Parking Regulation

Debate between Lola McEvoy and Dan Aldridge

Tuesday 6th May 2025 Westminster Hall

[Dan Aldridge (Weston-super-Mare) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Efford. I congratulate the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Martin Wrigley) and my hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) on securing this important debate, and so many others on campaigning on this issue.

I speak on behalf of the people of Weston-super-Mare, Worle and the villages. Our proud coastal community has stunning beaches, three glorious piers and a tourism and hospitality sector that plays an essential role in our local economy, but parking is a growing problem that is echoed across communities up and down the country. Far too often, the cost and availability of parking acts as a barrier, deterring visitors, frustrating local businesses and making it harder for residents to enjoy the very places that they call home. The issue has been hugely compounded by unscrupulous private parking companies, especially in recent years.

In Weston, we want both locals and tourists to come and enjoy our seafront and our high streets. We want them to visit our small businesses, our events and our attractions, but when a family find that parking for a day at the beach can cost as much as their fish and chips, they think twice. They might not come at all. The prospect—so often reinforced by these unscrupulous companies—of unfair and unclear fines further exacerbates the issue. We need to dramatically rethink our approach to parking regulation in coastal areas. That goes further than having a code of practice for private regulators; it is a wholesale issue about how we reinvigorate our town centres generally.

We must see cheaper and more flexible parking options, particularly during peak season, when towns such as Weston thrive on day visitors. Those might include capped daily rates, off-peak discounts, or partnerships with local businesses to validate parking. Too often, we have seen a “computer says no” attitude when such initiatives have been suggested, and far too often we are told, “We’ve outsourced this to private companies rather than innovating in-house.” Governments can make local decision makers shift their thinking on the subject.

Accessibility is also key. We have heard a lot about people with disabilities, older people, and those with Parkinson’s, such as my mum, who has been stung by parking charges simply because she cannot access the app or she does not do things quickly enough. Often, those are the people most at risk of extortionate fines, which are so out of proportion with the perceived error. It is not just about convenience; it is about fairness.

[Lola McEvoy]

In Darlington, there are car parks with no signal, so people have to go outside to download the app, log into it and then pay for their parking, by which point they have often incurred a charge. Does my hon. Friend agree that in our code, we should include the provision of multiple payment methods in every car park?

[Dan Aldridge]

Absolutely, and this goes to the heart of a lot of what we have talked about in this place in respect of the shift to a digital-first world. In many ways, that is great, but it excludes so many people. We need to continue to have other options, including cash payment, available for people who need them.

Coastal towns face unique economic challenges. Hospitality and tourism are two of the few industries that we rely on in Weston. If visitors are put off before they even step out of the car, or are punished by opportunistic private parking companies, we all lose out—local people, shops, cafés and attractions alike.

Let us be clear: better parking regulation is not about free-for-all parking; it is about sensible, locally driven policies that work for both residents and visitors. It is about supporting coastal regeneration by making it easier, not harder, for people to spend their time and money in our towns. Let us make it easier for people to get to our town centres, and for our communities to thrive.

Online Safety: Children and Young People

Debate between Lola McEvoy and Dan Aldridge

Tuesday 26th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Lola McEvoy]

A smartphone-free pledge is a great idea, and I will take it to Darlington. Parents are further down the line than we are on this; children are further down the line than we are; campaign groups are further down the line than we are. We are lagging behind. We have taken action—the last Government passed the Online Safety Act. I think it is time for us to make sure that there is nothing missing from that Act. In my view, there are some areas where we could go further.

Children in Darlington have said to me that they are getting these unsolicited images—from the algorithms. These images are being fed to them. They are not from strangers, or bogeymen from another country, although that might happen. The most common complaint is that the algorithm is feeding them content that they did not ask for, and it is deeply disturbing, whether it is violent, explicit or harmful. Once they have seen it, they cannot unsee it.

That is why I am arguing to strengthen the codes. I am not sure that we should be retrofitting harmful apps with a code that may or may not work, and having to tweak a few bits of the algorithm to check whether it will actually protect our children. I think we can take stronger action than that.

[Dan Aldridge (Weston-super-Mare) (Lab)]

Numerous mental health charities and a number of civil society experts have raised with me that there are powers within the Online Safety Act that must be used by the regulator. Indeed, the Secretary of State for DSIT made it very clear last week that he backed the Act and those powers. Does my hon. Friend agree that the regulator could and should act with more powers than it has?

[Lola McEvoy]

I am loath to tell Ofcom that it does not have enough power. As I understand it, the powers are there, but we need to be explicit, and they need to be strengthened. How do we do that? The reason I outlined the timelines is that the time to act is now. We have to explicitly strengthen the children’s codes.

There are many ways to skin a cat, as they say, but one of the simpler ways to do this would be to outline the audience that the apps want to market to. Who is the base audience that the apps and platforms are trying to make money from? If that is explicitly outlined, the codes could be applied accordingly, and strengthened. If children are the target audience, we can question some of the things on those apps and whether the apps are safe for children to use in and of themselves.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lola McEvoy]

I thank the hon. Member for raising that issue, because there are lots of different nudge notifications. We can understand why, because it is an unregulated space and the app is trying to get as much data as possible—if we are not paying for the service, we are the service. We all know that as adults, but the young people and children who we are talking about today do not know that their data is what makes them attractive to that app.

[Dan Aldridge]

I thank my hon. Friend for allowing me to intervene again. In my previous role as head of public policy at the British Computer Society, the one thing that my colleagues and I talked about a lot was the lack of focus on education in the Online Safety Act. I commend the previous Government for passing that legislation, which was very brave. The Act has tried to do some wonderful things, but what is missing is that we have failed to empower a generation of young people to act safely online, to be able to take back the power and say, “No, I am not going to do that.” We have failed in that so far. How do we build that in for the future?

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

Order. I would like to bring to the attention of Members that we have had a huge number of interventions and we are 20 minutes into the debate. The Minister and Opposition spokesperson will get up at just after half past 3. It is a matter for the speaker whether she takes more interventions, but that does mean that the amount of time for those who have asked to speak will be significantly more restricted than I originally planned. That is just a housekeeping matter to be aware of. There is also an issue about the length of interventions: they are getting a bit long. On a matter of this importance, I do not want to restrict interventions and contributions, but I ask Members to please bear that in mind.