Debate contribution: Hospital Parking Charges Bill: Consideration Stage

Debate contribution by Mr Gerry Carroll on 23 April 2024.

MLA

Mr Gerry Carroll

Party at the time

People Before Profit Alliance

Date

23 April 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Executive Committee Business

Heading

Hospital Parking Charges Bill: Consideration Stage

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4485058

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I beg to move amendment No 1:

Every day, at the side of this Building, I walk past a small fleet of gleaming, top-of-the-range cars with a chauffeur in the driver's seat. Those cars, which park for free and are paid for through the public purse, belong to the very Ministers who are imposing — reimposing, rather — hospital parking charges on health workers and patients. In hospitals across the city and beyond are our trust chief executives, many of whom opposed free hospital parking for staff and patients from the outset. At this moment, their cars are parked for free outside their place of work. People in the Assembly should think long and hard about the message that that sends out to health workers and the sick, who are set to face two more years of punitive taxation at the Executive's hands. As People Before Profit has said time and again, hospital parking charges are a tax on health workers and on the sick. Health workers are being told that they must pay to work. Patients and their families are being told that they must pay for their illness. What a rotten state of affairs. The Executive tell us that they took in £6·4 million last year from hospital parking charges. That was at the last count. I repeat what I said last week: that is not a huge sum for the Department of Health, but it is an astronomical sum to be made up by health workers and patients who have struggled during the worst cost-of-living crisis in living memory. We are talking about health workers who have had their pay cut, their bills raised and their overall living standards attacked by the Tories and successive Stormont Administrations. The last time I checked, health workers who have a permit were paying £200 a year to park at their place of work. That is high enough, but Unite, which represents some of the lowest-paid health workers in our hospital, has told us that some workers pay £2,000 a year to park at their place of work. That is almost 10% of a porter's wage. It is scandalous. The DUP, Sinn Féin, the UUP, Alliance and others tell us what that figure and the earlier figure are per day. They have worked it out. They tell us that the rates hike that they voted through last month is only x pounds and y pennies. Some will tell us that water charges, prescription charges and other revenue-raising measures will cost the public only so much. We should add to that rising rents, rising bills and rising childcare costs. I invite the Executive to add them all up and tell us how much health workers, patients and others are meant to pay and how they are meant to cope with the situation. Parties across the Chamber had no problem with voting for free hospital parking charges in the mouth of an election. The then and current Health Minister, Robin Swann, and his UUP colleagues could not wait to welcome them. The now junior Minister Aisling Reilly was seen posing for photos outside the Royal Victoria Hospital and telling voters how Sinn Féin had scrapped hospital parking charges. Lo and behold, now that the time has come to pay the piper, they have gone sheepish all of a sudden. They now tell us that there is no alternative and that the big, bad Tories are imposing another austerity budget. Ministers bemoan the devastating impact that it will have on public services, yet have agreed, once again, to do the Tories' dirty work for them. I challenge the Executive today to put it up to the Tories and to say that our hospitals, workers' pay, schools and so much else cannot be weighed against a rotten Tory ledger. I challenge them to spend the money that is necessary to protect patient lives, educate our children and lift people out of poverty and then to tell the Tories that they need to find the money. The Executive want us to believe that the state cannot afford the £10 million or so that it will cost to provide free parking, while handing some £400 million to private agencies for the provision of staff in our hospitals. While the private sector milks our health system dry, health workers and patients are asked to pick up the pieces. That is what it boils down to. I put it on record that, from the outset, I and my party opposed the delay to scrapping hospital parking charges. Most other parties here voted to impose them for another two years. We are prepared to offer an alternative. The Health Minister says that the technology necessary for free hospital parking should be ready by September, so we are prepared to take him at his word. We want to speed up the process and scrap the charges by September. If he is telling the truth when he says that the necessary technology should or, perhaps, will be in place, there is no good reason why he, his party and other Members should not accept our amendment. If the Executive parties do not vote for our amendment, we will have called their bluff. A refusal to support our amendment will prove that the legislation was never about technological or logistical issues but was always about squeezing more money from people, including health workers and the public. Our amendment will ensure that patients, health workers and trade unions will know where the Executive really stand on the issue when all is said and done. We want hospital parking charges scrapped for good, as the Assembly voted for two years ago, and not just for electoral gain, which the Executive parties have shown once again that it was. If the Executive impose this regressive tax on health workers and patients, I will call on the public to organise a campaign to oppose them and to, hopefully, see the charges scrapped once and for all.

999 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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