DVLA and Private Car Parking Companies

Debate between Steve Double and Jacob Rees-Mogg

Tuesday 21st March 2017 Westminster Hall

[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.