Baroness Brinton (LD)

My Lords, I apologise for not apologising, when I intervened on the last group, for missing Second Reading. I am very grateful for the Minister’s comments on my return after some ill health. There are 36 amendments in this group. The vast majority relate to disability and accessibility, but there are some other key ones as well. It would be important not to lose sight of those, and I know that other speakers will cover them. I have supported Amendments 3, 6, 10, 15 and 19 from the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, by signing them. They tackle the issues that the UK Government and the Civil Aviation Authority can make happen. I also commend her and her aviation accessibility group on their report last year and eminently sensible recommendations. The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and I have both been in your Lordships’ House for over 15 years and we have repeatedly raised the issues faced by wheelchair passengers specifically, but passengers with other disabilities as well. I started using a chair when I arrived in your Lordships’ House, and I went to see the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton, and asked whether she could give me some advice on what to do, because I had some international conferences to go to. Unlike her and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, I did not have experience of this. She said, “Expect either damage or nonsense on every flight. Plan for it. Learn about what duties the airlines have, and have your evidence with you”. She was right. The expectation of the vast majority of people who are disabled is that air travel going to be difficult—and it usually is, even for those of us that now do it a lot. On every flight, I now have to carry photographs of my battery. I print out the International Air Transport Association—IATA—regulations relating to my wheelchair and battery, as well as the IATA regulations for cargo, which many airlines muddle at the airport, quoting the wrong ones back at you. I will say more on IATA later. My Amendment 21 proposes regulations to provide an appropriate enhanced level of compensation for a disabled passenger when they have been left stranded without assistance or refused boarding because of an accessibility issue and how that claim can be made. I also read Samanta Bullock’s piece on LinkedIn and, although it is shocking, it is particularly shocking in that most people do not understand that the captain of the plane is the person who makes these decisions—including on batteries, by the way. The captain is able to decide, with no evidence whatever and no form of appeal, whether the passenger can continue. That is outrageous. I remember flying to Stockholm for a conference about four years ago. I had a lithium chair that I was going to use for travel then, although I cannot use it now—taking lithium on aeroplanes is such a flipping nightmare. I used the same carrier coming back, and the pilot said that he was not prepared to accept lithium batteries on his plane—full stop. I got away with it only because I could show him my boarding card from the previous flight three days before and could say, “Your company has flown me here. Please fly me back”. The consequences for disabled passengers—in Samanta’s case, she was bumped off a flight—are always much greater. It is not just being refused the flight; in a wheelchair, at short notice, you might need to find an accessible hotel room or accessible taxis, which the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, referred to. All of those not only cost much more than the standard but are as rare as hens’ teeth. My Amendment 29 proposes that the Government and the Civil Aviation Authority have a duty to ensure accessible air travel services and airport infrastructure systems, and ensure that disabled passengers and people with reduced mobility get support. It is not dissimilar to that of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson; it is just slightly more detailed. Following the famous disability mantra of the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton—which she was speaking about decades before she joined your Lordships’ House—there should be nothing about us without us. So my amendment states that both the Secretary of State and the CAA must consult with disabled people and organisations, enforce minimum accessibility standards and—to complete the communications loop—publish annual reports. My Amendment 37 proposes wheelchair passports for air travel. Over the past few years, the Department for Transport has discussed creating wheelchair passports, which would smooth the journey, with one brief check at check-in to ensure that both the wheelchair and, if relevant, the battery and the passport match. Once you have that passport, the details can be in the airport system and airline system for ever. However, the amendment also makes clear that the Secretary of State has to work with IATA—and, I hope, other nations supporting IATA—to make this happen, because it will never happen if only the UK does it. I support Amendment 7 of the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of Cradley; the amendment on air quality of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay; and many of the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes. I think we are all trying to do the same job—I will come to that. There is overlap between my amendments and those of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. The Government have to work to get to the heart of much of the problem. However, my amendments go further. Neither the UK Government nor the CAA have the power to change these problems across the world because the regulatory body for aviation travel is IATA. It uses the Montreal Convention of 1999, and yet it is also a trade body. Therefore, it is very difficult to make any change or progress when its stakeholders are the airlines that are not providing the service to disabled people. However, since I laid my amendments, I was asked if I meant to put down the International Civil Aviation Organization rather than IATA. I did not, but it was a very helpful suggestion, because the International Civil Aviation Organization’s description of itself says that it is “a United Nations agency which helps 193 countries to cooperate together and share their skies to their mutual benefit. Since it was established in 1944, ICAO’s support and coordination has helped countries to diplomatically and technically realize a uniquely rapid and dependable network of global air mobility”. Therein lies the problem. There are no teeth anywhere. It cannot create regulations. It cannot instruct or penalise aviation companies. It can only diplomatically support its 193 member countries in co-operating with each other. Further, those 193 countries cannot regulate matters that happen in the air or in another country. The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, referred to the problem: if they do so, it is valid in the UK only. I must say, I have hit a problem. On one flight I took, I was told, “Well, it didn’t happen with us. It was taken out of the aircraft and went elsewhere. It’s nothing to do with us”. In consumer terms, that makes it very difficult ever to get any satisfaction. We need these countries to start to come together, perhaps through the ICAO, to influence IATA to be much more active on its own regulations.