if they can actually get into the polling stations, but there are supposed to be 1.2 million wheelchair users who cannot get into public buildings at the moment—although I think that that estimate, which I got from the web, is high; there are probably about 800,000. However, that is still a pretty large number of people. I suggest to the Minister and the department that they would have a big win on their hands if they adopted the proposals in my Bill.
I am afraid to say that the equality commission seems to be doing nothing to enforce Section 20, and district councils seem to be worried about the cost of judicial review if some organisations were to challenge them if they enforced Section 20 on the basis that their interpretation of it is not reasonable. Therefore, I have concluded that a specific and objective measurement is the only way in which to make progress. It removes the need to determine whether the adjustment that I suggest in my Bill is reasonable.
I have gone through the Act carefully and looked at all the regulatory powers, but I cannot see any that would permit the Minister to make regulations addressing the specific and practical points in my Bill. There may be, but I could not find them. I am willing to accept that a possibly better solution than my Bill may be a new regulatory power that would permit the Minister to specify, in addition to the general duty to take reasonable steps, that certain practical things would be regarded as a breach of the duty and should be remedied. That power could be used for wheelchair access, as in my Bill, or specific other measures that would help blind, partially sighted, deaf or other people with disabilities who also need a practical remedy.
I hope that I can get the support of your Lordships’ House, at least for the concept of what I aim to achieve. I acknowledge that my Bill requires amending and input from noble Lords and noble Baronesses who have longer experience of wheelchair use than I have. However, I am convinced that the concept of my Bill is right. No real progress on getting access to public buildings will be made unless we have the Bill or a regulation that brings about the same effect. I beg to move.
Lord Blencathra
My Lords, this has been a short but interesting debate. I will come to the Minister’s response at the end of my remarks but I am slightly disappointed. I am grateful to noble friends and noble Baronesses on all sides of the House for their support.
My noble friend Lady Thomas of Winchester confirmed that progress has ground to a halt after the initial flurry after the 2010 Act. I agree with her that listed buildings should not be an excuse to do nothing, because there are many listed buildings that it is possible to sympathetically alter to grant disabled access. I will happily meet the Access Association. I will let my noble friend set that meeting up and we will see how we can take this forward.
I am also grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Flather, for her kind intervention. She made the point that in order to help her husband to get out on to the patio, a little wooden ramp was made—just a piece of wood, two inches high at one end and planed to nothing at the other; that is all that takes for electric or non-electric wheelchairs to do it without a terrible jolt.
I will also add EAT to my boycott list of places I will not go into if they cannot be bothered to provide access. I must say to the noble Baroness—I call her my noble friend—that I am used to going through the basement in some places, particularly in the Foreign Office, which I used to attend regularly until recently. I would be taken through the basement, until they installed a little lift. Actually, going through the basement is still faster than trying to use the disabled lift. On one occasion when the rest of the lifts were not working, I had to use the garbage lift at the Foreign Office to get to a ministerial meeting.
I do not want to get too far into issues that do not relate to the Bill, but I suggest that whoever designed the new disabled loo round by the Speaker’s quarters should actually have talked to a few people in wheelchairs before designing it. Some parts of it may be convenient but the washbasin is in one corner, the soap dispenser is three feet away and the towels are another six feet away—someone needed to have given that a bit of extra thought.
I cannot comment in detail on sleeping arrangements. I almost thought that was an offer from the noble Baroness. But she is absolutely right. One of the problems that some of us with MS and many other disabilities face is restless legs and, if they kick and thrash around all night, certain ladies do complain, so I sympathise with that point.
I agree entirely with my noble friend Lady Brinton. I was trying to make a modest measure that I hoped the Government would not oppose because I was trying to impose a burden only on buildings with steps of less than six inches, but it should be 12 inches. It is not too difficult to do that. My noble friend the Minister made the point that, when shops have a doorstep right on the pavement, it is difficult and dangerous to put a permanent ramp there because others would trip over it; there is not the space to do it. But there are temporary ramps they can use or ramps that they can instantly rush out with and assist, if they have given it some thought. I agree with her entirely about the Marriott County Hall Hotel. The last time I was there, I went by the same circuitous route but I ended up going through the aquarium.
I also pay tribute to 1 Great George Street, which is the Institution of Civil Engineers. I go in there occasionally just to use the ramp and the lift, because I attended a meeting a couple of years ago—I think it was of the Royal Society in Carlton House Terrace—where there were no proper ramps. To get in there, there was a ramp of about 45 degrees, and I said, “That just cannot be done”. I know that these things are supposed to have a maximum incline of 7 degrees, which is a bit over the top; I can do about 30 degrees, but 45 degrees there was impossible. I came next day to a meeting in Great George Street. There was a button to push and a chap came out, and I said, “How do I get in here?”. I was really annoyed. “Oh”, he said, “no problem. Just you watch this, sir”. He pushed the button and all the steps receded into the wall. A lift materialised from the ground and up we went to the first level. At that level, all the marble steps disappeared into the wall, and up we went again—I must admit that I played with it on a few occasions, up and down.
No doubt that cost a lot, but that was in a listed building and they have shown how it can be done. I agree about some of the other buildings in Great George Street, apparently used by engineers. It is a disgrace when they open a rusty old door and you are taken through the basement. I have been through that route, too.
I totally agree with my noble friend that innovative technology is out there. I was asked to lunch at the Garrick Club last year—it was the first time that I had ever been asked to lunch there; I will probably be asked again to go back and apologise. It has a staircase of about 20 steps up. They came with a most amazing contraption—a rubber, crawler tractor thing. One parked one’s chair on it, tilted backwards and then this crawler thing went up the steps. It was absolutely scary to use the first time. But that was a solution. It was an expensive, £12,000 solution—I checked out the cost—but we are talking in this modest little Bill of measures of £10 or more, up to about £100 to replace the steps.
Without going into detail on taxis, which are not covered by the Bill, I say to my noble friend Lady Brinton that she is absolutely right. I have now learnt the hard way when I have wanted to flag down a cab. The older London cabs have a proper, fold-out ramp. The super-duper new Mercedes Vito cabs, which have wonderful space inside, one cannot get into, because they have two skids with side lips about two inches high and our clearance on these things is about 1.5 inches; we just cannot get into them. Other cities are not as good as London.
I pay tribute to the vast majority of London taxi drivers who pick us up. Only a tiny minority suddenly go blind when they see a wheelchair. My worst ever morning was when there were three cabs in a row. One decided to look out the other window; one switched off his light and zoomed off; and the third one gave me a finger—one finger on this occasion. They were followed by another cabbie who did an illegal U-turn, came screaming up beside me and said that he would not charge me for the journey; he was appalled by what his colleagues had done.
Finally on taxis, I carry a screwdriver in my chariot here—I am sure that I am able to use a visual aid—because so many cabbies cannot open the screw to get the disabled ramp out. Those who can often find that it is rusted solid, so I must carry some WD-40 as well.
I am grateful to the spokesperson for the Opposition, the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, for her support for the Bill. From her background with her grandfather, she knows what it is like. I am grateful also to my noble friend the Minister for coming with me yesterday to look at the problem on the ground. She highlighted today that the key word is “reasonable”. Of course, one is not asking people to make “unreasonable” adjustments, but I simply say to my noble friend that I am not going to go around the 40 shops in Horseferry Road and so on, speak to individual shopkeepers and ask them to please put in a ramp for me and, if they refuse, then write to them and take court action against them. I expect someone else to be enforcing that rule. If the Government cannot accept the concept of my Bill, or even a future regulation, which may be far better, they—or someone—must do more on enforcement.
Finally, I accept that an automatic requirement to stick a ramp on every little shop, which could protrude into the pavement, could be dangerous. That may not be the best solution. Therefore, I hope that the Government will consider a regulation, which could have dozens of exemptions and opt-outs, to deal with the simple problem of shops that could easily install a ramp and the more difficult problem of shops which are right on the pavement, where a permanent ramp may be improper but some other facility could be installed. My Bill may be too blunt or too basic, but we need a solution either in better legislation than mine or in a regulation that would permit all the flexible solutions that we need. At the moment, we cannot get into shops. I am sorry about that. I therefore move that my Bill be given a Second Reading.