I beg to move

That the Final Stage of the Hospital Parking Charges Bill [NIA Bill 02/22-27] do now pass.

The Business Committee has agreed that there should be no time limit on the debate.

Today's Final Stage concludes the legislative process for the Hospital Parking Charges Bill in the Assembly. The debate on the Bill has been useful and informative, and I thank all Members for their contributions to the process. I express my gratitude once again to the Health Committee for working within difficult time frames and for supporting the Bill's receiving accelerated passage.

It is clear just how many important issues the Bill touches on and how important it is that we get it right. What we are talking about here today will have an impact on staff, patients and visitors. As I have stated repeatedly during the passage of the Bill, although I remain entirely sympathetic to the intentions behind the Hospital Parking Charges Act (Northern Ireland) 2022, delays to the operational implementation of the traffic management system to control parking once charges are abolished meant that the original commencement date of this weekend was simply no longer within reach. Compared with the uncertain position even a number of weeks ago, I can now confirm that the traffic management system contract to control parking, preserve blue-light routes and protect designated spaces once charges are abolished was awarded on 1 May. However, due to the technical realities of implementation, which include, for example, assessment of the infrastructure required and locations at each site, delivery, installation and testing of equipment, and any necessary communication and engagement with members of the public and staff, the system will not come online until the autumn at the earliest, which is after the new law comes into effect on 12 May.

Many colleagues supported the current legislation because of the benefits to staff, patients and visitors. Therefore, as I have said, as fair recognition of the hard work and dedication of the staff, and to allow the Executive to deliver some of the intent of current legislation, staff parking permits will be free of charge from 12 May.

Many Members will be aware of the traffic issues at hospital sites. Indeed, many may have personal experience of them. They will therefore understand why I am concerned that a delay in bringing into operation an effective traffic management solution will make the situation significantly worse for patients and staff by adding unmanageable demand for spaces and by adding further pressure on trust staff who are already dealing with huge challenges. In particular, I am informed that this would have had a significant impact in the Belfast and South Eastern Health and Social Care Trusts, which, regionally, have the highest number of charged-for parking spaces and offer many regional healthcare services.

If Members do not pass this Bill, the stark reality is that hospitals will have no means to control parking or, importantly, to protect the ability of emergency vehicles to come and go unimpeded. I hope that Members recognise that such an outcome creates an unacceptable risk of traffic chaos in and around critical hospitals, bringing those associated risks to staff, patients and the public.

Whilst the delay in introducing free hospital parking has, in this instance, been driven by other factors, it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge that the financial context for the Department of Health has worsened considerably since the original Act was passed just over two years ago. Car parking charges are currently used to help meet some of the expenditure associated with the operational upkeep and management of car parks. No additional capital or revenue funding has been made available to my Department for the implementation of the legislation and, in the light of the 2024-25 Budget settlement, the loss of that revenue, combined with the ongoing requirement to maintain the car parks, would only add to the significant pressures that my Department faces.

My Department therefore proposes to use the deferral period to fully implement the infrastructure required to manage free car parking and work towards funding the implementation of free car parking after the deferral period. It will also allow the trusts more time to explore how car use can be reduced — that is a fundamental point and not just because of our responsibilities to climate change — because, at present, demand for car parking spaces significantly exceeds capacity on some hospital sites. Therefore, increasing that demand by abolishing all charges is not without risk.

During the deferral period, trusts are also committed to increasing capacity by exploring off-site parking sites and incentives such as park-and-ride facilities; reviewing and extending the current free parking eligibility where the duration and/or frequency of visits leads to significant charges for patients or their families; and also, as we committed to, increasing awareness of free parking eligibility and the travel cost recovery scheme by, for example, advertising the details of that on patient appointment letters.

My primary concern is to protect access to hospitals for appropriate users. I therefore seek agreement to the Bill to defer the removal of charges for two years, and I hope that the Bill will receive Royal Assent as close as possible to the operational date of the current Act.

I urge all Members to support the Bill.

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the Final Stage of the Hospital Parking Charges Bill 2024. I will make some brief remarks on behalf of the Committee before speaking as Sinn Féin health spokesperson.

The Bill has been through the accelerated passage process, and I highlight that the Committee is disappointed that the Bill is required. The Committee understands why the Department needs time to bring the necessary systems into place to ensure that those who need access to hospital car parking spaces can access them. However, it is disappointing that, even now, we hear real-life experiences of people missing important appointments as they are stuck in a line, waiting to get into a car park.

Recent figures that the Committee received from the trusts outline that people can wait for over 90 minutes in a queue to get access to car parking. That shows that more work needs to be done by the trusts and the Department to improve parking capacity at congested sites. We look forward to seeing future plans and proposals to increase capacity and provide additional public transport and park-and-ride facilities to take pressure off those sites.

As I mentioned at Second Stage, the previous Health Committee undertook the Committee Stage of the Hospital Parking Charges Bill. The issues that were raised during evidence in 2022 are as relevant today as they were over two years ago. Those issues include inequity in charging within and across trusts, financial issues for staff having to pay for parking and inconsistencies in the approach to providing free parking to patients and their families. We still hear of staff having to pay around £11 per day to access safe parking at Belfast City Hospital. Some of them are the lowest-paid staff who work difficult shift patterns and have no easy access to public transport.

During discussions with the Minister and the Department, the Committee received assurances that the permit scheme for staff was being redeveloped with new criteria. It would be good to receive an update on that today and confirmation of when that process will be completed across all the trust sites. The Committee is also keen to ensure that the patients and families who are entitled to free parking are provided with parking passes. We encourage all trusts to ensure that eligible patients and families are made aware of and provided with passes at the earliest opportunity.

The Committee heard about the difficulties that there have been in appointing the contractor to deliver the traffic management scheme. It is welcome that that is now moving forward; the Minister stated that a contractor is now in place. The Committee has written to the Department to get updates on the progress of the scheme every two months. The Committee will seek to ensure that free parking at hospitals is brought forward as soon as practicable and that we are not in the position in two years' time of having to come back to seek further extensions.

I thank the Minister, his departmental officials and officials from the trusts for their engagement with the Committee before the introduction of the Bill. I hope that we continue to work collectively to improve the services that are provided to people in our communities.

I now speak as Sinn Féin health spokesperson. At each stage of the Bill, we have repeatedly emphasised the need for the legislation to be implemented as soon as possible. I reiterate my disappointment that it has not been completed in the time frame agreed in 2022. We must now ensure that there are no further delays. I welcome the Minister's update today about the contract having been awarded, but, as I mentioned, we will monitor the progress of the implementation of the scheme very closely. It is essential that a serious effort is made to deliver the work fully so that we can fulfil the Assembly's promise to the hard-working staff in our hospitals and to patients and their families, who continue to feel the financial burden daily, particularly as they deal with the impacts of a cost-of-living crisis.

We have highlighted on numerous occasions the serious workforce issues facing our heath service. Making it more difficult for people to afford to come to work is not exactly an incentive in attracting or retaining staff. We must do better. I look forward to seeing real progress on the removal of hospital car parking charges well in advance of the two-year deadline.

We are where we are. We have got to the Final Stage of the Bill, and I have no doubt that it will progress today. I am disappointed that none of the suggestions that we made about speeding up the process was accepted. The news today is that a company has been appointed to make the installations. That speeds things up. There was an opportunity to implement a process in between times. There are still barriers on all the car parks that are likely to be oversubscribed. Some sort of control system could have been put in while we retrofitted the new technology.

The delay of two years is simply too much. The Bill was promised at the time of an election. It is simply not doing what it said that it would do. Patients will be let down as a result, as will staff. Every extra day that they have to pay is one too many. Of course, the general thrust of the Bill was that staff would get free car parking. However, when we get down into the detail, it feels as though that will not be the case; only some staff will get free car parking. There will be a lottery-type system with guidelines. That means that many staff will lose out and will not get access to free parking. Nor will they have the capacity to park at all at their places of work, which will bring significant difficulty for many of them.

As a result, I feel that the process has been a shambles. It shows what happens when people try to electioneer a few weeks before an election and curry favour with the electorate by making all sorts of promises. When we get to delivery, however, it works out that, had the groundwork been done properly, we could have been updated on the fact that it was not simple to implement. We can complain about the delays, but it is entirely different to do so and then walk through to vote for those delays. There is an inconsistency there that does not make too much sense.

Whilst I kind of appreciate the Minister's predicament, the legislation has been poorly implemented by the Department. That is simply because of the fact that the wrong process was used, which resulted in a judicial review that was upheld. That added a full two-year delay to the implementation of the legislation. Had we run the processes properly, we would not need the two-year delay. I hope that the Minister is able to find out from the Department exactly what caused that and that lessons can be taken so that, when the will of the House is presented to any Department, the officials take it on board and implement it correctly. That will mean that we are not left with such a long delay, because, ultimately, it is the people — those who elect us and whom we serve — who are let down. The delay is too long, and, on the basis of the advice that we were given, implementation could have been done more quickly. On that basis, sadly, we cannot support the delaying Bill today.

Thank you, Colin. I call Paula Bradshaw.

I was not on the list to speak.

OK. Gerry, if you are ready to speak, you are next.

Thank you. I am always ready to speak.

I will not repeat verbatim what I said at the Bill's previous stages, but I will oppose the Bill. As with many promises that have been made by the Executive parties, the Minister and the Executive are rolling back on something that they promised and voted through. They sought votes from and campaigned on the policy and then U-turned and went into reverse gear when they got into the Executive and back into office.

The parking charge is a tax on those who work in our health and social care sector and those who need to avail themselves of those services. I repeat: it is one rule for MLAs and Ministers up here with their free parking and another for everybody else who works in or relies on our Health and Social Care (HSC) services. The Minister mentioned alternative forms of transport — active travel and the like: that is important, but it is not available or accessible to everyone. I urge the Executive to allocate proper resources to infrastructure for cycling, walking and other forms of active travel.

It would be remiss of me not to mention that social workers are due to begin strike action tomorrow because they are overworked and underpaid. The very people who are equipped for early intervention cannot intervene early, because they have too much work to do with too few workers. There is a vacancy rate of almost 50% for family support services in the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust area. It seems that the money that should go to those workers will not be made available in the Budget. To add insult to injury, they are also being asked to pay for parking again. What a shame.

During the early stages of the Bill, I raised scepticism about the delays and technological issues that the Minister had cited as the main reason for this Bill's introduction. He has now revealed that the technological issues have been more or less resolved. That confirms my suspicion that it was always about resource: raising money and putting the burden on workers and the public, which was stated by the Minister and in the explanatory memorandum. For those reasons and for the many others that I have previously stated, I oppose this regressive and unfair Bill.

I now call the Minister for Health, Robin Swann, to conclude the Final Stage.

I thank the Members who contributed to the debate. I will make a few comments on their contributions. On behalf of my Department's officials, I thank the Chair for her commitment and support. I guarantee that the Committee will receive the regular updates that it has asked for on the delivery of the legislation and the intention to develop the eligibility criteria.

I have stated previously that the current free parking eligibility is for patients who may have a number of outpatient appointments over an extended period; patients who may benefit from lengthy or frequent visits from relatives or friends; and patients who are outside the prescribed treatment categories but will make lengthy and/or frequent visits. As I said in my opening comments, a commitment was given in the Chamber at the Bill's other stages, and we are now looking at including the eligibility and how patients can access those free permits in appointment letters. That is being explored across all trusts.

I thank Mr McGrath and Mr Carroll for their comments. Both raised issues that were covered during the debates at earlier stages of the Bill around the legal challenges and the appointment of a contractor. How that can be covered and how it came about and occurred was covered at those earlier stages as well.

Many of us are aware of the traffic issues at Health and Social Care hospital sites. Again, the Chair of the Committee raised that with regard to information that the Committee received about patients often waiting for 90 minutes to access a hospital. I am concerned that, owing to the delay in being able to implement the traffic management solution, the current legislation, although clearly well-intentioned, will potentially make things worse for patients and staff by adding to the demand for spaces, which will add further pressure to trust staff, who are already dealing with huge challenges.

I know the value that Assembly colleagues place on private Members' Bills. Therefore, I do not make the proposal to postpone the operation date of the Act lightly. I do so to protect access to hospital sites for service users and because Health and Social Care no longer has the resources to deliver its services. Acknowledging that, I remain entirely sympathetic to the intention behind the legislation. We have a fundamental problem to address. I am conscious that I am asking the Assembly to take a difficult decision today. Unfortunately, given the budgetary challenges facing all Departments, there will be more difficult decisions to come. I know that Members supported the current legislation for the best of motives. It reflected a genuine desire to show solidarity with health service staff, patients and patients' families. However, if Members do not pass this incredibly important Bill today, the stark reality is that hospitals will have no means to control parking, preserve blue-light routes and protect designated spaces. I hope that it is clear to Members from what I have said that, in our view, it creates an unacceptable risk of traffic chaos in and around critical hospitals with the associated risks to staff, patients and the public.

Proper consideration needs to be given to how we manage and control the limited capacity in hospital car parks and to how provision and maintenance will be funded when parking charges are abolished. I therefore urge all Members to support the Bill today. I commend the Bill to the House.

Question put. The Assembly divided:

<SPAN STYLE="font-style:italic;"> Ayes 65; Noes 11

AYES

Dr Aiken, Mr Allen, Dr Archibald, Ms Armstrong, Mr Baker, Mr Beattie, Mr Blair, Mr Boylan, Ms Bradshaw, Mr Brett, Miss Brogan, Mr Brooks, Ms Brownlee, Mr T Buchanan, Ms Bunting, Mr Butler, Mrs Cameron, Mr Chambers, Mr Clarke, Mr Delargy, Mr Dickson, Mr Dunne, Ms Eastwood, Ms Egan, Mr Elliott, Ms Ennis, Mrs Erskine, Ms Ferguson, Ms Flynn, Ms Forsythe, Mr Frew, Mr Gildernew, Mr Givan, Miss Hargey, Mr Harvey, Mr Honeyford, Mr Irwin, Ms Kimmins, Mr Kingston, Mrs Little-Pengelly, Mrs Long, Mr Lyons, Mr McAleer, Mr McGuigan, Mr McHugh, Miss McIlveen, Mr Andrew McMurray, Mr McReynolds, Mrs Mason, Mr Mathison, Mr Middleton, Mr Muir, Ms Mulholland, Ms Á Murphy, Mr Nesbitt, Ms Nicholl, Mr O'Dowd, Mrs O'Neill, Miss Reilly, Mr Robinson, Mr Sheehan, Ms Sheerin, Mr Stewart, Mr Swann, Mr Tennyson

Tellers for the Ayes: Dr Aiken, Mr Chambers

NOES

Mr Allister, Mr Carroll, Mr Durkan, Mr Easton, Ms Hunter, Mr McGlone, Mr McGrath, Ms McLaughlin, Mr McNulty, Mr O'Toole, Ms Sugden

Tellers for the Noes: Mr Carroll, Mr McGrath

Question accordingly agreed to. Resolved:

That the Final Stage of the Hospital Parking Charges Bill [NIA Bill 02/22-27] do now pass.

Youse can all take your ease.

(Mr Speaker in the Chair)