Disability campaigners have made an emotional plea to the next London mayor to recognise their demands for equality in areas including transport, housing and education, with the launch of their own manifesto.
Close to 50 campaigners protested outside City Hall as they launched the joint manifesto, outlining a list of demands to the mayoral candidates.
Disabled transport access campaigners take their fight to the next mayor
Transport for All, Inclusion London and the Alliance for Inclusive Education developed the manifesto together and are hoping to meet with all the candidates before the 5 May election.
The manifesto states: ‘There are 1.2 million disabled people in London, making up over 14% of the population, yet we remain one of the most marginalised and excluded groups in society.
‘The incomes of disabled Londoners fell by 29% over the five years from 2007/8 to 2012/13 – double the equivalent figure for non-disabled Londoners. Meanwhile disabled Londoners experience inequality in every area of our lives such as housing, education and transport.’
For transport the manifesto calls on the mayor to:
- Incentivise bus companies through stricter penalties to enforce wheelchair priority in the wheelchair bay and an investment in bigger buses to prevent conflict over single wheelchair bays
- Increase the pace of making Tube and Rail stations accessible – the manifesto states only a quarter of the Tube is stepfree to platform, and stepfree upgrades are happening too slowly
- Incentivise the industry and implement measures (already introduced in other UK cities) to tackle the dearth of accessible minicabs
- Develop a reliable and affordable door-to-door service that ends the postcode lottery of trips and allows disabled and older Londoners to travel further than five miles
- Re-instate the structures at City Hall that facilitated genuine engagement and consultation
Alan Benson (46), who has written about disabled transport access issues for Transport Network, said that this election was critical and argued that the agenda had gone backwards under Boris Johnson’s time in power.
‘This mayor has not involved disabled people in any of the decision-making’ he claimed. ‘This is what we mean by “nothing about us without us”. We are the experts, we have the real life experience so we should be at the heart of the process.’
Mr Benson said that in previous administrations a disability officer had been at the centre of the City Hall bureaucracy.
He added there were many ways to improve disabled transport access that ‘are very useful and very cheap’ such as using ramps.
Mr Youcef Beyzekkoub (42) who works for Transport for All, told of how complicated journeys across the capital can be for the disabled, not just because of the lack of step-free access but also because of a lack of staff and staff awareness.
Being a wheelchair user, Mr Beyzekkoub hailed public transport as a lifeline: ‘I had a life changing injury in 1999 and I came to the UK in 2002. At first I lost my confidence and was unable to leave the house. It was accessible public transport that helped me get my confidence back and get out again; it was accessible public transport that helped me go to college. I am now married with three children. Without accessible transport I would not have lived this life.’
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