Disabled Access (Aviation Industry)

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Wednesday 7th November 2012 Westminster Hall

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Brooke, and to take part in this important debate and respond to the all-party group meeting held last week on the report. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans) on securing the debate.

Chairing the all-party parliamentary group on young disabled people is one of the most fulfilling parts of the job that I do here in the House. It is odd, in a way, because it does not involve much work from me. It is a rather unique all-party group, in that the less the Members of Parliament say, the happier I am, because I want the young people—the Trailblazers—to play the key role. They write the reports, so it is only right that, when we have a gathering of witnesses, they, not the MPs, do the cross-examining. The less the MPs say, the better—a welcome change that we might bring into other aspects of parliamentary life, perhaps.

I pay tribute to all the Trailblazers who played their part in writing the excellent report that we are discussing, which raises a wide range of issues. I pay particular tribute to a lady named Hayleigh Barclay, who has been doing sterling work, trying to influence plane manufacturers in Europe, so that they think about how they design planes in future. She has been struggling and must feel occasionally that she is hitting her head on a brick wall. I have tried to help, as well, by writing to companies, but I do not get any replies either. She has really dedicated herself to this cause.

Rather than rehearse the report’s contents for a third time, I would rather focus on what we discussed during the all-party group meeting last week, when we had evidence from a range of representatives from airlines and plane manufacturers. I took from that the incredibly great difficulty that disabled passengers have in maintaining the simple, basic human dignities that so many of us take for granted when travelling by air. Airlines always get a kicking in this regard, because they are the ones that we see when we travel. We think everything—every stretch of our journey—is to do with the airline, but of course it is not. The booking system can be any internet site going and might even not be based in this country; the airport operator controls the physical infrastructure; and bags or whatever else passengers need to check in goes to the ground handler, which is contracted partly to the airline and partly to the airport operator. Who is pulling whose strings? It is a complex passenger journey, which is one reason why we have lower level of passenger service than is now seen in rail and bus travel. Rail and bus are by no means perfect—do not get me wrong—but they are further down the track, if hon. Members will excuse the pun, than with air travel.

There are also jurisdictional issues. We can legislate all we like for UK planes and give the CAA as many powers as we choose to, but we cannot control what happens in a third country, particularly if it is outside the EU. Trying to use powers that the House could have to mandate change is difficult. That is why I have been focusing on working out why the industry has these disconnects in how it speaks to itself. Why cannot an airport consultative committee put disabled passengers’ needs at the forefront of what they do and redesign their systems to ensure that even simple stuff can be done, such as considering whether a powered wheelchair can be broken down and stored safely and not damaged? Why is that so difficult?

That takes me back to how we build airports. Sir Howard Davies has an awful lot to consider in the coming years and I am loth to add more to his task, but I hope that any new airport, should he choose to build a new one, is built on a slightly different model, where the needs of the passenger come first, rather than just getting people in and out as quickly and simply as possible. I was staggered to hear some witnesses talk about how difficult it is to get a wheelchair from the gate to the aircraft hold, without having to check it in about four hours beforehand, when they first arrive at the airport. Why should making that connection, which is no more than 25 yards away, be so difficult? Is it beyond the wit of man to devise a solution? I understand the need for security, which must be uppermost, and the need to separate incoming and departing passengers for immigration reasons, but those things surely cannot be allowed to stop a wheelchair simply being moved 25 yards. I fail to understand why that is so difficult.

So much of what we discussed last week was about passenger information from one actor in the process to another. The number of gaps that accurate information disappears down is mind-boggling. When booking a ticket, for example, people go into their local branch of Thomas Cook on the high street, if they are lucky enough to still have a branch there, and book the ticket with the travel agent, who notices if they have a wheelchair. The travel agent applies a code, although no one is ever sure whether the codes are all the same, which somehow goes down the wires to wherever it needs to go, but at no point is there any adequate consideration of whether a passenger will use their own chair. Will they need a different chair when at the airport? Will they need to check in their wheelchair at the gate or check-in desk? Is it a powered wheelchair? How big is it? What are the weight limits? Although the passenger booking the ticket might think that the great god of Thomas Cook— the all-knowing one—or the travel agent will somehow ensure that it is all right, that cannot be guaranteed. They might not have dealt with someone in a wheelchair before and might not know what the systems are. We place a great deal of confidence in a process that is not necessarily delivering for the passenger.

Until last week, I did not realise that anyone can try to reserve a seat on an aircraft. We can all put in a request for a bulkhead seat. They are popular. People get to stretch their legs out if they are able to and have more space, so those seats are particularly desired. However, so broad is the definition of a person of reduced mobility, that the severity of their need cannot be taken into account. Someone with a stiff leg might need a bulkhead seat, whereas another person may have a complex bulky powered wheelchair and quite severe mobility issues. The airline cannot decide how to allocate those seats until the last minute, when it knows who is trying to board the plane.

There are great difficulties in ironing out the flaws in this process, but I detect willingness to improve. It would be unfair to paint a uniformly bleak picture, and I always try not to do that in every report produced by the all-party group. There are always positives to focus on, and I think that we should do so. The airlines are keen to do more and to do better, but I sometimes feel that specific innovations are occasionally a shock factor, with the response being, “We don’t normally do it that way, so I’m not going to do it that way in future.” However, innovation is going on. The all-party group heard about some interesting and innovative proposals regarding replacing hoists, for example, with a new form of seat, which would ensure greater dignity for passengers. Boeing showed us a revolutionary new form of lavatory that was truly accessible. That might be a point for the Minister to consider.

The case that the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned of the young man who had to urinate into a coffee pot occurred because that person thought that the toilet was accessible and only found out when he got on the plane that it was not. The definition of accessible for an aircraft is not the same as for a bus or a train. It is no use putting a nice, shiny, chirpy blue symbol on the door and thinking that a lavatory is wheelchair accessible. That is not the case. I was surprised to hear one example of an accessible toilet at the bottom of a spiral staircase. I am not sure that even I could cope with that at 30,000 ft in the air and still think that that was accessible.

As I said, things are improving. We should celebrate the fact that, as the CAA confirmed last week, all UK airlines will voluntarily fully fund any replacement costs for any damaged wheelchair. We are unique in the world in making that commitment, which demonstrates to me that we do not always need stringent legislation. We need to get the industry to agree that something is worth doing and is in their interests, and they will do it.

I am acutely conscious that airport operators, ground-handling agents, travel agents, plane manufacturers, airlines and Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all almost need to be dragooned in a room and made to understand what is required. That is why I continue to lament the loss of the disabled persons transport advisory committee, which I hope is still offering views somewhere in the ether, and I would appreciate a verdict on where that is now occurring in the Department for Transport.

What gave me even more hope, however, was that, regardless of what the Department said, the Trailblazers are coming up with their own solution. Charlene Kane, the director of customer services at Monarch Airlines—I have probably got her title wrong—volunteered at the end of the all-party group’s session to host a working group of all the bodies that I mentioned, so that they can listen to what the Trailblazers and the industry have to say and try to come up with solutions. Those solutions would start when someone is at their computer trying to book their flight and end when they get back home, with their wheelchair undamaged and in one piece, having had the holiday or business trip that they wanted and having had their human dignity protected, rather than compromised, at every stage of their journey. That cannot be too much to ask. “Turn up and go” might be a utopia, but it should be a human right.

--- Later in debate ---

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

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans) on introducing the debate and setting out his stall most effectively. It has been a good debate, with a large number of constructive comments from all the Members who have contributed. I assure Members that I take the issue seriously, as does the Department for Transport and the Government generally. I shall respond to the points made as best I can.

To be clear from the start, the Government agrees that it is important for airlines and airports to be sensitive to the needs of disabled people. As a minimum, they must comply with the European regulation that has been enacted to protect the interests of people with disabilities, though that in itself is not enough. I very much agree with the comments made by a number of Members today, including the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), that while we have seen significant improvements under successive Governments in bus and rail travel—I am not pretending everything is perfect, but a lot of improvements have been made—what is happening with the airlines is lagging behind. That is the biggest challenge for travellers with disabilities.

Let me set out the legal position. Aviation is an international business. Almost all the issues that arise are common throughout the world, and a substantial body of international law, whether created by the International Civil Aviation Organisation, the European Union or individual member states, exists to support and help aviation passengers. For those people who are disabled or have reduced mobility, from whatever cause, European regulation 1107/2006 establishes their rights. The regulation is fully supported by the UK Government and has applicability in UK law under a statutory instrument, S.I. 2007, No. 1895.

The European regulation concerns the rights of disabled persons and persons with reduced mobility when travelling by air. It gives rights to disabled air travellers, including the right to assistance at airports and on board planes, and imposes legal obligations on airports, airlines and their agents or tour operators in respect of the service that they provide to disabled persons and persons with reduced mobility. To guarantee such assistance, passengers are required to provide notification to the airline of their needs at least 48 hours in advance. If no notification is given, airports and airlines are required to make all reasonable efforts to provide assistance. Forty-eight hours is a long time, and people obviously want to be as spontaneous as they can, so that is a challenge. The rail industry, for example, has done a great deal to reduce the time of pre-notification, so I hope that that issue might be improved in future.

The regulation is directly applicable in UK law and the Civil Aviation Authority has powers to enforce the regulation in the UK. Any company found to be in breach of its obligations could be subject to prosecution. On disability, it is fair to say that the EU and the USA are further advanced with legislative measures to secure rights to access and help for disabled air passengers.

The International Civil Aviation Organisation has also taken an interest in this area in its guidance, and we are engaging with it to share best practice, although even best practice leaves questions to be answered.

To help the UK air transport industry to comply with its obligations, the Department for Transport produced a code of practice, “Access to Air Travel for Disabled Persons and Persons with Reduced Mobility”, along with a passenger booklet, “Your Rights to Fly—What you need to know”. The code incorporates the legal requirements and recommendations—for example, offering best practice as a way forward—but the Government expects the industry to adopt the recommendations unless there are practical reasons that make it unreasonable to do so. Interpretive guidance is available on the regulation from the European Commission.

We want all disabled passengers and those with reduced mobility to experience as pleasant a flight as possible. To achieve that, we must always be alert to upcoming issues and try to identify them quickly. We must certainly persuade and cajole the industry to follow our guidance, and we must enforce that when necessary. All those involved in transporting disabled passengers should be sensitive and aware. I appreciate that that may not always be the case. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said that he was disgusted by the attitude of some airlines. I hope that that is not a general experience, but I accept that there may sometimes be insensitivity that could be improved on.

The right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough referred to training and process, and there has been a great deal of work on that in other transport modes such as rail and buses. The airlines may be marginally lagging behind on that front. All customer-facing staff should be well trained, and use kindness and common sense. We must be aware of when dignity might be compromised, and minimise that as far as possible. We must also be realistic and pragmatic about the limitations and difficulties facing airlines that may not apply to other forms of transport.

Airlines can refuse a booking only if accepting it would break safety rules or the size of the plane or its doors makes boarding or carriage physically impossible. Paragraph 1(a) of article 4 of the regulation authorises air carriers to derogate from the principle of non-discrimination and to refuse to accept a reservation from or to embark a person with reduced mobility, or require that person to be accompanied by another person to meet applicable safety requirements. That is a sensitive point for some, but whether we like it or not—I do not—there may be tension between disability rights and safety requirements, and we must accept that. Our efforts must be to try to minimise that as far as possible. The CAA has the task of enforcing the regulation and works hard to ensure that airlines deliver both safety and individuals’ right to travel as freely as possible.

Various tensions must be managed. Electric mobility devices can catch fire on board. In an emergency, it must be possible to evacuate an aircraft quickly. Personal wheelchairs would not be crash resistant to sit in during flight, so they cannot be used at present. There may be steps that could be taken to secure them adequately, but that has not yet been achieved. That is why we must consider a combination of pragmatism affecting disability rights and safety requirements.

There are physical limitations of aircraft type, and it has been noted that aircraft are purchased and constructed to last a long time. Some of the requirements that we want on an aircraft now may not have been thought of when it was built. There have been problems with rail vehicles, and that is the case even more with planes. The regulation provides a specific derogation and allows a carrier, its agent or a tour operator not to accept a reservation from a disabled person if that would not comply with the nature of the plane.

The CAA is the UK’s aviation regulator for all European Union aviation consumer protection law and the enforcer of EU regulation 1107/2006. This summer, the CAA took over responsibility for handling disabled passenger complaints and offers advice about all issues concerning disability travel. The aviation health unit at the CAA gives advice to GPs and to members of the public who may have questions about whether they are fit to fly.

The CAA is continuing to develop its capacity to help and to support passengers. It is actively engaged with airlines and airports in seeking to improve service levels and is conducting its own inquiries into those areas where further improvements are needed. It has set up a new consumer advisory panel to act as a critical friend of the regulator as it moves forward to putting the consumer at the heart of its regulatory efforts.

Hon. Members may know that the CAA announced in April that the chair of the new panel will be Keith Richards, and he is now in post. Mr Richards—he is not the Rolling Stone—has considerable experience of disabled air passenger issues, having been chair of the aviation working group at the disabled persons transport advisory committee for many years, as well as being a former head of consumer affairs at the Association of British Travel Agents. In the autumn, the full panel of nine members was appointed, and the new body has already held its first meeting.

The hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) asked about DPTAC. There has been consultation about its future, and we have now received the responses, which are being analysed in the Department. We will make a statement in due course. No decisions have been made at this point, other than to have consultation, which I think has been completed.

The hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), who is no longer in her place, asked whether the CAA should be required to produce an annual report. The proposed powers in the Civil Aviation Bill will enable it to facilitate comparisons across airlines. It will have a clear role in sharing and encouraging best practice. It has plans in place to share complaint data with disability groups to facilitate development of best practice. What we are doing in the Bill will be useful in taking forward the steps that right hon. and hon. Members rightly want.

I draw attention to the new CAA functions on information about aviation services in clauses 83 to 93 of the Bill. New publication powers are also crucial in putting the environmental concerns of passengers and the public at the forefront of the CAA’s core business. Without the provisions in the Bill, the CAA can publish guidance and advice only about its or the Secretary of State’s functions. Some operators may already publish data on their services, but many use varying and incompatible measures. Others choose to do less. The Bill, which is being debated in the other place today, will for the first time give the CAA a duty to publish performance and environmental data that are transparent, objective and consistent. That will allow consumers easily to compare operators and to fill gaps when the industry has not provided information. That is a useful tool to drive up performance.

A number of issues were raised that I will try to address. Some hon. Members asked about passengers’ dignity. We accept absolutely that that is important. On the matter raised by the hon. Member for Strangford, we are not aware of regular requirements for strip searches being a problem. If such a search is necessary, it should certainly be done discreetly in a private area. If the hon. Gentleman is concerned about a particular airport or airline, he is welcome to let us know and we will pass it on to the CAA to take forward. We would not want that to become a problem unnecessarily.

The hon. Member for Bolton South East asked whether passengers could be met at car parks. Pre-notification is the key, as always, but passengers should be able to be met and supported as needed. Pre-notification makes that possible, but again if right hon. and hon. Members believe that good practice is not being followed, they should let the Department or the CAA know and we will pursue individual matters as they are brought to our attention.

The hon. Member for Strangford also said that airlines could do some simple things if they had a bit of compassion. I hope that they do not lack compassion—I am sure that most do not—but I agree entirely that some simple steps could be taken to improve matters. Often, they can be done by changing a process, which may not even be costly. If he has suggestions, I am happy to pass them on.

The Department is certainly open to that and to making suggestions to the industry when they are brought to our attention. Indeed, some of the best comments have come from organisations such as Trailblazers, and I was pleased with its useful report. Frankly, some of the statistics that it referred to are rather disturbing, and the industry needs to respond sensibly to those. I know that the CAA has that in its sights and will look at what might be done, within its powers, to take that matter forward. For example, there is no reason or excuse for the number of wheelchairs apparently being damaged in transit, as hon. Members mentioned. The fact that British airlines have a better record on compensating passengers is a good point, but it is no substitute for wheelchairs being damaged in the first place. Steps can be taken, and ICAO technical instructions relate to wheelchairs and to medical and health equipment being carried. There is, of course, a remedy for wheelchairs being damaged, but as I said, that is not a substitute for them being carried properly in the first place.

I agree that airlines and airports need to do more to try and avoid unnecessary obstacles to seamless travel for individual passengers, in so far as that can be achieved. It is not good enough if people have to wait four hours for a wheelchair to be moved 25 yards, as my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) pointed out in a very passionate and useful contribution. I take his point that there is a need to look at the definition of accessible, so that people can understand what it means. That is an important point.

On what the Government is doing generally, I add that we are in the process of producing a transport accessibility strategy, which will cover all modes of transport. It will build on the work of successive previous Governments—both the Government that introduced the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and the previous Government, which did good work in this area. As hon. Members have said, this is not a party issue. All Members feel strongly about it, and we want to get the best results that we can. The strategy will appear in the not-too-distant future.

I am sorry, by the way, that my hon. Friend is leaving the Select Committee on Transport. Is that right?

[Paul Maynard]

I am afraid so.

[Norman Baker]

That is a great pity, because my hon. Friend’s contributions to that Committee have been very useful. I have no idea whose decision that was—if it was the Whips’, I think that it is the wrong one—but I thank him for his work.

An issue was raised about an aircraft on which an accessible toilet was down a spiral staircase. I should put it on record that although there is a toilet down the spiral staircase, there is another, more accessible toilet on that type of plane. It is some distance away at the other end of the cabin, but it is actually on the same flight level—to put the record straight on that point.

The hon. Member for Wigan asked about accessibility of public transport generally, and I hope that I have dealt with that matter. If she has particular issues about rail or bus travel, she can draw them to my attention, but we are making progress. We have kept the targets for replacing vehicles on the railways and buses, to make sure they are fully accessible. Those targets have not been changed and we are making good progress towards achieving them. We have also put further moneys into the Access for All programme—£100 million for the next control period for the railways—to ensure that further improvements are made to the railway station infrastructure in this country, so that fewer people encounter problems getting through stations, which I am afraid can be an issue.

I entirely agree with the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), who said that in his view, what benefits the disabled traveller benefits all travellers. That is exactly the right analysis, whether it applies to information on buses and trains or to physical access. Until I became a father and had to cart a buggy up and down stairs, I had never realised how many stairs there were at underground stations, nor had I realised how inaccessible some of them are. If we are able-bodied, we do not necessarily understand or appreciate the difficulties that some of our fellow citizens face. Putting the disabled person centre stage, as far as we can, is a sensible strategy to take forward, and I hope that we will do that in our general accessibility strategy.

I hope that I have answered most of the points that hon. Members have made in today’s debate, and I thank them again for their comments. I hope that it is clear from what I have said that no one is complacent, that the UK is fully engaged with these issues and that the CAA is doing an increasingly effective job in developing its consumer support function. There is, of course, always more that can be done. Pre-notification of requirements is key. Airlines need to know what disabled customers’ needs are, so that they can prepare for them, but having been notified of them, we would expect airlines to deliver on those requirements as far as possible. The CAA and ABTA have done good work in highlighting that need. It is much better to have pre-notification than to leave matters to best endeavours on the day.

I am pleased that the CAA is taking forward work in a number of other areas. For example, it has helped in the introduction of the Medical Engineering Resource Unit TravelChair, which is a specialist seat for disabled children that fits into a normal aircraft, and in discussing the introduction of a British Standards Institution standard for air travel for wheelchair users. Those are important extra steps towards making the air journeys of disabled passengers and those with reduced mobility more pleasant.

I thank the hon. Member for Weaver Vale again for securing the debate, as well as all Members who have contributed today.