Ruth Cadbury

My hon. Friend is entirely right. She is a passionate advocate—not just in transport, but across the piece—on the needs and rights of disabled people. To a large extent, this issue in transport is a subset of the societal challenge that she rightly raises. The barriers that I have described prevent access to employment, education and services, and prevent people from having social lives. Following long delays, eight Access for All station upgrades have been confirmed, with 23 more moving to detailed design, and another round may be funded in the next spending review. These upgrades are welcome, but they feel like a drop in the ocean. At current investment rates, the rail network will not be fully step-free for a century, according to the Disabled Persons Transport Advisory Committee’s estimate in 2022. As Emma Vogelmann, formerly of Transport for All, has said: “Accessibility must be delivered as standard across the whole network, not rationed station by station over generations.” Judging by Transport questions this morning, as well as every previous one I have sat through, Members who have been waiting for station improvements in their constituencies clearly feel the same way. We also await the Government’s new rolling stock strategy, which must set out a clear approach to level boarding. On holiday in France and Italy last summer, I saw clear ambition for that, as demonstrated by the lift access being built, if not already installed, across a number of rural stations. I hope GBR will inject that missing ambition into the UK rail system. On electric vehicles, Transport Focus recently found that not a single charger on the strategic road network met voluntary accessibility standards, so we risk building new barriers into our future infrastructure, and those barriers will be expensive to fix later. This is not just about hardware; we must embed accessibility into decision making. Witnesses to our recent inquiry into the Railways Bill expressed concern that, under the Bill, GBR must balance the interests of disabled people with cost. Of course, cost is always relevant, but we have repeatedly seen accessibility lose out. So we have recommended that GBR be required not just to consider but to deliver tangible improvements to accessibility. On enforcement, we must ensure that rights are real. One of the most striking findings of our inquiry was that disabled people often have rights on paper that do not translate into real experiences. The reason is simple: enforcement is too weak.