If you want to see anguish, just go to a hospital car park. Watch the stress and anxiety on the faces of motorists, whether it be the disabled, hospital staff, the long-term sick, or their families as they fumble for change to pay often extortionate car parking fees.

For years, motorists who don’t have good public transport links, or have no option but to use a car, have faced an additional stealth tax on the NHS. Some have had to pay charges of literally hundreds of pounds a week just because they needed to go to hospital regularly as an out-patient. All this when the core principle of the NHS is to provide free healthcare for all at the point of access.

Hospital parking costs are the bane of people’s lives. No one goes to hospital out of choice; they go because they have to. No one chooses to be ill, and we rely on our doctors and nurses to look after us.

It was because of this major social injustice that I started the campaign for free hospital car parking in 2013, bringing through a number of Parliamentary Bills – after finding out that some hospitals in England were charging staff and visitors up to £500 a week to use on-site parking facilities.