Member

The noble Baroness, Lady Blake, also referred to the two-hour window prior to travel for booking, but that is also utterly meaningless if there are no staff on the train or at the station. Turn up and go, which is a legal right, is becoming more and more irrelevant. This is not because of the staff or what the staff are doing. Once again, it is the lack of staff and the increase in elderly people needing assistance because of demographics. I have absolutely no doubt that the Minister wants assistance services to actually provide the assistance that passengers—especially those who are disabled—need. It must be a vital part of this Government’s strategy to get disabled people back to work. At the moment too many disabled people cannot rely on the assistance they need on a train, before we even look at reliability and overcrowding, which is why jobs can become too difficult to get.