Disabled Persons’ Parking Badges Bill

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Friday 30th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, for agreeing to pilot this Bill through your Lordships’ House. I should begin by declaring an interest: I am president of Access, a campaigning group working for the benefit of people with disabilities. I certainly welcome this Bill. It will ensure that people who genuinely need the blue badge are better protected and will help clamp down on the abuse of this very worthwhile scheme.

I know from talking to public officials in my own part of Wales that they are often frustrated by the lack of opportunity to act against those who abuse the present scheme. They welcome amendments to inspection powers so that officers in plain clothes may inspect badges. This, coupled with provision to allow councils to cancel badges which are not held by the person to whom they have been issued, will go a long way to improving the governance and management of the scheme.

They tell me that demand for blue badges is constantly increasing, yet there is no incentive for people to hand back a blue badge if and when they are no longer required. Among the commonplace scams are using a blue badge without the badge holder’s knowledge, keeping the blue badge when the person to whom it was awarded has died, photocopying genuine badges and acquiring stolen ones. I remember reading an article in the Daily Telegraph more than two years ago which stated that in Leeds, it was estimated that 60% of badges were misused; that in Newcastle around half the 4,000 issued badges were used illegally; and that in Edinburgh the figure jumped to 70%. I know that in south-east Wales, close to the English border, misuse of the blue badge is popular because possession of it allows motorists to cross the Severn bridges without paying. I therefore commend the Welsh Government on having launched a new blue badge scheme in March this year with many additional security features which make them harder to forge.

However, more than one in three people in Wales do not understand the eligibility rules for blue badge disability parking. In some cases, this has led to unpleasant remarks being aimed at legitimate users of the blue badge scheme in accessing parking spaces. Thirty-five per cent of people questioned in a survey said that they believed that disabled persons' parking spaces were provided only for vehicles carrying a wheelchair user. In fact, they are reserved for a wide range of people with mobility problems, including those with less obvious disabilities such as severe sight impairment, heart or lung conditions, or a prosthetic limb that may make it difficult for them to walk even short distances.

The misconceptions about the blue badge parking system emerged in a survey of more than a thousand people conducted for the Welsh Government as part of their drive to encourage greater respect for the parking rights of disabled vehicle users. The Welsh Government released the survey figures as part of their “space invaders” campaign to promote the new-style, more secure blue badge and to deter ineligible motorists being tempted to abuse the scheme. An earlier survey across Wales showed that one in 10 motorists admitted using blue badge spaces illegally and, in some areas, the figure was as high as one in four. Recently, on a very wet Saturday while driving out of the car park at my local Sainsbury’s at Pontllanfraith, I saw a motorist drive in, park in a disabled person’s parking space, get out of the car and run into the store. I am only sorry that the Bill does not give the police powers to seize and to crush the cars of motorists who take a disabled person’s parking space. Frankly, for me, whether they remove the driver first is an option for them. If they had such powers, it would certainly help deter these space invaders.

Another misunderstanding about the scheme was revealed in the Welsh survey, with 10% of respondents believing that anyone using a blue badge holder’s vehicle could park in the restricted spaces even if the eligible person was not with them. Former Royal Welch Fusilier Paul Davies, of Bargoed, who was paralysed from the waist down after being injured in a military rugby game, said that he regularly encountered these space invaders. Mr Davies helped launch the Welsh Government’s blue badge scheme and was quoted as saying:

“Drivers take no notice of the signs, either because of laziness or ignorance of how difficult it really is for a disabled person to park in a normal space”.

Finally, I welcome Clause 6, covering the provision of badges for disabled service personnel. This is a well intentioned move to bolster the Armed Forces covenant. As a former Veterans Minister, I believe that any new commitment to improve the quality of life of those who have served our country and to whom we owe a debt that we can never fully repay is right and just.

People who take a disabled person’s parking space and who abuse the blue badge scheme do a considerable disservice to disabled people and harm their quality of life. The Government are right to do something about this, and I certainly welcome this Bill.