The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)

My Lords, the purpose of this draft order is to extend Schedule 4 to the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, which I shall refer to as the POFA to save time. This will ensure that the recovery of unpaid parking charges on railway land is enforced consistently with other private car parks and has the relevant safeguards provided for users of those car parks, including an independent appeals service. It will also ensure consistency in the regimes applying in railway car parks across the railway network through the extension of this order to cover England and Wales. Noble Lords will wish to know that, after the draft order was laid on 8 September, it was formally cleared by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments in its Thirty-fifth Report of Session 2024-26. Likewise, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee formally cleared the draft order as an instrument but named this amendment as an instrument of interest to the House in its 36th Report of Session 2024-26. Prior to this, my department had responded to preliminary inquiries from the committee’s clerk. The background to the draft order is that railway operators currently use a combination of enforcement regimes to recover unpaid parking charges at railway station car parks, resulting in inconsistency and complexity for operators and passengers. Some operators rely on criminal enforcement set out in the Railway Byelaws, while others use agents who rely on contractual agreements with motorists. With the introduction of Great British Railways, my department expects a consistent level of service to be offered across the network to passengers. Therefore, the order will bring car parks located on railway land within England and Wales into the scope of the same civil enforcement regime that applies to all other car parks on private land. Previously, railway station car parks were excluded from the POFA because they were subject to the Railway Byelaws, which meant unpaid parking charges could be enforced only under those by-laws. The POFA made a number of changes to the law related to parking on private land. It bans vehicle immobilisation and/or removal without lawful authority and provides private landholders with additional powers to pursue the registered keeper of a vehicle for unpaid parking charges, providing certain conditions are met. Schedule 4 to the POFA facilitates the recovery of unpaid car parking charges from the keeper or hirer of a vehicle parked in a private car park. It sets out detailed requirements regarding the provision of notices and the appeals process. However, as I have said, railway station car parks are currently excluded from this regime. The change which this order enables will ensure a consistent civil enforcement regime for all railway station car parks across the future Great British Railways network. It will ensure that passengers have the same protection that they would have when parking in other car parks on private land, including access to an independent appeals service. An industry consultation showed support for amending the Railway Byelaws to remove criminal liability for parking breaches and instead using the civil enforcement regime set out under the POFA regime. These changes will standardise the approach to the recovery of unpaid car parking charges from the keeper of a vehicle parked in railway station car parks. To support this order, changes to the Railway Byelaws will be made at the same time to remove the criminal enforcement regime which is currently in place and allow this amendment to take effect. This shift from the criminal enforcement regime to the civil regime provides passengers with an independent appeals service and allows the same framework to apply to railway station car parks as applies to all other private car parks. I have highlighted the importance of this order to ensure that passengers have access to a consistent civil enforcement regime when recovering unpaid parking charges on railway land and an independent appeals service. I therefore beg to move.