Too Much Disabled Parking Says MP
Conservative MP Anthony Steen has been castigated by disabled groups for complaining that there are too many disabled parking spaces. A photo of Steen’s car parked in a disabled parking space at Newton Abbot railway station was sent to a local newspaper, a sapce in which he parked because the rest of the car park was full and all of the disabled parking spaces were empty. Anthony Steen said that:
“I should not have parked there and I am sorry for that but there was nowhere else I could go.
There were no cars in any of the disabled bays so I parked in the one nearest to the non-disabled parking spaces.
The number of disabled bays is disproportionate to the number of handicapped people living in the area.
I support making the life of every handicapped person easier, but we should not discriminate against the able-bodied.”
He is right that there appears to be disproportionate numbers of disabled parking spaces. Whilst some must be supplied, the number always seems to be too high. I have never seen all disabled parking spaces used by disabled people. When the number of parking spaces themselves is limited, like it is especially at railway stations, the number of disabled spaces always seems excessive to me.
Yes, disabled people have a right to go out, and not, as Douglas Campbell, a spokeman from disabled transport group Mobilise, put it: “sit at home twiddle their thumbs, not have a job, and perhaps just do to the day centre in an ambulance every day.” But that doesn’t mean that their needs should be met at the excessive detriment of able-bodied people. Do they need some specialist parking spaces? Yes. Do they need so many? No. Especially since the amount of disabled badge fraud, particularly in London, it isn’t even possible to know that all the cars parked in these spaces are in fact being used by disabled people.
Sources: BBC, The Telegraph
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