Ruth Cadbury MP, chair of Parliament’s Transport Committee, has used a Commons debate to call for further action to improve transport for disabled people and to lay down three questions for the Minister.
The debate on transport accessibility on 26 March was secured by the Committee and addressed progress on the recommendations in its Access Denied report published in March 2025.
Opening the debate, the Chair welcomed “several important steps” taken in the year since the report’s publication but called on the Government do more to improve the daily experience of disabled travellers.
Ms Cadbury said:
“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…. Enforcement relies on individual passengers pursuing complaints or court cases. This is unrealistic, expensive and often ineffective.”
She continued: “On the enforcement gap we concluded that regulators need more powers, more resources, a clearer mandate to intervene earlier and a cross-modal approach. The Government did not unfortunately accept these recommendations. There’s still no clear plan to close the enforcement gap.”
Elsewhere in her opening remarks, the Chair noted that the Government had rejected the Committee’s call for a new inclusive transport strategy and instead focused on the Integrated National Transport Strategy, but that this had been delayed from its initial 2025 timeline. She called for the forthcoming strategy to include ambitious and properly funded measures to deliver inclusive transport.
“Disabled people do not need warm words, they need a practical pathway to full accessibility,” she said.
The Chair did welcome the Minister’s engagement on the planned Accessibility Charter but called it for it to break new ground.
“It must be more than a restatement of existing duties. It needs to tackle areas including the street environment, the public sector equality duty, enforcement and clearer expectation on transport operators, and must be genuinely co-produced with disabled people.”
Concluding her remarks, the Chair laid down three questions for the Minister:
· Does the Government agree with the Committee that there is an enforcement gap? If so, what will Ministers do to ensure more active, effective enforcement across all transport modes?
· How are disabled people directly shaping the Integrated National Transport Strategy and the Accessibility Charter?
· How will the Charter be given the teeth it needs so that operators and local transport authorities are held accountable?
In response, the Minister for Aviation, Maritime and Decarbonisation Keir Mather insisted that disabled people and organisations have been “at the heart” of the process shaping the Integrated National Transport Strategy.
“The Government welcomed the Transport Select Committee’s findings in their report and accepted their conclusion that more must be done to ensure that transport is truly accessible to all. That is why the Government is delivering a comprehensive programme of reform to improve the accessibility of our transport system,” he said.
(Picture: House of Commons/Laura Noble)
