Equality Act 2010 (Amendment) (Disabled Access) Bill [HL]

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 24th November 2017 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Blencathra]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I have pleasure in moving the Second Reading of this innocuous little Bill to amend the Equality Act 2010 to grant 800,000 wheelchair users access to 70,000 shops and public buildings to which we are denied access at the moment. The Bill makes a tiny addition to the 2010 Act, would cost business very little to implement but would make a huge difference to wheelchair users. Let me assure your Lordships that my Bill does not touch in any way the protected characteristics in the Equality Act 2010 of age, gender, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, or sex and sexual orientation. It is concerned only with one aspect of disability: the requirement for public buildings to make “reasonable adjustments” so that wheelchair users can access them.

My Bill is identical to one which received a Second Reading in November 2014 but was rejected by the Government. At that time, the Government could say that I and noble Lords who supported my Bill were on our own and that we had no evidence to back up our case. Ironically, within one month of rejecting my Bill, the then Minister for Disabled People published a joint Department for Work and Pensions and DisabledGo report. The press release stated:

“DisabledGo study shocks the Government with evidence of inaccessible British high streets … The Minister of State for Disabled People is urging shops and restaurants to improve their accessibility”.


What a pity the Government did not take that view a month earlier when they dismissed my Bill.

Since then we have had the authoritative Lords Select Committee report, Equality Act 2010: the Impact on Disabled People. The committee was chaired by the noble Baroness—indeed, I may say “my noble friend”—Lady Deech, whom I am delighted to see is speaking today, along with other noble Lords who served on the committee. The committee found that there were severe difficulties with the “reasonable adjustments” provision of the Act, in that no one was enforcing it and disabled people had to take cases to court themselves in order to get access improvements.

The noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, cannot be with us today, but she wrote and asked me to say:

“It is easy to tilt a pram or pushchair up a step but impossible in an electric chair. My chair weighs 90 kilograms alone and takes 3-4 strong people to lift with me aboard!”.


So this time it is not just old Blencathra with a bee in his bonnet; we have the evidence of the Department for Work and Pensions survey, the overwhelming weight of evidence given to the Lords Select Committee and the committee’s own conclusions.

What are the facts and figures about the problem? The NHS estimates that there are 800,000 regular wheelchair users. By “regular”, it means people who are permanently in a wheelchair and, at the other end of the spectrum, those such as me who can stagger around a little bit. That figure is supported by other organisations.

The number of public buildings in the UK comprising shops, fast food outlets, restaurants and pubs is about 355,000. In addition, there are post offices, banks, churches and all the other buildings to which the public have access. The Department for Work and Pensions and DisabledGo study visited and assessed a massive sample of 30,000 shops and restaurants. Its findings were that 20% did not have wheelchair access—and, if wheelchair users did get in, 30% of the places had no disabled changing rooms or toilets. If you extrapolate that 20% of 30,000 shops to the total of 355,000 public retail premises, you get a figure of 71,000 shops, pubs and cafés which wheelchair users simply cannot access. That is a scandalous number in this day and age.

The Equality Act 2010 lists nine characteristics that are all protected against discrimination, including disability. The Act has replaced all separate disability discrimination legislation. It is an offence under the Act to fail to make “reasonable adjustments” to premises so that disabled persons are not discriminated against. What is a “reasonable adjustment” naturally varies between the needs of different disabilities, persons, buildings and circumstances, but it can be enforced only by a person taking a service provider to court to compel that provider to make the adjustment.

The Lords Select Committee found that most disabled persons and disabled organisations felt very strongly that disability issues had taken a retrograde step in the 2010 Equality Act, because all potentially discriminating characteristics were now being treated equally. What is the problem with equal treatment, you may ask? The committee pointed out that people with other characteristics such as sex, colour, sexuality and ethnicity needed to be treated equally to avoid being discriminated against—but, for disabled people to achieve equality, they needed different treatment. That is an absolutely crucial distinction which was never considered when the 2010 Act was passed—and that is the motivation behind my Bill: to try to get equality for wheelchair users.

I turn to the clauses in my Bill. Section 20 of the Equalities Act defines “reasonable adjustments” as,

“(a) removing the physical feature in question,


(b) altering it, or


(c) providing a reasonable means of avoiding it”.


My Clause 1 states that, if a public building has a step of six inches or less, a ramp suitable for wheelchairs has to be provided. If a building has a step of less than 12 inches, a ramp has to be provided. If the building has more than one step, my Bill does not apply. The difference between a six-inch step and a 12-inch step is simply revealed by Clause 2, my commencement clause, which states that the requirement to remove a step of six inches comes into effect on Royal Assent and the requirement to remove a step of 12 inches comes into effect a year later. That is simply an acknowledgement that removing or replacing a 12-inch step is a slightly bigger undertaking than getting rid of a little six-inch step. Like the Equality Act itself, my Bill would apply to England, Scotland and Wales.

In a nutshell, that is what my Bill does. If noble Lords will permit me, I need to set out why the Government Equalities Office is adamantly opposed to making specific adjustments, is opposed to my Bill and wishes to reject it—and I shall try to persuade noble Lords why it is actually wrong. I and the Select Committee agreed that keeping the general principle of “reasonable adjustments” is sensible, and I do not seek to amend that principle at all in the Bill. However, when we have clear evidence that something is not working in a select, specific area of the Act, and after seven years of experience of the Act, it is not good enough to take the GEO line that the principles of the Act are sacrosanct and cannot be amended.

The Select Committee was highly critical of the failures of the 2010 Act to assist disabled people. On launching the report, the chair, the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, said:

“Over the course of our inquiry we have been struck by how disabled people are let down across the whole spectrum of life. Access to public buildings remains an unnecessary challenge to disabled people … When it comes to the law requiring reasonable adjustments to prevent discrimination, we found that there are problems in almost every part of society, from disabled toilets in restaurants being used for storage … to reasonable adjustments simply not being made”.


The GEO members were the only people giving evidence to the Select Committee who though that there was no problem. The Government Equalities Office head lawyer, Tracey Kerr, said that the concept of reasonable adjustments is well understood because of case law. She said:

“We have found that as the case law has developed it becomes clearer and clearer for people to understand what a reasonable adjustment might be in certain cases. So we think that that has been a successful development of case law”.


But the vast bulk of evidence to the Select Committee was that that was not the case.

Of course, a Government lawyer specialising in this work would lead herself to believe that everyone knew the case law and would be granted their rights—but that is not happening on the ground. The Select Committee said:

“It is worrying, therefore, that evidence of problems in obtaining this right have emanated from almost every part of society. We heard of problems in gaining reasonable adjustments from employers and education providers, on buses and trains, and in taxis, shops, restaurants and hospitals. We were told of sports grounds and other entertainment venues that failed to make necessary adjustment”.


It added that,

“witness after witness told us that, contrary to the Government’s view, the provisions were neither well known nor well understood”.

In evidence to the committee, the Law Centres Network said:

“There is a crucial difference between, on the one hand, awareness of the phrase ‘reasonable adjustments’ or the understanding that a duty exists and, on the other, an understanding of what the duty entails or how to comply with it in practice”.


The committee agreed with that, and said that the evidence suggested that,

“even where there was awareness, understanding was often poor”.

Thus all the evidence to the Lords Select Committee, and its findings, indicate that the duty to make reasonable adjustments is simply not happening. My Bill will not change the duty but will provide additional clarity.

What about the cost? I did my own survey of shops and cafés within half a mile of this Parliament. I looked at public retail buildings on Victoria Street, Strutton Ground, which is a lovely little shopping street, and Horseferry Road. 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. New-build shops nearly all have level access. However, in those three streets, within a few hundred yards of this building, there are three premises with multiple steps, two with steps of less than 12 inches, three with steps of less than nine inches, 26 with steps of less than six inches, and 28 with steps of less than three inches. Implementing the six-inch rule provision of the Bill would immediately make 54 of those 62 shops accessible to wheelchair users—an 87% improvement.

I reference the shops in this location because they are right on the doorstep of Parliament, but they are representative of the 71,000 others with the same lack of access in every street of every town and city of this country. The cost of a ramp, either lightweight aluminium or fibreglass, to access premises with a step of up to six inches, is generally less than £100. One-third of the inaccessible shops had a little step of less than three inches, which does not need a special ramp at all, but £10-worth of concrete to make a little slope—then the wheelchairs can get into them, as some shops have done. That is why we are so steamed up about this. We can see tens of thousands of buildings that we could easily get into with less than £100 of investment—and you cannot get a more reasonable adjustment than that.

Some of my noble friends who will follow me will make the case that we should be removing steps of whatever height. I agree that sooner rather than later we should do that, but I do not want cost to be used as another excuse not to get us access to 87% of the premises that we cannot get into now, when the adjustment would cost less than £100. I accept that, in a minority of cases, where the step is 12 inches and the shop door is right on the pavement, a ramp cannot protrude on to the pavement, and that the shop would have to recess its doorway a bit, which could cost possibly £2,000 to £3,000. But many retail premises already have a recessed doorway, and the step could be replaced with a ramp without altering the door or shop facade at all.

So if we cannot get in, what do we do? The government response from the Despatch Box to my last Bill was:

“They should first approach the service provider to discuss why … they cannot access the service or function in question, and discuss what adjustments they require. If, following discussion, the service provider fails or refuses to make a reasonable adjustment, the disabled person could take their custom elsewhere; alternatively, they might decide to bring a case of alleged disability discrimination before the … courts”.—[Official Report, 21/11/14; col. 664.]


That was the Government Equalities Office’s official response.

Imagine that you are out shopping and you cannot get in. How do we discuss it? Do we sit in our wheelchairs on the pavement and shout for the shopkeeper to come out to discuss it? If he does not have a ramp, what good is discussing it going to do? If he decides to buy one next week, it does not help us very much when we are shopping today, does it? Disabled people are told by the Government that if they cannot be served they should just take their business elsewhere. Would they say that to a black person, a gay person or anyone else in the protected categories? I hope to God that they would not.

The Select Committee concluded, based on the evidence of everyone except the GEO witnesses, that enforcement had failed. It was highly critical that disabled people had to go to court to get access. The following exchange took place during the Select Committee inquiry. Tracey Kerr, the head of legal services at GEO, said:

“We think it is most appropriate and it is quite unusual and it gives claimants quite a lot of power in relation to going to the courts and explaining … what is reasonable … for the courts to decide”.


The chair, the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, interrupted:

“How long is it going to take for something to go to court? Surely you cannot expect a disabled person to go through the whole judicial procedure just to get that determination. It is too late”.


The lawyer replied:

“One would hope that the employer, the service provider … would be aware of the need to make sure that they were taking into account the issues and the person before them … they should be building that into their thinking about how they are going to provide their services”.


What a ridiculous answer. The reason the disabled person has to take the service provider to court in the first place is that the provider has failed to do all the things which the government lawyer wished, hopefully, that they would be doing. It was quite an incredible answer.

Although I cannot understand the complacency of that answer, it was exceeded by the deputy director of the equality framework of the Government Equalities Office who, giving evidence in the same session and in answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, about the failure of enforcement, said—and noble Lords should listen to this on Parliament TV to get the full flavour:

“Clearly where the difficulty comes … the nub of the issue and an extremely difficult one is trying to get some kind of handle on enforcement at the very earliest stage before in effect there has been any kind of dispute and that is the $64,000 question and the element that is invariably the most difficult to solve”.


I am not making this up. I do not have the imagination for such an extraordinary answer. When asked what the Government will do about the 800,000 wheelchair users who cannot get into public buildings because the Equality Act is failing, the official Government Equalities Office answer is that,

“that is the $64,000 question”.

Well, my Bill is a £100 answer to that question.

I am willing to do a deal with the Government. I acknowledge that six inches and 12 inches are arbitrary figures and we could have different heights—and of course they would have to be in centimetres. I acknowledge that businesses may need more time than Royal Assent or 12 months to implement any change. If we get to Committee, I am willing to fillet the specific details in my Bill and replace them with an order-making power for the Minister to specify in regulations the access requirements that I have outlined today. That would give the Government the chance to correct any errors they may perceive in my Bill. It also removes the excuse to do nothing about this problem. This time we are not just going to go away and shop elsewhere. Passing my Bill, or something like it, will not undermine the principle of “reasonable adjustments” in the 2010 Act—but it would grant 800,000 wheelchair users access to about 60,000 of those 71,000 shops that are currently inaccessible. It is little wonder that the Select Committee concluded:

“Government inaction is failing disabled people”.


I had an excellent meeting yesterday with the new Minister for Disabled People. Like her predecessor, she is caring, compassionate and determined to do all she can to help disabled people. But she has no power to change one comma of disability legislation because it is not in her department. I commend what she is doing with disabled champions and seeking to get an accessibility category added to the Great British High Street Award. I commend the city of Chester, which she told me about and which has excellent disabled access. These are all jolly good things—but we must have an amendment to the law if we are to get fair treatment for disabled people now rather than in the distant future.

I anticipate that the Government will dismiss the Bill. That is why I have tried noble Lords’ patience a bit this morning by setting out in detail why I think the GEO is utterly wrong. Wheelchair users are getting the runaround and being discriminated against multiple times. We cannot get into buildings in the first place; the Government will not change the law to assist us; the ECHR, which can do something about enforcement, does nothing to help; and disabled charities that would like to help are not allowed by law to help. My Bill does not tackle the problem of taxis and buses, or the failure of trains or platforms to have level access. It does not demand government expenditure or great private sector investment. It is confined to tackling one gross inequality which can be fixed cheaply, easily and quickly. I beg to move and commend my Bill to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Blencathra]

My Lords, I thank the 17 Peers from all sides of this House who have participated in this important debate. I am particularly grateful to those who are not wheelchair users but who support the Bill simply because they agree that there is a fundamental injustice here that can be easily corrected. Noble Lords had many different points to make, and I shall try to address them all as quickly as I can. However, every single Peer who has spoken, apart from the Government, made the point that wheelchair users are being discriminated against unfairly, and that it has to stop, and that my Bill or something like it is a simple and cheap solution to much of the problem. It does not solve all the access problems, but it tackles over 80% of them.

My noble friend Lady Anelay of St Johns was right to emphasise the importance of post-legislative scrutiny, as carried out by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and her committee. She made the point that, to be treated equally, disabled people need to be treated differently. I am very willing to amend the Bill in any way, so long as we can get access over those little steps—whether it is six inches or 10.325 centimetres, I do not care. She mentioned unemployed people and their rights, which was covered extensively in the Select Committee report, but I have not covered it in my Bill. And she is right: I try to avoid cafes, restaurants and bars, but if they cannot let me in to be served, I am not going to be served out on the street—they can clear off, and I would say that to them quite bluntly.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley of Knighton, said that if everyone spent 12 hours in a wheelchair it would open their eyes. I remember when the Labour Peeress, the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, was introduced, and a few weeks later she broke her leg. She was stuck out in plaster for a few weeks. She was appalled; she could not get to most of this House or Parliament, let alone all the other places in the high street. It is ironic that we can get into every park around London, but we cannot get into 20% of the shops and pubs around those parks.

I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Borwick for the wonderful work that he has done in ensuring that London black cabs are accessible. Frankly, I dread the idea of what I regard as the criminal and vile company Uber putting London black cabs out of business, because wheelchair users would never travel in a taxi again. Uber has no responsibility for providing wheelchair-accessible taxis. I agree that more training is necessary. In my little chariot, I carry a short, stubby screwdriver, because half the cabbies cannot find the screwdriver to undo the ramp. He also stressed the additional cost of disability, including the whisky; I agree entirely with that. He is also right that the Bill would benefit up to 4 million people using pushchairs, prams and baby buggies in addition to wheelchairs.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, also did sterling work on the Lords Select Committee. I agree on the need for guidance on the steepness of ramps. A few years ago, I was in a hurry trying to get to the Gatwick Express. I zoomed out of a black taxi, down the ramp; it was not on a high kerb and I did not wait for the cabbie to help me—my little chair went over backwards and I cracked my head open, and I was in hospital for a little while. That may explain some of my speeches afterwards. So yes, we need some guidance on the steepness of ramps. Some of us in chairs take risks that we are not supposed to take. I, too, commend the Institution of Civil Engineers on One Great George Street. I do not have to go in there, but I sometimes use that ramp for the fun of using it—it is such a magnificent construction.

I pay tribute again to my noble friend Lady Deech for her superb chairing of the Lords Select Committee. The whole House and the Government should heed her wise words. I agree with her that the government response to her committee’s report was feeble. Disabled people have been let down across the piece. If the Government or the House do not want to listen to me because I may be slightly biased, not just because of my party allegiance or because I am in a chair, as a distinguished Cross Bencher chairing that committee she is not biased, and the committee’s report was authoritative. Quite rightly, she said that there was there is a callous or ignorant denial of rights to wheelchair users.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, the spokesman for the Opposition. I am very grateful for her and for her party’s support. She is right to say that the onus all falls on disabled people to fight for access, and that is not right. It may be okay for us middle-class users such as myself and the three noble Baronesses here today in wheelchairs—we are articulate agitators and we can fight for some of our rights—but there are tens, indeed hundreds, of thousands of wheelchair users who are not like us and do not have the privilege of being able to make speeches like this to fight for those rights.

I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Haworth, on his speech. He emphasised the Select Committee’s point that the 2010 Act was a retrograde step for disabled people. The Act was well-meaning but had unintended consequences. He again emphasised that it is all the little things that make life a misery. I understand perfectly well that I cannot get up the six steps to the Cinnamon Club—I have not had a nice dinner there bought by someone else in many years—but I am annoyed that I cannot get into the place next door that has only a three-inch step, which they could easily have removed.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb; I am very grateful for her contribution. I appreciate that she has to dash off any second—I told her that I would prefer her to speak and go rather than not speak at all. She is also one who has no experience of a wheelchair but says that it is the sense of justice that annoys her and that the Act is just not fair. What better justification for changing the law than to do it out of a sense of justice.

My noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond gave a magnificent speech—what a powerful contribution, as always. I believe that he is the only person to win a record six gold medals in one Olympic Games. We have seen him champion many worthy causes in this House, and I am particularly pleased that he is championing my Bill. It gives me more justification than anything else for thinking that I must be on the right track, because I consider his support significant. He is right that business would get a boost if disabled people could get into shops. And he is also right that you can feel it in your gut and it makes you pretty angry and stroppy at times when you cannot get into a place that you should easily be able to get into.

The noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilton, has tremendous experience and I hope that the House will listen to the most senior female Peer in this building, because her opinion counts. She made the point that solving the problem of a four-inch step is pretty easy. One shop can do it; the one next door simply has not thought about it. Why would people in a wheelchair want to get into the shop? Well, if you do, what is the problem? She stressed that my Bill has no cost to the Government.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and I take her point. If the Government will do something about steps of six inches or lower, I will be quite happy in Committee to drop, or postpone for some time, the 12-inch problem, which has a greater cost. As I said, if we deal with steps of six or fewer inches, we would deal with 87% of the problem, so I am happy to put the 12-inch problem on the back burner for a bit, if that is the mood of the House.

My noble friend Lady Morris of Bolton made an excellent point. I, too, have lost control of my chair—luckily I have managed to avoid running into a hedge, but I can always grab a lamp post, which has saved me on a few occasions. My noble friend is also right that it is all the little things that cause us problems. I have tried to keep the costs down in my Bill. In the briefing that I circulated, I referred to the famous case of Allen v the Royal Bank of Scotland, taking place at 5 Church Street in Sheffield. He won his case; he could not get into the bank, a listed building. Eventually, it got to the High Court, after he spent his money to fight it. The judge ruled that providing a lift for this person in this listed building at a cost of £200,000 was a “reasonable adjustment”—yet the Government quote a possible cost of a few hundred pounds as one of the justifications for opposing my Bill.

I will try to be as quick as I can, but I do not want to miss anyone out. I listened carefully to what my noble friend Lord Shinkwin said. I do not pretend to fully understand all the complexities of the case, but I am certain that he was treated fairly shabbily by the EHRC. He was appointed to be the disability champion, but that post was scrapped before he got there. If nothing else, it all adds to the evidence that disability issues have fallen down its agenda. I urge him to stay to fight in the EHRC for disabled issues. It has been my experience—indeed, all our experience, as parliamentarians—that we can spend an awful lot of time worrying about conspiracy theories and waste a lot of our lives without getting to the bottom of them. But there is a real job to be done in the EHRC in fighting for disabled people. If he does not stay to fight, I cannot and nobody else can. My noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond does a magnificent job. We need him in there fighting for it and putting other issues behind him—let us go forward.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, for her marvellous work on the Lords Select Committee. She adds to the evidence that many small shops are inaccessible. It is a very good point that local authorities should do more. I like the idea of local mayors or chambers of commerce taking the initiative. We need others to take the initiative if the EHRC will not.

My noble friend Lord Wasserman quoted the Prime Minister talking about building a society that works for everyone. I wish that I had thought of that, because it is a brilliant point. He again stressed the economic benefits of the Bill and the strong moral reasons to remove stumbling blocks.

I agree with the point by the noble Lord, Lord Hussain, about places of worship and other public buildings. Many are old buildings where it is more difficult to deal with multiple steps. I had not thought of the problem of mosques and I am very happy to have discussions with him to see what can be done and how the Bill can, if necessary, be amended to tackle that problem.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston, for speaking in the gap. I agree with him that reasonable adjustments should cover every eventuality but, as all the evidence to the Select Committee showed, it simply does not happen on the ground. I also agree that these steps should already have been removed. When I searched on Google for “reasonable steps” and “getting rid of steps”, nearly all the hits were for companies advising people that, because of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, they had to remove steps. I could not find a single Google hit saying that they had to get rid of steps because of the 2010 Act. All the examples listed had done so because of the DDA 1995. I can also tell the noble Lord that I looked at Section 22. It gives the Minister order-making powers but not to do the specific things suggested in my Bill. Therefore, it does not technically cover what I am seeking to achieve here.

I come to the Minister’s speech. I say straightaway that she is an excellent Minister. She is the Minister of State at the Home Office—I have been there and done some of that, so I know what it is like—and she has an enormous and difficult portfolio covering countering extremism and hate crime, integration, devolution, data strategy, identity and biometrics, better regulation and animals in science. In addition, she has to answer for everything else here in this House. She is not the Minister for the Disabled, yet she has drawn the short draw today, having to stand at that Dispatch Box and, in my opinion, defend the indefensible. Therefore, my condemnation of what she has had to say is no reflection on her whatever, as she has my deepest personal respects.

It is obvious that the Government Equalities Office has produced the usual discredited litany of excuses for doing nothing to help disabled people. It says that “reasonable adjustments” is a well-understood mechanism, if only by government lawyers. The Select Committee said that the concept of “reasonable adjustments” should stay. I agree entirely, but the Government have ignored every other bit of criticism from the Select Committee about the failures of the Act. The Government also say that making specific requirements for wheelchairs would open up a Pandora’s box of other specific adjustments. However, if it were another category affecting 800,000 deaf or partially sighted people and there was an easy technical solution, I would say, “Open that box and make that amendment as well. Justice demands it”. Another excuse is that forcing disabled people to take service providers to court personally somehow empowers them. In the past, the Disability Rights Commission would fight for them, but no more. Of course, there is also the old chestnut about costs.

How have the Government, which I have supported since I was a 14 year-old, got themselves into this hole where disabled people are no longer on their radar? It was a Conservative Government who introduced the ground-breaking Disability Rights Act 1995 but now, as everyone giving evidence to the Select Committee said, disability has dropped way down the interest scale with the 2010 Act. As the committee said:

“Our conclusion is that the Equality Act 2010 has led to a loss of focus on disability”.


How have decent, caring Ministers lost control of policy on the disabled to the civil servants at the GEO, who guard the 2010 Act like fanatical vestal virgins guarding the sacred flame that must never be allowed to go out? It must not be amended, no matter what its failings and no matter how easy it is to amend it at little cost.

On 16 March this year, the Government told me in a Written Answer that since 2015 the Government Equalities Office has issued 75 press releases and statements on transsexual and transgender issues and 12 on disability. The department is obsessed with dealing with a tiny minority of the transgender lobby, and it does not seem to give a damn about the 11 million disabled people in this country. The transgender lobby demands the right to use male, female or whatever toilets, but 800,000 people cannot get into a building in the first place to have the right to use any toilet.

The new Minister for Disabled People, who is also a decent Minister—I met her yesterday—offered me a round-table discussion with other Peers on this problem, but she does not make policy, which is firmly in the grip of the GEO. I shall take her up on that round table and will invite other Peers to join us, but we are not going to go away quietly.

I urge Ministers to get a grip of the civil servants running this policy and to tell them that wheelchair users have rights too. We do not want special treatment but, in order to get equality, we need different treatment, as the Select Committee pointed out. Wheelchair users have no option but to take our business elsewhere, to the shops that are “caring” enough to let us in. But we will continue to demand that the Government legislate for this injustice, either in my Bill or through an order-making power.

Yesterday, I received a letter from the Secretary of State for the Environment assuring me that the Government recognise animals as sentient beings and promising to improve animal welfare standards. I suggest he should send it to the Government Equalities Office and tell it to treat disabled people with half the concern we rightly have for animals.

In the meantime, since the Minister is responsible for dealing also with hate crime, I should perhaps say—and not jokingly—that every wheelchair user should call the police and report a hate crime every time we cannot get into a shop or are refused access. If every one of us did that then we would add at least 10,000 new offences every day and they would be as valid as some of those already reported. We will fight with renewed vigour, and I ask that the Bill get a Second Reading so we can continue the battle for justice for wheelchair users. I beg to move.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.