Disabled Persons’ Parking Badges Bill

Lord Davies of Oldham Excerpts

Friday 30th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Oldham]

My Lords, as has been indicated by a number of speakers in the debate, we all owe a real debt to the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, for sponsoring this Bill and introducing it into the House. We also appreciate the accuracy with which she took us through each clause, hoping, I think, to ward off too many contributions which might stray a little far from its direct content. That is in the nature of Private Member’s Bills. This House always has a large number of noble Lords with experience in the field of any particular Private Member’s Bill. They will make their major issues part of the debate. Therefore, I hope the Minister will not be too upset by the fact that several contributions already have ranged quite widely in advocacy of the interests of the disabled. I hope, too, that I may be forgiven in that respect.

As my noble friend Lord Macdonald indicated, this Bill clearly has cross-party support. We from the opposition Front Bench wish it every success. We appreciate of course that the Bill is also derivative of the seminal work of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970, which our great friend Lord Morris of Manchester introduced at that time. He of course succeeded subsequently in developing many areas of work of great help to the disabled. I am pleased that this is my first opportunity to put that on record. I knew Alf for nearly 40 years. There was no one I held in greater respect in terms of his contribution. This issue with regard to the blue badge is a small tribute to his work. The blue badge scheme is of course of immense value to the disabled, but because of that it also incurs the tendency to a great deal of fraud and illegitimate use. That is why we welcome the fact that the Bill tightens up areas in significant ways that will aid the direct purposes of the blue badge concept—that is, service to the disabled.

I hope that the Minister is able to reassure us that there are no extra demands upon the resources of local authorities as a consequence of the Bill because we are all too well aware that our local authority budgets are greatly stretched at present. I want some reassurance on that front. Also, have the Government addressed this question of enforcement? We all recognise the very different concepts of civil enforcement and the operation of the police with regard to criminal enforcement. The police are able pretty much instantaneously to have access to the police databank on vehicles and their misuse. I am not at all sure that the enforcement officers envisaged in this Bill would have anything like that access to the resources necessary for them to carry out the role.

Let me say how very difficult this can be. On this occasion, an authority acted in my view entirely properly but it was of great distress to a dear neighbour of mine who is safely into her 90s. First, she found that in order to renew her badge there was a six-week period and she was late with that so the new badge was not issued in time. She got a ticket for the car parked outside her house in her reserved space because the old badge was out of date. Credit is due to those carrying out enforcement, except that they might have regarded the situation of a ratepayer of the local authority perched on a space correctly created for her with a little more understanding and consideration. Worse, she went straight to the local authority to complain about this and parked in a disabled spot. When she came out, a second ticket had appeared on her car. We need to recognise that as far as the disabled are concerned some understanding needs to be employed. I am therefore interested in this question of enforcement. We all want rigorous enforcement against those who misuse badges but we also want to make sure that the interests of those who legitimately use badges are safeguarded.

The Minister will also want to comment on the issue raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. We recognise how limited appeals were to the Secretary of State and there is no great loss in the withdrawal of that particular aspect but we want to be reassured about the question of appeals against the withdrawal of a badge. We all know how significant a badge is to a disabled person. It would be a significant loss, which can only be justified if every conceivable angle on the issue has been considered. That is why we need some kind of consideration on the question of scope for appeals.

I also appreciated the contribution by my noble friend Lord Dubs, who pressed the case for consistency with regard to application. Life is complex enough for all of us who cope with the myriad problems of parking. For the disabled to have the additional difficulties of the complexity and uncertainty of application is something we must take very seriously. I want reassurances from the Minister that the points that my noble friend Lord Dubs made will be taken fully into account.

This has been an extraordinarily constructive debate. It has shown the House at its best in circumstances where we seek to aid a very important part of our community—the disabled—and particularly to protect them in areas where the existence of fraud in the use of badges has been a clear abuse and very much to their detriment and the effectiveness of the scheme. I very much welcome the extent to which the Bill advances the interests of the scheme and gives great help to the disabled.