Mobility Scooters

Debate between Norman Baker and Mike Wood

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mike Wood (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise important issues relating to the estimated 4 million adults in the country who have some form of mobility impairment. Given that figure, it is not surprising that there are some 300,000 mobility scooters in use here, and that the number is growing by up to 25,000 each year. They obviously provide an invaluable aid for those who are elderly and/or suffer from a disability, enabling them to maintain their independence and ensuring that they are less marginalised in our society than they would be otherwise. They are crucial in helping people suffering a disability and others to realise the rights to access that I think most people in our society accept should be a reality for all our citizens. After all, 15 years have gone by since the passing of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995.

This evening I want to explore some aspects of safety in the use of such mobility aids, specifically, but not wholly, in regard to the transporting of these vehicles and their users. I also intend to look at the treatment of mobility scooter users and at whether they are being afforded the protection under the law to which they are entitled.

The local authority that serves my constituency, Kirklees council, licenses 249 taxis, 55 of which are able to carry wheelchairs. There are a further 1,520 private hire vehicles, of which 120 are designated for wheelchair access. Unlike nearby Calderdale authority, Kirklees makes a distinction between wheelchairs and mobility scooters, but it seems evident that the two classes are becoming blurred and that scooters are on occasions being transported as if wheelchairs. It seems—largely, I accept, on anecdotal evidence—that sometimes this is happening without the user being relocated to a standard seat within the motor vehicle for the journey or the appliance being anchored adequately, if at all. The situation is no doubt complicated by those scooters that fit within the dimensions of the reference “wheelchair” as used in previous deliberations on this topic by the Department for Transport, but, for whatever reason, this appears to be a growing practice, at the discretion, obviously, of the driver and his employers. Indeed, the National Taxi Association accepted that there was a great deal of confusion about this matter in its evidence to the consultants MVA, which compiled research for the Department.

The NTA also accepted that it has no existing policy about scooters being transported and left it to the discretion of the driver, based, it said, on health and safety considerations. It appears to share the view of many in the trade that it is waiting for a lead from the Government. Perhaps the Minister will want to use this opportunity tonight to provide such a lead. [Interruption.] He shakes his head, and I am encouraged.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Norman Baker)]

I nodded.

[Mike Wood]

I am sorry, it is late in the evening: the Minister nodded, of course.

In the meantime, perhaps tonight the Minister can supply us with the up-to-date figures for the number of wheelchair and scooter users injured while being transported. Whatever the figures are, perhaps he can tell us whether his Department is content for this high potential for accident to remain the case, and if not, what it intends to do to cure, or at least ameliorate, the problem.

I accept that the Minister has been in post for only a matter of months, but he will be aware that research commissioned by his Department in 2006 suggested there was the potential for 180 serious accidents a year involving vehicles transporting such users and their appliances and 16 fatalities. I should add that many scooter users, such as my constituent, Mr Lawrence Conlon, also feel that the loading into and out of any taxis is fraught with danger. In a letter to me, Mr Conlon said:

“I would invite the Minister or any of his officials to take a test and allow themselves to mount and dismount one of these vehicles in a wheelchair, either being pushed or guided on and then dismounted backwards on runners on many occasions not much wider than the wheels of the chair.”

That danger was also raised in the MVA research, which recommended that the Department institute trials so as to be in a better position to judge the danger itself. Can the Minister tell us if such trials have been undertaken in the four years since this report, and have the Government looked into the lack of uniformity in respect of anchoring points on the various appliances?

I realise—and I expect the Minister will tell me this—that the Department’s default position is that mobility scooters are not safe to be transported on public transport at all, not least taxis. But the situation in the country has moved beyond that point and we need the Government to act to help regulatory and licensing authorities make sense of the situation on the ground. At the very least, we have to be assured that all journeys involving such passengers are health and safety compliant and that the drivers are trained and aware of the safety needs of this group of passengers, not only while installed in the cab, but also at the point of their being loaded into or dismounted from the vehicle. Is it appropriate, as Mr Conlon suggests, to compare the process with the same procedures when they are carried out by ambulance service staff? If so, is the Department happy with the apparent disparity in safety levels between the two?

So far I have examined the potential problems relating to access to a vehicle and safety while someone is being carried. I wish now to discuss the issue of scooter users who have little access to a taxi; such access is apparently only at the whim of a licensing department and the local taxi owners. Lawrence Conlon, like his father before him, has given a lifetime of service to my local community. Now in his 80s, he uses a motorised wheelchair to maintain mobility, but rarely can a taxi be supplied to provide transport for him. The size of his wheelchair means that it cannot be loaded into a taxi unless that vehicle has a hydraulic facility, and not just ramps or runners. No such vehicle is licensed by my local authority, which tells me that it cannot require local taxi owners to provide such a facility in even one of their hundreds of cabs.

The Minister will recall that he confirmed to me in his letter of 7 October that section 160 of the Equality Act 2010 required taxis to be wheelchair accessible, but there remains no date for the enactment of this provision. May I press him to proceed with that enactment as speedily as possible and ensure that when the provision is enacted it takes on board the need to include scooters and motorised wheelchairs, as used by my constituent and, I suspect, many others, who are currently being discriminated against?

Finally, I wish to discuss a slightly different point relating to scooters. I have before me an Office of Fair Trading press release from a fortnight ago, in which the OFT announced its intention to launch a market study into mobility aids, including wheelchairs and scooters. It says that the sector was worth £500 million to UK companies in 2008. Apparently, however, the level of complaints from customers is growing at 20% a year and now tops 5,000 per annum.

I wish to outline to the Minister just such a complaint, as raised with me by my constituent, Mrs Crossland, a scooter user who earlier this year received an unsolicited visit from a firm called New Life Mobility Ltd of Kirkgate house, Shipley, West Yorkshire. It agreed with Mrs Crossland to replace two small scooters with a more highly powered one, and in total she has parted with £1,650, in addition to the two perfectly serviceable scooters that were taken in part exchange. Six months later she still has no scooter that she feels safe using. West Yorkshire trading standards department, which I have always found very effective, has been involved but is now at the point of advising her to go to law to recoup her cash. As she has spent her life savings on this venture, she is of course not in any position to do that. I know that trading standards officers have met two directors of that company, a Wayne Patrick Allen and a Jimmy Rodgers, but apparently none of the actions it was agreed that they would take to make good the problems they have caused Mrs Crossland have taken place. May I therefore ask the Minister whether he and his colleagues in government will introduce more robust provisions that afford protection for the likes of my constituent from those who seek to take advantage of their age and infirmity to rob them of both their life savings and their mobility? An OFT investigation might help provide industry solutions to the problems that mobility aids users face, but, again, I feel that we need a strong lead from Government.