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House of Lords decides not to kill off parking charges in Richmond and Bushy parks

11:07pm Wednesday 10th March 2010 in


The House of Lords today voted against a proposal to put an end to the controversial parking charge scheme in Richmond and Bushy parks.

Instead, the House opted to pass a motion by Conservative peer, Lord Greville Howard, which calls on the Government to rethink its decision to introduce fees in the Royal Parks-run open spaces.

Campaigners from the Friends of Bushy and Home Parks (FBHP) and Richmond Park MP Susan Kramer said they were "bitterly disappointed" by the result.

For an hour the sitting Lords heard passionate talks about the need to scrap the plan and keep the parks free for visiting drivers - but Conservatives refused to support a Lib Dem fatal motion to stop the charges from becoming reality.

To ensure a message was delivered to the Government, the Lib Dems were subsequently forced to give the thumbs up to the Tory motion.

Baroness Jenny Tonge urged the House to "stop the Government in its tracks", warning that the Conservative motion was not strong enough.

Lord Howard hit back by saying that the Lib Dem's fatal motion went too far, adding: "If a Conservative Government is elected on May 6 this order (to introduce fees) will be rescinded and the charges annulled."

Labour peer, Lord Bill Brett, rounded off the speeches by reiterating his party's support for the unpopular fees.

The fatal motion put forward by Baroness Tonge - backed by Ms Kramer and about 40 onlookers at tonight's debate - would have seen the fees of up to £1 an hour killed off completely but it was voted down by 48 votes to 71.

The Conservatives saw their motion passed by 136 to 71.

After the debate, campaigners said they viewed the result as a defeat - claiming the Government would still approve the parking charge proposal even though it has been asked to rethink it.

Despite the disappointment, FBHP chairman, Pieter Morpurgo, promised to "fight on".

• What do you think? Let us know by emailing imason@london.newsquest.co.uk, phone the newsdesk on 020 8744 4262 or leave a comment below.

Comments(19)

Julie Hill says...
9:49am Thu 11 Mar 10

Fight on indeed we will.

The irony is that the RPA is now regretting ever trying to bring in these charges and realises it will suffer a loss of revenue as a result.

If the revenue REALLY is going to be used to resurface the car parks with extremely costly and over the top surfacing, other ways of raising this money could have been investigated....

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twoquid says...
3:13pm Thu 11 Mar 10

I read this as both parties opposed parking charges but neither could put politics aside to agree on how to stop them. If this is anything to go by, we should say our goodbyes to Kingston Hospital too. Roll on election so these two can stop ruining Richmond. They should both feel disappointed and ashamed.

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SteveC1964 says...
3:24pm Thu 11 Mar 10

Car parking should be paid for. Too much space is already given over to car parking in Richmond Park. Recently more parking space has been created in Bushy Park (The Pheasantry) - too much. The demand for car parking needs to be restrained and requiring a fee is a good way of doing that. And at a time when public services are being cut back and will be further cut, I don't suppose there is anything much that the Royal Parks can cut and so they must raise some revenue. Car parking will raise revenue and pay for the maintenance of the ROADS and CAR PARKS. It's a win-win with car parking charges.

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SteveC1964 says...
4:07pm Thu 11 Mar 10

It'll be interesting at election time to discover whether the people who are usually minded to vote Lib-Dem are so violently opposed to the charges that they decide to vote Tory to get them rescinded. Or will they decide that actually there are more weighty issues than car parking charges? I hope they can see the bigger picture.

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kingpin says...
4:37pm Thu 11 Mar 10

Twoquid the lib dems backed the conservative motion. They did the right thing. The Conservatives had the chance to back the Lib Dems and didn't.

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Martin Cross says...
6:57pm Thu 11 Mar 10

I have just received an e-mail on this subject from Zac Goldsmith, which I assume he will not object to my passing on:
"The Conservative amendment in the Lords calling on the Government to withdraw the proposed charges in Richmond Park has been supported by a huge margin of 137-71.

Susan Kramer has described the result as 'bitterly disappointing'. But that's nonsense. It is a great result. Indeed it is the very best result that was possible, and it will be difficult for the Government to ignore it.

The Lib Dems claim that the proposals could have been 'killed outright'. But that's just not true. First, even if the Lords had supported her 'fatal amendment', there is nothing to stop the Government simply presenting the same thing the next day.

Second - Fatal Amendments represent a 'nuclear' option that has only been used three times in history. The unelected chamber doesn't veto decisions of the elected chamber. Moderate Peers were never going to consider using this method to deal with a local issue such as park charges.

In short, if Susan Kramer's fatal amendment had been the only option last night, the Government would have won outright. The sad truth is that the Lib Dem plan was actually designed to fail so that the Lib Dems could score political points. In the run up to an election, some politicians will try anything.

If you want to achieve things in Parliament, you need to make it as easy as possible for others to join you. The Lib Dems almost always do the opposite so that they can then issue press releases on the back of mere gestures.

The Conservative Party has shown that it is committed to scrapping the charges. If we win the election that is exactly what we will do. But we need your support on May 6th."

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twoquid says...
7:57pm Thu 11 Mar 10

Both were only after point scoring. The letter above states how one side did it. The other side is weakly reliant on IF's. IF they are elected, IF they can find other funding, IF they bother to bring it up after an election.
Neither care about the park. If either did, they would have remained true to their environmental principles and have supported the Royal Parks original recommendation.

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kingpin says...
8:19pm Thu 11 Mar 10

Zac's clearly embarrassed by this. So much is clear from the tone of his letter. He's always been unflappable even when answering critics on his questionable tax status and now he's clearly rattled.

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Julie Hill says...
8:47pm Thu 11 Mar 10

Whay twoquid is missing is that these charges are to pay for the RESURFACING of the CAR PARKS! So if no one takes their cars the parking machines will be EMPTY!

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twoquid says...
9:24pm Thu 11 Mar 10

...and they wouldn't need to resurface them. Exactly Julie, thank you for pointing that out. Either fewer cars in the park or have visitors contribute to the upkeep via meters, as was recommended by the Royal Parks.

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Beverly RA says...
9:28pm Thu 11 Mar 10

The Lib/Dems are looking for any branch to hang their hats on, this is but just one more, I await the next thing that they will try on,
ITS ELECTION TIME AND THEY ARE COMING OUT OF HIBERNATION AGAIN

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CSDLondon says...
9:18am Fri 12 Mar 10

Those of us campaigning against the parkign charges are not pro-car. We want measures to control / penalise the vast majority of cars in the parks - those who drive straight through. People who stop and actually use the parks for exercise and recreation should not be penalised. For info: along the whole north side of Bushy Park there is only one bus per hour.

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CSDLondon says...
9:18am Fri 12 Mar 10

Those of us campaigning against the parkign charges are not pro-car. We want measures to control / penalise the vast majority of cars in the parks - those who drive straight through. People who stop and actually use the parks for exercise and recreation should not be penalised. For info: along the whole north side of Bushy Park there is only one bus per hour.

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martnal says...
10:37am Fri 12 Mar 10

Ban cars (except disabled) altogether and the car park won't need resurfacing. Spend the money on trees and water voles.

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Julie Hill says...
11:08am Fri 12 Mar 10

"spend the money on trees...." What so the Cabinet Member for the "Environment" and planning committee can sanction their destruction?!

How silly to say ban cars .

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twoquid says...
11:30am Fri 12 Mar 10

How 'silly' that both parties made a political statement out of car parking charges, instead of attempting to sort out the bigger picture. We have to pay for the wear and tear of all these cars somehow.

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TheParkie says...
1:20pm Fri 12 Mar 10

A reminder to all that BOTH Kramer and Goldsmith were invited to raise the money for Richmond Park through their various networks of highly-placed and highly-compensated contacts. As far as I can see nothing has been done on this though i don't doubt it has been used as pretext for raising political party funds. Grrrrh. What I see is what the lawyers might call an "inalienable right" namely to park in the park is being alienated because people cannot see the difference between paying £30 per elector as a one-off to obviate the introduction of charges and an ever-increasing sum annually in perpetuity. If you as a citizen have an inalienable right it is your bounden duty not to alienate it. I wonder how other Londoners will view the people of Richmond after this?

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ChrisSquire says...
10:25am Sat 13 Mar 10

The bottom line is that the Lib Dems supported the Tory motion, which won’t stop the charges, while the Tories did NOT support the Lib Dem motion, which would have stopped them. Not a good day for the hapless Zac!

I have posted extracts from the debate at: http://tinyurl.com/y
d5g7nz

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TheParkie says...
10:00am Mon 15 Mar 10

According to a rumour circulating in the park future revenue from charges introduced on the justification that the visitors to RP could afford them are already being allocated towards the upkeep of er the horseriding facilities. That doesn't sound like the average Richmond Park visitor benefitting to me.

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