Public transport, the Equality Act and the Supreme Court

A bad combination?

 

I have previously discussed my feelings towards the Equality Act as it applies to buses on this blog, and a recent development has reinforced my concerns about the appropriateness of the rules when it comes to achieving proper and justified equality. It relates to the shared bay on modern low-floor buses that can be used both by wheelchair users and those with babies in pushchairs and reached all the way to the Supreme Court. While not making it a legal requirement to give wheelchair users priority use of this bay, the court's guidance strongly implies they have a greater right to it than any other group by indicating that bus drivers must do more to persuade other users to vacate it than simply asking them, for instance by rephrasing their request as a mandatory requirement or refusing to drive on until they have complied.

As long as this remains a shared space that multiple groups have equal entitlement in law to use I can see no possible way to resolve a dispute such as this in a fair manner that doesn't discriminate against either party, so true equality cannot therefore be achieved and the result of this case seems inappropriate and poorly thought out with insufficient clarity and not enough legal substance. While bus operators claim to welcome the new guidance, in reality they have no choice as any public criticism of it would itself cause them to be labelled as prejudiced against the disabled, but as an observer outside the industry I have a number of serious misgivings: it sets a dangerous precedent that implies the disabled are entitled to greater rights than others and is likely to have far-reaching consequences to wider society, not just within the bus industry. 

What is true equality?

My recent post "Is DDA killing the bus industry?" has proved to be by far the most popular and controversial piece on this blog and has provoked a heated debate, but has been misconstrued in some quarters and I have been branded anti-disabled as a result. That is not the point of the article at all and these detractors have missed my fundamental argument, so I feel this follow-up is necessary to clarify my position and the true nature of the issues under discussion.

Re-read the article and you will realise the real issue is that the government is using the Disability Discrimination Act as a 'one-size-fits-all' solution to many subtly different problems with a complete lack of any flexibility to allow exemptions or alternatives where it isn't appropriate. The word 'equality' seems to be widely misunderstood these days and has taken on a new meaning of applying the same rules to everyone. In fact, true equality is subtly but importantly different: it means providing appropriate adjustments for those who need them, but (and this is the critical part that is usually overlooked) without unduly interfering with conditions for those who don't require such adjustments.

Is DDA killing the bus industry?

This may be my most controversial bus-related piece yet but I firmly believe the Disability Discrimination Act, for all its good intentions, is actually doing a great deal of damage to the bus industry and discriminating against the able-bodied majority of passengers for the sake of a handful of disabled users. DDA has gone too far and rather than promoting fair and justified equality, in some cases is actually now giving the disabled greater rights than the able-bodied and forcing the latter to accept unfair compromises to avoid being labelled discriminatory. To me, the government's attitude of trying to create an all-inclusive service to accommodate everyone is fundamentally wrong and ultimately benefits no one as each group's needs are so different, and bus users would be far better served by separating the disabled and able-bodied and allowing attention to be focused on each group's specific needs individually.