Lord Blencathra (Con)

My Lords, I apologise to the Committee—I was in Yerevan in Armenia monitoring the election for the Council of Europe at Second Reading. This is the only intervention I shall make in Committee. I have done an observation role for the Council of Europe for the last 10 years, and among the airports and countries I have visited are Basel, Malta, Crete, Rome, Athens, Riga, Tbilisi, Frankfurt, Budapest, Monaco, Venice, Ankara, Amsterdam, Istanbul, Gdańsk last year, where I met Lech Wałęsa—he is still going strong—New York, Oslo, Helsinki, Charles de Gaulle, Seville, Sofia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Saint Petersburg—I am banned from Russia now—Monaco, Bulgaria, Vilnius, Minsk and Kiev, before the war. I do not have the authority of noble Lords who have moved their amendments but, by God, I have the experience of 100 check-ins and 50 hours of non-stop hassle. I support the content of nearly all the amendments in this large grouping, but particularly Amendments 1, 6, 21 and 48. The Minister will say that we do not need any of them, since he has a general power in the Bill to make regulations in Clause 1(2)(e). That is okay as far as it goes, but we need to spell out the areas and aspects of disability on which we need regulations made. We should not leave it to officials in the department at some time in the future to come up with some regulations which may not be a priority for disabled passengers. Let us take the problems wheelchair users suffer in chronological order. At least 48 hours before we travel, we fill in the airline forms about the chair—its weight, dimensions and battery type. Airline forms are all different and some misdescribe the type of battery, and ask if there is an open cell one, which was abolished about 20 years ago. We tell them whether we can walk a little bit and whether we need a chair down the aisle or can manage a few steps. British Airways are quite good with its forms. That is all good stuff, but I can tell this Committee with absolute honesty that at every single check-in I have done, not one word of what we fed into that computer is on the check-in computer. All the information they have is that the passenger will have a wheelchair, and the only training they seem to have is to ask about lithium batteries. Airlines are right to be paranoid about lithium batteries, which must never be put in the hold. Every time I check in, the check-in person says to me, with a look of panic, “Are they lithium batteries?” I say, “No, they’re sealed, non-spillable, dry cell”, which is an official category on the form. The next question is, “Can they be taken out”? I say, “No, they are bolted in. Only lithium batteries are removable”. That is usually challenged with the question: “Why not take them out”? I explain that they are bolted in and not removable, and they weigh 8 kilograms each.