CITIZENS ADVICE NETWORKS AND ASSISTANCE WITH PRIVATE PARKING CHARGES

That this House recognises the important work carried out by Citizens Advice networks across the UK in highlighting that the private parking industry, with the assistance of the DVLA and a flawed system of industry self-regulation, is increasingly acting as a mechanism for debt creation; notes the response to Written Parliamentary Question 21725 on 19 January 2016 which indicated that requests to DVLA for access to personal data of vehicle owners held by the agency rocketed from an average of 156,000 each month in April to June 2012 to an average of over 360,000 each month in October to December 2015; further notes recent research by Citizens Advice Scotland indicating that many of the charges raised in Scotland are legally questionable but are passed to debt collection agencies to pursue through threatened court action and damaged credit worthiness, resulting in motorists approaching local Citizens Advice Bureaux seeking assistance; and calls on the DVLA to more effectively police the use made of the personal data it controls and to stop outsourcing much of the judgement on who can access such data to trade associations whose members' and claims enforcers' finances depend on access to this data.