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	TX: 12.06.08 - BLUE BADGES PRESENTER: PETER WHITE

	Downloaded from www.bbc.co.uk/radio4 THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE 麻豆约拍 CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. WHITE As finding a parking spot becomes an ever bigger headache for motorists having a so-called blue badge parking permit becomes ever more valuable to car owners who have a disability. According to some estimates having disabled parking permits, which allow drivers to park in areas out of bounds to ordinary motorists, can save the owner up to £5,000 a year in parking charges and that can be as much as £7,000 in London. However, there's much controversy over who qualifies for a permit, a person with a particular disability may get a blue badge in one part of the country yet an identical person elsewhere may be told they're ineligible for the scheme. The government is currently holding a national review and the House of Commons transport select committee has this week completed its report on the scheme. Well Labour MP Louise Ellman chairs the committee and she joins me. You've described the situation, or the committee has, as a postcode lottery, so why would I stand a better chance of getting a blue badge if I live in Liverpool as opposed to Manchester? ELLMAN The way the scheme works is that for about two-thirds of the people who actually get a badge they're assessed by very variable schemes. The government does issue guidance to local authorities about how this should be done but that guidance is often ignored. So it might well be that a person with one set of circumstances will get a badge if they live say in Liverpool but might not get it if they live in Manchester and we don't think that's fair. WHITE So does that mean you think it should be sort of standardised - there should be a national scheme? ELLMAN We think that there should be national criteria which are observed but we wouldn't want to see the whole scheme administered in one centralised way. We still want local authorities to administer the scheme but we think that they should follow the guidance and look to independent people in the local areas to make an assessment about an individual's worthiness to have one of those blue badges. WHITE Now one of the proposals from the committee is that eligibility should be - actually should be expanded, under what circumstances might this happen? ELLMAN At the moment to be eligible for a blue badge under the assessed criteria you would have to show you have a disability for around three years. But there are circumstances where people do have short term mobility problems which can be resolved. So we want to see more flexibility and we want to see people who have a problem that might last for say one year, rather than three years, be able to have a badge if that disability is so strong that their mobility is affected. WHITE But given - one of the problems identified in your report is that you know if too many are issued benefits to people with real need will be reduced, won't this mean that more badges would be issued if you do what you've suggested there? ELLMAN Well we want to make this scheme work fairly and we want to make sure that if people have a badge they are eligible for it but we do want to look at widening needs. But we don't want that to be open ended, so that's why we've looked at drawing the criteria up more closely, we've looked at making the time limit more realistic. But we also want there to be much stronger action against abuse and there are many cases where badges have been reported stolen and in fact replacement badges have been issued yet those same stolen badges are being used by somebody else, we think that is quite wrong and there should be much more stringency about dealing with that. WHITE Yes now we've reported on that, as I'm sure you know. Last year You and Yours reporter Carolyn Atkinson went undercover with officers in the London Borough of Wandsworth who said at least 50% of blue badges used in London are fake. POLICE OFFICER What we're going to do now though is just go around to a side street around the corner from here where we know there's a vehicle displaying a forged badge and we're going to try and get the vehicle impounded. If the vehicle is outside the owner's address, so it may well be that the owner comes out in which case we'll speak to him and hopefully seize the badge from him. I checked earlier on and it had the forged badge on it. The badge itself is a known forgery to us, we've already prosecuted someone for a copy of the same badge. And we do know that someone else in the neighbouring borough has also been prosecuted for a copy of this badge. WHITE So I mean that level of abuse is well established, what do you think - what does your committee think should actually be done about it? ELLMAN We think there should be much better information about who owns the badges that are being used and that means having a national database, that doesn't seem to be very effective at the moment. And it means much stricter enforcement and not ignoring the situation. So we do think that's one area where a tightening up of the rules and stopping flagrant abuse could actually reduce the numbers of badges in circulation. WHITE Now the blue badge scheme doesn't cover private car parking. Jackie Bailey, a Scottish MP, has introduced a members bill in Scotland, in the Assembly, that will make it illegal to park in disabled bays in supermarkets, should we perhaps introduce that in the rest of the UK? ELLMAN Well that certainly is an area that we should be looking at. We found that there was only one supermarket - Asda - where it looked as if they were actually taking action if people were parking wrongly in disabled bays. Those bays are there for the use of disabled people and it is totally wrong for other people to use them. But that needs to be monitored and it needs to be enforced. WHITE How do your findings tie in with - because the government has said for some time it's doing something about this, so are you making concrete suggestions to the government about what it should do? ELLMAN Yes the government is now in the process of reviewing the way the blue badge scheme works. Its consultation has officially ended but the government is waiting until we produce our report and we now have done that before it makes its decisions about what should be done. So our report is part of that consultation and should inform the government's decisions. WHITE Louise Ellman thank you very much indeed. Back to the Transcripts homepage Back to the You and Yours homepage The 麻豆约拍 is not responsible for external websites

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