Disabled Persons’ Parking Badges Bill

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Friday 30th November 2012 Lords Chamber

Moved By

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester]

That the Bill be read a second time.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester]

My Lords, this Bill is a vital step in the fight against the fraudulent use of the much-prized blue badge. It will give local authorities some clear powers of enforcement and provide a welcome extension of the blue badge scheme to Armed Forces personnel and their families posted overseas on UK bases. I congratulate Simon Kirby MP on steering the Bill through the sometimes choppy waters of the other place, although it did have cross-party support, and making sure that it landed safely on the firmer ground for Private Member’s Bills of this House. I am extremely grateful for the help I have had from officials in my noble friend’s department. Also, before I go any further, I must declare my interest in that I am a blue badge holder.

The disabled parking scheme administered by local authorities has existed since 1971 and has enabled over 2.5 million disabled people to park close to where they need to be if they display a valid blue badge. It was originally introduced in the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970, the late Lord Morris of Manchester’s pioneering Act which has done so much for disabled people since that date, and who we have been remembering a lot since his death in August this year. There is no doubt that the blue badge scheme has transformed the lives of those of us who rely on it on a daily basis for our independence. We rely on it for where we live and how we live, and for our ability to travel the length and breadth of the country, knowing that we can nearly always park somewhere suitable to our needs.

However, as time goes on, the value of the badge becomes ever higher, sadly leading to an incentive to fraudsters to abuse the scheme. The National Fraud Authority estimates that abuse of the scheme is now costing local authorities up to £46 million per annum in lost parking revenue, added to which is the deprivation of suitable parking places for genuinely disabled people. Examples of abuse include copying and forging badges, changing the expiry date on the badge, failing to return expired badges, or the misuse of genuine badges by those who are not disabled in any way and who are often, I fear, family members. We all know about the families who take granny and her blue badge out and leave her in the car parked in the disabled bay while they go shopping. No one can do anything about that kind of abuse.

Reform is clearly necessary to try to stop the growing tide of real blue badge fraud. The Government have already introduced important non-regulatory improvements to the scheme, including a new fraud-resistant badge design and a common, shared database across the UK that will prevent multiple and fraudulent applications and enable quick and easy validity checks. It is now time for the law to be clarified to strengthen powers against fraud even further.

Before describing the clauses of the Bill in a bit more detail, I should spell out what the Bill is not about. It is not about the detail of eligibility for a blue badge; or about the exact details of where and when a person can park with a badge; and it is not about the admittedly rigorous application process or the equally rigorous renewal process. I am sure that my noble friend the Minister is prepared to answer questions about those aspects if necessary, but they do not come within the parameters of this Bill.

I turn now to the Bill. Clause 1 removes the requirement for the Secretary of State to prescribe the exact design of the badge in regulations. This will protect the high security features of new blue badges from disclosure, thus helping to prevent forgery. Clause 2 gives local authorities the power to cancel a badge that has been lost or stolen. Up to 25,000 badges come into this category each year. This means that if enforcement officers come across such a badge, they can check its validity on the national database quickly and, if appropriate, can recover it. The person who has lost the badge or has had it stolen will still be able to be issued with a replacement in the knowledge that the original badge has been cancelled and the thief will not be able to use it. Clause 3 clarifies the existing offences relating to the wrongful use of a badge. Existing legislation is ambiguous about whether it is an offence to use a badge which should have been returned to the issuing authority, and this clause makes it clear that it is an offence. However, it is important to point out that, under the Bill, it will not be an offence not to return a badge that should have been returned to the local authority, for example, on the death of a badge holder, because it might just have been overlooked. However, it will be an offence for another person to use the badge.

Clause 4 gives a power to enforcement officers in plain clothes but with appropriate identification to retain a badge which appears to be fake, which has been cancelled and due for return, or is being misused. I must make it clear that enforcement officers will not be empowered to use force to seize a badge and they will not, contrary to some reports, be able to make a value judgment as to the mobility of the blue badge holder. They will be able to check immediately on a national database and discover whether the blue badge holder is on that database, because of the number on the badge that is displayed on the windscreen. At present, a local authority can only recover a badge if a police officer is summoned. This clause brings the law up to date with the current practice of parking enforcement being largely a civil matter. If an enforcement officer finds that someone is misusing another person’s valid badge, regulations will require that the local authority returns it to the legitimate badge holder. A growing number of local authorities are establishing dedicated fraud teams to undertake blue badge enforcement, thus recognising the seriousness of fraud and misuse. This Bill will greatly facilitate this practice.

Clause 5 removes, in England, a very limited right of appeal to the Secretary of State. This right of appeal does not apply to badge applications or eligibility —it applies only to cases relating to the misuse of badges, such as where an authority may require the return of a badge following a conviction. There are only one or two such appeals each year. Currently, the Local Government Ombudsman resolves most complaints against local authorities about blue badges; in future the ombudsman will also review complaints in the circumstances I have described.

Finally, Clause 6 extends the blue badge scheme to UK military bases overseas. This extension will be widely welcomed and will allow disabled members of the Armed Forces community who are resident on UK military bases abroad to apply for a badge.

The provisions in the Bill have been widely consulted on and guidance will be given to local authorities about their enhanced powers of enforcement. To sum up, this Bill is vital to bring the invaluable blue badge scheme up to date and, in particular, to help tackle fraud. Those involved in both using and administering the scheme are eager to see these measures implemented. I commend the Bill to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate, which I have enjoyed very much and I hope that other noble Lords have as well. It has ranged much wider than the Bill, as I thought it probably would. I was hoping that my noble friend would answer all the non-Bill questions, and I think that he probably has.

I have a lot of sympathy with the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs; he lives in London, as do I, where there are completely different rules all over the place and you have to be pretty sharp to know what they are in each borough. I agree with him that it is a problem when someone drops off a very disabled person by a shop, then parks the car himself or herself in a disabled bay and gets out of the car but is an able-bodied person. Strictly speaking, the driver should not use that bay, but I understand that it is tempting to do that because then they are near to pick the person up again. However, that is one of those problems to which I do not think there is a solution.

My noble friend Lady Brinton talked about the training of enforcement officers, and that is a very good point. In one sense, their job will be much easier than it might have been because all they have to do is look at the number on a badge if they are in doubt about it and ring up the national database to check that that number is on it. That will stop them having to decide whether a person’s car is in the wrong place. On the other hand, it is important that they have training so that they are not tempted to make any sort of value judgment about people who may have hidden disabilities.

The speech by the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, was extremely valuable in telling us about the scale of abuse. I take his point about crushing cars belonging to people who park in the wrong places; so many of us have seen people park in disabled bays at the supermarket, saying, “I’m just going to rush in and out”. You feel like saying, “It’s all very well for you; some of us can’t rush in and out”. The noble Lord, Lord Davies, talked about resources, but I think that this is very much up to the local authority. Other noble Lords have talked about some of the problems with renewing badges and so on. I have used my local councillor to press my cause if I feel that I have been badly let down by a local authority. I was once given a ticket because the badge was on upside down; it had dropped off, and someone had kindly put it back on the windscreen but the wrong way up, and I had a penalty charge. That was ludicrous, and the councillor made quite sure that it did not go any further. Local authorities have to be aware that there are such problems.

I am pleased that there is support all around the House for the Bill.

Bill read a second time and committed to Committee of the Whole House.