Equal Opportunities Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Official Report 413KB pdf

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Mobility and Access Committee Scotland

We move quickly to agenda item 2, which is on the Mobility and Access Committee Scotland. Our witnesses from MACS are Annette Monaghan, convener Anne MacLean, and Bob Benson. There have been travel problems because of the sort of day it is, so I thank you for getting here and I extend a particularly warm welcome to you all.

I will be chairing the discussion. I ask committee members to indicate when they have questions. Once a question has been asked, the witnesses can decide among themselves who will answer it. Does any member want to come in with a question?

Yes.

Convener, may I make a point first? For the benefit of Anne MacLean, it might be better if people could say where they are sitting. That would let Anne determine where they are.

Thank you.

Should I explain where John Finnie is sitting?

It is probably easier if committee members introduce themselves; Anne will then be able to recognise the voices and know where people are sitting.

Thank you for your very helpful guidance.

My name is John Finnie.

The report was very—

Should the rest of us introduce ourselves?

Oh yes—I beg your pardon.

Okay. I am Siobhan McMahon.

I am Clare Adamson.

I am Dennis Robertson.

I am Stuart McMillan.

I am Claudia Beamish, the convener

I am Annabel Goldie, and I am sitting nearest to Anne MacLean.

Annabel is also sitting next to John Finnie. We are in a sort of semi-circle, and I am opposite Anne. Douglas Thornton, the clerk, is next to me.

Thank you, convener.

Thank you again for your advice.

I thank the witnesses for their annual report, which I found very interesting. The level of detail was very helpful. My question is for Anne MacLean and it is about one of the working groups. In your report, under the heading of “Roads”, I see that you have a working group on designing streets, shared spaces and shared surfaces. In another forum, an interest of mine has been the design of places so that problems do not arise. The Government’s thrust is towards preventative spending so, before we discuss what the present problems and shortcomings may be, will you comment on the working group’s progress? Is it heading off future difficulties?

Most of the work and research has been done for the United Kingdom Department for Transport, and the results have yet to filter through. As members will know, there was a lot of fuss about Exhibition Road, but even with that work, there has been no concrete answer as to what a good delineation is.

Some councils are quite good; others, less so. However, councils that are thinking of introducing shared surfaces—or shared space, or however you like to describe it—must talk to disabled people about how best to use delineation. I will not bore the committee with the whole range of arguments—whether to use tactile paving, corduroy paving or what have you, and whether that is enough to give good delineation even in what will be a slow-speed traffic area. In the use of shared surfaces, there is a big difference between areas where the traffic speed is slow and areas where the traffic speed is much faster. It is one step at a time, and at the moment there is no definitive or concrete answer. However, we would like local authorities at least to work with groups of disabled people.

It is not just the visually impaired who have concerns about shared surfaces. People who are wheelchair users tell us, “You try making eye contact with a man in a white van.” Sorry—that is a predictable thing to say. The same is true for buses, and there is a problem with cars with tinted windows—people can see out but you cannot see in, even if you do not have a sight problem. People are concerned about that—disabled groups in particular.

14:15

Does that concern extend to play streets? Do you have a view on play streets?

We have not discussed play streets. I know that they were introduced in some areas—certainly where I come from in the Highlands—long before the idea of shared surfaces in street design. They tend to be in areas where there is much less traffic and where there is predominantly housing rather than a mixture of housing and commercial property. Drivers are perhaps therefore more cautious.

We have not discussed the issue per se. There have not been accidents in what would be described as play streets—none that I know of, in any case.

I have a supplementary question. With reference to shared surface areas in housing estates, is one major problem for people with either poor or no vision that there are few orientation marks? For instance, there are no pavements. Although there is little reporting of accidents, is there a psychological impact on people in housing estates from there being no orientation marks?

There are absolutely no orientation marks, and in some estates there are other design issues, such as trees and tree roots and nicely placed benches. If someone has no orientation whatsoever, the first thing they know about such a feature is when their dog moves them around it or their stick hits it. Not everyone who has poor vision either uses a long cane or has a guide dog, so they bump into it.

Orientation is so important, and visually impaired people orientate themselves by the pavement or the wall. There are not always walls in housing areas—there can be big gaps with driveways, entrances and paths into houses. People can completely lose their sense of orientation, which is not good.

My question is about a different point. I am interested in the comment in your annual report about the Commonwealth games—it took me aback. Coming from the west of Scotland and sharing the excitement of most people about the games coming to Glasgow, I had imagined that such important issues would have been dealt with by now.

Convener, if Anne MacLean and her colleagues agreed, would it be possible for us as a committee to write to Glasgow 2014—the Commonwealth games organising committee—to express concern that the necessary co-ordinating group or strategy does not seem to be in place?

I will ask Annette Monaghan to talk about the Commonwealth games and perhaps deal with that issue.

We are delighted Annabel Goldie has raised that point. We have concerns about the Commonwealth games arrangements, especially with regard to mobility and access issues.

We have recently received the strategic transport plan final consultation document from the Commonwealth games organisation. Another MACS member and I will meet a senior officer from that organisation on Thursday to discuss the detail. The situation has not improved radically since we issued our annual report, and we will take up some of the issues.

In addition, it may be useful to comment on what we have recently found out about the Olympic games arrangement, which we have regarded as a role model for the Commonwealth games. There are now concerns about whether all the necessary arrangements will be in place in time for the Olympic games. It is a big issue as far as MACS is concerned.

Convener, would it help if we asked Annette Monaghan and her colleague Anne MacLean to report back on that? I am sure that as a committee we would be happy to assist in raising the issue up the awareness agenda of the Commonwealth games organising committee by accentuating it.

Thank you for that suggestion. We may need as much help as we can get on the matter, but we will meet Ms Nardi—

—on Thursday.

She is also coming to the MACS meeting on 24 January.

As Annette Monaghan said, we have just seen the result of the consultation, to which MACS responded—we are listed at the front of the document as a respondent—and it is a great disappointment that not one word of what we said is in the document. That indicates how we feel we have been looked on all along, which is a problem.

If we make no further progress on 24 January, I would be grateful for the committee’s help. I would rather wait to meet Ms Nardi, so that we can talk to her before we ask anyone to do anything. Can we bide our time and let you know, convener?

That suggestion is helpful.

The third paragraph under the Commonwealth games heading in the MACS report refers to

“the needs of disabled athletes, visitors and spectators.”

Having just been involved in organising the international children’s games, I am concerned about volunteers. If the arrangements are not right, that will limit the ability of people with disability to volunteer. Given the number of volunteers that is needed, the Equal Opportunities Committee could press that issue a little, too.

I was going to raise the same issues as Annabel Goldie raised.

There is a tremendous focus on the London Olympic games, because they will take place next year. Post the Olympic games, what work will MACS undertake with representative bodies down south that are dealing with the Olympic games, to try to help the Commonwealth games organising committee with accessibility issues?

We have no arrangements in place for such work. MACS is an advisory committee, so we do not have the relevant infrastructure for such activity. However, in the meeting on Thursday with Ms Nardi and in the full MACS meeting with her in January, we will highlight the point about trying to learn any lessons from the Olympic experience and transfer them to the Glasgow Commonwealth games.

I assume that MACS has looked at the running of the Manchester Commonwealth games and at any accessibility issues that were raised before and during those games. In any submissions or information that you have presented to the Glasgow Commonwealth games organising committee, have you based suggestions on the Manchester games and have they been taken on board, or have you felt that those matters have been dismissed?

Can somebody remind me when the Manchester games took place?

They were in 2002.

MACS was set up only in 2002. Three years ago, it was wound up, but it was resuscitated within two months, thanks to the Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Committee. MACS was not operating in the run-up to the 2002 games, and it is in the run-up to such events that all the work is done.

I was asking whether you had carried out any retrospective analysis of what happened in Manchester with a view to making recommendations for the Glasgow Commonwealth games. Have you undertaken any such work?

No, and I can tell you why. There are only 11 of us, and we work for only up to one day a month, so we could not do such research into the Manchester games. Such work would have had to be done through the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee, which, as you probably know, is being wound up. DPTAC gives advice on UK-wide issues and covers England and Wales. It would have been the responsible organisation in the run-up to the Manchester games in 2002.

I will continue on the same theme. We might need to take advice from our clerk, but the committee could probably look at some of the information on what worked well in Manchester, what did not work so well and what recommendations could be made. At this morning’s meeting of the Health and Sport Committee, Shona Robison, the Minister for Commonwealth Games and Sport, spoke about all aspects of the Commonwealth games, including infrastructure. I would have thought that we could bring the issue to her attention. Any findings from your meeting on Thursday would be more than useful. Perhaps we could request such information from the Government.

With the agreement of the committee, we will take up the suggestions made by Dennis Robertson and Annabel Goldie and bring them together. We will write to the Government to ask whether there is any retrospective information on the Manchester games. In regard to Annabel Goldie’s suggestion, we should wait until after the meeting on 24 January to ask about early development of a comprehensive accessible transport strategy and action plan by the Glasgow 2014 organising committee. Do members have any further comments? I see that we are in agreement. We will take that forward.

The issue is not just about transport; it is also about the infrastructure that goes with it. It includes consideration of whether people can walk to the venues, how accessible the stations that will be used are and whether accessible buses will be provided. Incidentally, the report on the result of the consultation shows that not all the buses will have suitable access for disabled people. A range of issues need to be addressed. Transport is not the only issue; the infrastructure that goes with it needs to be looked at, too.

Thank you—that is a helpful clarification of the issues that we should write to the Government about.

Do members have any further points to make?

I have a general point about the recommendations that MACS makes, some of which encourage local authorities to work more closely with access organisations. I would have hoped that the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 would have compelled local authorities to do a lot of the things that MACS suggests. Do you have a general feel for how the DDA is working in practice?

Do you mean across the scope of MACS’s work?

I mean in relation to things such as consultations with local authorities at design stages. I would have thought that that would be more implicit than the recommendations suggest. How well do you think that that is working?

14:30

I think that there is a difference between where local authorities ought to be engaging with their local access panels, or with access advisers and the like, and where, at a more strategic level, they ought to be engaging with us or bodies like us.

There are 32 local authorities and another two planning authorities—the Cairngorms National Park Authority and the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park Authority—which deal with infrastructure. In that sense there are 34 planning authorities. There is no way that MACS could or should engage with every local authority, but we expect to see good practice. We have been able to take some steps, in that we recently met the chief planner and I believe we are going to be invited to attend a meeting with the chairs of planning authorities. That would be a way for us to get a strategic feed-in to what planning committees do. That is the local authority infrastructure side of things.

We also deal with Transport Scotland, and you will see from our report that we have been fairly pleased with what was the DDA good practice guide for trunk roads—it will obviously have to change its name, because of changes in legislation—and the fact that Halcrow and an access consultant are giving training to appropriate people in local authorities. We have had some feedback that, in relation to transport at that strategic level, local authorities are now starting to talk to local access panels, or their own equal opportunities officers where the council actually has one.

In relation to trains, MACS is a member of the Scottish rail accessibility forum, so we have feed-in there. There is no equivalent for buses, however, which is a big gap. I have no idea how many bus companies there are in Scotland—somebody has told me that there are more than 300—but there is no forum where we can have an input at a strategic level with bus operators or with the regional transport partnerships and local authorities, which commission the bus operators. We have no input there at all because there is no forum, whereas we have input on trains—it is not perfect; I can come back to that—and we have some input on roads. It is a mixed bag.

I have a brief question regarding hospital appointments, which is not so much about community transport as about appointments whereby the general practitioner has arranged for transport to be provided to take patients, and maybe their families, to hospital. Do you have any input into that policy? Do you think that that way of working is operating well, or are there ways in which that policy could be improved?

As you probably know, Audit Scotland did a report on transport for health and social care, which came out recently and on which MACS has commented. We are in on-going discussions about that. The transport that people need to access doctors’ appointments, hospital appointments or appointments to meet social care needs depends on where they live—whether it is a rural or an urban area. There has to be a good balance of health services, social work and the third sector—that means community transport, car schemes and taxis. The Audit Scotland report was quite damning about the lack of co-ordination between health and social work in making the best use of public transport—for patients and users rather than for themselves. It was quite a damning report.

I know that Mr Benson was on the working group on the blue badge scheme—at least, it says that in the information that I have. Changes are coming in to the blue badge scheme in January. What do you envisage the monitoring of that will be? I know that MACS will be heavily involved in it.

Has there been any discussion, maybe not in the working group but in other places, about doing something different with the scheme? In my opinion—this is only my opinion—the blue badge scheme may contravene human rights law in that a disabled person has to advertise the fact that they are disabled to park somewhere. There may be ways round that, but are you aware of any discussions on that issue with politicians, be they in the Scottish Parliament, the Westminster Parliament or local authorities?

I will start to address the issue, and then I will refer to Anne MacLean, because the question has other implications.

I am not a member of the blue badge working group, although I was involved in the response that we made to it. It is also worth pointing out that I am a blue badge holder myself and that I know the great privileges and benefits that the scheme gives to many disabled people.

It has become clear to me that the exercise that we went through was primarily to avoid abuse and exploitation of the blue badge scheme. Disabled people themselves were keen for the issues to be addressed. That is why there have been a lot of administrative changes to the obtaining of new blue badges—and further changes will take place in the style and design of the badges. The primary problem was that, as long as we had different criteria for assessing disabled people, we would have real difficulties. Many of the assessments were based not on disability but on age, which does not have a correlation—certainly not in this day and age.

I am pleased that we have started to address the issues and to bring credibility back to the scheme. I am pleased, too, that MACS and its secretariat are heavily involved in the associated work.

On the wider implications for the working group, I would like us to monitor the new arrangements to see how they work. We would expect to see a decline in numbers, because the number of people who were obtaining badges was almost impossibly high and was creating a conflict with ordinary parking situations in our high streets, which are fraught at the best of times. However, there were some positive decisions on retaining some provisions for disabled people, such as allowing them to park on yellow lines, which have been welcomed.

We have to continue to monitor the scheme, but we need a centralised system that will give us common information to enable the on-going working group to make further deliberations. Clearly, if further blue badge provision issues need to be addressed, it is the correct working group to do that.

The second part of your question was about other users. Anne, do you have any thoughts about that?

Siobhan McMahon asked about somebody having to advertise the fact that they have a disability on their badge. That is interesting. I assume that you all know what a blue badge looks like.

Yes.

It has the holder’s photograph on one side and the symbol on the other. The only discussion among our team was quite a lengthy argument about whether the photograph should face outwards. It does not at the moment: the photograph faces inwards and, as I understand it, will continue to do so in the future.

There was an argument that the photograph should face outwards so that those responsible for policing the use of the blue badge—traffic wardens, police and so on—could see it. In a sense, that was a fallacy. For a start, it could be the passenger, not the driver, who holds the badge. Moreover, going back to the comment about being able to identify the disabled person, I point out that those with evil intent could look at the photograph and simply lie in wait for the person—who will, after all, be more vulnerable than others.

We have not discussed the blue badge identifying someone as disabled. Short of some new and complex piece of technology being introduced—and I have to say that I tend to be a bit of a technophobe—I do not know how else people’s entitlement to blue badges could be demonstrated. As Bob Benson said, they are a boon and a benefit. The question is how we ensure that they are not being misused, which is a huge problem and something that the new blue badge is trying to correct. Is that not right, Bob?

It is. It might be worth pointing out that that links to Scottish Parliament legislation on, for example, disabled parking spaces, the effectiveness of which is still being monitored. The situation has certainly improved in that people are now able to find those parking spaces, but we might have to introduce something like the guide that has been produced for London, which shows the location of every disabled parking space in that city. We do not have similar guides for our own cities but, if London can do it, Edinburgh or Glasgow can do it.

Such basic measures will ensure that people do not park out of desperation simply because they do not know what to do. Things are definitely getting more difficult and closer to the London situation, where there are many more restrictions, even on known parking bay spaces that disabled people previously enjoyed and used sensibly. Those considerations need to be built in.

I certainly know from my own experience that access to a car is vital to get to, say, a meeting such as this. However, it is very difficult to park close to the Scottish Parliament. Wider considerations need to be taken on board.

Of course, the number of disabled parking spaces could be almost doubled or quadrupled, but a public benefit issue needs to be considered. Disability blue badges are not a right but a benefit, and on balance it might be best to keep going in that direction at this stage. However, we will have to find out through the monitoring exercise how the administrative changes that have been introduced to deal with abuse and exploitation in the issuing of blue badges are working out. We need a wee bit more time on that before we reach the end of our deliberations.

Thinking out loud about how the issue might be addressed if the blue badge were not used, I know that, in certain streets in Edinburgh, instead of pay and display people can ring and report using their car registration. I wonder whether a similar mechanism, in which the car itself is registered, could be used. I realise that we are not talking just about Motability cars or the car that the person in question drives—as Anne MacLean said, the badge might be held by the passenger—and I acknowledge that some people change the person who drives them around and take the badge with them. Perhaps they might be able to register X amount of cars in their name.

I am thinking out loud and realise that there are certain fraud issues that would need to be gone through. However, there are ways round the problem. When you discuss these matters, you might look at that kind of mechanism instead of simply having a plastic badge with a person’s face or whatever on it stuck to a car window.

14:45

There has been substantive discussion about displaying photographs and badges. Such discussion took place when the blue badge replaced the orange badge, which was a three-part document in which the photograph was hidden. I think that it was suggested at that time that the displaying of a photograph would have meant that a person who had a disability could be spotted by someone with ill intent who was lurking about waiting for them to return to their car, but there was a feeling that there was probably insufficient evidence to suggest that that would happen. However, I take the point.

From a monitoring perspective, we probably need to wait to see how effective the reform programme will be. There is a huge amount of abuse. I accept that the criteria for having a blue badge need to be tightened up in some respects. Parking spaces for disabled people are abused, regardless of whether they are at supermarkets, in private areas or elsewhere. Last weekend, I went somewhere where there were 10 such spaces, seven of which were occupied by people who did not have a blue badge. A substantive amount of open abuse goes on. That is where monitoring needs to come in—we need to ensure that we clamp down effectively on people who take spaces that are not for them.

My questions are also about the blue badge scheme. I notice that, with reference to the blue badge reform programme, you say in your report that you expect changes to be made to secondary and primary legislation. You say:

“Some changes will be required to secondary legislation this year and later to primary legislation.”

Do you have any idea of what area of legislation such changes would encompass?

My other question arises on the back of the discussion. All of us have a deep detestation of people who abuse this facility. Will the legislation embrace some sanction under criminal law against the selfish people who abuse the scheme?

The monitoring and policing exercise will probably give us the information that we require on the level of primary or secondary legislation that is needed. We should remember that there is another dimension to the issue, which is what the public will find acceptable as far as the abuse of public parking spaces is concerned.

We would probably see it as a failure if we had to go down the legislative route. The best way of addressing the issue would be to change behaviours, which would avoid the need to bring in legislation that would have to be policed. Our first course of action would be to change attitudes towards the use of blue badges and to ensure that the current system is policed properly. After that, we could see what primary or secondary legislation was required. It would be a very big issue if such abuses were to be criminalised.

The adoption of measures that are already being taken on parking spaces for those with a disability at, for example, shopping centres, where fines are imposed on people who abuse them, might be a better way of going about things than criminalisation. That is my best guess at the moment.

As committee members have no further questions for the witnesses, I ask the witnesses whether they have any points that they would like to make before we draw the session to a close.

There is one final issue, which is very general. Because of the tight financial constraints within which the Scottish and UK Governments are working, it might appear easy to put the disabled travelling public’s transport needs and transport infrastructure needs at the bottom of the heap. I am not saying that such an attitude exists, but we would be extremely concerned if it did.

It sometimes seems that what people want for the general traveller is faster and brighter transport, with perhaps more broadband availability, for example, and with everything all wonderfully singing and dancing. However, the needs of the disabled travelling public are very important.

The more accessible buses are, the more highly trained public transport staff are in dealing with the disabled public, the easier it is to get to a bus stop or train station and the more accessible that station is, the more people will feel encouraged to use public transport. I am not thinking only of the disabled travelling public; what is good for the disabled travelling public is good for everyone. For example, it is good for families with children and pushchairs and for people who have to cart heavy luggage a long way.

Better public transport would help with the Scottish Government’s climate change agenda by making a tremendous contribution to cutting down the carbon footprint. It would also allow the disabled and the elderly—who may not be disabled but who may be frail—to lead independent lives. If the committee can do anything to help MACS with that, we will have made things better for a large group of people in Scotland.

Thank you for that summary.

I feel confident that the Government will not take its eye off the ball on accessibility—not only for people with disabilities but for the frail, the elderly and everyone else. The commitment to improving public transport and making it inclusive is huge. However, I encourage MACS and anyone else to go to the Transport Scotland consultation document, which is out now, and make their concerns known.

I would like to thank all three of our witnesses—Annette Monaghan, Bob Benson and Anne MacLean, the convener of MACS—for travelling here to meet us. We should probably think rather carefully about car parking at the Scottish Parliament, which was one of many issues that you raised with us this afternoon. We have already made a commitment to make progress with the points that you raised on the Commonwealth games. Other points have been carefully noted, too. Thank you for your attendance; we look forward to going on working with you.

Thank you very much for inviting us to come and talk to you about our annual report.

We will suspend to allow a changeover of witnesses. If any of the witnesses who have just arrived or any of the witnesses who have just given evidence would like a coffee or a tea and a piece of shortbread, you are most welcome.

14:53 Meeting suspended.

14:59 On resuming—