Flitwick Station: Step-free Access

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries) on securing this important debate, which gives us the opportunity for us to discuss accessibility. I want to acknowledge on the record her passionate and ongoing campaigning not only on behalf of her constituency but for accessibility across our rail network. I was moved to hear her talk about her constituent Darren, and I hope that my hon. Friend will never give up campaigning on behalf of her disabled passengers. As I continue, I hope that she will believe the evidence that we are committed to assuring accessibility across our transport system. I am committed as she is, and I will try to explain what happened in her particular case and what we are doing throughout the country.

My hon. Friend is aware of the Department for Transport’s inclusive transport strategy, and she has campaigned incredibly hard to ensure that her constituency gets as many resources as possible. The strategy is incredibly ambitious, and I believe it to be the first national strategy determined to deliver accessibility by 2030, which is the United Nations goal. She is right that we are dealing with very old infrastructure, which remains a barrier to disabled people accessing our rail network. We need to work with them, Network Rail and the train operating companies to ensure that accessibility is a priority.

We are discussing Flitwick station, which was nominated for the Access for All programme, but was not successful. My hon. Friend found that decision difficult to accept because she had worked incredibly hard on the best bid possible, but the funding was heavily oversubscribed. We had well over 300 nominations for the programme, and significantly more stations required our support—I will go through the reasons. The Flitwick nomination was good, and I hope for another round of funding in which she can secure a new bid, but it was not successful in the previous round.

We could compare Flitwick with lots of other stations, but I do not want to confuse my hon. Friend or her councillors, who are listening to the debate. They must put the best bid together in future. It is a competitive process, with criteria. Train operating companies also have the opportunity to nominate their top priorities—for example, Biggleswade was a top priority for Great Northern—although that is not the only criterion.

We also have to look at the broad spectrum of accessibility in a region. Twenty-one stations were nominated by Thameslink with a priority rating. The train operating company’s second priority was Mill Hill Broadway, with two other stations nominated, Catford and Cricklewood, which were more successful in the bidding despite being lower ranked than Flitwick by the company. There were, however, other factors, which I will explain. My hon. Friend will want to work as closely as she can with the train operating company and the local authority to ensure that the next bid is successful.

At present, I am told that six of the eight stations in my hon. Friend’s constituency are step-free, which is no doubt a great deal down to her campaigning. As we have discussed, a lot of that infrastructure is Victorian, but 75% of journeys are already step-free. We want to increase that figure, which is why the inclusive transport strategy had funding of £300 million available to help stations improve. A lot of those stations were deferred from the 2016 Hendy review to the Network Rail delivery programme, and new stations were accepted as well. In total, therefore, 73 stations will receive funding to ensure that they are step-free.

Nominated stations were selected on the basis of annual footfall, weighted by the incidence of disability in the area. We considered other local factors such as proximity to a hospital and, fundamentally, the availability of third-party funding for the project. It was also important to ensure a fair geographical spread of projects across the country. All those points are noted when a grid is put together.

Third-party funding is especially important in weighting a business case. Many of the selected stations had bids that included significant match-funding contributions, which often came from the local authority but also from the train operating company. I hope that my hon. Friend will take on board the fact that we have released a new tier of funding—£20 million now available for the Access for All mid-tier programme—which was launched on 8 July and is open to nominations right now. I urge her to put in another bid, ensuring that she works with the train operating company and the local authority. I cannot emphasise this enough: significant third-party funding for the project would help.

A few weeks ago, I wrote to all right hon. and hon. Members, encouraging them to contact their train operating companies if they wanted their stations to be included in that programme of work. I can only apologise if my hon. Friend is getting mixed messages from my Department, and I am disappointed that the train operating company has not made it clear how the whole package has to be presented, not just nominations. However, we—not only I—look forward to the train operating company nominating Flitwick station, and I hope that she can go back to her constituency and put together a package of support from the local authority, to ensure that the station gets a higher rating than it did previously.

I will now reflect on some of the points made by my hon. Friend on behalf of her constituent Darren. Within the inclusive transport strategy, we have ambitious plans to ensure that disabled passengers are dealt with with the care and dignity that they deserve. My hon. Friend mentioned taxis being called, which is part of the disabled person’s protection policy. It is absolutely right that a person should be able to carry on their journey. It is illegal for taxis not to take disabled passengers onboard, to take umbrage at taking wheelchairs or to charge any extra for taking on disabled passengers. I urge my hon. Friend or her constituent Darren to write to me—immediately, considering where we are right now—so I can keep an eye on the taxi firm and how that could have occurred. She closely follows the issues of her disabled constituents.

[Ms Dorries]

May I add some nuance? Some constituents such as Darren are not just in wheelchairs but in huge, motorised, supportive wheelchairs that enable people to sit up and move. It is not a case of just a wheelchair but much more, making it more difficult.

[Ms Ghani]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, but the facts remain the same: all operators have a disabled people’s protection policy, and it is their duty to ensure that disabled passengers can continue their journey and to provide the right sort of taxi for them to continue that journey. But who wants to complain religiously when they are being let down by a service? That is why we are working with the Rail Delivery Group to ensure that Passenger Assist becomes a far more interactive, real-time application and to make it easier to make complaints, so that we can hold train operating companies to account.

Passenger Assist is a service that does good work, but it is not as real-time as my hon. Friend and I would like it to be. Hopefully, that will be delivered by the end of the year. We are working to make sure that the rail network is more accessible, and I have supported the industry’s establishment of an independent rail ombudsman with powers to deal with unresolved passenger complaints. I have made it clear to the Office of Rail and Road that it needs to ensure that disabled passengers’ complaints are heard and their expectation of services is met. Through the inclusive transport strategy, we will have a grading system to look at the train operating companies that do well and those that fail to deliver a standard that the rest of us enjoy.

I hope that my hon. Friend can take on board all the advice that I have given and will take it back to her councillors, to ensure an even stronger bid. She has worked incredibly hard, even before I was the Minister for rail accessibility; her reputation is very strong in the Department for Transport, thanks to her campaigning on behalf of her constituents. We will look forward to the bid coming in, but my hon. Friend must not forget to ensure that it is nominated strongly by the train operating company and the bid has some matched funding.

I hope that my hon. Friend will agree with me that even though the infrastructure is not perfect, and even though we have a long way to go, with the inclusive transport strategy and the £300 million that we have made available recently, we are doing everything we can to ensure that accessibility is not a barrier to people with disability accessing our rail network. I could talk about many other commitments that we have made through the inclusive transport strategy, but they will not necessarily affect the rail network.

[Ms Dorries]

Can the Minister give some further clarification? Obviously, we will reapply for the fund—I think that is already underway. We are having discussions with Central Bedfordshire Council about third-party matched funding. I am aware that we need increased matched funding in place, and I am sure that Flitwick Town Council will make that case, too.

I hope that the Minister will still be in post at the end of this week, if not in a more elevated post, but I am sure there will be continuity of her work. She mentioned matched funding and the other elements, but I do not take the case of comparability with other stations, because ours tops all the lists. If she is in post, can she ensure that the considerable engineering challenge of adapting Flitwick station and the cost of that does not preclude us? The Department could probably adapt five stations for what it will take to adapt Flitwick, but I do not want that to be a barrier to the rights of our disabled passengers.

[Ms Ghani]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Let me be clear: when we put together the grid to see which stations to support, we do not look at the complexity of transforming those stations to make them accessible. At that point, we do not know the cost. That is why we do not say at the beginning that the £300 million will support 50 stations. We try to make sure that it supports as many stations that get the most points according to the criteria: high footfall, levels of disability in the area, accessibility issues, other concerns such as local schools and hospitals, whether there is a disability centre or an old persons’ home nearby, or whether there are events throughout the year where the footfall increases incredibly. All those factors are taken into account.

In my experience as Accessibility Minister, I have not been in a meeting in which we have thought that something was too difficult to do. That is not the point. We are trying to do as many stations as we can that are accessed by a high number of people with disabilities, as well as all the other added elements. My hon. Friend can take that back to her constituency and tell them that the complexity of the station is not the key. In the next round of funding, the key is to be nominated top by the train operating company, to put forward a proposal that is supported by both the town and council and any other local authority that will be involved in planning, and to have some matched funding. It is about putting the best, most robust case forward, with all the added elements of people trying to access that station—with or without a wheelchair—and any other accessibility issues, whether parents with a buggy or persons with sight loss. In the last round of funding, there was a remarkable number of stations that had substantial amounts of matched funding. I would like her to take that away.

I hope that my hon. Friend will continue to campaign for accessibility in her constituency and will hold my Department to account, regardless of who the Minister for accessibility is, to ensure that the inclusive transport strategy continues to roll forward. Even though 75% of journeys are step-free, we will not be satisfied until 100% are. I look forward to working with my hon. Friend in her next bid for a round of funding.

Question put and agreed to.