London Local Authorities and Transport for London (No. 2) Bill [Lords]
Christopher Chope Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
With this, it will be convenient to discuss amendments 2 to 9 and 20.
Mr Chope
It gives me great pleasure to move amendment 1 and to discuss the other amendments in the group. I begin by paying tribute to the promoters, who said earlier today that two of my amendments in a subsequent group will be accepted, and I think that is a perfect answer to all those people who look askance at Members of this House who force debates on issues such as this and table amendments. The promoters have, by their actions, demonstrated the worthwhile nature of that behaviour.
The concerns of my hon. Friends lie in trying to find out more about the proposals before us and ensuring that the same standards of high-quality legislation are applied to private legislation as are applied to normal public legislation. I shall refer to some examples later and I hope that the House will agree that there are examples of legislative provisions that are too woolly or imprecise to deserve to be put on the statute book.
Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
The critics to whom the hon. Gentleman refers have obviously never had the opportunity of being in the Chamber and listening to the amendments that he and his colleagues have tabled. They have clearly demonstrated their worth over many, many years.
Mr Chope
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I do not wish to crow, other than to say that it is important that just because a Bill is a private Bill it should not be subject to less scrutiny than a public Bill. As was said on Second Reading, why should a local authority impose a statutory regime in its area different from the national regime?
I am delighted to see the Minister, who will be able to respond to some of the concerns about why a regime for dealing with skips different from the regime that applies elsewhere in the country that has to be introduced private legislation rather than through a public Bill promoted by the Government.
Before I get too distracted from the subject matter of the amendments, I should say that amendments 1 and 2, which can be considered together, are an example of why the Bill is unnecessarily complex. The Bill applies to the whole of London other than the City of London, yet it is proposed that its provisions should be brought in at different times in different areas. If we are to have a regime for skips, for example, in London, surely the changes should apply to the whole of London at the same time rather than piecemeal. Yet clause 3(2) states:
“Different days may be fixed under this section for the purpose of the application of the provisions mentioned in section 1(3) to different areas.”
Likewise, clause 3(3) states:
“Different days may be fixed under this section for the purpose of the application of the provisions mentioned in section 1(3) to an area.”
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
I understand my hon. Friend’s point. Is it possible that what he mentions is done to enable authorities to trial something, to make sure that the system works efficiently and properly before extending it? If that is true, is it not sensible?
Mr Chope
It may be that my hon. Friend, as so often, anticipates the response to come from my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), who speaks on behalf of the promoters. We shall have to wait and see. On the face of it, the issue is worthy of an explanation. If the legislation is untried and experimental, that should be clearly set out in the Bill.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Might not confusion result from the fact that measures are to be introduced on different days in different parts of London? I might not be as generous in my thinking as my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), but could that not be a deliberate ploy to try to confuse people and set up a money-making racket?
Mr Chope
It could be, but I am not going to try to follow my hon. Friend by making accusations against the promoters or London authorities by suggesting that the Bill is designed to confuse and ensure that they can get more in penalty income than they might otherwise be able to. Again, the fact that my hon. Friend raises that as an issue demonstrates the climate of suspicion regarding a lot of local authorities in relation to the imposition of penalty charges, which I recall from having read an article are now giving hundreds of millions of pounds in income to London local authorities alone. Many people feel those measures were brought in almost by subterfuge through Bills such as the one we are considering tonight, and now many years later people can see that has resulted in a significant financial burden and quite a lot of injustice. That is why I think it would be better to have simplicity and clarity, which would require that any provisions in this Bill be introduced in all areas of London at the same time on the same day, rather than causing the confusion to which I have referred.
Philip Davies
I just wonder whether my hon. Friend’s amendment will achieve what he seeks. Are these parts of the Bill making something clear to people, rather than being a necessary part of the Bill? Even if my hon. Friend’s amendments were accepted, would it not still be possible for these measures to be introduced on different days? I am not entirely sure where it is made clear they would have to be on a specific day. Are these two parts of the Bill just making something clear to people?
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend raises another point that I had not thought about, which is that these subsections may be superfluous anyway and it is implicit within the powers being given under clause 3 that an appointed day could be a different day for different parts of London in different circumstances, in which case, in trying to keep legislation simple there would be another argument in favour of accepting my amendments 1 and 2, as in leaving out subsections (2) and (3) of clause 3, they would make the Bill clearer. We will have to wait to hear the response to the debate before assessing whether these amendments are of such significance that we would seek to divide the House on them. Speaking for myself, I think it would be reasonable to await the full explanation before rushing to judgment.
Amendment 3 is significant. It is the first of the amendments addressing part 2 of the Bill, and clause 4 in particular, which deals with the attachment of street lamps and signs to buildings, and changing the regulations relating thereto. At present, the regime is pretty restricted under the highways legislation, but this Bill seeks to give much wider powers to local authorities, enabling them to permit the attachment of street lamps and signs to buildings even when that is not approved or supported by the owners of those buildings. This power is potentially quite significant, because the owner of a building could suddenly find they are required to have a street lamp or sign attached to their building.
We know from earlier stages of the Bill that the Society of London Theatre was very concerned about the impact of the measure on theatreland, and it is to the credit of the promoters that they decided that they would therefore exempt theatres, which is why clause 4(14) specifically states:
“This section and section 5 shall not apply in respect of a theatre.”
In a few moments I will talk about amendment 4, which follows on from that. Amendment 3, however, deals with subsection (13), which states:
“A London authority may not, under section 3, appoint a day for the purposes of this section until a code of practice dealing with the exercise of the powers of the said section 45 and the said section 74 as modified by this section has been published by a joint committee.”
My amendment would ensure that the code of practice must not only be published by a Joint Committee but be approved by the Secretary of State for Transport—an appropriate and proportionate safeguard.
Mr Nuttall
Amendment 3 specifically suggests that the approval of the Secretary of State for Transport should be sought. My limited understanding of these things is that the normal practice is to specify “the Secretary of State” and leave the actual office open. Perhaps my hon. and learned Friend would like to expand on why he has specified the Secretary of State for Transport.
Mr Chope
I am not learned in any sense of the term, but this amendment has been selected and I thought that rather than just referring to “the Secretary of State” it would more appropriate if it specified the Secretary of State for Transport. If the Minister wishes to intervene to suggest that it should be the responsibility of a different member of the Government, so be it. The point I am trying to make is that this is a significant issue. It is recognised by the promoters as sufficiently serious in its potential implications as to mean there should be a code of practice to deal with the exercise of the powers. The code should go further, in the sense that it should be approved by the Secretary of State for Transport. It would be unreasonable to expect this code to have to be approved by this House, through a statutory instrument, but it is reasonable to say that there should be a safeguard and that the Government can ensure that the code of practice accords with what is reasonable and proportionate. The Secretary of State for Transport could then be held accountable by this House for approving a code of practice if it did not meet the reasonable conditions we think ought to apply.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend comes at this with far more expertise and knowledge than I do, because whereas I never have been and never will be a Minister, he has been—indeed, he was in the then Department of Transport. Will he therefore outline how he would expect the Secretary of State to take on this responsibility? Would it just be a meaningless rubber-stamping exercise?
Mr Chope
Whether it was a meaningless rubber-stamping exercise or something of substance would depend very much on the Minister. Although we would say that the code would be approved by the Secretary of State for Transport, in practice it would be brought before a more junior Minister, who would carry out the approval in the name of the Secretary of State. It is not for me to comment on the assiduous way in which various junior Ministers operate, but I have no doubt that the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond), would be extremely assiduous if he was the Minister charged with this responsibility. The paper would be put before him by his officials and he would ask probing questions, perhaps on an iterative basis, whereby it might take a few days or weeks before the matter went through. He would take the responsibility seriously and examine the code, raising any concerns he had and suggesting any modifications that he wanted to have.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Stephen Hammond)
My hon. Friend rightly says that I would be entirely assiduous should this onerous burden be placed upon me, as I am with any such instrument; I carefully read these things and scrutinise them. I can tell him that the Government’s view, having examined the amendment, is that there would be no need for the Secretary of State to approve the code of practice; the code could stand by itself.
Mr Chope
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the first part of his remarks and I hope that in due course we can explore further the second part, in which he said that there was no need for the code of practice to be approved and that it could stand by itself. Quite, but would it not be an additional safeguard to ensure that it received the approval of the Government rather than just a Joint Committee, as suggested? I shall leave the matter there and we can perhaps explore it in due course.
Amendment 4 would add a new subsection after clause 4(14) so that clauses 4 and 5 would
“not apply in respect of any building in a conservation area.”
The provisions already exclude any application to listed buildings and, as we have discussed, theatres, but a building in a conservation area has traditionally enjoyed the same protection as a listed building outside a conservation area. The essence of a conservation area is that all the buildings should be considered together in the context of the local environment. One might be concerned that if a lot of street lamps and signs were attached to buildings in a conservation area, that could detract from the character of the area quite significantly. My challenge to the Minister in responding to the debate is that if it is reasonable to exempt listed buildings from clause 4, why has that not also been extended to buildings in conservation areas?
The next amendment in the group comes under the category of bad drafting and an attempt to take extremely wide powers. Amendment 5 would amend clause 5(4)(b), which deals with the serving of notices under clause 4 on people who would be affected by the application of the clause on the attachment of street lamps and signs to buildings. It states:
“If, for the purposes of serving a notice…the name or address of the relevant owner cannot be ascertained after reasonable enquiry, the notice…may be served by…addressing it to him by name or by the description of “owner” of the land (describing it)”.
That is probably similar to a lot of the letters one gets through one’s letterbox addressed to “The Owner” and asking, “Have you thought of selling your house or letting it through some great agents?” It would seem to be perfectly reasonable. Alternatively, one could leave
“it in the hands of a person who is”
on the land as a
“resident or employed on the land or leaving it conspicuously affixed to some building or object on or near the land.”
That is a standard way of serving notices, by affixing them to a property. Giving it to a person who is resident is fine, but what concerns me is how we are to judge whether to give a formal notice to somebody who “appears to be” the resident. That is such a large loophole. Anybody could say, “I saw somebody there, they appeared to be the resident, I served notice on them. I don’t know who they were, I didn’t ask them any questions, but they appeared to be the resident.” That is granting a power that is far too wide—unnecessarily so—and could undermine the whole purpose of the clause, which is intended to ensure the reasonable service of notices and that the owner or resident of affected premises should receive the proper notice. I look forward to hearing from my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East on how we will judge whether people appear to be resident, and why it is necessary to have this extraordinarily wide power, which allows a notice to be left with somebody who appears to be resident; implicit in that is the idea that they may not be resident.
Philip Davies
I totally agree with my hon. Friend; this is a ludicrous state of affairs. Also, the Bill says “appears to be resident”—appears to whom? A person may appear to be resident to someone who is issuing a notice, but there is no regard to whether anybody else would think that the person was resident. Is this a good enough test?
Mr Chope
Exactly. My hon. Friend makes a very good point.
Clause 5(5) falls into the “ludicrous and superfluous” category. It says:
“This section shall not be taken to exclude the employment of any method of service not expressly provided for by it”,
but of course the clause is only permissive; subsection (1) says that a notice
“may be served by post.”
What does clause 5(5) add to the statute book, other than completely superfluous wording? I would have thought it a statement of the obvious. Do we really need to include on the statute book lots of statements of the obvious, like this one? Amendment 6 would therefore leave it out.
Jim Fitzpatrick
The hon. Gentleman is making a strong argument for the amendment. If I heard him correctly, he said that he had received an indication that some of his amendments may be accepted by the sponsor. Is this amendment one of those that he anticipates being acceptable to the sponsor?
Mr Chope
I hope so, but I have not yet received formal notice about this amendment. The two amendments about which I have received formal notice are in the second group, and I will not go into those now. From the hon. Gentleman’s comments, it seems that he is supportive of the amendment—I am not sure whether he is referring to amendment 5 or 6; perhaps he could indicate that more clearly.
Jim Fitzpatrick
I was not indicating whether we supported or opposed the amendment; all I was saying was that the hon. Gentleman was making a strong argument.
Philip Davies
On amendment 6, which would leave out subsection (5), has my hon. Friend had any thoughts about what might be included in those other methods of service? Might they include notices being served by e-mail, or by some other electronic means? If so, does he support that?
Mr Chope
I find that a rather testing intervention, because I am rather against the idea of using e-mails to serve notices. From my limited experience of receiving and sending e-mails, I think it is often not clear whether they have reached their destination or got lost in the ether. Quite a lot of mine seem to go into something—I cannot remember what it is called—
Mr Chope
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. They go into the spam folder, so they are effectively never received, because they are automatically deleted—or they certainly are on my computer, but I do not want to be drawn into that issue. The promoters may have it in mind that they could serve notices in that way to anybody who appeared to be resident, but I do not know how they would find out how to do that. I look forward to hearing from the sponsor on that point.
One of the reasons why it can be frustrating for people following private legislation is that during the Committee stage of a Bill which is the subject of a petition it is not possible to go into the detail of the drafting, unless a petitioner has expressed concern about it or members of the Bill Committee take an interest and ask the promoters what a particular clause or subsection means. When the Bill comes back to the House on Report, it is often the first chance that we have to examine the wording and why the promoters consider it necessary.
Clause 6 deals with damage to highways as a consequence of adjacent works. It provides that
“The 1980 Act shall apply in Greater London as though for section 133 (damage to footways of streets by excavations) and its heading there were substituted—
Damage to highway by carrying out of works”.
The current wording of clause 6 is:
“If a highway maintainable at the public expense is damaged by or in consequence of any works on land adjacent to the highway, the highway authority for the highway may make good the damage”.
The effect of my amendment 7 would be that the highway authority “shall make good” the damage, because the highway authority has the ultimate responsibility for ensuring the integrity of the highway. I declare an interest as the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on highways maintenance. We had a meeting today to discuss the fraught issue of highway maintenance, the number of potholes that there are, and the rather varied performance of local authorities up and down the country in addressing the problems caused by deteriorating road surfaces and the creation of potholes.
Most people say that it should be the responsibility of the highway authority to put the road back into good order if that is what has happened. Amendment 7 would make it mandatory for the highway authority to make good the damage, and amendment 8 would enable the highway authority to recover the expenses reasonably incurred by it in so doing.
Philip Davies
May we stick to amendment 7 for the time being? I agree with my hon. Friend’s general premise. Motorists get a raw deal in this country, considering the amount of tax that they pay. Might the amendment lead to a perverse situation where the damage may be minor, yet the local authority would be forced to carry out work, which may be considered disproportionate? Might that be an unintended consequence of my hon. Friend’s amendment?
Mr Chope
I do not think it would be an intended consequence. I concede that my hon. Friend may have got me on that. Essentially, the question is whether we would describe minor damage as being covered by the amendment, or whether we are talking about significant damage. I drafted my amendment on the basis that we are talking about damage of such significance that it should be made good. We know that an unevenness on the road surface may soon deteriorate when heavy vehicles go over it or when it is subject to water penetration. What might start off as relatively minor damage may, if not addressed in timely fashion, become a significant pothole and a hazard to road users. My hon. Friend makes a good point, but I do not think that it really counters the general thrust of amendment 7, which is to try to ensure that the highway authority takes responsibility for making good any damage caused by works adjacent to the road.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend, rather uncharacteristically, is rushing through his amendments and catching me out as a result. To return to amendment 8, which would insert the word “may”, is he indicating that clause 6, as drafted, would force the highway authority to recover the expenses? Is the purpose of his amendment to allow some flexibility?
Mr Chope
Yes. If we were to leave out “may” and insert “shall”, as amendment 7 proposes, but not make amendment 8, obviously the highway authority would be required to make good the damage and be forced to recover the expenses reasonably incurred. I do not think that it would be sensible to oblige a highway authority under the terms of a statute to recover the expenses, which might prove difficult. It would be better to say that it “may” recover the expenses, which is why amendment 8 seeks to insert “may” in front of the word “recover” in the provision. That way, the highway authority would have a responsibility to make good any damage caused to the highway by adjacent works, but it would have discretion over whether or not to seek to recover the resulting expenses. I hope that is clear.
Philip Davies
It is clear, but I wonder whether my hon. Friend could expand a little on why he thinks the highway authority should not recover the expenses reasonably incurred.
Mr Chope
In a sense, that is the other side of the coin my hon. Friend has just used. The answer is that it might not be worth the candle. Why should we force a local authority to try to recover a relatively small sum when the cost of doing so could be disproportionate? That is the best answer I can give to the good point he makes.
Let me turn to amendment 9. This is another example of where the Bill’s drafting is unnecessarily wide. If a highway is damaged as a result of adjacent works, surely the person responsible for paying to repair it should be
“(b) the person carrying out the works; or
(c) the person on whose behalf the works were carried out.”
Why should
“(a) the owner of the land in question”
be the subject of the recovery of expenses if he neither carried out the works nor had the works carried out on his behalf? That seems unnecessarily oppressive, because the owner of the land might know nothing whatsoever about the work being carried out or any damage resulting from it. That incorporates a provision of strict liability in circumstances in which I do not think it is reasonable.
That is why I have tabled amendment 9, which would leave out subsection (a) and ensure that the expenses reasonably incurred could be recovered from the person who carried out the works or the person on whose behalf the works were carried out. That might often be the owner. However, if that person was not the owner, he would not and could not be liable. I look forward to hearing from the promoters of the Bill why they think it is reasonable to expect the owner of the land to be liable in the circumstances that I have described.
Mr Nuttall
Is my hon. Friend aware of the definition of “owner”? Is it a leasehold-owner or someone who owns the freehold?
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend makes another good point. I do not know. The explanatory notes define “owner” in relation to part 3, but he is asking about part 2. That is perhaps an omission. There may be more than one owner. As he suggests, they may be a leasehold-owner, a freeholder, or, indeed, a sub-lessee. That is a reasonable point of inquiry. It might also be another reason why leaving out any reference to an owner would be the best way forward for the promoters of the Bill.
Amendment 20 is in the same group, which is headed “Highways and general”—“general” in this case. It relates to part 4, which has only one clause—clause 15, on the subject of gated roads, which says:
“Any person who opens, closes or otherwise operates or interferes with a relevant barrier without lawful excuse shall be guilty of an offence and liable, on summary conviction, to a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale…In subsection (1) a ‘relevant barrier’ means any barrier lawfully placed in, or over a highway by or on behalf of a traffic authority in London for the purpose of preventing or restricting the passage of vehicles or any class of vehicles into, out of, or along a highway.”
My amendment 20 would leave out all that. If we are to have specific legislation creating a criminal offence for people who open, close or otherwise interfere with such barriers, it should introduce that offence right across the country rather than in a particular part of it. I have no evidence to suggest that there is a bigger problem relating to gated roads in London than anywhere else.
Furthermore, introducing specific offences litters the statute book of criminal law with rather a lot of unnecessary trivia. In this case, if somebody goes along to a barrier and cuts off the padlock or forces it open in some way, they will be guilty of criminal damage, which is obviously already an offence in criminal law. The provision would potentially criminalise somebody who might open a barrier because it was not locked and then find themselves guilty of an offence.
Philip Davies
I agree with my hon. Friend wholeheartedly. Does he agree that there may well be a perfectly good, legitimate reason for somebody to do that if it is to preserve their health and safety or for other emergency purposes, and yet the provision does not give any wide-ranging exemptions for such people?
Mr Chope
Absolutely. The clause refers to anyone who
“interferes with a relevant barrier without lawful excuse”,
which raises all sorts of questions regarding how to avoid the build-up of congestion caused by an accident or another incident such as a fire. If somebody says, “We need to open this barrier so that the traffic can flow more freely,” they might—unless they are authorised by the local authority—find themselves guilty of an offence. It seems to be a totally disproportionate response to the problem that the Bill’s promoters say exists.
I have seen no evidence of how many occasions gated roads have been opened, closed or otherwise interfered with by people to the detriment of the local authority. As I said at the outset, if there is a problem surely it would be better dealt with under the Traffic Regulation Act 1984, which relates to all authorities, not just those in London.
Rather earlier than some might have anticipated, I have reached the end of my introduction to the amendments, to which I have tried to speak in a constructive way. This is not an exercise in trying to prevent a Bill from making progress; it is an exercise in trying to ensure that the legislation that we put on the statute book is clear beyond peradventure and of sufficiently high quality to merit inclusion. It is very difficult to put these things right after the event, and on too many occasions in the past local authorities and Transport for London have been given wide powers that were not sufficiently explored beforehand, to the detriment of the general public. That is why, on behalf of road users and residents in London—I declare an interest as the owner of freehold property in London—I propose these amendments. I hope that the Bill’s promoters will address them as constructively as they have agreed to address at least two of the amendments in the next group.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) for tabling these various amendments in, I trust, a spirit of exploring the intentions of the Bill’s promoters. I trust that my explanations will be sufficient for him not to press them to a vote. The Bill has been subject to a great deal of scrutiny both in this House and in the other place, so I will confine my remarks to the amendments.
I gleaned from my hon. Friend’s remarks that he tabled amendments 1 and 2 because he wants an explanation, not because he wants to press them to a vote. They relate to the commencement date for the regulations on lamps and signage. The Bill’s promoters across London are very keen for ultimate flexibility as to when the regulations should be introduced. The amendments would constrain London authorities to introduce them all on the same day across London, which would be draconian. The purpose of this part of the Bill is to say that there will be a need for lamps and signage to be restricted, but at different times for different authorities. That does not alter the fact that authorities have to advertise and give notice of their wish to introduce these schemes, but they do not have to introduce them in the same way right across London.
Bob Blackman
There will be times when signage or lamps are required, possibly on a temporary basis, and therefore one needs to introduce them, and give notice of that, and then take them away again. Those signs might be for emergency roadworks, or a particular purpose such as special events that take place in London. There are regularly demonstrations and road closures for special events, and it would be foolish to have those signs unnecessarily in operation throughout London and the affected areas. I trust that that provides a suitable explanation. It does not change the fact that local authorities must still advertise the reason for lamps and signage, as is wholly appropriate.
Amendment 3 suggests that after the Localism Act 2011, which enables local authorities to take many actions themselves, and after devolving power to London, we suddenly drag power back to the Secretary of State to force the Minister—or someone else—to consider the minutiae of things that go on in London. To me that seems to be overkill, and it does not take place in any other part of the country. The Secretary of State and Ministers have plenty to do without considering the minutiae of a code of practice that London local authorities will come together and agree, cross-party and for the good of all Londoners and London. I trust that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch will accept that such things are best kept to a local level, rather than involving the Government. I understand that the Government have not stated that they want to interfere in such a process, and I am sure the Minister will confirm that in due course.
Mr Chope
Is not the point that provision is already set out in the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 to deal with such issues? That is national legislation but the Bill seeks to modify it for London. My amendment would ensure that there is a proper safeguard for that proposed modification for London through the Secretary of State. My hon. Friend refers to localism, but surely such things should apply equally to all local authorities, not just those that bring forward Bills such as this.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
The Minister is getting carried away. He cannot intervene on someone who is already intervening. I think we have got the message for Bob Blackman to respond.
Bob Blackman
It just reinforces and restates existing legislation, and I think it is sensible to have the relevant legislation all in one place so that people can understand everything that applies. The subsection is nothing new and does not amend the 1972 Act. That Act has gone through many changes, through London Acts and so on, so it is sensible to retain the subsection.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend says that the subsection just restates the existing law in section 233 of the 1972 Act. That section applies throughout the country, so why is it necessary to reapply an existing provision in a local Act? Why do we need clause 5(5) at all? He says that it is useful to have everything in one piece of legislation, but that provision is already in the 1972 Act. Unless there is something in the subsection that adds to or subtracts from section 233 of that Act, what is the point of having it? How can that be good legislation?
Bob Blackman
For clarity and continuity it is sensible to restate, not change, the position that already exists. There is nothing new in clause 5(5), but if I were reading the Bill, I would want to know that there was complete clarity about its purpose.
Amendments 7 to 9 deal with cost and repair. There is nothing more frustrating for people than to see a development cause damage to a public highway, and for there then to be a lack of clarity about who will fix it. This is a problem in large parts of London. However, the effect of the amendments will possibly not be what my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch intends. The local authority has a clear duty to maintain the highway so that it is in a good state of repair. In many parts of London it is not in a good state of repair. Where a developer or someone acting on behalf of an owner has caused damage, it is clear that the first option should be for the developer to repair the damage it has caused. Amendment 7 would remove the obligation on the developer to fix the damage it has caused and put the onus completely on the local authority to obtain the funding from the developer or the owner affected. This is, therefore, an unwanted measure.
Existing national legislation is worded in exactly the same way as the proposed legislation. Amendment 7 would place London local authorities in a worse position than the local authority in, for example, Christchurch. I do not see any reason why London authorities should be placed in a worse position than authorities outside London. The position should be consistent for all three amendments: the first call is for the developer to fix the problem it has caused. If it does not fix it, then the local authority should step in, make good the damage, and charge the people who caused the damage in the first place. In all these cases, this is entirely consistent with national legislation. The obligation to fix it should be on the people who caused the damage.
Mr Chope
The explanatory memorandum states that
“Clause 6 would replace section 133 with provisions for London that would enable the highway authority to recover their expenses of remedying such damage to any part of the highway, not just the footway.”
That seems to be what is being changed, rather than the means by which the damages can be recovered. Does my hon. Friend accept that there is a lot of rather superfluous wording, if the purpose is just to be able to extend an existing power from the footway to the whole of the highway?
Bob Blackman
The key point is who repairs the damage initially, or how the money is recovered. The point is that it should be the developer who causes the damage—frequently, heavy lorries delivering goods to a site cause damage to the highway as well the footway—who repairs it first. If they do not repair it, then the local authority steps in, makes good the damage, serves a notice and recovers the money. Unfortunately, the effect of all three amendments would remove the position of the developer doing any work at all, and put the onus fairly and squarely on the highways authority to make good and then try to recover the costs. That would be terribly frustrating for all concerned.
Mr Chope
I think we are at cross-purposes. My hon. Friend rightly said that the polluter should pay, but my concern is that if the polluter does not repair the damage to the highway, it might go unrepaired, unless my amendment 7 is carried, as it would require the local authority to repair the damage.
Bob Blackman
The highways authority already has a duty to keep the highways in good repair. As I read the amendment—I was only able to read it today—my concern is that it would not allow the developer to fix the problem.
Bob Blackman
No, it wouldn’t. It says that the local authority “shall” step in and do the work, irrespective. That wording is incorrect and is why I shall resist amendment 7, as well as amendments 8 and 9, which are all consequential amendments.
On amendment 20, London has many gates placed across roads to prevent the flow of traffic through residential communities. The roads are normally accessible by the emergency services—the fire brigade, ambulance service and police—and other appropriate authorities, but sometimes there is a severe problem. At the moment, if someone damages a gate, they can be held liable for criminal damage, but if they merely open the gate for their own convenience—to access the road or bypass a congested road—it defeats the purpose of that gate, which is to prevent large parts of London from being used as rat runs. The promoters therefore seek an enforcement option. If, on being directed by the emergency services, someone opened a gate, clearly they would not be guilty of an offence, but if they opened a gate for their own convenience—or for other people’s convenience, for joyriding or whatever—they would be guilty of an offence, and it would be up to the local authorities to enforce those actions.
I accept completely that there is an issue of interpretation around the reason for opening the gate, and there is always the potential for somebody to receive a penalty for incorrectly opening one, but it is entirely fair and proper to make it clear that people should not open one unless they have authority or good reason to believe that life or limb are in danger.
Bob Blackman
Clearly, this is a matter of interpretation. The purpose of placing barriers across a traffic highway is to prevent the incursion of normal vehicles, but I cannot envisage someone ever being prosecuted for opening a gate that is normally locked in order to give access to an ambulance, the police or the fire brigade. However, the promoters are keen to ensure that people understand that if they interfere with a locked gate that is there for the purpose of preventing traffic from passing through, that will be an offence and they can be prosecuted.
Bob Blackman
Having made something of a study of such gates in London over the years, I can say that they are almost all locked with padlocks—except where someone has stolen the padlock, in which chase the gate will often flip open and shut. Young people—in general it is young people—have a habit of occasionally using such gates as a form of entertainment. We need to make it clear that such gates are there for a purpose. This issue is a matter of interpretation. We are talking about gates being interfered with—that is, opened to allow the incursion of traffic.
Mr Chope
On reflection, would my hon. Friend agree that the biggest problem with the clause is that it criminalises the good samaritan? As the explanatory memorandum points out, it is an offence to drive along a road in breach of a road traffic regulation, so if somebody finds one of these gates open and closes it to prevent other people from committing road traffic offences by driving through that open gap, they will be liable to a criminal penalty under this clause.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. That is one of the problems with the clause: it will potentially make criminals out of people who seek to do good. That cannot be right. It also prompts the question of what signage would be in place. In the context of the other clauses, we were talking about trying to remove signs, but there now might need to be new signs to warn people that such activity is a criminal offence. I entirely support the amendment and I look forward to hearing from others.
Philip Davies
Among your many other great qualities, Mr Speaker, you are clearly a mind reader. I was only just thinking to myself that I must be brief so that we could get on to the next group of amendments. I commend you for that.
I find myself in a rather difficult position. I usually agree totally with my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) in his amendments, which are always thoughtfully considered and well argued. He usually manages to persuade me. I am rather torn on this group of amendments, however, as although he has persuaded me on some of them he has not on others. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) has done a great job in making the case for the proposers of the Bill and articulating their side of the argument and, in some cases, he has persuaded me.
I am not entirely sure how this might operate, as I am not an expert in the procedures of the House—unlike you, Mr Speaker, and my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch—but I want to tell my hon. Friend which of his amendments I think are strongest and on which he might, if possible, wish to divide the House. Some of the amendments are stronger than others.
Some of my hon. Friend’s amendments are superficially attractive, as they generally are. He made a good point with amendments 1 and 2, which highlight provisions in the clause that are either bad or unnecessary. However, there is some merit in having some flexibility for the London boroughs in organising how they do business. There might be good reasons for trialling measures or introducing them at different times, and that flexibility should be allowed. The provisions might be superfluous but I do not see from listening to the arguments that they are particularly dangerous.
Mr Chope
At the risk of hastening my hon. Friend on, will he specify which he thinks are the best amendments in order of preference? If his remarks are cut short, we will then have heard him putting the best first so that we can consider on which of them we might wish to divide the House.
Philip Davies
I am grateful to my hon. Friend and I certainly will do that. To cut to the chase, his strongest amendment is amendment 5, on the issue of serving notices and whether someone is a resident or, as the Bill states, “appears to be” the resident. For me, the situation is completely nonsensical. On what basis does somebody appear to be a resident? One of us might be delivering leaflets in our constituency, as we do, and might have just left the door of a place only for somebody from the local authority come along to serve the notice. Seeing that we are leaving the door, they might serve us with the notice because they presume, quite wrongly, that we are the resident. All sorts of ridiculous scenarios could ensue. Sometimes, such provisions are just for the convenience of the laziness of local officials, so that they can use the justification that as far as they could see somebody appeared to be a resident and they therefore did not have to take any reasonable steps to ensure that that person was a resident. Surely the least any resident affected by these provisions can expect is that the authority concerned makes a proper effort to serve them with the relevant notice. If it was enough for someone to appear to be a resident, the local authority could, for its convenience, idly hand that person the notice, come what may. That is a ludicrous situation that we in this House should not tolerate, so I hope that my hon. Friend will consider pressing amendment 5 to a Division; that would be doing us a great service.
My hon. Friend’s other particularly strong amendment is amendment 20, on gated roads. This is a very important issue. As I mentioned in my intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East, there are often well-meaning, well-intentioned provisions in legislation that have totally perverse outcomes. As I said, if a person drives through a red light to allow an emergency vehicle through, they are liable to prosecution for the offence of going through a red light. People might think, “It would be ludicrous if anyone who went through a red light just to allow an emergency vehicle through was prosecuted. Surely that would never happen,” but people have been prosecuted in those very circumstances. It does actually happen.
My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East says that when someone opens the gates for a good, common-sense reason, they will not be prosecuted. I do not doubt that that is his genuine belief, but we cannot pass legislation on the basis of what we think is likely to happen; we have to look at what the legislation actually states. We cannot allow perversity in the law. What if there is a terrible accident, and someone says, “For goodness’ sake, open that gate! An emergency vehicle is coming along in five minutes, and we need this person to be dealt with as soon as possible,” so a person opens the gate, and then finds themselves with a criminal record because they had done something they were not allowed to do under this legislation? That would be ludicrous, and we would be enshrining that kind of perversity in law.
On the other hand, someone who is encouraged to open a gate because an emergency vehicle is coming in five minutes’ time may say, “No, I’m not opening the gate, because I know the legislation, and I will be committing a criminal offence if I do.” We may end up with that kind of idiotic situation as an unintended consequence of the Bill. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch will try to find a way for amendments 20 and 6 to be put to the vote.
My hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch and for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) were very gung-ho about amendment 9, and I feared that they might seek to put it to a vote. I advise a certain amount of caution, because including a reference to the owner of the land in the legislation is quite sensible. Clause 6 does not say that the highway authority has to go after the owner; it just allows the authority the flexibility to do so, if that is the right person to pursue.
Let me briefly show why that may be a good idea. If the provision mentioned only the person carrying out the works and the person on whose behalf the works were being carried out, the following scenario could arise. Say a landowner’s permission is sought for work to be carried out. Although they are happy for that work to be done, and may well have encouraged it to be done, it may not have been carried out on their behalf, and they may not be the people carrying it out. However, they could quite easily be just as liable as the other people for the damage done, because they gave their consent for the work, although it was inappropriate.
Another scenario may come into play. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch may unintentionally create a loophole with his amendment, because a wealthy landowner who does not want to be liable for any damage caused may get someone who has no means whatever to request that work be carried out, and get another person who has no means whatever to do the work. When the damage is done, the local authority has no means of recovering its money because the people who carried out and officially requested the work have nothing. The owner of the land, who actually wanted the work done in the first place, though that may not be evident at the time, gets away scot-free. I therefore fear that my hon. Friend could be creating a loophole, which would be unfortunate. Knowing him as I do, I am sure that would be an unintended consequence of what he is trying to achieve. I urge caution on him in pursuing amendment 9, even though I appreciate that my hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch and for Bury North feel that it is a particularly strong one.
Jim Fitzpatrick
I am grateful for the opportunity to follow the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies).
When the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) was initially moving his amendments in a self-deprecating fashion, saying that he is sometimes criticised for the role he plays in private Business, I said in an intervention that that is not the view on the Opposition Benches. We value the service he provides, ably assisted by his hon. Friends the Members for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) and for Shipley. I sometimes query whether the length of time taken is necessary, but I do not in any way, shape or form challenge, question or criticise the right to table amendments and make sure that legislation such as this is scrutinised.
Having listened to the arguments from the hon. Member for Christchurch and his hon. Friends and the explanations from the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), I regret to inform the hon. Member for Christchurch that should he press any of the amendments in this group to a vote, Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition will not be joining him in the Lobby.
Mr Chope
With your encouragement, Mr Speaker, this has been a very civilised debate and we have covered the ground. As I said, this is the first opportunity we have had to look at much of the detail of the Bill. I am immensely grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for having responded to the points that were made. I have been convinced by many of the arguments, and he produced answers to many of my concerns.
With regard to the two amendments that my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) identified as being worthy of further consideration by testing the will of the House, my inclination is not to press amendment 5, because my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East said that clause 5, to which the amendment relates, is a complete replication of the existing law set out in section 233 of the Local Government Act 1972, in which case to divide the House would probably be to seek its indulgence in a way that I would prefer not to do. I hope that it will be possible in due course to seek the House’s view on amendment 20, which would mean having a Division after we consider the next group of amendments.
Having listened to the debate, it seems to me that the issue of gated roads has national application, rather than being confined to London. If we are to create a completely new offence, as both my hon. Friends the Members for Shipley and for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) have said, we must ensure that the legislation is as plain as a pikestaff so that everybody knows where they stand. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East said, we cannot be in the business of passing laws that are a matter of interpretation.
I think that it would be wrong to create through legislation a new criminal offence that could have the effect of penalising a good Samaritan. As my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley said, it is idiotic that a person who closes a gate after him, when it had been open, could find himself on the wrong side of the criminal law. There is too much control by political correctness. We now have a situation in which firemen are not prepared to go and rescue somebody because that might be against health and safety regulations. We do not want a situation in which a person does not close a gate in their neighbourhood that is normally closed because they fear that to do so might be to commit a criminal offence. For those reasons, and thanking everybody who has contributed to the debate, I seek the leave of the House, at the appropriate moment, to test its opinion on amendment 20.
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I am clear that he wishes at some stage to test the will of the House on amendment 20, but could I ask him to be clear on whether he wishes to do so in respect of amendment 1?
Mr Speaker
With this is will be convenient to consider amendments 11 to 19.
Mr Chope
These amendments relate to part 3 of the Bill, which deals with “Builders’ Skips”. It is important that we have a proper control regime for builders’ skips. It is also important that we are absolutely clear in our own minds about what the impact of the proposed changes to the Bill would be. For example, amendment 10 would add to section 8(1) so that the relevant highway authority could require the relevant person to provide them with the name and address of the owner of the builder’s skip
“where that information is not clearly and indelibly marked under the provisions of section 9”.
Section 9 provides that a skip must be
“clearly and indelibly marked with the owner’s name and with his telephone number or address”.
It seems to me that the best way of resolving this matter is to ensure that the skip must be, as amendment 15 suggests, clearly and indelibly marked with the owner’s name, telephone number and address. If that is done and there is no breach of the provision, it will not be necessary for the highway authority to exercise the power set out in clause 8 because the information that it is seeking to ascertain will already be in its knowledge and the knowledge of anybody else who looks at the skip in question. That would improve the wording of the Bill.
Amendment 11 challenges the current provision, which states:
“A requirement under this section shall specify the period within which it must be complied with, which must be a period no shorter than 3 working days beginning with the date on which the request was made.”
Mr Chope
I will take my hon. Friend’s intervention shortly, but I am going to anticipate it in my next comments. Prior to his looking at this because it was drawn to his attention by my amendment, nobody had thought through how reasonable a period of three working days would be in these circumstances. As a result of my tabling amendment 11 to insert 14 working days instead, he and the promoters of the Bill have seen the unreasonableness of the original proposition and the reasonableness of the amendment. He indicated in a letter that I received this morning that he would be willing to accept the amendment.
Bob Blackman
I congratulate my hon. Friend on tabling this amendment. The promoters are happy to accept it, and I do so on their behalf without the need for a Division.
Mr Chope
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend.
Amendments 12 and 13 deal with the level of penalty for any person convicted of an offence under clause 8(6), which says that
“in the case of an offence under paragraph (a)”
the fine should be “not exceeding level 3”. However, under paragraph (a) the penalty would apply to somebody
“on whom a requirement is imposed…if…without reasonable excuse he fails to comply within the period specified”.
That means that he would not be providing the information within 14 working days. That is, I submit, a relatively minor contravention that should merit, if indeed it is prosecuted at all, only a fine not exceeding level 1 on the standard scale. Obviously, if a person responds to the requirement and, in so doing, gives information that he knows is false in a material particular, that is much more serious. The gravity of that could be reflected in a fine not exceeding level 3 rather than a massive one at level 5. I look forward to my hon. Friend explaining why the fine levels in the Bill were chosen.
Philip Davies
Will my hon. Friend clarify what sums are involved at levels 1, 3 and 5 so that we may better assess a reasonable amount that somebody should be fined?
Philip Davies
Does my hon. Friend have in mind a scenario in which a skip that has been properly lit is vandalised by people who prevent it from being lit? As it stands the owner would still be liable even if he had done everything he could to ensure that the skip was properly lit. Does my hon. Friend think that “taking any reasonable steps” would protect somebody who was doing their best?
Mr Chope
That is exactly the scenario I had in mind. The owner might employ security guards to look at the skip regularly, but if the light was stolen or vandalised at some point would it be reasonable to say that the owner should be liable to a penalty charge?
When I spoke to amendment 10, I referred to amendment 15, which would strengthen the Bill because it would make it incumbent on the owner to take reasonable steps to ensure that the skip is clearly and indelibly marked with his name and telephone number and—rather than or—his address. Having a name and telephone number on a skip is not as good as having a name and address on a skip. I do not understand why the Bill’s promoters and drafters did not require both the telephone number and the address of the skip owner to be displayed. I would have thought that that would be much more preferable. That shows that these amendments are designed not to undermine the Bill, but to try to strengthen it where appropriate.
Amendment 16 relates back to clause 9(6)(d). Subsection (6) sets out, for the purposes of the London Local Authorities Act 2007, a number of provisions relating to
“the grounds on which representations may be made against a penalty charge 40 notice arising”,
one of which is paragraph (d), which notes that
“the contravention of the relevant provision in question was due to the act or default of another person and that he took all precautions and exercised all due diligence to avoid the contravention by himself or another person under his control.”
That seems brilliant, but subsection (8) states:
“Where the ground mentioned in subsection (6)(d) is relied on in any representations…the relevant highway authority may disregard the representations unless, before the representations are considered, the person making the representations has served on the relevant highway authority a notice in writing giving such information identifying or assisting in the identification of that other person as was then in his possession.”
That seems oppressive in the extreme. It would be fine to leave in subsection (6)(d) without subsection (8), and that is the purpose of amendment 16, which I hope will be acceptable to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman).
Philip Davies
Does my hon. Friend accept that if amendment 14 is accepted and requires someone to take “any reasonable steps” with regard to a properly lighted skip, we would not need subsection (8)? Amendment 14 is a much neater way of doing what the promoters of the Bill seem to be trying to do with their other provisions.
Mr Chope
Exactly. Sometimes the imagination of those who draft private Bills runs away with them and they think of all possible scenarios. Requiring someone who has taken all reasonable precautions to avoid a contravention to set out in writing their information about other people who might have been up to no good, goes too far.
On Second Reading, the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound), who I am sorry is not in his place, made a point about the immobilisation of builders’ skips—I think the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) also raised that issue. If a builder’s skip is unlit, not properly guarded, causing a nuisance, filled with rotting rubbish or whatever, is it sensible to immobilise it? That is the challenge I put to the promoters of the Bill with amendments 17 to 19, which would leave out clauses 12 to 14.
If the owners of a skip have offended against provisions in part 3 of the Bill, surely penalty notices and so on will be involved. To immobilise the skip in the meantime, thereby preventing its owner from removing it when it is not lit or causing a nuisance, seems to go slightly in the wrong direction. I am sure I am wrong about that, and when my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East responds to the debate he will put me right and explain why London would be a better place if all skips were immobilised. The fact that this was a cross-party issue and taken up on Second Reading was not properly addressed in Committee, so I hope it can be addressed in response to my remarks. I look forward to hearing from my hon. Friend in the hope that we can proceed with these amendments in a similar way to the previous ones.
Bob Blackman
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) for outlining his various amendments. I will run briefly through the promoters’ view of each. I trust that he will see the logic that they have applied.
The amendments relate to proposals for the decriminalisation of the position on builders’ skips. The power to enforce the rules and if necessary—I emphasise that—immobilise skips when relevant notices are not complied with will instead be put in the hands of the local authority. The authority will have to be convinced that immobilisation is the correct thing to do.
Amendment 10 suggests that information should be provided only if it
“is not clearly and indelibly marked under the provision of section 9”.
I think my hon. Friend has got the wording incorrect, because the requirement set out in the Bill is under section 139 of the Highways Act 1980. The problem, as Members will see if they come to various parts of London and see skips on the roads, is that there may be a name on the side of a skip, but it might not be accurate, because skips are swapped around various companies at various times. The amendment would place a severe burden on skip suppliers to ensure that the details were accurate. On that basis, I do not think it would be sensible to accept it, particularly given the rest of the Bill’s provisions.
The promoters wish to accept amendment 11, and on reflection believe that 14 days should be allowed for compliance. That makes better sense.
Amendment 12 is about the maximum fine for not complying with a request. For clarification, I point out that a level 3 fine is currently £1,000 and a level 1 fine £200. The Government are currently consulting on increasing those levels fourfold, and the Ministry of Justice has raised no objections to the proposal that level 3 be the appropriate fine for the offence set out in clause 8(5)(a). In fact, a level 3 fine is lower than the fine in some equivalent cases. For example, under section 16 of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976, the maximum fine for the equivalent offence is level 5, which is £5,000. The promoters have sought the right level for an offence of this type. If skips are placed on the road in contravention of highways law, appropriate fines are needed for the local authority to remedy the situation. If the owner did not provide relevant details, the local authority would find it difficult to remove the skip, immobilise it or take appropriate penalty action against the supplier. People need to understand that if they deliberately flout the rules, they will get a severe fine.
Amendment 13 is about the offence of knowingly supplying false information in response to a legitimate request from a local authority for the name of the provider and owner of a skip. The Bill currently provides for a level 5 fine, which is £5,000. The amendment would lower the fine to £1,000. A draconian fine is required to prevent people from knowingly misleading the local authority, so that they cannot leave a dangerous skip on the road without the authority being able to identify who had done so.
Amendment 14 lowers the threshold at which a penalty charge notice could be served when a skip owner does not take reasonable steps to comply with the existing requirements. We need to make it clear that the Bill is a decriminalisation measure. At the moment, there are no “reasonable steps” elements in it. The amendment, therefore, would water down the requirements considerably. The general public—motorists, pedestrians and others—have a right to believe that if skips are placed on the public highway, they will be properly positioned, properly lit and will not be dangerous to motorists or pedestrians. The amendment would water down the proposals considerably and unfairly.
Bob Blackman
The current position is that were that to happen and lighting were removed, a criminal offence would have been committed. The police would step in and take appropriate action against either the owner of the skip or the owner of the property at which the skip was based. Clearly, we want skips that are placed on the public highway to be lit properly and placed in a sensible and not a dangerous position. I will come on to that point later. We can water down the criminal law and remove the ability of people simply to claim, “It’s nothing to do with me, guv. What can I do if someone removes the lighting?” That does not change the fact, however, that someone has driven their car into a badly lit skip, causing immense damage. At that point, it will be a matter of ensuring that the wrong is put right, and that, if it is not, a fine is issued. It is as simple as that.
Amendment 15 would require names, addresses and telephone numbers to be marked on skips. That would change the law in London, meaning that skip owners would face much more draconian measures in London than outside it. [Laughter.] My hon. Friends smile and laugh, but when someone acquires a skip in London, they do not necessarily acquire it from a site in London; they might acquire it from a skip owner outside London, who would then have to take it to London. If the amendment were passed, the owner would be burdened with having to mark the address and phone number in a way that did not apply in the rest of the country.
I know plenty of skip-owning firms that come from way outside London to provide skips, as well providing skips in their own areas. The amendment would provide for a regulatory burden in London that did not exist elsewhere, resulting in the potential problem of people inadvertently falling foul of the law. I agree that there might be an argument for amending national legislation in the way that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch suggested, but he is a promoter of deregulation, wherever possible, and I do not believe that we want to impose unnecessary regulation on businesses outside London. The amendment is therefore unnecessary and should not be pursued.
Amendment 16 deals with penalty charge notices. If we left out subsection (8), anyone served with a PCN could say, “It’s not me, guv. I’m not responsible.” As far as I am aware, whenever a PCN is issued for an offence on the highways, it is for the person served to substantiate whether someone else was responsible. If we left out the subsection, that person could say, “It’s nothing to do with me”, and then the authorities could not pursue those responsible. For that reason, we would resist the amendment.
Mr Chope
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his support of my amendment. Does he accept that exactly what he is asking for is in a sense reflected in clause 9(3)(b)(iv), which provides that
“the skip is removed as soon as practicable after it has been filled”?
It does not say that it should be removed as soon as it has been filled, but as soon as is practicable. That has been accepted by the promoters, but not extended to other provisions.
Mr Chope
Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the big problems is that local authorities have already demonstrated through the use of decriminalised penalty notices that they can be over-zealous and keen to get the maximum amount of revenue irrespective of the justice of a situation, which is why we hear all these stories of traffic wardens hiding and then creeping up on unsuspecting motorists so that they can get extra penalty points imposed and extra fines for themselves and their local authority?
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes a good point, as that is one reason why one is slightly sceptical about this sort of clause. Just this day I received a letter from a constituent raising exactly that point about the behaviour of traffic enforcement officers in Bury; it detailed how they have been served with a penalty notice in circumstances where it would have been easy to deal with the matter in another way if more common sense had been applied. That would have avoided having to give a local resident a penalty notice. Such examples make me want to agree with my hon. Friend’s proposition that people will be suspicious that this provision is there to make it easy for the local authority officer to find somebody. It does not matter who they find on this basis; they can give the notice to almost anybody and they will be able to say, “We have done what we can. It is now your problem. If you weren’t responsible, it is now your responsibility to find somebody who was.” I humbly submit that that is clearly not the right way for things to be done. It should be the responsibility of the responsible officer of the local authority to find out who is responsible, rather than expecting a person on whom a notice has been served to identify that other person for the purposes of determining who has committed the offence.
If I were to enter this little competition of saying which amendment I would press, I would opt for amendment 14, as it is entirely reasonable that where someone has taken reasonable steps to avoid committing an offence, they should not be held liable under this part of the Bill. With that, I will wait to hear what others have to say.
Mr Chope
In summing up an excellent debate, may I thank my hon. Friend the Members for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), for Shipley (Philip Davies) and for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for their contributions? If the Minister had contributed, the debate would have been even better, as indeed it would have been had the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) spoken—they demonstrated unusual self-restraint on these important issues, particularly on the issue of “national versus local”.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley said, the promoters of the Bill are now saying that it would be unreasonable potentially to impose on operators from outside London a requirement to put their name, telephone number and address on a skip, given that the legislation that applies outside London requires only the telephone number or the address. Clearly, there is an inconsistency between the approach of the promoters to those of us who argue that we should have national legislation on these issues rather than localised legislation.
Mr Nuttall
I appreciate that my hon. Friend is summing up, but are we not talking about the same case that was made earlier in respect of amendment 20 and gated roads?
Mr Chope
Exactly the same point applies in relation to gated roads, which is why it is a pity that we have not heard from the two Front-Bench spokespeople on where they think the balance should be between individual local authorities, or groups of local authorities, legislating in this area and a responsibility for the Government to try to introduce a national regime.
My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East has gone through each of the amendments seriatim and tried—
Mr Chope
I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman is joining in with the debate, albeit from a sedentary position, because he has been referred to already in dispatches, as he might know. We had been hoping to hear from him on immobilisation devices, but he has now put on record his enthusiasm for the word “seriatim”.
Let me take the amendments one by one for the benefit of the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound). My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East said that he did not think that amendment 10 would be appropriate because of the conflict between the national and local legislation. This is an opportunity for London to lead the field so that others can follow. It would be sensible, taking amendments 15 and 10 together, to require that in London skips should have the name, address and telephone number of the owner clearly and indelibly marked on them. I am disappointed that the promoters are not interested in accepting those amendments but I am delighted that amendment 11 is to be accepted.
On amendments 12 and 13, I am grateful to my hon. Friend for drawing to our attention that there is a proposal to increase fourfold the maximum fine levels on the standard scales. I think that would have quite a significant impact on the cost of living of the criminal classes. It would also put into a negative position all those provisions where the maximum fine is level 3—£1,000, which is reasonable—
Humber Bridge Bill
Christopher Chope Excerpts(12 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
It is because of me that this debate is taking place at all. I was much criticised by my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) for saying that we should have a debate. I said to him privately, and repeat publicly, that I thought that such a debate would redound to his benefit, because he would be able to explain the good work that he had put into trying to achieve the objectives of the Bill. I said to him that if the Bill were not debated on Second Reading, it would—because it is an unopposed Bill and there is no petition against it—go to an Unopposed Bill Committee, and then come back to the House for Third Reading, without a Report stage, so there would be no opportunity for people to move any amendments or make any points about it, whether good or bad. I hope that my hon. Friend now understands the virtues of a debate. The fact that other Members are in their places shows that they, too, understand the importance of being able to articulate concerns about, or the good points of, a piece of legislation.
It is great to hear support from those on the Opposition Front Bench for the principle of the Laffer curve—reductions in price can increase the volume of activity. We have heard that, in relation to the top rate of tax, they do not believe that the volume of activity would increase. I suggest that they are now speaking with forked tongue, because on this Bill they have conceded the point that reducing the costs increases the activity and thus the yield. I have at home on the back of a napkin the Laffer curve drawn by Dr Laffer himself, and I will revisit that as a result of this debate.
On a serious point, I hear what my hon. Friends say about local control, but the Bill would give up any direct control over the level of tolls in the future—that is the impact of clause 11. As my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) implied in his intervention, there is something to be said for having on the face of the Bill some safeguards for local people against possible future increases in the level of tolls beyond the rate of inflation. At the moment, they have been halved, but nothing in the Bill would safeguard against the introduction of differential tolls, for example.
Andrew Percy
I take my hon. Friend’s point, but the primary responsibility of the bridge body is to service the debt, so either way local taxpayers pay. Either the road user pays through the tolls or responsibility reverts to the local authorities. So there is no safeguard because the safeguard of not having a toll rise is that it would then revert to the local taxpayers to pay for anyway.
Mr Chope
I take my hon. Friend’s point, and the arrangements are now for a much more equitable relationship. Certainly when I was a Transport Minister it was an impossible subject to deal with, because there was no incentive for the other local authorities involved to be reasonable on these issues. However, that would not stop something being written on the face of Bill. Even if there is no demand locally for it and there are no petitions against the Bill at this stage, it would still be possible for people to petition against the Bill when it gets to the other place if they are concerned about the lack of any assurances in relation to tolls.
I raised with my hon. Friend the issue of the maintenance fund. Clause 9 says that the maintenance fund can be reduced. Money can be taken from the maintenance fund and spent on other things. I believe that we have too much crumbling infrastructure in this country, much of it owned and managed by local authorities that have refused to use the money that has been given to them, often by central Government, for the purposes of the proper maintenance of that infrastructure. In my constituency, the A338 Bournemouth spur road comes to mind as an example. I am concerned that we give power in the Bill for money that has specifically been put aside for the maintenance of an important structure to be spent on something else.
We know that bridges decay, and what is happening with the new Forth bridge is an example. I hope that when he responds to the debate, my hon. Friend will explain why the promoters of the Bill feel that the existing maintenance fund is topped up too high. If it is topped up too high and they want the power to reduce it, why was that not taken into account in the negotiations over the reduction in the debt and the taxpayers’ money that went into it?
Those are reasonable questions to ask in the context of a debate such as this. I was chided for asking what this had to do with my constituents. My constituents are national taxpayers and they do not want to be told that the Humber bridge needs to be rebuilt and the only way it can be rebuilt is with national taxpayers’ money because the maintenance fund was not used for the purposes for which it was set up. That is my concern and that is why I ask these questions in relation to clause 9.
I do not and never did wish to prevent the Bill from making progress, but it is important that we establish a principle that such legislation does not go through on the nod, so that we all know what we are talking about and we give it our express consent, rather than letting it go through by default.
Philip Davies
I take my hon. Friend’s point, and he might be satisfied that there will be sufficient accountability. I merely wanted to flag up the fact that people might want to consider some additional safeguards in the Bill to prevent tolls from reaching levels that would be unacceptable to the local community. I know that that is not his intention or, as far as I can see, that of any Members from Humberside—an awful term that I object to greatly. I do not think that it is the intention of anyone from either side of the Humber to see fees go up. I do not think that anyone supporting the Bill wants to see that. My concern is that that might be an unintended consequence of the Bill without additional safeguards.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend makes a good point. The Bill gives the board the power to have differential charges for the residents of the four local authorities concerned and for non-residents, so there is the possible scenario whereby the charges for residents of the four local authorities would be kept down while the charges for visitors, such as my constituents and those of my hon. Friend, would be pushed up. Should not the Bill provide a safeguard against that?
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend makes a good point. We wish to represent the best interests of our constituents too, so we need to be cautious about that.
Philip Davies
I take my hon. Friend’s point and his reassurance. However, he must accept that although we have seen a change in strategy this evening, as my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch has noted, some people will believe politically that the best way to raise money to service the debt is to increase taxes or, in this case, charges. The people on the board may not accept the idea of my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole that the best way to increase the revenue stream is to reduce the price—they may take the view that the best way to service the debt is to increase prices—so there is no guarantee that what he suggests will always prevail. I will not go on for too much longer because I do not want inadvertently to talk out his Bill, but there is a concern about what might happen, and it is worth putting that on the record and asking him to think a little more about whether a provision should be inserted in the Bill to prevent any potential problem further down the line.
I have two final points. The first is about the people whom my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes wants to be given a full or partial relief from the toll, perhaps because of medical conditions. He said that when one makes a list one might inadvertently miss something off and cause a problem, and I understand that. However, an intention to give certain people a relief is only that—an intention. Nothing in the Bill would force it to happen or guarantee it. People could have their hopes raised and then see them dashed. It would be unfortunate if the board had a change of heart, or its personnel changed, and it no longer felt that a relief was appropriate or affordable because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole says, their primary responsibility is to service the debt.
It might therefore be worth inserting a provision—it does not have be as specific as my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes perhaps inferred from my intervention—to make it clear that there should be some form of relief for people with, for example, serious medical conditions. It need not specify anything in particular but would make sure that what he intended happened in reality. One of the many unfortunate things in politics is people’s hopes being raised and then dashed when other people have made promises that they cannot keep. It would be good if we could demonstrate in the Bill that this provision would be an inevitable consequence of its being passed, whereas at the moment it is just an aspiration and a hope that cannot be guaranteed.
My final point is about clause 5, on allowances and expenses, about which I made an intervention earlier. I took the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole about out-of-pocket expenses. I do not think that anybody will reasonably object to people being able to recover their out-of-pocket expenses, but that is not exactly what the clause says. It says:
“The Board may pay to each director of the Board such allowances and expenses as the Board may from time to time determine.”
With the best will in the world, whatever the intention and whatever expectations people may have, that gives an awful lot of scope under the Bill for people to be paid allowances and expenses that local residents may consider at some time to be excessive. This kind of thing can often build up resentment if it does not come with the support of the local public. If the intention is for people to have their out-of-pocket expenses repaid—I would not object to that and I am certain that the vast majority of local residents would not, either—perhaps the Bill should make it clear that that is what it means, rather than say
“such allowances and expenses as the Board may determine from time to time,”
which would give people scope to vote for considerable amounts of money that others would find unacceptable or offensive.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is right. The Bill gives carte blanche to the board to vote for any amount of money it chooses. There does not seem to be a restriction, aside from the expectation voiced by my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes that the four elected people would be voted out on their ear at the next election. There is no guarantee, however, that that would happen. People will not be judged on that alone. I ask my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole to consider these points. I understand what he and Members from all parties and from both sides of the Humber intend to happen, and I would not wish the Bill not to deliver on their or their constituents’ hopes and expectations.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch on allowing us to have this debate. All the private Bills we have debated over a number of years have involved certain points that the promoters have not given consideration to or that, with hindsight, they might have done differently. This debate has given us an opportunity to look at such points. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole will take some of our concerns on board and even table some modest amendments when the Bill goes to Committee.
Oral Answers to Questions
Christopher Chope Excerpts(13 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
3. What use the Commission is making of price mechanisms to ensure maximum utilisation of House of Commons dining rooms on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.
John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)
The recently endorsed Catering Services business improvement plan proposes the return of a variable tariff structure in the Members Dining Room. The Administration Committee will be consulted on the details shortly. This is in response to feedback from Members who had stopped using that service following the introduction of a fixed tariff. Catering Services has a three-month rolling marketing plan that highlights offers and promotions in all the catering outlets to generate more business. This plan will include the Dining Room.
Mr Chope
I thank my hon. Friend for that response. Last week, I dined on all three nights in the Dining Room and almost nobody else was present, but the service was fantastic because there were three servants for each person sitting down. [Hon. Members: “Servants?”] Exactly. Does my hon. Friend think that one way of engaging Members who do not use the Dining Room would be to offer them much cheaper rates when there is an opportunity for them to come along?
John Thurso
There is clearly a balance to be struck between attracting people in at the right price and prices being so low that they do not recover the appropriate cost. The House authorities strive to strike that balance appropriately. Work is being undertaken, particularly by the Administration Committee, but the key, driving factor is that the footfall in the Palace is dropping because of the change in hours, and I do not think any of us can do a great deal about that.
Disabled Persons’ Parking Badges Bill
Christopher Chope Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Philip Davies
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Simon Kirby) on his great achievement in getting this far with his private Member’s Bill. He has steered it through with his customary charm and skill. I very much hope that it will find its way on to the statute book and that it will make further progress today, but I believe that the Bill could be improved in some areas, so my amendments are proposed in a spirit of constructiveness more than anything else. I have not given up hope that he may be persuaded that some, if not all, of my amendments would greatly enhance not just the Bill’s wording but the spirit of what he is trying to achieve.
I should make it clear from the start that this subject is very close to my heart. Members may know that before I entered Parliament I spent many a year working for Asda. During that time, I was delighted to have the role of trying to improve the facilities and services for our disabled customers. The biggest issue that they used to complain about, by a considerable distance and without any real competition, was disabled parking—the abuse of disabled parking spaces and the fact that they found it difficult to get them and that there was a lack of them.
I spent a great deal of time considering that particular issue and was very proud to be a member of a campaign called baywatch. Before anybody gets the wrong idea, it had nothing to do with Pamela Anderson or people dashing around in red swimsuits and bikinis. The campaign was set up to improve disabled parking. Its members were the four major supermarket chains, as well as disability groups such as the Disabled Drivers Motor Club, the Disabled Drivers Association and Scope, which used to host our monthly meetings; Disability Now magazine was also an active participant.
Parking badges were without doubt one of the biggest problems, and the solutions are not as easy as people may think. I will not go through all the problems but I want to touch on why we need to tread carefully. People have blue badges for good reason—they have them because they need them to park close to where they need to go—but complications arise when, for example, somebody has been on holiday and broken their leg. They would not qualify for a blue badge, because they are reserved for people with more permanent conditions, but that person is incapacitated, albeit temporarily, and might need a parking space close to the store. The issue is not always as black and white as people may want it to be; shades of grey and nuances have to be taken into consideration.
I have spoken to organisations that represent people with disabilities who are particularly exercised by the problem of disabled parking, and my amendments are based on some of their thoughts. They would strengthen my hon. Friend’s Bill, and I hope he will be persuaded of the need to do that.
New clause 1 is fairly straightforward and self-explanatory:
“Anyone found guilty of knowingly using a fraudulent parking badge will receive a minimum custodial sentence of three months.”
The Bill, although excellent, is rather silent on the penalties for people who break the rules. These are serious offences and they should be treated as such.
One reason why we needed the baywatch group in the first place and why many people with disabilities are so exercised about this matter is the scale of the problem. It is not something that happens on just a few occasions; it happens day in, day out. I urge hon. Members to go around places where there are disabled parking bays to see how many of the cars display a valid badge. I think that they will be staggered by the number of times they come across one or more cars where a proper badge is not displayed. In my opinion, that is the case because the penalties for not displaying the correct badge are insufficient. The purpose of the new clause is that if the penalties were more severe, they would reduce the abuse of disabled parking bays.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
May I seek a little clarification? The new clause refers to
“a minimum custodial sentence of three months.”
Does that mean that three months would have to be served in prison or that the sentence passed by the court would be three months, which might mean that only a few days would be served in prison?
Philip Davies
It would be the sentence passed by the court. My hon. Friend makes the good point that people who are sent to prison these days serve a maximum of only half their sentence. People with short sentences, such as three months, may serve considerably less than half their sentence. However, to reassure him that I am not going soft on crime in my old age, I still hope that one day we will have a Government who bring back honesty in sentencing so that the sentence handed down by the court is the one that is served. I obviously think that a person who is sentenced to three months in prison should serve three months in prison. Unfortunately, that is not the case under the current lax regime, but we should not give up hope that it may happen one day.
I have suggested this specific offence because my understanding is that there is currently no such offence. There are many people who are more qualified than I am, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown and my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), who is a lawyer of considerable distinction, who will perhaps clarify whether that is correct. Currently, anybody who is found guilty of knowingly using a fraudulent parking badge would have to be pursued under the Fraud Act 2006. As far as I understand it, no other offence would have been committed. Under the 2006 Act, the maximum sentence is six months in prison. Hon. Members could argue that we have the relevant offence in the 2006 Act and that there is already a maximum sentence of six months in prison, and ask why we need the sentence of three months. What I am trying to get across is the need for a minimum sentence.
Most people with disabilities are under the impression that nothing ever happens to people who go around using fraudulent blue badges. I wonder whether the Minister can give us any figures on that. The feeling is that such people are rarely caught, that if they are caught, they are very rarely prosecuted, and that if they are prosecuted, nothing really happens to them. That is why the problem persists. A minimum custodial sentence of three months would not only send out a message about how seriously the House takes this problem, but would act as a useful deterrent—[Interruption.]
Philip Davies
I am very grateful, Mr Speaker. When you talked about wittering, I thought for a moment that you were referring to my speech. The people concerned have voted with their feet and left the Chamber, rather than listen to my speech, so they should at least be commended for good taste.
We need to make it clear that this is a serious issue. The new clause would send out the message that we take this issue seriously and it would act as a useful deterrent. We should make the point that this is not only something that is wrong and immoral, but something that has a negative impact on somebody’s life. Such people are knowingly taking up a space that they do not need and preventing somebody who does need it from taking it up. They should suffer a more severe consequence than just a financial penalty.
Mr Chope
In expressing some reservations about this proposal, I say to my hon. Friend that setting a minimum sentence removes from the court any discretion. A rather dangerous precedent may be set by the European Union, which is thinking of passing a law that would mean that anybody who committed fraud against the European Union would be subject to a much higher minimum sentence than anybody who commits fraud against any other organisation. Is that not an example of a very bad precedent?
Philip Davies
I understand my hon. Friend’s point and he is far more expert in matters of law than I am or ever will be. I bow to his superior knowledge in that regard and, in the matters that we are discussing, as a former Transport Minister.
We would all be happy to leave more discretion to the courts if we felt that they were treating certain offences with the seriousness with which they are treated by the public and the people who are affected by them. People with disabilities and people like me who are concerned about the impact on people who need disabled spaces simply do not feel that anybody, including the courts, takes this matter seriously enough. This proposal is a last resort. If there was any evidence that this matter was being treated more seriously, I would not have brought it forward. I am making the point that the matter is not being treated seriously enough. It seems to me that this is the only way of doing so.
I take the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch. There can be problems if discretion is taken away from the courts, but there are not many nuances at play in this issue. It is not as if there could be lots of mitigating factors. We are talking about somebody who is
“knowingly using a fraudulent parking badge”
Perhaps I am too strict on these matters, but I do not see that there could be much mitigation. I am sure that my hon. Friend, who was a distinguished barrister, could come up with some marvellous mitigation for one of his clients, but I cannot say that I would be greatly impressed by it. This is therefore the kind of offence where a minimum sentence would be useful.
Mr Chope
Without getting into too much detail, I would say that members of the legal profession benefit from the fact that the court has discretion when they put forward arguments on behalf of their clients and seek mitigation. If the court had no discretion, it might remove the role of the lawyer.
Philip Davies
My proposal would not end all discretion because, as I made clear, a court may send somebody to prison for up to six months. If my hon. Friend represented somebody as a barrister, and did so with great distinction, as he always used to in his previous life, I am sure that his client would be pleased to escape with just a three-month sentence. The point is that we must have lines in the sand to show that the offence is unacceptable.
Philip Davies
I will not get distracted by going off piste and talking about other offences that should have minimum sentences, but they are not an unusual idea. In fact, earlier this year we passed the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, which included minimum sentences for threatening someone with a knife. The concept is not unusual, and the Government have been quite happy to use it.
My hon. Friend says that misusing a blue badge is only a parking offence, and he is clearly right, but I suggest to him that it causes a great deal of distress to many people. It not only causes inconvenience but can deprive people of the ability to go out and live their lives. I have spoken to many people who use blue badges, and sometimes they cannot go out because they know there will not be a parking space available to them, as they will all be clogged up by people who do not need them.
Planning regulations now set out a certain number of disabled parking spaces that should be available, so there should be an ample number, but we still find that people are abusing the system. I understand where my hon. Friend is coming from, but I do not see these offences as being just road traffic offences like not wearing a seat belt, which largely has an impact only on the person who does it. I see them as much more serious, because they deprive people of their freedom to go about their daily lives. It seems to me that when someone is found guilty of knowingly and recklessly denying others their freedoms, it is a reasonable punishment that their freedoms are taken away as well.
Mr Chope
Is not the problem with the new clause that there is no requirement that a person found guilty of using a stolen disabled parking badge should have done so knowing that it was stolen? Introducing a minimum sentence higher than the standard sentence for handling stolen goods, for example, which requires knowledge or belief that the goods are stolen, is surely far too draconian.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. I am quite happy to be found guilty of being draconian, and I seem to spend my life in Parliament asking for more draconian sentences for a range of offences. I do not mind his describing me in that way, because there are far worse things to be described as when it comes to law and order. I would sooner take the tag of being draconian than the tag of being soft on dealing with crime. However, he makes a perfectly valid point. As ever, his quick and insightful mind is a benefit to the House.
Amendment 1 suggests that when someone is given notice of the cancellation of a parking badge, it should be given in writing. It is simply intended to clarify what is expected of local authorities. Notification can be given in all sorts of forms, but it is important that everybody knows where they are and that there is a clear record that notice was given. If notice is given over the phone, a person who denies they ever received that phone call may well be on strong ground. Notification given in writing, however, is perfectly clear, so we should ensure that that is what happens.
Philip Davies
I am not sure whether it is a compliment or an insult to say that I am no longer draconian, but I will take it as a compliment in the spirit in which I think it was intended.
Amendment 3 to clause 3 would insert in subsection (4C) of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970
“a custodial sentence not exceeding one month.”.
As I understand it, the existing penalty is a level 3 fine, which I believe is up to £1,000—I am sure the Minister or my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown will happily correct me if I am wrong. It would not be the first time I have been wrong, and it will not be the last time. The amendment would increase that penalty to one month’s imprisonment, meaning that anything up to that could be used as a punishment, including, for example, a community order or prison for repeat offenders. That would also allow the use of increased fines, as suggested by Disabled Motoring UK—one of the organisations I consulted in advance of this debate.
My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch will be elated with this amendment. I have moved away from the principle of a minimum sentence, and the provision would simply allow the courts to increase the penalty to up to one month’s imprisonment, if they saw fit. It would place no more onerous obligations on them than that, but it would reflect how seriously these offences should be taken. It may be that for persistent offenders, a short prison sentence is the most appropriate penalty, and I commend the amendment to my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown.
Amendments 8 and 9 also relate to clause 3. Amendment 8 would insert in subsection (6) of the 1970 Act:
“An issuing authority has a duty to send out badges that are being renewed no less than three weeks prior to the date of expiration of the badge in question provided the applicant has completed the necessary paperwork by the authority’s deadline for such paperwork.”
That was suggested to me by Disabled Motoring UK, and, if I may, I extend my thanks to that organisation for its help in considering the Bill and ways that it may be improved.
All local authorities should be required to send out badges in good time. Clause 3 is about the use of parking badges that are no longer valid. When a badge is being renewed—unless my earlier amendments regarding the defence that someone did not receive a letter or can still use their old badge in some circumstances are incorporated in the Bill—amendment 8 is a further defence mechanism. If we do not have such defences in the Bill, we must find some way to ensure that local authorities send out renewals in good time. We must ensure that people receive their badges on time and do not inadvertently fall foul of my hon. Friend’s Bill.
In terms of time scale, I am the first to concede that my choice of three weeks is somewhat arbitrary, and I accept criticism for that. It seems to me, however, that three weeks is a reasonable time for any delays in the post to be dealt with, and it should ensure that everybody receives their renewal before their previous badge has expired.
Mr Chope
Will my hon. Friend clarify what he means by “renewal”? My understanding is that many disabled parking badges are issued indefinitely for people who are permanently disabled rather than limited to a period. If they were so limited, we might not have so many problems, but what does he mean by “renewal”?
Philip Davies
I mean exactly what I say. My hon. Friend is right, but some badges have an expiry date and must therefore be renewed, and my proposal deals with that. Some renewals are automatic. I am in favour of expiry dates in some cases, because people’s disabilities change over time—people might not need a blue badge further down the line as the nature of their disability changes. However, people should expect to receive a renewal on time. If they do not, it makes a mockery of the system.
As I have said, amendment 8 would provide a further safeguard if my other proposals are not accepted, but I should make it clear that any one amendment is not dependent on the acceptance of the others. There is no reason why amendments 2, 3 and 8 should not be accepted—they are not contradictory, but in many respects complementary. However, if one or other is not accepted, we still need a safeguard in the Bill.
Amendment 9 is on a theme similar to amendment 8. It asks that an
“issuing authority has a duty to invite members of the badge scheme in writing to renew their membership two months before the badge is due to lapse.”
That, too, would be an additional safeguard. We need to ensure that the people who use badges are the people who need and are entitled to them, and we need to prevent people who do not need and are not entitled to them from using them. The problem we could end up with is that some people could fall foul of the law even if they genuinely need a blue badge and if they would have one in other circumstances.
Amendment 9 would ensure that issuing authorities have a duty to remind people that the expiry date is coming up and they need to renew, so that people are not caught out with an out-of-date badge. They would fall foul of clause 3, even though they are not the people whom the Bill chases. The amendment would ensure that we go after people only if we should be going after them, and that people do not inadvertently fall foul of the regulations.
My general theme is that the offences are serious, and hon. Members have a duty to tackle them. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown for introducing the Bill. He has picked a subject that is incredibly important to people around the country. I met many such people in my years at Asda when we tried to tackle this thorny problem, and many of my constituents are incredibly frustrated by it. The theme of my proposals is to stiffen the penalties for people who fall foul of the rules, abuse the blue badge scheme, and knowingly take places away from people who need them, and to treat such offences with the seriousness with which many constituents treat them. People are appalled by those who abuse disabled parking spaces and who use blue badges when they are not entitled to them. I seek to punish them properly, but I also want to ensure that the Bill does not catch people for whom the blue badge scheme was designed and who inadvertently fall foul of it.
I commend my proposals. I look forward to the Minister’s support and to my hon. Friend incorporating them in the Bill.
Mr Chope
I had hoped that we would hear from the Minister and the promoter of the Bill, my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Simon Kirby), whether any of the proposals of my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) would be acceptable. I have set out in interventions why I am nervous about the introduction of more minimum custodial sentences, because it undermines the discretion that we should allow the courts in deciding the appropriate penalty, subject to a maximum penalty.
Philip Davies
I understand my hon. Friend’s point, but does he agree that, in many cases, courts undermine the principle of their having freedom and discretion by not giving the strong sentences that the public would wish people to be given?
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend is right in one sense. Instead of independent courts deciding sentences, the Government give sentencing guidelines, which inhibit courts’ ability to implement the sentences that they believe to be appropriate. I accept that that undermines the independence of the magistracy and the judiciary in deciding on the right sentence. The guidelines cross the line between the Executive and the judiciary, which leads to pressure on my hon. Friend to introduce measures such as new clause 1. He believes that introducing a legal minimum sentence is the only way to ensure that courts genuinely have the discretion to give a serious sentence if they believe it is merited, and are not undermined by the sentencing guidelines.
I am with my hon. Friend to that extent, but I am nervous, because as with so many things, introducing one constraint results in unforeseen consequences. In an intervention, I cited a current example. The Ministry of Justice is fighting the EU over the suggestion that a fraud against the EU is somehow much more serious than fraud against anybody else, even though for time immemorial the EU has not been able to get its accounts audited. That is the difficulty with proposals to introduce minimum custodial sentences, although I recognise that my hon. Friend’s proposal rightly takes account of the strength of public outrage at the abuse of the disabled parking badge system.
Philip Davies
I understand my hon. Friend’s parallel, but I am not asking for a more severe sentence for disabled badge fraud than for any other kind of fraud. The maximum sentence under the relevant part of the Fraud Act is six months. I am asking merely for a minimum of three months. I am not treating the offence more seriously, but saying that the powers to deal with such offences should be invoked.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend is saying that if somebody is found guilty of knowingly using a fraudulent parking badge, the court should be limited to giving a sentence of anything between three and six months, but would have no discretion, for example, to issue a community sentence or a fine, and could not take account of a situation in which sending the offender to prison would be unthinkable. I am probably sounding rather soft compared with my hon. Friend, but that is an example of a court’s discretion. If the offence carries a maximum penalty of six months, why can we not leave it to the courts to decide what penalty should be imposed without requiring them to impose a minimum three-month sentence? That is my difficulty with new clause 1.
By contrast, in new clause 2 my hon. Friend is talking about a maximum fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale, thereby ensuring that the sentencing authorities have discretion to decide the level of fine or whether indeed a fine would be appropriate.
The other points that my hon. Friend made are centred around the issue of renewal of disabled parking permits, and that fits in with his opening remarks. It is now some 20 years since I was the Minister responsible for this area of policy, and at that stage we still had the problem of people who were very disabled for a short period of time because of an accident, for example—they would make a recovery in due course, so they were not permanently disabled, but their mobility was just as lacking as that of someone who was permanently disabled. The fact that the disabled persons’ parking badges scheme has not accommodated the temporarily disabled has caused a lot of misunderstanding and resentment. I have had many constituency cases—I am sure that my hon. Friend has too—of people who thought that they were more disabled than someone living next door, but because their disability was not, or might not be, permanent, they were not entitled to a badge.
Philip Davies
I think I made it clear in my speech that we had the same issue when I was working for Asda. Is my hon. Friend suggesting that, because of that anomaly, it would be acceptable for someone who has a blue badge to hand it over to someone with a temporary disability and that that should not be penalised?
Mr Chope
Far from it; I am not suggesting that at all. I believe in the rule of law and at the moment that is unlawful. The point that I was trying to make is that, although the Bill was discussed briefly in Committee, it was never debated on Second Reading because it went through on the nod. When I read the Bill, I thought that one of the best things about it was that it would give discretion to local authorities to award disabled persons’ parking badges for a limited period. So if, for example, someone had a medical certificate saying that their disability was such that they would lack normal mobility for six months, the local authority would be able to issue a disabled parking permit for that period instead of being able only to issue an indefinite one. It is my understanding that the Bill would give local authorities that additional discretion—
Mr Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman cannot take the opportunity now to initiate a Second Reading debate, the absence of which he spent some moments lamenting. He must now focus his remarks on the new clause, accompanying new clauses and amendments. I feel sure that after that brief diversion that is precisely what he is now minded to do.
Mr Chope
Absolutely, Mr Speaker. In commenting on my hon. Friend’s amendments relating to the notice period following the renewal of licence, I was speculating on the discretion that a local authority has to set a fixed period for a licence after which it would have to be renewed and notification would have to be given to the recipient. I may be wrong, but my understanding is that standard procedure at the moment is for local authorities to issue a licence for an indefinite period that is coterminous with the lifetime of the person to whom the licence has been issued. The Bill would give a new discretion to local authorities to set renewal periods, and it would be to the exercise of that discretion that the provisions in my hon. Friend’s amendments relating to the process of notification for renewals would be relevant. That is the background to the point that I was making.
You said that I lamented the lack of a Second Reading debate, Mr Speaker, although I did not use that word. The lack of such a debate means that speculation about the intent of the Bill in relation to local authority discretion is at large, and has perhaps been anticipated by several of my hon. Friend’s amendments.
If local authorities have discretion to renew licences and issue them for fixed periods of time, it is reasonable to say that there should be a specified period within which the local authority would send to the licence holder notification that it had to be renewed, giving the holder time in which to obtain the relevant documents to facilitate the renewal, should that be necessary.
There is much to commend some of my hon. Friend’s amendments, although I am sorry that I cannot go along with him on all of them—
Philip Davies
It would be incredibly helpful to me—if to no one else—if my hon. Friend could be more specific about which of my amendments find favour with him.
Mr Chope
I find amendment 9 quite appealing. It states:
“An issuing authority has a duty to invite members of the badge scheme in writing to renew their membership two months before the badge is due to lapse.”
That is a reasonable amendment, especially in the light of the draconian penalties for not having a licence in order. New clause 2 is also perfectly reasonable, as it states:
“Anyone found guilty of knowingly allowing another to use their disabled parking badge shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale.”
However, new clause 3, for the reasons I have already put forward, goes too far. There is already an offence of handling stolen goods. If a disabled parking badge has been stolen, anyone using it would effectively be handling it and would be liable to the full force of the law, and the maximum penalty for handling stolen goods is several years in prison. Indeed, it is often said that without handlers there would be no thieves, and that is why the courts have always come down heavily on handlers.
Philip Davies
I take my hon. Friend’s point, but likewise without thieves there would be no handlers.
Mr Chope
I cannot disagree with my hon. Friend on that point, although courts and politicians have said over many years that we should not necessarily treat thieves with more severity than we do handlers. Anybody who handles a stolen disabled parking badge should be severely dealt with, but the problem with new clause 3 is that there is no requirement that the person found guilty of using a badge did so with mens rea—guilty intent.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend suggests that the person using the badge might not know that it was stolen, but by definition they would know that it was not theirs and that they were not entitled to use it. It is not as though they could be an innocent bystander in this scenario. They would know that they did not have the disability that qualified them for a blue badge. My hon. Friend might be splitting hairs on this point.
Mr Chope
That is indeed the trade in which lawyers work—they do split hairs. As legislators, we need to try to anticipate how those hairs might be split, or what opportunities there are for splitting them, and thereby ensure that the laws that we pass in this House are clear beyond peradventure. That is what I am trying to ensure happens in this case.
Philip Davies
I understand that, but the point remains. Why would it be any better if the person did not know the badge was stolen, when they would clearly know that it was not theirs? There does not seem to be much of a hair to split.
Mr Chope
That takes us back to the word “using” in my hon. Friend’s new clause 1, because it depends on whether, by a person using the badge, we mean that the person driving the vehicle does not know that the disabled person sitting next to him has a disabled permit or badge but is not entitled to it because he has stolen it, whether we mean that the person driving the car is using it, or whether the person sitting next to him is purporting to be disabled and is the person who is using it. There would therefore be scope for lawyers to be engaged in that, if the wording remains as it is.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
It also occurs to me that a lot of people who have disabled badges are elderly and have memory lapses. Therefore, they may have forgotten who they are and may inadvertently be using a badge that had been stolen.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As I have the privilege of representing a constituency with, I think, the highest proportion of people aged over 85, I am familiar with one aspect of what he refers to: people sign postcards to which I respond by saying that I have sent their postcard to the Minister, but quite often I receive a letter back from the person denying that they have ever signed such a postcard. I then send a copy of the signed postcard to the constituent, who then writes back—people in the Christchurch constituency are ever so polite—full of apologies saying that, yes, they recognise that it is their signature and their handwriting and they must indeed have signed this postcard, but they could not recall having so done. My hon. Friend makes a perfectly valid point.
My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley has tried to encourage me to expand on my concerns about his amendments, but I do not think that I need to do so any more. I look forward to hearing from the Minister and from my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Simon Kirby), the promoter of the Bill, who will have the first opportunity to discuss, in the presence of the whole House, the virtues of the Bill, not having had that opportunity on Second Reading.
Simon Kirby (Brighton, Kemptown) (Con)
I have listened carefully to the clearly thought out arguments of my hon. Friends. I admit to having some sympathy with the amendments, as the Bill is designed to stop the abuse of the blue badge scheme, but I would like to make some observations that I hope will be helpful.
My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) mentioned section 115 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984, but he did not mention the Fraud Act 2006 or the Theft Act 1968, which may also apply in some circumstances. The Bill is about enforcement, not sentencing, as that is properly dealt with elsewhere.
There was some concern about people not being notified. The proposed subsection 7AB to the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970 states clearly that cancellation takes effect only when notice is given. Therefore, if a person has not received a notice, the badge is not cancelled. On that note, I ask my hon. Friend to withdraw his amendments so that we may proceed with some haste.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Norman Baker)
I have listened carefully to the contributions of the hon. Members for Shipley (Philip Davies) and for Christchurch (Mr Chope), and of course to my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Simon Kirby).
I understand why the amendments and new clauses have been tabled. They have been tabled, as the hon. Member for Shipley will appreciate, somewhat late in the day. Therefore, it has not been possible for us to give full consideration to the implications of what he has put forward. What I would say in general terms is that some of the measures he proposes do seem draconian, to use a word that was bandied around earlier today, and some of the measures that he wants to introduce may not be entirely necessary. For example, it is not necessary to have a separate offence of allowing another person to use a blue badge, as that conduct is already covered by section 115 of the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984. Sections of 44 and 45 of the Serious Crime Act 2007 also have a role to play. At this stage, I do not think there is a case for accepting any of his new clauses or amendments, but I will undertake to look at them carefully. If there is any merit to any of them, I will be prepared to look at them and so will the Lords.
Norman Baker
That matter is either reflected in the Bill or by the existing legislation, and it is one to which I, as a Minister, have given some consideration over time. I think we all have sympathy with those who have temporary impairments and might have a condition that may be similar to a permanent disability. However, the reality is that the administration costs of setting up such a system to deal with temporary impairments would be very high. With 2.5 million blue badge holders in this country, if that number were extended significantly, as would be the case if those with temporary impairments were able to have blue badges or something similar for a period of time, the consequences would be to put enormous pressure on existing parking space. Individuals with genuine but limited mobility problems could occupy spaces designed for those with much more serious conditions. The conclusion I have therefore reached is that this should be a matter for local discretion. There are opportunities for individual local authorities to take forward schemes in their own patches if they choose to do so, depending on the availability of road space. The likelihood is that some local authorities will do that.
Mr Chope
I am grateful to the Minister for that response. Does he think that one way of reducing the large number of disabled parking badges would be to ensure that there has to be a renewal date for any disabled parking badge issued, so that they are not in effect issued for a lifetime?
Norman Baker
I agree with that, and that is indeed the position. We require blue badges to be renewed on a regular basis—I think it is every three years—to take account of the possibility of improvement to people’s mobility and disabilities. We hope that there are such improvements, and in some cases that is true. Even for those with permanent disabilities—loss of a limb, for example —we still need to ensure that the photograph on the badge is up to date, the address information is correct and that the badge has not faded, which has been a factor in the past, though it is less so now with the new badge design. It is sensible to have badges renewed on a regular basis and that already happens. There are no indefinite badges; that problem has already been taken care of.
As I said to the hon. Member for Shipley, we have not had a huge amount of time to examine the new clauses and amendments. I am not convinced that they have merit, but I will undertake to ask officials to look at them. If there is any merit, we will deal with that in another place. On that basis, I ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw his new clause.
Mr Chope
I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Simon Kirby) for the progress he has made with the Bill and the deft way in which he has mastered the Standing Orders to ensure that his Bill leapfrogged over others Bills into the first slot today. He is already an old hand at this. His Bill is in first place today because it went through Second Reading without a Division—without even any debate—and was agreed to unanimously by the House. It also had a short Committee stage, confirming that everybody thinks that it will improve matters and deserves to get on to the statute book.
The better controls over the abuse of the blue badge scheme will be welcomed in my constituency. A large number of my constituents have blue badges, and they resent the fact that the system is abused and that sometimes this means they cannot park close to where they want to be, because their parking space has been occupied by someone who purports to have a valid blue badge but whose badge is not valid or does not apply to them. The changes in the Bill are very good, therefore. It is desirable that we give local authorities greater discretion. It will, I hope, result in local authorities considering what is best in their own circumstances.
I remain concerned about the fact that people who are temporarily severely disabled cannot access disabled parking concessions. I hope that the Minister’s comments implied that local authorities will now have the discretion to decide that they can.
Mr Chope
The Minister is nodding. That is very helpful. Dorset county council has always told me that it does not have the discretion to allow temporarily disabled people to access disabled parking permits. If we now have much tighter control over the abuse of those permits, greater flexibility for local authorities should flow from that. When given the appropriate medical evidence, they should be able to issue disabled parking permits to people with temporary disabilities. That is a really good benefit that could come from the Bill.
It is interesting that the Bill sets out why the form of the disabled badge should not be prescribed in detail—if it is set out in statute, the fraudsters will know exactly what is in it and can follow the same format. The Bill proposes that there should be some form of encryption, which will enable more effective enforcement to take place and make it much more difficult to forge the badges.
All in all, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown. I hope that, having got himself ahead of the queue, he can get the Bill into the other place and that before too long it will find its way on to the statute book.
High Speed Rail (Scotland)
Christopher Chope Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
To follow on from what the hon. Lady is saying, this scheme will benefit everyone in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Does she envisage this high-speed rail having contact with Larne, Cairnryan and Stranraer, thereby ensuring that the people of Northern Ireland can also benefit from the high-speed rail link, which ultimately will take them to London? Based on a very significant business plan—
Sheila Gilmore
I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for his intervention. I am sorry, but I was reading out a quote; it was the speaker of those words who stopped at Britain and did not talk about the United Kingdom. I think that any options that can be built in for some of these things would be very useful. Anyone who has ever travelled to Stranraer using the current arrangements will know just how difficult that is. It is a big disadvantage for both Northern Ireland and Scotland that we do not have a particularly good rail link down to the ferry ports.
In the debate in April, we talked about getting the journey time down to three and a half hours—that is what the previous Minister said—but a commitment to bring it down to three hours is a welcome further step in the right direction. That would hugely enhance connectivity. It would improve links, not just the Scotland-London link, but links to other parts of England and the major conurbations, which would make Scotland a much more attractive place to do business. It would boost jobs and growth throughout the country.
London Local Authorities and Transport for London (No. 2) Bill [Lords]
Christopher Chope Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
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Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
I am pleased to introduce the Bill to the House. It is promoted formally by Transport for London and Westminster city council, who do so at the request of all the other London boroughs, including the City of London, and through the good offices of London Councils, the representative body. It is therefore fair to say this Bill has the support of all political parties across London.
This is a different Bill from the one we valiantly promoted over the past few weeks, and which my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer) led on. Sadly, he is unable to be in the Chamber tonight—because he is still suffering the after-effects of the previous debates on that Bill.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I am sure we are all very sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman) is unable to be present. However, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) on taking on the responsibility, and he will know that that previous Bill has not completed its passage through this House. Discussion of it will be resumed next Tuesday—it is to be hoped at precisely 7 o’clock.
Bob Blackman
Indeed, we will have a series of Bills; as with London buses, once we have enjoyed one, another will follow. I hope we will conclude discussion of the Bill in question next week, and I trust we will be able to start the debate on it at 7 o’clock.
That Bill has proceeded further than the Bill currently being debated, which has been in its gestation period for a considerably extended period.
Bob Blackman
I thank my hon. Friend for that question and although I will not digress at this point, I shall explain further during my speech why there are not only two but three Bills going through almost at the same time.
It is fair to say that private Bills of this type have been promoted regularly by London boroughs for many years. That goes back to the days of the old London county council, of which many might mourn the loss, and to those of the Greater London council, and runs through to the advent of the Greater London authority and the Mayor of London. This is the third Bill to be promoted by the boroughs and Transport for London since TFL came into existence. Separately, the London boroughs have promoted no fewer than 10 London local authorities Bills of their own and TFL has promoted three of its own over the years.
It is therefore fair to say that Bills of this nature are not uncommon—far from it, in fact. I mention that because during our recent debates it has been suggested that London local authorities Bills are somehow different from or new in comparison with what happens elsewhere in the country. They are not new. This form of localism has been practised over many years and it has been so successful that Governments of all parties have taken sections from the provisions pioneered in London local authorities Bills and advanced them in national legislation. For example, the Localism Act 2011, which I strongly support, includes provisions on fly-posting that were first introduced in a London local authorities Act. That demonstrates that what happens in London can subsequently be taken forward nationally.
There has been a long wait for this Second Reading. When I was asked to take on this Bill, I was reminded that we reviewed its provisions at a council meeting in 2006 when I was deputy leader of Brent council, and we initiated this draft Bill when I served on the Greater London authority, although at that stage it contained many more proposals and clauses.
Finally, the Bill was introduced in the House of Lords as long ago as January 2008 and First Reading in this House took place on 28 March 2011. Before I move on to the contents and details of the Bill, it is right to explain why we have had to wait so long for it to come before the House. A threat to the Bill emerged after the House of Lords Opposed Bill Committee reported in March 2009. A group of bodies that represented sporting interests voiced concerns about two clauses that would have enabled London authorities to recover the costs of cleaning streets and imposing traffic regulation measures at sporting and other events. It soon became clear that the sports bodies had very strong support among peers in the other place and the promoters recognised that there was therefore a potentially serious threat not just to the clauses in question but to the whole Bill.
Unsurprisingly, the promoters embarked on a process of negotiation with the sports bodies. It has proved to be a very long process indeed. Without going into all the details, it is enough to say that agreement in principle was eventually reached before the general election of 2010. Although the promoters believed that agreement had been reached with the sports bodies in 2010, a further point of dispute arose, the conclusion of which was not achieved until the beginning of 2011. As part of the agreement, the clauses were removed.
Mr Chope
To go back to the sports bodies who were concerned about the Bill, am I right in recalling that the compromise agreement that caused provisions to be withdrawn from the Bill involved the large football clubs in London entering into an agreement with the local authorities on sorting out the problems of litter emanating from the playing of those first division and premier league football matches? Will my hon. Friend tell the House whether that voluntary agreement has now been implemented?
Bob Blackman
Not only premier league and first division football teams, but other sporting events throughout London were involved. Coming as I do from the Wembley area, I remember the negotiations that had to take place between Wembley stadium and the local authority on the clearance of litter, which was the subject of a section 106 agreement when the stadium was rebuilt. However, not all the stadiums in London are being rebuilt so separate agreements had to be reached with those bodies. It is quite right and should be accepted that huge amounts of litter are generated by sporting events, so why should local council tax payers have to bear the cost of the litter dumped by visitors to stadiums? Voluntary agreements have been reached and my understanding—I am happy to be corrected if I am wrong—is that they have been adhered to thus far and fully implemented across London.
After the general election, the Department for Transport raised a number of new issues with the Bill that required the promoters to give detailed consideration to the drafting in some other respects. The Department asked the promoters not to hold Second Reading in this House until they had responded in detail to those points, hence there was a further delay while the points were ironed out and notice was given of Second Reading last July. Second Reading was objected to by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) and others.
It became clear at that point that clause 17, which relates to pedicabs, was the subject of strong opposition from all sides, in particular the pedicab industry on the one hand and parts of the taxi trade on the other. Petitions were deposited against the pedicab clauses by pedicab operators, taxi driver representatives and the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers. Essentially, one side wanted stronger clauses whereas the other side wanted no clauses at all. Following further discussion between the promoters and the pedicab industry, the promoters have decided that they will not proceed further with clause 17 and they will ask that the Bill is amended in Committee to remove it. In those discussions, it has been agreed that the pedicab industry will take steps towards self-regulation. After that, it will be monitored to see whether self-regulation achieves the requirements. The promoters have been working with the pedicab industry to achieve that and, consequently, propose to withdraw the provisions from the Bill.
Bob Blackman
I understand that the Bill’s promoters will submit that in Committee for the inspection of those who wish to see it. I know that the promoters have written to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), who have specific concerns about clause 17, to inform them of the position.
Let me address the clauses that will be implemented, which cover seven distinct subjects. Clauses 4 and 5 will enable London authorities to attach street lamps and signs to buildings without requiring the consent of their owner or occupier. This will bring the rest of London into line with the City, where the City of London corporation already has those powers. The intention is to avoid cluttering streets with more and more street furniture; that is a particular concern right across London. In response to the points made by the then Minister, the right hon. Member for Doncaster Central (Ms Winterton), in her report to Parliament on human rights, the promoters have amended the Bill. Subsections (3) to (7) of clause 4 now require authorities to serve notice on the owner of the building in question and to take any representations into account. Also, subsection (12) requires authorities to come forward with a statutory code of practice on the exercise of the powers. The provisions on compensation have also been amended in favour of the property owner. Leading counsel’s opinion on the compatibility of part 2 with the European convention on human rights has been obtained by the promoters, and she is satisfied that it is compliant.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend has not mentioned the petition against the Bill that has been put forward by the Society of London Theatre and the Theatrical Management Association. Are the promoters going to give any further concessions as a result of the concerns that those two organisations continue to express?
Bob Blackman
The promoters agreed to introduce proposals in Committee to exempt theatres from the legislation so that no street furniture will be adhered to such buildings, because of the nature and type of buildings concerned. I trust that my hon. Friend will be satisfied that that particular objection will be fully answered and that no further action will be taken.
Clauses 6 and 7, which deal with damage to highways, are uncontroversial. They will enable London authorities to recover the cost of repairs to the carriageway—not just the footway as the current law provides—where damage is caused by construction traffic. The measures will also enable them to require by way of a planning condition a deposit before construction work commences. That will be warmly welcomed across London, where construction traffic frequently causes damage not only to footways but to the public highway. It is often very difficult for local authorities to recover funding for dealing with that.
Bob Blackman
One of the key concerns about damage to highways and footways across London from construction work is about recovering the costs of repair, which otherwise have to be borne by local council tax payers. Those costs should properly be charged to the firms carrying out the work—hence the rationale. However, I will refer my hon. Friend’s comments to the promoters to make sure that this issue is clarified in Committee.
Part 3 concerns builders’ skips and its main purpose is to decriminalise offences relating to such skips, such as putting them out without a licence or not properly lighting or protecting them. Such actions are a menace to road users of all types and the Bill enables the highway authority to require information about who the owner of the skip is in order to determine on whom penalty charge notices should be served. Clause 10 provides that the owner of the builder’s skip will be liable to pay any penalty charge arising from a contravention. Representations may be made against the imposition of penalty charges, and appeals made to an adjudicator, much like the existing parking regime in London.
Part 3 will also alter the powers of the highway authority to place conditions on giving permission for placing a skip on the highway and enable the authority to insist that the skip have lights or a guard, or a system of guarding, as an integral part of the skip. Once again, that is a key part of ensuring the safety of all road users.
Bob Blackman
The key point, which is clear, is that that is a criminal offence and subject to enforcement by the police nationally. The purpose behind the measure is to get to a position whereby the local authorities can impose those penalties and ensure that they are properly and effectively enforced so as to prevent people from committing quite serious offences. This sensible measure, taken in London, might eventually be rolled out across the country. We are talking about what should happen in London.
Bob Blackman
To clarify, the position is that these are already offences in law. However, as things stand, there is no capability for local authorities to do anything about them or take enforcement action in London. The purpose behind these measures is to enable local authorities to enforce the rules and ensure that penalties are served on those who indiscriminately place skips on the public highway outwith the proper conditions, without proper protection and without proper lighting. The difficulty that a number of London authorities have is pursuing skip owners. Unfortunately, not all skip companies write their name and phone number on the side of their skips. Identifying who is responsible for a skip is often a challenge. These clauses will help to clarify that and give local authorities the ability to deal with those skips. As to how they will be immobilised, I look forward to seeing diagrams of the ingenious devices that will be produced.
Mr Chope
It is inherent in what my hon. Friend says that the police are able to deal perfectly adequately with the problem of skips right across the country. Why do London authorities think they need a completely different regime for dealing with skips, when up to now the police have been quite competent at doing so?
Bob Blackman
I am not one to criticise the police—far from it. The police do a wonderful job in this country. However, I do not want the Metropolitan police to spend their time pursuing skip owners and people who indiscriminately leave skips on the public highway. I would much rather the police were pursuing burglars, muggers and violent criminals, than people who had committed such an offence on the public highway. The measure is much in keeping with the decriminalisation of car parking that was carried out a number of years ago, which led to local authorities imposing car parking controls and ensuring that penalty notices are properly served and car parking restrictions are properly implemented.
Mr Chope
If there is a case for decriminalisation, surely the best way of proceeding would be for the Government to introduce national public legislation enabling local authorities to enter into decriminalisation of these offences if they wish, instead of the piecemeal bottom-up job that my hon. Friend is trying to promote.
Bob Blackman
I thank my hon. Friend for the intervention. I have no objection to the Government coming forward with legislation. I am sponsoring the measure on behalf of London authorities, which all agree that this is a severe problem in London. It may well be that in my hon. Friend’s constituency there is a problem, in which case he can promote suitable legislation there. This is all about proper localism. As I suggested earlier, in the fulness of time other local authorities may also lobby the Government for such measures. This is all about implementing a measure in London, trying it out and possibly rolling it out across the country, as I suggested earlier.
Clause 16 deals with interference with barriers and makes it an offence to open, close or interfere, without lawful excuse, with a barrier that is erected by a traffic authority that is intended to prevent the passage of vehicles or any class of vehicles into, out of or along a highway. There has been no objection to this sensible measure. A number of roads in London are closed off for normal purposes, but there is a requirement that barriers should be movable for emergency vehicles to gain access. Unfortunately, because barriers can be moved, unscrupulous individuals tend to move them. The clause would make it an offence to do so unless one is a proper person duly qualified by the highway authority to do so.
There have been substantial objections to clause 17, which deals with pedicabs. The promoters will seek to drop the clause in Committee. Despite that, there have been a large number of objections. Hon. Members who have been to the west end recently will almost certainly be familiar with pedicabs. They are sometimes known as bicycle rickshaws. They usually consist of a large tricycle with an open carrying cabin to the rear for passengers. They operate to all intents and purposes like taxis, charging fares for what are usually short journeys. They are found mostly in the west end of London and they are currently not regulated in London at all. They give rise to a number of problems, which have been the concern of the promoters and others.
The promoters have decided to ask the Bill Committee to remove clause 17. None the less, I should briefly explain what it would have done. The clause relates solely to traffic management; it does not deal with the safety of pedicabs or the fitness of their drivers—believe me, pedicab drivers have to be fit. The clause would have assisted the councils and TfL in identifying the owner of a pedicab and enabled them to serve a penalty charge notice when a parking or moving traffic offence had been committed.
The clause would have operated only if the councils or TfL already had arrangements in place for a voluntary registration scheme for pedicab owners or if a separate statutory licensing scheme had been enacted. That is because such a scheme would undoubtedly require pedicabs to display some sort of plate that could be used to identify the owner. The clause, in itself, would not have set up a statutory licensing or registration scheme, although there is of course a demand for that in some parts of London. An attempt to introduce a statutory registration system was made in a previous London Local Authorities and Transport for London Bill, but it was rejected by the Committee on that occasion.
Two pedicab companies, Bugbugs and Reliable Rickshaws, have petitioned against the clause, as have the London Cab Drivers Club and the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, which represents taxi drivers. As hon. Members can guess, the petitioners have very different views about the merits of the pedicab trade but are united in their opposition to the clause. Hopefully, the proposed withdrawal of the clause will appease all those who objected, but it will probably satisfy none of them.
Bob Blackman
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I think that a voluntary system of regulation is needed and should be attempted. If such a system does not work, I am sure that we will return to the matter in a further such Bill in future.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend will know from looking at these petitions that as long ago as 2003, on the application of Robert David Oddy v. Bugbugs Ltd, the courts suggested that primary legislation would be required. Is he of that opinion? If so, would he suggest that it should apply right across the country, and why does he not start putting pressure on the Government to bring forward that legislation?
Bob Blackman
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Pedicabs are almost unique to the west end of London; I have not heard of or seen any pedicabs anywhere else in this country. In the due fulness of time there may be a requirement to regulate pedicabs throughout the country, but at this point it is specifically a London issue and specific to a distinct part of London.
It is therefore for London local authorities and for TFL to determine what they are going to do. They have responded to London cab drivers and to various aspects of the taxi driver lobby, who share the view of the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) about the pedicab trade, but equally they have understood that the pedicab trade itself has responded in a very—[Interruption.] Ah! The hon. Member for Ealing North is present. The pedicab trade itself has responded by saying that it is being unfairly treated, but we will have to see whether the voluntary system works, and if it does not we will have to return to primary legislation.
Part 5 refers to charging points for electric vehicles and enables London authorities to provide and operate charging apparatus for electrically powered motor vehicles on highways and to permit third parties to do so. The clauses in part 5 set out the procedures for that provision and create an offence of the unlawful use of charging points.
The number of electric vehicles has increased rapidly since the Bill was first thought of some six years ago, and the Government are very much in favour of encouraging their use. I strongly support the use of electric cars and look forward to their being the principal cars on the roads in London in the not too distant future. The Mayor of London has made it a priority to encourage electric vehicles on our roads, and there has been no opposition whatever to part 5, except from the Society of London Theatre, which was concerned about points being placed directly outside theatres.
Bob Blackman
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. The location of the electric charging points, which is the nub of his intervention, will be the subject of appropriate consideration. It would be foolish in the extreme to site electric charging points where there were going to be huge crowds. I cannot imagine, for example, electric vehicles being charged up outside football stadiums, where crowds would be charging over them. That would not be a sensible siting, and that is why we want sufficient electric charging points to coincide with parking meters, where people are allowed to park, so that, instead, they are legitimately able and permitted to park, they can charge their vehicles at the same time and they can be charged by the local authority for the electricity that they use.
Mr Chope
Following the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Mr Scott) made, does my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) accept that planning would be a much better regime with which to control the location of such charging points? Why should one not have to obtain planning permission if one wants to install a charging point in a particular place on the highway?
Bob Blackman
My hon. Friend is a great supporter of deregulation and of reducing the burden on business, but I cannot think of anything more cumbersome than having to obtain planning permission for an electric charging point on the highway. I can just imagine the extended time that that would take. The proposal will allow London local authorities to introduce such charging points in sensible and appropriate places, where the public can access them easily and we can encourage the use of clean, green electric vehicles.
I hope that my very brief outline of the provisions of this worthy Bill has persuaded hon. Members of the merits of giving it a Second Reading and minimised the necessity for an extended debate.
John McDonnell
That is exactly the point. Clause 17 is being removed from the Bill because it is not satisfactory. It does not address the issues that were pointed out to the promoters by the Department for Transport and the Opposed Bill Committee of this House. We are now faced with a free-for-all out there on the streets of London, where there are vehicles that comply with none of the legislation that licenses and authorises every other vehicle on our roads. I find that unsatisfactory. It leaves Londoners at risk.
No commitments have been given on how the voluntary arrangements will be devised or who will be consulted. Will all the petitioners against the licensing clause in the Bill be consulted? Will they be engaged in drafting the voluntary registration and regulation scheme? Will there be a wider consultation with the general public? How will the consultation take place and over what period? How long will self-regulation be allowed to operate before the Government decide whether to move to a full licensing regime? None of that has been made clear by the promoters of the Bill.
Like other hon. Members, I find this situation unacceptable. We have been discussing this matter since 2003. Nine years on, we still have no licensing regime and no concept of how the self-regulation regime will be developed and consulted on, how it will be tested, what criteria it will be tested against and when the House will address the issue again.
John McDonnell
Apart from there being too many, as I heard one hon. Member say from a sedentary position, nobody knows how many pedicabs there are, how many people are involved in the industry, how many companies or operations there are, or how many passengers there are. Also, nobody knows how many complaints have been made against the operation of these rickshaws. All we know is that when proposals have been made to discuss pedicabs and their regulation, a considerable amount of concern has been expressed about their operation and about how they should be regulated, if they are to be allowed to continue at all.
There is now strong concern and we are in the worst of all worlds. There is a free for all with no regulation, no licensing and no understanding of how voluntary regulation will work. These pedicabs are out there operating and it is making people vulnerable. There is growing concern and anger not just among taxi drivers but among other road users in the centre of London about the unrestrained way in which pedicab operators work—not only how they pedal through the streets but how they park and clutter up the streets. In some ways, they also affect west end businesses. As much as they say they benefit businesses in the west end and passengers travelling around the area, the more they clutter the streets the more they impede business.
I am pleased that the clause on pedicabs is being withdrawn, but the Government need to take action either to close down pedicab operations, because of the real concern about their safety, or to bring forward a proper licensing and regulation regime. If such a regime is introduced, it should be no less stringent than the one on the black cab trade in London; otherwise, it will undermine fair competition.
I have read into the record the intended withdrawal of clause 17, and if the promoters of the Bill are now going to enter into discussions about self-regulation, I urge them to contact all Members who have expressed concerns about the operation of pedicabs and engage us in a full consultation. In that way, we might find a way forward. After all these years, I would have hoped that the promoters had learned some lessons about how to legislate properly rather than continuing in the same way.
Mr Nuttall
I have not yet reached the subject of gated roads, but it is probably possible to pick at random a part of the Bill that creates a new offence, rule or law, to which is attached a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale.
As my hon. Friend says, there are gated roads all over the country, and if that is a problem in the capital city of our great country, it is no doubt just as likely to be a problem on a country road somewhere out in the shires. If the correct way of dealing with the problem is to introduce legislation that creates a criminal offence—which is what we are doing here—it is surely correct to deal with it by means of legislation that covers the whole country, not just the capital.
Many things have happened since the Bill’s introduction in the other place as long ago as 27 November 2007, four and a quarter years ago. For instance, we have had a general election, and the Localism Bill—now the Localism Act 2011—received Royal Assent on 15 November last year. I am sure that several London local authorities have undergone a change of political control since 2007, and I wonder to what extent the promoters of the Bill considered those changes.
The Localism Act gives local authorities a general power of competence. It has completely changed the regime in which authorities operate: they no longer have to seek specific authority from this place to go off and do something, because the Act allows them to do it unless another Act tells them that they cannot. To what extent has that been taken into account by the promoters? Moreover, residents have been given the power to institute local referendums. If this is the problem that some Members think it is—as we heard earlier—I am sure that some residents will be hot on the heels of local councillors with petitions asking for something to be done about it.
After many years of delay, things speeded up after the Bill’s Third Reading in the House of Lords on 28 March 2011, and it appears to have been given its First Reading in this House on the same day. I believe that that is the only occasion on which anything to do with this Bill has ever happened speedily. It has, however, attracted four new petitions, from Bugbugs Media Ltd, Reliable Rickshaws Ltd, the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, the Society of London Theatre, the Theatrical Management Association, and the London Cab Drivers Club. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East said, the promoters of the Bill managed to achieve the rare feat of upsetting the petitioners on both sides. They could not really win. Whatever they did, they were bound to upset somebody. I suspect they have probably reached the right conclusion by deciding to upset both sides and withdraw clause 17.
Let us return to the question of the cost to the London council tax payer. The organisations concerned—private limited companies, trade bodies and, indeed, trade unions—have been put to expense in having to raise these petitions. I dare say the solicitors and parliamentary agents were not acting for nothing; they could have been acting on a pro bono basis, and if they were I am sure someone will rise to tell me so—but the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington is not doing so. I therefore assume these people were being paid rather handsomely for their good services. These Bills are by no means a no-cost option, therefore.
Over the past four years there has been an attrition rate of four clauses per year. However, only 10 minutes after the start of the opening speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East, we heard that another clause is to go. We have made good progress, therefore: the first clause went in 10 minutes. If we carry on at this rate, the Bill will be gone in a couple of days—but if we carry on at the same rate as things have been moving since the Bill started its life, we may, sadly, have to wait another six years before it withers away to its natural end.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend makes an important point. If this Bill had not been objected to and had instead received its Second Reading on the nod, it would not have been possible for its promoters to reflect upon clause 17 on pedicabs, for example. They have now had the opportunity to reflect on that, and have reached a different conclusion from their original one.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend is right. What has happened with this Bill gives the lie to the notion that these proceedings are meaningless and we are just going through the motions. Although only 11 Lords were involved in the proceedings in the other place, very substantial changes have been made to the Bill, and we do not know what might happen after the Bill has been examined in more detail. The three hours that have so far been allocated to Second Reading may well turn out to be rather brief when one considers the history of this matter and how long it has already been going on and what little progress has been made in four years. Any thoughts the promoters might have that a Third Reading could be concluded within three hours may prove to be somewhat optimistic.
We heard in the opening speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East that despite the fact that the Bill has been on the go for so many years, there are still a number of areas where we have no idea what is being put before us. There is no draft of the agreement relating to the affixing of lamps to theatres. There is no draft of the code. There is no idea of how skips are going to be immobilised. I would have thought after all these years, such basic points would have been covered and the details would be before us tonight.
It seems to me that the Bill is half-cooked and the simplest thing at this stage would be for the promoters to withdraw it and for it to be reconsidered in the light of the Localism Act 2011, the comments made in the other place, the reservations expressed by the Government and the comments that I shall now make.
The Bill is down to just six parts. Part 1 deals with preliminary matters, part 2 effectively deals with the attachment of street lamps and signs to buildings and damage to highways as a consequence of adjacent works, part 3 deals with the law relating to builders’ skips, part 4 deals with two matters to do with road traffic—that is, gated roads, which were referred to in an intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), and pedicabs—part 5 deals with charging points for electric vehicles and part 6 deals with the London Local Authorities and Transport for London Act 2008.
Part 1 contains the standard preamble, giving details of when the Bill will take effect, and states that the Bill
“may be cited as the London Local Authorities and Transport for London Act 2009”—
but perhaps 2012 might be optimistic. I shall therefore deal with the provisions on the attachment of street lamps and signs to buildings in part 2, which is the first substantive aspect of the Bill. The explanatory memorandum, which the promoters have helpfully provided, states that clauses 4 and 5 would alter the London authorities’ existing powers to attach street lamps and traffic signs to buildings by bringing them more in line with those of the City of London corporation. It is a “decluttering” measure, making it easier for the authorities to require that signs and lamps are attached to buildings. I would submit that it is not so much a decluttering measure as a moving of clutter from one part of the highway to another in such a way that there might well be some practical difficulties with how it operates.
The requirement in clause 4(4) is:
“Not less than 56 days before the London authority propose to begin the work to affix an attachment or a traffic sign to a building they shall serve notice in writing on the relevant owner of the building of their proposal to affix it.”
Of course, the owner might not necessarily be the occupier of the building. The Bill is silent, as far as I can see, about the definition of an owner. I would submit that the owner would be the owner of the freehold, but I can understand that someone might argue that the owner could be taken to mean a leaseholder or tenant of the building. There might therefore be some legal argument about that clause, which I suspect will need to be considered in more detail in Committee.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend will have heard what our hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) said about the promoters’ intention to offer an exemption from clauses 4 and 5 for the Society of London Theatre and the Theatrical Management Association. Does he think that that exemption needs to go much wider than just the organisations that have petitioned against the Bill because the points that they make about natural justice and listed buildings could apply to a much larger group of building owners than that particular group of theatre owners?
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes a welcome and interesting observation. It seems to me that the theatres are being given special treatment because they have particularly deep pockets. They have been able to employ parliamentary agents to prepare and submit a petition, which is before the House, and they have been using a firm in Westminster to prepare representations regarding their concerns. There is a danger that other owners of buildings in London may be somewhat jealous of the fact that London theatres have managed to wangle an exemption from the measures for themselves which many others would no doubt welcome if they could benefit from it. That raises the pertinent point that if it is appropriate for the London theatres to be exempt, why is it not appropriate for other buildings to be exempt?
We know from the petition, dated 26 April 2011, that the Society of London Theatre and the Theatrical Management Association are concerned about the effect that the measures could have on their members. They quoted the Wyndham report, which studied the economic impact of London’s west end theatres. Tony Travers of the London School of Economics was commissioned to do the report, which revealed, in 1998, that the total economic impact of west end theatre on the UK economy had been £1.1 billion in the previous year. More recent data imply that the figure is now approaching £1.5 billion. Some 41,000 jobs depend on west end theatre—27,000 directly and 14,000 indirectly. Those organisations went on to say that, crucially, they operate on very tight profit margins and that anything that could add to those costs is a matter of concern. I am sure that many other organisations and bodies throughout the capital city would say, “Those concerns apply to us as well. We operate on tight margins and anything that might add to our costs would be extremely detrimental.” It is therefore difficult to see at first sight why west end theatres should be treated differently from other organisations that have not petitioned the House in the way that those societies did. Equally, however, one could say that they took the time and trouble to do so and therefore it is only right that they should be granted some form of special treatment.
Mr Nuttall
Yes. I hope that, when the time comes to consider the clause in Committee, some explanation for that is given. Perhaps the code of practice will be available at that stage. It is perhaps a matter of some regret that that document is not available for consideration by the House today to enable us to see how effective that particular code is likely to be.
That deals with clause 4, very briefly. Clauses 6 and 7 deal with damage to the highway caused in consequence of works done on land adjacent to the highway. At first sight, I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East that it seems perfectly reasonable that the taxpayer should not be required to pay for damage caused to the public road by those carrying out works on land adjacent to the road, but I wonder whether there is not a better way to do that. I am particularly concerned about small builders, and perhaps people who are not builders at all, but who own land and are carrying out the works themselves. It might come as a surprise to them when they apply for planning permission to build a small extension on their property that they are asked to stump up before commencement of the works in case any damage might be caused to the highway, when the chances are that, although that is a possibility, it will not happen.
I am pleased that clause 7 now appears in the Bill.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Norman Baker)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) on his succinct contribution, which demonstrates that it is possible to get a large number of points across eloquently within a short period of time. I congratulate the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) on moving the Second Reading of this private Bill and welcome the opportunity of this debate.
I want to make it clear from the start that the Government do not oppose the principle behind the Bill. However, we have some reservations about some of the powers set out in the Bill as currently drafted. Officials from the Department for Transport are currently in discussions with TfL on these provisions, and I look forward to a more detailed examination of them in Committee.
As the hon. Member for Harrow East set out, the Bill would confer a variety of powers on TfL and London local authorities, the promoters. For example, they could provide electric vehicle charging points and recover costs from developers for damage to highways following remedial works. The Government have already notified the promoters of some clauses that could be improved or altered by minor amendments, particularly those relating to the attaching of street furniture, such as lamps and traffic signs, to buildings and the terms of usage of electric vehicle charging points.
Pedicabs were discussed, and it might be useful for the House to know that I asked the Law Commission to carry out a review of the rather convoluted and confused legislation relating to taxis and private hire vehicles, which it has agreed to do. As part of that review, it will also consider the law in respect of pedicabs, so there will be national consideration of the matter.
Norman Baker
The Law Commission is currently holding an open consultation, to which the hon. Gentleman and others can doubtless contribute if they wish, and it will come forward with recommendations later in this Parliament on what in the way of legislation the Government should take forward.
We should also like to ensure that the financial and resource burdens that the new provisions might create for the justice system are properly assessed. The Government will in preparation for Committee seek to reach agreement on amendments with the Bill’s promoters.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the Minister, who I am surprised was so brief, because this is an important measure. As he said, his Department and the Government generally are still looking at the detail of it, because they have not had sufficient time to do so hitherto—as the Bill was first brought forward only in 2008. They are therefore pleading with the House tonight, “Please give us a bit more time for further detailed consideration,” and then, when the Bill goes into the Opposed Bill Committee, they will be able to decide exactly what they want.
Given that the Bill’s sponsor, our hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), whom I congratulate on having been given the accolade and responsibility for taking it through the House, has already said that he will seek in Committee to withdraw clause 17, which relates to pedicabs, and given that the Minister himself referred to the prospect of the Law Commission carrying out a review, it seems that if the Bill takes the normal course of such legislation, it will, when it leaves Committee and returns to the House, no longer contain any provisions relating to pedicabs. That is why I begin my main remarks by referring to the pedicabs issue, which raises an enormous amount of interest in London. I have to admit that I have never travelled in one, but I am conscious of the fact that they are among the most environmentally friendly forms of transport—even more so than electrically propelled motor vehicles, which are also dealt with in the Bill.
I note from the evidence that the pedicab industry has produced that most pedicab drivers are self-employed entrepreneurs serving the interests of the people of London and now, as we have heard, of other parts of the country. They have developed a business that meets the needs of the public, and done so totally outside the sphere of regulation, except that pedicabs are propelled by bicycles, which are subject to regulation under the Road Traffic Act 1991 and the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984.
Pedicabs themselves are not subject to any specific regulation, but this Bill, when it was brought forward, contained definitions of pedicabs which were offensive to everybody: offensive to the taxi trade, to the pedicab industry and, probably, to the people of London—if they applied their minds to the matter. I note that it is now proposed that the pedicab industry should engage in self-regulation and that the promoters of the Bill are making specific arrangements with the pedicab industry to encourage that approach. However, is that consistent with what has taken place before? The hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) was particularly brief in his remarks.
Mr Chope
Perhaps. That might be because the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse did not want to draw the House’s attention to the fact that the issue of pedicabs was raised when his party was in government and the House was considering the London Local Authorities and Transport for London Bill 2004-05 to 2007-08. I think that I am right in saying that he was a member of the Government at the time. On that occasion, the Government said:
“The clauses relating to pedicabs did not address the concerns the Government had about passenger safety. The clauses made no provision for any minimum standards to be applied to or for any checks to be carried out on pedicabs, their riders, or their operators, nor for any training to be required or for a registration to be refused, suspended or revoked. The Government pointed out that the registration of pedicabs under these clauses could be mistakenly viewed by the public as an endorsement of the vehicle's basic roadworthiness and the character of the rider.”
The then Government took the view that there was a serious problem that needed to be addressed and that the private legislation was not going far enough. Tonight, the Opposition seem to be taking the line that it is probably a good idea to withdraw even the proposals in this Bill relating to pedicabs.
Jim Fitzpatrick
In my very brief comments, I said, as I did in my intervention on the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), that I was disappointed that the issue of pedicabs was not being addressed. There is a challenge here. Were pedicabs to be endorsed by the legislation, people might feel them to be safe, but were they to be scrutinised through the legislation, people would have every expectation that that would make them safe.
Mr Chope
I am trying to interpret what the hon. Gentleman has said. I know that he is probably walking a proverbial tightrope, but he seems to be saying that he would like the provisions on pedicabs to remain in the Bill and objects to their being taken out in Committee. Is that the right interpretation, or would he like the different interest groups, whether they be pedicab supporters or taxi drivers, to interpret his remarks as neutral?
Jim Fitzpatrick
I think that what I said was that we look forward to the Bill going into Committee so that we can look at these matters in some detail.
Mr Chope
Okay. I hope that the hon. Gentleman has the privilege of serving on the Committee so that he can get down to that necessary detail.
On a serious note, if pedicabs are a problem in London—I am not conceding that they are—then the problem will also be apparent elsewhere in the country in many other cities, if not now, then perhaps in future. Apparently pedicabs are already operating in Oxford. Surely that makes the case for saying that if we are going to do anything about pedicabs, it should be in the form of national legislation. That is why I welcome the Minister’s announcement that the matter will be the subject of consideration by the Government, perhaps with a view to legislation if necessary, or if recommended by the Law Commission, later in this Parliament. That is obviously an addendum to the coalition agreement of which we should all take note for the purposes of tonight’s proceedings.
Having dealt with the issue of pedicabs, I think that we must congratulate the pedicab industry on having thrived without regulation for so long. I am sure that it will play an important part in ensuring that those who come to London for the Olympic games later this year will be able to access transport to suit their needs at the time of night when they want it. I suspect that the pedicab industry would never have developed in London in the way that it has if there had been more licensed black cabs operating in the early hours of the morning, when people cannot find a black cab for love nor money in the centre of London. The pedicab industry has filled that vacuum.
I will now return to clauses 4 and 5. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) made some important points about those provisions. I referred in interventions to the petition from the Society of London Theatre and the Theatrical Management Association. Those two organisations think that clauses 4 and 5 are framed far too widely and that they do not provide people with a sufficient opportunity to have their representations considered.
Paragraph 16 of the petition states that the Bill
“ought to include provision to ensure that where a building owner does make representations in response to a proposal by a London Authority to affix a street lamp or traffic sign to a building, those representations ought fairly to be considered by an independent third party before the London Authority should be allowed to proceed. Furthermore, the London Authority should be required to explain its response to the representations and the grounds upon which it has come to its decision to proceed with its proposal under clause 4(6)(a) or (b).”
That is an important concern. It applies not only to theatre owners, but to building owners throughout London who will potentially be affected by clauses 4 and 5. I hope that when the matter is considered in Committee, the promoters will ensure that those safeguards are written in and that it is not just the Society of London Theatre that is given an exemption.
Similarly, paragraph 17 of the petition, states:
“your Petitioners respectfully submit that the Bill should further specify how these provisions will affect West End theatres, particularly those which are also listed buildings.”
I do not think that it is only listed theatre buildings that should be the subject of concern, but all listed buildings. I hope, likewise, that that point is taken on board by the hon. Members who have the privilege of serving on the Opposed Bill Committee.
Second Reading is an opportunity to flag up issues that, were the Bill to make further progress, might be the subject of more detailed consideration through amendments on Report, if not in Committee. Without wishing to detain the House for a great length of time, perhaps I can help by drawing attention to one or two issues that I think are worthy of more detailed consideration, if not this evening, then on a subsequent occasion.
The first issue is that of builders’ skips, which is the subject of part 3. A whole part of the Bill is given over to the issue of builders’ skips. People who are following the proceedings of this esteemed House of Commons may wonder why we should spend valuable time discussing decriminalising offences under section 139 of the Highways Act 1980 on a piecemeal basis. Surely it would be much better for the Government to bring forward primary legislation to enable local authorities that so wished to decriminalise those offences. That is exactly the same regime that is operated in relation to parking offences. In effect, local authorities can opt into the decriminalised regime if they so wish.
The precedent that the Bill would set, on which the Minister did not comment, would be that any local authority wishing to decriminalise offences—or in due course any police and crime commissioner who thought that decriminalisation would be a good idea—would have to promote a private Bill. Surely that does not make much sense.
Philip Davies
While my hon. Friend is on the subject of skips, I am sure it has not escaped his notice that as the Bill stands, if a skip is hired out to a person who breaches the provisions of the Bill, it will be not the person who has hired the skip but its owner who is pursued by the local authority. Even though the owner may not have been the person committing the offence, they will still be pursued. They will have to go through the bureaucratic nightmare of trying to recover their costs from the person who perpetrated the offence. Does he not think that that is nonsense?
Mr Chope
I do, and when my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) referred to the debate on Third Reading in the other place on 28 March 2011, he did not mention what Lord Jenkin of Roding said about the concerns about clause 9(5). He said that it
“provides for a defence of knowingly giving false information about the identity of the owner of a skip. There has to be some way of enforcing Clause 9, which enables the authorities to obtain from the skip company the name and address of the person on whom they can serve a penalty charge notice. If not, the authorities will end up in a position where the whole of Part 3 will be unenforceable.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 28 March 2011; Vol. 726, c. 1027.]
At the moment, as I indicated in an intervention, we are not aware that the police have any problem whatever in enforcing the provisions of section 139 of the 1980 Act. One wonders why the London authorities are so keen to take on enforcement provisions for themselves and are not content with the existing law, with all the safeguards that were incorporated in it when it was considered as primary legislation by both Houses.
I have referred to the Third Reading debate in the other place, and I note the sad news of the recent death of my late noble Friend Lord St John of Fawsley. It is worth reminding the House that he was a man of great wit, with plenty of good stories. One of them was set out in that debate. I will not read it out, but I do not think it would be out of order for me to recall that he told their lordships of the time he was appointed chairman of the Royal Fine Art Commission by Lord Jenkin of Roding. He said that he held that position for 15 years,
“until the whole of the commission was abolished by fax. Not even the Vatican in its worst days would behave in such a way. When the Orthodox Church got rid of the Orthodox Archbishop of London, it did so by fax. However, it provided a charge: namely, that he coveted thrones.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 28 March 2011; Vol. 726, c. 1030.]
It is therefore not only in this House that we allow ourselves diversions and indulgences in proceedings on private Bills—they certainly allow them in the other place. The Chairman of Committees took the noble Lord to task only a few minutes later, but, bearing in mind the sad news of his death, I thought it was worth sharing that with the House in case hon. Members have not been looking as carefully at the Official Report as some of us have been.
That brings me to the issue of gated roads and clause 16. The same point arises in clause 16 as arises in relation to other clauses. If we want to introduce criminal sanctions against a
“person who opens, closes or otherwise operates or interferes with a relevant barrier”,
they should apply across the country rather than just in London. That is an issue for the Government. We considered pedlars legislation at length in the previous Parliament, but this is the second Bill this Session in which the question of national or piecemeal, local legislation is a big issue.
Philip Davies
I do not wish to pre-empt my hon. Friend’s speech on Report, but the gated roads provision says that relevant barriers should not be operated or interfered with “without lawful excuse”. Does my hon. Friend have any idea—I do not see such an idea in the Bill—what constitutes a “lawful excuse” for interfering with a barrier?
Mr Chope
I would normally refer my hon. Friend to the terms of the Bill, but he is right to say that there is no reference in it to what is defined as a “lawful excuse”. The only virtue of clause 16 is that it is a short one, so it is easy for gifted amateurs to get to grips with it. There is no definition of a “lawful excuse”, so he is on to a good point and potential grounds for amendments when we have the opportunity to propose them.
As for clause 18, “Charging points for electric vehicles”, had I been asked to predict on which issues the Government and the promoters would have a difference of view, I would not have thought that was one of them. I was interested to hear from the Minister that the Government have concerns. I hope that they extend to why there should be a separate regime for charging points for electric vehicles in London from other parts of the country.
All sorts of things are set out in the clause about the permissions that can be granted, conditions that can be imposed, and charges that can be made. There are also references to the avoidance of liability. Despite all the powers that the London authorities would be willing to give to themselves, they would be keen to exculpate themselves from responsibility and liability, and to give themselves indemnity, as set out in the detail of clause 18, for injury, damage or loss resulting from the charging apparatus.
The mind boggles to think what uses people could make of the charging points if not to charge their electric vehicles. There is obviously sufficient concern, because there is a provision in clause 22 to create yet another new criminal offence—that of unlawful use of a charging point. The details are set out in the Bill, and I encourage my hon. Friends to acquaint themselves with them in case they should ever find themselves unwittingly on the wrong side of this new law, which the Bill’s promoters are so keen to impose on the body politic.
Mr Speaker, you can probably tell that I am full of enthusiasm for the Bill. In fact, I am full of enthusiasm about the prospect of submitting its contents to closer and greater scrutiny. I hope that, in due course, we will have a Bill that is a heck of a lot better than this one and which contains only powers for the local authorities and Transport for London that are needed, justified, reasonable and in accordance with the rule of law. I put those points on the record and thank colleagues who supported me in ensuring that we could debate the Bill on Second Reading, which would not have been possible had we not objected to it consistently over recent weeks and months.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time.