Parking (Code of Practice) Bill

Luke Graham Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 23rd November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

Once again—this is now getting to become a feature—I congratulate the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight) on progressing this Bill through the House with such dexterity, skill and consensus. I welcome the fact that, after today, this will soon become law. I also extend my congratulations to everyone involved, particularly to the Minister, who, as I mentioned in my earlier remarks, has been nothing other than consensual, effective and efficient in ensuring that this Bill has got through the House, and to everyone else who was on the Bill Committee with the right hon. Gentleman.

For me, this Bill cannot come soon enough. We need a firm of code of practice that will constrain the worst excesses of these private parking companies. I do not know what Perth has done to deserve the attention of some of the more sharper practices of the parking operators, but for far too long we have been blighted by some of the worst excesses of these parking operators. They almost act, until this Bill, as a law unto themselves. I refer to them as parking cowboys, because that is exactly what they are. They harass and frustrate our constituents and drive tourists away from our town and city centres.

I am sick and tired of receiving emails from people complaining about the behaviour of parking companies, telling me that they will never again visit Perth city centre because of the negative experience they had when they had the misfortune to end up in a car park operated by one of these companies. I have received more complaints about one car park in the city of Perth than about any other issue. That car park is operated by the lone ranger of the parking cowboys: the hated and appalling Smart Parking—I see that many other Members are unfortunate enough to have Smart Parking operating in their constituencies. It has reached the stage where one member of my staff now spends a good part of each day just helping my constituents and visitors to my constituency to navigate the appeals process.

[Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)]

rose—

[Pete Wishart]

I will of course give way to my constituency neighbour.

[Luke Graham]

I am indeed the hon. Gentleman’s neighbour, and I can confirm that I, too, receive many complaints about that same operator, from constituents in South Perthshire and from people in Clackmannanshire who visit Perth. I therefore want to say how much I support the Bill. Hopefully our staff will soon be able to focus more on the things that really matter to our constituents, rather than having to deal with car parking complaints, which really are the companies’ responsibility to fix.

[Pete Wishart]

I understand totally the frustration felt by the hon. Gentleman’s constituents who have to park in Perth city centre. I hope that we will both see the amount of correspondence we receive in our mailbags on this issue decrease significantly as a result of the Bill.

Another frustration is that Smart Parking is singularly unresponsive. It does not reply to representations from Members of Parliament or have meetings with us. It does not even start to engage with some of the difficulties we identify with its operation. I wish to commend The Courier newspaper in Perthshire for the campaign it has mounted about the situation. One of the reasons I am down here today as the Member of Parliament is the very fine work that The Courier has done on the situation right across Perthshire. I congratulate it on that.

The Bill means that these companies will no longer be able to get away with that type of behaviour. The days when they could distribute fines like confetti, and when they could confuse and frustrate our constituents with their so-called smart technology and poor signage in order to harvest fines, are coming to an end. The Bill is evidently necessary, because self-regulation has been a resolute failure. The toothless regulators, such as the British Parking Association, are singularly incapable of dealing with the sharper practices of the rogue operators.

The British Parking Association actually lists some of the operators as its members. I had a meeting with it this week, and it gave me a copy of its magazine, which includes a list of all its members, and who should be listed there, in bold letters? It was Smart Parking. The BPA does not have the ability to regulate these companies and has shown no sign whatsoever that it is trying to get on top of some of the sharper practices. The BPA gives a veneer of legitimacy to some of the more outlandish rogue operators by including them in their membership, allowing them to continue to operate. The Bill will oblige operators such as Smart Parking to amend their practices.

I want to mention another practice that I have observed in a retail park in my constituency—this is actually worse than Smart Parking. Two private parking companies operate one huge car park at St Catherine’s retail park in Perth. One company circled the car park with signs telling motorists that, if they had the temerity to leave the part of the retail park where they had used a parking space to access shops in other parts of it, they would be fined. It did that, and it actually took photographs of people leaving their car and going into other parts of the retail park where the facilities are covered by another parking operator. That is what it did, and this is the extent to which some of these private parking operators work. It is not good enough, and it has to end.

I want to say to the Minister that I think what he is doing is fantastic. I have seen some of the details he is going to put into the code of practice and I think they are fantastic. I congratulate him on taking the maximalist approach. I think the Government will approach this by ensuring they will do the utmost they can to protect the motorist from this type of practice. They will put in place a set of regulations that will ensure the best result we can get when it comes to these things.

Among the things I want to make a plea for including in the code of practice—given what I have heard from the Minister, I am pretty certain that he will be looking at them—are equipment and technology. We have to make sure that we get the signage absolutely right and that surface markings are clearly identified and regulated properly. There should be clear and accessible displays of the terms and conditions of the car park. We have already heard examples of when that does not actually work. I know that the Government are looking at consideration periods to allow motorists sufficient time to decide whether they would like to park, and grace periods to allow motorists time to pay and leave the car park. All of this would make a real difference to the parking arrangements in our cities and town.

I believe these parking companies intentionally deploy poor signage. The fact that motorists can be fined simply for entering a car park to look for a space is simply and clearly unacceptable. One of the car parking operators in my constituency actually fines people for entering a zero instead of the letter o. Apparently, the smart technology cannot cater for that, but the operator takes no recognition of that when people appeal on such a basis.

Another of my pleas to be included in the code—the Minister may be able to help us with this one—is capping fines, a feature that I think we all agree must happen. The fact that someone can be fined £140, £160 or £180 for parking a car is simply and utterly absurd. I think, and I hope, that this will be addressed. My suggestion is that fines or parking charge notices in private car parks should be no more than those of the local authority. I think it is fair that there is a uniform cost that people pay in any city or town across the country, and I am pretty certain that we will get to such a place.

I know the Government’s intention is to ensure that what are called PCNs will no longer be able to look like fines from the local authority, and that is really important. Will the Minister tell us how this will be done and how he intends to ensure that that happens? Parking companies have to get away from this confusion with local authority penalty charge notices, and they must do so without using the threatening and intimidating language on these tickets.

What I would like to see on such tickets is the full legal basis on which they can be distributed. As the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire said, this is a contractual arrangement, so they are not fines. If the private parking company is to pursue such a case, it has to take it to the civil court to demonstrate clearly that the motorist has breached the terms and conditions of using the private car park. That should be mentioned on the parking ticket, as issued by the private operator. I think that would be fair.

--- Later in debate ---

[Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)]

Being a neighbour of and sharing a county with the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), it is a pleasure to come here to support him and my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight) on this Bill. This parking issue affects constituents from not only Perth and Kinross, but Clackmannanshire, on the other side of my constituency, who go into Stirling. They, too, have experienced extortionate fines for very small or misunderstood misdemeanours. Importantly, this Bill corrects a wrong that was identified by Citizens Advice Scotland in 2014 in its “It’s Not Fine” report, which set out how private practitioners need to clean up their act. This is now being addressed and it is great to see a national problem having a national solution in this Bill, with the support of Members from across the United Kingdom.