Parking (Code of Practice) Bill

Michael Tomlinson Excerpts

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

[Sir Greg Knight]

Following previous stages of our consideration of the Bill, and having received a number of representations, it is apparent to me that it can and should be strengthened further. One point of concern that has been raised, including by the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) and my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood), relates to the appeals services available to motorists. Currently, when a motorist receives a ticket, they must first go to the parking operator to challenge it. If the challenge is rejected, they may go on to an appeals service provided by whichever accredited trade association the parking operator is a member of. Parking on Private Land Appeals and the Independent Appeals Service are the appeals services of the British Parking Association and the International Parking Community respectively. However, POPLA does not operate in Scotland, so motorists who receive parking tickets from British Parking Association operators in Scotland are denied an independent appeals service entirely, which I do not think is right.

The Bill provides an opportunity to raise the standards of the private parking industry and create more consistency in the process. My amendments would expand that opportunity, providing the Secretary of State with the power to appoint a single appeals service for the whole industry, providing greater consistency for motorists in England, Scotland and Wales, as they would know exactly where to go when they want to appeal a private parking ticket.

[Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)]

May I be the first to congratulate my right hon. Friend on piloting his Bill thus far? Many of our constituents who are caught up in these schemes are among the most vulnerable. Will he reassure my constituents who have been caught up in the past that in future they will be able to go through a much clearer and more straightforward process?

[Sir Greg Knight]

I am happy to give that assurance and to confirm that the appeals process will be free of charge.

The new clause and amendment 6 are the substantive amendments and would allow the Secretary of State to appoint a single appeals service for the private parking industry. They would also amend the proposed levy powers in order to use the levy to cover the costs of establishing and maintaining such an appeals service. Amendments 1 to 5, which also stand in my name, are largely technical and would amend the Bill to allow the Government flexibility to delegate their functions for investigating breaches of the code. They would also ensure that, where the Secretary of State has delegated the function of preparing the code of practice, they must still approve the final version of the parking code.

The current provisions mean that the Minister can delegate only to a public authority, but my amendments would allow the delegation of the investigatory function to private bodies. That would allow subject matter experts from private industry to conduct the function, thus offering a greater range of options and value for money. Lastly, my final amendments cover where the Secretary of State has delegated the code of practice, as I have said, but is still required to give final approval to it. I commend my new clause and amendments to the House.

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[Michael Tomlinson]

As always, my hon. Friend and neighbour considers these matters carefully, and I am listening carefully to his proposals. Given that the Bill’s sponsor has received reassurance on this point, surely the phrase “best endeavour” would be otiose, because the Government and the excellent Minister have said that these things will be brought forward. We simply do not need those words.

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[Pete Wishart]

Absolutely. It is not just my city of Perth—I understand that there are issues across Scotland, where we have particular difficulties. I will come on to rogue operators on Third Reading, as it is important that they are identified and sharp practice is outlined to the House. What has happened is clearly a problem, and the hon. Gentleman is right that we require these measures. That is why I am proud to sponsor the Bill introduced by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire, and it is really important that we get it through the House today. I am pleased that we are here to ensure that a thoroughly good Bill gets through the House.

[Michael Tomlinson]

As ever, the hon. Gentleman is making an eloquent and passionate defence of the Bill, which is excellent. A few moments ago, he mentioned the threatening letters that were sent. Does he agree that, like my constituents, his more robust constituents can shrug them off, but the more vulnerable are caught up, and for them the charges, when set out in detail, are more worrying and impactful if they end up having to pay them?

[Pete Wishart]

Absolutely. I have seen examples of correspondence from debt collection agencies, and the increasingly aggressive and intimidating tone that is taken in subsequent letters. It gets to a stage where some of my constituents and visitors to my constituency feel that they may be taken out and shot at dawn because they tried to park a car in a parking space. I wish to return to this, because the Minister will probably have hopeful things to say about debt collection. I understand that that is one of the areas he is looking at, and I hope to secure good news from him on Third Reading about how that will be incorporated in the code of practice so that we can end the more intimidating features of debt collection agencies.

I do not want to say anything else other than to totally support the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire in what he is trying to achieve in his amendments. May I tell the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope), who is engaged in a conversation with his Whip, that I do not think that I can support him? That is a shame, because we have both served on the Select Committee on Scottish Affairs. He was a doughty and—I shall use the term—challenging Member to the Chair, as I was at that point. I very much enjoyed his contribution, as he scrutinises things personally and ensures that he tries to test things to the absolute limit, but I do not think that I can support him, given all the concerns about procurement raised by the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire. I understand that that is not decided yet, and there might be a need for such measures, but I cannot support anything that might get in the way of the Bill taking effect.

Reflecting the comments made by the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire, the Minister has been nothing other than totally efficient and effective in dealing with the Bill. He has responded generously, which is an example to other Departments and Ministers when we try to get such legislation through the House. If he is prepared to say that this is happening within the timescale allocated in the Bill, I would be more than happy and satisfied, having worked with him and seen the way in which he approaches these issues. I encourage the hon. Member for Christchurch not to press his amendments, as they would not have the support of practically anyone in the House, but I am more than happy to support the amendment tabled by the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire.

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[Alex Chalk]

I will be getting to that point, but it is important to set the context as well.

My first example affects one of my own constituents. I was making a point about the distress that can be caused by these demands, many of which are being issued on a specious basis. I had a constituent in Cheltenham, in a road near Montpellier Terrace, who received a letter demanding that a fine be paid. However, it turned out that the company demanding the money was seeking to claim a parking ticket in respect of land that belonged to the person receiving the ticket. That was an extraordinary situation. In other words, the company had not bothered to check with the Land Registry to find out who owned the land. When I looked into it, it turned out that the parking company had been called in because of a vexatious neighbour dispute. The neighbour had called in the parking company to try to get at his own neighbour. This is a prime example of why we need a sensible system of regulation, to ensure that the system is not misused in that way.

The second example that I want to give, before turning expeditiously to the amendments that the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) has mentioned, relates to my own situation. Seven years after the event, a parking company wrote to me to suggest that my car, which had long since been sold on, had been wrongly parked. I knew that this area of law was covered by contract law, and that this was way out of time in any event, even if the underlying suggestion was correct. The truth is, I could not remember, because it had happened seven years previously. However, such an episode would be upsetting for people who did not have that knowledge and who would not realise that such a demand was time-barred.

I shall now turn to the new clause and the amendments tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight), whom I congratulate on bringing forward this brilliant Bill. He is right to have a single point of appeal; that is enormously sensible. There is not a great deal that I want to add to that, other than to say that I hope that the clause will be flexible enough to ensure that there are sufficient resources to deal with these points. The reason I say that is that new clause 1(1) states:

“This section applies if the parking code contains guidance recommending that all parking appeals are dealt with by a single person who is independent of persons providing private parking facilities.”

All I can say is that I hope there will be more than one person, because there are likely to be a great number of appeals. I hope that it will be appropriate for the singular to include the plural. I am sure that that point will be dealt with, but there needs to be more than one person.

I also want to deal with the proposal from my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch about the use by the Secretary of State of “his best endeavour”. I understand the logic behind his proposal, but I respectfully suggest that it is unnecessary in this case. The point has been made that there is a danger of seeing ghosts where none exists, so to speak. The wider point, however, is that, were this provision to be required, it would surely be required in every piece of legislation that this House passes. That would transfer power from this House, where hon. Members can properly hold the Executive to account for allegedly dilatory behaviour, to outside the House because, as my hon. Friend rightly acknowledges, the issue would become justiciable. We could then have a situation where a person could serve a writ suggesting that the Government had not used best endeavours to bring legislation into effect, which would cost a huge amount of time, expense and inconvenience. More importantly, this House would effectively be precluded from discussing it, because it would then be a matter under discussion by the High Court, which would be an unsatisfactory state of affairs.

[Michael Tomlinson]

As ever, my hon. Friend is using his forensic intellect to consider these matters, but is not the situation worse than that? Even if it were justiciable, the phrase “best endeavour” is simply too vague. It would be impossible to judge, as the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) pointed out in an earlier exchange, whether a Minister had or had not used best endeavour.

[Alex Chalk]

Absolutely right. The Court would not thank this House at all for requiring it to make that kind of assessment. One could imagine how the evidence would have to be provided on both sides. The Minister would provide timelines, and then the Court might have to consider what the Opposition had to say. How on earth would the Court be meant to make a judgment?