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Rail Vehicle Accessibility Exemption Orders (Parliamentary Procedures) Regulations 2008

I, too, support the regulations. Perhaps, unlike the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, I feel that they are very tightly drawn already, so it is inevitable that there will be continuous requests for exemption. In addressing the issue of access for the disabled, we should first be concerned that disabled people travelling at present meet a lot of obstacles when using the railway. Even when travelling between well-staffed stations, messages about the means of getting on or off trains are often not transmitted by train operating companies or their staff, and disabled people find themselves marooned on trains. No matter what devices we have to tell them that they should get off the train, unless a ramp that enables them to do so is made available to them, the information that is displayed on the train is probably of little use. I turn to the issue of the large number of obsolete vehicles now running on our railway. Some of them are not only unsuitable just for disabled people, they are unsuitable for anyone. I look forward to the Minister being able to tell us when we are going to get new vehicles to replace our dreadful old ones. I was talking to someone today who had made the journey from Gloucester to Swindon in a Class 143 train that he described as ““deplorable””. He also explained to me how difficult it is to maintain such stock. My last point, which is covered not by these regulations but by very similar ones, concerns the design of stations. When a disabled person gets off a train, there is often a footbridge which can be difficult, or there is a tunnel. I was in Switzerland this year, where it is common practice for people, whether they are disabled, with pushchairs or just ordinary people, to walk across the track. There are lights to tell them that it is safe to do so, and it is a common practice. I draw the Minister’s attention to the fact that the huge footbridges that have appeared in, for example, Moreton-in-Marsh and Llandrindod Wells are extremely expensive and probably militate against their provision at all. They may also explain the resentment that the people who have to provide them feel about the system. The Minister should look again at the prospect of substantially simplifying the footbridge arrangements so that people can cross the track as they used to, except on very high speed lines. They could be protected easily by signalling, which is simple. It is not complicated stuff: when the light does not show, you do not cross, so if the light fails you do not cross. We want something much simpler. Lastly, I draw the Minister’s attention to the fact that I recently had a case of someone trying to open a railway line, but the cost of providing disabled facilities to the standards specified was so high that it was decided not to build the intermediate stations between the starting and finishing points. Therefore, not only do the disabled not get access to the railway, neither does anyone else. That seems to be a rather perverse decision. The department needs to look very closely at the present arrangements for accessibility at stations, so that people may enjoy the vehicles for which the regulations are designed, which I support.