Revised

Members present

Baroness Deech (Chair)

Baroness Brinton

Baroness Browning

Baroness Campbell of Surbiton

Lord Foster of Bishop Auckland

Lord Harrison

Baroness Jenkin of Kennington

Lord McColl of Dulwich

Baroness Pitkeathley

Baroness Thomas of Winchester

________________

Examination of Witnesses

Marie-Claire Frankie, licensing solicitor at Sheffield Council, representing the National Association of Licensing and Enforcement Officers, and Mick Martin, Managing Director and Deputy Ombudsman, Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman

Q147 The Chairman: Good afternoon. Thank you very much for coming. I should explain that this session is open to the public and a webcast of it will go out live and is subsequently accessible via the parliamentary website. A verbatim transcript will be taken of the evidence and that too will go on the parliamentary website. A few days after this session, you will be sent a copy of the transcript to check it for accuracy, and it would be very helpful if you could return it to us as soon as possible with any corrections.

If, after this evidence session, you wish to amplify or clarify any points you make or have any extra points to make, you are welcome to submit supplementary evidence to us because, as you appreciate, we have to be pretty speedy going through the evidence. I know that you may well feel, once you have left, “If only I said this or that”. If you feel that, please write to us afterwards and we will take that on board. If a bell goes, that means there is a vote and we will have to adjourn for about 10 minutes while Members go downstairs to vote.

Would you like to introduce yourselves to us briefly? Then we will go on to the first question. Each of our members will declare their relevant interests, if they have any, before they put a question. Perhaps you would like to introduce yourselves.

Marie-Claire Frankie: I am Marie‑Claire Frankie. I am the licensing solicitor at Sheffield Council. I deal with all things licensing, whether it be taxis, premises, gambling or sex establishments. In addition, I am a solicitor for NALEO, which is the National Association of Licensing and Enforcement Officers and, as part of that, I go around the country giving training to licensing authorities and their officers and members on all matters licensing‑related.

Mick Martin: I am Mick Martin. I am Managing Director and Deputy Ombudsman at the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman. We provide final decisions on complaints about public bodies.

Q148 The Chairman: Thank you. I do not have any relevant interests to declare, but I will just mention the interests of Lady Campbell; because they are so numerous, it will save time. She is a patron of Just Fair; a patron of the National Disability Archive; founder and member of Not Dead Yet UK; recipient of a social care personal budget, disability living allowance and Access to Work. She was a disability rights commissioner throughout the life of the Disability Rights Commission and she was a commissioner of the Equality and Human Rights Commission for three years.

My question to you is: what role does your organisation or its members play in enforcing the requirements of the Equality Act? How significant a part do you think licensing authorities and ombudsmen can and should play in enforcing the requirements of the Equality Act? How much can be done using existing powers? If additional powers are needed, could existing regulations be amended or would primary legislation be needed? That is to either or both of you.

Marie-Claire Frankie: NALEO as an organisation has no role in enforcement, but instead, through the training that we do with licensing officers and authorities, we try to create a culture of good practice and equality compliance, reminding officers of the public sector equality duty. I feel local licensing authorities do not have as big a role as they could. It is really down to the local policies, which have limited impact. If I give you an example, in Sheffield, we require all our taxi drivers—when I say taxi, I mean private hire and hackney carriage drivers—to do a BTEC before we allow them to be licensed. Part of that BTEC has an equality module and, as part of that, there is a disability module as well.

That is great for all the drivers in Sheffield, but the Deregulation Act that came in in October means that drivers from other authorities can come and drive in Sheffield. Drivers who think that the BTEC is too big a hurdle to jump over in Sheffield will go and get licensed in a neighbouring authority and still come and work in Sheffield, which means that our local policy is diluted somewhat, because we still cannot ensure that the standards are as high as we would like. We feel that the existing powers are limiting. They could be much wider reaching.

In relation to taxis, as you know, only a few of the elements are in force. The provision in force in the Act in relation to guide dogs is really only efficient in relation to private hire vehicles, and that is because of the wording saying that you have to pick up a guide dog once your vehicle is hired. If a person with a guide dog approaches a hackney carriage on the street, it has not been hired at the point at which he is refusing to take them. It is another hurdle. They would be committing a different offence, that being that it is an offence to refuse a fare. That is the offence that the hackney vehicle is committing in that instance, rather than the guide dog one specifically under the Equality Act.

There is another issue that has come about with the Equality Act. I hear of experiences from other members, but most of my knowledge is of Sheffield. In Sheffield, we used to have a by-law that meant, if you were driving a wheelchair accessible vehicle, as all our hackney vehicles are, you had to be fit to load and unload wheelchairs into your vehicle. That was our by-law. If somebody came and said, “I have a back injury. I cannot do that”, we would only issue them with a private hire licence so they were not driving a wheelchair-accessible vehicle. Now, with the Equality Act, there is the exemption in place so, if a driver cannot load wheelchairs into his hackney, he can go to his doctor and get an exemption, and we have to issue him with the hackney driver’s licence that previously we would never have issued. He now has the legal right to drive a hackney with the exemption, so you are in the position where you have a wheelchair-accessible vehicle being driven by a person who is not able to assist someone in a wheelchair to get in and out.

The Chairman: Is there any reason to think that loophole is exploited?

Marie-Claire Frankie: I will email round members, if that is something you would like me to come back on, but we certainly have drivers who previously only had a private hire badge and now we issue them a joint licence, and they can drive both if they choose. I will survey members. Sorry, give me a moment while I write that down.

Lord McColl of Dulwich: Your city has made possible what you want, but other people come in from other authorities. How can we get at these other authorities?

Marie-Claire Frankie: The Deregulation Act has made that legal. If you are licensed as a hackney driver in Sheffield or any other authority, you can legally go and drive as a private hire vehicle anywhere else in the country. That is what the law says now.

Q149 The Chairman: Regulation has a bad name, but deregulation seems to have hit the disabled community particularly badly. Do you think more could be done, if people were willing, under existing regulations; or, assuming it is a good idea to use licensing, is there a need for primary legislation? How can we put some real drive behind this?

Marie-Claire Frankie: Primary legislation is always helpful, but there are amendments that could be made to existing legislation. Take the guide dog section in the Equality Act. In Sheffield, I have prosecuted a driver for failing to carry a guide dog. We went to court. He pleaded not guilty. He was found guilty, after an argument where I said it was on him to satisfy himself that the dog was a guide dog or an assistance dog, as it was. It was not what people see as your standard disability dog; it was a small Pomeranian. But he was found guilty. He got his £100 fine, £200 costs.

As a result of that, we referred his licence to the licensing committee and they revoked it, saying that, if you are not prepared to take guide dogs, you are not a fit and proper person, which is the test, to be a licensed driver. As is his right, he appealed to the magistrates’ court. I do not know if you are aware of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976; that is where the powers are to revoke and suspend licences. Under Section 61, you can revoke a licence for offences of dishonesty, indecency or violence; offences under the 76 Act or any taxi regulations; or for any other reasonable cause. We had to use the “any other reasonable cause” arm, and magistrates said, when looking at the two years he had been licensed, it was not reasonable.

If you want local authorities to take this seriously and revoke licences when drivers breach the Equality Act, an addition to the 1976 Act so that it covered convictions for dishonesty, indecency, violence or under the Equality Act would at least show magistrates that local authorities should take taxi licensing seriously, rather than it being under the catch‑all, which is always harder to satisfy.

The Chairman: It must be better to make sure that people are going to observe the equality provisions before they start work, rather than taking their livelihood away from them, which is even more drastic.

Marie-Claire Frankie: Absolutely. It is very draconian step, but they have the training; they have passed the BTEC; they know what the position is. We took a hard line, which was fine.

The Chairman: Mr Martin, what do you think about enforcing powers? How can we beef this up?

Mick Martin: We think the ombudsman service has an important role in ensuring that organisations meet their requirements. The way we do that is by making sure, when we look at the complaints that come to us, that we are looking at all the legislation, all the policies, all the requirements that the organisation should have been adhering to when providing the public sector experience that the individual has come to us about. We find, very often, that that has not been the case.

We see our role as looking at each of those individual experiences on the merits as they come to us, investigating what should have happened, what did happen, looking for the gaps, which includes all the issues that would be covered by the Act. Our focus is not simply to identify if the organisation has failed to meet those obligations, but also to evaluate what learning and improvement is needed locally, so that not only does the individual who has come to us with the complaint experience the improvement, but thereafter the organisation demonstrates that they have changed their practice, so people who come afterwards get the appropriate treatment.

The Chairman: How do you feed that back and make sure they learn the lesson?

Mick Martin: We undertake the investigation and we, as I have hopefully indicated, focus on the individuals involved. We are very mindful that, in a public service environment, there are individuals on both sides. There are the people who have experienced the service, but there are also the people on the ground who have delivered the service. We work closely with both those sets of people and, at the end of that, reach a set of findings and recommendations via a report, which explains what we have found, what we think the issues are and, very importantly, what we think the local organisation should be doing about that to put it right.

We then seek the organisation’s agreement to comply with our recommendations. We have a significantly high level of agreement to our recommendations and we have the recourse via Parliament when our recommendations are not adhered to. We then have a role in going back and following up with those organisations to ensure that action has been taken as promised.

The Chairman: It seems to me that the word “ombudsman” is used to cover a whole variety of people who can intervene: some who look just at the process and some who go further, as it seems to me you do, who suss out what is wrong and try to make sure that it can be righted. The word “ombudsman” covers a whole variety of interventions, does it not?

Mick Martin: Your observation is very accurate. If you take ombudsmen as a population, they all have different approaches to how they do their work. They have different focuses in terms of what they concentrate on. Our perspective on this I would divide into two. Our priority is always about making sure that we are looking to what has happened for the individual and, where necessary, getting justice for the individual who has come to us, but we believe the ombudsman’s role is much more than that. It is also about pulling out the learning and insight that comes from the cases we are seeing, and engaging and working with public organisations to identify what can be done to improve services.

That is a difficult job to do, because of the demarcation we have to have between ourselves and the service providers, the system, so that we are able to maintain our independence and impartiality. That is a difficult balance. We err on the side of trying to gather as much information as possible about not only what has happened but why it has happened, so we can then start to provide our insight and support for improvement.

We think that is the right dialogue to have. I would demarcate it from the other elements of the system. Whereas we are not the courts and therefore enforcing the law, and we are not commenting on, for example, government policy on how the law is provided, we are focused on learning, making sure people get a full explanation and making sure that, where there are problems, they are addressed.

Q150 Lord McColl of Dulwich: Who are the primary licensing authorities for improving the implementation of the Equality Act in practice? Is it primarily local authorities or are others involved?

Marie-Claire Frankie: I would say, yes, it is primarily local authorities responsible for licensing. DVSA regulates PSVs. In terms of enforcing, it is the licensing authorities with that power.

Lord McColl of Dulwich: How successful are they in practice? Do we have any figures?

Marie-Claire Frankie: No, we could not get figures. Most local authorities do not have much to enforce. We have the provision on the guide dogs for taxis, and most authorities have investigated or enforced on that. Again, when I am sending a circular around asking how many exemptions have been issued for hackney vehicles, would you like the question to be asked as to how many prosecutions there have been?

Lord McColl of Dulwich: That would be helpful. Thank you.

Marie-Claire Frankie: I can get numbers. In terms of improving implementation, the Department for Transport issues guidance. It could address the Equality Act in its guidance. If the Law Commission’s taxi Bill moves further, there could be something in there requiring drivers to have equality training beforehand, rather than it just being local policy. To your question earlier of how we counter the Deregulation Act, if it is made a requirement that all drivers have to do it, that would be a way to get around it.

Q151 Baroness Thomas of Winchester: Could I ask about premises? We have only talked about taxis, but premises come into this too. So many premises are not accessible: pubs, cinemas and all sorts. Some of them are a bit, but not as much as they should be. Is there something you can do about that?

Marie-Claire Frankie: Accessibility is generally dealt with by planning, so it is pretty much all done and dusted before they get to applying for their licence. It is much easier for newer buildings, because the health and safety people will build in disabled ramps as a requirement. In terms of old buildings that are already licensed, it is very difficult and it is a planning matter.

Baroness Thomas of Winchester: The country is absolutely full of old premises. Is there nothing the licensing authority can do?

Marie-Claire Frankie: There is nothing, because at the moment, in the Licensing Act, there are the four licensing objectives. What could strengthen the licensing authority and give them the ability to enforce it is to make a fifth objective related to equality. It could be the promotion of equality, inclusion and diversity. That would then give the licensing authority power when they are out in the premises, as they are every day—they are out in premises; they are out looking at taxis—rather than them having to have a friendly word in somebody’s ear.

It is not just accessibility; it is people who complain that they have been stopped coming in because of their sexuality, or large groups of males who have not been allowed into a venue that is letting only females in. At the moment, all we can do is write to the premises and remind them of their duties under the Equality Act. We have no teeth. In relation to licensing of premises, the Equality Act is pretty much a blunt instrument as far as we are concerned.

Baroness Campbell of Surbiton: Does it work? How often does one of your letters result in change of practice, access or whatever? Do you keep a dossier?

Marie-Claire Frankie: No. For example, they turn up and the disabled toilet is locked. It would be an advisory word to the management, because we do not have the power to take anything further. Even though the licensing authority is a responsible authority, there is nothing specific in the Licensing Act under which it can chase them up.

Baroness Campbell of Surbiton: I understand that. What I would like to know is: when you have that friendly word or you write to them, what are the results? Do you know if that makes a difference or if you might as well not bother?

Marie-Claire Frankie: It would put that premises on the radar so, when officers went out, they would continue looking to check that the breach had been remedied or that it was unlocked. It is a little easier with taxi drivers. We used to find a lot who did not have their wheelchair ramps or, worse, had the ramps but had no idea how to use them.

Baroness Campbell of Surbiton: Do you take a record of your interventions?

Marie-Claire Frankie: Yes.

Baroness Campbell of Surbiton: Do you have a percentage of what has worked and what has fallen on deaf ears?

Marie-Claire Frankie: No.

Lord McColl of Dulwich: Supposing an inspector finds the thing locked, what is to prevent him unlocking it?

Marie-Claire Frankie: That would be part of the inquiry.

Lord McColl of Dulwich: You would do that.

Marie-Claire Frankie: Yes. Often—maybe not often; that is probably unfair on premises—sometimes they will unlock it and it is full of toilet rolls or dry mix for the drinks, so it is clear that the intention is not that it be used for a disabled toilet.

Q152 Baroness Browning: I should declare my interest as a vice‑president of the National Autistic Society and the Alzheimer’s Society, and as a patron of Research Autism. Do you think the licensing authorities and ombudsmen should be taking greater account of court cases that are brought under the Equality Act, and, for example, warning service providers that their trading licence is at risk? Once it has been determined in court and becomes case law, presumably that gives you more teeth in a wider area. How do you think people can keep up to date, and how do you yourselves keep up to date, with what is coming out of the courts?

Mick Martin: It is a very important part of our investigative work to make sure we reflect the legal environment and the precedents coming out of court cases when evaluating whether an organisation has or has not complied with the requirements that we would expect. I would go a bit sideways and say that it is about evaluating whether or not things happened as they should do, but it is also about making sure we are doing that in accordance with what other professional bodies, in addition to the law, require. For example, the General Medical Council and the General Dental Council are also important places where we keep up with precedent.

Where we find examples of poor practice and point them out, all three of those approaches are available to us to progress. If we feel it is appropriate to refer it for more legal action, for example, we have a small legal department that ensures we keep abreast of legal developments. We have relationships with all the professional bodies.

To give you a real life example, because it is really important to bring it alive through examples, a recent case that we looked into involved a gentleman who was autistic. He had trouble with lights and being in places where there were lots of people. He asked his GP surgery if they would allow him to wait in his car prior to the doctor being ready to see him. He also asked, because he had trouble building relationships with new people, if it was possible for him to see the same general practitioner, even if that meant postponing his appointments. The general practitioner denied him both of those things.

We found, of course, that the general practitioner was at fault, but we also followed up to make sure that they not only fixed it for him but they changed their practice and trained two of the practice partners to make sure that, if not just those events but a very broad set of events happened in the future, they would behave very differently. We have the recourse to the professional bodies if we do not feel compliance is forthcoming. The powers of the ombudsman have such wide discretion that we can pursue that quite hard, if we need to.

Baroness Browning: On the licensing side, once a court case has been determined, can you use that as a lever in the licensing process to say, “Look, under case X, this is what was determined and you are doing exactly the same thing”? Can you make the licence conditional upon that or warn them that they really ought to do it because they are in legal danger?

Marie-Claire Frankie: We would be able to do nothing in relation to licensed premises or Licensing Act 2003 matters. The only position in which we could warn people that their licences are at risk is in relation to taxis. If we found, specifically again, that they did not pick up a guide dog, we would have to take the individual prosecution. Sheffield advertises, as a matter of course. We have a newsletter, which goes out to all our drivers—it used to be quarterly; it is now twice a year—detailing any successful prosecutions, what they were doing and reminding drivers of what they should do and that their licences could be at risk if they did not take guide dogs, for example.

In relation to premises, the way we get equality messages across is that we require premises to be members of what is called Pubwatch. There are local meetings in local areas. All the premises from a specific postcode will have monthly meetings and, as part of that, the equality duties are spoken to by licensing officers who attend. In relation to case law and stated cases that come up, NALEO, as an organisation, circulates that to all the members, so all 600 members then get notification of this case, the requirements and all the commentary from it. It is for them to feed that into their day-to-day licensing role.

Q153 Baroness Campbell of Surbiton: Mr Martin, I would like to explore with you the possibility of a disability ombudsman. Shall we start off with this: do you think there is a need for a disability ombudsman?

Mick Martin: The overwhelming point is that it is essential that all individuals have access to justice, through whatever mechanisms we come up with. We would take the starting‑point view that the landscape of ombudsmen is already very crowded but, more importantly, very confusing for the public who might want to utilise it. Therefore, we have a big push on awareness and access to ombudsmen, which is a really important part of the jigsaw puzzle. Our push is in the opposite direction from creating individual ombudsmen for particular things, and I would suggest two reasons for that.

The first reason, which is the most important, is that individuals come to us because of a set of experiences they have had with the public sector. Those experiences tend to cover a number of things, one of which may be issues that are dealt with via the disabilities Act. We think it is important to deal with those issues in the round, from the point of view of the service that has been experienced.

To bring that alive for you, about 75% of the complaints we receive are about health. We often have cases whereby someone’s treatment has been complicated or the service they received much harder and less well provided because that person had disabilities that were not catered for by the healthcare provider. That is in the context of the care that was provided. Therefore, breaking up the different types of things that people are experiencing is quite hard to do.

The second area is that, from the point of view of the citizen, understanding whom to go to, where to go, how to get there, how to get help is more important than having subject‑specialist ombudsmen. We have found, in the work we have done trying to get to hard‑to‑reach groups, that their propensity to complain is very low. Their access to advocacy and other areas of support is slight. Therefore, we think the emphasis should be on making the route to support simpler and much clearer, and that is not aided by having different ombudsmen for different things.

Baroness Campbell of Surbiton: You would say no, in terms of a disability ombudsman, on balance?

Mick Martin: The existing system seems to us to have three components, one of which is enforcing the law via the courts; the second is the ability to challenge policy. The ombudsman route is about having a really simple, joined‑up service for the citizen whereby, whichever set of issues they have had with the public organisation, they are able to easily access and easily respond.

It might be worth giving the context of that. About 34% of people who come to use our service are people with a disability. That is partly because people with disability use public services more fully, but it places a real emphasis, in our work, on making sure we understand those needs, in terms of both the service they have had from a public body but also how we can best provide the service and how flexible we can be to the needs. I would suggest that the organisation doing the ombudsman work has more flexibility to respond to people’s needs if it is a larger body covering a larger number of areas.

Baroness Campbell of Surbiton: Yes, I see that. Do you think disabled people know enough about what a more generic ombudsman does? Do you think, if there was a disability ombudsman, they might identify more with that, so there would be more activity between disabled people and the ombudsman; or are you confident that disabled people use your services in a way that is primarily affected by the fact that they are a disabled person? Should there be some kind of disability enforcement or arbitration?

Mick Martin: I would say there is a lot more work to do—a lot more work that we can do; a lot more work that hopefully a single public sector ombudsman will do—to raise awareness of what ombudsman services provide and how to access them simply. I would put that in the context of a broader issue, which is that, in our view, the constraint on all citizens, particularly those with disability, is in terms of encouraging them to complain and to raise issues in the first place.

The right place to place emphasis initially is to make complaining a much more prevalent thing when something has gone wrong. The barriers to that are that it is hard to do, it takes too long and many of the people who should be complaining, often people with disability, do not do that because they do not believe anything will change as a consequence. The agenda for ombudsmen in responding to that is large in that context, because that helps every citizen, but it particularly helps people with disabilities.

Q154 The Chairman: Ms Frankie, can I clarify one thing? Going back to licensing premises, were you saying to us that Sheffield, for example, can give or withhold licences for premises, but you cannot withhold a licence as a lever to make the licence holder adjust the premises as necessary for disabled people? You cannot use that as a lever; is that what you were saying?

Marie-Claire Frankie: As I have said, we have no teeth in relation to licensed premises. If a new premise was coming in, the health and safety team would go out and they would make it part of the requirements and the plan of the premise that it had disabled access and disabled toilets and it was an accessible premise.

For old and existing premises that transferred over before the Licensing Act, there is not anything that we can go back and revoke licences on or anything that we can add conditions on. Because of the licensing objectives, there is no way of getting it before a committee because they are not breaching crime and disorder; they are not committing public nuisance; they are not publicly unsafe; and they are not endangering children. If there was an additional objective relating to equality, there would be a mechanism to get it before a committee, to enable the local authority and the licensing authority to do something.

The Chairman: If we were able to wave a magic wand and add a condition, to which statute would it be added?

Marie-Claire Frankie: If it was to the Licensing Act 2003, currently there are four objectives. The licensing authority is a responsible authority under the Act. You have the police, who are the leaders in crime, and in safeguarding children. If the magic wand created that fifth objective, when they are out looking at the premises, finding locked toilets, finding disabled toilets being used as storerooms, with their enforcement information they could bring that before the committee and review the licence. When the licence is being reviewed, you have the mechanism there to add conditions to it or, in extreme cases, to revoke the licence.

The Chairman: That has made it clear. Thank you.

Baroness Thomas of Winchester: Is that primary legislation?

Marie-Claire Frankie: It is, yes, the Licensing Act 2003.

The Chairman: That is why you need a magic wand.

Q155 Baroness Brinton: Mr Martin, earlier you referred to individual enforcement through the courts. Some witnesses have suggested to us that complaints to licensing authorities and casework‑style enforcement, such as provided by the ombudsman, would provide a more accessible route to enforcement than reliance on individual cases going through the courts. Do you agree and, if so, what characteristics of the models make them more accessible. If you do not agree, what makes them unsuitable?

Mick Martin: I would say, initially, I agree, but it is important to keep demarcating the different roles that are here. It is not the role of ombudsmen to enforce legislation. It is the role of ombudsmen to identify where things have gone wrong for citizens and make sure they get justice in doing so. That is a demarcation.

The reason why I support it is because the real area of value for this process is about learning and improvement. One of the most satisfying things for an ombudsman service is when we are able to join the person or people who are providing the service with the person who has experienced the service. We have lots of examples where, when we have shared with the organisation and the people within the organisation how people have experienced that service, how someone with disability has been disadvantaged, how they have been poorly treated, not as a consequence of people behaving badly but because the systems were not designed properly and people were not thinking about the right way of providing their service, that has added real value.

In order for that to be successful, the attitude of that dialogue has to not be confrontational; it has to be about engaging and learning. Ombudsmen have a really important role to play in that. That is about getting justice for individuals, but doing that in the context of the fact that most people who come to the ombudsman do not want to allocate blame. They do not want anyone punished. They want to have a firm understanding of what happened in their case. They want to be heard by the organisation that has treated them in that way. They want people to understand what it means and how it felt.

That is such an important area. The access to that form of judgment so people can recognise what has happened, understand what the remedy is and then move on is a crucially important part of what this whole composite answer requires.

Baroness Campbell of Surbiton: What is your success rate? Again, do you keep a dossier of successes and failures, because there must be a few failures where that just does not happen?

Mick Martin: Yes, absolutely. I will break down some information for you. We investigate formally about 4,000 complaints a year and we find, in about 1,500 cases, that there are some issues that need to be addressed by the service provider. As an ombudsman, it is really important to stress that, in doing our work, we are also able to provide assurance to the citizen that they had the service they should have expected, that the organisation did comply with the policies, practices and legislation. It is really important, for our role as an independent and impartial body, that we are as focused on assuring people that the service provider was good as we are at looking to find fault.

Nevertheless, for every one of those 1,500 cases where we have found fault, we have produced a report; it has findings and recommendations; it has specific agreement from the organisation to those findings and recommendations. We track compliance with our recommendations and follow up on every occasion when that is not the case.

Baroness Brinton: Ms Frankie, do you want to add anything to that?

Marie-Claire Frankie: From a licensing perspective I would agree that going through the licensing service would make enforcing the Equality Act much more accessible for people. There is the core process, the gathering of evidence and the costs associated with that. The licensing service has the infrastructure to deal with it. It has legal services there, which can take matters to court. But we can only investigate complaints that we have the powers to investigate under the Act and that we have the powers to enforce, which leaves for us the element of taxis for the sections that are in force.

We spent a long time, in the taxi prosecution that we did on the failure to pick up a guide dog, with the complainant’s mother. She explained that she thought the Equality Act was going to be great for her, because, when she was phoning for a taxi for her son, who has quite complex needs, it meant she did not have to tell the operator that he was going to travel with an assistance dog. No drivers, once they had seen the dog on the data head when taking on the job, would pick him up. She thought, “This is great. I do not have to declare that I have a dog and drivers still have to go and pick him up”.

But, because of the nature of his needs and his visual impairments, it has instead ended up worse, because he will stand there and not be picked up. The nature of his needs means that he cannot tell if the taxi has driven past him. He cannot report the number of the taxi that has not picked him up. All the driver does is press “no pick‑up” on his data head and the complainant is in a position where he cannot do anything about it. On this particular occasion, where we were able to prosecute on behalf of this lady and her son, it was only because she was with him that she was able to get the information required in that instance.

That is a taxi offence that we can enforce and prosecute for, and we are prepared to do it. We get so many other complaints where there is little we can do. There was one just the other week of a lady who had ordered a taxi. She was in a wheelchair but was happy for her wheelchair to go into the boot of the private hire vehicle. The private hire vehicle turned up and the boot was too small for her wheelchair to fit in, so the taxi company sent her another one but charged an extra £5 for sending a larger vehicle. When we took it back up with the operator, they said, yes, that is their policy. If a larger vehicle happened to turn up in the first instance, then there would have been no extra charge, but, specifically because a larger vehicle was required, there is this additional £5. At the moment, it is legal for them to do that.

We have local music venues about which disabled people contact us, saying that they made themselves known when they got there or when they bought their tickets, and the venue charged them to set up a small disabled viewing platform so they could see the stage. That has been an additional charge for them. Again, these are complaints that we get, but we have no way of doing anything with them. As local authorities and licensing authorities, we would like to be able to do something, and at the moment we cannot.

Q156 The Chairman: Coming back to Mr Martin for a moment and being interested in the ombudsman’s service, you said you were dealing with 4,000 complaints a year. Off the top of your head—you may not know the answer—how many staff do you have and do you have any idea what your annual budget is? I am just thinking about an ombudsman’s service and what it might cost the taxpayer.

Mick Martin: To give you the scale of that, we have about 400 employees and our annual budget is, I think, £32 million a year. We operate in locations in London and Manchester and we have employees who provide primarily three operational services. First, importantly, we have a role in trying to reconnect people who contact us back into the local service provider, because we recognise that local resolution and local learning is by far the best outcome. Secondly, we have people who are looking into the cases—they look into about 7,000 a year—to see whether or not we think there is merit in the case, but also to see if we can deliver an early resolution. Then we have 4,000‑plus formal investigations a year, where we are letting the organisation know that we are investigating their activity: we provide our investigative service and, at the end of that, we produce a report with our findings and recommendations.

The Chairman: I am just beginning to wonder what a disability ombudsman service might cost if it ever came into being. That is why I asked you. Ms Frankie, bearing in mind these very sad stories that you have been telling us, if you could have more powers, what would you like? Again, take out the magic wand. You have already mentioned an extra power in—

Marie-Claire Frankie: The Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976.

The Chairman: Yes. Is there anything else that would give you the clout you clearly need?

Marie-Claire Frankie: We just need the powers to enforce and the powers to take action against the licensed premises. Licensing is self‑financing, so it does not come out of taxpayers’ money. The worst‑case scenario is that licence fees go up, as they should, because you are checking compliance with the law of the people who are benefiting from it.

The Chairman: That extra condition in the Licensing Act would give you the power in every sphere to say, “We are not going to license you unless you can assure us that the premises are fit for disability use”.

Marie-Claire Frankie: The Licensing Act is set up so the presumption in the very first instance is that the licence is granted, unless there are objections with evidence. It would be very difficult to have a premise and say, “You are not going to use the toilet correctly”. But, when there is the evidence to show that they were in breach of equality‑related matters, there is the provision to bring the licence back for review, and that is in the Licensing Act and in the Gambling Act, so covering all gambling premises.

Baroness Pitkeathley: You say licensing is self‑funding. Can you give us a figure about what the licences cost to the people who apply?

Marie-Claire Frankie: There is not just one figure. It is impossible to do that. The Licensing Act figures are centrally set, so, if licensing authorities were going to be given additional powers, that would probably have to be addressed, or they would have to be locally set. They would still have to be accountable, so, if there was a deficit or credit at the end of the year, it would roll forward, because you cannot make a profit from it. But the Licensing Act fees are centrally set, depending on the size of the building, how many people it can fit and that type of thing.

The Chairman: Thank you both very much. We appreciate your concern for access to justice. That was very interesting. Thank you very much indeed for your time. If you think of anything else, please write in.