Overseas Electors Bill
Debate between Julian Knight and Philip Davies
Philip Davies
I do not accept that that is a necessary extension. We are dealing with new clause 1 of this Bill, and if somebody wanted to extend it to something else, they would have to find a Bill in which to do that, and argue for that extension. That would be a matter to consider at that time, and it has nothing to do with this Bill. My hon. Friend could be right—I do not say he is wrong—but I ask Members to consider the new clause in the context of this Bill, rather than thinking about its repercussions on other legislation
Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)
My hon. Friend is generous, as ever, in taking interventions. Is it the case that the earlier people register, the less of a bottleneck and a jam there is, and the more likely we are to ensure a robust system, and that those who register are bona fide and legitimate? We have seen in more recent elections that people voted in one place when they should have been in another.
Philip Davies
I am delighted to be scoring more runs with my hon. Friend than I did with my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien), and I welcome his intervention.
Julian Knight
I thought earlier during my hon. Friend’s speech about the GDPR issue, which our hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien) has raised, but the truth of the matter is that, throughout government, people find ways to comply with GDPR. I do not think it is beyond the wit of registration officers to find a way for my hon. Friend’s new clause 1 to be operable within the confines of GDPR. We should not fear GDPR in that respect. We should always try to find ways to work within it, but at the same time it should not stop us making law.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is right. The other point is that if we find that the new clause is useful but is being stymied by the general data protection regulation, there would be nothing to stop this House amending it to make it easier for the new clause to operate, so I agree with him. I do not think we should fear doing anything because there might or might not be a problem further down the line. If there is, we can deal with it when it appears.
Philip Davies
I hope that he will accept that.
New clause 4 is again one of the hon. Member for City of Chester’s greatest hits. He proposed this in Committee, where he made these points:
“It is essential that there is appropriate evaluation and investigation of the effects of passing the Bill on the number of registered electors in each constituency. We must have a clear idea about the sheer volume of people we are enfranchising in order to establish the necessary procedure to register and deal with the inevitable administrative bedlam that will result from the change.”––[Official Report, Overseas Electors Public Bill Committee, 17 October 2018; c. 69.]
I want to cite some of the figures that the hon. Gentleman gave during that debate, because they were very interesting. He said:
“Under the 15-year rule, the number of registered overseas voters in the June 2017 general election reached just over 285,000, surpassing the December 2016 record. The Government have estimated that that is about 20% of eligible expats under the current 15-year limit, giving a potential electorate of around 1.4 million. Indeed, the figure has the potential to increase fivefold with the passing of the Bill. The number of overseas voters registering to vote has risen exponentially over the last 10 years and continues to rise. That can be attributed to the general increase in awareness by overseas voters about voter registration. Until 2015, the number of overseas voters registered to vote had never risen above 35,000.”––[Official Report, Overseas Electors Public Bill Committee, 17 October 2018; c. 70.]
I thought that that difference was quite telling. What made the seismic difference was the EU referendum in June 2016. I mentioned earlier the amount of work that was done in embassies around the world to try to encourage people to register for that referendum.
New clause 4 therefore has merit if we are to deal with the scale of the increase in numbers that we are talking about. I am not saying that I would press it to a vote, but I certainly think that it has merit and requires further consideration today, because the points that the hon. Member for City of Chester made in that debate were striking and something that we should all consider.
Julian Knight
That is a very interesting point, and I am quite staggered that 7 million people overseas could be enfranchised long term if the 15-year rule falls. That is very telling. Is it not true, in terms of my hon. Friend’s reflection on the EU referendum, that when the establishment wants to do something it will put its shoulder to the wheel and get it done? Is it not the case that with this Bill, should it come about, we will find a way to overcome any logistical issues?
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is amazing what can be achieved when the Government and the powers that be set out their stall.
The point that the hon. Member for City of Chester was making, as I see it, was that this measure could make a big difference to elections in this country and ultimately elections could, and might well be, decided in future by people who do not live here. Is that something we want to see? People might well be happy for that to happen, but I brought the new clause back after the hon. Gentleman tabled it in Committee because I think that the people should at least properly consider whether they want to put in place legislation that could in effect mean that the deciding votes in elections in this country are cast by people who do not live here. What might people living here think about that? We need properly to consider it and to ensure that we are content before we go ahead with it. I brought the new clause back so that people could be aware and could think about whether that was what they really wanted to happen with elections in this country.
Hospital Parking Charges (Exemption for Carers) Bill
Debate between Julian Knight and Philip Davies(9 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Philip Davies
We are already slightly all over the place with this Bill, and now the hon. Lady has drawn attention—probably not intentionally—to what a dog’s dinner it is. We are already arguing about how many carers there actually are, but in fact the Bill will apply to only a few of them, and the hon. Lady has just suggested that the vast majority will not even benefit from it. The hon. Member for Burnley has said in the past—and I may say more about this later—that the Bill is just a starting point, and that she intends to extend it further and further, so we have no idea where we may end up.
Julian Knight
The Bill does not apply only to those who receive carer’s allowance. It also applies to those with an underlying entitlement to carer’s allowance, which brings a great many more people into the net.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend has made a perfectly valid point. How the hospitals are likely to know who has an underlying claim to carer’s allowance is something that we may explore at greater length as the debate continues.
Philip Davies
If I might be able to make some progress, which I am always keen to do on these occasions, I will come later to the situation at Torbay, because it is very interesting and does not make the case for this Bill as the hon. Lady seems to think.
It has also been interesting to learn from these exchanges that whereas not that long ago during the passage of a different Bill the Labour party claimed it very much supported the principle of localism—that it was the champion of localism and devolution and it wanted to jump on that agenda—today, early on in this Parliament, when we actually have localism in action, where local hospitals can make decisions which they think are in the best interests of their local residents and local patients, the Labour party goes back to type and wants to centralise everything.
Julian Knight
My hon. Friend is making an important point about how this ties in with the devolution agenda. We are going headlong towards a combined authority in Greater Manchester, which will be in charge of the NHS in the area. Presumably that will mean that it will be in charge of hospital parking charges, and will be able to do many things, including giving discounts to carers, if it deems that necessary.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is right, and my understanding was that the Labour party in Manchester was in favour of devolution and it had agreed to the devolution package the Chancellor had proposed. I suspect it could not ever have got off the ground if the Labour party in Manchester had not been supportive of it. The whole purpose of devolution is to allow local decision making on things such as the NHS, and presumably as part of that car parking charges within the NHS, yet it seems that at the first step the Labour party wants to take the whole devolution agenda from under the feet of the locally elected people before it has even started.
Philip Davies
I would have more sympathy with the principle of the Bill if it wanted to make the Government’s guidance mandatory, because there would be some logic to that. Clearly, a whole range of people struggle, but just to pick out one group at random seems iniquitous.
Julian Knight
My hon. Friend is making an interesting case about other groups and how the Bill picks out carers individually. Many people do not travel to hospital by car but by public transport or by using subsidised bus services. The Bill does not cover them in their time of need, so will my hon. Friend reflect on the fact that the Bill is purely for car owners who are generally in the higher income groups?
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend makes a good point. The Bill applies only to car parking charges, and many carers cannot afford a car, let alone car parking charges. They travel faithfully on a probably more tortuous journey to hospital by public transport. If the Bill were to be passed, people who could afford a car would get their parking charges reimbursed but those who cannot afford a car and have to travel by public transport would not get their public transport costs reimbursed. Clearly, there is something not quite right about that. My hon. Friend makes a good point. While we are on that subject—I may come back to this as well—I should have thought that we were trying to deter people from using a car. Some people have to use a car, as he said, and nobody argues with that, but it would be perverse to give people an incentive to use a car rather than using public transport if they could. My hon. Friend has made a good point as to why the Bill would give people a perverse incentive to use a car rather than public transport.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. The hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South made the point that people find it very stressful to have to pay after they have been to visit a relative in hospital, but as my hon. Friend rightly points out, it is probably even more stressful if they cannot find a car parking space at all. We need to bear that in mind.
Julian Knight
In my constituency, one of the reasons hospital parking charges were introduced in the first place was that the car park of the hospital, which is very close to the town centre, was being used at weekends by shoppers leaving their cars, and so patients, carers and those with urgent medical needs were unable to get into it. Will my hon. Friend reflect on that point?
Philip Davies
I was about to come on to that point, and my hon. Friend makes it very well. One of the essential reasons for hospitals charging is that, particularly near town centres, people use the free parking and then go and spend all day at work. That does not help any carer who is trying to find a parking space. That is why it is so important that hospitals have to be able to use charges in a way that suits their particular local circumstances to ensure that visitor and staff parking is always available when it is needed. Without their being able to make some restrictions on a local basis, there will be nothing to prevent people from using the site as a free car parking area.
I have no idea—perhaps the hon. Member for Burnley could tell me—whether parking would be free for carers only when they are coming to the hospital as a carer or free for them all the time because they are a carer. That is not clear in the Bill. I am looking for assistance from some of my more learned colleagues, but it appears that nobody knows the answer to that question, including the promoter of the Bill, so I will leave it there as something that does not seem to have been thought through.
This issue applies not only to hospitals close to town centres, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight), but to those that are close to railway stations, where there is also a large demand for parking. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) mentioned Scotland earlier. This issue has arisen at hospitals in Wales and Scotland since they scrapped car parking charges. The NHS Confederation said:
“The NHS Confederation represents 99 per cent of NHS trusts in England. On behalf of our members we support the right for NHS trusts to determine their own car parking and transport arrangements within current regulations and good practice”.
That is what is under threat today. A response from the House of Commons Library states:
“There is nothing specifically stopping hospitals from giving concessions or free parking to carers or other groups—although all public bodies need to operate within the framework of the Equalities Act—i.e. avoid discrimination against protected groups. Decisions on hospital car parking charges are a matter for the NHS body running the car park.”
Hospitals clearly have the flexibility to offer a free parking policy for carers—as the hon. Member for Burnley said, some have already done so—but it is not right that we as a House should force them to do so. Hospitals that do not already have a free car parking policy for carers have clearly assessed the situation and chosen not to, for whatever reasons. There may well be good reasons that we are better not second guessing. If she feels so strongly about this issue, perhaps her time would be better spent lobbying her own hospital trust in Burnley to persuade it of the argument for giving carers free parking, as opposed to coming along here and trying to impose it everywhere else when she has not even persuaded her own hospital in Burnley to do it.
Hospital parking charges are a key part of income generation. Hospitals may choose not to give free parking because car parking on healthcare sites is an income- generation scheme under the income-generation powers that enable NHS bodies to raise additional income for their health services. NHS bodies are allowed to charge for car parking, and to raise revenue from it as an income-generating activity, as long as certain rules are followed. Income-generation activities must not interfere to a significant degree with the provision of NHS core services. It is also crucial to note that these income- generation schemes must be profitable, because it would be unacceptable for moneys provided for the benefit of NHS patients to be used to support other commercial activities. It has to be the other way round; the commercial activity has to support the core NHS services. The profit made by income-generation schemes has to be used to improve health services. That is absolutely crucial. The money has to go towards that particular purpose.
The Department of Health’s “National Health Service Income Generation—Best Practice: Revised Guidance on Income Generation in the NHS”, which was published in February 2006, clearly sets out that income generation must be profitable. Paragraph 30.10 states:
“For a scheme to be classed as an Income Generation scheme, the following conditions need to be met: the scheme must be profitable and provide a level of income that exceeds total costs.”
It then goes on at great length, but that is the key part, so I will not bore everybody by reading the whole paragraph. The document goes on to say that
“the profit made from the scheme, which the NHS body would keep, must be used for improving the health services”,
and
“the goods or services must be marketed outside the NHS. Those being provided for statutory or public policy reasons are not income generation.”
Therefore, if exemptions are made for other people, that must be taken into consideration when calculating the estimated annual revenue and whether it will make a profit or a loss.
I fear that if the hon. Lady’s Bill is successful, the consequence will be not just exemptions for carers—worthy sentiment though that may be—but, I suspect, higher car parking charges for everybody else who visits the hospital so that it can protect its revenue stream. The hon. Lady did not mention that and she has not been open about it, but the chances are that that will be the consequence of the Bill. Everyone else will have to pay more in order to meet the NHS’s criteria for income generation. That means that all of the people the Government think should get a concession from car parking charges, including people with disabilities and those who visit hospital regularly, will not be exempt, but will have to pay more as a consequence of this Bill. Does the hon. Lady really want to tell all disabled patients who go to hospital that, in order to pay for her Bill, they are going to have to pay more to park at their local hospital? If that is the message she wants to send, I think she is rather brave. I would not want to tell my disabled constituents that they are going to have to pay more. It seems to me that that would be an inevitable consequence of the Bill. That is why we cannot pass legislation based on a worthy sentiment; we have to think through the consequences. [Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr Mahmood) wants to intervene, I would be very happy to give way to him.
Philip Davies
The hon. Gentleman was chuntering—I misinterpreted him. I thought he had something worth while to say, but clearly not.
Given the guidelines, I would be interested to know what information the hon. Member for Burnley has obtained to determine an impact assessment for the scheme in question to be rolled out nationally. Indeed, during my research on the Bill, the House of Commons Library—which, as ever, I praise for its fantastic work—confirmed to me that
“no central data is collected on NHS hospital car parking charges or concessions”.
It therefore seems to me that the hon. Lady could not possibly have done an impact assessment, because no assessment has been made of the current impact.
Where is the money made from car parking charges spent? Obviously, the provision of car parking incurs overheads, including for the running of it and for maintenance costs. If no charges were imposed, the maintenance costs would have to be sourced from elsewhere, at the risk of diverting funds from patient services. There is also the cost of monitoring the car park, to make sure it is being used for its intended purpose. That money has to be recouped, and it is recouped through car parking charges.
Julian Knight
The contracts for hospital parking maintenance costs in my constituency are signed by the Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust, and some of those costs, such as those for drawing lines and for preparing machines and barriers, are very high indeed. If this Bill comes to pass, would that not mean that that money would potentially have to come directly from healthcare budgets, because no profit would be being made?
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is right. There is a considerable cost involved in maintaining car parks, including setting them up in the first place and drawing the lines. The Bill would have a number of potential consequences. The maintenance money would have to come from patient care and there would be less provision for car parking spaces. Maintenance would not be carried out and the spaces would not be monitored, so there would be no point in carers being exempt. Everyone may as well be exempt, because no one would be checking whether they had paid to park their car. There would be a number of potential consequences, all of which would be adverse.
Given that foundation trusts are independent bodies, they are not covered by the Department of Health guidance on income generation. Their non-NHS income is governed by a board of governors who are drawn from NHS patients, the public, staff and stakeholders. Non-NHS income streams need to demonstrate concretely how new revenue from sources outside the NHS will support the principle purpose of a foundation trust, which is to provide goods and services for the NHS.
The hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) has not stayed to hear me talk about my local NHS trusts, despite encouraging me to do so. Back in August, one of my local NHS trusts, Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said:
“We are determined to keep car parking charges as low as possible, this is the first time in 11 years that rising costs and growing pressure to create extra parking has forced us to increase them.
Our car parks are self-funding, ensuring we do not have to divert money away from frontline services and patient care. Demand for 24 hour parking is low and it is normally used under exceptional circumstances. We will review 24 hour parking if it becomes problematic for our visitors. Reduced parking rates will continue for people frequently attending outpatient clinics and those visiting relatives who are gravely ill or having an extended stay in hospital. Parking for people with disabilities will remain free of charge”.
That strikes me as a perfectly reasonable policy.
The whole point of the governance of foundation trusts is that it is not some NHS baron who decides these things. Foundation trust governors are drawn from NHS patients, the public, staff and local stakeholders. They are the best people to determine their local hospital’s car parking policy. Members of Parliament and Ministers should not dictate to them what is best for them. That is why I am very happy with what my local NHS trusts are doing. I am sure they would like to go further if they could, but there is always a balance to be struck.
During my discussions about this Bill with my local hospital—I did contact my local hospital—it said:
“It must be acknowledged that there is a cost of operating and maintaining the Foundation Trust’s car parks. If car parking income is reduced because of the introduction of the new legislation then the balance would have to be met from elsewhere. Ultimately, this could mean higher charges for other car park users or funding diverted from budgets that could potentially impact on patient services.”
That is a very serious concern. A one-size-fits-all central policy is simply not appropriate for regulating hospital car parking charges and it could have those severe unintended consequences.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Burnley on being a clear champion for the NHS and I praise and support her for it. Time and again she is quoted as being extremely worried about staffing and patient care in the NHS, particularly in her local area, but it is ironic that her Bill could have serious implications for staffing and patient care in local hospitals.
How would the Bill be enforced? That is one of the key practicalities involved. One of the main concerns of many local trusts will be how on earth it will be implemented. I must say that the hon. Lady was quite light on that.
The nearest comparison to a group of individuals being given free parking is the free parking scheme for people with disabilities. The scheme is monitored by ensuring that people using a disabled parking space have a blue badge. That in itself is not as easy as it might seem. I speak as somebody who, in my many years working for Asda, was responsible for our facilities for disabled customers. I also had to ensure we had a system to protect the parking bays for use only by disabled customers. That is one of the biggest problems. I suspect that if hon. Members ask car parks what their biggest problem is, they would all say that it is trying to protect the spaces for disabled blue badge holders to make sure that they can use them when they need them and that the spaces are not abused by other people who want to get nearest to the entrance or whatever. I know that from my own experience.
That scheme uses the blue badge, but it is not all that easy. People go on holiday, break their leg, get themselves crutches and then they are—albeit temporarily—disabled, but do retailers have to tell them, “Actually, you’re not disabled, even though you’re on crutches”? Some discretion must be allowed, otherwise the whole thing becomes a farce and the staff who have to monitor the scheme can be put in very difficult situations, including dealing with conflict. We should always bear in mind that, ultimately, somebody has to enforce such policies. If policies are not very clear, or always have exemptions and shades of grey, somebody somewhere will be in the line of fire. They have to implement the policy, and we must make it as clear and as fair as possible for them, and allow them sufficient discretion. We need discretion in any car parking policy or any policy that involves dealing with customers.
I do not know what the hon. Member for Burnley envisages. Does she expect all carers entitled to free car parking to be issued with a badge for a similar purpose? If so, I am not entirely sure what the cost would be of developing, creating and distributing the new badge, or how everyone to be issued with a badge would be identified. Perhaps she does not envisage having such a system. Perhaps she thinks that car parks could be fitted with automatic number plate recognition technology to ensure that when a car goes into the car park, the number plate is recognised and no charge is therefore allocated. That can of course be successful. We tried such a scheme at Asda to protect disabled parking bays. The problem is that it is extremely expensive to introduce. Another problem is that when a carer goes into a car park for the first time and has not registered, they get clobbered like everybody else. They have be go to the hospital to register, so although it is all right for subsequent visits, they fall foul of the rules on their first visit.
Julian Knight
I have discussed with my local hospital trust aspects of free parking and what we can do to help people. One point mentioned to me is that such a scheme might take people off front-line care services, or at least off front-line administration services, when they are asked to step in and help with the parking or to administer a parking scheme such as the one proposed in the Bill.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is right. There will, as an inevitable consequence of the Bill, be issues about preserving the integrity of the spaces.
I am not sure, but perhaps the hon. Member for Burnley intends to ask hospitals to provide designated spaces for carers to use, in the same way that there are designated spaces in car parks for people with disabilities or for parents with toddlers. If so, how many spaces should the hospital provide? There are rules and guidance on how many spaces there should be for disabled customers. From my memory of working at Asda, I think the rule is that 4% of all the spaces in a car park plus four should be set aside for disabled customers. That was certainly the situation when I was at Asda. Does she envisage a similar system—a number of designated spaces for carers, but when they are full they are full?
Does the hon. Lady expect someone to police the car park at all times to ensure that carers use the right spaces and that no one is charged unfairly? I do not know what system she wants. Perhaps she envisages a system of reimbursement, with carers paying for parking normally, just like everybody else, and then going into the hospital to demonstrate that they are a carer and have their costs reimbursed. That may require 24-hour-a-day, constantly manned reimbursement desks to be open at the hospital. Does she envisage that?
Philip Davies
Whether it is or not, Mr Deputy Speaker, I will move on.
I asked my local hospital how many carers already use its car parking spaces, which very much is our concern today. It replied:
“The Foundation Trust is currently unable to determine how many carers use the designated hospital car parks. It would therefore be difficult to assess the potential impact on car parking revenue”.
That goes some way towards answering the question my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch asked. The honest answer is that we do not know what the impact will be on any particular hospital. My local hospital certainly does not know.
Julian Knight
My hon. Friend is making the important point that his foundation trust does not know how many carers park at the hospital. I have asked similar questions and have not received any answers. That shows that we do not know how much the Bill would cost the country if it were put in statute.