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Rail Vehicle Accessibility Exemption Orders (Parliamentary Procedures) Regulations 2008

I thank the noble Earl for his very kind opening remarks. I much look forward to working with him over the coming months, as I do to working with the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw. I have already had the pleasure of responding to one of his debates. Hardly a day passes without my signing off many Written Answers to him, which are immensely informative to me and to knowing what is going on in the industry that he has spent so much of his working life engaged with. I shall deal with the general opening remark made by noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, about the quality of the rail fleet and its accessibility to people with disabilities. Of course, I entirely share his objective, which is that we should see as much of the fleet as possible made available and open to disabled people as soon as possible. We entirely share that objective and I am sure that the noble Earl is also in agreement with that objective. We have led the way among our European partners by introducing regulations requiring all new rail vehicles, buses and coaches to be accessible to disabled people. There are already around 4,700 accessible rail vehicles in service, which have been introduced since the RVAR came into force in 1998. That is already more than one-third of the fleet. We have set an end date of 1 January 2020, by which time all rail vehicles must be accessible. Many thousands of older rail vehicles have already been made more accessible through the process of refurbishment. While I accept that there is more to do, we have a good track record so far. As the noble Lord knows, we have the procurement process for the 1,300 new rail vehicles to be made available over the next six years, which will also significantly boost the accessibility of the railway to disabled people. I shall simply have to note the remarks about footbridges. He was talking about the overground, which would not help in terms of the order about the Victoria line. Underground accessibility is often linked to lift access and to the ability to access platforms directly from ground level by means of lifts. A comprehensive programme of work is taking place on the Victoria line over the next five years to see that there is universal access to platforms from street level. At the moment on the Victoria line, Brixton and Tottenham Hale have lift access from street level directly down to the platforms. King’s Cross/St Pancras will have lift access from the end of 2009; Stockwell and Vauxhall from the end of 2011; Finsbury Park, Green Park and Highbury and Islington from the end of 2012 and Blackhorse Road, Euston, Oxford Circus, Seven Sisters, Victoria, Walthamstow Central and Warren Street from the end of 2013. That is a very expensive process of refurbishment of stations so that they can be fully accessible to disabled people. The work will be welcomed by those noble Lords here and more widely. The noble Lord mentioned access to platforms on the overground. As he will be only too well aware, the safety authorities have to strike a balance between accessibility and safety. I understand that Her Majesty’s Railway Inspectorate is discussing with Network Rail and Passenger Focus whether we can make any changes, along the lines that he suggested, to increase accessibility for disabled people.