Parking (Code of Practice) Bill

Faisal Rashid Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 23rd November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Faisal Rashid (Warrington South) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in support of this important Bill, and I commend the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight) for his hard work in championing it and enabling it to reach this stage. I also congratulate all the Members who have worked on it with him.

The Bill will, I hope, lead to long overdue change in the car parking industry. It is alarming to hear from Citizens Advice that parking companies are issuing 13 times more tickets than were issued a decade ago. This is a business model that is designed to exploit motorists rather than fulfilling its purpose. It is a case of several cowboy parking companies treating motorists in the most unfair terms, and it cannot be allowed to continue. Throughout our debates we have heard of a range of problems that motorists have faced, from poor signage and broken machines to appeal systems that lack transparency and fail to apply any common sense. Today we have the opportunity to ensure fairness for British motorists.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

I support the Bill. Does my hon. Friend agree that some of these car parks are set up to trap motorists and lure them in? Their real aim is to get motorists not to pay the parking fee, but to pay the fine.

[Faisal Rashid]

I totally agree. It can be difficult for the general public to understand these machines; they are set up to be confusing and then people get trapped. We are passing a Bill that will oblige the Government to introduce a new statutory code of practice to spell out what behaviours can be reasonably expected from private car parking operators.

As the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire, who is in charge of this Bill, highlighted on Second Reading, there are almost 19 million journeys a day that end at a parking space. This is truly a Bill that will affect almost every person in this country in some way; it is an issue that hugely affects my constituents in Warrington South, as it affects the constituents of many other Members here. I have been contacted by a number of people who have told me of issues they have faced with parking companies. In most of these cases, my constituents are being penalised for breaking an obscure term of the car park, or they are being falsely accused of not purchasing a parking ticket.

One constituent told me that she had purchased a ticket but made a genuine mistake and failed to enter her vehicle registration number correctly. As a result, my constituent was sent a number of letters threatening court action if she did not pay a substantial fine. Despite the innocence of her mistake, the letters scared my constituent into offering up the money.

Such threatening and exploitative behaviour is totally unacceptable and cannot be allowed to continue, and this is far from a one-off incident. I have been contacted by several constituents who made similar mistakes, often entering a single digit or character of their vehicle registration incorrectly, and have then been faced with fines and threatening letters.That is wholly unacceptable, especially as these mistakes are often made because of parking companies’ deliberately misleading signage and complicated machines.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight) on introducing this timely Bill.

The hon. Gentleman is talking about parking companies that almost set motorists up to fail to be able to meet their terms, but it is not just the small operators who do this. It is alleged that NCP—National Car Parks—in the centre of Crawley has been charging motorists for illegal parking when it does not even have planning permission for the CCTV to monitor those cars. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the large companies must also comply with best practice?

[Faisal Rashid]

I totally agree: all operators, whether large, medium-sized or small, should be part of this code of practice.

Some of my constituents are being targeted with letters demanding money and threatening court action. Indeed, some people have contacted me to tell me that the situation has become so bad that motorists are being discouraged from visiting some of the town centres for fear of being targeted by rogue parking companies. This is a deeply sorry state of affairs; it is bad for my constituents and bad for our local economy, especially in the run-up to the festive season. High streets and town centres are already struggling. Rather than coming into town to spend money on the high street, people are choosing to stay at home and shop online.

The regulation of private parking companies that this Bill proposes is long overdue, and I am pleased that it has secured cross-party support. If this Bill is passed today, it will be welcomed not only across this House, but across the country. It is good to see that in a time of much division in this place there are still opportunities for colleagues to put aside their differences and work together to improve the lives of their constituents.