Who'll defend Londoners from this parking rip-off?

Why is no one standing up for the people whom Westminster City council are clobbering with rip-off parking charges?

It may seem to be a pretty strange state of affairs when the person who oversaw the introduction of the congestion charge is shoulder-to-shoulder with motoring organisations campaigning against parking charges in the city centre. But that's what is happening because Westminster's latest charges are nothing to do with regulating congestion or improving the environment, and everything to do with ripping off Londoners to fill Westminster council's coffers.

Westminster City council plans to impose a new tax on Londoners, a new parking charge of up to £4.40 an hour at evenings and weekends. That can mean charges of up to £22 or more for visitors to the West End for one visit. It will be paid by Londoners from all over the city, more than two million a year of whom are going to the West End to have an evening or weekend out, or attend religious worship. It is a pure money-making scheme.

The council is at it all the time. Its motorbike parking charge taxes non-residents and undermines the positive effect of less congestion with fewer cars and more motorbikes.

It is clear that Westminster City council has little thought for the businesses that operate in their borough. It is simultaneously abolishing more than 1,700 free parking spaces on single yellow lines in the West End. The effect is to maximise the numbers forced into the new parking charge bays.

London's unemployment rate has soared to 10 per cent, higher than the national rate. This measure isn't going to help. Specialist workers, such as musicians, will face a new tax on their incomes.
We need to understand that the centre of the city has to be part of the whole city, not like something out of Passport to Pimlico. It taps into a wider issue of making sure we keep a human dimension.

For this part of London to stay an attractive place for everyone we have to get the balance right. The stealthy encroachment of chains at the expense of London's diverse shops, restaurants and bars in inner and outer London is something we should all be concerned about. There ought to be a much bigger outcry about the threatened closure of small but popular places such as Gaby's Deli on Charing Cross Road and the arguments about the future of the Burlington Arcade off Piccadilly.
Westminster is already unique among councils in raising more in parking charges than it does in council tax. That is starting to look like an abuse of its position as the location of London's premier location for all types of leisure activities.

You have to ask whether there is too little pressure on Westminster council because we now have a Tory administration in City Hall, filled with many leading former Westminster council figures, including the mayor's regeneration chief and one of Boris Johnson's deputy mayors for policing.

Politicians of all parties should be trying to do something about this tax on Londoners. In tough times we need to put money back in the pockets of Londoners through fare cuts and other measures to make our city fairer, and to find ways to make it easier - not harder - to enjoy London whatever you like to do.