Parking (Code of Practice) Bill

Giles Watling Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 2nd February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Luke Hall]

I completely endorse what my right hon. Friend said and hope that the Minister will give that assurance. As has been discussed, parking hotspots can be due to poor signage, unclear signage, poor markings on the floor and even, in some cases, signs that are deliberately designed to mislead the person who is parking and catch out motorists. I am not saying that that is happening in all cases, but it clearly is in some.

[Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the provision of confusing signs, along with the confusion over PCNs and the machinery that people have to use to get their tickets, is often deliberate, with the intention of levying fines rather than ordinary parking charges?

[Luke Hall]

It is important for us to address that during the Bill’s passage. Parking hotspots in private locations continue to trap innocent drivers month in month out, year in year out, and because the information is not released, there is little pressure or incentive for layouts to be improved in order to prevent drivers from making the same mistakes. I support the AA’s recommendation that when a private parking company requests a person’s data from the DVLA, it should be required to give either the postcode or the location where the driver was caught, so that the number of parking charges issued per location could be recorded and published by the DVLA. I understand that it would be quite a simple change, and that the information could be added to the V888/3 form that private parking operators have to fill in. I hope that that can be incorporated in either the guidance or the Bill.

I also want to make a point about cost. According to a report published by the Transport Committee report in 2014, which I understand is still accurate, the DVLA charges £2.50 to process each request for information, but the processing costs the DVLA £2.84 per application, which means a deficit of 34p. We are effectively subsidising the private companies that are making the applications, and that surely cannot be right. I hope that we would make the charge the same as the cost, but, if not, we would surely charge slightly more rather than slightly less. The DVLA is having to cover a shortfall of £700,000 a year, which is 0.1% of its total operating costs.

I know that a number of other Members wish to speak. Let me end by saying that this is a positive Bill. I hope we shall be able to address a couple of the points that I have made as it progresses, and that the Minister will give some assurances about the guidance, but I think that it will promote confidence in private operators by creating what will be a set of recognised standards. It is endorsed by the chief executive of the British Parking Association and the director of the RAC Foundation. I commend my hon. Friend for introducing it, and I will support it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart). As a touring actor for 45 years, I picked up tickets all over the country, including in his area. It is my pleasure to support the Bill proposed by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight). His proposal for a code of practice sets exactly the right tone. No one is seeking over-intrusive regulation of the private parking market, because there is nothing fundamentally wrong with it if it is run properly and with oversight and consideration. Private parking is a legitimate industry that is vital to economic activity in some areas, and overregulation would put a burden on local authorities, and therefore on the taxpayer, if they had to administer and maintain all the car parks themselves.

However, a code of practice is necessary to inform correct behaviour, as for all public amenities. Without such codes, poor practice grows. I have seen this in my own constituency. My experience in Clacton is with a firm called Smart Parking. It advertised free parking in a very pronounced way on a very big sign. Far less prominent was the request to enter a plate number and to take a ticket. That was required even though the parking in that car park in Ravensdale was supposedly free. The widespread view was that a large “free parking” sign meant just that, so people just parked their cars and went about their business, only to have a hefty fine levied on them because they had missed the deliberately small print.

In my view, that is an outrageous scam, and it is still going on. It enables Smart Parking to issue tickets and therefore collect fines. It would appear that the company is not interested in levying ordinary parking charges. Instead, it raises money through levying these very expensive fines—a legal if dodgy practice. It was totally legal, for instance, that a 70-year-old lady visiting a friend at the Abbey nursing home round the corner from the Ravensdale car park for 45 minutes was later sent a fine in the post, despite the fact that a notice advertising one hour’s free parking was displayed in the car park. I am informed that since Smart Parking took over the site in Clacton, about 400 unfair parking tickets have been issued, and given the local demographics, these have probably been issued predominantly to elderly, and therefore potentially vulnerable, people. Of those, 250 are being pursued by a company called Debt Recovery Plus, one of the debt recovery schemes that we heard about earlier.

Clause 6 of the Bill covers the delegation of functions, and would give the Secretary of State the power to

“enter into an agreement with another public authority authorising the authority to perform any of the functions listed in subsection (2).”

In my mind, that means local councils are in the best place to lead the charge. After all, councils already administer their own municipal car parks, and are experienced in having to balance the needs of the local community, including those of small businesses, parents on the school run and so on. They have the bedrock of skill, experience and local knowledge that can really help to tackle some of the outrageous abuses that we are seeing.

The extant regulation is insufficient. Smart Parking claims that it is fully compliant with British Parking Association guidance, and it is. However, that still allows it to issue hundreds of fines that are legal but totally disingenuous and unjust. That is why I support my right hon. Friend’s Bill. It is unjust that we allow signage that is legally compliant but blatantly results in hundreds of parkers ending up under a misapprehension that causes them to receive fines, as is happening in the Ravensdale car park, off North Road in Great Clacton. When hundreds of people are fined due to the same mass confusion, the system is failing. We in this House need to fix this, just as we once did with unscrupulous clampers.

Having two different accredited trade associations with differing codes of practice creates inconsistency and confusion in the market. We need universal standards that can be understood across the country. For example, there could be a universal standard providing parkers with a five-minute grace period in which to decide whether to buy a ticket or not, having read the signs. They should be able to leave the site with impunity if they decide not to proceed. Sadly, I know of cases of people who have merely driven into a car park then turned round and left, not knowing that an automatic number plate reader had recorded their visit and started the process of issuing a fine.

Let us be clear that the issue is getting worse. As it currently stands, private parking operators seek car keeper details from the DVLA to follow up unpaid charges. Research from the RAC Foundation suggests there was a 28% rise in requests for keeper details in 2016-17 alone, which means private car parking companies are ticketing drivers once every seven seconds—that figure conflicts with an earlier statement. There are an awful lot of parking tickets, anyway.

I urge Ministers to consider how we can bring to bear the core pillars of localism and use this Bill further to empower councils—in line with a code from the Secretary of State, as suggested in the Bill—to root out some of these unscrupulous practices that damage good local parking and, therefore, the economic and tourism prospects of towns across the country.

Parking (Code of Practice) Bill (First sitting)

Giles Watling Excerpts

Committee Debate: House of Commons
Thursday 19th July 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)]

rose—

[Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)]

rose—

[Sir Greg Knight]

I give way first of all to Scarborough and Whitby.

[Sir Greg Knight]

That is indeed the case. I am moving down the coast; I am now going to Clacton.

[Giles Watling]

I want to pick up on the notice of free parking, which my right hon. Friend brought up. In a particular scam in Clacton last year, some 400 tickets were issued in Ravensdale car park, which had a very large sign that said, “Free parking”. In very small print, hidden round the back, were the terms and conditions that nobody saw. People expected that they would be able to park for free. It was a scam; some 400 tickets were issued and many were challenged. A certain local councillor, Councillor Richard Everett, was very strong in fighting those tickets and got a lot of money back for people, so it is worth fighting. I support the Bill, because this must never happen again.

[Sir Greg Knight]

That is just the sort of case that I would expect the code of practice to cover. I now move inland to South West Bedfordshire.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey. I, too, commend the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire on his success in getting the Bill this far. My Licensing of Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Safeguarding and Road Safety) Bill was parked just after his at Second Reading. He avoided the chop; I did not. But there is no bitterness: this is an extremely important Bill.

I will say to the Government that it is three years since the consultation document “Parking reform: tackling unfair practices” was published. It has been a long wait. I think that really the Government should have responded and introduced legislation, but in the absence of a Government who are able to deal with the pressing problems of the day, I am delighted that the right hon. Gentleman has introduced this Bill. I agree with much that is in it.

It is important to state at the outset that huge numbers of people drive every day—I think the right hon. Gentleman mentioned the figure of 19 million cars on the road every day—and the vast majority of people manage to find somewhere to park and do it successfully, and many in the industry work very professionally and very well. There is sometimes a danger in these debates that we hear only of the awful experiences. They are awful, but the vast majority of people, and the vast majority of people in the industry, are doing their best to make the system work successfully, so it really is the rogues that we are trying to deal with here.

I think that the number of people who get a parking charge notice each year is between 1% and 1.5%. Obviously, it is never good to get one, but we do need a regulated system. There is no such thing as free parking; there are always costs associated with it.

I also pay tribute to the advice that I have had, over the few years I have been following this issue closely, from the British Parking Association, which is a reputable organisation trying to achieve decent standards and a proper outcome for members. It has been looking for this kind of code for many years, and I very much hope that we will be able to get it on the statute book as soon as possible, because the longer we go on in the current situation, the greater the number of people who will suffer.

I have one major query for the Minister. The point has been raised with me by many people in the industry. At the heart of this is the information that the DVLA passes to operators; the major sanction through this measure will be to stop rogue operators getting that information. Unfortunately, that will not solve the entire problem. That does not mean that we should not do it, but we need to be aware; we should not raise expectations too high, because I am afraid that the real rogues will carry on. They will just stick one of these things on people’s windscreens and they will not even need the information from the DVLA. I am told that some 30% of people just pay up, because they are intimidated.

[Giles Watling]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that because of the very large amounts of money that can be involved in such scams—a company called Smart Parking was involved in one such scam on my patch, in Clacton—organised crime can get involved, which can be intimidating? This is not that much different from the old Denver boot that used to be put on vehicles some time ago, indiscriminately across the country.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am grateful for the intervention. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. At the bottom end of this, we are dealing with some very difficult people, and I am afraid that their not having access to DVLA information will not stop them trying to extort in this kind of way. That is one of the things on which I hope the Minister will have something to say. It is not an easy problem to resolve, because this is a complex area of contract law. The question is always, how will we enforce the Bill’s provisions? If they are not enforced, passing the legislation makes us feel better, but it does not necessarily resolve the problem on the ground. My thinking is that we have to get to a point where motorists have confidence that they can ignore some of these intimidating tactics. In my view, that is the only way that we will be able to get around it.