DVLA and Private Car Parking Companies

Steve Double Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) on securing this important debate on an issue of particular interest to the area I represent.

I am privileged to live in the most beautiful part of our country, and I have the honour of representing the great people of St Austell and Newquay. It is because of our stunning scenery, our beaches, our wonderful heritage and our excellent food that 4 million people a year come to Cornwall on holiday. I am delighted to learn that the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) is one of those who comes to enjoy all that Cornwall has to offer. An additional 14 million people a year come to Cornwall for a day visit, and the vast majority of them come by car. That is where we start to get into some of the issues.

One of the jewels in Newquay’s crown is the very special Fistral beach, which is the surfing capital of Cornwall, and indeed of Europe. The beaches of north Cornwall attract many people to the area. In the summer, we can see more than 10,000 people on our beaches in north Cornwall, many of whom go into the sea to catch the waves on nice days. It has even been known for Prime Ministers to come to catch the odd wave in the Newquay area, which is always very welcome.

People come and park their cars. On their journey home, they battle through the roadworks on the A30 at Temple, which are soon to be completed thanks to the Minister’s support. When they eventually get home, they unpack their car with their hearts full of happy memories from their time in Newquay, and open their front door to find the inevitable pile of brown envelopes. In among the envelopes, there is a sinister-looking one, which they open to discover it is a penalty charge notice from a private parking firm that has issued it as a result of their stay in Newquay—it is an invoice masquerading as a fine.

As the hon. Member for West Bromwich West pointed out so well, that becomes people’s lasting memory of their time in Newquay. It ruins their memory of that holiday, because they feel they have been unjustly billed. That is very often the case. The reasons why penalty charges are issued are often spurious. It can be for overstaying for very few minutes. It can be, as the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) said, because when they put their car registration number into the machine they got one digit wrong. I have been told that people sometimes go into the car park, find that there are no spaces available, wait a few minutes to see whether one becomes available, and then after some time give up and decide to move elsewhere, only to find that they have overstayed the grace period and that their car has been clocked by the camera. They then receive an invoice as a result.

As has been said, that situation damages the reputation of Newquay and many other holiday areas where such parking firms operate. I believe we need to take action. Many of the hard-working businesses in places such as Newquay are owned by families who go out of their way to welcome tourists. They go the extra mile to look after them well, which is why tourists keep coming back to those places. Those parking firms damage the reputation of those areas and other people’s businesses. They do not damage themselves, because they hide behind anonymous PO boxes. They are faceless organisations that do not face the public.

[Kirsten Oswald]

The hon. Gentleman is making an incredibly important point. Our town centres can ill afford to have their business impacted by parking operators that act against the interests of the people who park there.

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[Kirsten Oswald]

They often act very inappropriately when they deal with people who try, as we do, to put forward the interests of our constituents.

[Steve Double]

The hon. Lady makes a very good point. Absolutely—the whole point is that those parking firms are not damaging their own reputation. In fact, a cynic might say that their whole business model is built on being able to issue extra charges. Their businesses are profitable because they charge people extra money. It does not damage their businesses; it damages the many other businesses in our coastal areas and town centres that rely on people coming back and being able to park. The action of those firms puts people off.

Some hon. Members have said that they are inclined not to name the parking firms. I am going to name two, and there is a very good reason why I am going to do so. I would like the Minister’s help. My office has received many pieces of correspondence, both from local people from Newquay and tourists who have gone to Newquay on holiday, complaining about those companies’ actions and the unfair way they believe they have been treated. Despite numerous attempts by my office to contact those firms and open some constructive dialogue with them, not once have they responded. They have not got back to me or even given me the courtesy of sending a letter saying, “Please leave us alone. Go away. We don’t want to talk to you.” Never, not once, have they responded, despite my many attempts to contact them.

I am therefore more than happy to name ParkingEye and Smart Parking as the firms operating in Newquay in that way. They deserve to be named because of their refusal to respond to me as the local Member of Parliament. I ask the Minister what more the Government could do to make such firms engage—to force them, if necessary—and have a constructive dialogue when issues arise, so that we as Members of Parliament may represent our constituents and the businesses in our constituencies to resolve some cases so that the image of our towns is not tarnished.

We need to look at the relationship the firms have with the DVLA. In my view, they are abusing their privileged relationship and their access to drivers’ information in order to issue penalty charges. When we have unfair practices and firms operating in ways that damage other businesses, it is right for the Government to look at the situation carefully and to introduce regulation or, if necessary, legislation in order to stop those unfair practices and protect other businesses, which rely on people being able to park. I am delighted that we have been able to have this debate, and I hope that as a result we will see some positive and constructive action.

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[Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

May I say what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship in this important debate, Ms Dorries? I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) for bringing it forward, because many of our constituents have complained about what is going on in the parking field. I also thank the Minister and his predecessor for their many courteous replies to the letters that I have written.

The DVLA is at the heart of this issue, not the Department for Communities and Local Government or other bodies. It is the DVLA giving out information that begins this whole unfair process, so the buck stops with the DVLA and the Minister, not with other people or regulations. It is the DVLA that has decided that it will accept accredited trade associations and give out information to them, subject, apparently, to audits that it carries out. It would be useful to hear about what audits have been done.

My hon. Friend the Member for Torbay mentioned Premier Park. I have no qualms about mentioning businesses without telling them in advance. There is no convention that we should be expected to do that, and we should be wary about limiting our right of free speech in this House. Premier Park behaved quite disgracefully to a constituent of mine and has a reputation for doing so at a place called Popham Diner, which local newspapers have written about. Has the DVLA audited that company? Has it looked into it? Has it, in response to complaints from Members of Parliament, gone beyond the accredited trade association to see what is going on?

The Government are at the heart of this matter, because it is about the principles on which our society is founded and what the Government are there to do. One of the great roles of the Government is to ensure justice and make it impossible for the strong and the powerful to bully the weak and the powerless, but the DVLA is party to helping the strong and the powerful to bully the weak and the powerless. It just says that these accredited trade organisations are, broadly, enough, but those organisations have a vested interest in approving the bodies that sign up to them, because that is where their revenue comes from. The last thing that one of those bodies wants to do is to penalise a parking company that is signed up to it, because if it does, other companies will not sign up and its revenue stream will be threatened. There is a clear conflict of interest.

To my mind, that is where the DVLA is not doing its job, because it is not protecting individuals against those who are more powerful. That is where it should change, and that is where the answer to the problem is. The DVLA should do its own approval of organisations and have its own code of conduct. The fee it charges may cover all of that—it is not unreasonable to charge a fee if you are doing the job properly and there is no vested interest. That work should be done properly by a Government body.

The law is there to protect us. This is essentially a system that is outside the law but to which the Government are party. It is not a legal process, but, as other Members have said, it appears as if it is. It appears to be the same as a fine from a local authority, but it is not. In my experience, the local authorities behave much more reasonably than the private companies. Yesterday, I had a letter from Bristol City Council, which is behaving extremely well to a constituent of mine, erring on the side of leniency to someone who made an honest mistake. The private companies do not seem to do that because their business model is otherwise, and the DVLA is party to that.

[Steve Double]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, where local authorities lease car parks to private operators, the local authority should take a more active role in insisting that those operators work in a way more similar to that of local authorities?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. We want fairness in the process. We must understand that the DVLA has the information in the first place as a legal requirement so that the police may know to whom cars belong. That is why, by law, we are obliged to register our cars. We are not obliged to register them for the benefit of a subsequent private contract, which is a subsequent activity beyond the initial purpose of the DVLA. It was to be there for public interest, not for private contracts. Because of the way in which parking has developed, the DVLA has got involved in this private parking aspect. It earns fees from that, although apparently it is loss-making, which if true seems extraordinarily silly.