Disabled Access Is No New Issue

ON Monday I had the honour and pleasure of opening the extended Shopmobility centre in Teignmouth.

Based in the Quay Road car park near the Port entrance, this charity provides electric buggies and wheelchairs for those unable to walk far who want to shop in the town or just take in the sea air.

Back in 1970, when I was a new recruit to the Young Liberals, one of the first campaigns I was engaged in was an 'access' campaign to illustrate how difficult it was for wheelchair users to get round the town.

Six or seven of us, I recall, set out with (fully able) Maggie Reynolds, sat in a wheelchair.

With a flag and a drum, we stopped at every step and high kerb that prevented wheelchair access.

I found a photo of this the other day with us all looking very young and very 1970s.

Forty years on, times have changed. We now have dropped kerbs and far fewer steps but even so, some places remain inaccessible for no good reason.

Access does not have to be provided everywhere, but where access is not possible then alternative arrangements need to be provided.

For instance my office is on the first floor, but I will always visit someone who cannot get up the steps.

Unless you are confined to a wheelchair, you cannot appreciate how difficult life can be to get around.

Unless you have pushed a wheelchair around, it is hard to understand the problem steps create.

Having easy access to wheelchairs and buggies really helps those who may just stay at home otherwise.

Like all shopmobilities, they provide a great service.

FOR reasons I am not certain of, I have become a sounding board for the Japanese Embassy on British politics.

Most embassies like to talk to UK politicians and businesses to get a clear understanding of life in Britain.

So about once a year, I will be asked to meet with one of the First Secretaries of the Embassy.

This time it was not in London for he had talks with Devon County Council and Exeter City Council and asked if I would meet him afterwards.

I was happy to do so and I took him for lunch at Sampson's Restaurant in Kingsteignton.

It was an excellent meal. I thought he would appreciate good locally sourced food and he did.

It was a slightly different way to spend my lunch break but still very interesting.

THE BBC arrived at my office yesterday afternoon to do a piece for the local opt out on Sunday's Politics Show.

Half-an-hour of filming for a 30-second clip is par for the course, which is about all they showed.

The issue was about volunteer hospital drivers who provide a vital service for patients trying to get to their hospital appointments.

The problem is drivers feel that they are losing out as fuel prices go up but the 40p per mile rate remains the same.

The rate is set by the Inland Revenue and any payment above 40p per mile would have to be counted as earnings.

Now this may not in itself be a problem, but it makes the driver an employee entitled to the minimum wage, would affect their insurance and they may require a taxi licence!

It would not take a lot to sort this out but as hospitals and surgeries find it harder to recruit volunteer drivers, it means many patients face the cost of a taxi or missing their appointment.

Some do the latter which is why urgent change is needed.

I HAD picked up that a few people were having problems finding a dentist again so thought that it would be useful to pop along to the Brunel Dental Centre in Newton Abbot, a NHS dental practice I helped to get established.

I had a chat with Mike Haden, the senior practice nurse, who assured me that the practice is still taking on NHS patients.

When I was elected in 2001 there had been a real dental crisis but the Teignmouth-based Den Dental Centre asked if I would support them in opening up a new practice for NHS patients in Newton Abbot.

With the help of the District Council and the Primary Care Trust we were able to achieve this.

With other initiatives we were able to provide more than 7,000 patients with NHS dentists.

AN HISTORIC vote took place last week, the Commons voted for a referendum on a fairer voting system.

What is remarkable about this is that it was proposed by one Gordon Brown.

This is the same Gordon who, when he was Chancellor to Tony Blair, blocked Blair's proposals for such a vote.

Blair had suggested such a referendum was possible to Paddy Ashdown, but as Ashdown recalled in his diary, was told by Tony that he 'couldn't get it past Gordon'.

Now the vote is clearly a cynical device to put the Conservatives onto the back foot and expose them as being anti-reform.

What Gordon proposed was the alternative vote (AV) which is simply a modified system of voting for MPs in the existing single member constituencies.

Instead of a cross on the ballot paper, it is marked 1, 2, 3, 4 in order of preference.

The candidate with the lowest vote is eliminated and the votes allocated to the second choices on their ballot papers.

This is done until one candidate has 50 per cent of the vote.

It preserves the MP constituency link and ensures an MP has the support of more than half of those voting.

It is not much more proportionate than our existing system which is why the Lib Dems support a three or four-member constituency which preserves a link and makes the individual the centre of the vote (rather than the party) and is more proportionate.

When I was elected in 2001, the Lib Dems took 20 per cent of the vote but only elected 52 MPs.

Twenty per cent of the vote should have elected 110 MPs.

But that aside and ignoring the motives of the author, this could herald a historic change in our electoral system, a step towards making MPs more accountable