A new report casts doubt on York’s ‘Blue Badge Ban’, says Diane Roworth of Reverse the Ban

Independent research conducted by postgrad students at York Law School for the Reverse the Ban coalition suggests that the Blue Badge ban in York is not proportionate to the threat to life from terrorist activity and that the rights of disabled people were given insufficient weight in the decision-making.

The study took place between October and February and interviewed counter-terror academics and disability rights academics including from University of Oxford, London School of Economics, University of Leeds, and Durham University; a former Superintendent of North Yorkshire Police; a disability expert; a city planner; an access expert; the founder of York Access Hub and the York ME Community; and the Chair of City of York Council’s Protect and Prepare Task Group.

There are around 7,000 Blue Badge holders in York and 17 per cent of York’s population identified as disabled in the 2021 census.

The study found that the council had failed to anticipate sufficiently the far-reaching and severe impacts of the ban for some disabled people and conceded, late in the process, that their proposed mitigations would not work for many.

It went on to conclude that police guidance was misrepresented by council staff as mandating them to take specific action in order to dilute their own accountability for it.

However, the study pointed out that the council is both the body responsible for deciding what action is needed to combat terrorist activity but also for ensuring that its decisions comply with human rights law.

In imposing the ban, council decision-makers also mimicked the broader global trend of temporary or emergency laws and policies being used to implement more invasive, permanent changes and may have violated international human rights law by indirectly discriminating against disabled people.

  • READ MORE: full report here

Although the council has a clear and important responsibility to lower the risk of hostile vehicle attacks, it is required to do so by using the least restrictive means possible.

Lucia Zedner, Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Oxford, told the researchers that there is a global trend to over-emphasise terrorist threats and that: “Blue Badge holders should and could easily have access [to the city centre] without any hazard to public security”. She added: “There is a moment in the implementation [of a measure] that adversely affects any section of the population when city councils are obliged to reflect on the ethics of what they are doing”.

Dr Jessie Blackbourne, Associate Professor in Public Law and Human Rights at Durham University, also warned of the dangers of over-inflating risk.

“Often told the risk from terrorism is very high, the reality of being involved in some kind of terror incident is statistically remarkably low,” she said. With reference to York she added: “It does seem like it has an overwhelming impact on one group with very little regard to the balance of the actual risk of terrorism in York.”

One of the counter-terror researchers interviewed explained that although vehicle-related terror attacks rose to unprecedented levels across Europe in 2016-2017, they have since become less frequent, with new terror methodologies, such as single-person attacks and bladed weapon attacks, taking precedence.

Conor Gearty, Professor of Human Rights Law at the London School of Economics, concurred and said that counter-terror measures should not only be effective but also proportionate, and that ‘the balancing of interests should also be done in a way where the risk is engaged with, not as a ‘blank check on a proportionality assessment’.”

This echoes comments by Jonathan Hall KC, the central government’s Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, in a recent Newsnight programme when he pointed to the danger of ‘over-reach’ in counter-terror measures and advised that today’s risks are anyway far more likely to come from cyber attacks than vehicles.

The report concluded that although the rights of disabled people and the need for effective counter-terror measures have the potential to be reconciled, this has not been achieved in York amidst a fundamental misunderstanding of discrimination.

Worryingly, it found that the council’s actions mean that not only are disabled people painted as a hindrance, but also as a risk to the safety and security of others, setting up an ‘us versus them’ and encouraging the public to perceive disabled people in the city centre as a threat to their lives.

A spokesperson for Reverse the Ban said: “The findings of this important independent study make for sobering reading. Disabled people, like non-disabled people, want their council to protect them from terrorist threats but this action has singled them out unnecessarily.

“The ban has taken an intense toll on the emotional and mental health of many disabled people, their friends and family and has taken away our right to move around the city like non-disabled people.”

Diane Roworth is a member of campaign group Reverse The Ban