Birmingham Commonwealth Games Bill [HL]

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2019 Lords Chamber

When hosting a mega sporting event in this country it is as important to have a wonderful celebration of sport and recreation for able-bodied and disabled athletes as it is to have a legacy from all the investment that is made in the community in infrastructure, the redevelopment of run-down parts of our cities and the wider sporting benefit for the length and breadth of this country, not just in the immediate area of Birmingham. I look forward to hearing what other noble Lords have to say on this, and I beg to move.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I have not spoken on the Bill before now, but it is not often that I gasp loudly enough from below Bar for colleagues to turn round to look at me. I was listening to the debate in Committee on the amendments on accessibility tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, and he made a remark about specifically mentioning accessibility and disability rather than just scooping things up in “any other purpose”. In his reply, the noble Lord, Lord Ashton —I think he might have missed the point that the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, was trying to make—said of disability and access:

“The trouble is that that might be what my noble friend—


the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan—

“thinks is the most important thing to sign but many other noble Lords might have other priorities. The whole point of including the words, ‘any other purpose connected to … the Games’, is that it covers everything and individuals’ personal priorities are not put on the face of the Bill”.—[Official Report, 9/7/19; col. 1742.]

I gasped because, of all the protected characteristics, disability has very special provisions under the Equality Act. That is because people with that protected characteristic—in this case, athletes, spectators or people trying to use services—have the most difficulty in accessing the sports that they want to take part in, in whatever form. The point that the Minister unwittingly made said to me that we needed something specific in the Bill for the exact reason that too many people assume that, if you mainstream it along with other protected characteristics, everybody knows what you mean.

I declare my interest as a former trustee of UNICEF. I was at the opening ceremony of the Glasgow Games and I have also been to a number of Soccer Aid games in recent years. At the Glasgow opening ceremony, Celtic Park met the accessible stadia requirements but was not accessible to this person, who was supposed to be a VIP hosting other guests, because there was no access to the VIP suite for people in wheelchairs. Worse than that, there were no wheelchair spaces in any of the directors’ boxes areas, so my daughter and I had to sit in a completely different area from the one used by the people we had come to host. That seems utterly ridiculous. The Glasgow Commonwealth Games did not quite meet the level of accessibility of the 2012 Games in many ways but it was considerably better than many others.

The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, who cannot be in her place today, has also read Hansard and is very concerned. She has sent me five pages of bullet points, listing things that could be improved; I will spare your Lordships the details. I am very grateful to the Minister’s office for writing to ask whether there are any particular issues that we would like to take up. Both the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and I would like to do that because we have specific points to raise, although they are not for this Report stage.

To try to illustrate the problems, I have picked three points that the noble Baroness has made about toilets. The first is that there are virtually no Changing Places toilets. There is now a mobile Changing Places toilet that, very unusually, can be hired, but such facilities are absolutely vital for some athletes, as well as for some spectators. She also points out that she cannot remember a time when there have not been accessible toilets for anti-doping purposes. That needs to be considered, because at football stadia you would not expect to have accessible toilets for anti-doping purposes for athletes. There also needs to be consideration of the provision of disabled toilets and whether they are truly accessible for spectators, both close to the seating areas and in the areas where people are likely to eat.

Regarding the accessibility of food outlets, the counters are high—they are designed for people who are standing up. The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, says—I agree with her—that you have to hand your card over to someone to make a payment for you as you cannot see the card reader. You have to place your trust entirely in the hands of a stranger.

The subject of hotels goes well beyond the issue of stadia. It concerns services—in this case, in Birmingham and its surrounding area. A well-known disabled campaigner tweeted fairly recently that she had booked a fully accessible room with a shower seat. She arrived to discover that the hotel did not have a room of that description and she had to borrow a plastic garden chair from the hotel in order to take a shower. There are questions over whether an accessible room is actually accessible. I am usually very complimentary about Premier Inn but half of its accessible rooms have baths with showers over them. Some disabled people can access them but others cannot.

These may seem tedious, detailed points but the important thing about 2012 was that the whole of London, including the tourist industry, got to grips with every single issue, including: dropped kerbs, more ramps, people with visual impairments sitting on the ends of rows, and training the Game Changer volunteers so that if they saw someone with a disability they would ask, “Can I help you? What can I do to make your visit better?”.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, for tabling his amendments. I too will listen with care to what the Minister says; I am not yet quite as confident. We need to ensure that the onus is on the organising committee, the city of Birmingham and the transport hubs that people will use; whether you arrive at the Commonwealth Games as an elite athlete, a spectator or a visitor just trying to use services, we must follow the law under the Equality Act and the duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people in these Games.