‘Hospital parking charges are wrong’

THE Labour Party has called for hospitals to scrap their parking fees – dubbing it a “tax on sickness”.

But bosses at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary and Calderdale Royal say the millions generated by parking go straight back into patient care.

Across the two hospitals’ car parks, about £2.7m was generated in 2016/17.

Mid Yorkshire Hospitals, which runs Dewsbury and Pinderfields, makes a similar amount.

Without that cash there would be an even bigger financial hole towards NHS services.

Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust is struggling to balance its books and is heading for a £23m deficit at the end of this financial year.

In a House of Commons debate, Batley and Spen MP Tracy Brabin called for the total abolition of parking fees at NHS hospitals.

She said the government should

Ms Brabin told of her own experience when her daughter was rushed to hospital with acute appendicitis and lambasted the “cynical” approach to charging seriously ill patients and their families.

And she said eye-watering fines, charges to healthcare professionals and the misery for residents who live around hospitals who can’t get parked on their own street, were common issues highlighted to her by constituents.

In a speech in Parliament, she said: “Now whilst we know trusts are struggling to balance the books after years of underfunding by this government, we must ensure they are not forced to fill this gap by charging sick and poorly patients and their relatives, and already hard-pressed NHS staff.

“Car parking charges are an attack on serious illness.

“Labour would scrap car parking charges at all hospitals funded by raising insurance tax on private healthcare to 20% to meet the £162 million worth of cost of free parking at all NHS hospitals cross England.

“Charities, trade unions, the British Medical association, the Society for Acute Medicine and the public are all calling out for this government to please listen.

“In Scotland and Wales they have abolished car parking charges in all but a handful of hospitals. We should show some humanity and do the same.”

On a visit to Milton Keynes University Hospital, Jeremy Corbyn MP, Leader of the Labour party, said: “It’s fundamentally wrong that out-patients, NHS workers and those visiting their loved ones are being forced to pay a tax on sickness.

“Patients and visitors should not be subsidising the profits of outsourced private contractors who run almost half of these hospital car parks or make up for Tory underfunding of our NHS.

“Labour is committed to ending NHS hospital car park charges in England by making those who can afford private healthcare pay a bit more in tax.”

New figures reveal that money raked in from NHS England car parks run by private firms has increased to £500,000 every day, whilst the £175 million made from hospital car parking in 2016/17 is equivalent to only 0.001% of total healthcare spend.

One of the biggest generators of car park cash is Leeds Teaching Hospitals, which made £3.7m from patients and visitors in 2016/17.