Local Government and Communities Committee, 01 Oct 2008

Meeting date: Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Official Report 369KB pdf

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Disabled Persons' Parking Places (Scotland) Bill: Stage 1

Item 2 is further oral evidence on the Disabled Persons' Parking Places (Scotland) Bill. I welcome to the meeting Guy Mason, public affairs manager, and Paul Hedley, customer services manager, from Asda; Kelvin Reynolds, the British Parking Association's director of technical services and head of the safer parking scheme; and Graeme Taylor, the Scottish regional manager of National Car Parks Ltd.

If none of you has any introductory remarks to make, I will move directly to questions.

I have the pleasure of firing the opening salvo.

As you are aware, there has been a lot of discussion of and interest in the bill. Although we did not ask you to make any written submissions, we welcome the opportunity to question you as car park operators on any problems that might arise and any actions that you might have to take if you have to provide and enforce the use of disabled persons' parking bays.

According to written evidence that we have received, Asda has tried to alleviate certain problems that disabled groups and the bill's promoter, Jackie Baillie, have highlighted with regard to parking bays for disabled people outside supermarkets and major stores. I wonder whether the representatives from Asda will tell us about the measures that have been taken to restrict people's abuse of such bays. Why, for example, did Asda feel it necessary to introduce such measures?

Thank you for inviting us to give evidence. Asda has approximately 360 stores across the UK, 45 of which are in Scotland. Every week, each store is visited by 60,000 customers, with 40,000 to 50,000 cars passing through.

For quite some time now, customers have been complaining about the abuse of disabled and parent-and-child parking spaces. Estimates suggest that we used to receive 20 recorded complaints a week about those parking spaces. When we took into account comments made to colleagues on the shop floor that are not recorded, the number rose to about 50 to 100 complaints per store per week.

Clearly action needed to be taken. We found that we could not tackle the problem simply by getting colleagues to say to customers, "Please don't abuse those spaces," and decided that something more needed to be done. We felt that our customers supported such a move; after all, the majority did not abuse spaces and did not want them to be abused. As a result, we got together with the British Parking Association and came up with a scheme under which a civil penalty notice would be served on customers who abused the spaces.

Paul Hedley will say more about the implementation of the scheme and the trial in Liverpool.

As Guy Mason has pointed out, it was not only the customers who legitimately used disabled or parent-and-child bays but our general population of customers who wanted us to act on the issue. We trialled other schemes to alleviate the problem, such as getting colleagues to patrol the bays and ask customers to move and installing space hogs—which I should explain are electronic devices that sit on the ground and ask people who are not legitimately parked to move their vehicles. Although the measures worked in the short term, their effect soon dwindled as customers realised that there was no element of enforcement.

We decided to trial the civil penalty scheme in Liverpool, simply because the city provides a representative sample of the UK demographic and because we find that if we can make schemes work in that city—which is a particularly difficult area—we can make them work in other areas.

It is a challenging area.

Indeed. Thank you, Guy.

In a scheme that we introduced in conjunction with Town and City Parking Ltd, which manages our parking estate for us, we put up very clear signs that set out parking terms and conditions and stated that anyone using a disabled bay must clearly display a blue badge in their vehicle and that anyone using a parent-and-child bay should have in their vehicle a child seat or booster seat for children up to 12. Within seven days of putting up the signs and after bringing in attendants who work at each store for 12 hours a month on a rotational basis, we improved the availability of both types of bay by more than 60 per cent. In fact, even though the wardens do not work in our car parks all the time, availability has continued to improve. I suppose that a good analogy is with a public highway; parking attendants do not have to be present all the time to act as a deterrent.

Obviously, as a retailer, we did not want to turn customers off shopping with us by having attendants jumping out of the bushes and issuing parking tickets. We simply wanted to ensure that there was a clear deterrent.

In a major piece of customer perception work that we then carried out, the scheme received a 93 per cent customer endorsement rating, which is probably one of the higher ratings for any of our trials. It was clear that our customers felt strongly that this was the right thing for Asda to do.

One interesting point is that, with regard to the 60 per cent improvement in the availability of bays, we issue on average only two tickets per store per week across the UK. The figure increases in Scotland to three tickets per store per week, which reflects the fact that, on average, there is slightly more abuse of bays in stores in Scotland than there is in stores in England, Wales or Northern Ireland.

The £60 penalty fine is split 50:50 between Asda and Town and City Parking, and we donate our half to Tommy's campaign and Motability. So far, we have been able to donate £120,000 to those charities through the scheme.

I welcome Asda's comments and actions. However, what about the issue of the cost of enforcement, which other witnesses have highlighted? How does Asda cover the costs of issuing an average of three tickets per store per week? How does the company engaged to deliver the scheme, Town and City Parking, operate? I welcome the customer endorsement figures, but can you tell us how regularly the company's parking attendants visit the stores? Have you experienced any resistance from customers in paying their fines?

The scheme costs about £400 to £500 per store per year. Asda funds that centrally out of our budgets, because we see the scheme as a customer service initiative in our stores. Prior to our launching the trial, customer perception was clear—they wanted action. The abuse of disabled and parent-and-child bays rated highly as an issue—it was in the top four issues for customers when visiting an Asda store. Given the number of disabled shoppers and parent-and-child shoppers in our stores, the feedback on the issue was probably disproportionate. Customers who did not fit into either of those categories still expected Asda to take action on the issue.

Attendants are available at our stores for approximately 12 hours per month. The system works on a rotational basis. For example, in Edinburgh, once our new store is built at Leith, the attendant will rotate between the three stores over a month, so that they are at each store at particular trading times, at the weekends, during the week and in the mornings and evenings. However, we monitor closely the number of CPNs that are issued at stores and our complaints system, and if we find a continuing issue at a particular store, we liaise with Town and City Parking and put full-time attendants into the stores for short bursts of a set number of weeks to alleviate the problem. We also consider measures such as making signage clearer. That has proved fairly successful.

We pay for the costs of the scheme. We would rather take the option of funding it and paying for the attendants, so that we can keep control of the scheme and ensure that we deal with customers on a case-by-case basis. For example, a customer might bring a disabled family member shopping in their car, but without a badge. They might feel entitled to park in a disabled space, but could receive a CPN as a result. We want to be able to say to that customer that we understand fully what happened, that the circumstances were different from normal and that we are prepared to refund the fine or ensure that they do not have to pay it.

We want to ensure that somebody does not pay a fine that is completely unfair because there was a genuine reason why they had to park in the space. That person might say that they will never shop in our stores again, because we were responsible for their being charged £60, which they cannot afford or get back. We need to be able to deal with customers on a case-by-case basis, so we would like to keep control over that.

Several other members have questions, but I will give the other witnesses a chance to outline their experience. What happens in National Car Parks?

Thank you for inviting us. We appreciate the opportunity to give our point of view.

Last year, NCP split its business into NCP, which operates off-street car parks, and NCP Services, which is now a different company that is owned by 3i and which provides on-street parking services for the City of Edinburgh Council. We see the bill as threefold. Off-street parking is split into two—there are operators such as NCP and APCOA, and the supermarkets. NCP manages and enforces parking restrictions in disabled bays through mobile teams that visit all our sites in Scotland regularly and throughout the day. We actively enforce penalty contravention charge notices, which involve a fine of £50 that is enhanced to £100 if it is not paid within 14 days.

As a result of the parking enforcements that we put in place approximately nine months ago, our business has recently noticed a decline in the number of people parking in disabled bays. We do not think that the bill will change the situation. If the council or the police enforced bays, as the witness from Asda said, that would have a negative impact on our customers, as we would not be able to control the situation properly within our remit. We would also lose revenue. We use the revenue to invest in our car parks and to improve standards and deliver customer service. That is NCP's view on the bill.

I would like to get a comparison between NCP and Asda. What is the level of abuse? Although the abuse is declining, how many fines or tickets are issued?

Each site is different. Obviously, things depend on the volume of traffic that goes through the site, but we probably issue between 15 and 20 parking contravention charge notices each week to people who have parked in disabled parking bays. There has been an increased focus on the matter, and the number of notices that have been issued has drastically reduced in the past nine months, as I said, so that we probably issue only around three or four a day now. When we initially started, we issued around 50 or 60 notices a week on the sites.

So enforcement works.

Definitely, it does.

Do you have any figures for the UK organisation to make comparisons? It is interesting that, in Asda's experience, the abuse of such spaces is worse in Scotland, to our shame.

Currently, my remit covers Lincoln, Nottingham, Wales and Northern Ireland. The abuse that we have seen is consistent.

The committee has taken evidence from public and voluntary organisations, and it is interesting to find out the perspective of the private organisations that are represented here today. I am interested in the views of the British Parking Association and NCP on the proposal that there should be a recurring request every two years to get involved in enforcement in parking areas.

Guy Mason touched on the perceptions of customers. Does Asda think that, as a business, it has lost custom from able-bodied customers who are concerned or unhappy that they face such charges? Does it think that it has gained custom from disabled customers because they have easier access to parking bays? Do you know of any other supermarkets that are considering similar disabled and parent-and-child parking schemes?

We have a new system that we have just started. Through our pulse of the nation index, we can get in touch with 10,000 of our customers by e-mail. We can send them a range of questions about how they feel about themselves, life at the moment and the cost of living. One question that we asked them was whether they are aware that we now monitor disabled parking spaces and issue fines on the back of that monitoring. Almost 45 per cent of them said that they were aware of the scheme. We then asked whether they felt better or worse about Asda because of it. Some 61 per cent felt more positive about us because of it; 39 per cent felt less positive about us; 26.1 per cent felt some more positive about us; and only 11 per cent felt negative about us. That shows that our customers are behind us. We split mums from everybody else in our survey of 10,000 people, because they are our core shoppers. Some 68.4 per cent of mums said that they felt more positive about us as a result of the scheme; 24.6 per cent felt some more positive about us; and only 5 per cent felt negative about us. Therefore, our customers were overwhelmingly behind us.

I spoke about customers who have said that they cannot afford to pay £60. Very few people say that they will refuse to pay the money. Most people say, "Okay. I understand why the fine was issued and I'll pay it. I feel it's a justified fine." The fact that we give 50 per cent of it to charity makes people feel a bit better and helps them to say, "I understand why I need to pay it and will do so."

Is there any evidence of your competitors running similar schemes?

After the launch of the scheme, Sainsbury's quickly followed our lead. It is trialling a similar scheme in particular areas of England. Morrisons and Tesco think that their current policies, which involve putting leaflets on windscreens or having colleagues patrolling bays, are effective. However, Mobilise, which is a leading disabled persons' charity, has received different feedback from its members and the general public and, following the launch of the scheme, we received the Redex trophy from Mobilise for our work to defend disabled parking bays. It is widely noted that it is significantly easier for disabled shoppers to park at an Asda store than at our competitors' stores.

Paul Hedley touched on the fact that we can now target activity where it is most needed, which makes it particularly effective. We monitor the data from all our stores and the number of complaints that we get in each store, and we can say, "Right, we need to focus on the Chesser store, because it had particularly bad abuse last month." If parking was under local authority control, we would not be able to target resources in that way.

Are you suggesting that Asda would rather stick with its private scheme in the long term even if the legislation is passed?

Yes.

We would prefer to stick with our scheme. As head of customer services at Asda, I have a clear and defined role to protect our customers and ensure that they continue to shop with us and are happy with our levels of service. Often, customers park in disabled parking bays not out of malice or ill intent but because they are just popping in for a pint of milk or running into the store to use the cash machine. All that is required is for an attendant to walk up to the individual and say, "I could issue you with a fixed penalty notice. However, we would prefer you to move your vehicle to another bay."

When we talk to someone, we record their vehicle's registration number, so that we can check whether we issue a CPN against the vehicle at a later date, although that is a rare occurrence. Once one of our attendants has asked a customer to move their vehicle, it is rare for us to issue them with a CPN. Our approach has the double benefit of enforcing what we want and preventing abuse of the bays while still delivering a high level of service and allowing our customers to return to shop with us.

It is perhaps important to say that we do not incentivise the attendants for the number of tickets that they give out. That means that they talk to customers first, saying, "You shouldn't park there. There is a reason why it is a disabled bay. Please don't park there again. We will make a note of your car registration." The same thing applies in relation to parent-and-child bays.

Does Mr Reynolds or Mr Taylor have anything to add?

If I may, I will do a bit of scene setting and say who we are. We are not a parking operator per se but the professional body that represents the parking industry. NCP Ltd, NCP Services Ltd and Asda are all members of our association. Asda operates through our approved operator scheme—that product was mentioned earlier—in managing its private off-street parking, which is unregulated in UK law. The management of off-street parking that is not governed by local authority regulation is unregulated—that is an important point.

Professionally, I represent the parking industry as director of technical services at the British Parking Association. Personally, my mother is a blue badge holder, so I have experience of how the system works; I tend to be her chauffeur. I also have a disabled son who does not qualify, so I understand both issues and see it both ways.

I support Asda's desire to retain its own destiny, if you like, in the matter. In canvassing opinions from our members, we have picked up on the challenge of operating disabled parking bays successfully. There are examples in England—I have not yet found any in Scotland—of local authorities having entered into partnerships with supermarkets whose car parks function as town-centre car parking. In such cases, if the parking was not managed, there would be a problem for the store. Poole, on the south coast, is an example. There is a traffic regulation order on the car park and the whole thing is managed by the local authority, including any disabled spaces.

There is often a conflict between the official process of issuing what is now a statutory penalty charge notice and the will of the store manger to treat a customer differently for whatever reason. The customer has an expectation that the store manager will be able to do something, but in fact they are trapped in the legal process that the traffic regulation order establishes. That can create conflict. I think that that was what was being referred to with regard to individual bays.

That situation is not specific to supermarkets. Our approved operator scheme has member companies that manage rail stations, DIY stores and so on. We find that there is always conflict between the management company that issues the ticket and the local store manager who must deal with the customer. Experience suggests that it is probably best to leave such issues at the local level, unless a fair adjudication service is in place. That is not the case in the off-street world; as it is unregulated, it does not have an adjudicator. It is a complex area to understand.

From NCP's point of view, we would support Asda in keeping it local, for two reasons. First, we believe that we can control and patrol the bays more regularly than could be done from any other source. Our people visit a site on average once every half hour, so they pass sites in excess of 48 times a day, identifying people who park illegally in bays and applying a penalty contravention charge notice where applicable. Secondly, if Parliament goes down the route of the council enforcing regulations, there would be a customer service issue.

There are circumstances in which, if there is substantial evidence to support doing so, we will withdraw the notice as a goodwill gesture. We work in partnership with a number of shopping centres, which have now passed over control to us. Previously, they wanted to do something and we wanted to do another thing. Now, we can manage the full situation without too many parties being involved. We can deal with situations quickly and effectively, and ultimately satisfy customers. We can ensure that customers who should not park in bays for disabled people pay for doing so. We can also ensure that disabled people who were prevented from parking in bays by customers not entitled to use them can park there.

I have a brief follow-up question. It is clear that the private sector is not looking to enter into a public agreement and that the private agreements that are in place seem to work well. Superstores such as Asda provide free parking spaces for all customers, but the basis of NCP's and others' custom is to charge. Do they charge disabled people? If not, does that mean that there is greater pressure on spaces for disabled people in private car parks such as NCP's? What is the British Parking Association's view on their clients charging for spaces for disabled people?

NCP currently charges for every space in a car park. There is no free parking on any site, although we work with groups around the UK to offer free parking for particular events, for example. However, on a day-to-day basis, charges apply to all clients who come into the car parks.

It is an interesting one. Perhaps I should preface my answer by saying that the BPA also works with Mobilise, the baywatch campaign and the Department for Transport. We are about to launch a major study across the UK this month, looking at abuse and misuse of spaces and provision of spaces in the off-street environment for people with disabilities. We want to understand the level of provision, the level of proper use and the level of misuse. There is currently no source of such information, so we are working to try to understand the issue.

We need to reach a stage at which unauthorised parking in a disabled bay is socially unacceptable, and we are not there yet. Anything that can be done to encourage that should be done, because it means that, to a large extent, people will self-regulate.

On Jim Tolson's point about charging, the British Parking Association's view, which we have given in all the national consultations on the blue badge scheme, is that the blue badge is about convenience rather than price. The point of the blue badge is to ensure convenience for people who need access; it is not about the value of the space. In fact, we have picked up the point that in the on-street world much of the abuse that takes place of the blue badge scheme arises because it offers free parking. If the parking was paid for at the rate that other people pay for their parking, the incentive to cheat in the blue badge scheme would vaporise overnight.

We need to address that issue, and the association is promoting it whenever we have the opportunity. There is massive cheating in the blue badge scheme, which causes distress to the people who genuinely need blue badges. As I said, I have personal experience of that—not because I cheat—but it is not just a personal view; the view of the industry is that the blue badge is about convenience and not price.

Some witnesses have mentioned monitoring of existing schemes. Mr Taylor said that attendants checked for abuse of disabled parking every half hour. Is that universal? For example, does every Asda store monitor disabled parking in the same way? To what extent are your existing internally policed schemes policed?

As Paul Hedley said, it works out that attendants are at the stores for about 12 hours per month, and for 20 minutes on a run. In the same way as NCP works, one attendant will go round several sites—both Asda and non-Asda sites—and turn up at random times. The main point is to ensure that enforcement is random and not, for example, between 3 and 6 o'clock on a Friday every week, in which case people get to know what time the attendants are there. They can appear at any time of the day or night on any day, including at weekends, but they are not there all the time. They work on a rotational basis. The key for us is to ensure that the signage is clear and accurate, that customers understand it and that we back it up with regular patrols.

We endorse that. I should make it clear that half the BPA's members are local authorities, and we have not yet touched on the on-street environment, which is a different ball game.

In any situation, most people comply with rules and regulations: the trick is to tackle those who do not. Random enforcement is the key because it is the most cost-effective. If enforcement is regular and expected, the self-regulation goes away. People not knowing is the key. They think, "Will I get caught? I don't know, so I won't take the chance." Random enforcement is most effective in achieving the objective and it is most cost-effective because it does not have to be done often, as long as it is done randomly. We just need a presence so that people know that enforcement takes place and is totally unexpected.

That is also true of on-street enforcement. Parking attendants regularly walk the streets because their presence is important. People do not know whether the attendants will actually be there, but most are not prepared to take the risk of picking up a parking ticket.

We say exactly the same about shoplifting from our stores. Ninety-nine per cent of customers are law-abiding citizens and would never dream of taking anything from a store, and it is the same with car parking spaces, in that 99 per cent of people never abuse a disabled space or a mother-and-child space. It is a question of tackling those who do.

I agree. NCP's challenge is different from that of supermarkets, where people nip in and out for short spells. In NCP car parks, it is likely that people who park in disabled spaces will leave their cars for several hours, which ties up the spaces. All that we can do is issue PCCNs, which we hope will show people out there that we are trying to control the use of bays as best we can. We do not see many repeat offenders after the charge has been acknowledged.

Are you making the case that your existing systems of policing—if you want to use that word—would be more effective than involving local authorities, as proposed in the bill? You have said that your existing systems are better for customer relations, but do you think that they are better or worse for disabled people than what the bill proposes?

NCP believes that it is better that we do the policing. We can make more repeat visits than a council or any other party in the system. Therefore, we want to maintain control over the process.

How does policing work in the NCP car parks? Do the people who work there monitor use of disabled bays daily? Is it part of their duties to inspect them every couple of hours?

When our teams drive past every car park, we get them to check the disabled bays. They are all mobile teams in Edinburgh and Glasgow and every time they visit a site, they check the disabled bays.

They are not dedicated to any one site.

In Scotland, 50 per cent of the sites are manned and 50 per cent are visited by mobile teams, which go around the sites constantly. On average, the teams visit each site every half hour to deal with any issues that crop up.

As part of the trial that we launched in Liverpool, we ran a similar scheme at one of our large supercentres, where we engaged the local authority to manage our site on our behalf. We found that the level of availability of the bays was similar in the site that the local authority managed and the site that Town and City Parking managed—the levels were 59 per cent and 63 per cent respectively. However, we found that a much higher number of civil penalty notices were issued by the local authority. Under local authority management, tickets were issued without question, although we thought that some were questionable in terms of customer relations. We found it much harder to override those tickets with the local authority. If you can deliver the scheme through non-heavy-handed enforcement, so to speak, that would definitely be our preferred option.

Alasdair Allan asked what is best for disabled customers. The fact that we can target our resources on the worst sites means that we can deliver the best service for disabled customers. If we know that a particular store has had a problem for two months, we can dedicate the majority of resource there for the next month, which tends to clear up the problem. That is what delivers the added benefit to our disabled customers.

One of the concerns about the bill that other witnesses have expressed is that it is possible that private car park owners—I am sure this does not apply to those who are represented here today—would not engage with local authorities and that local authorities would not be able to enforce their will, as it were. I appreciate that you do not want the bill to proceed, but if it does, would you co-operate with local authorities in that way?

Brian Butler, who is in the room today, is part of a team that liaises with councils about business development—he has regular meetings. Our local area managers regularly meet councils from around the UK to build up partnerships. We need a two-way joint venture to ensure that consistency is delivered. We need support from councils to deliver our business plan, too.

We worked with colleagues in the Scottish Government on the document, "Safeguarding access to off-street parking facilities for people with disabilities in Scotland", which contains a lot of good practice and sets out how and why parking could be managed in the kinds of arrangement that we see.

The other challenge with local authority enforcement of private car parks is that it would immediately put the whole process into a legislative framework that includes adjudication. The following point has probably been referred to. In that environment, more PCNs are likely to be issued, because discretion does not exist. Civil enforcement officers—or parking attendants, as they are still known in Scotland—face an objective situation that they deal with by issuing a penalty charge notice. They do not have the opportunity to exercise discretion locally. Once a PCN is issued, it is caught in a statutory regulatory regime that the local authority must follow, in which the ultimate right of appeal is to the adjudicator.

If a genuine blue-badge holder forgets to bring the badge for some reason and is issued with a PCN, he or she can currently pop into a store to tell the store manager that they have a problem, which the store deals with. If that happened in a regulated environment, the store manager would say, "Sorry—there's nothing I can do about it. You need to write to the local authority that issued the PCN." The statutory regulatory process would be followed and the local authority would decide whether to withdraw the ticket. If it decided not to, the process could go all the way to the adjudicator.

Our view is that nothing is ever gained by not co-operating. If the bill was passed and that was Parliament's will, we would co-operate, because that would be what the Scottish people wanted.

The bill does not insist that private car parks become part of the scheme, so nothing would stop any company that has a regime in place continuing to use that regime. One imagines that a local authority would be reasonable and would see that your company was doing a good job. The bill deals more with spaces that are not policed at the moment. If you did not have a regime in place, would the bill interest you for your customers who are car park users? Would other organisations look on it favourably, as it would save them from putting in place a regime?

As an off-street car park operator, we support the bill 100 per cent because it would work in the environment in which we operate. If requested, we would share our experience of the benefits and the customer care that we can provide.

I will turn what Rhoda Grant said round. Perhaps the question should have been asked a while ago: why have several operators chosen not to go down the route that is recommended in the bill and not to adopt the regulatory route that has been around for a long time? They might not want their customers to be caught in a process that is driven by the system that I described, in which local authorities issue PCNs. That relies on local authorities exercising discretion on whether to withdraw tickets and can end in the adjudication process. Private sector operators might prefer to control their own destiny. I accept that some operators do little or nothing, but others might worry about the implications of going down the regulatory route, which is why they have not done that.

Does that make sense? I understand that the bill would encourage people—if not force them—to go down an existing route. The legislative power exists to allow local authorities to enter partnerships with operators under the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 in order to make enforceable parking bays. Many bigger companies that are customer driven and customer focused have chosen voluntarily to achieve that through their own arrangements. Few—if any—have gone down the regulatory route. We must ask why. The reason might be that they do not want their customers to be caught up in a regulatory process that is completely outside those companies' control, because it ends with an adjudicator deciding whether a ticket is fair and valid, which is a matter of law. The adjudicator has no discretion to consider whether someone is a good customer whom a company does not want to penalise.

So, the concern is more to do with the handling of whatever regime is in place.

That can be important. In a consumer-driven environment such as a store or a rail station, there is a customer-landowner relationship. That relationship will not apply in a regulated local authority car park or in an on-street situation, where we are talking about traffic management as opposed to customer service. In a customer service environment, the landowner is more likely to want to maintain the customer relationship, whereas a local authority will be concerned with traffic management.

If organisations do not have a regime to protect or even provide disabled places, how does that fit with their obligations under disability discrimination legislation? How do you tell them that they need to value their disabled customers just as highly as they do their able-bodied customers?

As Rhoda Grant suggests, other legislation requires that the needs of people with disabilities be met. If that is not happening, that legislation should be used to ensure that it does. We need to reach a point at which self-regulation works because not meeting the needs of people with disabilities has become socially unacceptable. As Guy Mason said, 99 per cent of people comply with disabled places anyway.

When the number of places is small, the 1 per cent who do not comply can cause quite a problem.

I agree—they can cause chaos.

Some extremely good points have been made. People who do not embrace some kind of enforcement over the bays are underestimating the number of non-disabled customers who feel strongly about the issue. Those customers will say, "It's not just that I agree not to abuse the spaces myself—I also think nobody else should abuse them." We have heard such opinions from our customers; they are fully behind our scheme and say that it is the right thing to do. They have never abused a space in their lives and will never be fined, and they want to be sure that spaces are kept available for disabled customers. That strength of feeling should not be underestimated.

A local authority might say to people with car parks that their schemes work well and the local authority therefore does not need to get involved. Such people should welcome it if the local authority also says that it is going to tackle other sites where disabled bays are not being protected. It will not cost them any more. For example, we already incur a cost and we would rather pay that cost in order to keep control of our scheme. People with good schemes should say, "I see the point of what the local authority is doing. It will be no additional cost for us, and we should work with the local authority to make things work." The majority of our customers would welcome such an approach.

I would like to explore the legal basis for charges, because I am slightly confused by the terminology. We have heard about penalties, fines, PCNs and PCCNs, and I think that Mr Reynolds said that it was all unregulated. What is the legal basis of the charge, or the demand for payment, on an Asda customer or an NCP customer who parks in a designated disabled bay?

That is an interesting question, and one that the BPA is researching at the moment. We have recently taken counsel's opinion on the law in England and Wales. We have yet to check whether the situation is the same in Scotland, but we suspect that it is.

When I say "unregulated", what I mean is that the situation is the opposite of on-street, regulated parking, as managed under the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984, and the opposite of off-street parking that is provided by local authorities and also comes under the 1984 act. Car parks on private land, as provided by major stores and private operators for example, are commercial operations that operate within the law of contract.

I am not a lawyer, but essentially, a motorist who enters that land enters into a contract with regard to the terms and conditions that are established on the signpost or the information that is displayed in the car park. Those terms might state, for example: "This car park is for customers only—you can stay here for three hours, and then you must move on", or words to that effect. The contract is: "If you enter my land, you must be a customer and you must not stay there for more than three hours. If you breach that contract, I will charge you £60."

As we understand it, the law of contract is established between the landowner and the driver of the vehicle that enters that land. That is the advice that we are given by barristers, lawyers and counsel. We are currently rewriting the codes for our approved operators scheme to ensure that operators explicitly set that out. It is not that they do not do that at the moment, but in some areas they are perhaps less specific than they need to be in pointing out the arrangement.

When I say that such off-street parking is unregulated, I mean that it is not covered by the 1984 act. However, it is covered, in a sense, by the law of contract and all the vagaries that go with that. It is for the landowner to demonstrate that the contract was broken, and then to impose charges for breach of contract. They can call those charges what they like, because such charges are associated essentially with a breach of contract.

I accept that you can, privately, call them what you like, but it is important, in order to tease out the differences, that we establish a clear distinction between a penalty and a charge. It is a long time since I have practised law, but in relation to the law on contract, I understand that contracting parties cannot penalise one another.

You can impose a charge for a breach of a contract, which might be a negative thing because someone has broken the contract by parking in a disabled bay, or you can effectively charge people for parking in a disabled bay by saying that there is no charge for people with a blue badge, but a charge of £60 for those without a blue badge. You are not allowed, however, under the law of contract, to impose a penalty or a fine. Is that correct?

That is how we understand it, and that is why our code specifically mentions that operators must not call them penalties or fines.

So there are no notices that state that there is a £60 penalty for parking in a disabled bay? Perhaps the witnesses from Asda or NCP can confirm that.

Perhaps we should have brought some of the signage with us. We could give you the wording later.

That would be helpful. It is very important that we get the nomenclature right and establish the legal basis. If we accept that all those cases involve a breach by the parker of a contract that has been entered into when he enters the private land, how does the £60 charge come about?

For illustration purposes, I will read you a paragraph that was written by one of our lawyers. I am sorry about the acronyms—we are full of acronyms at Asda, including the name Asda. It states:

"We take the position that these are penalty notices (rather than fines) levied for breach of conditions of parking which are advertised by signage and which are implicitly accepted by drivers who use the car parks."

We advertise the fact that people should not abuse disabled bays when they enter the car park, and that anyone who parks there accepts that. If they abuse the bays, they will receive what we call a civil penalty notice—I will stick to calling them CPNs. The idea is that if they do not pay, they can be pursued through the courts. However, it is extremely expensive to follow somebody through the courts, and we have never yet needed to do so for the £60. We do not know if we would ever do so.

You have just answered my next question about how many people have been taken to court to enforce such a breach of contract. So the answer is none, anywhere in the UK—not even in Liverpool?

We have not needed to do that yet.

I recall that wheel clamping was prevalent a few years ago. Many companies used to go around clamping cars that were illegally parked on private land and charging people large sums of money to release their vehicles. The ability to demand such a payment as a matter of contract was challenged in the courts and, as I understand it, wheel clamping was effectively ruled to be illegal. Not only was the payment of the fine or civil penalty, or whatever it was called, not enforceable, it was a criminal offence for the clamper to appropriate or disable the property of the person who was parked illegally. Given that experience with other methods of controlling parking on private land, what is there to say that the courts would enforce, as a matter of civil law, what has been called a civil penalty notice but is in fact a charge for a breach of a contract?

It has not been tested yet.

Mr Reynolds, you said that you were taking legal advice, so what is your legal advice?

You made an interesting point about wheel clamping. We introduced our first draft code to attempt to regulate wheel clamping back in 1999 because we were concerned, as an industry, about unscrupulous persons going around appropriating other people's vehicles by clamping them. We do not take the view that clamping is not a legitimate enforcement tool, but there was a case in Scotland—as Mr McLetchie rightly said—in which it was determined that wheel clamping is unlawful. However, in England and Wales it is not unlawful at present. Our code of practice clearly sets out a modus operandi so that if someone uses the wheel clamping method of enforcement in England and Wales, they should operate according to a set of rules. However, it is a voluntary code. Through our approved operator scheme, around 80 member companies operate in that manner.

The second part of our code covers parking tickets, as we call them, which are effectively notices to the car owner that they are in breach of a contract and owe the operator because of that. We specifically say in our code that they should not be called fines or penalties, because they are not—they are charges for breach of contract. Our legal advice says that they can be pursued through the courts, and there are examples of that happening in England. On its extent—in terms of volumes and values—and why, I cannot answer, but I can certainly give examples later if you like. However, I know that the charges are pursued through the courts in England.

By some of your members.

Yes.

But not Asda.

Asda operates in a different environment and it is entirely up to it how to proceed. Our code does not say that payment of charges must be pursued through the courts.

No. I understand that, but I am interested to know whether it has been established that the charges are legally recoverable. The wheel clamping industry in Scotland fell apart on the basis of a successful legal challenge—its end was not much lamented by most motorists, I should say. If we get to a situation whereby a civil court in Scotland—or England for that matter—says that the charges cannot be enforced under the law of contract, where would that leave us?

Currently, we follow through court proceedings. If a parking contravention charge notice has not been paid after 28 days, we pass the matter over to a debt agency specialist who follows the process and goes through the various court mechanisms to recover the costs, including their charges. That process has been tested in courts in Scotland and England. I do not have the exact number of cases to hand, but I can provide them if required.

That would be helpful—thank you.

Good morning, gentlemen. I was fascinated by the description of the Asda pilot scheme in Liverpool and its roll-out across the UK. I would like to visit one of the Asda stores near me to see how that operates. The closest store to me is in Summerston in north Glasgow. Perhaps I can organise a visit after the meeting; I say to Mr McLetchie that I could even see what the signage said while I was there.

You said that there has been a 60 per cent increase in the availability of disabled and family parking bays and that your approach received a 93 per cent approval rating from your customer base. Does that give Asda a business advantage over its main competitors? Can the advantage be quantified?

We cannot quantify the additional footfall from drivers to our stores, but we can say that there has been a significant increase in the number of disabled visitors to our stores as a result of our system. When we monitored customer perception after the system was introduced, the mums among our shopping base told us that during peak trading times they were more likely to visit an Asda store than they were to visit our competitors, because they were finding it easier to park in parent-and-child bays. However, it would be hard to monitor the percentage increase in sales and the overall effect on the business.

You said that a team of enforcement officers—or whatever you call them—rotates around stores. What evidence do they use to process a penalty or charge? Do they use closed-circuit television footage, take photographs or go round in pairs so that there is a witness who can corroborate the evidence?

We issue very few notices in the first place, given how many we could issue. I think that that has been clearly demonstrated. We much prefer to advise our customers to park elsewhere in the car park in the first instance. In general, only when a registration number has been noted on a second occasion would we issue a CPN. As I said, on average we issue fewer than three tickets per store per week, which represents a small percentage of shoppers. The attendant makes a visual verification and has the option to get photographic evidence, too.

Is a photograph usually taken? Without such evidence a motorist could dispute what the warden said.

I do not think that the code of practice states that a photograph must be taken; a visual verification would satisfy the terms of the code.

It appears that by and large you are using enforcement or the threat of enforcement as a tool to change customers' attitudes, which seems to have been successful.

The committee has talked to representatives of local authorities about their concerns regarding enforcement. Given your track record on the matter in the UK, would Asda and its partners be willing to share with local authorities your expertise and know-how, so that authorities can make schemes work if Jackie Baillie's bill is passed?

We work with Town and City Parking because the company is known to be a reputable car parking provider and has high customer perception ratings. With that in mind, we drew up a code of practice, under which a person would always be approached and asked to move their car to another bay. As a result, availability of bays has increased significantly, although few CPNs have been issued. We would support work with local authorities to share our best practice.

What you said about enforcement is interesting. The first time that someone parks in a disabled parking bay you might get their registration number and details and write to them to say, "That was a bit naughty. Please don't do it again. We are trying to change attitudes and we have enforcement powers." The approach tends to work. Would you encourage local authorities to take a similarly flexible approach to on-street parking in residential areas? Instead of creating a situation in which neighbours in a scheme in Glasgow fell out over a £60 fine, the local authority could send a letter to remind the person that they should not park in the disabled bay and explain that they could be fined if it happened again. Would it be advantageous if the bill provided for such flexibility?

Very much so. At Asda, a parking attendant approaches a person who has parked in the wrong bay and has a one-to-one conversation with them, pointing out that the person's parking in that bay might mean that a disabled shopper cannot do their weekly food shop. We find that that often pricks the individual's conscience and that it takes only one such interaction to ensure that they do not park in a disabled bay again. I am sure that the approach could be replicated on the public highways and in other car parks.

We must think about the lifetime value to us of a customer, who may spend £100 per week on shopping with us. We must be very careful about how we treat our customers. Perhaps local authorities do not always think in the same way.

Are you suggesting that local authorities are not always best at customer relations?

You might think that—I could not possibly comment.

My final question concerns the biennial audit of off-street parking that each local authority would have to conduct in its area to find out whether private companies will buy into the new enforcement regime. If a company such as Asda has a code of conduct to regulate its off-street parking, would it be simpler for local authorities to give that code the stamp of approval after looking at it, without taking the matter further? Would that allow you to retain flexibility even if the bill is passed?

More to the point, it would give local authorities extra resources. They would be able to say that Asda and other supermarkets that follow a code of conduct are dealing with the matter and to target their limited resources at other places that really need it. Such an approach would give us flexibility and return resources to local authorities.

Good retailers would have nothing to fear from the bill, because they are already doing the job. Local authorities could say that what retailers are doing is an example of good practice and that it is good enough for them.

That follows from what has been said.

Does the British Parking Association recommend that a certain percentage of parking bays should be disabled bays? For example, does it suggest that 5 per cent of the bays that are provided should be disabled bays and 5 per cent should be mother-and-child bays? I am aware that there may be differences between Asda's provision and that of NCP.

The aim of the research that I described is to establish what provision should be made. The current situation in law, if that is not too strong a word in this case—it may be best to refer to custom and practice—is that the provision of parking in off-street environments is regulated under planning law. Planning law does not say how many spaces should or should not be provided for people with disabilities, although disability discrimination legislation states that some kind of provision should be made. The DFT has produced a document called "Inclusive mobility", which is all about transport provision for people with disabilities. It recommends that 4 to 6 per cent of spaces should be disabled parking bays, but that is only a recommendation.

Individual local authorities produce what in England is called supplementary planning guidance—forgive me if I have used the wrong term—which sits alongside their local interpretation of planning legislation. Many local authorities have adopted the figure of 4 to 6 per cent as a requirement in their supplementary planning guidance, so that tends to be the proportion of disabled parking spaces that is provided. However, the figure is not justified anywhere and tends to be a rule of thumb. In our study, we want to establish whether that figure is right, because in some cases it is too low and in others it is too high.

One of the challenges that we have encountered in anecdotal research—we will address it in our bigger project—is that abuse of disabled persons' parking spaces takes place because there is too much provision of blue badge space in a particular area at a particular time. If a car park is full, and the only spaces that are available are blue badge spaces, people may decide to take a chance, because they intend to be there for only 10 minutes. Provision of disabled parking spaces should be better and more appropriate to need—for example, there may be greater need at a hospital than at a swimming pool.

Research that we are doing with the DFT and Mobilise aims to understand appropriate levels of provision, based on the available services that are associated with a car park, rather than assuming a universal level of 4 to 6 per cent. I am happy to supply information to the Scottish Government when we have done the research.

We follow the guidance, too. Our rule of thumb is 4 to 6 per cent, depending on guidance from the local authority, plus two extra bays as a minimum. Many Asda stores have larger car parking areas; our stores are predominantly superstores or supercentres, so we tend to have quite a large number of disabled and parent-and-child bays on offer, which does not restrict the overall number of bays for the standard customer.

NCP complies with the guidance for each individual car park. Our provision is reviewed on a monthly basis, not in order to decrease the number of bays but, where demand has been appropriate, to increase the number.

Jackie Baillie, who introduced the bill, is with us. I invite her to ask some questions before we close this evidence session.

Thank you, convener.

The committee has examples of industry leaders taking action to protect disabled parking bays. I very much welcome that. You will acknowledge that many organisations do not do so, and that some organisations have not undertaken the same customer surveys that Asda has done. Perhaps it is worth making it absolutely clear that the bill places no new duty on existing businesses. There is nothing to prevent Asda or NCP from continuing their schemes and keeping their arrangements local, if they so wish. That said, do you think that the bill will provide an opportunity to organisations that do not currently see the advantage of enforcing disabled bays in the way that you have done? Will it encourage them to take such measures, either by themselves or with the assistance of local authorities?

NCP welcomes the proposed new provisions for the sake of consistency around on-street and off-street parking facilities. We certainly see the benefits. They should be delivered throughout the country as part of the bigger picture.

The objective of any piece of proposed legislation is surely to achieve compliance. It must always be a good thing to encourage people to comply with provisions for people with disabilities. If a piece of legislation encourages people to do things, and if that in turn encourages compliance with the rules, that has to be a good thing.

If nothing else, the bill brings the subject back into the public domain. It highlights the need to bear in mind an issue that is extremely important, especially for people who have car parks under their control, who should remember that the majority of people who use their car parks want disabled bays to be properly patrolled. Perhaps we need to revisit the matter and remind car park owners that the issue is important for their customers, who feel strongly about it. They should reconsider the issue and not allow a free-for-all at spaces that should be protected for the use of certain members of society.

A local authority might come along to people's premises every two years; they might just send a letter, which would suffice under the bill. That could give the extra nudge to people who are not currently complying.

Yes.

I thank the witnesses for their attendance and for the evidence that they have provided, which has been helpful and is very much appreciated by the committee.

Meeting suspended.

On resuming—

We proceed to our second panel of witnesses. I welcome Stewart Stevenson MSP, the Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change, and, from the Scottish Government, Angus MacInnes, branch head of the local roads policy, traffic management and transport decisions unit; Bill Brash, team leader in the Passengers View Scotland, Mobility and Access Committee for Scotland and mobility team; and Judith Ballantine, Mobility and Access Committee for Scotland secretary. I invite the minister to make some opening remarks before we proceed to questions.

Thank you, convener. I will be very brief.

We recognise what Ms Baillie seeks to do in the bill and we share her commitment to helping disabled people throughout Scotland to have access to parking. We will engage positively with the parliamentary process on the bill. We may not agree on the detail, but I think that we will be aligned on the objective. I hope that the committee and Ms Baillie feel that that is the right and proper approach for the Government to take to her bill.

Much of the discussion in previous evidence sessions has focused on the potential cost to local government of implementing the bill. Local government appears to be aligned with the aims of the bill, but authorities such as Glasgow City Council have indicated that its implementation would be expensive. Does the Government have a view on that?

We share concerns about the uncertainty of the cost of implementation. We recognise that the bill's sponsor, who undertook the proper process, received responses in the first instance from 20 out of the 32 councils. We are examining what the City of Edinburgh Council and Glasgow City Council said about the potential cost. However, it is primarily for the bill's sponsor and for Parliament to consider whether the financial information that is provided with the bill, which might be enhanced by the parliamentary process, is sufficient for it to proceed. That is not directly a matter for Government.

One aspect of the bill that has been discussed in the committee is the relationship between local authorities and private car park owners. Does the Government have a view on that issue? We have heard witnesses representing various private car park owners and supermarkets say that they would be very happy to co-operate with local authorities at every stage, but other witnesses have expressed a different point of view. Is the Government confident that the bill contains adequate provision to ensure that there is co-operation between local authorities and private car park owners?

I would be surprised if the overwhelming majority of private car park operators do not wish to co-operate. They have duties to discharge under the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. I am sure that it will be in their interest to show that they are co-operating as the bill proceeds to the statute book or otherwise. After all, I would have thought that having a regime in which there is clarity about the people who may use disabled parking spaces that are provided privately and about the steps that may be taken to ensure that those private parking places are used by properly entitled people is in the interest of private providers of parking places.

There may be some uncertainty about the extent of the private provision of parking. For example, it would be possible for me to paint a private parking place in my own front yard, but no one would necessarily know about it unless I told them. However, I suspect that that is a trivial issue. The real issues relate to supermarkets and commercial providers of car parking. I would be astonished if they did not all want to be part of the process of making the bill work and would not welcome an improvement in the clarity about how the system should operate.

You mentioned the uncertainty of the cost of implementation for local authorities. There is wide variation in the estimates of costs and accusations have been made that, although local authorities may have a case, they have overstated it. Can we take it from your answer to Alasdair Allan's question that cost is primarily a local authority issue and that, irrespective of cost, the Scottish Government's support for the bill would not extend to giving financial assistance to local authorities such as Edinburgh or Glasgow, which may face disproportionate implementation costs?

We already provide £11.1 billion to the local authorities. In common with most but not all of the major conurbations across Scotland, the city councils in Edinburgh and Glasgow have decriminalised parking. That means that, among other associated issues, the authorities keep the full revenue from any fines that may be enforced; that arrangement will be extended to any additional legally enforceable parking. I suspect that the committee will wish to examine whether the extension of areas where fines can be enforced might be self-financing.

The Government is not only providing record sums to local authorities but allowing them to keep the 2 per cent efficiency savings as an additional source of funding, whereas previously efficiency savings had to be returned to central Government. Therefore, we do not consider at this stage that the bill will change the financial relationship between central Government and local government.

I take it that that is a no to any financial commitment from the Government to the start-up costs that may be incurred. I understand the point that, over time, fines will increasingly finance on-going costs. However, the Government is making no commitment to put financial resources into the start-up costs.

It is not our intention to do that. We will watch the progress of the bill, as I am sure the committee and Parliament will do, and look for further information on the cost of implementing the bill. I hope that greater clarity will be delivered as the bill progresses.

I hope also to see effective scrutiny of some of the detailed information that has been submitted. I am thinking in particular of the evidence from Glasgow City Council. It is not for me to challenge any of the evidence; I am sure that the committee will be highly effective at doing that.

As we have heard, some local authorities are a wee bit concerned about the additional burden of identifying spaces and working with companies to bring their parking under the scope of the legislation. If the bill is passed, could the Government amend national planning policy guidelines to allow local authorities to make planning permission conditional on the applicant adhering to the provisions of the bill? Authorities could manage such parking, or the company could set up a scheme to do that, either of which would comply with authorities' requirements in this regard.

At the moment, planning touches quite frequently on this subject. In a development of any scale, whether commercial, retail or office, it is pretty much routine for planning authorities to impose conditions on the provision of disabled parking spaces. Indeed, existing guidelines determine how many spaces should be provided. The planning system, in its operation if not necessarily in the legal sense of the legislation, touches on the subject. There is therefore no reason to believe that local authorities could not extend the range of conditions on future planning applications.

Ms Grant's question also raises the issue of who enforces disabled parking provision on private property. The question is whether that should be enforced voluntarily by the private provider or enforced by the local authority. At this stage, I remain relatively agnostic on the issue. I will await the outcome of the committee's examination and exploration of the balance of advantages for the two options. I will therefore not express a Government view on the matter at this stage.

I am not asking the minister to do that. I understand that the bill allows local authorities to approach private businesses and invite them to be part of the scheme. We heard evidence earlier this morning on planning guidelines from companies including Asda, which operates a very good and successful scheme. I imagine that a local authority would look at the Asda scheme in its area and say, "That scheme is fine. We don't need to become involved or spend money on that one." The planning guidelines would allow local authorities to say, "You must either comply with our scheme or provide a scheme that we are happy with." That would allow the likes of Asda to continue to provide their own scheme, but it would almost put the onus on the developer to go and sign things off with the local authority, rather than the local authority having to go and haunt them every two years to ensure compliance.

I suspect that it is not at the Asdas of this world that the issue will arise, because they will take a positive and proactive approach. I am not singling out Asda in particular—that is equally true of the other major supermarket chains and other major stores.

I am not going to take a view at the moment. I am genuinely going to remain agnostic, because it is important that the committee has the opportunity to explore the matter and that the sponsor of the bill is in a position to respond without my seeking to tie her hands on the matter—as if I could. It is properly a matter for the Parliament to consider.

I am confident that there is a lot of good will that will cover the overwhelming majority of private parking spaces, which means that anything other than benign persuasion and discussion will not be required. That will remain my view unless the committee, in its deliberations, uncovers evidence to the contrary.

Good morning, minister. Like you, I am keen to support Jackie Baillie's bill, but I have some concerns about the detail of its implementation. Some organisations have suggested that it will place no administrative burden on local authorities, but when we took evidence from local authorities last week, it was evident that they believe that there will be a significant increase in their administrative burden, including perhaps the cost of bringing in extra staff.

Local authorities will be required to audit the existing advisory parking places to establish whether they are necessary. Those that are not necessary will be removed and the process of obtaining a designation order will be commenced for those that are found to be necessary. That might involve tens of thousands of spaces for each of the 32 local authorities. Will the costs of implementation and continuing administration place a significant additional burden on local authorities?

Mr Tolson highlights the fact that local authorities have a range of views. If I recall the number correctly, Glasgow City Council suggested that it has 4,552 voluntary spaces. I suspect that the actual number might be one or two either way. Clearly, it has a problem of a different character from elsewhere. It is important that the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities plays a role in expressing the generality of local authorities' views, and perhaps the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers should also take a role.

It is important to consider how long the work will take. In my previous experience as a back bencher, I was involved in the passage of the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill, which gave local authorities three years to draw up a core paths plan. The problem in that case was probably more complex than the one that we are considering today, but how long will the work take? The views of those who will have to undertake it are probably paramount in coming to a conclusion about that.

That was another non-answer. Thank you, convener.

Asda gave us some interesting evidence this morning. If someone is in breach of Asda's enforcement regime, its wardens ensure that that person gets a letter and is asked not to do it again, and, by and large, they do not. That changes the culture within Asda's car parks. For Asda, the key issue was having flexibility to decide when to serve a charge on customers.

Should local authorities have flexibility in their approach to enforcement in residential areas—not high streets but the schemes in Glasgow, Edinburgh and so on? For example, should they be able to send a warning letter to someone who is abusing a parking bay, rather than immediately imposing a £60 fine?

Flexibility is likely to be an important part of any successful scheme, particularly in the early days, when the introduction of enforceable parking will be taking place on an unprecedented scale.

A senior policeman said to me, on an informal and off-the-record basis, that a person who abuses a disabled parking space is four times as likely to have a criminal conviction as someone who does not. The policeman was suggesting, in other words, that people who break rules in one part of their life are likely to break rules in lots of parts of their life.

Sending a letter to the people who misuse a disabled parking bay would seem to be a sensible way forward, but we would need to ensure that people do not simply build up a large stock of letters and that, ultimately, we catch the people who are persistently misusing the spaces.

I take note of your report of what Asda told the committee. If that policy is as successful as you were told, that would indicate that we will see similar success with similar approaches elsewhere. Not only does that approach effectively deal with people who might inadvertently or thoughtlessly, but not maliciously, misuse spaces, it is likely to deliver an earlier and more effective result for the people who need disabled parking spaces.

When we took evidence from local authorities on the cost of implementing the policy, they were all over the place and could not break down what the costs would be. I will not go into that, as I think that the Official Report will be testament enough.

There will, of course, be a cost associated with the introduction of any scheme. The provisions in the bill would result in local authorities having to start, in one year's time, the statutory procedure to make orders for enforceable bays. Might a relaxation of the timescale and a phased implementation of the scheme ease the burden of cost on local authorities?

I referred to timescales in one of my earlier answers. My initial reaction—which is not one on which I would take a firm, committed position—is that 12 months is ambitious. I am not just coming at that from a cost point of view as, to be blunt, there is a practical challenge in simply completing the task. That is one of the issues that the committee will consider and that Jackie Baillie, as the sponsor of the bill, will wish to take into account. If Ms Baillie were to consider that a different timescale could be used in the interest of greater flexibility, it is likely that I would be able to support that.

I want to ask a couple of questions about co-operation with the UK Government, which I know that you are keen on.

It has been suggested that an alternative approach to the one that is taken in the bill might be to use the provision to legalise on-street disabled persons' parking places through designation under the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2002. Glasgow City Council said that using that mechanism would require a change in UK legislation, which would mean that we would have to legislate on a UK basis in order to deal with the issue that Jackie Baillie's bill identifies. Is that a matter that has been raised in ministerial discussions with counterparts down south?

The 2002 instrument is delegated to Scottish ministers, although that delegation comes from UK legislation. It is one of those legal issues in which there is a shared responsibility between the state and the devolved Administration.

As it happens, in the past hour, I read that instrument, to ensure that I was aware of the issues. The area is highly complex and touches on, for example, the UK Government's work on the operation of the blue badge scheme. I think that the UK Government is minded to change some aspects of that scheme but is not yet committed to doing so.

We remain in close contact with the UK Government on this issue. I do not see any particular divergence of interest on the matter. There is an interest in our working with the UK Government. Indeed, the 2002 instrument that you referred to makes reference to equivalent blue badge schemes in different areas of the UK. It is an issue that stretches well beyond the geographical boundaries of the Administration's competence, and is something on which we wish to work with other Administrations.

I understand that the order-making powers lie with Scottish ministers. However, there is also a division of responsibilities between the two Administrations. Do you have the power to issue a new order that would encompass disabled parking, or does the primary legislation limit your order-making capacity in that regard?

I suspect that we have that power, but I will ask the expert who is sitting on my left to give a more definitive answer.

The current arrangements allow for that to happen.

If that is correct, would it be fair to say to Jackie Baillie, with all due respect, that we do not need her bill because, using secondary legislation, the Scottish Government can issue an order that would give local authorities the relevant powers?

That is a question that you might more properly direct to the sponsor of the bill. I suspect that she would say that her bill covers issues that are beyond the scope of the 2002 instrument, such as the duty that it would place on local authorities to consult private providers of disabled parking spaces.

We are in complicated legal territory, and I will give you a little example of that. Because the highway code does not describe how a parking place on the public highway that is not subject to enforcement should be painted on the road, you can paint it any way that you like. However, one that is enforced has to be as prescribed in the 2002 instrument. The boundary between different powers can be as narrow as that. The 2002 instrument, which modifies a previous instrument, is a complex document.

An order is required when the enforcement power is used in particular places; this is a complex area. It seems to me that there is scope for at least some of the bill's provisions to be implemented, even if you were to persuade your colleagues against agreeing to other provisions. That is a matter for the bill's sponsor.

Is it correct to say that a substantial part of the bill's provisions could be implemented through your order-making capacity?

We have the capacity to make orders for every parking place on the public highway; that has been the case for a long time. I do not think that the bill's sponsor is saying anything other than that. She is saying that local authorities have not exercised that capacity and is seeking to bring them to the table to make them do it. She argues—it is for her to propound the argument more fully than I—that that will benefit users of disabled parking spaces.

We are getting into a circular argument. I understood from local authorities that the 2002 instrument would have to be amended to give them the power to use existing legislation. That is what Glasgow City Council said in its evidence.

Local authorities can request at any time an order to make a parking place on the public highway legally enforceable; that has always been the case. Very few such orders have been made, because very few have been requested.

Does the 2002 instrument about which we have heard in evidence require any amendment to achieve the object of the bill, which is to make bays that are currently advisory enforceable? Does the mechanism about which Glasgow City Council told us exist? What is required to enact it?

I am making a genuine effort to be clear about what I am being asked. If I am being asked whether the framework of the 2002 instrument and the powers that I have to amend it give me the power to require all voluntary parking spaces on the highway to be turned into enforceable spaces, I think that the answer is no; Angus MacInnes has confirmed that that is correct. That is precisely the point that the bill seeks to address.

Is the answer no?

I cannot require that we move from voluntary spaces to enforceable spaces.

That takes us back to my first question. Is a change to primary legislation, which is a UK matter, required to give you the ability to require advisory bays to be made enforceable bays?

Because we are in a devolved situation—we can discuss that point further—the Westminster Government will always be able to legislate in the terms that you request. The sponsor of the bill would argue that we can address the issue through our own primary legislation. The powers that I have under secondary legislation do not give me the ability to require voluntary spaces to be turned into enforceable spaces.

So a change to primary legislation is required to give you such a power. To return to my initial question, was Glasgow City Council correct to say that a change to UK legislation was required?

I do not believe that that is necessary.

I am not asking you whether you believe that it is necessary as a matter of policy. I am asking you whether it is necessary, as a matter of law, in order to implement the alternative approach that has been highlighted to us. Glasgow City Council said that that would require a change to UK legislation. Is that correct?

My advice is that we can pass primary legislation in the terms that have been set out by the sponsoring member. In accepting the bill, the Presiding Officer has concluded that it is not ultra vires.

I am not asking about that, minister; I am asking about the existing reserved UK legislation—the alternative approach. I am not suggesting that Ms Baillie's bill is incompetent. Of course it is not; that is why it has been accepted. What I am saying is that, according to the evidence that we have been given by Glasgow City Council, an alternative approach that would achieve the same result would be a change to the UK primary legislation that gives you the order-making power that we are talking about. Is that correct?

I hope that I said earlier that, of course, the Westminster Government can legislate—

The Westminster Government can legislate for anything in terms of the Scotland Act 1998.

That is precisely the point that I am making. If you are asking whether an alternative route to the one that is before the committee is for the Westminster Government to legislate, the answer is yes—even if, politically, I might wish it to be otherwise. De facto, that is the case.

Good morning, minister. I have two questions, the first of which is on advisory versus enforceable parking bays. We have heard from local authorities that transforming the existing advisory on-street parking bays would be a major cost, especially in Glasgow. I have the figure of 4,500 such bays, but you gave a more exact figure for Glasgow. What planning regulations stipulate that local authorities must mark out advisory bays? Are there such planning regulations? If not, why not?

Both England and Wales have decided to review the blue badge scheme and its operation. We have received evidence that there is abuse of that scheme, and we regularly read stories in the Evening Times and the Edinburgh Evening News about people who have been caught using blue badges illegally. My second question is this: has the Scottish Government—or have you, minister—considered reviewing the blue badge scheme?

I am aware that concerns about the operation of the blue badge scheme vary from concern about fraudulent use of the scheme to concern about inconsistencies in the application of the standards for issuing blue badges. Rosie Winterton, the Minister of State for Transport in England and Wales, has initiated a consultation on the matter. We are waiting to see the results of that, as we have no particular belief at this stage that there are special circumstances. It will be useful to see what comes from the work that is being undertaken by the DFT. That will please Mr McLetchie, in view of his earlier remarks.

The bill does not propose any changes to the blue badge scheme, but we have heard evidence that if we are to succeed in this area we will have to make abuse of the scheme socially unacceptable. While what has been described this morning as massive cheating takes place in the blue badge scheme, we will not get other people to respect disabled parking bays.

You seem to say that in Scotland there is no specific interest. Has the Scottish Government looked into misuse of the blue badge scheme here? Has there been no input to the review from a Scottish perspective? Is there any likelihood of future involvement in reviewing the blue badge scheme as applied in Scotland? For example, could you raise awareness of abuse through a public information campaign? Or do you not consider the problem in Scotland to be sufficiently serious?

Is there interest? Most certainly there is interest—in the effective provision of blue badges; in the effective delivery of parking places for people who properly have a blue badge; and in preventing interference from people who are misusing the scheme. All those interests have driven Rosie Winterton at the Department for Transport in England and Wales to undertake the consultation. That consultation is just starting and I have the document here. We are taking an interest in the work that the Department for Transport is doing, and we want to piggy-back on it.

The blue badge scheme is not a Scottish Government or a Scottish Parliament scheme; it is a UK scheme, originally introduced as the orange badge scheme in 1971. We are taking a close interest in the review of the scheme.

Earlier this morning, we heard from representatives of Asda. Their evidence was that the level of abuse in their car parks in Scotland is higher than average. Is abuse of the blue badge scheme greater here than elsewhere in the UK, or less? Have we no Scottish perspective either on the scale of the problem or on action to pursue it?

We have also heard that initiatives throughout England to ensure enforcement have had some success. Those initiatives have involved local authorities and the police. Has anything similar been considered here in Scotland? For example, have you discussed pilots, enforcement, or hot spots where abuse might be greater?

The previous Administration undertook a survey in 2003, which suggested that 44 per cent of designated parking bays were being used by non-blue badge holders. That has probably informed Ms Baillie's efforts to introduce her bill.

I have just been handed a document that, if I am candid, I do not think I have seen before. It is a 2007 transport research document on the subject of tackling the abuse of off-street parking places. It builds on work done in 2003.

This bill is an excellent way of dealing with the issue. I would certainly like, in the first instance, to make progress in the context of the bill.

I asked a two-part question earlier. The first part was about planning regulations for on-street parking, and I asked whether local authorities were required to record where they had installed on-street parking. Can the minister clarify whether local authorities have to do that or not?

The member uses the word "regulations", but planning comes in different forms, and planning advice notes are a primary route for local authorities. I do not think that my officials and I can give an immediate answer to the question. If the committee will permit, we will make further inquiries to see whether that requirement exists. Local authorities' practice, through planning, is to ensure that new developments have adequate parking areas and adequate provision within those areas for disabled users. Whether there is systematic recording of that is perhaps another question. I have some evidence from my constituency that such information is not available in a form that can be provided to disabled people to enable them to work out where there are disabled parking spaces. There may well be room for further improvement. However, that is informal feedback, rather than a fully reasoned piece of feedback.

The committee was interested to hear about the review taking place in England and Wales. There, appropriate or proportionate disabled car parking availability is being considered, which would allow for differences between hospitals and swimming pools, for instance. Is any review taking place along those lines here in Scotland, which would help planners to designate a proportionate and appropriate number of disabled car parking spaces, rather than having a flat line of 4 to 6 per cent?

Planning advice notes provide guidance as to the appropriate provision of disabled parking in different circumstances. We are not currently considering whether we need to change that. However, if the committee's deliberations on the bill identify a necessity for us to do that, we would of course be happy to respond.

Am I correct in thinking that that discretion is between the levels of 4 and 6 per cent, rather than in relation to the purpose of the building to which the car park is attached? That is not a trick question—I do not understand what the current requirement is.

I think that you are effectively asking me a slightly more subtle question. The requirements at a supermarket might be different from those outside a school, which might be different from those outside a hospital. I accept that. We are not undertaking any work to revisit existing practice and guidance at the moment, as far as I am aware. However, if the committee, in its deliberations and as part of the peripheral work surrounding its consideration of the bill, identifies the need to do such work, the Government would find that very helpful, and it would inform any further work that is undertaken on the matter.

You will have noticed, minister, that Jackie Baillie, who introduced the bill, is here. Now that committee members have had an opportunity to ask questions, she will ask you some questions.

I will slightly abuse the good will of the committee by thanking the minister for his and the Government's support for the general principles of the bill, which is very welcome. I was blissfully unaware that I was helping to target the criminal fraternity through the measures in the bill.

If there was an easier way of doing this, I would have found it. Local authorities suggested using a process similar to that whereby bus clearways are designated, which does not require a traffic regulation order. However, provisions under the 2002 instrument are reserved—we will check that again, but I am certain that they are reserved. In that respect, the traffic regulation order process is a bit easier, but it costs more as a consequence of signage. Can the minister confirm that, as far as the Scottish Government is concerned, no power to make parking orders without consultation and without signage exists? That is the situation as far as I am aware.

I will ask Angus MacInnes to respond.

That is right. It is for the local authority to decide how it wants to handle disabled parking bays. They find it easier and cheaper simply to put down an advisory marking, which is not underpinned by a traffic regulation order. The authority can put either a sign or road markings in place. There is currently no mechanism to make authorities do things the other way—to make the use of the bay enforceable.

My second question relates to the costs and the timescale for converting bays. As other members have said, there is wide variation in costs, from £119 a bay in Fife to £466 in Glasgow. The timescale ranges from two men taking 12 person years in the Highlands to two similar men doing the same job in one year for 4,500 bays in Glasgow, which I think is a number 10 times higher than the number of bays in the Highlands.

Does the minister acknowledge that there is a difference between the timescale in identifying the advisory bays—which local government knows about, given that it designated the bays and administers the blue badge scheme—and that for promoting traffic regulation orders? The bill provides for a time limit in identifying an advisory bay, but does not place a limit on the time an authority is to take in promoting an order. In so doing, it acknowledges the need for local government to have time to promote an order.

I am happy to acknowledge that; it is self-evidently true. I sound a cautionary note on identifying advisory bays, however. We need to remember that some of the legislation goes back a considerable period of time. Several local government reorganisations have also taken place during that time, and, in other policy areas, clear record keeping has not adequately transferred from one local authority to another. When we come to the policy area underlying the bill, I suspect that it will be found not to be free from similar simple administrative difficulties.

Although I will not try to justify the differences between Highland Council's and Glasgow City Council's view on the cost—that is for them to do—I recognise that there will be uncertainties.

Let us look at a real, live example of an order that an authority has just put through. West Dunbartonshire Council's ability not only to identify the advisory bays in its area but to move the traffic regulation order in the space of a year is a useful guide for other authorities. Is it fair to say that that example should be commended to other local authorities?

I am always happy to commend good practice to anyone else who may benefit from that commendation, convener.

My final question is based on a question that you asked, convener. If the bill is passed at stage 1, will Government move to lay a financial resolution so that costings become a matter for Government and not the bill sponsor alone?

That sounds like a slightly unusual process. The member will recall that the financial memorandum is normally passed at stage 3 of a bill. I would not wish to make that commitment at this stage, but I note what she has said.

I am looking to my officials for advice on the matter, but I am getting none.

I will pursue the matter, convener, which will also allow thinking time. When Angus MacKay was the Minister for Finance and Local Government, I recall that he indicated clearly to the Parliament that the Government would respect the wishes of the Parliament in passing a bill at stage 1, thereby agreeing to its general principles, by not using the mechanism of blocking the financial resolution, which it has responsibility for laying and moving, to scupper the bill at a later stage. I hope that that principle, which was agreed on a cross-party basis at the time, continues to be shared by this Government.

Clearly, I would wish to respect the will of Parliament, but I would also wish to be in a position whereby a robust set of information was made available that would form the basis of any financial resolution. I am not yet clear or persuaded that we are in that position. That leads me to say that the minister, as he properly should do, is therefore neither granting his consent for nor withholding it from the way forward that the member proposes.

I await developments that will enable us to make a judgment on whether an appropriate, defensible and defendable financial resolution emerges.

Thank you, convener.

I thank the minister and his team for their evidence and attendance at committee.

Meeting suspended.

On resuming—