Hospital Car Parking Charges

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

My hon. Friend has put a very important point on the record. It illustrates again that when management thinks about patients rather than managing the accounts, it can come up with solutions that are good for the patient.

We have all had many representations from individual patients about the costs they have incurred personally. We have also heard from pressure groups. In particular, Macmillan has highlighted that cancer sufferers have found parking charges to be a very costly element of their treatment, adding significantly to the financial strain for people who are going through prolonged periods of treatment. As I have said, some of them are losing considerable amounts of earnings during that process. We need to be making it easier for them to get better and overcome their debilitating illness.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) and for Harlow (Robert Halfon) on securing this debate. Of course, it is patients and their families who are the main people affected by this particular issue, but does my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock agree that surely it is wrong that NHS staff, who do such an amazing job in all our hospitals, are in many cases, particularly in my area, required to pay for the parking in the area where they work, thereby reducing their own salary?

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

My hon. Friend raises a very important point. One objection to our campaign on parking charges is that somehow the money would be taken away from health care, but I do not believe that is the case at all. He mentions staff. In order to get the best conditions for care, we need to make it easier for people to go out and work, and access to cheap parking is very much a part of that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), I would like my trust to review its approach to parking charges at Hexham hospital and in the region.

I will start my short speech by pointing out that I have probably spent more time in hospitals as an acute patient than virtually any other Member of the House, and I have certainly had my life saved on two separate occasions. More particularly, I have seen on the many occasions that I was visited by family and friends the degree of worry in the wards that I was in, whether with a brain tumour or as an injured jockey. The last thing people need at such times is to worry about parking and similar matters. That is not the right approach, and it is wonderful that the House is debating the issue today—as always, full praise is due to my hon. Friends the Members for Harlow (Robert Halfon) and for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price).

The direction of travel is clearly good, with the Secretary of State’s announcements over the summer, today’s discussion, and the sharing of innovative ideas. The hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) made a fair point about the alternative ways that such issues can be approached, and we all agree that at times our trusts seem not to talk to each other to develop an alternative way forward.

Northumbria NHS Trust is an outstanding trust with exemplary staff and quality service, and Hexham hospital charges are well below those of many trusts. There is free disabled parking and concessions for some patients and visitors. It has got rid of the dreaded ParkingEye that so many people complained about, but problems still remain and there are complaints not only from individual constituents but from the staff who are effectively required to use the hospital car park if they wish to get to their job. That cannot be right. I endorse all the comments about how we need to review that and change the system.

In Northumberland, we have managed to remove local authority parking charges, so a visitor to Hexham is entitled to free parking. As a consequence, the one argument the town centre hospital had for charging has disappeared. We therefore have the bizarre situation where it is free to park in the town, but expensive to park at the hospital. The Network Rail station, Marks & Spencer and the hospital are the only three organisations charging for parking in the local area, whereas in the town it is now free.

Sadly, the trust is not prepared to reduce or cancel the parking charges. We can all understand why parking charges should be imposed where a hospital is in a town centre and where, sadly, members of the public would use free parking to avoid a Northumberland county council car park or alternative private cark park—there is ample evidence for that—but we need to balance the two arguments to ensure a flexible approach. Then we can have an individual policy for the town.

In rural Northumberland, well over 90% of journeys to the hospital are made by car. Mr Deputy Speaker, you have kindly granted me a debate on rural transport in Northumberland, so you know that I shall be raising the absence of bus, train and alternative provision to Northumberland town centres this Wednesday evening at 7.15 pm. Currently, however, the harsh fact is that those journeys have to be made by car. As I have indicated, we have received many complaints from members of staff and constituents, and I endorse the favourable comments about the Macmillan report on the treatment of cancer patients and the findings of the charity Bliss which my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow outlined so eloquently.

There is a cost to this process, but if we all stopped using hospital car parks, hospitals would not benefit from the charges, so, bizarrely, unless the trusts act, all of us will attempt to boycott them and use alternative means, in which case they will be the ones facing the costs. Trusts need to review this policy in the light of their individual circumstances—town centre parking and other parking facilities in their areas—and ultimately change it, because this policy is wrong.