It is a great pleasure to address the Committee under your chairmanship, Mr Gray.

I hope that everyone present supports the Bill, which aims to protect the blue badge parking scheme for disabled people. The scheme was established under the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970, and currently enables around 2.5 million disabled people to retain their independence by allowing them to park close to where they need to go.

However, as the years have passed, the substantial financial value of a badge has provided non-badge holders with an incentive to commit fraud and abuse the scheme. There are many types of abuse, including copying, forging and changing details. The Bill is an attempt to close some loopholes and increase the quality of life of disabled people by reducing abuse, providing them with more parking spaces and enabling the scheme to run as was intended in the 1970 Act.

The Bill will improve the ability of local authorities to tackle fraud on the street and make more parking spaces available to disabled people. First, the Bill removes the requirement for the Secretary of State to prescribe the form, or design, of a parking badge in the regulations. That will make the design more confidential and secure, making forgeries more difficult.

Secondly, the Bill will provide local authorities with a new power to cancel a badge that is no longer in the holder’s possession; for example, when it has been lost or stolen. Without that power, such a badge arguably remains a valid document. That will clarify the legal status of such badges.

Thirdly, the Bill will make it clear that it is an offence to use a badge that should have been returned. Provisions that concern criminal offences should be precise, otherwise there is a risk that a prosecution may be successfully challenged. The Bill removes any ambiguity. Fourthly, the Bill enables an employee or contractor of a local authority, wearing plain clothes, to inspect badges, if authorised in writing to do so by the authority. That ability does not currently exist.

Fifthly, the Bill will enable civil enforcement officers in England and Wales to retain a badge that has been presented to them and which appears to be fake, has been cancelled or is due for return. Sixthly, the Bill will establish the Secretary of State as a badge issuing authority for members of the armed forces and persons employed in support of those forces who are resident in UK military bases overseas. I am sure that we would all welcome that.

Finally, I want to make a technical point. The Bill will remove the right of appeal to the Secretary of State, which I understand happens in only one or two cases a year. It will give appellants the right to appeal to their councils and then to the local government ombudsman. The Bill is designed to improve the scheme and make disabled people’s lives easier and better.