HC Deb 13 March 1959 vol 601 cc1704-12

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Chichester-Clark.]

4.8 p.m.

Mr. Graham Page (Crosby)

I wish to draw the attention of the House to the action of the Metropolitan Police in removing certain "No Parking" boards from outside a school within the police area namely, from outside St. Martin-in-the-Fields School, Adelaide Street, Trafalgar Square. This matter has a history which I will endeavour to relate very briefly.

I, with many others, have held the view for a long time that there is extreme danger in cars being allowed to park outside school exits and entrances and I have taken the opportunity on occasions to express that view in the House. As long ago as 1936, the Inter-departmental Committee on Road Safety among School Children said exactly the same thing. Accidents, of course, inevitably occur as a result of children running out between the parked cars. The Highway Code, in paragraph 65, confirms this by its direction not to park near a school entrance.

In April last, I raised this matter in an Adjournment debate because my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport accepted a recommendation of the London and Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee, contrary to a demand by the Metropolitan Boroughs Standing Joint Committee for a ban on the parking of cars outside schools. On that occasion, my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport, in reply to me, said: No reasonable application for a waiting restriction outside a school is refused, and if at any time he has a case where he thinks a restriction has been wrongfully refused, I will gladly and without delay look into it"— [OFFICIAL REPORT, 23rd April, 1958; Vol. 586, c. 1128.] Indeed, my hon. Friend pursued the matter and wrote letters to the local authorities advising them as to the possibility of their making application for waiting restrictions outside schools. As regards the London County Council, letters were sent out to headmasters and headmistresses asking for their views on whether restrictions should be applied outside their schools. It was decided that these applications could proceed through the Metropolitan Boroughs to the Ministry of Transport, the application of the Metropolitan Boroughs being supported by the London County Council. By January of this year, twenty-eight schools had applied to the Ministry through the Metropolitan Boroughs but not in any case through the Westminster City Council, and the school to which I refer is within the latter area.

I have here a statement by the head-masters arid headmistresses of nine schools within the area of the Westminster City Council and seven schools within the area of the Paddington Borough Council. I will quickly read the heading to that statement: The headmasters and headmistresses of the undermentioned schools in Paddington and Westminster have asked that application be made to the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation for the imposition of waiting restrictions. The heads are of the opinion that the close parking of vehicles outside these schools constitutes both a serious danger to the pupils and an inconvenience to the schools, for the reasons that:— Then three reasons are set out:

  1. "(i) children walk between the parked vehicles into the road and the presence of the vehicles tends to blind both children and drivers;
  2. (ii) in the event of emergency, access by the fire brigade or the ambulance service would be seriously impeded;
  3. (iii) delivery vans—meals, milk, fuel, supplies—are frequently prevented from pulling into the kerb outside the school entrances."
The headmasters and headmistresses, having asked their respective councils, and in particular the Westminster City Council, to apply for waiting restrictions outside their schools, and having been refused, rather took the matter into their own hands and placed outside their schools boards reading, "School Entrance. No Parking".

The one outside St. Martin-in-the-Fields school was placed there on the instructions of the headmaster, Mr. Tomlinson, who incidentally is Chairman of the London Council of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. It remained there for ten weeks, and it bore the inscription: School Entrance. No Parking. Highway Code para. 65, page 12. It was removed in February by the police on the ground that it obstructed an official taxi rank.

This taxi rank is an overflow rank from Charing Cross Station and, in fact, is more frequently used by private cars than by taxis. Of course, there ought not to be an official taxi rank outside the exits from the school, having regard to the directions in the Highway Code, and I ask the House to take a wider view of this matter than the mere convenience of taxi drivers and their fares. The wider view is concerned with the safety of children coming out from the school.

The House will remember that last year some 50,000 children were killed or injured by road accidents and that, to put the matter in some perspective, in 1956 road accidents killed fifteen times as many children as did poliomyelitis, on which a great deal of public money is spent. On 14th of last month the British Medical Journal said: With the conquest of infectious diseases, road accidents have been exposed as a major cause of death, mutilation or disfigurement in childhood. In face of that statement I should have thought that the Westminster City Council, with the highest annual accident rate of all Metropolitan Boroughs of 19.82 accidents per mile of road, would seize every opportunity for safety measures.

This removal of boards from the front of a school is a narrow point, but it raises matters of principle. In considering this principle we must start from the premise that to park a motor car anywhere on the highway is a criminal offence. It is the offence of obstruction. It is obstruction in law, as I understand it, whether the car is proved to have obstructed anybody or not. In modern times, with the great number of motor cars on the road, we leave it to the police to decide when and where to enforce that law, but the police have no exclusive prerogative in this respect. The ordinary citizen has his obligation to prevent the commission of an offence. It is within his right to tell a motorist, "You shall not commit the offence of obstruction in this particular place".

If it is wrong for the individual to do that, the police should remove all "No Parking" signs that one sees on or adjacent to a highway and, for example, on the railings or walls of commercial and private premises, and such signs as brewers place outside public houses, reading "Do not park. There is to be a delivery of So-and-so's beer." There are signs which one sees outside Government Departments, "No parking outside here for a certain distance". There are blocks that some frontagers put in the roads outside their premises. There is a board in the road very close to the Westminster City Hall—just opposite, in fact; outside the Garrick Hotel—which says, "No Parking". There is the Westminster City Council's board outside the Westminster City Council's yard in Monk Street, which is near to St. Martin's School in Gt. Peter Street, and proclaims to all who pass, "Westminster City Council. No Parking".

In face of all that, why should the police pick on these two boards outside St. Martin-in-the-Fields School? If two little boards there are an obstruction, the motor cars which park there when the boards are not there are a greater obstruction, are in fact a dangerous obstruction.

One hears complaints frequently that the citizen does not do his duty of preventing crime. He stands by while the brick is thrown through the jeweller's window and the smash-and-grab raid takes place. He scarcely ever reports a case of dangerous driving. In this case, the headmasters of these schools, with great responsibility for the safety of their pupils, are trying to see that the law is observed outside their schools. They have been picked on—I use the word deliberately—for the removal of their efforts to make the law effective. They teach their pupils the Highway Code inside the school. The pupils come out and see the Highway Code being broken immediately outside the school. Surely the police should remove the cars which are breaking the law rather than remove the boards with which the headmasters are trying to make the law observed.

Dame Irene Ward (Tynemouth)

Hear, hear.

Mr. Page

My hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State may use the argument that the display of boards tends to give motorists the impression that if they are told they cannot park here it means that they can park elsewhere. I suggest that is a rather poor argument, although it has been put forward in correspondence by the Metropolitan Police. It is, in short, that we must not prevent a breach of the law in one place in case we cause one in another.

Perhaps with more strength, my hon. and learned Friend may quote to me Section 48, subsection (3) of the Road Traffic Act, 1930, and Section 35 of the Road Traffic Act, 1936, which forbid unauthorised signs on the roadway, but to call that in aid is most unrealistic. Why choose those preventing an acknowledged danger and leave those which are merely for commercial and civil servants' convenience? I shall quote a paragraph from the West London Press of today: 'It is a scandal,' thundered Mr. J. Burgin, headmaster of St. Matthews School, Old Pye Street, Westminster, referring to the number of vehicles allowed to park outside his school. Mr. Burgin and the heads of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Buckingham Gate, St. Barnabas', Westminster Cathedral and Burdett Coutts schools have protested that parking outside their schools is endangering the lives of pupils. I also call the attention of hon. Members to an article in today's Star on the same subject. Today Her Majesty the Queen visited St. Michael's School, Graham Terrace, Belgravia. The police had placed "No Parking" signs all round that school and had moved the cars away from the road outside the school. I wish that Her Gracious Majesty could have seen that school before the police had taken that action and could have seen the danger to children coming out of that school between parked cars. I wish that the police would remove that danger or allow it to be prevented by the headmasters and headmistresses every day and not just on the occasion of a Royal visit.

4.22 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Skeffington (Hayes and Harlington)

I wish briefly to support what the hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Page) has said in this Adjournment debate. I am sure that everyone concerned about safety on the roads, particularly the safety of young persons will be grateful to him for what he has said today and for the very zealous manner in which he has pursued with some considerable success this subject of child safety near schools on previous occasions.

I speak with a vested interest because I have two young children, and I certainly do not want them to be numbered in future road casualties as 49,863 infants were last year, of whom 717 were killed. One way in which we can all help road safety for children is to see that cars are not parked near the entrances and exits of schools. It makes nonsense of kerbside safety drill, on which a great deal of time is spent in the schools, if immediately the children come out they cannot even see the kerb because of a line of cars.

The hon. Member has quoted the head of St. Matthew's, Westminster. Perhaps I might quote a little further because in that school, which is only a short distance from here, Mr. Burgin said: We have been badgering for the last eight years here to get something done. Cars parked outside all the entrances to the school, on the pavement as well as on the other side of the road, so that children coming out of school can't see what is coming down the road and the motorists can't see the children. Something should be done to keep the roads clear. I know the school very well, because my mother taught there for 23 years and I have often visited it. I know the site, and I know the problems in Westminster, with its large office accommodation and population.

It seems to me that if we could have the co-operation of the police instead of, apparently, their hostility where there are "No Parking" boards it would do something to help. We know that the police have many duties and many difficult decisions to make. They have to balance various considerations which are presented to them. In the case to which the hon. Member referred, however, it seems to me that the police might have used their powers with greater discretion in the interests of the children. I hope that as a result of the debate we shall have greater co-operation both from the police and from the Westminster City Council, which in this respect seems to lag somewhat behind other Metropolitan boroughs.

4.26 p.m.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. David Renton)

The interest of my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Page) in all matters of road safety is well known, and I should like to acknowledge it. He is right to say that the parking of cars outside schools is a contributory factor in causing accidents to school children. As my hon. Friend well knows—because he raised the matter with the Ministry of Transport in an Adjournment debate nearly a year ago—the policy concerning the restriction of parking is a matter not for my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary but for my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport, and I hope that it will not be thought that I am trespassing too much on the preserves of my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport if I remind the House briefly of that policy.

On the advice of his London and Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee, my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport has decided that there shall not be universal restriction on the parking of all cars outside all schools but that each case shall be considered on its merits, and so that this may be done applications may be made to local authorities and, in London, to the Metropolitan boroughs or, for example, to the City Council of Westminster, which, if they approve the action, can forward the applications to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport. It would be wrong for me to do more than merely remind the House of that policy. Any questions as to its application should be directed to the Minister of Transport or his Joint Parliamentary Secretary.

I come into this matter only because my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby has said that he is worried about certain action either taken or not taken by the police. It is the duty of the police to implement the policy of the Minister of Transport and thereby to enforce the law. The police do not make that policy.

We are faced with the fact that there are a great many schools which, of their own initiative and without going through the lawful procedure, have attached various "No Parking" signs to the school buildings or the railings of the playgrounds. In doing that they are doing what my hon. Friend said the owners of private premises, whether business or residential, often do, although I have never heard that Government Departments do it without complying with the law. Those signs are unauthorised and indeed unlawful, and they can cause some confusion, but the police take a very tolerant attitude towards them; indeed, the powers of the police to remove those signs are somewhat uncertain.

I think it is true to say that in essence the point raised by my hon. Friend in the debate is about the narrowest point which I have ever heard raised even in an Adjournment debate. He has given evidence of one occasion, and one occasion only, when the police removed signs, not attached to the school premises, but which had been placed out in the roadway adjoining the school. In those circumstances, the police considered that the signs caused an obstruction to traffic. They were unlawful signs, and the police had a duty to remove them. They did so in that one case only. In my opinion, the police not only were fully justified, but had a clear duty to do what they did.

Mr. Skeffington

I know that the Joint Under-Secretary of State has only a limited time. Is it not better to have the signs there than to have cars there? It is a matter for the discretion of the police.

Mr. Renton

It is a perfectly fair point. May I paraphrase the point which the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (Mr. Skeffington) is making so that I can better reply to it? The hon. Gentleman is asking why the police should remove boards saying, "No Parking", which obstruct the road, in order to enable cars to obstruct the road. Is that the hon. Gentleman's point?

Mr. Skeffington

Yes.

Mr. Renton

That is a very fair point and there is a very satisfactory answer to it. The placing of unauthorised signs on the highway is illegal. The parking of cars on the highway at a point where parking has not been prohibited by the Minister of Transport is not illegal. The only circumstances in which it could become illegal is if the vehicle were parked in such a way as to cause unreasonable obstruction to traffic. Incidentally, my hon. Friend was not correct in law in saying that parking on the highway is in itself an offence. It is not. It is an offence only when it causes an unreasonable obstruction.

The police, with their duty to enforce the law, were bound to take the view that the wilful causing of obstruction by the placing of an unauthorised traffic sign was an offence. Therefore, in their duty to keep the streets clear, they were entitled to remove the obstruction. Similarly, looking at the other side of the coin, as there was no prohibition on the parking of cars at that point, they were entitled to let the cars park.

Let us not be dogmatic about it. Traffic problems are difficult enough without our trying to over-simplify them in a misleading way. It is not on every occasion that the parking of a car outside a school will cause danger. It does so in some places. It does not necessarily do so in others. The circumstances are greatly variable. We have to leave this to the good judgment of the local traffic authorities, and to the final decision of my right hon. Friend, as enforced by the police when necessary.

I am sure that on reflection my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby will feel that in the one case to which he has referred the police did nothing wrong. Nevertheless, I make no complaint of his raising this matter, because the interests of road safety are of great concern to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-six minutes to Five o'clock.