I am a physically disabled Liberal Democrat member living in London and have held a Taxicard for about 5 years now. For those who don’t know this, a Taxicard allows Londoners with mobility problems subsidised trips in black taxis within London boroughs.
On Good Friday, I asked the London Taxicard service a simple question. It was a question I have asked them several times before: How many trips do I have left?
The answer? 52. The next question: When is that up to? Here comes the unpleasant surprise: That’s for the whole year.
Fifty-two trips a year? That’s one trip a week, I thought. That can’t be right.
That means that I can’t book a return journey using the Taxicard service- at least not unless I only use it once in two weeks.
Surely they can’t be expecting disabled people to only leave their houses once in two weeks? When I started on the scheme almost 5 years ago, I was told the trips could be used for social or medical reasons. At the time, I was given 104 trips per year.
For a start, I have weekly medical appointments. If I was to need to use the service to get to these under the current rules, how would I get home? And, only slightly less importantly, how would I ever have any sort of an independent social life if I used up all my trips on medical appointments?
Further research last night revealed that my London borough has halved Taxicard trips per year from 1st April 2012 for “members who also hold either or both a Freedom Pass or a Blue Badge.”
This discovery answered my questions. I have a Blue Badge.
However, the suggestion that a Blue Badge should entitle you to fewer Taxicard trips is madness. Blue Badges only entitle you to park within walking distance of wherever you want to go. I know there are other advantages but sadly, 24 hour access to a car is not one of them! I still can’t drive or use public transport without company. I carry my Blue Badge with me and use it in the car of whoever I happen to be with.
When I started using the Taxicard scheme it gave me a whole new and wonderful level of freedom. I could now get a cheap lift to the cinema or to a friend’s house. It significantly reduced the need for my parents to drive me around town- and for that reason it has become a valuable part of my life.
Now I am being told that just because I hold a Blue Badge I can either only leave my house independently once in two weeks or, if I choose to leave independently once a week, I still need to drag one of my parents out of the house to pick me up when the movie finishes or when my friends need me to leave their houses.
Where is the very independence that the Taxicard scheme was set up to allow? How is leaving the house once in two weeks a free, independent social life for any young person? And without these unreasonable restrictions, if we wish to keep our independence, how do we get home?
With the London Mayoral elections coming up, I even tweeted Lib Dem candidate Brian Paddick about this very important issue. His response? “good scheme not brilliantly administered; not helped by LAs having differing approach to funding which creates uncertainty.” Good points, all true, but, disappointingly, no mention of how he would help. The London Liberal Democrats have not yet responded to my tweet.
I have started a campaign on Facebook: How Do We Get Home on Facebook. Please visit it.
* Sarah Ismail is a Lib Dem member who blogs at Same Difference about disability issues big and small.
Follow @LibDemVoice on Twitter
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
West End Ward Tuesday Surgeries #dundeewestend
Is Trump set to get his revenge on Labour?
Meeting the new locality coordinator
Peterborough Cathedral launches £300,000 appeal to allow it to stay open daily
The Government needs its growth *explanation*
The surprising similarity between Tony Blair and Nigel Farage
theakes
Chris Moore
Roland
Daniel Stylianou
22 Comments
I think you should honestly feel quite lucky, I don’t think things like Taxicard exist outside of London.
London already has amazing disability-friendly public transport and then on top of that they give you extra money to help get a fortnightly taxi. If you lived in the countryside there’d be no public transport and no subsidy.
Fortunately this is not an issue, because you never need to use this service to get to these.
If you have a medical appointment for anything other than first-line contact with your GP, and you have a medical need for transportation beyond what regular public transport can provide, then the NHS patient transport service will provide it. Ask when booking an appointment and they’ll book a car or ambulance along with it, as appropriate.
If the PTS is unavailable or you don’t qualify, but you’re on (usual list of low-income benefits), then the NHS will pay your costs. That includes paying taxi fares if you can’t use public transport.
@Tommy
So I’d assume you’d tell rape victims that they should “honestly feel quite likely” that at least they’re not starving? Not that I’m saying that rape and the problems with Taxicards are on the same level of awfulness.
But it’s utterly backwards to adopt a mentality of “well, it could be worse so therefore you have no right to complain”. It’s utterly wrong that disabled people should be trapped inside their houses. Full stop.
*lucky, not likely
I think you should be happy for what you have. Whatever people have they always seem to take it for granted and want more. What if you were living in a city outside London? There wouldn’t be taxicard or such extensive public transport systems. What about those disabled people? Do you think you should get extra trips at the expense of their mobilityallowance.
There’s only a certain amount of money to go round. We are working our way out of a recession/public deficit and everything has to be paid for somehow. Taxicards don’t come out of thin air. I can’t make any social trips at all now because the price of food and petrol has gone up and my earnings have gone down. All I can afford to pay for is food and housing. Extra money to pay for more taxicards has to come from taxes from people like me. Do you think I should be taxed more so I can’t afford to pay for food so you can have more social trips?
As Tommy says feel lucky for what you have.
Andrew Suffield- I have, in the past, used Taxicard to get to medical appointments. That’s why the thought was in my mind at all.
Thanks all for commenting, they make interesting reading.
@George
Sorry George this response is so out of line with reality I am flabbergasted. Tommy was simply pointing out that in most of the rest of the country people can only dream of the benefits that those in London take for granted. Nowhere did he even imply that “it could be worse so therefore you have no right to complain”. Putting such sorts of arguments forward discredits the good point we all need to make that there is still a long way to go before we really can get to being truly disabled friendly.
In a rural area such as mine, disability is a massive problem, exacerbated by scarcity and all the related problems faced by charities and local authorities. You should campaign for both, not decry someone who is calling for the most disadvantaged to be remembered.
disadvantaged to be remembered.
@David Evans
Tommy said “you should honestly feel quite lucky” because things like Taxicard don’t exist elsewhere in the country.
Now, aside from the fact that a lot of the idea about London public transport being disability friendly (it’s not, as a general rule), it’s backwards looking to always compare downwards.
Pointing out that things are much worse in rural areas and elsewhere in the country is perfectly necessary – but saying someone should feel lucky (with the subtext that they don’t have anything to complain about) because things are worse elsewhere is not helpful in the slightest. It’s a way of dismissing what the OP has said rather than facing up to the fact that the taxicard scheme is flawed and that isn’t mutually exclusive with problems with disability access elsewhere in the country.
Tommy did not say something like “The taxicard scheme does sound stupid but there are also much worse problems for disabled people in other parts of the country where things like the taxicard don’t even exist” and therefore he wasn’t “calling for the most disadvantaged to be remembered”, he was just implying that the OP didn’t have anything to complain about. That’s certainly how it comes across even if it wasn’t his intention.
David Evans- this may not surprise you but I have to agree with George above.
David Evans………I think ‘Tommy’s’ use of language was ill considered.
George Potter…..I think your mention of ‘rape’ was intemperate.
I suppose that, as a country dweller who relies on public transport to get about, I agree that, out here in the countryside, we would dream of having taxicards, especially for those for whom mobility is a real issue. Howev er, where we lack official provision, we have Good Neighbour schemes, where local residents will drive disabled or elderly neighbours to appointments, or to social events, or to a railway station.
And, of course, Sarah may well have chosen where to live based on the availability of services that she now relies upon, as so many people, disabled or otherwise, do.
But it does seem terribly unfair that, in finding additional ways to be mobile, i.e. obtaining a blue badge, she has been punished for her initiative, and I wonder if there is an assumption that owning a blue badge implies owning a car, thus reducing the perceived need for the Taxicard scheme. Sarah, have you questioned this point and, if so, what was the response? It may well be that, given that this is a local policy, they may well not have thought it out that well, and there may be scope to restore your entitlement.
But, in any event, good luck with the campaign!
I don’t particularly think I said anything ill-considered, I’m simply pointing out that disabled people in London have it better than anyone else does and therefore if you want to focus on anyone’s “plight” it should be the 80% who don’t have this luxury.
And yes, I’m quite happy to call it a luxury. London has better public transport than nearly anywhere else in the world, all buses and well over half of tube stations are disability friendly. Costs for public transport are already given in basic disability benefits, Taxicard is simply something an on-top bonus.
Yes, no one likes to have their perks and privileges cut but a £1 spent on ferrying people by taxi who could otherwise get the bus is £1 that has to be cut from somewhere else. It’s all too easy to imagine that tax money comes from some sort of magical bottom-less pot.
And, George… don’t be silly. No one has suggested (not even the OP) that people are going to be or should be trapped in their house. To even suggest such a thing is frankly hysterical.
To those talking about public transport- as I’ve said in the post, I can’t use it alone, ever. Unlike the Taxicard.
@Tommy
I don’t know where you get your figures from but they’re completely wrong.
Most tube stations are not accessible – a lot of those defined as such only have, for example, no step access to platforms but lack disabled access onto the trains without assistance.
I suggest you read Channel 4’s No Go Britain report if you actually want facts on the state of disabled access in London rather than TFL’s propaganda: http://www.channel4.com/news/no-go-britain
And no, transportation costs are not properly covered in disability benefits – especially given the recent welfare reforms. On top of which disability benefits themselves are being reformed with the expectation of cutting 25% from DLA by 2015 – despite the fact that the number of people in need of help has not decreased and that the fraud rate for DLA is less than 0.5%. So you clearly don’t know what you’re talking about on disability benefits either.
And, for the record, being able to get around, being able to live your life independently is not a “perk and privilege”. Disabled people not being forced to spend most of their lives cooped up in their homes due to the cost and unavailability of transport. As Sarah says, if she needs to use a bus then she needs someone to accompany here – which, in addition to meaning it will cost more than a taxi, also means that she’s dependent on knowing well in advance where she is going and on the the person meant to accompany her turning up. I’d wonder if you’d describe this thing as a perk and a privilege if you had to plan every single journey outside your house well in advance and try to navigate bureaucratic mechanisms so you can do so.
A society should be judged on how it looks after its most vulnerable. Disabled people are amongst our most vulnerable and are one of the most consistently discriminated against groups in modern Britain (look at the figures for disability hate crime, for example) and, when it comes to deciding what to cut, giving them the, not unreasonable, independence of being able to go out, independently, once every week, should be a priority.
When the government stops spending £250 million on bringing back weekly bin collections then I might be willing to listen to you telling me that preventing cuts to schemes like the Taxicard are unavoidable but not before then.
@jason
Rape was the first horrible thing to pop into my mind. As I said in my comment, I was not suggesting that cuts to Taxicard are as bad as rape is to a rape victim . I was using it to make an analogy. I could have used starving children in Africa or a man hit by a bus or a woman dying of cancer instead. So, given that it was an analogy and that I went out of my way to emphasise that I wasn’t trivialising rape, I fail to see what your problem is.
George PotterApr 20 – 7:05 pm……………@jason……………, I fail to see what your problem is………………
You complained about the emotive language of ‘Tommy’ and then went ‘way over the top’………(So I’d assume you’d tell rape victims that they should “honestly feel quite likely” that at least they’re not starving? Not that I’m saying that rape and the problems with Taxicards are on the same level of awfulness)………….
If you don’t believe that, even obliquely, accusing ‘Tommy’ of such insensitivity was wrong, then my problem is your choice of analogy.
However, as I seem to have offended both you and ‘Tommy’ I have probably got things about right!
I’m not disabled but I would dread having to navigate the trains/tube/buses if I was.
, Even those stations that supposedly have disabled access, it’s often a long roundabout way to use them and often needs assistance from staff (of which there generally will be none late at night, or difficult to find in rush hours). As an example of what George pointed out, the gap between the train and the platform when I change train at Clapham Junction is extremely large, a problem for old people and children (as in a person could fall in full through it: almost 1 foot up and 1 foot wide!).
and the transport system is at times (most of teh time in fact) VERY crowded (think sardines in a tin, literally), which if you have mobility problems (or sight problems) will make it even more difficult to navigate.
the other thing is that because the public transport is so good for able people, many don’t have cars, unlike elsewhere where you basically have to have one. it’s especially true with young people: of my friends (ages 25-45), 90%, including me, don’t have cars.
So if she wants to go visit friends, they can’t simply come pick her up or drive her back.
oh and taxis are much cheaper in the country!
@Jason
Where did I complain about the emotive language of Tommy? I just complained that he was rather blithely and callously dismissing the entire point of the article.
Is the taxicard in addition to the £54.05 that I assume you are receiving as the mobility component of disability living allowance? (I assume you are eligible, but am not sure if you have to give up the DLA MC to get the taxi card)
I would be interested to know how much the taxi card costs, and whether recipients value it at more than a cash benefit of the same value. As a liberal I generally prefer to see people being given cash, so that they can choose how to use it for themselves.
Some of the comments on this thread, in all directions, seem to be completely out of order. Full marks to Sarah for engaging with the thread.
tim Leunig- Yes, it’s on top of the DLA MC.
I wonder if whether we should be providing a level of incentive/reward to disabled members of socially. So that transport schemes that Sarah talks about provide a minimum level of mobility, however for those who show that they are using such schemes to contribution society (I’ll leave what that actually may mean open to discussion) should perhaps qualify for additional support. Ie. Sit at home and get a basic level of benefit, actively engage with society and get a higher level of benefit.
Yes I’m ignoring funding etc. etc., at this point I’m only interested in whether the principle is good or not and whether people could easily substantiate/verify their social engagement.
I have to agree with the main thrust of George’s comments above. The argument should not be that because people in London receive a greater benefit than others then they should be happy with their lot. Instead the argument should be whether what is given is sufficient.
It’s fine if you want to argue that what is given is excessive if that’s what you think, but look at the needs of the people and what support they receive rather than at what others get – it shouldn’t be a race to the bottom.
I also agree with Tim, my personal preference is in general for people to use a benefit how they think it would best improve their lives rather than how the government dictates, however I could see that this specific benefit would be aimed at trying to encourage participation in society so in general I see this as a good thing.