[Relevant documents: correspondence between the Transport Committee and the Secretary of State for Transport, on Access denied: rights versus reality in disabled people’s access to transport: Government response, reported to the House on 1 July and 10 June 2025.]
That this House has considered the matter of transport accessibility for disabled people; notes the recommendations of the Transport Committee in its First Report of Session 2024-25, Access denied: rights versus reality in disabled people’s access to transport, HC 770, and the Government’s response to that report, HC 931; and agrees with the Committee that there is an urgent need for review of the legislative framework and the enforcement regime to ensure that the gap between rights and obligations and the daily experience of disabled travellers is closed.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for scheduling today’s debate. The Transport Committee’s report, “Access denied: rights versus reality in disabled people’s access to transport”, was published a year ago. It was reported to the House on 10 June, and the Government response was published on 1 July. The timing of this debate enables me to provide a timely update on the work achieved by the Government and transport sectors over the past year, and to cover areas where more needs to be done. I am going to cover strategy, infrastructure and enforcement, and I will conclude with a few questions for the Minister.
Our report follows an in-depth inquiry that started in 2023 under the leadership of my predecessor as Chair, Iain Stewart. We travelled with people with disabilities to understand their experiences and the challenges they face, and we heard from a wide variety of people and organisations, whose knowledge was invaluable. The report has also informed much of the Committee’s other work over the last year or so, on buses, taxis and the street environment—areas where poor design and maintenance, and a lack of priority, continue to inhibit transport access unnecessarily.
In the year since the report was published, several important steps have been taken, and I thank the Government and others for these. The accessible railways road map was published alongside the Railways Bill in November last year and includes actions ahead of the formation of Great British Railways, such as a minor works budget and improved lift information. GBR will later set out its own plans through the long-term rail investment strategy. The Bus Services Act 2025 requires accessible network plans, streamlines disability awareness training and supports more accessible bus stop design. The aviation accessibility implementation group was established to deliver improvements in air travel for disabled passengers following the earlier task and finish group recommendations.
On railcards, eligibility has been extended to Blue Badge holders and will soon expand further to cover a wider range of visible and non-visible disabilities. On pavement parking, after five years of waiting—most of that was under the last Government—the Government have finally announced their next steps, and we await legislation. On taxi licensing standards, we welcome the amendments to the devolution Bill, including new national minimum standards that will include robust accessibility requirements. The Railways Bill introduces a duty on the Secretary of State and GBR to consider disabled passengers’ needs, and ensures that GBR is covered by the public sector equality duty. We welcome the publication of the equality impact assessment, and we will scrutinise it closely.
I congratulate my hon. Friend on her opening speech. Does she agree that society’s disabling barriers prevent disabled people from being able to have accessible transport, and that the Government and others need to understand that we have to change the infrastructure? That is how we are going to create an inclusive and fully accessible transport network.
My hon. Friend is entirely right. She is a passionate advocate—not just in transport, but across the piece—on the needs and rights of disabled people. To a large extent, this issue in transport is a subset of the societal challenge that she rightly raises.
The barriers that I have described prevent access to employment, education and services, and prevent people from having social lives. Following long delays, eight Access for All station upgrades have been confirmed, with 23 more moving to detailed design, and another round may be funded in the next spending review. These upgrades are welcome, but they feel like a drop in the ocean. At current investment rates, the rail network will not be fully step-free for a century, according to the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee’s estimate in 2022. As Emma Vogelmann, formerly of Transport for All, has said:
“Accessibility must be delivered as standard across the whole network, not rationed station by station over generations.”
Judging by Transport questions this morning, as well as every previous one I have sat through, Members who have been waiting for station improvements in their constituencies clearly feel the same way.
We also await the Government’s new rolling stock strategy, which must set out a clear approach to level boarding. On holiday in France and Italy last summer, I saw clear ambition for that, as demonstrated by the lift access being built, if not already installed, across a number of rural stations. I hope GBR will inject that missing ambition into the UK rail system.
On electric vehicles, Transport Focus recently found that not a single charger on the strategic road network met voluntary accessibility standards, so we risk building new barriers into our future infrastructure, and those barriers will be expensive to fix later.
I apologise for not being able to contribute substantively to this debate, owing to a commitment to lead another debate in Westminster Hall shortly.
Bus passes are hugely valued by the disabled community, but there is a frustration along the lines that the hon. Lady has hinted at, which is that some people cannot make use of their bus passes without a companion, yet the inclusion of a companion bus pass in the entitlement to have a bus pass is discretionary, not mandatory. Would she agree with me that it is not much good giving a bus pass to a disabled person if that does not cover the companion they need with them to make use of it?
The right hon. Gentleman makes a very good point, and that is a good example of a systemic policy issue that could well be addressed.
Enforcement currently relies on individual passengers pursuing complaints or court cases, which is unrealistic, expensive and often ineffective. Many people do not know who to complain to, court processes are costly and unpredictable, and even successful judgments do not always lead to improved practice. As a result, many people just give up travelling, because what is the point? For example, earlier this month the Office of Rail and Road secured commitments from Northern Trains to improve disability training and passenger assistance, which is welcome, but the ORR’s concerns dated back to 2019, with formal action emerging only years later. Such delays mean that disabled passengers continue to be failed daily, and a system that relies on individuals is unfair.
On the enforcement gap, we concluded that regulators need more powers, more resources, a clearer mandate to intervene earlier and a cross-modal approach. The Government did not, unfortunately, accept these recommendations, and there is still no clear plan to close the enforcement gap. We appreciate the Department’s commitment to explore collective action on accountability, but we would ask the Minister for an update. When we raised enforcement with the Secretary of State in correspondence—it is listed on the Order Paper—and when she last appeared before us in November, she told us that she wanted operators simply to comply with the law rather than relying on enforcement. We agree that compliance is ideal, but robust enforcement is a necessary part of achieving that compliance, and disabled people should not be expected to force the system to uphold their own rights.
We very much welcome one aspect of the Government response to our report, which is a commitment to review the overly complex and fragmented legal framework governing transport accessibility. The Department has agreed to take forward this work with the Law Commission, and I was delighted to see that the Law Commission has launched its review this week. That is long overdue, but it could bring long-term benefits.
I congratulate the Chair of the Transport Committee, the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), and my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone) on securing this debate. I am conscious that transport is devolved, but what I have already heard in the debate tells me that there are a lot of similar themes.
My constituency of North East Fife is quite a rural one, and in recent weeks I have spent a couple of days travelling around it on the bus with those who use wheelchairs to understand better the challenges they face. One reason why they use public transport is that other options are limited. There is a distinct lack of accessible taxis in North East Fife and beyond—that is a licensing and economic issue—and we find that a lot of the taxis are used for school contracts, which means that members of the public wanting to use them cannot access them. That is a real challenge.
As the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth pointed out, getting to the bus stop in the first place is a challenge, because of the pavements, dropped kerbs and street furniture. When I was out with a constituent the other week, we actually had to move road signs from the interminable roadworks in Guardbridge for her to get to the bus stop in the first instance. There is also the fact that, in most cases, there is space on the bus for only one wheelchair, so if a wheelchair user is friends with somebody else who uses a wheelchair, they cannot go to things together. There is already a real impact on people’s lives in that regard.
There are different types of buses, and we experienced them all during our days out in North East Fife. For some services, people have to give two hours’ notice that they have a wheelchair and want to use the bus, so that the provider can ensure that it provides a bus they can use. I just find it bizarre that we are in such a situation. Also, in some cases, a wheelchair user can have people leaning across them to pay their fare, which is such an invasion of their privacy.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) on her sterling work as Chair of the Transport Committee, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for providing time for us to debate what I think is a very important issue.
It is no secret that I have been a lifelong campaigner for the rights, inclusion and equality of disabled people, not least due to my own lived experience. I have been calling for and pushing for all modes of transport to be fully accessible and inclusive. It is essential that disabled people should have equal participation in society at all times. I genuinely believe that having access to transport is a human right, and we really should look at it in that context, yet all too often we hear stories of the many barriers disabled people face when they travel. We have all heard the stories of disabled people being left on planes for hours on end, or turning up at a train station and their assistance not being there for them. When I travel and have booked assistance, I worry about whether that assistance will be there. That should never be somebody’s experience in daily life.
We know the issues around pavement parking. I introduced my own Bill to ban pavement parking 18 months ago. Having obstacles on the road, especially those awful e-scooters—everyone knows my views on those—creates many problems, not just for disabled people but for families with young children pushing a buggy and so on. And then there are buses. We all know that buses are one of the best forms of inclusive transport for disabled people. However, there are times when the ramps are not working or the allocated space on the bus is not available. We must ensure that we tackle that issue. It would be wrong of me not to mention floating bus stops, because I hate them too. They are huge problem, so I might as well tie them into this transport debate. Floating bus stops should be banned from all new infrastructure, because they prevent disabled people from being able to travel freely.
Like the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis), I am trying to represent my constituents in four debates today. There was a Spanish Catholic priest called Padre Pio, who was made a saint because of the miracle of appearing in two places at once. I have not mastered that yet.
I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests with regard to my chairing of the RMT parliamentary group. One of the key issues my hon. Friend has campaigned on—we campaigned on it together—is ensuring adequate staffing levels, not just in ticket offices, where we succeeded, but on the platform and on the trains themselves, for safety and security reasons. Does she agree that, under GBR, we need a very strong plan for the workforce, so that we have adequate staffing at all levels in all facilities?
I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention, because he is absolutely spot on. We can have all the infrastructure in the world, but if we do not have the workforce to manage it then it will not work. We have to value the workforce, because I rely on that workforce when I travel and I know that many others do, too. We successfully kept our ticket offices open, which is a good thing.
I am really proud of the changes we have made in my constituency, but that brings me back to this point. Why is it that, in 2026, disabled people are still fighting for an inclusive and accessible transport network? That cannot be right. Many people cannot engage in travel. The Select Committee’s brilliant report a year ago highlighted that 67% of disabled people experience problems when they are travelling—that is just staggering—from not enough priority seating to the poor quality of pavements for active travel, a lack of step-free access and so on. Talking of step-free access, in my constituency—I am sorry to keep referring back to it—we have Battersea Power Station tube station, which is an underground station but is step-free. That is so important, because we should be able to use all modes of transport; we should not be restricted to taxis, private hire or just buses.
Inaccessible travel can be the factor that locks disabled people out of so many things: going to work or study, attending health appointments, or just participating in life. Those are the effects that an inaccessible infrastructure and travel network have on disabled people. We must do better to move things forward. I say to my hon. Friend the Minister that I do not want to hear “We are going to work towards” or “We are going to look into”. I genuinely believe that we need to see proper action on creating an inclusive and accessible transport network. Frankly, as I said earlier, it is a crying shame that in 2026 disabled people still cannot travel independently. We need a strategy, and we are going to have one.
Thank you. This place is not accessible either, because I need someone to tell me when my time is running out, but we will work on that, too.
We need solid infrastructure, backed up by the right investment, and the workforce to deliver it. We need to tighten up enforcement, because without enforcement, the onus is on disabled people, which it should not be. There must be enforcement. We should focus on the UN convention on the rights of disabled people, and having an inclusive transport network is a key pillar of that. As disabled people say, there should be nothing about us without us.
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Let me now cover three strands that are essential if we are to embed and deliver lasting change. First, there needs to be a practical, ambitious and integrated transport strategy. The last Government’s 2018 inclusive transport strategy aimed for equal access for disabled people by 2030, but when we gathered evidence for our report, it was clear that that ambition was not being met. Much of the strategy focused on “considering”, “exploring” or “consulting”, rather than on delivering substantive change. Our report called for a new inclusive transport strategy; instead, the Department said that accessibility would be embedded as a “golden thread” in the forthcoming integrated national transport strategy.
That may be positive, but we still have not seen the strategy, which was originally expected by the end of 2025. We cannot judge whether accessibility will truly be prioritised until it is published. The Department says that the strategy will include clear actions and milestones for accessibility, so I hope that Ministers will ensure that those actions are ambitious, properly funded and capable of delivering inclusive transport—not just in principle, but in practice. After a decade of best-practice sharing and awareness raising, disabled people do not need warm words; they need a practical pathway to full accessibility.
On infrastructure, we need to avoid embedded barriers. When people think about accessibility, they usually picture lifts, ramps, level boarding, tactile surfaces, accessible bus stops, hearing loops, and reliable audible and visible announcements—and rightly so, as these are basic enablers. Inaccessible infrastructure is one of the most stubborn barriers to people with disabilities accessing our transport system. Transport assets are long-term investments, so mistakes become embedded for generations. The built environment can be enabling or deeply disabling. As many disabled people tell us, people are not disabled; too often it is the environment that disables them.
This is not just about hardware; we must embed accessibility into decision making. Witnesses to our recent inquiry into the Railways Bill expressed concern that, under the Bill, GBR must balance the interests of disabled people with cost. Of course, cost is always relevant, but we have repeatedly seen accessibility lose out. So we have recommended that GBR be required not just to consider but to deliver tangible improvements to accessibility.
On enforcement, we must ensure that rights are real. One of the most striking findings of our inquiry was that disabled people often have rights on paper that do not translate into real experiences. The reason is simple: enforcement is too weak.
We appreciate the Minister’s engagement on the planned accessibility charter, but it must be more than a restatement of existing duties. The areas it must tackle include the street environment, enforcement of the public sector equality duty and clearer expectation on transport operators, and it must be genuinely co-produced with disabled people. My question is: how will the charter be enforced? As new statutory duties are created under the Railways Bill, enforcement routes need to follow. The new passenger watchdog is intended to be powerful, but it currently lacks the enforcement powers that we believe are needed.
In conclusion, accessibility is not a “nice to have”; it is a fundamental right and a precondition for equality. From taxis to railways and from aviation to the street environment, enforcement should be at the heart of the strategy for accessibility. Do the Government agree that there is an enforcement gap, and if so, what steps will they take to deliver stronger, earlier and more effective enforcement across all modes of transport? How are disabled people directly shaping the integrated national transport strategy and the accessibility charter, and what measures will give the charter real teeth so that operators and local authorities are held accountable?
Finally, I thank all the disabled people and disabled people’s organisations that contributed to our inquiry, those who have shared their experience since and those who continue to advise us. We will keep drawing on their expertise as we scrutinise the Government’s progress on all modes of transport.
Another challenge in a rural constituency where we have had ongoing changes and reductions in bus services is that multiple buses are sometimes required to get between population centres. I have a constituent who lives in Guardbridge and works in Cupar, but now has to go to St Andrews and then to Cupar to get to her place of employment. That does not feel like a real choice for wheelchair users.
Finally—I am sure we are all aware of this through our casework—for wheelchair users, in particular, to use public transport, the access allowing them to get on to the bus needs to work. I was with a constituent last week when the ramp did not work. The bus was therefore put out of order, everybody on the bus had to get off, and nobody who was looking to get on the bus after my constituent could get on. That was highly embarrassing for that individual, because she felt responsible for inconveniencing the other passengers, and it is simply not good enough.
I want to talk about Access for All, which is reserved—the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth also highlighted it. Leuchars is the nearest railway station to St Andrews, which is hopefully known to all Members, because I have mentioned it here in the Chamber a lot; if they like golf, they will know St Andrews well. There is no lift at the station, and we have been trying to get funding for a new bridge for six years—my Scottish Liberal Democrat colleagues on Fife council have been trying for even longer. The gradient of the ramp up to the bridge is 1:12, or just over 8%. For a ramp of over 10 metres, the British Standards Institution recommends a gradient of no more than 1:20, or 5%.
That is simply not the case at Leuchars, where the ramp is not short; it is many metres. It is a real challenge for those using wheelchairs and prams, and the first thing that visitors to St Andrews have to do, rather than being able to access a lift, is humph their cases up the ramp and down again. It is completely unfair on local people, because they are often excluded from using public transport, and they tell me that they do not use the train as a result. Last year, ScotRail hosted a roundtable on the future of train services in Fife, and it listed Leuchars as being lower priority. I cannot get my head around that classification and, accordingly, I am waiting for a meeting.
Access for All is an example of where devolved and reserved do not work together very well. Much like the infamous Spiderman meme, the answers to my queries five years ago involved the UK Government pointing to the Scottish Government, who pointed right back at them. I know I am not the only Member of this House to be extremely frustrated by the scheme effectively slowing to a halt.
In a written statement in January, the Government downgraded, and indeed halted, some proposed work on projects under Access for All. I would be interested in the Minister’s explanation of how that squares with reporting by Disability Rights UK in 2024 that Access for All had actually been underspending prior to that. The statement went on to say that there might be some funding available in the next spending review, but that means we are not expecting any announcements for another three years, at which point we will be heading into a general election. Are we seriously saying that there will be no Access for All spending rounds in the whole remainder of this Parliament?
Finally—this is less about funding, but directly relevant to what our constituents can expect—I would like to hear whether the Government will be publishing any outcomes from the review of design standards for accessible railway stations. Using public transport should not be a luxury; it is something we should be trying to encourage our constituents to do at every opportunity. Putting disability considerations to one side, if we are talking about economic inactivity and how we enable access for people to get to work, and indeed for those with disabilities into work, this should be an absolute priority for our public services.
I am really proud of the work we have done in my constituency, in the nearly nine years I have been campaigning, to ensure that all the modes of transport that go through Battersea are inclusive. Clapham Junction, one of the busiest interchange stations in Europe, is partially accessible. I was proud that we secured funding for Wandsworth Town railway station to be made step-free. It is a shame that it no longer sits in my constituency after the boundary review, but I will claim that win, Madam Deputy Speaker—I think I should.
We all remember the fight we all had to go through to ensure that we kept ticket offices open, when the previous Government wanted to close them. That was a battle worth fighting. I cannot use ticket machines, and there are many others who cannot use them either. They are vital pieces of infrastructure.