It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Rosindell, and to follow the distinguished Chair of the Select Committee on Transport, my hon. Friend the
Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman), in raising the report with the Minister. I look forward to his comments and those of the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden).
I am a relatively new member of the Transport Committee, which I assume is why the current membership list on the first page of the report states:
“Jim Fitzpatrick (labour, Poplar and Limehouse)”—
Labour with a small l—while every other member’s party is spelled with a capital letter. Perhaps that is a demarcation issue for the Stationery Office, but I take it as no slight. My contribution will be brief and may repeat some of the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside, because the Government’s response to our report, which they have been good enough to provide, leads to some questions.
My first point, already raised by my hon. Friend, is about the consultation that ran until 14 February, which is mentioned in the opening paragraphs of the Government’s response. How is that consultation going? When might we expect its findings to be published?
On recommendation 1, about pavement parking¸ the Government response states:
“In 2011 the Department for Transport gave all local authorities in England the authority to introduce local restrictions on pavement parking”.
How many local authorities acted on that advice? The Minister may not have that information, but given that the Government issue guidance and authority to local councils, it would be interesting to know how many took it seriously and responded locally.
The Government’s response to recommendation 2 states:
“The Government will consider the views of stakeholders and respond to the consultation in the first half of 2014.”
Is that on track? Given that we are now approaching April, can the Minister be more specific than “first half of 2014”?
In response to recommendation 3, the Government say that the Department for Transport
“intends to revise and update its statutory guidance to local authorities on parking enforcement.”
As my hon. Friend suggested, it would be interesting to know when the Government expect to be able to do that.
The Government responded to recommendation 5, about regimes, by saying:
“We agree that a roundtable discussion might be useful and DfT will talk to local authorities and the freight industry to see how this might be organised.”
Has a roundtable taken place? Will one take place? London had a positive experience during the Olympics, when so many deliveries were made out of hours. Local authorities introduced new procedures, such as adjusting vehicles to ensure that radios turn off when cab doors open and installing rubber wheels on delivery trolleys. Local authorities and businesses adopted all manner of simple but sensible arrangements, so that middle-of-the-night deliveries were almost silent. I recall that there were no complaints that the system did not work well, so there is room for optimism that such procedures could be adopted in other places with congestion.
Recommendation 6 asked that the Government
“provide greater clarity on the rules for loading and unloading”.
The Government said that they
“will review its guidance to local authorities and will update it as appropriate.”
Has that happened? Will that happen?
The Government’s response to recommendations 7, 10 and 13 are identical. In all three answers, they said that local authorities
“should collect and publish data”
and that the
“revised Code of Transparency for Local Government states that local authorities must”
publish data on revenue collected and parking enforcement fines. What discussions has the Minister had with the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, whose Parliamentary Private Secretary, the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw), is present and is taking a great interest in the debate? Has the Department for Transport met the Local Government Association? What progress has been made on the publishing of data? Are local authorities routinely publishing such data? Is the Department is happy with the progress of authorities that previously did not publish as much data, if any? It seems sensible that residents should be able to see, as my hon. Friend the Chair of the Transport Committee suggested, whether parking and enforcement fines are appropriate and are being used to pay for enforcement officers, CCTV cameras and appropriate road markings and signage. The publishing of such data provides an easy way for residents to be reassured that the balance is right. I am sure the Minister will have information on how well it is going.
In response to recommendation 12, the Government state:
“Consultation of draft regulations is programmed for spring 2014, to come into effect by March 2015.”
Is that on time? As a former Minister responsible for time at the Department of Trade and Industry, I know that time in the civil service lexicon is a vey flexible feast. I have told the story of when I had to sign off an answer to a parliamentary question asking, “When will this be done?” and the answer from the civil servant was “by autumn”, so I asked the civil servant, “What does autumn mean?” and I was told that autumn was 23 December, because that is when the autumn session of Parliament started. Most people would probably think that we were pretty much into winter by that time, so what does “spring” mean? Is that the Easter recess? Is it the Whitsun recess? Or is it the middle of July at the start of the summer recess? I suspect that it is probably the July date, which would give the Government more time—I am not quibbling about that—but it would be nice to know what spring means in this context.
My penultimate comment is on recommendation 17 and the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside about the general European-wide power. While the Government state that they remain
“open to considering a general European-wide power”,
they say later in the response:
“In March 2011 the Government announced that it would not opt in to a European Directive facilitating cross-border enforcement in the field of road safety.”
Many of us were unhappy about that at the time and still are. If the Government will not opt in to a directive on road safety, which most of us would deem far more
important than parking—notwithstanding how important parking is to drivers across the country—it is disingenuous for them to say that they remain open to a joining a European-wide initiative. If the Government are not going to do that on road safety, surely the Minister can confirm that they will not do it on parking.
I am pleased to see the Minister and his shadow, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield, in the Chamber today. I look forward to their comments.
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