Parking (Code of Practice) Bill

Lord Leigh of Hurley Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 18th January 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to see this Private Member’s Bill in your Lordships’ House for us to consider, and I congratulate my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral and Sir Greg Knight on its reaching this stage. Although some may think that politics is fairly quiet in the Westminster bubble, it is good to see that your Lordships’ House can turn its attention today to three Bills that are of great importance to people’s lives and can make a difference to them.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, said, parking is a subject that seems to be at the core of some people’s lives, and I suspect that I might be guilty of being somewhat overzealous about it myself. I recall that, when the announcement was made of my elevation to the peerage, even before I entered your Lordships’ House I received congratulatory letters, not least from someone who said how jealous they were that I would have free parking in SW1.

Like others, I get irritated by those who seek to profit unfairly from motorists seeking to park. The culprits are not limited to car park operators. Motorists sometimes have to use car parks because of restrictions imposed by the likes of local authorities, which force them there through the imposition of restrictions on their roads. Often one sees a gradual, insidious loss of space.

I will elaborate on my parking credentials and overzealous nature. A few years ago I noticed that a large number of single yellow lines in Westminster had been turned into double yellow lines, such that parking after 6.30 pm was no longer available. In June 2014, I put in a freedom of information request to Westminster Council, asking for this to be quantified. The council refused to provide the information for the whole of Westminster, so I got the council to do it for the preceding three years for just one ward, the West End. I discovered that some 433 metres of single yellow line had been lost to double yellow line. It is a great loss to motorists and to businesses, which would otherwise benefit from late-night shoppers, particularly in this difficult retail environment—not to mention restaurateurs, theatres and the like.

I cannot help but comment en passant that Westminster Council has form in being anti-motorist, with its unsuccessful attempt in 2011 to force all-night parking into its own car parks, and its successful removal of free parking on Saturday afternoons, which is a great shame for West End retailers.

Meanwhile, back in Hurley, where my nomen dignitatis indicates that I am from and where I have an interest, another parking situation arose. The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead sought to impose all sorts of ugly signage and parking restrictions in no lesser place than Hurley high street. Fortunately, we have an excellent MP, who helped the village reach a satisfactory compromise on its parking and signage.

It was during these important and critical negotiations with the council, with the enormous help of the local MP—who was then Home Secretary; she does win some arguments against authorities—that I had the chance to get to know the regulations that became Statutory Instrument 362, the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2016. I am sure that all noble Lords have had the chance to review these regulations, which cover the precise nature and size of parking signs allowed. At 545 pages, they pretty much cover the entire landscape and all you need to know. I hope that the Minister is able to give us some comfort that the legislation before us today, which is only enabling legislation, will not lead to a code for signage that is markedly different from that laid out in Statutory Instrument 362, so that there will be some compatibility with the signs and information that the motorist is getting used to, while at the same time keeping regulation, as always, to the barest minimum.

There has clearly been some abuse by some operators. Second Reading in the other place evidenced a wave of unacceptable practice. Not to be outdone, when I read the debate it brought to mind my local press, the Henley Standard, which reported that visitors to the town and its memorial hospital were being fined £160 by a company called Smart Parking when they were eligible for a free 20-minute grace period. They were being fined even when they drove through the car park without stopping—such is its configuration that one can drive through it.

Clearly, the success of the Bill will depend on the detail of the new code of practice and the terms it contains. I note that the Bill requires the Secretary of State to prepare the code. In other areas, the Government have passed that obligation back to the sector. For example, in the charity sector, where I have been involved both in charities and in the legislation, the Government created the Fundraising Regulator and invited the sector to self-regulate and, in effect, create its own code. In this instance, I support the different route that has been selected.

Some areas to be included in the code were very helpfully set out for us by the Minister in his letter of 14 January. He did not mention the situation where operators in a private residential area might first need to get approval from all, most or maybe some of the residents before implementing a scheme, and this may also require the inclusion of guidance from the Government in the code.

Finally, I have to put on record for full disclosure that, in a professional capacity, my employer has advised companies in the sector. As the noble Baroness, Lady Thornhill, said, there are good companies: we advised Creative Car Park Ltd and there are others that behave profitably, ethically and properly. It is up to us to ensure that good operators are allowed to thrive and others are curtailed. It is now time to ensure that the estimated 250 billion vehicle miles travelled in the UK in any one year are not subject to rogue opportunists taking advantage of the need to park at the end of those trips.