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Blue badge extension consults existing users. Or does it?

One of the most interesting policy changes currently out to consultation is the much-demanded extension of eligibility for ‘Blue badge’ car parking scheme for disabled people. The proposal is to widen this to cover ‘hidden’ disabilities and is attractive to huge numbers of people with physical, mental or cognitive conditions who cannot currently qualify. If we count their carers, and their families, we are talking about something that could affect several million people. This is something quite rare in politics – something that seems do-able and which is popular with everyone.

But there is one snag. There are already 2.4 million Blue Badge holders, and they already worry that there are insufficient parking spaces. Abuse is growing and even thefts of Blue Badges have quadrupled in five years. If we increase those entitled by half, it will make it even more difficult to use the concession. So it is highly appropriate that we have a proper public consultation to flush out these issues – and to take proper account of the various arguments.

So, here’s what’s curious. The consultation cannot identify who responds. Presumably, to make sense of people’s views, would it not be important to know if the respondent was someone who was an existing user? Or maybe someone who hopes to benefit from wider eligibility. Or maybe a relative? Or someone who is just worried about the lack of car parking spaces in general? The consultation tries to identify where responses come from representative groups, but that is about the sum total of the demographic information requested. Nothing to help determine if issues are different as between urban and rural areas. Or for older rather than younger people. Or for any other potentially disadvantaged groups.

This consultation is not alone in choosing not to seek demographic data from respondents. The Ministry of Transport consistently chooses not to do so. Other Government departments seem to take a different view. For comparison purposes, look at The Department of Health’s pre-Christmas consultation survey on opting out of organ-donation  – another one where someone’s state of health or ethnographic position might affect the interpretation of the data.

The move away from asking respondents to describe themselves also raises questions about compliance with the 2010 Equality Act. Section 149 (3) is about advancing equality of opportunity and subsection (c) requires public bodies to have ‘due regard’ to the need to

‘encourage persons who share a relevant protected characteristic to participate in public life or in any other activity in which participation by such persons is disproportionately low.’

This is the provision whereby the Ministry needs to prove that its consultation has been sufficiently accessible to the protected categories under the Act. It is perfectly possible that some of the categories may not be especially relevant for some consultations, but surely for the Blue Badge issue, it should be critical to show that disabled people have been sufficiently able to become involved in the debate.

The extent to which consultation questionnaires should ask the ‘equalities’ questions has been a subject of discussion in the Institute for some years, but we now have the ability to explore it in detail in our brand new training course Equality law for Public Engagement and Consultation.

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