English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Borwick Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 8th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Borwick (Con)]

My Lords, I think I might have discovered why Governments of all flavours make their legislation so heavy and long—in the case of this Bill, 371 pages, 93 clauses and 34 schedules. It is to enable any Peer to speak about the one subject they know about at Second Reading. That is very generous, because several clauses are to solve long-term problems in the taxi industry and that is what I want to talk about.

I must first declare my interests. I have been connected with the taxi trade for about 45 years and I own my own wheelchair-accessible licensed taxi. Historically, I was the group CEO of Manganese Bronze Holdings plc, which voluntarily introduced the first production wheelchair-accessible London taxi in 1997.

I want to mention the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. Thirty years ago may seem to the young people in the transport department to be legislative archaeology, but the wonderful Library here has dug out the history of this legislation. Section 32 of the 1995 Act says that the department

“may make regulations … for the purpose of securing that it is possible … for disabled persons … to get into and out of taxis in safety”

and

“to be carried in taxis in safety and in reasonable comfort”.

The Government did not actually make the regulations, and the DDA Act was repealed and replaced by the Equality Act 2010. The same clauses were carried through in Section 160 of that Act, but the same inactivity was carried through too. The House of Lords did post-legislative scrutiny on the Equality Act and disability, and the Liaison Committee did so again in 2021. I think that both said the provision should be commenced without further delay. The Government leaped into action, agreed with the committees, and did nothing. So, I believe that the words in Section 32 are still relevant 30 years later. The department “may make regulations”, but has not bothered to do so, and still disabled people with flat batteries are pushing their wheelchairs uphill.

These words pose an obvious question: why have they not been actioned? Is it because there has not been the time in 30 years to action them? The Conservative Party was in power for 16 years, the Labour Party for 14 years, and the Liberal Democrats in coalition for 5 years. All of them have had the power to do something, but nobody has actually done anything. The blame should be shared among the parties represented here; there is ample obloquy for everyone other than the Cross-Benchers to take their fair share.

This is a shameful history, and it should stop. Essentially, Parliament decided to do something and the department decided not to do it but did not have the courage to repeal the legislation. Thirty years is enough. In those 30 years, the number of people who use wheelchairs has grown enormously as longevity has increased. Indeed, I can point out that all of us have used a wheelchair; it is called a baby buggy, and we are very fortunate if it is only at the beginning of our lives when we use a wheelchair.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, made a speech on 4 March 2022 that impressed me. She mentioned that she had arrived at her local station, Watford, after 11 pm in sleet and snow, and only a very few of the taxis were wheelchair accessible. She had a flat battery, so she had to push her heavy wheelchair because there was not an accessible taxi available. Why did any party in power not do the small work required to get the statutory instrument in place?

I have enormous respect for the Minister the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, who I know is enthusiastic to solve this wheelchair accessibility problem. I ask the Government two questions: has the department already drafted the statutory instrument needed by the previous Section 32? I presume that that was 30 years ago. When can we see it proposed?

On the Bill itself, where there are new clauses on the licensing of taxis and private hire vehicles, I ask: why not set a timetable for these excellent clauses, which I thoroughly support? Why does it say “may” and not “must”? Are we debating a 30-year timetable to get these changes done?

The largest problem in the taxi industry is cross-border hiring, which was mentioned earlier. It was a problem mentioned in the Casey report. If a taxi driver can be caught in a crime and lose his licence but carry on working the same place with a new licence from somewhere else, this change to enlarge licensing areas should be made.

There is clearly something suboptimal about the knowledge in London. Butter boys—the London trade’s name for newly qualified drivers—spend three to five years memorising knowledge which is inherently computable. It can be done better on an iPhone than in a brain, because the answer to the question, “How do I get from the House of Lords to Carey Street?”, changes from day to day, depending on who is digging up which road and then staring at the hole.

There may well be significant problems with the rest of the legislation, but I support the taxi clauses. I will propose amendments to compel the Government to bring forward the inclusion of wheelchair accessibility to taxis—a matter agreed no less than 30 years ago.

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

Lord Borwick Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 5th March 2026 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Borwick]

235A: Clause 65, page 64, line 16, leave out “may” and insert “must”
Member’s explanatory statement
This probing amendment, and others in the name of Lord Borwick, seeks to ensure that the Secretary of State makes regulations related to the licensing of taxis and private hire vehicles within six months of the day on which this Act is passed.

[Lord Borwick (Con)]

My Lords, I rise on this St Piran’s Day to carry forward the millstone of ensuring accessibility just a bit, knowing that so many disabled people still struggle with accessibility every day, even 30 years after we legislated to make a change. I am indebted to the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, for pointing out the importance of the patron saint of Cornwall. His miracle was to carry a millstone across the Irish Sea. My task is much easier: getting accessibility to actually happen. I should first declare my interests as the owner and driver of a wheelchair-accessible London taxi and as a London taxi proprietor. I have had a long history in the taxi trade.

The amendments in my name, co-signed by the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Grey-Thompson, the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, come in two sets. One is a set of probing amendments that add a new twist to an old chestnut—if noble Lords will forgive a badly mangled metaphor—and the other amendments are serious improvements to the reliability of wheelchair accessibility in this country. Thirty years ago, in the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, Parliament decided that all taxis in the country should be able to carry disabled people who use wheelchairs in dignity in their chairs. This intention was repeated in the Equality Act 2010. The phrase

“The Secretary of State may make regulations”


was used but, 30 years later, they still have not done so.

This English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, whose taxi clauses I thoroughly support, also states that the Secretary of State “may” bring forward regulations, but I am puzzled. Does this mean that they may bring forward regulations in more than 30 years’ time? How can we be assured that the Government will bring forward regulations called for by the Casey report, when they have not done so in 30 years on disability? Can the Minister therefore tell us when the Government may bring forward these regulations? Can he also compare the regulations with the accessibility regulations that were passed by agreement 30 years ago? We must have both sets, not just one set of regulations.

I am old-fashioned enough to believe in the sovereignty of Parliament and that, when decisions were made in Parliament, those decisions were the law and something that law-abiding departments followed. It appears that Parliament has achieved the credit for improving accessibility, while intentionally leaving disabled people, such as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, to walk home in the snow pushing their wheelchair because it has a flat battery.

This is only a probing amendment and I have no intention of proposing it on Report, provided the Minister deals with my next point. The requirement of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, repeated in the Equality Act 2010, is that disabled people should be able to travel safely and comfortably in their chairs in a taxi. Private hire vehicles are different. The words to be inserted under my Amendment 235B are that:

“The Secretary of State may make regulations (in this Chapter referred to as ‘taxi accessibility regulations’) for securing that it is possible for disabled persons—


(a) to get into and out of taxis in safety;


(b) to do so while in wheelchairs;


(c) to travel in taxis in safety and reasonable comfort;


(d) to do so while in wheelchairs”.


Of course, when we at Manganese Bronze Holdings plc made the first wheelchair-accessible taxi to enter volume production in 1997, we discovered that the majority of people who could not walk were babies in baby buggies. We all spend time in a wheelchair while we are babies, and we are very lucky if that is the only time in our lives when we are dependent on wheels. The arguments used when Parliament decided on this matter included that the country needed a dependable, integrated transport system on which disabled people could rely. The fact is that they can now get wheelchair-accessible transport—a bus or a taxi—from anywhere in London to a mainline station, where they can get a wheelchair-accessible train to almost anywhere in the country. Only after this amendment is accepted will they know that they can get a wheelchair-accessible taxi at their destination. Hooray—this is an integrated transport system.

This amendment would abolish one of the constant problems of disability: the overhead of planning. Can I get an accessible loo at my destination? Will there be steps on the way? These are all old problems that the Minister—the noble Lord, Lord Hendy—has done more than his fair share to abolish. As disability becomes more complex in general, many more people have a range of simultaneous disabilities that can make the overhead of planning much harder.

Another argument produced is that taxi drivers cannot afford the cost of a wheelchair-accessible taxi. This argument has the flaw that drivers compare the cost of a new taxi with the cost of a second-hand car. A new taxi is indeed expensive, but that is partly because the volume is so low. I am confident that the price will reduce as volume increases.

Comparing two 100,000-mile vehicles makes the answer different. My taxi, which is parked in a car park outside and has 126,000 miles on the clock, has only one year left on its life in London because of the emissions regulations and age limits in London, so it will be sold next year for very little. However, all taxi drivers have had 30 years’ notice of this change, ever since the Disability Discrimination Act was passed in 1995. Is 30 years’ notice insufficient?

If any noble Lord wants to replay this argument, I am perfectly content to do so, but I would say that the argument is over. Parliament has already decided on this matter, and the choice is either to implement the Equality Act 2010 or to repeal it. Hiding a change in the long grass of legislation, passing an accessibility measure and modestly accepting praise for it but then doing nothing is immoral and offensive to disabled people; I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, would not want to have anything to do with it.

I was amused to see a press release issued by the Department for Transport on 27 November last year. It was proud that these taxi clauses in the English devolution Bill improved accessibility—so proud, in fact, that the press release mentioned accessibility four times. The trouble is the clauses do not mention accessibility at all. On introducing these clauses on Report in another place, the Communities Minister, Miatta Fahnbulleh MP, said that they are

“improving the accessibility of services for everyone. That means that people—particularly those who rely on these services the most, such as women, girls and people with disabilities—can be reassured”.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/11/25; col. 286.]

However wonderful and necessary Clauses 64 to 72 are, they do not seem to me to improve accessibility at all.

This should not be a party-political matter. All parties and the department have been trying to do the right thing over the past 30 years. No party is trying to stop this. Any criticism of the Department for Transport may be misplaced because, clearly, the department showed extraordinary foresight in knowing both that I would propose such amendments as these and that its prediction that these clauses would improve accessibility would come true in the end, because it would accept my amendments and take the credit for them. I do hope that I am right. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I can absolutely confirm to the noble Baroness that I will do exactly that. It is a very important subject.

[Lord Borwick (Con)]

On taxi accessibility, is the Minister arguing that the local requirements of disabled people might be different in one area from those in another? Surely, that is completely wrong, because the whole purpose of this is to organise transport—that a disabled person in London should be able to travel to Penzance and know that in Penzance there are the same standards of accessibility. It is in the nature of travel that people change their location; therefore, they surely need to have the same standards. It is the job of the Government, as was put in the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, that they set the regulations that can be met by as many disabled people as possible. That I would approve of, but saying that we cannot do anything just in case there is a difference in the local arrangement seems to me more in the nature of an excuse than a plan for the future.

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I am certainly not arguing that the needs of disabled people are different in different areas, but—and some noble Lords have heard this in the course of meetings that we have already had on this Bill—I am expressing that there are extraordinarily different sets of local circumstances across the country and that what the park of vehicles in local areas consists of is very different in different places, and serves quite different purposes.

The noble Lord will recall a discussion that we had not too many weeks ago in which it was quite clear that there were some fundamental differences in the needs of local areas in the provision of taxi and private hire services. We are strongly attempting to recognise that we have to start from where we are and that a one-size-fits-all solution to the mandatory provision of things may not suit every area—for example, it may not suit rural areas in comparison to dense urban areas. I am not at all saying that the needs of disabled people are different in different areas, but the way in which the two trades are organised in different areas is because the needs of the users, as expressed in the use of those services, are very different.

[Lord Borwick (Con)]

I thank the Minister for his point, but I am not sure that I entirely agree with him and I look forward to the meeting and to Report. In the meantime, I withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 235A withdrawn.