Disabled Persons’ Parking Badges Bill

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Friday 30th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dubs]

My Lords, first, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, on this Bill and the opportunity it gives us all to debate a pretty important issue. We do this having had the most successful Paralympics in history, so that the country as a whole is more conscious of the situation and needs of disabled people. I hope that the tendency to abuse the blue badge scheme will itself be lessened through a greater awareness of the situation of disabled people.

I have some experience of the blue badge scheme, because a member of my family has one. It is amazing how, if one is closely involved with a scheme, one is so much more conscious of its use and misuse. Even if I am not with that disabled person, when I drive somewhere I look at every blue badge parking space to see whether it is being used properly or not. I look into the windscreens to see whether the car has the blue badge there. One is much more aware of these things, as one is if one is pushing a wheelchair around. In theory we all know about kerbstones and all the other impediments, but if you get behind a wheelchair and push, you know just what it is like when you are in a local authority area that does not have the kerbstones adjusted so that one can push the wheelchair up. However, I have digressed from the Bill.

I am aware of the fraud and misuse of blue badges. It is extremely upsetting when this happens for people who have a blue badge and want to park but cannot find anywhere to do it. There is also the misuse of spaces that are designated for blue badge holders by other people, thereby denying the blue badge holder ease of access to the building, home or whatever it is. I will say a little more about that in a minute.

Some years ago, when I was a junior Minister in the Northern Ireland Office, this particular area was one of my responsibilities. The disability organisations in Belfast came to me saying that far too few spaces were designated for blue badge holders in Belfast city centre—I realise that the Bill is for England only, but the example applies—so that people with a blue badge could not find anywhere to park, as the spaces were all taken up by other motorists. One of the beauties of being a direct rule Minister was that I could change things very quickly, and I got a few more spaces installed right away. I am not even sure we had to do any consultation, and it happened within a short period of time. Sometimes there is a case for not having too much consultation if you want to get something done. It made me much more aware of the difficulties and the situations.

I understand that even ahead of this Bill, arrangements for the renewal of blue badges have been tightened up. The blue badge must now be collected in person by the holder within a six-week period, otherwise the badge is revoked. However, getting to the place where the blue badges are issued can sometimes be a problem, and one should be aware that these are extra burdens imposed on people who do not have the ease of access and mobility that the rest of us have.

There is one issue about enforcement that I will just mention. I once drove a disabled person and dropped him near a shop that he wanted to go to. I then drove the car to a parking space and put the blue badge up, but thought to myself that if someone sees me doing that and hopping out of the car, they will say I am abusing it. I thought I might have to explain this, so was ready with my explanation; which was that it was too far to get the disabled person from the space to the shop he wanted to go to, so I left him at the edge of the kerb with somebody else. If one is being tough on enforcement—as one should be—there are certain sensitivities about the way other people help disabled people. Although the Bill does not apply to supermarket and other private car parks, there is still a problem of enforcement there. I only hope that, as a result of this measure, the owners of supermarkets and other private car parks will enforce the blue badge parking bays. There are blue badge parking bays at my local Sainsbury’s, and I think they are being properly used—because I tend to look at them to see—but enforcement is sometimes not carried out as well in some supermarkets as it might be.

One key point is that there is still a lot of confusion and uncertainty about the scheme and the entitlements of blue badge holders. There is a very good website, which is clear, but you cannot always say to people when they get a blue badge, “Look at the website and go through it all before you go out in the vehicle”. I understand that these Explanatory Notes have been prepared by the government department, but there is at least one mistake in them. In paragraph 4, the notes say that the Bill,

“provides parking concessions for certain severely disabled people to enable them to park without charge or time limit”.

Unfortunately, in the four central London boroughs—Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, part of Camden and the City of London—there is a three-hour time limit. That may be necessary because of the enormous pressure on parking in the central London boroughs; on the other hand, if you do not know about it and come from outer London, you can be caught. Even a three-hour time limit can be difficult, because a lot of the hospitals that people with blue badges may need to visit for appointments are in the three-hour time limit area. One cannot always predict that one will be seen within the three-hour period and therefore it is hard to know how to manage the parking to make a hospital appointment. My point is that there is some confusion and uncertainly about it. It is fair enough in one’s own local area, because the blue badge holder gets to know what the conditions are there, but that does not apply if one goes outside one’s local authority area. All I can do is plead for more sensitivity and more information, because if a blue badge holder goes outside their own area, or is driven outside it, there are not always signs up saying what the conditions are.

One thing I did not know, which I checked with the carer for a blue badge holder, and which is also in the Explanatory Notes, is that there is permission to park on yellow lines in England for up to three hours. The carer did not know that; she had no idea one could park on yellow lines. Did your Lordships all know that? Maybe I am the only one who did not, but I certainly did not. However, it is not quite as simple as that, because it also applies to double yellow lines—but there are exceptions, such as where there are the vertical kerbstone markings, although that does not always apply in all local authorities, so the advice is to phone up the local authority and check. That is a bit of a performance but I understand that is how the system works. Confusion and uncertainty are a problem for those with blue badges.

Another problem is that some local authorities have bays that are designated for named persons. That is fair enough. Others do not. If one has a blue badge bay outside one’s house, which is not designated to the person in the house, and somebody else parks there it can be very difficult getting into one’s home because there is not a parking bay there. That designation of parking spaces for individual blue badge holders varies from local authority to local authority. I understand that Westminster does it, but others do not, so there can be a real problem there.

I will quote an example that I have quoted once before. The carer of a blue badge holder parked in the blue badge space outside the home. Life can be pretty stressful and she did not put the blue badge up, although she also had a resident’s parking permit for the borough. The wheelchair was perfectly visible in the back of the car. The car was towed away within minutes and that cost her £250. I thought that the insensitivity of the local authority to tow away a disabled person’s car with a wheelchair in it, without any notice, took some beating.

I very much welcome this Bill. Obviously, we would all like to go a bit further but Private Members’ Bills can only go so far and so quickly. The noble Baroness is nodding; she understands that. I welcome the tougher enforcement that is going to happen; that is a good thing, but there also needs to be greater clarity so that legitimate holders of blue badges are not caught by the tougher enforcement.