Terry Jermy

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Christopher. I thank the hon. Member for Maidstone and Malling (Helen Grant) for bringing forward this debate today. It is lovely to see cross-party working on such a serious issue. I am not from Kent—I am from Norfolk—but from listening to the debate, there are some clear similarities. We are a rural county in Norfolk, similar to Kent. We have a significant coastline, an older population and similar issues with accessing blue badges. I am halfway through my summer tour of the 72 villages in South West Norfolk, and I do not think I have been to a single village yet where somebody has not come forward to say, “I’ve got a real issue trying to get hold of a blue badge.” It is coming up time and again, and there are dozens of cases locally. For example, I have a constituent who had been diagnosed with and undergone treatment for breast cancer. She is in her 70s. She is profoundly deaf and has a hearing dog. She has been rejected three times for a blue badge. As a result, she is reluctant to leave her village, and there is a real issue with isolation from that. Another constituent was at the end stage of kidney failure. He is in the early part of having had a transplant, but there are post-surgery complications, anxiety and a whole number of other health issues. His application was turned down because it was considered that his mobility was only bad during flare-ups, rather than “more often than not”, his anxiety was not regarded as being bad enough, and toileting issues do not form part of the national guidance. There is a real issue about cost, too. I am fortunate that at our local hospital, which is about an hour away, people can still get free car parking if they have a blue badge. Those in a rural community often do not have any public transport enabling them to get to hospital. They have to drive or rely on other people to drive them there. If they are having routine treatment for cancer, for example, the cost of car parking alone soon stacks up, as it does for any other regular hospital or medical appointments. There is a real cost aspect to this. What arrangements are in place for monitoring councils on the time taken to process blue badge applications? Norfolk county council seems to spend an incredible amount of time processing applications, and there is an element of local criteria. I have not done the work yet, but I think there is a significant policy difference in Norfolk, where it is incredibly difficult for a whole range of reasons to be eligible for a blue badge. Clearly, people who would benefit from and need a blue badge are not receiving one. Can the Minister comment on what oversight and assessment there is of local councils amending their own criteria, making things difficult and ultimately denying people eligibility for blue badges?