Hospital Car Parking Charges

Julie Cooper Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Julie Cooper (Burnley) (Lab)]

I am pleased to have the opportunity to respond to this debate on a very important subject. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) for bringing this subject forward. He and I agree on most aspects of the issue, and he has campaigned passionately on it for so many years.

[Robert Halfon]

As you have.

[Julie Cooper]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that comment.

I am grateful to Members on both sides of the House because it seems that there is much agreement on the matter. It is heartening to hear Members mentioning—and fully understanding—its impact on patients, visitors, carers and NHS staff. My hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) mentioned the effect on the greater transportation system.

The hon. Members for Telford (Lucy Allan) and for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), and my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) made powerful speeches, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Thelma Walker), who accused the system of profiteering. My hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) made an important point on behalf of staff. The right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) referred to the burden of having to pay to go to work. My hon. Friends the Members for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin) and for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) mentioned personal family issues when people are taken away from a sick family member’s bed to replenish parking meters.

No one likes to pay to park, but to pay to park at a hospital really does add insult to injury. We are not talking about a luxury experience, a shopping trip or a fun night out; we are talking about paying to visit a hospital. People are not queuing up to go to the hospital café, as the hon. Member for Telford pointed out. No one goes to hospital because they want to. People go because they are sick. They go for treatment, for surgery, for chemotherapy and for kidney dialysis, and they go to visit loved ones. In short, hospitals are not destinations of choice: people go because they must. I am quite shocked that it is free to park at Trafford shopping centre yet I must pay to park at my local hospital.

During the past three years, I have spent hours and hours visiting my mother in hospital. I have often gone backwards and forwards two or three times a day, juggling hospital visiting around work and other commitments. I have to say that it has all been very distressing. As I leave the hospital each night worried, wondering what tomorrow will bring, the last thing I want to do is to stand outside in the cold queuing to pay for my parking. This burden is, of course, in addition to the actual cost.

Some hospital car parks demand payment in advance, as we have heard. This brings its own set of problems, because patients and visitors have to judge how long each hospital visit will last, and then often have to leave the ward or treatment room to feed the ever-hungry parking machine. Of course, running to and fro between the car park and the hospital is impossible for someone hooked up to a dialysis machine. Many dialysis patients suffer with multiple conditions and are unable to work, so paying to park three times a week for dialysis sessions that each last four to five hours is a real financial burden for them and their carers.

Paula in my constituency relies on the weekly £62.70 carer’s allowance she has received since she was forced to give up work to provide round-the-clock care for her husband, who suffered a severe stroke. He has been in hospital for the past month. She has visited every day, often staying for two to three hours to support and comfort him. This costs her more than £20 a week. By the time she has paid for her petrol, half her carer’s allowance is gone.

We have a national health service that was set up to be free at the point of delivery. It was established in 1948 to make healthcare a right for all, but that is not what is happening. Even though hospital car parking is free in Scotland and Wales, here in England, hospital users are forced to pay often extortionate rates, with charges varying from £1.50 an hour to £4 an hour. We are charging the chronically ill, the terminally ill, and their carers and visitors. More than half of all people over 76 have conditions that require regular hospital appointments, and hospital car parking charges are an extra burden for them and their families. The Alzheimer’s Society reports that patients with dementia stay five to seven times longer in hospital than other patients aged over 65. Hospitals can be frightening places for people with that condition. They rely on family and carers visiting them to give support. Parking charges are an extra burden that these families could well do without.

The Patients Association has commented:

“For patients, parking charges amount to an extra charge for being ill…Hospital appointments are often delayed or last longer than expected, so even if you pay for parking you could end up being fined if your ticket runs out. Visiting a hospital can be stressful enough without the added concern of whether you need to top up the parking.”

Macmillan Cancer Support says:

“The core principle of the NHS is to provide free healthcare for all at the point of access. But sadly some cancer patients in England are paying extortionate hospital car parking charges in order to access treatment for a life-threatening illness.”

Bliss, the charity for babies born prematurely or sick, says in its “It’s not a game: the very real costs of having a premature or sick baby” report that these charges can contribute to the financial burden that many families face when their babies need neonatal care.

In the midst of all this misery, the average hospital trust is making £1 million of profit from car parking charges, and several hospitals the length and breadth of the country report profits of over £3 million. Last year, NHS hospitals made a record £174 million from charging patients, visitors and staff. In addition, 40 trusts report additional income from parking fines.

Some people point out that public transport is an option that avoids parking charges. Public transport provision has been reduced in response to funding cuts, but even where it exists, there are many for whom it is not an option. Some patients are too unwell or too frail to travel on a bus. Others, including cancer patients attending for chemotherapy, have reduced immunity and must avoid contact with the general public.

[Sir Mike Penning]

The hon. Lady is making a compelling case, as have most Members. Public transport has its place for out-patients and so on, where it is available, but imagine someone going into labour and saying, “Can I wait for the No. 2 bus, please?” This is farcical. We need car parks to be there for people when they need them, rather than being a cash cow.

[Julie Cooper]

I entirely agree and thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention.

Patients and carers are often balancing work and other commitments, and have tight time schedules that preclude public transport. I have spoken to the parents of a terminally ill child who left their child’s bedside only to tend to the needs of their other children. They do not have time to wait for a bus.

No discussion of hospital car parking charges would be complete without a consideration of their impact on NHS staff, which Members have spoken about eloquently. These staff pay to go to work and are still not even guaranteed a space. That can lead to them being late for the beginning of their shift. Some hospital staff whose shift overruns because they are tending to patients’ needs face fines for overstaying their parking time. That is clearly no way to treat our health professionals. It is no wonder we face a crisis in recruitment and retention.

Government action to date has been limited to a series of recommendations on hospital car parking. Currently the Government recommend that hospital car parking charges should not be applied to blue badge holders, carers, visitors of relatives who are gravely ill, and patients who have frequent out-patient appointments. In reality, those recommendations count for very little. In fact, the trend is to increase car parking charges and to reduce the number of those who are exempt. Many hospital trusts have even begun to charge blue badge holders.

It is not good enough for the Government to abdicate responsibility. This is a matter of principle. Scandalously, Conservative Members have previously argued in the Chamber that the NHS needs the income from parking charges. I have no doubt that the NHS needs this revenue, as it is common knowledge that the service has been starved of funding since 2010, but is it right that we fund our health service by taxing the sick?

Labour Members will have none of this. I am proud that the next Labour Government will ensure that our NHS is properly funded and will abolish car parking charges at all hospitals. To pay for that, we will increase the premium tax on all private health insurance policies. Crucially, no hospital will lose funding as a result of our policy.

In 2015, I asked the Government via a private Member’s Bill to exempt carers from hospital car parking charges. At the time, that relatively modest proposal was met with derision from Government Members. My attempt to remove this financial burden was dismissed as a worthy aim, but not worthy enough for the Government to support. Indeed, Conservative Members went to great lengths to talk the Bill out.

Times, I hope, have changed. Today I am asking, along with the right hon. Member for Harlow, that the Government remove all car parking charges at NHS hospitals. Today we ask the Government to do the decent thing by removing this tax on the sick and taking action to ensure that we truly have an NHS that is free at the point of access.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Barclay]

I am very happy to look at such cases and to speak to those trusts to understand this better, but I was making a point about the complexity of the issue and how to manage reducing the charges. For example, as the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) will no doubt be aware, there were local media reports over the summer about a hospital car park in Inverness being used by those going to the airport; there was displacement there. We do not want a solution that constrains capacity for those using the hospital and makes access more difficult.

Some of these issues have a very local flavour. That was recognised in the debate: the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) said that shoppers do not seek to use the car park at the north Manchester site, whereas my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) was concerned that simply removing charges would cause displacement at his hospital. The point is that there are local factors, just as there are with legacy PFI contracts, including in Scotland and Wales, where charges are still made under contracts going back to 2008.

[Julie Cooper]

Would the Minister accept, though, that people being ill and suffering distress at hospitals is not a local issue? It is a national issue. The burden of hospital car parking charges, wherever they occur, ought to be a concern of the Government.

[Stephen Barclay]

Of course, but equally the hon. Lady must recognise that the fact that charges are still being applied under PFI agreements put in place by a previous Government in 2008 signals that there are often complexities, in terms of what can be done when different factors apply. As my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull highlighted, there are factors relating to displacement. That is why trusts have local discretion, but as the House has discussed today, we need to understand the transparency around that and how it is applied.