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Chamber

Plenary, 14 Nov 2007

14 Nov 2007 · S3 · Plenary

Item of business

Stobhill Hospital <br />(Parking Charges)

McNeil, Duncan Lab Greenock and Inverclyde Watch on SPTV

I thank Paul Martin for giving us the opportunity to have this debate this evening. I start with a confession: I was not born at Stobhill, or even in Glasgow. However, I visited Stobhill hospital on many occasions in my role as a trade union official representing people there. I was also a member of the then Health Committee when, under the convenership of Roseanna Cunningham, we examined car parking charges.

I am pleased to see the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing at a members' debate. That does not often happen and it is worth noting.

The anger that has been generated by this issue at Stobhill, at Inverclyde royal hospital and at other hospitals in the Greater Glasgow and Clyde NHS Board area is as high as we have seen anywhere else. There have been protests, and petitions have attracted massive support. Unfortunately, industrial action is threatened. I have read the cabinet secretary's public statements and I am sure that she is working to prevent the situation going that far.

We have had review after review, which just will not do. We have been given guidelines, criteria and—supposedly—the right to consultation on the impact of car parking charges. Although most people would agree that charges should not be a profit-making exercise, I concede that some hospitals have suffered from abuse of their car parks. Such abuse has to be tackled, but I do not know that charges are the right way to do so.

Safety and security issues have to be addressed when they arise. However, for Stobhill, the Inverclyde royal and other hospitals, a case-by-case, hospital-by-hospital consultation before the introduction of car parking charges is essential. Many hospitals in the west of Scotland are in different situations. This is not a dodge—people in Inverclyde are not suggesting that it is okay to introduce charges at the Glasgow royal infirmary or other Glasgow hospitals. People from my part of the world use all those hospitals, and we have the additional burden of the cost of the journey to get to them. However, there is a double whammy in that if we get a friend to take us there, we have to face car parking charges as well.

It is a scandal that car parking charges will be rolled out across the health board area—and particularly in the IRH—without consultation. No one has consulted the local community, no one has consulted the local authority, no one has consulted the local users groups and no one has consulted people in the neighbourhood. I ask the cabinet secretary to use her powers and to insist that a full and proper consultation take place, so that issues can at least be aired.

In June 2006, the Health Committee raised the issue of access—another issue that angers me. We are pushing ahead with car parking charges in and around our hospitals, but I see no such enthusiasm for dealing with the general issues of travel access to hospitals and health centres throughout the west of Scotland. There is no guidance on how health boards and various other agencies should deal with access. How soon will it be before the health board moves on to consider charging for the use of car parks at health centres as well? I hope that we can stop such a move, and I hope that the cabinet secretary recognises—I am sure she does—the seriousness of the situation. If we can, let us consider car parking charges and other such access issues as part of the broadest consideration of access. We have to think about how the most vulnerable people can access health services at their health centres and hospitals wherever they may be throughout the west of Scotland.