Hospital Parking Charges (Exemption for Carers) Bill

Liz McInnes Excerpts

Friday 30th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

The hon. Lady is approaching this Bill as if nobody at the moment does any caring and if we have this Bill everyone will start caring and save the NHS billions of pounds. The point is the people—

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Philip Davies]

I will deal with the first intervention first, then I will give way to the hon. Lady; there is plenty of time.

On those people who are saving the NHS millions of pounds—I think I made very clear at the start of my remarks how much we all rely on carers—they are already saving the NHS that money. This Bill does not come with any savings to the NHS. This Bill only comes with a cost to the NHS. If the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) cannot see that, she really needs to go and look at the Bill again, because that is clear to everyone. She may well want to argue that it is a worthwhile cost to the NHS, and I am perfectly prepared for her to make that case, but people should not be claiming that this is a cost-saving Bill for the NHS because it is anything but.

[Liz McInnes]

The hon. Gentleman seems to know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Did he not hear my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Julie Cooper) talk about Torbay hospital and the benefits that it has found the scheme brought to the hospital in terms of patient care and wellbeing, which is surely what hospitals are about? They are not about charging people to park.

[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.

[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.

[Liz McInnes]

Is the hon. Gentleman not aware that, although car parking charging decisions are made locally by individual hospital trusts, they follow the Government’s guidelines?

--- Later in debate ---

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

I should like to declare my support for the Bill, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Julie Cooper) on bringing it to the House today. We have had an interesting debate. It has been enlightening for me; I am not often here on Fridays, and I have been intrigued by the way in which the discussions have gone on.

My hon. Friend made a good point about the amount of money that carers save the NHS as a result of the unpaid voluntary work they do, attending hospitals, caring for friends, relatives and loved ones and relieving the pressure and stress that our support workers, nurses and doctors are under. When we talk about money resolutions and finance, we need to remember that not everything has a financial cost. We cannot put a price on everything, and the amount that carers save our NHS is priceless. It is not something we can quantify. However, I certainly agree with my hon. Friend that the amount of money that carers save our NHS is far over and above what they might bring in in car parking fees.

I am speaking from the point of view of a former NHS worker. I used to work at North Manchester general hospital, which is now part of Pennine Acute Hospitals Trust to which the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) referred. He spoke about the trust as something of an exemplar in the way that it advertised car parking to patients and visitors. Having worked there for a long time, my experience is that its policies caused a lot of confusion. Frequently, when I turned up to work, visitors asked me whether they should pay, whether I had any change for the parking machines, and whether I could help them with where they were going. Not wanting to be too critical of my ex-employer, I have to say that I do not think that Pennine Acute is a shining light when it comes to dealing with car parking for patients and visitors.

[Mr Nuttall]

I do not know when the hon. Lady left the employ of that particular trust, but it seems from its website that it has tried to simplify things by having different coloured signs for different groups—green signs for patients, blue signs for blue badge holders and pink signs for staff. It seems that it is making an effort. I am sure that the hon. Lady knows more than me whether its system is working in practice.

[Liz McInnes]

What the hon. Gentleman said was very telling. He said that he had looked at the website. Not every patient or visitor has access to the website, however. I agree that the system is clear on the website, but it is not clear in reality. When someone turns up with a sick relative or a distressed patient, they do not have time to go through the colour coding. Pennine Acute could improve its signage, but that is not why we are here, or why we are talking about this Bill.

The hon. Gentleman asked how long I had worked at the hospital. I started at North Manchester general in 1987, and I was there when hospital car parking charges were first introduced. I remember the disquiet that was caused to staff, who have always had to pay those charges. Many people do not realise that staff have to pay car parking charges at hospitals.

[Mr Nuttall]

I mentioned it.

[Liz McInnes]

I appreciate that, but it always comes as a surprise to the wider public to hear that staff have to pay to park at their own place of work. I am sure that there would be an uproar if such charges were introduced for our exclusive car park facilities in this place. I know that the staff’s objections to having to pay to park at their place of work have been ignored. We have been protesting about it for many, many years. However, I am not here to talk about staff; I just wanted to make people aware that that practice still goes on. I have always seen it as a tax on coming to work.

We are here to talk about carers. I want to use Pennine Acute as an example. Most recently, it has engaged a private parking company, the income of which comes solely from administering fines to people who have parked incorrectly or who have not paid the right amount of money. The business of this private parking company depends on people contravening parking regulations; it actually wants people to contravene parking regulations, because that is the only way that it gets any income.

When I worked at the hospital, I was a workplace rep for Unite the union. I dealt with a lot of staff who were very, very distressed about the letters they had received from this company, demanding a fine that had to be paid by a certain day, and if they did not pay it by that day, the fine would go up. They were given the opportunity to appeal. If the appeal was not successful, some people found that they had to pay an inflated fine because they had had the temerity to appeal.

With regard to my hon. Friend’s private Member’s Bill, my main concern is about carers. What would happen to them if they were to get one of those bills? At least members of staff, if they are in a trade union, can go to a rep and get some help to deal with the situation. I worry about private parking contractors, because they exist solely to make money out of people. Exempting carers from car parking charges would bring much needed clarity to the matter. It would stop these exploitative companies from making money out of them.

[Julian Knight]

Could the hon. Lady’s local hospital trust not write such a policy into its contract? It would then have discretion over the fines. It would not need to fine carers in a particular situation. That would give them some flexibility, whereas in this scenario, there is no flexibility at all.

[Liz McInnes]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I am not clear what his point is. He said that the trust could put it into a contract that carers would not be charged—[Interruption.] He means in the contracts of the parking contractor.

[Julian Knight]

indicated assent.

[Liz McInnes]

That would bring us to the issue of how we identify carers, which we have already talked about at length. If we introduce this Bill, it would be clear that carers were exempt. They could approach the hospital trust with evidence that they are in receipt of carer’s allowance. Their registration number would be taken and a badge would be produced with that registration number on, so that there would be no possibility of people transferring permits. They would be valid for only one vehicle. It would take a lot of the stress and worry out of parking at hospital for carers. There has been a lot of talk about how difficult it would be to administer the schemes, but actually it would be fairly simple.

Much is wrong with hospital car parking charges. I applaud the Scottish and Welsh health services for removing the charges. The imposition of car parking charges in England means that staff and others are being treated as a cash cow. While the rate that those charges are put up every single year is way above inflation, hospital staff are suffering from either a pay freeze, or a 1% below-inflation pay rise, which they get only if the Secretary of State deigns to bestow it on them. We really need to look at the whole situation with car parking charges in English hospitals, but at the moment we are considering parking for carers.

At Pennine Acute, there were informal arrangements, to which the hon. Member for Bury North has already referred. Frequent visitors who were in the know could approach the ward manager or departmental manager to ask for help and an exemption from car parking charges if that was available. People need to know that these exemptions exist; that is the problem. This Bill would not cost the NHS a great deal of money, because those in the know are aware that they can ask for exemptions. This Bill is about clarity, so that the exemptions are available to everybody and nobody is kept in the dark about them. That is why we need this Bill.

I fully support the Bill. Points have been made about hospitals introducing car parking fees, but unless a hospital is near a major shopping centre or bang in the middle of a town centre, people will park at a hospital only to visit, attend as a patient or carer or work there, and people should not be penalised for doing any of those things.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley for introducing this Bill, and I hope that she is successful in removing charges for carers and bringing much needed clarity to what is a very confused situation. Legislation is long overdue. Hopefully, following the introduction of this Bill, we will look at charges for others—patients, visitors and staff. If it is good enough for Scotland and Wales, it is good enough for England. The policy would be very well received in Heywood and Middleton as well as across the country.