Labour blasts 'sick tax' as hospital parking charges soar in a year
2 min read
Labour has renewed calls to end hospital car parking charges after it emerged prices have more than doubled at some English trusts in just one year.
Figures obtained by the Press Association suggest four in 10 of the 152 NHS trusts which run hospitals had increased parking costs in the past year.
Of the 124 trusts which responded to a Freedom of Information request, 43% said prices had increased.
Shadow Health Secretary Jon Ashworth fumed: “These car parking charges are a tax on the sick. The next Labour government will axe them.”
He added that Labour would abolish privatisation in the NHS and end the “bureaucratic fragmentation [and] marketisation that’s been so so wasteful”.
The figures obtained by PA showed Airedale NHS Foundation Trust in West Yorkshire hiked the cost for a stay of up to 24-hours to £8 in 2017/18, up from £3.50 the year before.
Shrewsbury and Telford hospital now charges £8 to leave a car for between five and twenty-four hours, up from £3.50 in October last year.
Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool meanwhile scrapped its £2 flat rate for a day and Lancashire Teaching Hospitals doubled the cost of a four-to-six hour stay to £6
The figures also showed the millions hospitals made in 2017/18 from parking fees - including £4.45m for Frimley Heath in Surrey and £4.4m for University Hospitals of Leicester.
A Department of Health spokesman said: “We have made it very clear that patients, their families and our hardworking staff should not be subjected to unfair parking charges.
“NHS trusts are responsible for these charges and ensuring revenue goes back into frontline services, and we want to see trusts coming up with options that put staff, patients and their families first.”
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