Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)

My Lords, I thank everyone who contributed to this short debate, and I will be brief. I understand that there is a lot of pressure on the network—not just money, as the Minister says—if we cannot even get station signs to match up. There are big things that we have to address, and we absolutely have to make it better for everyone. We just need to work out what those specific things are. The current barriers that people face are infrastructure, working and accessible toilets on the platform and on board, and the number of staff who are ramp trained but who manage to get themselves exempt from ramp training so that they do not have to get a wheelchair user on or off a train. That is even before we get to the aspiration of having level boarding. There is a conflict between the duty as listed and what actually happens. This comes back to how hard it is for disabled people to complain; it can be quite exhausting. I am glad that the Minister raised catering provision. It might not be a legal duty, but these are the things that matter to disabled people when they travel. The two companies that I use most, LNER and Grand Central, offer this. Lots of good stuff happens on the network. But, back in 2020, one train company that had just bought new trains was getting very excited about it. I will probably very badly quote what happened on social media—I was trying to look for it, but I do not have it in front of me—but, when the new trains were pictured on social media, we quickly realised that, as a wheelchair user, you might have the accessible space in your carriage but you could not get to the café bar. When lots of questions were asked about it, someone from the social media team posted back and said, “Don’t worry, you’ll be in sight of the café bar”. I tweeted that, in all my years of campaigning, I had dreamed of being in sight of a café bar. The disability rights campaigners had quite a lot of fun with it, calling it “Egg and Cress-gate”. Sometimes you need a sense of humour to get you through. On a serious note, it was so close and yet so far, which comes back to thinking ahead about these things. The great advantage of having some time between Committee and Report is that it will be an opportunity for us to think creatively about how we can improve the system and what in reality needs to be in the Bill. I will take the Minister and his team up on his offer of a more substantive meeting with the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and anyone else who would like to join. For disabled people, this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance. I have been talking about accessible railways since 1995 and I probably do not have another 40 years of my life left to keep doing it. So this is genuinely an opportunity to do something really important. I will bring amendments back on Report—I have to work out which are the best ones to bring back—but for now I beg leave to withdraw.