Hospital Parking Charges (Exemption for Carers) Bill

Peter Bone Excerpts

Friday 30th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Julian Knight]

My hon. Friend makes a good point and I have urged my hospital trust to make the information available not only online, which always seems to be the catch-all approach of any organisation, but in the hospital, so that patients and visitors do not have to come into the hospital and take up the time of staff and administration staff to clarify something that could easily be set out in a leaflet, a letter or a small poster by a desk.

In Solihull, a reduction in the price of monthly tickets and concessions was the direct response to the lobbying done by me and local councillors. We have also seen a doubling of the free parking time at Solihull hospital from 15 minutes to 30 minutes. At the hospital it can often take up to 15 minutes just to find a space, so I urged the trust to increase this time, and the Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust kindly saw fit to double the time. These are small wins, but they are an example of what can be achieved through individual engagement, by putting our case and understanding that there is not an endless supply of money and that we have to be sensitive to the bottom line—the finances of the NHS—because if we are not careful, we may end up depriving the NHS of vital cash.

My own Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust has a deficit—this is in the public domain—of £29 million for the first five months of the financial year. So seriously is this viewed that the management of the University Hospitals Birmingham has been brought in to help close the black hole in the finances. I welcome that move, but it shows that this is no time to destabilise NHS finances or those of individual hospital trusts in our areas.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

My hon. Friend has been generous in giving way. I have listened to the arguments and the one problem I have is this: should we be using car parking charges to fund the NHS? Should we not fund the NHS properly? I am slightly uncomfortable with that.

[Julian Knight]

I understand entirely where my hon. Friend is coming from and in an ideal world I would agree. I would like to see free hospital parking. However, I recognise that there are pressures on our car parks, and that car parking charges at a hospital have to reflect the car parking charges in the local area; otherwise we will have the problem that we encountered in Solihull prior to the introduction of charges, when people were parking at the hospital and then shopping. It is a fine balancing act and it should be dealt with by individual areas on a case-by-case basis.