Lola McEvoy

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. The issue we are addressing today is symptomatic of a country where people who have done everything right are being burdened and bullied by a system that is weighted against them. I want to use this debate to tell the stories of some of my constituents in Darlington, and to outline why I am urging the Government to take action to regulate the private parking industry. The reason people are so enraged by this issue is because it is a microcosm of people’s broader experiences. What was once an ordinary, day-to-day, unremarkable occurrence has been allowed, through the incompetence of the last Government, to become a truly unacceptable experience for ordinary people. While many simply pay the fine, for a lot of people in Darlington an unexpected bill of £170 really affects their budget. I pay tribute to the people who have shared their stories; it has helped me greatly in my conversations with Ministers, colleagues and the companies. Each of the 140 people who have reached out to me since I was elected has been treated unfairly, and I am confident that they are just the tip of the iceberg nationally. I am convinced that we absolutely must regulate private parking companies, and that action is long overdue. The car park that the majority of my constituents have complained about is situated right next to the Darlington Economic Campus, which houses the Treasury. While I was visiting that car park in my first week, a man using a wheelchair was trying to use the machine to pay for his parking. It had taken him longer than five minutes to get to the machine, so he had missed the window to pay without a fine. He was rightly shocked and angry about the unfairness of the rule. The fact that I witnessed him getting caught out in real time convinced me, there and then, that this was happening so frequently that something had to be done. Ten months later, the five-minute rule has been stopped, but we need to go further to protect people. We need proper reporting, proper regulation and an independent ombudsman for appeals, and we need it quickly. Many Members will be familiar with the story of Hannah Robinson. She received a staggering £11,000 in parking fines from a single company across 67 tickets. In every case, she paid for her parking. Her only fault was that she did not do it within the five-minute window set by the operator. Often that was not even possible. Machines did not work, phonelines were unresponsive and the internet signal was too poor to pay online. The five-minute rule has now rightly been banned following campaigning efforts by MPs such as my hon. Friends the Members for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) and for Derby North (Catherine Atkinson), whom I have been proud to work alongside. However, Hannah and others like her should never have been charged in the first place, or dragged through legal proceedings or forced to fight ruthless companies to prove they had done nothing wrong. Another Darlington resident, Kim, had her life completely knocked off course for parking in the same facility. Like Hannah, she paid for her parking but was unable to do so immediately because of technical issues. She was sent a £170 charge, but she never received the letters. Completely unaware of the issue, she received a county court judgment. Her credit score collapsed. She and her partner were both working full time, doing the right thing, and were blocked from getting a mortgage. The fact of the matter remains: we must take action on this issue, as it is long overdue.