Bus Services Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2016-07-20
Topic: Transportation
Peter Snape (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, the noble Baroness raises an important point which should not be overlooked in the course of our deliberations. There is a very human problem here: drivers will quite often explain to management the difficulties they have in seeing that the spaces provided for passengers in wheelchairs is properly occupied by those passengers. There are various documented instances of parents with buggies, for example, occupying that space. Buses these days are, by and large, operated by one person, and the driver is often called upon to intervene in disputes between someone in a wheelchair and a parent with a buggy about who will occupy that space. It is easy for us to say in the course of these debates, "Of course, it’s obvious; it should be the person in the wheelchair", but in the human context of dialogue that takes place between passengers, it is not quite that simple. I would say to the noble Baroness who has raised this matter that you should never ask a question to which you do not know the answer. I cannot provide the solution, but I can illustrate that these difficulties are taking place at present. Whether the Minister can help us out in resolving them or not, I do not know So far as visual aids are concerned, again it is important that we are not too prescriptive. We had a debate some years ago in your Lordships’ House about Gatwick Express trains, which were operated by a company for which I used to work. According to my memory, the issue was that the visual displays inside these trains were five-eighths of an inch smaller than they should have been. At that time, the Gatwick Express trains ran only between London Victoria and Gatwick Airport, so if you were going south, you were going to Gatwick Airport, while if you were going north, you were going to Victoria station in London. There were no intermediate stops. Despite that, at the time the then spokesperson for the Liberal Party opposed the derogation that had been proposed for these particular trains. I make this point in the context of these amendments, after all these years, to show that it is possible to be overprescriptive with these matters I heard from the noble Baroness who ably moved these amendments that it is sometimes impossible for the person in a wheelchair who occupies the position provided for them on that bus to see the visual display. Again, I am not quite sure how many visual displays would need to be provided on buses for that particular problem to be dealt with. Evidence about public transport is hugely anecdotal—we all have various experiences, some better than others. For what it is worth, I can offer one I took the 91 bus service recently from Trafalgar Square to Crouch End. I have to say that after about 40 minutes I found the audio announcements and visual display—there are both on those buses—somewhat wearying. At every stop there were the chimes and this rather well-polished voice, if I might put it that way, announced the particular stop, and said which route it was on and what the following stop was. I have to confess to your Lordships that after the first 50 or so times, I would willingly have ripped the whole apparatus apart and thrown it off at one particular stop. I relate that anecdote only because, again with the best of intentions, we sometimes overprovide these things I return for a moment to the Gatwick Express trains. Certain Members of your Lordships’ House felt it preferable for the trains to remain in a siding rather than trundle between Gatwick and London Victoria with a visual display which was five-eighths of an inch or whatever it was too small. I do not want to labour the point, but it is vital that we do not overprescribe It would be remiss of me before I sat down not to congratulate the Minister on surviving the enormous cull that appears to have taken place in Her Majesty’s Government. I am sure I speak for all of us on this side when I welcome him back, as his name is on the papers before us today. I did tell him that I would have a word with the Prime Minister on his behalf. I did not realise there were a couple of choices that I could have made there, but I welcome him back and hope we can continue the debate on this matter in the same spirit as on the previous two days.