Tanni’s View

Baroness

Grey-Thompson DBE writes for Ability Needs

by some of the things that they were hearing, even though this is not the first time they will have seen or heard it. There is something quite powerful when someone sits in front of you and tells you the reality of what it can be like.

And then at the weekend a booked journey that I was due to take failed, and I tweeted about it. I am not going to go in to too much detail as an investigation is currently underway and I haven’t decided what further action I am going to take. I had checked the website to check whether it was an accessible station. I had booked the assistance and it was confirmed by email, and I have rarely claimed back money when I could have done under the delay repay scheme. I am refused to have tickets refunded when there has been a failed assist, and I have turned down first class tickets when there has been a fail. For me it is not about getting something ‘free’ back. Partly, the cost of a first class ticket to a rail company is far less than the cost if I were buying it, and partly because I am not going to take the tickets and just go away.

But I think that I am changing my view, because there is not enough movement forward. I think refund of tickets should now be the absolute bare minimum, and I am now at the point of thinking that without compensation, and evens fines, I am not sure what is going to change. I am done with being told that they are ‘really sorry’ and that it won’t happen again. Because there is always a next time.

I tweet a lot about my experiences because I want to educate the wider public on the issues that disabled people face. More often than not, if I am having an issue a non-disabled person will often offer to help. This happened twice over the weekend. I also post on social media because when you get a lot of engagement, the train companies do seem to take it more seriously. For some reason it still doesn’t feel like we are being treated as customers. Several people have told me that they have been told to not travel when it is busy, or even worse not be out.

While there may be an app to facilitate booking, there are still failures. As a colleague said to me, an app can’t put a ramp down. And we must remember that ‘turn up and go’ (TUAG) is still an option. I do worry that being pushed towards an app means that TUAG will be forgotten. It should be noted that in Europe you are meant to book more than 48 hours in advance, not two hours. So as much as we might be frustrated we are better than other places but that also doesn’t make it OK.

The Select Committee is making a serious attempt to look at the issues and they will be tasked with making some recommendations. We were asked as a panel whether we thought the Equality and Human Rights Commission should take more of a role. My view was that the Department for Transport needed to step up. Every single Government have allowed derogations that have pushed back the date when trains will be accessible. And we haven’t even got on to other modes of transport. It is not as simple to say that things have moved on. While travelling in the Guards Van was pretty miserable, I was never left on a train.

Whatever the solutions, quite frankly disabled people deserve much better.