Meeting of the Parliament 19 August 2014
The debate has been relatively short, and that was certainly a short speech from Cameron Buchanan. Mine will not be quite so short.
The debate has been consensual, and there have been no amendments to consider at stage 3, which reflects the general support from witnesses and from the Local Government and Regeneration Committee. All that is testament to the hard work that Dennis Robertson has carried out with the steering groups that were set up, and to the work that has been done with local authorities, the police and Transport Scotland.
In my opening speech, I outlined why we support the bill, which will bring much-needed improvement to administration of the blue badge scheme. During the stage 1 debate, the minister pointed out that a particularly determined individual could save about £6,000 a year in parking charges by fraudulently using a blue badge in one of our city centres. In itself, that is a shocking misuse, but it is compounded by the fact that the parking spaces are no longer available to genuine badge holders.
We have concerns about the financial impact on local authorities. We have been reassured that they can cope with the additional costs of review, but we still have questions about their ability to resource the enforcement aspect meaningfully. Regardless of that question, the bill should, we hope, result in increased revenue to councils, as misuse of blue badges is reduced from the current level.
I mentioned in my opening speech that there is a great deal of synergy between the bill, other legislation that has been enacted—Jackie Baillie’s Disabled Persons’ Parking Places (Scotland) Bill—and a bill that is in the pipeline: Sandra White’s proposed responsible parking bill. Those three combine well to improve the situation for disabled people and will go a long way towards making our towns and cities much more accessible to people who have a disability.
Section 1 of the bill sets out how the badge will be improved. That should address the issue with people tampering with an expired badge to extend the expiry date or by changing the photo. Some of the evidence that has been given indicates that the tampering and misuse of badges in that way can be fairly lucrative, with free parking on offer in many areas where it is expensive to park without the badge. Section 1 should reduce the costs of that lost revenue to local authorities and open up spaces for use by genuine badge holders.
The measures in the bill will be a welcome addition to local authorities’ powers to tackle blue badge misuse and the impact that it has on genuine users, as long as they are supported financially to enforce the measures.
Although we have always been supportive of the bill, we seek assurances that there will be an education campaign to inform genuine blue badge users of exactly what they can and cannot do with their badges. I welcome the minister’s comments on the guidance that will be issued to resolve some of the issues on that.
We will support the bill at decision time and look forward to it becoming an act and improving the lives of genuine blue badge users across Scotland.