Committee on the Equality Act 2010 and Disability Report

Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

My Lords, this is an excellent report, and I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and her colleagues on it and congratulate the noble Baroness on the forthright way in which she opened the debate this afternoon. A welcome feature of the report is the way in which it interpreted its remit broadly, to encompass not just the technicalities of equality legislation but the way in which the Equality Act underpins and supports the delivery of services, the accessibility of the environment to disabled people and how those services are delivered.

I want to talk about four of those service delivery-related issues, but first I will allude to a couple of general points. First, many of the protections for disabled people that have been introduced in recent years have depended on regulation, either in primary or secondary legislation. All too often, the Government have characterised these, rather pejoratively, as “red tape”, which they have used as a pretext for getting rid of the protections, under the so-called Red Tape Challenge. A good example would be the questionnaire procedure which was formerly available to assist complainants in making claims of discrimination, and which the committee would like to see brought back. The report makes an important point when it says that these things should properly be seen as protections for disabled people rather than burdens on business, and that their removal under the Red Tape Challenge should be reversed.

The second point is the need for a cumulative assessment of the impact of the many changes which have affected the lives of disabled people in recent years. Since 2010, the Government have introduced a long list of measures that not only have a negative impact in themselves but often impact on each other so as to compound this effect, with those having the greatest needs often being hardest hit. Social security and benefits provision have been abolished, been reduced or failed to match inflation. Eligibility criteria and assessment procedures have been tightened. Social care has suffered from savage reductions in local authority funding so that often only those with the greatest needs qualify for help.

A third area concerns civil rights. In many areas, as I have said, the drive to reduce regulation and red tape has resulted in rules and provision that were helpful to disabled people being weakened or abolished. Disabled people have argued for an assessment of the cumulative impact of all these changes. This is surely ungainsayable. If we want to know the impact of a measure, it is not enough to know what its impact is in isolation: we need to know what its impact is in the context of everything else that is going on. The Government have been resistant to the idea of cumulative impact assessment. It is obviously the case that cumulative impact assessment is attended by considerable difficulty, but that is not the same as saying it cannot be done. The EHRC and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research think it can, and it is obviously necessary if the Government are to have a proper understanding of the effectiveness of its policies. The Government need to redouble their efforts in this regard.

I now turn to the service delivery and environment-related issues I want to highlight. I hope it will be of greatest help to the House if I highlight issues which are of particularly concern to people with a vision impairment. In doing this, I am indebted to the RNIB and Guide Dogs for their briefings, and I declare my interest as a vice-president of the RNIB. When the Equality Bill was going through Parliament, I was successful in having Section 20(6) inserted to make it clear that the duty to make reasonable adjustments included a duty to provide information in an accessible format where appropriate.

Recommendation 13 of the report states:

“All government departments, local authorities and official bodies should review their means of communication with the public”.

To help achieve this, we are told, the Minister for Disabled People has convened an accessible communications round table. Although this is welcome, as the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, said, continued reviews are not enough. The provisions in the Act requiring the provision of accessible information have been in place since 1999 as part of the auxiliary aids provisions of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. Disappointingly, after 17 years, public authorities still routinely fail to provide accessible information. The Government’s response stated that the DWP’s accessible communications are under review. They have been under review since 2014, but little progress has been made. Blind and partially sighted people continually report that the DWP fails to provide even the most basic information, such as appointment letters, decision letters notifying claimants of changes to their benefit and even sanction letters in an accessible format.

It is also disappointing that the Government’s response failed to address what appears to be a near-universal lack of accessible information provided by local authorities. RNIB regularly receives complaints from blind and partially sighted people that their local authority has failed to communicate with them accessibly on a whole range of matters, including registering to vote, registering for council tax and requesting information on local social care provision and recycling. The Government must act now to ensure that disabled people, including blind and partially sighted people, receive information in an accessible format from government departments, local authorities and official bodies.

Recommendation 30 states:

“The Department for Transport should update its 2011 Local Transport Note to offer guidance to local authorities on how shared spaces schemes can best cater for the needs of disabled people. Local authorities should review existing schemes in the light of that guidance, make changes where necessary and practicable, and base any new schemes on that guidance”.

It is concerning that the Government’s response stated that they had no plans to revise the DfT’s 2011 local transport note, despite the committee reporting that the guidance fails to address the difficulties that people with disabilities face in accessing shared-space schemes. The Government stated in their response that the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation will produce new guidance on shared space. Coming on top of existing Department for Transport guidance with minimum input from disability organisations, this risks confusing local authorities with multiple sources of advice. It also fails to address the lack of consistency in the design of shared spaces across the country identified by the RNIB, with different schemes adopting different approaches to disability access issues. The Government must urgently review and update local transport note 1/11 to ensure that local authorities fully address the disability access issues posed by shared-space schemes.

The committee received more responses relating to accessible transport than on any other issue. This accords with the pattern of complaints received by RNIB from blind and partially sighted people. Recommendation 28 states:

“Training of all rail, bus and coach staff to a level agreed in consultation and set out in law is in our view essential … Ministers … should be prepared to use these reserve powers if necessary, and to enforce the Regulations they make”.

There is concern, however, that the Government’s response states that legislation is not seen as an appropriate tool for delivering disability awareness training in the bus and coach sector.

The RNIB believes that disability awareness training must be made a statutory requirement and must be regulated to ensure quality and consistency across different providers. The European regulation on the rights of bus and coach passengers requires all bus and coach drivers to undergo disability awareness training. The Government used a derogation to exempt UK drivers for five years; this is due to expire in 2018. With the UK due to leave the European Union, the future of this regulation is thus unclear, so we need an assurance from the Government about their plans for disability awareness training for bus drivers.

Finally, Recommendation 27 states:

“More resources should be devoted to providing annunciators on trains and buses which do not have them. No new vehicles should be put into service which do not have audio and visual annunciators. The Public Service Vehicles Accessibility Regulations 2000 should be amended accordingly”.

The RNIB was disappointed that the Government’s response failed to acknowledge the problem raised with the committee that many annunciator systems fitted on trains are not switched on. It would like to see spot checks on trains such as are already carried out on buses. The Government’s response acknowledged the benefits of AV information on buses but made the incorrect assumption that such systems are expensive to fit. Evidence submitted to the committee states that audio-visual annunciator systems add only 1% to the cost of a new bus.

The RNIB is very concerned that bus operators continue to procure new buses that are not fitted with AV announcement technology. For example, Leeds First bus service has announced that 37 new buses, which are expected to be used for at least 10 years, will enter service, none of them with annunciator systems fitted. The Government stated in their response to Recommendation 27 that vibrating wristbands have recently been trialled to improve the accessibility of bus travel. However, there is reason to be sceptical about that solution, as it is still only proof of concept stage. The RNIB believes that audio-visual technology is the most effective solution; the technology is tried and tested and is proven to make bus travel accessible for disabled passengers. It is already in operation on all buses in London, as well in many other regions, and can be introduced to new buses inexpensively.

The Bus Services Bill, currently awaiting Report in your Lordships’ House, is the ideal vehicle for the Government to legislate to ensure that all new buses are fitted with audio-visual technology. An amendment has been tabled to the Bill to require all bus operators to provide information to bus passengers in an accessible format. The Government are considering the matter sympathetically, and I very much hope that they accept the amendment to require operators to install AV on all new buses. It is gratifying that that recommendation has been highlighted by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, the noble Lord, Lord McColl, and most recently by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. I hope very much that the Government have been listening and taking note.