Race against time to change law on car park barriers before bereaved mum loses cancer battle

ITV News

07-07-2025

Johnny Santer has been working to introduce 'Gabe's Law' to make safety barriers taller and prevent future deaths. He spoke to our political correspondent, Lise McNally.
A father who is fighting to make multi-storey car parks safer after his son fell to his death says he hopes to change the law before his wife's terminal cancer progresses.
Gabriel Santer was 15-years-old when he fell from the top of a multi-storey car park in October 2020.
He had been with friends at the Q-car park, in Liverpool city centre, and had just texted his mum to tell her what he wanted for tea, but never came home.
Since then, his dad Johnny Santer has campaigned to increase the minimum height of barriers on top of car parks through the Multi-Storey Car Parks (Safety) Bill, known as Gabe's Law.
But he says "time is of the essence" for his wife and Gabriel's mother to see the law passed before her cancer, which she has been living with for the last 10 years, progresses any further.
Johnny said: "It would be lovely for her knowing Gabe's law has been enacted to protect the most vulnerable people in our communities and make sure no other family goes through the pain we have."
On Monday, 7 July, Johnny met with the Building Safety Minister Alex Norris to make his case. If the law were to pass, it would see:
"When you look as I have done extensively into this problem, specifically surrounding multi-story car parks, you realise we've got a really big problem", Johnny said.
"We are having repeated preventable deaths - six at the last count in Liverpool alone since Gabriel's death, and unbelievably another from the same operator as the one that Gabriel fell from. It has to stop."
The company that runs the site where Gabe died have previously said that their car park outperformed the required building regulations and they were cleared of any wrongdoing.But the Liverpool Garston MP Maria Eagle believes that is exactly why the regulations need to change, and says the best way of preventing future deaths is to "stop it being so easy."
She said: "At the moment the law requires only a very low barrier, that people can easily topple, fall or jump over. So, make the barrier higher, people can't fall, and they can't jump, its simple as that."
At the beginning of July, the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer promised to review safety standards in multi-stories to 'prevent future tragedies."
Speaking in Parliament on 2 July, he said the Government will conduct a call for evidence on minimum barrier heights in car parks.
He added: 'We will conduct a call for evidence on part K of the building regulations about minimum guarding heights, so that necessary protections are in place to prevent future tragedies.
"We will also look at the contents of the Bill.'