Parking Places (Variation of Charges) Bill

Seema Kennedy Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 25th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Seema Kennedy (South Ribble) (Con)]

I want to give a quick plug to Small Business Saturday, which is a week tomorrow, and is important for all our local communities. May I commend the work of South Ribble Borough Council, which has suspended parking charges in Leyland for that day?

[Mr Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend and South Ribble Borough Council, which is obviously thinking very carefully about how it can promote its town centres. Small Business Saturday is a great way to do that. Our larger businesses on our high streets and in our town centres are extremely important, but our small businesses provide an additional vitality that many people appreciate. They distinguish our high streets from many out-of-town retail parks, which do not have that level of small business involvement. It is therefore great to hear what my hon. Friend says.

This is a real opportunity. The Bill will allow councils, when there are festivals, to use the celebrations to demonstrate how good our town centres and high streets are. People lead busy lives and they do not necessarily pop to the high street or the town centre to do their shopping. They might do their shopping and even banking—through apps and so on—on the internet. We often find that because people do not have a reason to go to a high street or town centre, they forget to frequent them. That is a real pity. Any festival, or anything else, that can bring them back into town, make them think, “This is somewhere I should visit and do a lot of my shopping”, and refresh their memory is a good thing.

One thing I learned from my involvement in the Great British High Street competition when I was the Minister with responsibility for high streets last year was that people up and down the country had a passion for their high streets. When I was chairman of the all-party group on town centres, I led a Backbench Business Committee debate in this Chamber. I think that was when you, Madam Deputy Speaker, were the Chair of the Committee, which I later had the great pleasure to serve on under your chairmanship. If I recall correctly, about 70 right hon. and hon. Members attended that debate, which filled a full six hours. It just showed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth did in introducing the Bill, what passion there is for our high streets and town centres. If a place can get its high street and town centre right, it can create an experience that visitors will not get on the internet or in an out-of-town shopping park, and that is why we should do everything we can, as legislators, to facilitate the use of our town centres and put them on a long-term, sustainable basis.

The Bill offers flexibility on car parking charges, but as has been discussed by hon. Members, there is concern about local authorities deciding to raise charges without consulting businesses, as does happen. The Government think it fit and proper, therefore, that where councils intend to put them up, they are responsive to local concerns and should have to consult local people before seeking to do so.

The hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon) mentioned the consultation and how it might work. I am sure that he is well aware that after the Bill was passed, it would be necessary to implement the changes through secondary legislation that stated exactly how places needed to consult. It is important that those measures be there, because without a measure allowing for consultation, local people might not get an opportunity to comment. I have seen such decisions taken within a matter of weeks, and even in a day. A council might hold a cabinet meeting, propose a budget and through it an increase in car parking charges, and then in two hours be in full council and pass the measure without the public knowing. We need to guard against that, and the Bill certainly does.

The Bill brought forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth, which provides for consultation if local authorities want to raise the charges on an existing traffic order, is a sensible reform that strikes a balance between the need of local authorities to set fair car parking charges and the need to consider the views of local communities. I appreciate the points made and thank him for introducing this important Bill. The Government support its intentions, not just because it delivers on one of their objectives, but because it encourages a model of more effective support for our great British high streets and town centres. As we can see in the Chamber, such is the enthusiasm for our high streets among Members from across the country that we should think carefully before doing anything that might cause harm or detriment to them; we should applaud councils that want to reduce charges and welcome more people into their area, and enable them to do so. This matters to local people, and it should matter to the House.