Piers Morgan has blasted an NHS trust for its “shameful” charging of NHS staff to park at the hospital.
The Mirror exclusively revealed that bosses at Epsom and St Helier NHS Trust have started charging workers “to manage demand” and reduce long queues at its hospitals.
However, the move has unsurprisingly infuriated staff, with one telling the Mirror: “A lot of the staff are angry because we’ve had no perks during the pandemic.
“Some people are isolating, some have Covid, we’ve had staff die of Covid, including nurses, cleaners, porters.
“We’re working our socks off, where’s the pat on the back?”
Reacting to the news on Good Morning Britain today, Piers branded the move “absolutely disgusting”.
“These staff have had to put up with the most terrible conditions,” raged Piers. “Utter relentless agony and heartbreak for nearly a year and the reward is that they get hit with £500 a year parking to park in the grounds of the hospital where they are saving lives.
“It is a complete disgrace – we’ve been campaigning about this throughout the pandemic and we’ve got [Transport Secretary] Grant Shapps on later.
“So if your advisors are watching – first question is going to be, ‘Why are you charging our health workers in this country to park at hospitals?’
“They’re not doing it in Scotland! Are their health workers more special? Why are you doing it down in England?! It’s shameful that we’re making NHS staff pay to park at hospitals and it’s got to stop.
“And these trusts have got to stop this greed!”
This comes amid the Mirror’s almost three-year campaign for the charges to be permanently abolished for everyone.
Figures show the trust trousered £3.3 million in car parking revenue from April 2019 to March 2020 but it says less than 10% of this was from staff.
From January 26 it reimposed parking charges for staff, requiring them to pay at least £500 for a card enabling them to park at work for the year.
The trust added that staff parking rates were calculated relative to their salary.
*Good Morning Britain airs weekdays at 6am on ITV
Originally from https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/piers-morgan-lashes-out-shameful-23473676