Problems with accessiblity for people who use wheelchairs

Disabled councillors blocked from accessibility vote — because they are disabled

This may seem obviously ridiculous, but this argument has been made about patients as study authors. It is pernicious and has to be challenged whenever it rears its septic head.

https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/d...bility-vote-because-they-are-disabled-1107366

"A council ballot turned sour when two councillors were blocked from voting in an accessibility debate — because they are disabled.

Councillors Katie Lomas and Ashley Mason were told by York City Council they had “a prejudicial interest” in vote on improving accessibility in the town centre because they are Blue Badge holders.

The pair were told they had to leave the room during the vote among councillors on Thursday evening, and they would have to declare the reasons in front of their colleagues as a conflict of interest."

 

Absolutely absurd. The people who drive into the town & use the non disabled facilities have the identical 'conflict of interest'. Therefore the only people who should be allowed to vote (by the rationale being used) are those who never go into the city centre, at all, ever.

And therefore the people voting will only be people who have no experience of the city centre or it's facilities.

If they wanted to be super-fair and ensure that an equal proportion of people voting would be people who both might want more disabled parking spaces because they are disabled, and not want more spaces because they are not, then they should have equal numbers of disabled & non disabled people voting. So if the committee was made up of 10 people including 2 disabled people, then 6 randomly selected able bodied people should be excluded from the vote.

ETA : My comments are specifically about decisions on disabled *parking* which can be a thorny issue due to so few spaces overall. With regards other accessibility issues, surely the disabled people are the MAIN people you want included in the vote, since they are the ones that will be most affected!

 

This is akin to excluding women from voting on an equal pay for women vote!

 

Persons with disabilities have lived experience and should be at the forefront of decision making.

 

Should any council tax payer be blocked because any decision might have an impact on the amount payable?

 

indeed

I edited my post to add the following

 

They do not have a conflict of interest - they have a vested interest. It should be in the council's interest to hear from councillors who can help keep the local high streets alive & the more accessible those streets and their shops are the better for everyone.

They have personal experience of the issues at hand...no doubt this expertise is disregarded as it is free and not from some.consultancy firm that can charge the local tax payers a fortune.

 

Restrictive voting is making a comeback generally it seems.

 

Yes. There are examples at one end where interests are clearly in conflict, and at the other where it would be ludicrous to suggest an interest was in conflict.

There is also a whole grey area in between, and I confess I'm never quite sure where the dividing line is.

 

It might reasonably be thought that those who elected councillors with disabilities were aware of the ways in which they might vote on contentious issues, and elected them nevertheless. The decision seems not merely to disenfranchise the councillors but also those who voted for them. If they don't like the way they voted they could can always withhold their vote at the next election.

edit spelling of councillors. Don't know if it was I or autocorrect .

 

When I read the title of the thread I thought "I wonder what country that's in". I was shocked to read it was in the UK.

 

How about we ban wealthy people in having a say on tax increases?

 

Not gonna lie this is one of the most UK things I've ever heard of.

 

I don't know the particular local politics but my guess is that this is a "road to hell/good intentions" kinda thing, where some legal advice has been issued and no one has had the sense to question how that advice relates to the real world. The horror is that anyone in a leadership role would blindly accept the outcome when it's clear that both natural justice and Equality laws trump the bureaucratic legalism of a local Council.

 

This has been noted before in S4ME in a different context, but worth noting again here.

NICE very specifically make clear in their CoI guidance:

https://www.nice.org.uk/Media/Default/Get-involved/Fellows and scholars unsecure/Conflicts-of-interest-policy.pdf

If it is good enough for NICE, it should be good enough for councillors.

 

If either of the disabled councillors had close ties with a company who, depending on the outcome of the vote, would then be tendering to repaint the car parking spaces or repave areas that would be a conflict.

They might find themselves in a position where the best interests of the council & community are different to that of the company they have close ties with. That would be a clear conflict.

Mulling this over more I think the problem here goes a little deeper. It seems to pitch the best interests of disabled shoppers against the best interests of able bodied visitors to the town centre. As @JemPD says, if one group who uses parking is excluded from the vote then others should be too.

Why is it not possible to looks at things differently and see if there are ways in which can benefit everybody?
This "them" & "us" attitude helps no one and throws up barriers to inclusion all round.

 

Yes, it all gets a bit confusing. What if none of the councillors were disabled? What if they all were? The thing about conflicts of interest is not so much the interests themselves, but whether they conflict with people's ability to carry out their professional duties objectively, free of bias. But even that is much less simple than it might seem. What if a disabled councillor can perceive something more clearly than their able-bodied counterparts, by virtue of their disability? In contrast their could also be a disabled councillor blinded by their disability to the more general needs. I've got myself very confused!

 

We humans do like to complicate things! One of the areas we tie ourselves in knots is when we worry most about the perception of fair play, being seen not to discriminate rather than just being fair and not discriminating. It becomes very easy to lose sight of the primary objectives.

Councillors are supposed to represent the people who voted for them, abled and disabled alike, motorists, cyclists and pedestrians. Would a councillor who doesn't drive or is currently banned from driving have to step out when voting takes place? I doubt it.

If being a user of the same services as many of the people you represent is a conflict then the entire local government system is in trouble!

 

Yes, I think that is the point. If a councillor is conflicted in doing that for whatever reason, then then there is an issue that at least should be declared. But to presume blindly and naively that an interest will conflict them in performing their duty is where it goes wrong.