Stephen Pollard
reducing parking spaces. So much for the Department of Health guidance, which says that NHS organisations should ensure that staff can reach their place of work “as safely, conveniently and economically as possible”.
The figures show that almost a third of hospitals in England – 348 out of 1,175 hospitals – charge both visitors and staff to park. Incredibly 132 hospitals even charge for disabled parking.
Yes, the NHS needs more money but the answer isn’t to fleece visitors and its own staff: it’s to decide as a nation how much money we want to hand over to the NHS.
In 2016/17 NHS hospitals grabbed the highest-ever amount in parking charges from us: £175million (of which £950,000 is made up from fines). That’s six per cent more than in 2015/16. No wonder when staff at Edgware Community Hospital in north-west London and Birmingham Children’s Hospital are forced to pay £2 an hour. And for anyone who wants to visit a relative at St Thomas’ Hospital in central London there’s a £3.20 per hour charge.
Quite rightly Conservative MP Robert Halfon has campaigned for all fees to be axed. As he puts it: “This is another example of an NHS stealth tax on staff, the vulnerable and the disabled.”
The whole set-up stinks. As if it wasn’t bad enough that anyone has to pay this sickness tax, the pay and display machines in hospital car parks are often so antiquated that you can’t even use a debit or credit card so you have to scavenge around for the right change.
And because you don’t pay when you leave but in advance, you have the added stress of having to predict how long you’ll be and then the worry of making sure you don’t overstay and get a fine.
We’re not talking about a visit to the cinema or something for fun. Visiting someone in hospital can often be extremely stressful. And the charges of course apply to anyone who has to drive themselves to hospital for tests or an appointment.
I speak from experience. For many cancer sufferers with poor immunity, public transport is a terrible option. Many of us – I have leukaemia – try to avoid it because we know the risk of picking up some bug or virus is so high and that’s before you even think about the effects of any chemotherapy.
WHEN I travel on public transport I carry a ridiculous amount of paraphernalia – wipes and all sorts of things – to try to keep myself free of germs and bugs.
So how else could you describe a hospital parking charge than as a tax on sickness? Licensed extortion, perhaps, since few of us who go to a hospital, whether to work or visit, have any choice.
In theory charges are a pricing mechanism to ration parking so that the supply of spaces meets the demand for them. But in reality they are a form of revenue raiser.
As if to rub home the iniquity of all this, a quarter of hospitals don’t charge a penny for parking and nor do any in Scotland or Wales, where it is illegal for them to do so. So this is really about how a hospital management views its staff and its patients. And the inescapable conclusion is that in 348 out of 1,175 hospitals they regard them with contempt.
‘Hospital car park charges are unjust’