Holyrood ‘anti-disabled’

A TORY candidate hoping to become the first wheelchairusing MSP has delivered a scathing assessment of disabled access at Holyrood.

Eric Holford was left partially paralysed in 2004, aged 37, when a routine operation for a neck injury went wrong.

The former financial adviser says the parliament lacks wheelchair-friendly links between the campus’s six buildings, and suggests the creation of a series of bridges linking office blocks. This would mean disabled people do not have to descend to the underground car park to take lifts between floors in different buildings.

South Lanarkshire councillor Mr Holford – the Tories’ candidate for Clydesdale – said: ‘It’s terrible for disabled people.

‘The message effectively says, “Able-bodied people use this magnificent staircase – cripples round the back”.’ One in five of Scotland’s population has a disability, according to the last census, but only one in 129 MSPs is disabled.

Mr Holford said: ‘The people making up rules and laws to aid or hinder disabled people are not disabled people. There’s no disabled influence in it.’

A spokesman for the Scottish parliament said that the Holyrood building ‘including its chamber, was designed to offer access for all’.