Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to prevent the abuse of the blue badge scheme for disabled drivers.

Local authorities are responsible for enforcing the scheme but the Department for Transport has taken a number of steps to assist them: making it easier to withdraw a badge for reasons of misuse; providing local authorities with powers to seize badges on-street; introducing fraud resistant badges; and establishing a single national database of all badges that can be accessed by on-street enforcement officers to identify genuine badge holders.

The Department shares examples of best practice amongst local authorities and is currently hosting a series of regional workshops aimed at making authorities aware of the powers they have to address abuse.