draft Disabled Persons’ Parking Badges (Scotland) Act 2014 (Consequential Provisions) order 2016

Eilidh Whiteford Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2016 General Committees

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

I am very glad to see that the Deputy Leader of the House has managed to get here for at least the tail end of the debate. I am glad to have an opportunity to make a few brief remarks about this draft order, which will ensure that the blue badges that have been cancelled, lost or stolen in Scotland cannot be used in England or Wales with impunity.

As we have heard, the background to this measure is the Disabled Persons’ Parking Badges (Scotland) Act 2014, which significantly strengthened the law, to prevent the misuse of blue badges and ensure that those who need disabled parking spaces have access to them. That Act started life as a private Member’s Bill in the Scottish Parliament, brought forward by my colleague Dennis Robertson, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, and I pay tribute to him today. We all know only too well how hard it is in this place to steer a private Member’s Bill on to the statute book, so Dennis and his staff deserve enormous recognition for their efforts in navigating public consultations and parliamentary processes to ensure that that valuable piece of legislation received Royal Assent.

One of Dennis Robertson’s aims when he brought the original Bill forward was to tackle the misuse of blue badges. Research by Transport Scotland found that 83% of the 800 badge holders it consulted had experienced the misuse of blue badges or disabled people’s parking spaces. Even more telling was an Audit Scotland report, which found that around 4,000 badges belonging to people who had died had not been returned to councils by their families or carers. Not all those badges were necessarily being misused, but it did help to manifest the problem. There are around 228,000 legitimate blue badge holders in Scotland and they need to be able to access the parking spaces to which they are entitled. We know that there were some brazen and blatant instances of blue badges being traded in the informal economy. Those loopholes have now been closed, and Scottish councils’ enforcement procedures have been significantly strengthened, but it is very important that those badges do not find their way to England and Wales, where they could be misused.

The 2014 Act gives local councils extra powers to crack down on the misuse of disabled people’s parking badges. It has helped to raise awareness about the impact their misuse has on disabled people and encouraged a more responsible attitude towards disabled parking spaces overall. Thanks to the Act, the proper use of disabled people’s parking badges is now far more easily enforced, with tougher penalties for misuse, including fines of up to £1,000.

I am very pleased that the UK Government are introducing these consequential changes to ensure that badges originating in Scotland can no longer be misused in England or Wales, and that people who need disabled parking spaces have access to them.