Car parking idea is bad

Written by Jenny Randerson and published in Cardiff Post on Mon 10th Mar 2008

The Health Minister announced last week that from April, car parking at hospitals will be free. Of course that will not apply at University Hospital of Wales because they have a commercial contract with a private car park operator which binds them in for the foreseeable future. Free parking at hospitals sounds great in theory but it has a massive downside. In hospitals near to town and city centres for instance, there could be a free-for-all with local office workers, commuters and so on taking advantage of the free parking leaving genuine patients and their visitors without a space at all.

The decision led to an unseemly public spat between the English Health Minister, Ben Bradshaw and Edwina Hart here in Wales. Ben Bradshaw claimed that the decision would divert vital money from patient care (true!) and that waiting lists are already longer in Wales than in England (qlso true!). He also stated that free parking would undermine the Assembly Government's own green agenda and the efforts being made to encourage us all to use public transport rather than our cars.

In return, Edwina Hart accused the UK Labour Government of "sour grapes." Public rows like this between two Labour Ministers are virtually unknown. I strongly support the right that we have in Wales to do things differently from England as local problems are nearly always best solved by local solutions. I don't like it when UK Ministers try to interfere. But in this case, Ben Bradshaw has logic on his side. Local hospitals should have the right to find the best solutions to parking problems, with some advice from the Assembly Government. I believe that advice should be free parking for regular patients and visitors, not for everyone and anyone who fancies parking for free at the expense of our NHS. This would mean that those hospitals with pressure on space in their car parks could give a rebate to those key, important groups. They manage to do this for cinema goers at the Red Dragon Centre in Cardiff Bay, for example, and in some supermarkets, so why shouldn't our NHS be allowed to do the same?

Once again, the Labour-Plaid Government have imposed a 'one-size fits all' approach without allowing local organisations and people to do what is best for their local hospitals.