My Lords, I declare my past interest as a member of the Select Committee on the Equality Act and its impact on disabled people, which included assessing PSV transport regulations for safe and effective travel for disabled people. Once again, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, and to have been able to sign his Amendment 26A. I have three amendments in this group, also signed by my noble friend Lady Randerson.
I want to pick up the point the noble Lord made when he talked about not just disabled people, but the elderly and frail in our society. If you include all of those, we are talking about more than one in four of the population. This is not something that affects a few people; it is a major, really important part of automated vehicles, increasingly so as we become an elderly society, because it is less likely that people will be able to make their own journeys. One reason why so many disabled people cannot travel around is because they do not have access to the right vehicles.
On this group, I want to refer to the Minister’s response at Second Reading, when the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, and I raised accessibility just not being visible in this Bill, neither generally nor in Clause 83. From the Dispatch Box, the Minister said:
“The granting of self-driving authorisations will be subject to the public sector equality duty, and the Government intend to make equality impact assessments part of the authorisation process”.—[Official Report, 28/11/23; col. 1070.]
The granting of self-driving authorisations being issued by a regulatory body would mean that the grantee has to follow the PSED, providing that it is supervised by a state regulatory body and providing a public service, so he is no doubt correct that PSVs would be able to follow it. I would hope that the provision of public sector AVs would fall within scope but, as we have discussed, there are many other parties to the running of an AV, some of which may not appear to be party to the PSED or realise that they are required to obey it.
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Can the Minister confirm that all those involved in the journey—the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, outlined some, such as those providing the apps or helping disabled passengers, as some parts of the journey are currently reliant on assistance from a driver or conductor who will not be visible—are aware that they have to follow the PSED? Also, will the organisation granted authorisation, as well as any private owners or leaseholders of AVs and all those in the PSV chain, from hailing apps through to any staff involved in the journey, have to obey it too?
The Select Committee on the Equality Act recommended that, under the PSED, the duties to assist passengers in wheelchairs in Sections 165, 166 and 167 of the Equality Act should be brought into force. In 2011, one year after the Act came into force, the Government said that they would do so, as they did in their response in 2016. However, the online
advice for the licensing authorities on the Equality Act still says that they have yet to be brought into force. There is a gaping hole. Without it, disabled people—particularly those in wheelchairs, under these three sections—discover the failures of it every day when they make journeys. It could be when taxi drivers, or perhaps in future a hailing app, refuse to take them. If I want to hire an Uber and no wheelchair cab is available, I do not get my journey at all. That is why the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, made the point about ensuring that this must be by design—so that various groups in our society are not excluded from using AVs because those AVs cannot help or take them.
I raise this because it has become painfully clear that too many PSV companies and their staff currently do not understand the PSED. Doug Paulley had to take First Bus to the Supreme Court in 2017 to ensure that wheelchair users had access to the wheelchair space on a bus, over and above suitcases and baby buggies. That was delivered through a change to the bus driver regulations, which would be disapplied in Clause 83.
That brings me on to Clauses 83 and 87. The Minister kindly noted my concerns about disapplying current taxi, private hire and bus legislation resulting in important accessibility protections not applying. He went on:
“Clause 87 requires that automated passenger permits could be granted only with a view to improving the understanding of how these services can be provided and designed for older and disabled passengers. Service providers will also need to report back on lessons learned”.—[Official Report, 28/11/23; col. 1070.]
An “understanding” of how these services can be provided is a mile away from the actual provision and design of these services for older and disabled passengers, so forgive me for not being enthusiastic about the provision for them to report back on lessons learned. Lessons cannot be learned where people have ticked a box but not delivered what is needed. I see the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, nodding and am grateful for his support.
Why do I say this? A further problem was highlighted by the House of Lords Select Committee report on the Equality Act. Its report noted at recommendation 31:
“Our evidence has demonstrated that there is a fundamental flaw in the current Public Sector Equality Duty, namely that a public authority can make no progress towards the aims of the general duty and yet be judged compliant with it by the courts. We have heard convincing evidence that an amendment is needed to remedy this”.
The Select Committee recommended that a new subsection be added to Section 149 of the Equality Act to strengthen it and the Government said in their response that they would set up a review to make this happen. However, sadly, as with Sections 165, 166 and 167, the Government have not even set up a review, let alone changed the current legislation. That is another gaping hole.
That is why I have asked for Clause 83 not to stand part and laid Amendment 53, which would at least establish a statutory advisory panel with the purpose of designing a national minimum standard for accessibility of self-driving passenger service vehicles, and Amendment 57, which is consequential to it. The key thing about Amendment 53 is the involvement of disabled people. We in the disabled community have a saying: “Nothing about us without us”. Where coproduction works
best, we are involved right from the start in the design, so that the voice of the disabled passenger can be heard and understood before it is too late to change it. I thank the Minister for his offer of a meeting and I hope that we can meet before Report. In the meantime, I hope that he can respond more favourably than he did at Second Reading.