Lord Bilston
Main Page: Lord Bilston (Labour - Life peer)Leeds City Council Bill
Lord Bilston Excerpts
Lord Bilston
My Lords, these four private Bills were all deposited in Parliament together in November 2007. The reason why it has taken so long to get to where we are today is the high level of opposition that they attracted in the Commons. Together with two similar Bills promoted by Bournemouth and Manchester, well over 24 hours have been spent in debating these Bills on the Floor of the House of Commons. They were opposed by a very small number of Members at every stage, including procedural stages such as carry over, but on each vote—and there have been many votes—there was an overwhelming majority in favour of the Bills.
The Bills are very similar to each other, but not identical. They all deal, in the main, with one general issue—that of street trading. Here I declare my special interest as a former member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Markets, and currently vice-chairman, and also as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.
The main area of contention in the other place was pedlars, and it is that subject that is also of concern today. All four Bills deal with this issue, and it is not the first time that a subject has been raised on a private Bill in this House. The provisions can be found in Clause 5 of each Bill.
Street trading is controlled by local authorities outside London under Schedule 4 to the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982. Councils can designate streets in their area as prohibited streets, licence streets or consent streets, or can leave streets unregulated. In prohibited streets, no street trading is allowed at all, and in licence and consent streets it is allowed only with the authority of a licence or consent granted by the council. There are exceptions to the rule; one of them is for trading as a pedlar under the authority of a pedlar’s certificate. A pedlar so trading can trade anywhere, even in a prohibited street. A number of councils have promoted private legislation to restrict that pedlar’s exemption so that it applies only to pedlars who trade from house to house. They include all the London borough councils, Leicester, Liverpool, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Medway and Maidstone. The Bournemouth and Manchester Acts finally reached the statute book earlier this year. Similar legislation applies in Northern Ireland.
There are a number of reasons for the promotion of the pedlars clause. One key reason is the difficulty in enforcing the street trading legislation. A pedlar should travel as he trades, but case law has established that pedlars should be able to stay stationary for short periods of time before moving on. One case suggested that 15 minutes should be allowed. That requires constant monitoring of pedlars by council enforcement officers. There is nothing to prevent the pedlar moving on to a different location in the same street. Case law has also decided that pedlars should be able to use a barrow or stall. The councils argue that this has resulted in the abuse of pedlars’ certificates in their areas, with pedlars effectively acting as street traders. With the councils unable to control where pedlars trade, this can result in trading in inappropriate locations; for example, in areas where the highway is already congested, or in town and city centre areas where the council has invested considerable resources to provide a more attractive environment. In some cases, this has been achieved in part by making a street a prohibited street but, as I have mentioned, that does not enable councils to prevent pedlars trading on those streets.
Another issue is that councils do not issue pedlars’ certificates. Certificates are issued by the local police force where the pedlar actually lives, which is unlikely to be where he trades. The fact that pedlars are, by their nature, here today and gone tomorrow means that the councils are much less likely to be able to deal with complaints about the quality of goods sold than where they are sold by a trader licensed by them and whose name and address they know.
One of the main issues arising during the course of the promotion of these Bills is what to do with those who are known by some as “genuine pedlars”. Broadly speaking, those are pedlars who are said to obey the rules by moving frequently and who either do not use a barrow or stall or, indeed, might use a small one. On this subject, in order to try to meet the concerns of Mr Chope, the honourable Member for Christchurch in another place, two of the four councils, Leeds and Reading, put forward amendments to their Bills in committee. As a result, their Bills are now different from the other two in that they would allow pedlars to trade so long as they carried all of their goods on their person—in other words, no trolleys or stalls. Unfortunately, while that might have satisfied the honourable Member for Christchurch, it has not satisfied the pedlars, and petitions have been deposited against both the Leeds and Reading Bills, so they will have to be referred to a Select Committee.
Nottingham and Canterbury have not made the same concessions as Leeds and Reading, and that is because they have different problems. Both cities have narrow and congested streets where problems would be, and are, caused by any type of trading activity. Canterbury is a particular case in point. Around the cathedral, the streets retain their medieval narrowness and are very congested indeed, particularly during the summer tourist season. The city council believes that a concession of the type given by Leeds and Reading would amount to a failure to achieve the Bill’s purpose in Canterbury’s particular circumstances.
That brings me in turn to another point which I am sure will be raised today: the desirability of different councils coming forward separately to create a patchwork of legislation across the country. The four councils could not agree more. They think that there should be a change and that it should be on a national basis, but the problems they face are here and now. I am told that when Westminster City Council, which was the first to promote this type of legislation, deposited its Bill in 1996, the Home Office objected on the grounds of prematurity, saying that a review of the pedlars legislation was imminent. Fourteen years on, the previous Government undertook a consultation exercise on the law—it closed in February—but there are no guarantees that legislation will come forward in the near future.
There has been some concern about the number of councils lining up to promote similar legislation. No similar Bills have been deposited since these in 2007, and as far as the councils and their parliamentary agents are aware, there is no queue of authorities waiting. This indicates, as the Minister said when he spoke at Third Reading on the Manchester and Bournemouth Bills, that there are probably only a limited number of councils that have experienced the problems that these Bills seek to address and which are prepared to go to the time, trouble and expense of promoting their own legislation.
Having dwelt on pedlars, I turn to the other provisions in the Bill. All the Bills contain new enforcement powers relating to unlicensed street trading. Following precedent in London, council enforcement officers and police constables would be able to seize items in suspected unlicensed street trading for use as evidence or for forfeiture by the courts on conviction. This would not apply just to the pedlars but to any person who trades unlawfully. There is provision for compensation to be paid in the case of unlawful seizure.
All four Bills would also enable the councils and police constables to serve fixed-penalty notices for street-trading offences, and they would provide an offence of giving a false name and address. In the cases of Reading and Canterbury, powers are also given to police community support officers to serve fixed-penalty notices. All four Bills would extend the scope of the street-trading regime to the provision of services on the street. The type of activity that is intended to be covered includes hair braiding, henna tattooing and the like.
In the cases of Nottingham and Reading, the definition of “street trading” is also extended to the buying of tickets for gain or reward. This is intended to deal with the commercial ticket tout, which is a particular problem for Reading. When the annual Reading festival is on, selling tickets on the street as opposed to buying is already caught by the street trading legislation, and it is important to note that it is already a separate offence to tout for football tickets.
The only other way in which the Bills differ from each other is that Reading and Canterbury both include a clause that would regulate touting in their area. This is not the same as ticket touting, as some Members in the other place mistakenly thought, but is intended to cover touting for business in the streets, which can be a nuisance. I should also mention that the honourable Member for Canterbury South, Julian Brazier, gave the honourable Member for Christchurch an assurance at Third Reading that Canterbury would seek leave at the appropriate stage in this House for its tout clause to be omitted from the Bill, and that this will be done in Committee.
In conclusion, these promoters have identified, and are seeking to deal with, real issues in the Bills. Private Bills do not come before your Lordships that often, and it is a measure of how significant a step it is for any promoter to take, particularly a local authority, in these times of financial constraints. All four Bills will no doubt be subject to rigorous detailed scrutiny in Committee, and I urge your Lordships’ House to support them on Second Reading. I beg to move.