Protection of Freedoms Bill

Ben Bradshaw Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Lynne Featherstone]

It is not the norm. This is about making parking work for everyone. We are changing what was an appalling blot on the landscape. There is probably not an MP in the House who has not written to me or the Minister who previously held my position with terrible tales of rogue clamping. At the very worst, if the hon. Lady—sorry, the hon. Gentleman—[Interruption.] I have forgotten my point now; it is lost to posterity.

Anyway, I hope that I have answered the points raised by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North. We are trying to do the right thing; we are removing a scourge. The measures have been welcomed by motoring organisations and people across the land. There is nothing as popular as the measures, as a result of people’s experiences of being clamped in unfair circumstances. I hope that the hon. Lady will feel able to withdraw her new clause and support the Government amendments. I fear that she may not, but I live in hope.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

I rise briefly to support new clause 15, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson). In over 14 years as Member of Parliament for Exeter, I cannot recall a local grievance that has caused as many constituents to complain to me or seek my help as have done about the behaviour of private car park operators over the last 18 months or so. Constituents have been fined while going to buy a ticket; fined despite buying and displaying a ticket; and fined despite the fact that the ticket machine was broken at the time and the driver had left a note to that effect on his windscreen. One car park at Exeter airport, which has 24-hour digital recording of the cars going in and out, has fined motorists for using the car park to turn around in, or for driving in and out of it by mistake.

The vast majority of cases concern people who have been fined, not clamped. The common grievance is the sense of summary injustice and the lack of any right of proper appeal. In some cases, when I have intervened, the companies concerned have reduced or even waived the fines. My local newspaper, the Express & Echo, has also taken up individual cases and sought to name and shame the rogue operators, but no system of justice should have to depend on the intervention of an MP or a local newspaper. I wholeheartedly agree with the excellent editorial in The Times today that warned that the Bill threatens to make a bad situation worse. We need a proper right of appeal, and I am afraid that the appeal process outlined by the Minister, which will be on a voluntary basis, will not reassure my constituents.

[Lynne Featherstone]

Is the right hon. Gentleman saying that he would allow wheel-clamping on private land to continue?

[Mr Bradshaw]

No. I am making the same point that other Members have made: if we ban wheel-clamping, the danger is in the unforeseen consequences. As I hope that the hon. Lady will appreciate from her experience as a Minister, there is always a danger of moving the problem elsewhere. We are already seeing that happen in towns and cities such as mine. Her approach of a voluntary appeals process is wholly inadequate, given the problem out there; it certainly will not reassure my constituents who have suffered rogue fines.

I completely support the requirements in the new clause for any organisation enforcing a parking charge to be a member of an accredited association; for all parking signage to be clear; and for fine limits to be set at similar levels to maximum on-street parking fines. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North will push the new clause to a vote, and that hon. Members will support her.

[Guy Opperman]

I used to be one of the Automobile Association’s retained counsels. That is not necessarily a recommendation, but it is a past fact that I must acknowledge. I am no longer one of its retained counsels, and I am no longer a wheel-clamping specialist, but I was the counsel who represented Mrs Marina Vine. On 6 March 1997, she went to Langthorne hospital in Leytonstone. She was suffering from ulcerative colitis, and effectively she was being tested for a type of cancer. She left hospital, and on her way home, she felt violently sick. She pulled over to the side of the road, went on to what turned out to be private land, and was violently sick approximately 15 yards away from her car, just around a corner from it. In the time that intervened before her return—approximately three to four minutes—her car was wheel-clamped. She literally had to beg the clamper to release her car, but they would not do so unless she paid £105.