Leasehold Reform

Greg Knight Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

For most people, buying a house is the single largest investment that they make in their lives. Not only does it provide a home for them and their family, but it is also probably the biggest financial commitment that they have to meet each month. Anyone who has bought a new home knows how stressful and bewildering the process can be, particularly for first-time buyers. The mixture of stress and excitement of owning a new home means that many rely on advice from an array of advisors, including estate agents, lawyers, high-pressure salesmen and developers.

Often, when people are buying a house, they do not look at the issue of freehold and leasehold. They think that leasehold is cheaper, so they think that they will put that all off until the day they can afford to buy the lease. Many are not aware of the feudal nature of the property system in this country. Not only is the system outdated and unfair, but it has been made worse in recent years by the pure greed—it is greed, frankly—of certain house builders and property developers. The number of houses sold as leasehold has more than doubled between 1995 and 2015. The Minister mentioned that the figure has recently gone down. I wonder whether that is because of the scandal to which the Father of the House has just referred.

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

I am most grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. He is making a number of very good points. In the light of what he has just said, does he agree that it is essential that anyone taking on an estate in land, whether it be a leasehold or freehold, receives the best possible legal advice before they sign on the dotted line, so that they know precisely what commitments they are taking on? Are not some of these problems related to the fact that that advice is not particularly good?

[Mr Jones]

I will cover that in more detail later, but it was a point that was raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami). The right hon. Gentleman is right: the one thing that needs outlawing is a developer or an estate agent being able to refer a person to a solicitor who is supposed to be “acting in their best interests”. That should not happen. The legal advice should be completely independent. There is an unhealthy relationship between those people. It is okay saying that we should blame the individual buying the property, but they are often first-time buyers who do not understand the process.

The issue of flats has already been raised. I accept that we deal with flats in a particular way, but there is a perfectly simple system that is not leasehold. What we have seen over the past few years is houses being sold under leasehold arrangements. That is because certain developers have seen it as a way of maximising their profits. They do it in two ways. The first is by passing the charges on to the owners, when traditionally they should have been paid by the developer—I will come on to examples of that in my own constituency in a minute. The second, which was referred to earlier, is the monetarisation of the actual leases, which are not only being sold to individual companies, but, in some case, being put into baskets of leases. It can be bewildering for a person to find out who owns their lease from year to year.

The other scandal, which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), is around minor alterations. We are not talking about the wholesale redevelopment of a property, but, perhaps, a porch being moved or even a Sky dish being added, which have to be charged. It is no wonder that investors have got on to this. They know that the way that these leases have been constructed can mean a profitable business for them. They are not buying out of altruism; they are buying because they know that they can make money, and the people who are suffering are those who bought the leases.

I have already mentioned the issue of legal advice. Clearly, it is an issue that needs to be looked at. In many cases, if a person goes to some major housing developers, they will be told, “These are our recommended solicitors.” I am sorry, but that should be outlawed. The solicitor should be there to represent the buyer’s best interests. As the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight) has just said, the solicitor should be there saying, “No, don’t sign that, because it is not in your best interests.”

I know that Members will cite many examples in this debate, but I wish to raise just three in my own constituency. Members will not be surprised to hear that they involve a notorious company, Persimmon Homes, which is terrible at dealing with customers. It has made more than £1 billion of profit every year for the past five years, mainly funded by the Government’s Help to Buy scheme. The Government have done nothing to stop Persimmon’s sharp practices. Between 2012 and 2020, Persimmon built Roseberry Park in my constituency. Traditionally, when an estate is finished, the verges and common areas are passed over to the council, once they have been brought up to adoptable standards. But, lo and behold, on this site, they have not. Those areas are part of the lease, which means that the leaseholders have to take responsibility for the maintenance charges, which then go up and up. If buyers are asked whether they knew about this, they say, no, they did not, which gets back to the point about legal advice made by the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire—should they have signed this when they are taking on open-ended commitments. The site was finished in 2020, but the roads have still not been brought up to adoptable standards. It is anything to save money for Persimmon.

The other case involves Urpeth Grange. It is a small development site of 47 houses on a larger estate. Developers refused to pay the 15 years’ maintenance on an area of land and a play area and have passed it on to a management company, which is then owned by the leaseholders. Part of the planning permission was to have a play area. Well, if it is a play area, it should have been brought up to standard and passed on to the local authority, but, no, that did not happen. Even though everyone can use this play area, it is still the responsibility of the leaseholders. These sharp practices by Persimmon have been used to make more profit, and they are funded by the Government’s Help to Buy scheme.

Adult Social Care

Greg Knight Excerpts

Wednesday 8th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

I agree; indeed, I will mention workforce later.

The Government have, of course, responded to this issue in successive years, and have found extra central Government funds to pay local government, so we have proceeded from year to year, and although the system has been fragile, it has continued to operate. Of course, the background conditions are getting increasingly difficult. Inflation has an impact on social care providers. A cost of living survey done by social care provider MHA found that 94% of its community schemes had heard members or residents express concerns about the rising costs of living, and 49% of respondents said that the increased costs of transport specifically were a significant issue among their members. There is a danger that rising energy costs will significantly reduce the number of available services and have an immediate impact on discharge from the NHS into the community.

The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services has reported that nearly half of all directors of social care services are not sure that unpaid carers will be able to cope financially with the cost of living crisis, which could lead to further increased demand on paid-for social care services.

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that we still grossly undervalue carers?

[Damian Green]

My only caveat is that my right hon. Friend says “we”. In the community, we do not.

[Sir Greg Knight]

As a country.

[Damian Green]

Publicly, as a country, we may well do so. They are a hidden army of people acting well, purely out of generous motives and the desire to help loved ones, which is natural. They do not get enough reward and praise from the general public, even though many of those people are the best members of the general public.

There are other specific measures that the Government could take. I would hope that following April, adult social care providers could be defined as a vulnerable sector as part of the energy bill relief scheme; I think that would be of significant help. The County Councils Network has estimated that with inflation, it could cost councils £3.7 billion extra to keep social care services running. If that figure is anything like accurate, the quality of care will decrease if those providers are not defined as a vulnerable sector.

I will now move on to the central point of the debate, which is funding. The hon. Member for Sheffield South East has very eloquently made the case for what we all know to be true: adult social care is a huge strain. The way in which we currently fund it is something that local councils find unsustainable, and therefore, the system is now kept going through repeated one-off injections of central Government cash. That in itself is not sustainable as a system. Some years ago, I suggested an alternative way of getting the extra money we all need into the system. I will return to that proposal now, because if we step back, the problem is that social care—especially for the elderly, perhaps—is too opaque for those trying to understand it, with no apparent logic as to which conditions receive free NHS treatment and which do not. Moving directly on to the financial point, it is also unfair not to reward a lifetime of prudence. Those who have saved feel that their savings will simply disappear, while those who have not saved receive the same level of care.

There is also the fact—which is not often discussed—that funding social care out of council tax means that local authorities are reluctant to allow too many care homes, or indeed retirement housing, to be built, because they do not want an increasingly elderly population. The ageing population means that something like 50% of some councils’ spending already goes on social care. As the hon. Member for Sheffield South East said, that figure is projected to rise to 60%, and given the demographic trends that I have already mentioned, my fear is that some higher-tier authorities that are funding social care will end up as basically social care providers with a few libraries and a bit of money to spend on potholes, and not much else. A lot of essential council services will be swallowed up by the need for social care, as well as the fact that the problems in social care put extra pressure on the NHS.

We need a radical change to the system in order to meet five objectives. The first is to provide enough money to cope with the increasingly ageing population. The second is fairness across generations, so that today’s working-age taxpayers are not asked to pay for both their own care in the future and the care of the generation above them today. The third is fairness among individuals, ensuring that no one has to sell their own home—has to lose all their assets to pay for care—and ending the dementia lottery that the hon. Member for Sheffield South East mentioned, where one condition is treated on the NHS and another is not. The fourth is increasing the supply of care beds and retirement housing. My fifth point is perhaps slightly ambitious: in an ideal world, we should secure cross-party consensus, with a lot of consultation before we move to a new system, but with the people moving to that system having confidence that Governments of any stripe will keep it going.

The model I take, because we can see it more or less working, is the pension system. The basic state pension has been increased significantly in recent years, taking many pensioners out of poverty, but at the same time, most people save additionally through their working years to provide comfort and security in old age. Auto-enrolment in pensions has been a great cross-party success story, encouraging millions more people to save towards their own security in old age; for an individual who starts saving in their early 20s, the benefits will not come for decades, but they will be huge when they arrive.

Similarly, just as the basic state pension has been improved in recent years, I think we should offer a universal care entitlement, offering a better level of care—both homecare and residential care. For those who need residential care, that would cover the core residential costs. The needs would be assessed locally, but the money would come from central Government, which would take away the pressure on local councils. The state element of that funding should come centrally, rather than locally. Will that involve extra money? Of course it will, but given the annual injections of extra money that the Government put into the system, they have already implicitly admitted that it needs much extra money, so I think this is a necessary increase in public spending. I accept all the pressures and controversies that it will cause, but it seems unavoidable to me.

On top of that, we need to find an acceptable way to allow those with the capacity to improve their own provision to do so. I suggest we should create what I call the care supplement: a new form of insurance designed specifically to fund more expensive care costs in old age, just like the private pension system that tops up the state pensions of millions of people. It would allow people to buy insurance at the level they can afford in order to provide peace of mind. I do not think that the care supplement should be compulsory, as indeed auto-enrolment for pensions is not compulsory, so we would not get into the slightly sterile debate about death taxes and dementia taxes, phrases that both of the main parties have thrown at each other over the years.

People could save for that insurance over many years through their working life, or they could make a one-off payment—possibly using something like equity release from a part of their house value—at a suitable time in their life. I will pause on that point, because too much of the social care debate has devolved into questions about home ownership and whether a person has to sell their home. Under a mass insurance system, nobody would have to lose all of their assets or sell their home; a sliver of the money that is now in free equity in housing owned by the over-65s would cope with this challenge. There is £1.7 trillion in free equity in housing owned by the over-65s, and if a very small percentage of that money were applied to insurance for social care, it would mean that people had peace of mind in old age.

I have been told by successive Ministers that that system would be too complicated, and that we cannot set up an insurance system. All I say in response is this: of course, setting up a new system is complicated and difficult, but we know that the current system is not working. If we carry on doing the same thing, the system will continue to be frail and rickety for years—possibly generations—to come, which is not acceptable. We have to do something radically different. If somebody can come up with a better way of getting some of that wealth to pay for social care, fine, but we have to try something radical.

Funding is one key issue, but since the debate is about adult social care, I will identify four areas in which we need new thinking if we are going to fix social care. The first is the workforce, which has already been mentioned. It needs to be bigger—bigger by more than 100,000—and to achieve that, it needs to be better paid and have a higher status. I would like nurses working in the care system to be on the same Agenda for Change pay scales as those in the NHS, otherwise they will keep moving from the care system to the NHS.

The second area is the voice of care within the new integrated care boards. That change represents a chance to improve the integration of the health and care systems without creating another massive bureaucracy, but I slightly fear that the ICB system is settling down with the voice of care providers not being loud enough at the table. Local authorities are clearly a key player in the system, but so are other providers, and their voice needs to be heard.

My third point is about the use of technology, not only for sharing information between different parts of the system, but for giving those in receipt of care more control over their daily life. We are not exploiting the range of available technology anything like enough to do that and, if we get it right, the prize is that more people will be able to stay in their own home for longer. That is better for them, most importantly, but it is also better for the taxpayer, so it ought to be a high priority. It is particularly important for people living with dementia.

The fourth area is an extension of that notion of people staying in their own homes for longer through the provision of housing. As it happens, in one of the Minister’s previous incarnations, I spoke to him about this issue. We are failing to build anything like enough supported housing for older people, particularly in retirement villages. Taken together, the last two measures I mentioned—technology and the provision of suitable housing—would mean that many people were able to stay in their own home for longer. As I say, that is a double win: it is better for the taxpayer, but most importantly, it is better for people as well. Most people want to live in their own home for as long as they can.

My original idea for a universal care entitlement accompanied by a care supplement would take the burden of social care funding away from local authorities, which is good, and, more importantly, offer certainty and security for the increasing numbers who will need social care in old age. No one would have to sell their house and see their inheritance disappear, everyone would have the chance of receiving better care and fewer people would be left unnecessarily in hospital beds as they wait for social care to be available. I am conscious that none of this is easy and that it will take political courage and possibly political consensus to achieve, but it is absolutely necessary if we are to provide peace of mind and security to frail, elderly people who richly deserve it. I commend these ideas to the Minister.

Oral Answers to Questions

Greg Knight Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

They are coming: we are going to introduce those reforms in the next Queen’s Speech.

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

Is the Secretary of State aware that in 2019 I took through Parliament the Parking (Code of Practice) Act with all-party support? This measure mandates the Government to introduce a code to make parking fairer for motorists. In view of the overwhelming support for this measure on both sides of the House, why are the Government now dragging their feet on the matter?

Terrorist Offenders (Restriction of Early Release) Bill

Greg Knight Excerpts

Committee stage & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons & 3rd reading & Committee: 1st sitting
Wednesday 12th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir William Cash]

I have already canvassed some parts of what I am about to say, but there is more to say, for a very sound reason. Parliament is full of opinions and Ministers are full of opinions. Two Ministers are sitting on the Front Bench at the moment, no doubt debating the issue before the Committee, but their opinions are not the law, and nor are those of leading counsel, whether senior Treasury counsel or those involved in academic discussion. I say that really seriously. I have been practising the law since 1967 and I know a little about how the law is interpreted. We saw the Gina Miller case the other day. How many times were we told that there was absolutely no question but that the Government were right in their interpretation? I served as the shadow Attorney General and saw the whole of the Iraq and Peter Goldsmith exercise. We were told over and over again in the House this, that and the other about interpretation—“This is what will happen. This is the way it will go.” That is no way to make decisions on matters of this kind of critical importance.

There are occasions on which the question of interpretation may merely be about a modification of policy; this is actually about saving human life. I repeat that: saving human life. Where it is possible for the House to ensure that human life cannot be unreasonably and wilfully disposed of by people who are intent on murdering for no reason at all, we need to take seriously the question of whether or not we can exclude the courts —because this is Parliament, not the judiciary—from making wrong decisions when matters come before them.

I heard with interest the Chairman of the Justice Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), and the various cases he mentioned, and I have just heard the Minister refer to the Uttley case. There is also the Hogben case, which was of course in 1985, before the Human Rights Act 1998. Reference was also made to the del Río Prada case. As a matter of fact, the legislation does not depend on an interpretation of those individual cases by way of precedent, and that is not what we should be worried about; we should be thinking about the purpose and scope of the Bill and its objective, which is to do everything that we can to ensure that human life and public safety come first. I do not want this to become an argument about the interpretation of law, which is why I tabled amendment 3 to clause 1.

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

On the subject of opinions, does my hon. Friend intend to test the opinion of the Committee, or merely the opinion of the Minister?

[Sir William Cash]

That is an extremely good question on which I have already given an indication. Being a realist, I know perfectly well that this is not a Bill to which an amendment is going to be passed—certainly not today—but I did say that the House of Lords, which is where the Bill is going, is full of lawyers, some of whom I will disagree with and have disagreed with for as many years as I have been in the House, but there are others who will take a different view.

I am interested to hear the views of the House of Lords on the question of my proposal to amend clause 1. The wording of clause 1 currently refers to an offence “within subsection (2)” and a sentence imposed

“whether before or after this section comes into force”,

at which point I propose to insert the words

“and notwithstanding the Human Rights Act 1998”.

The effect of that would be to put a complete bar on the use of the Human Rights Act, by interpretation of the courts, in any attempt, whether it is regarded as misguided or is a matter of culture—there is currently a load of culture in the courts relating to human rights questions that have built up over the whole of my lifetime in the law.

I am deeply concerned that we could allow legislation to go through that could be interpreted in a way that would result in human life being lost and public safety being infringed. That is my concern. [Interruption.] I see the Minister looking at me either apprehensively or with anticipation; I am not sure which it is and I do not really care. What I am saying is that I want certainty. I know that if the words “notwithstanding the Human Rights Act” are brought into the Bill, the effect will be to exclude completely, for reasons that I am about to give, any attempt by the courts to modify the effect that the Bill otherwise would have.

I have other concerns about the Bill that I have already made clear. I do not think that offenders should be considered for release after half or two thirds of their sentence. I have a lot of sympathy for what my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) proposes in amendment 1; he says it should be nine tenths. I do not know whether he will address that point later.

The bottom line is that we should not allow this situation if we can avoid it—and we can avoid it, because we are the Houses of Parliament, and as a result of Brexit, we have just regained an awful lot of our sovereignty. This is more a matter of the European convention on human rights than of the charter of fundamental rights—or, for that matter, of Brexit—but the amendment is an indication of the House’s determination to use our sovereignty to make law that will guarantee that we do not face people losing their life, or public safety being undermined.

If we do not include in the Bill the words that I propose in my amendment 3, I believe—as I said before with respect to the Lee Rigby case—that it is not a matter of if such a thing happens again; it is a matter of when. I concede that this is emergency legislation; that is why I support it, but it requires a full, thorough review, perhaps by the Justice Committee, to ensure that we deal with the issue properly and fully.

I applaud the Government for bringing in this Bill on an emergency basis, but I criticise the fact that the Bill does not go far enough. The Minister is, if I might say so, not a lawyer; he can only have received his information from others who are. He is taking a bit of a punt in saying that the words

“and notwithstanding the Human Rights Act 1998”

are not needed. He does not know that. I say that with not only respect, but knowledge and certainty. It is very difficult even for lawyers to be sure what the impact would be of allowing the Bill through without excluding the Human Rights Act 1998 from it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir John Hayes]

We do, in fact, have an independent reviewer of terrorism legislation. In that context, I was privileged to work with Lord Carlile—a former Liberal Democrat Member of this House, by the way. So that role exists, but I do not want to underestimate the significance or value of the Committees of this House in doing their job. The ISC in particular is a well-respected Committee of the House, which has a very strong track record of looking at these matters empirically and advising accordingly. My argument is not that we should not have that kind of scrutiny; ideally, it would have been a precursor to this legislation, but we should indeed consider allowing it through the mechanisms that I have described. I invite the Minister to embrace the spirit in which I have advanced my argument.

The third and final amendment that we have heard ably articulated during our considerations this afternoon is the one in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne). Again, I am extremely sympathetic to the purpose of the amendment. Indeed, I might even go further, and say that “nine-tenths” is too modest. However, while my right hon. Friend’s amendment is welcome and adds pressure, if I might put it that way—he said “prodding” rather than “probing”, and I have added a third “p”, “pressure”, because I know that alliteration is dear to his heart—given that the Government have made crystal clear that in forthcoming legislation they will look at three matters, minimum sentences, maximum sentences and mandatory sentences, much of what he desires should form part of that further Government policy and practice. I hope that we can increase minimum sentences, that we can increase maximum sentences, and that we can tie to that—as the Government have said they will, as I note from comments made in the statement by the Secretary of State following the recent terrorist outrage—

[Sir Greg Knight]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Sir John Hayes]

I will just finish my sentence, and then I will give way happily to my right hon. and distinguished Friend.

The Government have said, and the Secretary of State was clear about it in the statement a few days ago, that tied to those three provisions will be the end of early release for certain kinds of prisoner. I now happily give way to my right hon. Friend before I move to my exciting peroration.

[Sir Greg Knight]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. Does he not think that whatever scheme is ultimately settled upon, there needs to remain some incentive for someone who is in prison to behave him or herself?

[Sir John Hayes]

I note that my right hon. Friend was preoccupied with urgent meetings when I spoke earlier, but if he reads the Hansard report of my earlier contribution, he will see that I am on exactly the same page as him, not for the first time. He is absolutely right that parole has historically always been considered on the basis of an assessment of both risk and worthiness. “Good behaviour” is the term that was once routinely used in respect of parole. When people have proved, through how they behave in prison, that they no longer pose a risk to the public and that they deserve to be released early, they should be. The problem with the current arrangement is the automatic nature of early release, and I resist that per se, not just in respect of terrorist prisoners but more widely. The public would be outraged if they knew just how many people have been released early, including terrorists. Enough is enough; now the time to put an end to that. This is the beginning of it, and I happily support this legislation.

Valedictory Debate

Greg Knight Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sir Patrick McLoughlin (Derbyshire Dales) (Con)]

Thank you for calling me to speak, Madam Deputy Speaker. This is the last time that you will be able to call me. It was a great privilege working with you when we were doing opposite jobs, as Chief Whip and Opposition Chief Whip.

I first saw inside the House of Commons in about 1972. In 1970, Cannock elected a Conservative Member of Parliament, Patrick Cormack, with one of the biggest swings in the country in that general election. Like any new Member of Parliament, he went round the local schools and invited us to come down to the House of Commons to have a tour. I came down in about 1972, and I remember it well. I was overwhelmed by the atmosphere, the beauty of the place and the history of the building—so much so that I remember saying to one of my best friends at the time, John Beresford, “I’ve decided what I want to do in life.” He said, “What’s that, Patrick?” and I said, “I want to come back to the House of Commons as a Member of Parliament.” I will always remember him saying to me, “If I was you, I’d keep that a secret.” It was not the kind of place that a comprehensive schoolboy from Cannock would end up.

Leaving school at 16, I became involved in the youth wing of the Conservative party, and I fought my first general election in Wolverhampton South East in 1983. It was a great campaign but an unsuccessful one, when the Conservative party overall was doing incredibly well. I made several unsuccessful attempts at winning other seats, and I began to think that my friend John was right. But as we all know in politics, things happen suddenly. All of a sudden, a by-election was called in West Derbyshire, and I was selected as the candidate, when Matthew Parris, who has been a lifelong friend since then, decided to pursue a career in TV.

I would like to pay tribute to the officers of the West Derbyshire Conservative association in those days, particularly Geoffrey Roberts, who is sadly no longer with us, but his wife Josie still lives in Bakewell. They took a bit of a gamble in 1986, selecting a 28-year-old who was hardly a typical Tory—somebody who left school at 16, had not been to university and had gone through 12 months of a coal strike. With our successful campaign in that by-election, and with my charm and personality, I managed to take a very safe Conservative seat with a majority of 15,500 to one with a majority of 100 votes.

I came into the House of Commons on 13 May. My mother came down, and my pregnant wife was with me, and we were invited to have tea with the then Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher. My mother was not overwhelmed at all by meeting Mrs Thatcher. She had never met a senior politician of any description. We met her in the Prime Minister’s office here in the House of Commons, and within a few minutes, it was almost as if I did not exist. My mother and Mrs Thatcher were talking away like two old fishwives. After 30 minutes, a note came in for the Prime Minister saying that she had to go to her next meeting. She looked at my mother and said, “I’m very sorry, but I have to go to my next meeting.” I will always remember my mother tapping her on the knee and saying, “Yes, my dear, you are busy, aren’t you?” to which Mrs Thatcher said, “Well, I am today. It’s just one of those days.”

That is how I came to represent one of the most beautiful constituencies in England. It is a constituency dominated, to a great degree, by the Peak District national park. The Peak district is within an hour’s drive of 60% of the UK population, and some weekends it feels like they all come. The Peak District national park is a very important part of our country. Obviously it has strict planning rules and regulations, but I want to see people living in the national park and not priced out of it. We must bear that in mind.

We have a number of important market towns in Derbyshire Dales, not least Wirksworth, Ashbourne, Bakewell and Matlock. They are thriving market towns, but at the moment their high streets are under tremendous pressure. I do hope that the new Government will think very carefully about how they can support our market towns and our high streets—that is incredibly important—and avoid putting extra unnecessary costs on them, or if costs are put on business, make sure they are across the board, including for the internet companies, which at the moment do not quite share their full burden.

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

It has been a privilege and a pleasure to serve in this House with my right hon. Friend, but will he give the House a pledge that he will not write his memoirs, or if he changes his mind and does decide to write his memoirs, that he will make no reference at all to what happens in the Whips Office? Does he agree with me that whipping, like stripping, is best done in private?

[Sir Patrick McLoughlin]

I agree partly with what my right hon. Friend says. If he does not mind, I shall say something in a few moments about the Whips Office that may or may not get his approval, but let us see.

Less than a year after I entered the House of Commons, we faced a general election. I have to say that it was an unusual election as far as West Derbyshire was concerned because two parties got what they wanted. My Liberal opponent had posters up and down the constituency saying, “100 more votes this time”. I am very glad that he got his extra 100 votes, and I was even more pleased that I got an extra 10,000. Let us leave that to the side, but we should be careful what we wish for.

In 1989, I was invited by Margaret Thatcher to join her Government, and I went as a junior Minister to the then Department of Transport. One of the first issues that landed in the area I was responsible for, within a few weeks of my being at the Department, was the terrible Marchioness disaster on the Thames. As we have done in the previous debate, dealing with people who have suffered such tragedies is one of the more difficult parts of life in government, as it is when, as Members of Parliament, we have people who are hit by tragic circumstances and incidents that often cause the loss of life and the like. I think most Members of Parliament go out of their way to do whatever they can to help.

I served in several Departments before John Major appointed me to the Whips Office in 1995. I spent 17 years there, becoming one of the most long-serving and perhaps, as far as my party is concerned, long-suffering Whips. When David Cameron became leader of the Conservative party in 2005, he made me the Opposition Chief Whip, and then he made me the Chief Whip in the coalition Government in 2010. There, I was really ably assisted by John Randall, who is now in the other place, as my Deputy Chief Whip—really a man of great and outstanding ability and high principle—and by the right Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael). I see in his place the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), who was also in the Whips Office.

Park Home Residents: Legal Protection

Greg Knight Excerpts

Tuesday 1st October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Order. In the absence of the Member we hoped would be chairing the sitting, it falls to me as the only member of the Speaker’s Panel present to take the Chair and to invite Sir Peter Bottomley to move the motion on my behalf.

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

On a point of order, Sir Christopher. In view of the fact that the debate is starting just over two minutes late, are you, as the Chair, prepared to give yourself injury time?

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

I am advised that it is in order to give injury time for time missed.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered legal protection for residents of park homes.

Thank you for starting the debate, Sir Christopher. I hope I will soon be able to resume my place and that you—you were originally going to move the motion—will be able to pick up and give the speech the House is looking forward to.

May I first pay tribute to you, Sir Christopher, for leading the all-party group on park homes? This is one of those areas where, for far too long, there was too little publicity and too little Government action.

I pay tribute to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, which looks after park homes, for the way it has picked up the initiative by Nat Slade, an officer in Arun District Council, and his colleagues, who have worked with the Ministry to get the Government to come forward with measures to deal with some of the appalling abuses. If I were a tougher Member of Parliament, I would name some of the rogues and crooks—some have left the park home business, but others continue. My belief is that, with publicity, they will be shamed into stopping the exploitation of some of the most vulnerable people in our communities.

Few people choose to live in a park home as their permanent residence if they have better options, but the fact is that many do not. Too often, people have taken on a home that is, in theory, licensed only for holiday use, but everyone, including the freeholder and owner and the operator, knows that they are there to make permanent use of it. If, by chance, the operator manages to get the licence changed to permanent, the innocent park home owners and residents are then told to pay a fortune to convert what was, in effect, a permanent residence into another permanent residence.

[Mr Philip Hollobone in the Chair]

[Sir Greg Knight]

Is not one of the problems that, unlike purchasers of freehold property or those who take on the long lease of a flat, many park home occupants have not had the benefit of legal advice before signing up?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. We can learn a lot from them and the best way to encourage them is to take strong action against rogue traders. I shall come on to those points later.

[Sir Greg Knight]

Does my hon. Friend agree that those who seek to occupy a park home need the best possible advice, and some information about the law in the area, and will he join me in congratulating Age UK on preparing a wonderful factsheet—factsheet 71— explaining that law?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Absolutely. That is important. In that context, the Government have given new responsibility to the Leasehold Advisory Service to advise potential purchasers of park homes. I, and indeed the all-party parliamentary group, had a meeting with Anthony Essien, its chief executive. The trouble is that although it can give advice someone must approach it for advice before it can do so, and many people do not because they are seduced by the sort of information that I have referred to.

[Mr Clive Betts in the Chair]

Permitted Development and Shale Gas Exploration

Greg Knight Excerpts

Thursday 28th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mark Menzies]

That is why I called the Westminster Hall debate last year and why I am on my feet today. It is absolutely critical that permitted development, which has a place in our planning system, is for, say, a small extension to a bungalow or a conservatory, not for an enormous industrial estate that will produce tens of thousands of tonnes of pollutants, have thousands of vehicle movements per year, and so on.

I thank the Minister and the Department for listening to the case that I and local people put with regard to the Roseacre Wood site in my constituency. That was a long-running case that had gone through a number of stages in the planning process, including two planning inquiries. We made the case that the site was unsuitable, primarily because it was up country lanes, and regardless of how we tried to cut it, the traffic management plan simply did not work. I am not sure where traffic management plans fit in under permitted development. A fundamental reason why a site was turned down would not be a consideration under permitted development. If the Minister is looking for a reason why this proposal does not stack up, he should refer to Roseacre Wood and the decision tree that kicked in. It was turned down on those grounds, and therefore the Government simply cannot proceed with the permitted development proposals.

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

The present Government have a policy of localism and wish to see devolution increased. If the Government are to be consistent, does he agree that, on this issue, they should let local communities decide?

[Mark Menzies]

I absolutely agree. The Minister has a difficult decision to make, because the planning system for shale gas simply cannot continue as it is. After various appeals, the planning process for Preston New Road and Roseacre has been going on for years. It is not good for local communities to have this hanging over them, nor does it favour local democracy, because the powerful can hire lawyers and basically game the system to suit them. The planning system in its current format must change and needs review, but permitted development is not the route to go down.

On the issue of local democracy, a lot of nonsense is talked when it comes to Lancashire County Council. It is said that Lancashire turned the Preston New Road site down and then Ministers forced it on them, but the reality is that planning officers at Lancashire County Council recommended that the site should go ahead on planning law grounds. Those people who were complaining about the Secretary of State giving Preston New Road permission to proceed cannot then celebrate when the same process refuses Roseacre Wood. The planning system sometimes gives us what we want, and it sometimes gives us the opposite of what we want. I am afraid that we cannot trim our argument to suit our case.

Parking (Code of Practice) Bill

Greg Knight Excerpts

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

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 7, in clause 1, page 1, line 3, after “State” insert “within twelve months of the day on which this Act is passed.”

Amendment 8,  page 1, line 3, after “must” insert “use his best endeavour to.”

Amendment 1, in clause 6, page 3, line 14, leave out from “may” to “functions” in line 20 and insert “—

(a) enter into an agreement with a public authority authorising the authority to perform any functions of the Secretary of State under sections1 to4 (other than the function of laying a code or alteration before Parliament);

(b) enter into an agreement with a person authorising that person to perform any”

This amendment enables the Secretary of State to delegate functions relating to the investigation of breaches of the parking code to bodies that are not public authorities.

Amendment 2, page 3, line 28, leave out “public authority which is” and insert “person”

This amendment is consequential on Amendment 1.

Amendment 3, page 3, line 34, leave out “the final version of”

See the explanatory statement for Amendment 5.

Amendment 4, page 3, line 35, at end insert “for approval”

See the explanatory statement for Amendment 5.

Amendment 5, page 3, line 36, leave out “The” and insert “Once the Secretary of State has approved the code or alteration, the”

Amendments 3 to 5 make clear that, where the Secretary of State has delegated the function of preparing the parking code, the Secretary of State must approve the final version of the parking code (or any alteration to it) before it is laid before Parliament.

Amendment 6, in clause 7, page 4, line 3, at end insert—

“() where the Secretary of State has entered into an agreement with a person under section (Appeals against parking charges) (appeals against parking charges), the establishment and maintenance by the person of a service for dealing with parking appeals (within the meaning of that section).”

The effect of this amendment is that, where the Secretary of State enters into an agreement with a person for the person to deal with appeals against parking charges (see NC1), the costs of establishing and maintaining that parking appeals service may be defrayed out of the proceeds of the levy imposed on accredited parking associations.

Amendment 9, in clause 11, page 6, line 29, leave out from “force” to the end of line 30 and insert “two months after the day on which this Act is passed.”

Amendment 10, page 6, line 31, leave out subsection (3).

[Sir Greg Knight]

Following previous stages of our consideration of the Bill, and having received a number of representations, it is apparent to me that it can and should be strengthened further. One point of concern that has been raised, including by the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) and my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood), relates to the appeals services available to motorists. Currently, when a motorist receives a ticket, they must first go to the parking operator to challenge it. If the challenge is rejected, they may go on to an appeals service provided by whichever accredited trade association the parking operator is a member of. Parking on Private Land Appeals and the Independent Appeals Service are the appeals services of the British Parking Association and the International Parking Community respectively. However, POPLA does not operate in Scotland, so motorists who receive parking tickets from British Parking Association operators in Scotland are denied an independent appeals service entirely, which I do not think is right.

The Bill provides an opportunity to raise the standards of the private parking industry and create more consistency in the process. My amendments would expand that opportunity, providing the Secretary of State with the power to appoint a single appeals service for the whole industry, providing greater consistency for motorists in England, Scotland and Wales, as they would know exactly where to go when they want to appeal a private parking ticket.

[Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)]

May I be the first to congratulate my right hon. Friend on piloting his Bill thus far? Many of our constituents who are caught up in these schemes are among the most vulnerable. Will he reassure my constituents who have been caught up in the past that in future they will be able to go through a much clearer and more straightforward process?

[Sir Greg Knight]

I am happy to give that assurance and to confirm that the appeals process will be free of charge.

The new clause and amendment 6 are the substantive amendments and would allow the Secretary of State to appoint a single appeals service for the private parking industry. They would also amend the proposed levy powers in order to use the levy to cover the costs of establishing and maintaining such an appeals service. Amendments 1 to 5, which also stand in my name, are largely technical and would amend the Bill to allow the Government flexibility to delegate their functions for investigating breaches of the code. They would also ensure that, where the Secretary of State has delegated the function of preparing the code of practice, they must still approve the final version of the parking code.

The current provisions mean that the Minister can delegate only to a public authority, but my amendments would allow the delegation of the investigatory function to private bodies. That would allow subject matter experts from private industry to conduct the function, thus offering a greater range of options and value for money. Lastly, my final amendments cover where the Secretary of State has delegated the code of practice, as I have said, but is still required to give final approval to it. I commend my new clause and amendments to the House.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

I commend the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight) for his Bill and for the very sensible amendments that he has brought before the House. I assure him that I am not going to speak at length. I rise at this stage just to congratulate him and to assure him that he has the full support of Her Majesty’s Opposition.

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

May I address some remarks to the amendments in my name, particularly amendments 7 and 8 to clause 1? Like everybody else in the Chamber, I think this is a really good piece of legislation, but it is dependent on the good will of the Government to ensure that something actually happens.

Too often, we pass legislation in this House, and months or years later we find that nothing much has happened as far as the Government are concerned. I give as an example the primary legislation passed in this House to limit public sector exit payments to £95,000. That was contained in the Enterprise Act 2016. The Government have still not implemented that provision. Despite promises more than a year ago that they were about to bring forward regulations, they have not even fulfilled those promises. The most recent information I have is that there will be a write-round before Christmas, and then they may have a consultation on the regulations next year. When the Government say, “Yes, we’re definitely going to do something about this”, as they did when that law was passed, there is quite often a gap between what is said and the reality.

It is against that background that I am seeking, in amendments 7 and 8, to tighten up the requirements on the Government to bring forward the code of practice. Currently, all the Bill says is:

“The Secretary of State must prepare a code of practice containing guidance”.

However, he may not prepare that code of practice for many months or many years, and we should learn from past mistakes.

[Sir Greg Knight]

May I just say to my hon. Friend that so far, throughout this whole process, I have found the Government very helpful, with no sign of procrastination? Indeed, they have been very astute in already seeking views and starting the consultation process, with a working group looking at some of these aspects. I am certain his fears are unfounded.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I hope that is so. One way of establishing that my right hon. Friend is right would be if the Government readily accept amendments 7 and 8. Doing so would reinforce the good will of the Government in ensuring that they will bring forward their parking code in good time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a perfectly fair point, and I have tabled the amendment as a fall-back position—[Interruption.] Not a backstop, no. The amendment is a fall-back in case the Government do not accept amendment 7.

[Sir Greg Knight]

May I say gently to my hon. Friend that if his amendments are accepted, they may cause some difficulty? If the Bill becomes law, the Government will need to go through a procurement process, which will take several months. The arbitrary time limit that he seeks to impose might mean that that procurement process could not properly take place.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

With the greatest respect, perhaps my right hon. Friend’s point is relevant to my other amendments that relate to the time the Act must be passed. I do not see how having to go through a procurement process will interfere with the code of practice, unless the Government propose to delegate the drawing up of that code to some consultant—[Interruption.] My right hon. Friend says that the Government might want to do that. They might also feel the need to comply with the European Union procurement directive on this matter, but that is speculation.

My right hon. Friend has been, not obsessed, but very concerned about the abuse of private parking facilities for a long time, and this is a great opportunity to get legislation on the statute book and get something done. However, I say to my right hon. and hon. Friends who have great trust in the Government, that even if the Minister does not obstruct the Bill and exercises good will, as we have seen with public sector exit payments, there can be a big gap with those good intentions. I think the whole House supported the idea of a £95,000 cap on exit payments, yet two and a half years later there is no sign of that coming into effect, and the latest projection is that it will be sometime next year.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I see the hon. Gentleman is expressing his strong agreement.

[Sir Greg Knight]

I think my hon. Friend is seeing shadows on the wall where they do not exist. The Government have made it quite clear that they are very supportive of the Bill. If I give him an undertaking to harass the Minister and make his life a misery if I think he is dragging his feet, will my hon. Friend agree not to press his amendments?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

I want to speak, very briefly, about new clause 1 and amendment 6. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight) on the progress that his Bill has made, and particularly congratulate him on the new clause and amendment, which clarify the possibilities for a truly independent appeals procedure.

Landowners clearly have a right to decide on reasonable and fair terms for the way in which their land is used, but, as we know from our constituency postbags and email inboxes, in too many cases those terms do not seem fair. The processes for contesting unfairly issued parking tickets are expensive and drawn out, and motorists who are willing to contest a ticket through the courts take a disproportionate risk in the form of a dramatic escalation from the original fine as well as, of course, the legal costs. While we would not wish to prejudge the outcome of the parking code, one possibility that should be considered is the handling of appeals by a single independent person, and the measures allowing that person to be appointed and the funds to come from fees collected from the private operators covered by the scheme are therefore sensible.

[Sir Greg Knight]

Will my hon. Friend also give himself credit? It was partly as a result of the representations that he and others made that I decided to table the new clause and amendments.

[Mike Wood]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that generous intervention, but I fear that it may be a little too generous. The work that he and his team, and Ministers, have done has been key to the Bill.

I will certainly support both my right hon. Friend’s amendments and the Bill’s Third Reading, but I am afraid that I do not find myself able to support amendment 8, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope). I think that we have a responsibility to ensure as far as possible that the provisions in our legislation are enforceable, and I therefore question the wisdom of legislative provisions requiring best endeavours on the part of the Government, although I have no doubt whatsoever that Ministers will at all times exercise such best endeavours. I am particularly reassured by the undertakings given by my right hon. Friend to harry Ministers if that becomes necessary, and I am in absolutely no doubt that he is perfectly capable of making Ministers’ lives a misery, just as he has promised.

--- Later in debate ---

I pay tribute again to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire for all his work. I thank hon. Members on both sides of the House. I am delighted the Government can support the amendments tabled by my right hon. Friend, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch will not wish to press his amendments to a Division, in view of the reassurances I have given.

[Sir Greg Knight]

May I just echo the Minister’s final comment? I, too, hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope), having heard the pledges of support for the Bill and the clear expressions of good will, particularly from Front Benchers, will not press his amendments to a vote.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I am not going to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Greg Knight]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

We have had a good-natured and constructive debate throughout our proceedings, and I wish to thank everyone who has taken part. In particular, but not exclusively, I would thank the Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak), and his predecessor, who first indicated to me that the Government were willing to support this measure. I also wish to thank Sarah McLean and Phillip Dunkley, her predecessor, who managed the Bill in the Department and have been very helpful to me. There are many other people I wish to thank: Steve Gooding of the RAC Foundation; my parliamentary colleagues who served on the Committee; members of the advisory group, which I have also attended and played a part in, who have discussed these matters; and, last, but certainly not least, the official Opposition for their support for this measure, the Scottish National party and my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart)—and he is my hon. Friend—who pledged his support, and my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), who is also my hon. Friend and is a sponsor of the Bill. I am also grateful to the many people throughout the country who have contacted me with stories of how they have been unfairly treated by parking operators under the current voluntary regime.

As I have said, parking is an indispensable part of motoring, as if someone undertakes a journey in a vehicle, they will need to park it. According to the DVLA, there are 38 million vehicles on our roads, approximately 19 million of which will be driven each day and will then undertake at least one parking transaction. The number of penalty notices issued every year from private car parks continues rise, so it is essential that the Bill makes further progress. It is essential that those who park on private land are treated fairly and uniformly.

Motorists should have certainty that when they enter a car park, they are entering into a contract that is reasonable and transparent, and that involves a consistent process. That is not just my view: in 2015, some 78% of respondents to the Department’s discussion paper on private sector off-street parking stated that there were significant problems with how the sector conducts its business. Poor signage, unreasonable terms, exorbitant so-called fines, aggressive demands for payment and opaque appeals processes need properly to be outlawed.

Some private parking operators still deploy tactics that are clearly unacceptable. I have previously referred to an appalling case involving a pensioner called Angela, whose car was ticketed for £70 for exceeding the time permitted in the car park. Angela is 5 feet tall and although she had not initially noticed the parking sign, when she came back to her car she looked for it. It was mounted so high up on a pole that she could not read what it said. That is clearly unacceptable.

Another motorist, Mr O’Keefe, whose case I have also mentioned before, was driving on a private industrial estate, searching for a particular business that he was having difficulty finding. He stopped in an empty lay-by for around 15 seconds to reset his satellite navigation system and was filmed by a passing security van equipped with a video camera. One week later, he received a penalty invoice for £100 for stopping in breach of a sign that was situated not in the lay-by itself, but some distance further along the road. He realised that he had passed it at 30 mph. The parking company accepts that he was parked for only around 15 seconds, but when he used its appeals procedure, he still received threatening letters.

The hon. Member for Warrington South (Faisal Rashid) mentioned one of many cases in which usually pensioners, although not always—some of the cases that have come to my attention have involved pensioners—type one digit of their registration number into the machine incorrectly and the machine does not allow for any correction of the details already entered. The fee is nevertheless paid, but a ticket is issued. So, for many people, parking on private land can be a traumatic and expensive business.

One of the reasons why we need a mandatory code now is that technology is being used to provide evidence. The growing misuse of automatic number plate recognition cameras is a particular worry to me. Cameras ostensibly enable private parking companies to keep a record of exactly how long a motorist has remained in a car park and provide photographic evidence if they exceed the time they have paid for. They say that the camera never lies, but things are not always as they seem.

In one car park at a fast food restaurant in Nottinghamshire that is policed by CCTV, drivers are told they must not enter the car park when the restaurant is closed. However, the signage telling them that is located inside the carpark itself, along with the details of the opening times of the restaurant, making it impossible for a motorist to know before they enter the car park whether they will receive a private parking notice.

At another private car park at a fast food outlet in Enfield, a driver was recently issued with a parking charge notice for overstaying. In this case, the motorist visited the restaurant twice in one day. The ANPR cameras recorded her leaving the car park on the first visit and returning for the second. By using the photos the wrong way around, the car park operators tried to charge her a penalty for a period when she was not even in the car park.

[Henry Smith]

My right hon. Friend is continuing to make a powerful argument. One of my constituents recently parked at a McDonald’s so that he could go in and complain that his drive-thru order was incorrect, and he received a penalty notice. It is not only the small rogue operators that abuse the system; some large companies are also sailing extremely close to the wind.

[Sir Greg Knight]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. These examples are all, clearly, very distressing for the motorist concerned, as are the language and the threats that are often used—a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk). It is, however, important to remember that these companies have no legal power to fine motorists. That is something only the police, local councils and those enforcing railway byelaws can do. As a result, some private parking companies deliberately make their parking charges look very similar to official penalty charge notices. When the police or the local authority issue a fine, it will often be labelled as a “PCN”—a penalty charge notice—and may come in an official yellow cellophane wrapper. Some private companies are now using similar packaging and are even labelling their notices with the word, “PCN”, but this time it stands for parking charge notice. Often the term enforcement is used, but these companies do not have any enforcement powers.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

None of these companies would be able to operate in this way if they were not able to get access to the DVLA database. Why is nothing being done about that?

[Sir Greg Knight]

My hon. Friend will be pleased to know that, when this Bill becomes law, as I hope it will, that is precisely what it will do: it will take away the right of a rogue company to seek vehicle keeper details, thereby putting it out of business.

[Kevin Foster]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the whole purpose of this Bill—I will come on to this in my own speech in a minute—is to create a clear and single source for the code of practice and regulation so that the rogue operators cannot shop around, and also if those operators are not approved, they cannot approach the DVLA? What is at the absolute core of this Bill is stopping this flagrant abuse that is going on.

[Sir Greg Knight]

Indeed that is the case. In reality, these private parking notices are not fines, but invoices. It is the law of contract that governs the relationship between the parking company and the customer, as has previously been said. In other words, they are a demand for payment, because the car parking company says that a driver has breached their terms and conditions. They are private parking notices, and the code should require them to be described as such in future, and I am sure that the Minister will do that and that those companies will not be able to use threatening language or imitate or copy a ticket received from the police.

My Bill is designed to bring these bad practices and bad behaviour to an end. It requires the Government to create a mandatory code of practice across the parking sector to end inconsistent practices and unfair treatment of motorists. It will ensure that the terms on which private parking is provided, including the rights and obligations of each party, are fair, clear and unambiguous. The mandatory code will assure drivers that private car park operators will in future treat them in a reasonable and proportionate manner. If they do not, motorists will have access to a robust and independent appeal service. As I have said to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope), erring car park operators will be put out of business by being denied access to the DVLA database. May I repeat again that I am most grateful to have the support not only of the Government, but of the Official Opposition and the Scottish National party? I say to the House that, today, we can take a big step towards making private parking a fairer and more predictable experience for us all. I commend my Bill to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pete Wishart]

I understand totally the frustration felt by the hon. Gentleman’s constituents who have to park in Perth city centre. I hope that we will both see the amount of correspondence we receive in our mailbags on this issue decrease significantly as a result of the Bill.

Another frustration is that Smart Parking is singularly unresponsive. It does not reply to representations from Members of Parliament or have meetings with us. It does not even start to engage with some of the difficulties we identify with its operation. I wish to commend The Courier newspaper in Perthshire for the campaign it has mounted about the situation. One of the reasons I am down here today as the Member of Parliament is the very fine work that The Courier has done on the situation right across Perthshire. I congratulate it on that.

The Bill means that these companies will no longer be able to get away with that type of behaviour. The days when they could distribute fines like confetti, and when they could confuse and frustrate our constituents with their so-called smart technology and poor signage in order to harvest fines, are coming to an end. The Bill is evidently necessary, because self-regulation has been a resolute failure. The toothless regulators, such as the British Parking Association, are singularly incapable of dealing with the sharper practices of the rogue operators.

The British Parking Association actually lists some of the operators as its members. I had a meeting with it this week, and it gave me a copy of its magazine, which includes a list of all its members, and who should be listed there, in bold letters? It was Smart Parking. The BPA does not have the ability to regulate these companies and has shown no sign whatsoever that it is trying to get on top of some of the sharper practices. The BPA gives a veneer of legitimacy to some of the more outlandish rogue operators by including them in their membership, allowing them to continue to operate. The Bill will oblige operators such as Smart Parking to amend their practices.

I want to mention another practice that I have observed in a retail park in my constituency—this is actually worse than Smart Parking. Two private parking companies operate one huge car park at St Catherine’s retail park in Perth. One company circled the car park with signs telling motorists that, if they had the temerity to leave the part of the retail park where they had used a parking space to access shops in other parts of it, they would be fined. It did that, and it actually took photographs of people leaving their car and going into other parts of the retail park where the facilities are covered by another parking operator. That is what it did, and this is the extent to which some of these private parking operators work. It is not good enough, and it has to end.

I want to say to the Minister that I think what he is doing is fantastic. I have seen some of the details he is going to put into the code of practice and I think they are fantastic. I congratulate him on taking the maximalist approach. I think the Government will approach this by ensuring they will do the utmost they can to protect the motorist from this type of practice. They will put in place a set of regulations that will ensure the best result we can get when it comes to these things.

Among the things I want to make a plea for including in the code of practice—given what I have heard from the Minister, I am pretty certain that he will be looking at them—are equipment and technology. We have to make sure that we get the signage absolutely right and that surface markings are clearly identified and regulated properly. There should be clear and accessible displays of the terms and conditions of the car park. We have already heard examples of when that does not actually work. I know that the Government are looking at consideration periods to allow motorists sufficient time to decide whether they would like to park, and grace periods to allow motorists time to pay and leave the car park. All of this would make a real difference to the parking arrangements in our cities and town.

I believe these parking companies intentionally deploy poor signage. The fact that motorists can be fined simply for entering a car park to look for a space is simply and clearly unacceptable. One of the car parking operators in my constituency actually fines people for entering a zero instead of the letter o. Apparently, the smart technology cannot cater for that, but the operator takes no recognition of that when people appeal on such a basis.

Another of my pleas to be included in the code—the Minister may be able to help us with this one—is capping fines, a feature that I think we all agree must happen. The fact that someone can be fined £140, £160 or £180 for parking a car is simply and utterly absurd. I think, and I hope, that this will be addressed. My suggestion is that fines or parking charge notices in private car parks should be no more than those of the local authority. I think it is fair that there is a uniform cost that people pay in any city or town across the country, and I am pretty certain that we will get to such a place.

I know the Government’s intention is to ensure that what are called PCNs will no longer be able to look like fines from the local authority, and that is really important. Will the Minister tell us how this will be done and how he intends to ensure that that happens? Parking companies have to get away from this confusion with local authority penalty charge notices, and they must do so without using the threatening and intimidating language on these tickets.

What I would like to see on such tickets is the full legal basis on which they can be distributed. As the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire said, this is a contractual arrangement, so they are not fines. If the private parking company is to pursue such a case, it has to take it to the civil court to demonstrate clearly that the motorist has breached the terms and conditions of using the private car park. That should be mentioned on the parking ticket, as issued by the private operator. I think that would be fair.

[Sir Greg Knight]

I would argue that if the parking operator takes an erring motorist to a civil court and it is shown in court that the form of private parking notice was not as laid down in the mandatory code of practice, that should be a case for dismissing the claim.

[Pete Wishart]

I totally and utterly agree. I will come back to access to the DVLA register later in my speech. The key to all this is the DVLA register and ensuring that access to it is predicated on good behaviour. If there are any examples of any of these companies going back to such sharp practices, they should be dealt with effectively and not given access to the DVLA register.

I am particularly delighted that the Government are looking at debt collection issues. I hope the Minister will confirm that the Government will state explicitly that operators cannot sell or assign debt to a third party, as that has to happen. The use of aggressive debt collection companies is probably the most grotesque, threatening and intimidating feature of parking companies’ behaviour, and the part of their operation that concerns me most. I cannot remember which hon. Member mentioned vulnerable customers who receive some of these letters, and what it must do if they receive a letter that tells them that the charge will impact on their credit rating. I think that is illegal—perhaps one of the greater legal minds here will clarify that for me—but that is the sort of thing that those letters include.

Debt collection companies increase the tempo and rate of intimidation and threat. One of my constituents received 10 letters from a range of different companies, with an increasing tone of belligerence and threat. It is right for private parking companies to expect settlement, and to deploy reasonable steps to recover it, but we cannot continue to allow threatening and aggressive letters that demand payment simply for parking a car.

Access to the DVLA is the prize that parking companies require to ensure they can continue to operate. The Government will introduce conditions for access to the DVLA database—perhaps the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire will confirm that—so that proper auditing must be conducted before an operator can join a parking association, and that compliance must be demonstrated. I believe it should be incumbent on parking operators to demonstrate fully that they are a responsible operator in order to get DVLA access, and if there are examples of bad practice, that access must be removed.

I am grateful that the entire Bill covers the whole UK and will be applicable in Scotland. We have agreed a legislative consent memorandum in the Scottish Parliament to ensure that the Bill will apply across Scotland, and it is right that we have uniform measures such as this. I travel down to London and park my car here, just as hon. Members come to beautiful Perthshire to enjoy the fantastic features of my constituency, and it is right for everyone to expect the same level of service and regulation throughout the United Kingdom.

We have seen what this issue does to towns and cities. Parking is an essential requirement for any town or city centre, and the right hon. Gentleman was right to highlight how many trips are made and how many parking experiences are involved as we go from A to B. It can have a devastating effect on local economies if we do not get the issue right, so parking is an important ingredient in our community and the local economy.

In my experience, people are happy to pay for parking—I have never seen anybody suggest that we should get parking for free, and any place where free parking has operated has become a disaster and a free-for-all. We need efficient and effective parking in our towns and cities. People are even happy to pay parking fines if they know they have been wrong and perhaps overstayed, or something happened and they received a fine. What they cannot stand, however, and why we receive so much correspondence and so many complaints in our inboxes, is when the fines are unfair and imposed disproportionately, or when people are pursued by parking companies. Ultimately, it is not beyond our wit to design an arrangement where someone parks a car, makes a payment, and is assured that that is the end of the matter. Needing to ensure a code of practice shows how bad things have become, which is why we must address this issue.

I hope that this is high noon for the parking cowboys. I hope they are brought under control and that I will not have continually to respond to constituents and visitors to my constituency about the behaviour of a certain company. This is a good Bill, and we must now see the code of practice. I know the Minister will ensure that we are involved in designing that code, and when he responds to the debate I look forward to hearing some of the features that will be included. Finally, I congratulate once again my good friend, the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire, on sponsoring this Bill, which I am sure will be successful today.

[Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

It is an absolute pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart). I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight) on finally bringing this madness, quite frankly, to an end with this Bill.

Many right hon. and hon. Members have talked about their constituents’ experiences of receiving unfair parking enforcement notices. I declare an interest because I have experienced the exact same situation. I drove into an underground hotel car park, got my bag out and went into the hotel. A member of the hotel’s staff then told me how much the parking charge was—it was more expensive than the hotel room—but that there was a really good local authority car park around the corner. I took that advice. I got back in my car, drove out and parked in the local authority car park without any problem. However, I received a fine from a parking operator because I had driven in and driven out of the hotel car park five minutes later. I won my appeal, but the hotel company said that it would discipline its member of staff for advising me to park elsewhere. Perhaps that is a private Member’s Bill for another day.

On the border of my constituency, there is a local authority car park. Bizarrely, part of the land is privately owned. People park there because they think they can park for free, just as they can for the local authority part. There is no signage on the part that is privately owned and people do get charged. It is an absolute sting.

[Sir Greg Knight]

My hon. Friend is making a very good point. That is why it is essential that the code of practice has a transaction period that is free. In other words, it would give motorists thinking time between entering a car park and deciding whether or not to stay. In some parts of the country, car parks are situated in conservation areas where, for planning reasons, signage is inside. We need to give motorists time to go in and think, so they can say, “No, this is not for me” and leave without facing a penalty.

[Huw Merriman]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are talking about contract law. If people pick up an item in Boots priced £5 but at the till they are charged £10, many people think they can actually get the item for £5. In fact, under the offer and acceptance of contract law, the contract is formed only at the time of execution. Yet when one goes into a car park, one can be charged before executing the transaction. That has to be a breach of contract law.

On the charging mechanism, there is no proper definition for what is a reasonable and proportionate charge. That is of particular interest, because my former chambers sought a legal opinion from the Royal Automobile Club. The feeling was that the legal definition of reasonable and proportionate would be the cost of administering the charge. What was unusual was that the Supreme Court was asked to decide and found that £85 was reasonable and proportionate. The QC, however, felt that it was several times higher.

Perhaps the Minister could commit to guidance on what the charge should be. If that were to follow local authority charging, which outside London would be £60, I would perhaps stray into another area and say that I do not believe £60 is reasonable and proportionate. Local authorities will say that that is the cost because they do not make any profits, but I believe that they do. I believe that local authorities, time and again, use the money they raise from parking to pay for other areas of their spending. They are not supposed to do that. Barnet Borough Council, which was taken to court and lost, freely admitted that it was levying excessive charges to raise money for other services. No other local authority will ever admit that. There is a permitted amount they can spend from parking revenues on measures that enhance the environment. However, that is so wide and woolly that local authorities can effectively charge in any way they want.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan]

May I join the long list of Members who have been praising the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight) for introducing this Bill? He has had so much praise today that perhaps next Tuesday at the political studies awards, which will be shown on the BBC Parliament channel, he should get an award of his own for introducing this Bill. He will be well supported because I and the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) will be there with him at the awards, playing in MP4 and launching our new single “Do you see me?” I turn to the Bill. I was delighted to sponsor—[Interruption.] CDs are available at £5 on Revolver Records.

I was pleased to sponsor this Bill with the right hon. Gentleman, the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members. Why are we here? If we cannot in this place try to change things for the better for our constituents, there is little purpose in our being here, and this legislation genuinely will improve the quality of people’s lives. If they no longer have the stress and anxiety of receiving one of these fake notices—which is sometimes what they are—through the post, trying to extort money from them for simply going about their daily business, as anybody should be free to do, we will have done a great service to our constituents. If the Bill takes out some of the cowboy operators that every Member in this Chamber knows about through their constituency casework, we will have done a great service to our constituents. If it saves hard-pressed constituents a few quid because they have not been fooled—as is sometimes the case—into paying notices unnecessarily, we will have done them a great service. The right hon. Gentleman in particular and other Members who have contributed deserve credit for that. He does deserve some sort of award for bringing the Bill through. I am sure that will make the right hon. Gentleman extremely popular not only, as he already is, with his own constituents—I can say that as he has a very safe Tory seat—but with motorists and constituents across the country.

I am glad that the Bill was strengthened today through the new clause and the amendments that the right hon. Gentleman introduced, and I am sure that when it travels down the Corridor to the other place their Lordships will want to look at it very closely and perhaps consider strengthening it further in co-operation with the Government. But what is most important is that we get it on to the statute book as quickly as possible because it will make a genuine and positive difference.

In Committee, I mentioned some of the bad practices. I am not going to dilate at length—as Mr Speaker might say—on those issues this afternoon, but some companies, such as New Generation Parking, which I mentioned, do not even respond to correspondence from Members of Parliament on behalf of their constituents. In Committee, I expressed the view, which I know the Minister heard, that any code worth its salt would ensure that any company that failed to respond to a letter of concern from a Member of Parliament on behalf of their constituent would be in breach of that code. It should be a basic requirement on any decent company operating any kind of business that it should respond to a reasonable inquiry from a Member of Parliament within a reasonable time.

[Sir Greg Knight]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right on that point. If a complaint is made about the receipt of a private parking notice, whether by the driver, the registered keeper or the registered keeper’s MP, it should in my view be responded to within 14 days.

[Kevin Brennan]

I am pleased that the right hon. Gentleman has put that firmly on the record. He also responded positively in Committee when I intervened on him on this matter. I am sure that the Minister has heard what he said, and I hope that those who are preparing the code will also have heard that viewpoint being expressed here.

Perhaps we need to ponder further on the practice that is now developing of parking companies using technology to enforce these parking notices. I am concerned not only that they are using camera technology but that, in more and more cases, anyone who parks on private land—for example, the site of St David’s Hospital in my constituency, where there is no charge but we nevertheless have to register when we park—is required to enter their registration number into a machine in order to be deemed to have parked legally or appropriately there. How is the collection of that data being properly overseen? Who is responsible for ensuring that the personal data that is being collected in the form of our constituents’ registration numbers is being properly and legally processed? Further to that, the companies do not often provide a paper receipt from the machine, and people are expected to provide a mobile telephone number or sometimes an email address in order to get a receipt to prove that they have parked legally. Who is responsible for ensuring that the data being collected in that way is being properly processed?

This issue was brought to me by my constituent, Derek Donovan, who has campaigned heavily on issues relating to parking, and to private parking in particular. He has also pointed out that, even when we are not required to provide a registration number, the parking company can go to the DVLA and ask who the owner of a particular vehicle is. The way in which that information is handed out, and to whom, is not being properly co-ordinated by the DVLA—if indeed it is its responsibility to do that. Only a sample of cases is audited, so we cannot be sure that that data is in all cases being released to responsible people and used responsibly and legally. As a result, Derek Donovan has registered a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office, the outcome of which could prove pertinent to the passage of the Bill in another place if we hear from the ICO before the Bill goes through its other stages there.

I do not want to go on at length, because we want to ensure that the Bill completes its passage before we end our proceedings today. I reiterate my congratulations to the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire and I wish it well for its further passage at the other end of this building.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Greg Knight]

With the leave of the House, I once again thank everyone who has taken part. In anticipation of his future help, I thank my noble Friend Lord Hunt of Wirral, who has agreed to take the Bill through the other place.

The message to cowboy parking operators from this Chamber is loud and clear: in future, you play by the rules or you are put out of business. Let us give the Bill our blessing and make parking a much fairer experience.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

Shale Gas Development

Greg Knight Excerpts

Wednesday 31st October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mark Menzies]

My hon. Friend’s point is well made.

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mark Menzies]

Let me make some progress and I will take some more interventions.

As the Minister is aware, the Department recently held a consultation on the proposals to bring applications for non-hydraulic fracturing sites under permitted development rights. In addition, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy simultaneously held a consultation on proposals to bring the production phase of a site under the nationally significant infrastructure projects—NSIP—scheme.

I recognise the issues surrounding the development of shale gas sites. The Government’s concern that it takes local mineral rights authorities far too long to consider planning applications carries some legitimacy. It originally took Lancashire County Council 12 months to consider each of the applications in my constituency. It was a further 15 months after appeal before a decision was made on Preston New Road. Four years on, no decision has been made on the Roseacre Wood site.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Greg Knight]

My hon. Friend is being very generous. Is he aware of the recent comments of the Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), who said that we need

“‘people power’ more than ever”

and that the Government’s civil society strategy will put communities at the centre of decision making? If the Government were being consistent, should local communities not have more say in fracking matters, and not have their voices taken away?

[Mark Menzies]

My right hon. Friend makes a valid point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kit Malthouse]

No, because I want to leave time at the end for my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde.

It is clear from my hon. Friend’s speech that the recent consultations are important and have excited a strong reaction from his constituents, from him and from other hon. Members. I emphasise that no decision has been made whether to bring the proposals forward. The consultations have now closed: the Government are considering the representations made and will issue a response in due course.

The consultations are part of a range of measures to make planning decisions faster and fairer for all those affected by new shale gas development and ensure that local communities are fully involved in the planning decisions that affect them. Hon. Members will know that the Secretary of State has a quasi-judicial role in the planning system, so they will understand that it would not be appropriate for me to comment today on the detail of individual planning applications, on decisions on those applications, or on local plans. Hon. Members will also know that my remit as Housing Minister in relation to shale gas development is focused on planning policy and on delivering related manifesto commitments. However, given that many matters have been raised that are beyond my remit, I undertake to refer them to the appropriate Ministers, not least the Minister for Energy and Clean Growth.

[Sir Greg Knight]

Will the Minister give way?

[Kit Malthouse]

I am afraid that I do not have time.

My hon. Friend the Member for Fylde highlighted the importance of community engagement in the planning process. I reassure him that we remain fully committed to ensuring that local communities are fully involved in planning decisions that affect them, and to making planning decisions faster and fairer. Those are long-standing principles and I am adamant that we should stick to them. However, we understand that communities feel that they are often not consulted closely enough before planning applications are submitted to the local planning authority by developers. As my hon. Friend highlighted, that can lead to opposition to developments and a longer application process.

Engagement with communities at the pre-application stage gives local people a say earlier in the planning process and makes developers aware of issues of importance to the community that may need to be resolved. The planning system in the UK already provides an extensive legislative framework for community involvement, but I believe there is scope to do more. We have therefore published a consultation on whether applicants should be required to conduct a pre-application consultation with the local community prior to submitting a planning application for shale gas development. We believe that that could further strengthen the role that local people play in the process, and we are keen to hear the voices of industry and of communities. The consultation also seeks views on the process of community consultation that should be required and on the stages of shale gas development that should be covered. It closes on 7 January, and I urge everybody to contribute to it.

Let me move on to the potential changes to permitted development rights. Over the summer, we consulted on whether permitted development rights should be expanded to include shale gas exploration development, and on the circumstances in which those proposals might be appropriate. I make it clear that any potential permitted development right granted for shale gas exploration would not apply to hydraulic fracturing operations or to the production stage of shale gas extraction. I also emphasise that any permitted development right covers only the planning aspects of the development; it does not remove requirements under the regulatory regimes of the Environment Agency, the Health and Safety Executive and the Oil and Gas Authority.

It is important to note that all permitted development rights contain specific exemptions, conditions and restrictions to control and mitigate the impact of the development and protect local amenity. Any potential permitted development right for shale gas exploration would be no exception; for example, it could specify limits on the height of any structure, areas where a permitted development right would not apply, or noise and operation controls. The consultation has sought views on that issue.

In relation to the role that local communities and mineral planning authorities can play within the permitted development rights regime, our consultation also sought views on whether MPAs should be able to conduct a prior approval process to consider specific elements of a development before works can proceed. Such a process can include a requirement for public consultation. It would also enable local consideration of key matters.

There is currently no commercial production from any hydraulically fractured shale gas resources in the UK. However, we believe that it is vital to look ahead and understand how best to manage planning permissions for a future state in which shale gas is produced. We therefore also consulted over the summer on whether the production phase of shale gas developments should be brought within the nationally significant infrastructure projects, which many hon. Members have referred to. The consultation particularly sought to understand what the appropriate triggers and criteria could be for including production projects in the NSIP regime.

I emphasise that community engagement is fundamental to the NSIP regime’s operation. Pre-application consultation with the local community and with local authorities is a statutory requirement. Developers are required to consult extensively before an application is submitted and considered, and where the consultation has not been carried out in line with the statutory requirements, the Planning Inspectorate can refuse to accept an application. Local authorities and communities also have the right to be involved during the examination of a project; they can set out their views in written representations, which will then be taken into account in decision making.

Both consultations ran for 14 weeks and closed on 25 October. The Government are analysing the representations made and will publish a response in due course. Should we take forward the proposals, we have committed to conducting further consultations on the detail of the proposed changes. No doubt this debate will provide valuable feedback into that process.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde again for securing this valuable debate. We remain fully committed to ensuring that local communities are properly involved in planning decisions that affect them, and to making planning decisions faster and fairer. As part of that, as I said, we have launched a further consultation today on whether applicants should be required to conduct pre-application consultation with the local community. We have also delivered on our manifesto promises to consult on how best to develop our planning processes for exploration and production of shale gas development while ensuring that communities remain fully involved. We are considering the responses from the consultations and will respond in due course.

Parking (Code of Practice) Bill (First sitting)

Greg Knight Excerpts

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

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to discuss clauses 2 to 11 stand part.

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

Mr Bailey, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship and to see you in the Chair. I have a soft spot for the part of the country that you represent, not least because it made some of the classiest and most desirable cars ever made. My favourite car of all time is the Jensen Interceptor, which was of course made in West Bromwich, so it is appropriate that you are in the Chair today.

I also thank all Committee members, who are not conscripts forced to be here by the Whips, but are here because they have an interest in the subject we are considering. I am most grateful to them. I also place on the record my gratitude to the hon. Member for Makerfield, who is leading on the Bill for the official Opposition. She has apologised for not being here today due to other commitments, but she has made it clear that she fully supports what I am trying to achieve with the Bill. I am most obliged to her for that.

The heart of the Bill is clause 1. It requires the Government to create a new mandatory code of practice across the private parking sector, which will end the inconsistent and unfair treatment of British motorists by rogue parking operators. It is important that motorists know when they enter a car park that they are entering into a contract that is reasonable, transparent and involves a consistent process. Poor signage, unreasonable terms, exorbitant fines, aggressive demands for payment and an opaque appeals process have no place in 21st-century Britain. In short, self-regulation has not worked, which is why the Bill is necessary.

It is necessary because of incidents that have happened to motorists like Mr O’Keefe, who was driving on a private industrial estate looking for a particular retail outlet. He could not find where he wanted to go, so he stopped for 15 seconds in a lay-by to check his satellite navigation settings. He was caught by a passing security van equipped with a camera, and a week later he received a ticket for £100 for stopping in breach of a sign situated further back on the road, which he later realised he had passed at 30 mph. The parking company agrees with his version events—it does not dispute the facts—but is still pursuing him, and he continues to receive threatening letters.

Even homeowners have been hit, like the residents of a Salford block of flats who in just one month had more than 200 tickets issued to them for parking in their own car parks. They were given one day’s notice to display their newly issued permits. The firm responsible posted warning letters through residents’ mailboxes just one day before the introduction of the new scheme. However, many residents were away—some at work, some on holiday—and, despite having a right to park there, their cars were ticketed.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, who is my very good friend, for introducing the Bill and for giving those examples. Often when such problems occur—I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth has faced similar problems—people write to their Member of Parliament. I wrote to one particular company, New Generation Parking, which never bothered to even reply to me, as a Member of Parliament. That kind of arrogance has to stop. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree, as I think he did on Second Reading, that the Minister should make sure that a requirement to respond to Members is in the code of practice?

[Sir Greg Knight]

I would hope that the code of practice would lead to every parking organisation behaving in a business-like and proper manner, and treating motorists fairly. One of the reasons that the Bill does not set out the code of practice is to allow wide consultation and to take into account points such as that just made by the hon. Gentleman, who is my honourable Friend. It is important that we have the widest possible consultation to ensure that the code of practice, when it is crystallised, formulated and produced by the Minister, is as wide and as comprehensive as possible.

If I could mention one other case, a pensioner mis-keyed her number plate into an automated machine when paying for her parking and got one digit wrong. On returning to her car, she discovered that the innocent mistake had resulted in a ticket. On appeal, she was able to point out that it was an honest mistake. She was also able to prove that no other car on the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency database had the registration number that she had keyed in. The parking company still demanded payment. In my view, the Bill is sorely needed.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

As well as examples of poor practice, does my right hon. Friend agree that there are some examples of good practice? I returned to my car last week at the car park I use when I come to London every week and, for the second time, I saw that a parking ticket was stuck to my window. I realised what I had done: I had forgotten to pay the fee when I left for London the previous Monday. I opened the plastic wrapper of the parking ticket and instead of being a parking ticket, it had a note inside saying, “Did you forget?”. So there are examples where people do the right thing. They realised that I was a regular customer of theirs.

[Sir Greg Knight]

I am grateful for that example. My hon. Friend clearly has an unknown admirer, because I doubt that happens on many occasions.

The advisory code of practice is currently being formulated. I am grateful to the Minister, because after the House gave the Bill an unopposed Second Reading, he immediately started consulting on what should be in the code of practice. I have been to some of those consultation sessions to listen to what other people are saying. The code, although not yet ready for publication, is coming along very well indeed.

A summary on the code is available and has been distributed to Members. I will refer to a few aspects of it. There will be obligations on the operators of private car parks in the code, which will include the type of “equipment and technology used”, “clear signage”,

“clear and accessible displays of the terms and conditions”,

and the requirement that there be a transaction period and a grace period.

We need to ensure that a motorist has a choice before committing him or herself to park in a particular car park. With the advent of CCTV cameras, in some cases what happens is that a vehicle registration plate is recorded upon the motorist entering the car park. The motorist then sees the terms that apply to the car park and decides not to park there, but gets a ticket because the car was seen going in and coming out. That cannot be right. There must be a grace period of five or 10 minutes—perhaps even longer in a multi-storey car park—which would allow the motorist to change his or her mind.

[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.

[Mr Goodwill]

Thank you. I myself witnessed a situation in Haworth. There was a notorious parking firm operating using clamps, which have now been outlawed. In that case, a couple who had parked their car went to a nearby shop to enact a small transaction in order to get some change. In that short time, they were blocked in by the parking company vehicle and clamped. They can no longer clamp, but these scoundrels are reverting to other methods, which my right hon. Friend’s Bill will prevent.

[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.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

We had a similar case in Dunstable to the one my right hon. Friend described. The Quadrant car park in the middle of Dunstable was, on some occasions, completely full. Cars that came in, tried to find a parking space and, on seeing no space, drove out again were being issued with tickets. I managed to get that issue resolved after communicating with the company. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that sort of thing should not happen and causes unnecessary distress?

[Sir Greg Knight]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and I am grateful to him for giving that example.

[Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on bringing forward the Bill. I had a similar experience to the hon. Member for Cardiff West, who highlighted the fact that these parking firms rarely engage with MPs. It was only after I named and shamed the parking company in the House that it started to respond to me.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the reasons the Bill is important is the impact this issue has on tourism? As the MP representing Newquay, every week I get letters from tourists who come to Newquay, only to find a fine waiting on their doorstep when they get home. They then write and complain to me, as the MP, saying that they will never come to Newquay again because of the way they have been treated. These measures, therefore, are important in supporting our tourism industry and ensuring that people feel welcome to come to places such as Newquay.

[Sir Greg Knight]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I can concur, as I too represent a tourist area.

[Andrew Selous]

To elaborate on the excellent point made by my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay, the proper functioning of a car park in a friendly, courteous and correct manner is essential to the health of our town centres. If people are scarred by receiving tickets, they will not come and shop, and keep our town centres going and our small businesses in business.

[Sir Greg Knight]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

Turning to the rest of the Bill, clause 3 requires the Secretary of State to review the code from time to time, which I think is necessary, because just as new rules are introduced, new loopholes are found by those who wish to get around the regulations that apply to them. Clause 4 requires the code, when it is finalised, to be published. Clause 5 gives details of the effects of the parking code. I am pleased that it makes it clear that the parking code itself will be admissible in any court proceedings. If a parking company takes a motorist to court and it is then revealed that it failed to follow the statutory code of practice, I would expect the courts properly to take that into account.

Over 19 million journeys every day end at a parking space. This is an issue that affects all voters, regardless of geography, class or age. The Bill seeks to introduce transparency and fairness.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey. It is a pleasure to be here with other members of the Committee today. I pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman, who has done so much work to bring the Bill forward. I am pleased to support him in his effort.

This matter has long been of concern to me. I have looked with interest at all the clauses of the Bill and the draft code that the Minister helpfully sent out. I hope that we can engage with him over the coming weeks and months to ensure that the code is as robust and tough as possible, and that the Bill provides the review that is necessary, as the right hon. Gentleman said, to ensure that further loopholes are not found and that companies do not seek to avoid the code.

My constituency of Cardiff South and Penarth, which neighbours that of my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West, has a huge number of apartment units and is one of the most densely populated constituencies in Wales. There are many multiple apartment blocks that have large parking areas outside and parking is at a premium. Understandably, some restrictions are needed to ensure that the rightful owners or renters of parking spaces—or their visitors—can benefit from the exclusive use of their space.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Doughty]

Absolutely; that is exactly the point. Essentially, it is a money-making enterprise that takes advantage of motorists up and down the country. They operate in a very business-like fashion, which is why I call them roboclaims companies. A lot of the operation is automated. Fines are issues and the companies assume that a certain number of people will pay them. The rest are automatically referred into a legal process involving bailiffs and others, and all the companies are interconnected.

The companies are jamming up parts of our legal system. A number of cases were being processed by Northampton Crown court. When people tried to contact the court to get information about their case, they were unable to get through on the phone lines because there were so many cases.

What discussions is the Minister having with the Ministry of Justice and the Solicitors Regulation Authority, which I met a few months ago to raise concerns about a number of named companies, and which has advised me that it is looking at the practices of those firms and whether they are operating in an appropriate way?

One individual who wrote to me about this said:

“I now pretty much know exactly how the parking companies and in particular the IPC have been running this scam for the past 5 years. Basically both of the appeals processes are a complete and utter sham, (and part of that sham is Gladstones Solicitors itself).”

I should be clear that that is Gladstones Solicitors in Knutsford—other companies might have a similar name. The letter continues:

“The appeals process at Excel/VCS is run by a team of minimum wage office workers with no legal knowledge or experience whatsoever, who are given 6 minutes to read an appeal, and 12 minutes to reply. Most of these replies are obviously cut and pasted from existing templated replies (sometimes referring to issues which are not part of the motorists appeal), with a few lines added in to make it look specific to your claim. The IAS (Independent Appeals Service) which the IPC offers as a second chance appeals service is also very similar, cut and paste answers, dubious legal statements etc… It is claimed by the head of the appeals service (retired Judge Bryn Holloway) that this is a completely independent fair process, it is not.”

The letter mentions two individuals—Will Hurley and Bryn Holloway—and concludes:

“This is a typical example of the clear collusion between the IPC, their members and the IAS…all to the detriment of the motorist”.

When the Minister is putting the code of practice together, I urge him to consider on a cross-Government basis what we can do about roboclaims companies and solicitors’ firms that profit, often in shady ways, off the back of people who are just going about their daily lives and business.

Will the Minister say more about information? A number of examples have been given. Far too often, individuals entering car parks do not see the notices and requirements. Visitors to residential parking places often have no clear information about how to park. Somebody came to the block where I live to do emergency boiler repair work—it needed to be carried out immediately to avoid serious damage—and returned to their van to find that they had been fined. I know of people on emergency medical appointments and carers who have been caught up. It is not appropriate and we need to look at what discretion can be applied in such cases. We also need to look at the information provided at entry.

Lastly, will the Minister say something about the devolution aspect? We are dealing with the DVLA. The Bill makes it clear that it applies to England, Wales and Scotland, but obviously some of these matters cross into devolved Administration territory. I am sure that there would be warm support for a unified approach across the United Kingdom, but what conversations has he had with the Welsh Government and others about how the measure can be applied? People cross borders and travel around the country. Solicitors and the DVLA are obviously UK Government matters, but transport and highways issues are often devolved, and Wales has a different local government system.

[Sir Greg Knight]

The hon. Gentleman has made the very good point that it should be the norm that a motorist can read the sign listing the terms and conditions before entering the car park, but does he agree with this point? On some occasions that will not be possible, such as when the car park is in a conservation area, and that is why the transaction period is necessary—because where a motorist does have to enter a car park to see what the terms are, they should also be able to go out again without incurring a fee or fine.

[Stephen Doughty]

I completely agree. Indeed, I am aware of individuals having been fined just for spending two minutes in a car park and coming out—perhaps they just made a wrong turn. That is of course an absurd situation, so I wholeheartedly support the measures in the Bill. I have looked at the draft code of practice. There are a couple of areas where I would like to make suggestions to the Minister offline, and perhaps the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire, about how we could tighten it up even further. I hope that the Minister will be able to have conversations with us going forward, but I commend the Bill and very much hope that we can deal with these awful companies and their associated legal agents and ensure a fair deal for motorists and residents up and down the country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rishi Sunak]

I do not want to get drawn into that intra-Cardiff debate; I will leave the hon. Gentlemen to conclude that after the Committee. I am happy to look into the issue that the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth mentions. Cardiff is wonderful and is represented here in force, but I think Yorkshire is slightly more represented. Yorkshire Members remind everyone to visit the delights of Yorkshire over this summer.

In conclusion, I thank Committee members for their constructive comments, this morning and on Second Reading. I look forward to working with not only my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire but all Committee members to bring this important piece of legislation on to the statute book as soon as possible, so that we can start to right the wrongs that so many of our constituents have had to endure. This is a fantastic example of Members from all parties working together to solve a practical problem that will make a meaningful difference to people’s everyday lives.

I commend the Bill to the Committee.

[Sir Greg Knight]

I thank all colleagues who have contributed to the debate. Each has brought to bear some of their and their constituents’ experiences of unfair practices, which emphasises that the Bill is overdue and necessary. I also thank the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire, who cannot be here because of other proceedings but who has indicated his support on behalf of the Scottish National party, so the Bill really does have all-party support. I thank the Minister for his diligence, help and assistance.

I commend the Bill to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 1 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 2 to 11 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Question proposed, That the Chair do report the Bill to the House.

[Sir Greg Knight]

May I thank you, on behalf of the Committee, for your superb chairing of our proceedings, Mr Bailey? I also thank you for your comments before the Committee started that, if you were not chairing it, you would like to be a Committee member, because you support what we are trying to do. I am most grateful for that. However, I accept that the Chair is totally impartial.

[Kevin Brennan]

I know that my friend, the right hon. Gentleman, would also like to thank the Clerks, the Doorkeepers and everybody else responsible for looking after us during this lengthy proceeding.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly to be reported, without amendment.