Business of the House (13 May)

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Wednesday 8th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I will follow on from my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope), who I thought made some fantastic points. However, I want to start by commending the Leader of the House for listening to the previous concerns and coming back with a revised motion. We are particularly grateful that she has been, as my hon. Friend said, a representative of the House. She has listened and come back, and I commend her for it.

None the less, I think my hon. Friend is absolutely right when he says that two hours is insufficient for this subject. This is not about the rights of Members of Parliament alone, although obviously it is to some extent. It is mainly about the rights of their constituents, who have a right to be represented in Parliament by the person they elected. The motion—I broadly support what is in it—is designed, in effect, to deliberately restrict the rights of those constituents to have their voice heard in Parliament. That is something that we in this House should interfere with only with great care, and certainly not on the back of a two-hour debate.

With a two-hour debate, by the time the Front Benchers have had a go, set out their stall and all of the rest of it, the time left for Back Benchers is limited. As anyone can see, the motion that has been tabled is quite extensive, with a number of different paragraphs, and eight amendments have been tabled, as my hon. Friend has said. If Front Benchers want to set out their views on the motion and address the amendments, how much time will Back Benchers get to speak? I suspect it will not be very long at all.

We are not really going to have time for a debate, but I think we saw earlier—through the exchanges of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch with my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips)—that there is quite a significant debate to be had, and people will have strong opinions on different sides of the argument. The whole point of being here is that we have a debate, and surely we can all see from this timetable that we are not going to have time for a proper debate. That cannot be right.

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch made this point about the business on Monday. I have no idea how long debate will last on the various regulations down for debate on Monday, on public procurement and agriculture, or how many urgent questions and statements there might be and all the rest of it, but it is not impossible to envisage that those debates will not last very long. We could be in the absurd situation where we have business on a Monday that is supposed to run until 10 o’clock but we rise early because the two-hour limit for this debate has been reached, with hours still to spare. Why on earth would we unnecessarily restrict the debate before the normal end of the sitting day? We should at least make it clear that we can go on until the normal end of the sitting day, if that comes later. Why can the motion not at least make clear that we could carry on until 10 o’clock?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Will my hon. Friend emphasise that the debate scheduled for Monday is not any ordinary debate? It is a debate to change the Standing Orders of the House. As was pointed out to me by Enoch Powell when I was first on the Procedure Committee in 1984, in the absence of a written constitution, the Standing Orders of this House are our constitution. Are we really saying that we should change our constitution in a time-limited debate this coming Monday?

[Sir Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. In some respects, I am perhaps arguing against my own self-interests here, because the changes that the Leader of the House has made to the motion mean that I am broadly content with it. I would prefer to see certain minor changes that we could perhaps tweak out, but there are probably other Members who do not like the changes that have been instituted since the measure last appeared before the House. Their opportunity to speak against those changes will now be severely curtailed, and that is unfortunate to say the least.

I simply ask that the Leader of the House think again about this measure. We can all see that two hours is not an adequate amount of time. There is scope to have more time for this debate on something that is of great importance to the rights of Members of Parliament, but mainly to their constituents, who want to be represented in this House by the people they have elected and for that to be curtailed only where necessary. I hope that the Leader of the House will indicate that she will not move this motion today, withdraw it and think again.

Heart and Circulatory Diseases: Premature Deaths

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Thursday 22nd February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen), as I often seem to in these debates, which often resemble Madame Tussauds: the same faces appear, time after time. As you will know, Madam Deputy Speaker, I have a reputation for brevity in my speeches, and I intend to support that reputation now.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Dean Russell) on securing this important and rather timely debate, and I echo the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire in saying that we enjoy seeing him looking so fit and healthy after the trauma that he had. This is a really important matter, and he is right to raise it today. As I highlighted in last month’s Westminster Hall debate on excess death trends, a recent article in The Lancet found that although the causes of ongoing excess deaths in the UK

“are likely to be multiple”,

Office for National Statistics data showed some clear trends—in particular, the “largest relative excess deaths” since the pandemic occurred in young and middle-aged adults, with the number of cardiac deaths happening outside hospitals being the most elevated. In other words, young and previously healthy people are dying at home from cardiac-related events, and we do not know why.

These are not just numbers and statistics—these are real people, loved ones, often from younger age groups, who are dying before their time. It is urgent and our duty to get to the bottom of the situation sooner rather than later. As I am sure we are all aware, there are many theories circulating about the causes of these excess deaths. One is the possibility of a causal link between the population-wide use of covid-19 vaccines and the marked increase in cardiovascular-related critical events, including heart attacks and strokes, among otherwise apparently healthy people. We do not know if that is the cause or not, because the data is not being released. Until certain data sets are released, it is impossible to rule that theory in or out.

That is why I, along with cross-party colleagues, wrote yesterday to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care; Professor Steven Riley, the director general for data at the UK Health Security Agency; and Dr Alison Cave, the chief safety officer at the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency. We warn that by withholding official data, the Department, UKHSA and MHRA are helping fuel concerns and hesitancy about public health. We have asked that anonymised record-level official mortality data be released, alongside vaccination dates, doses and co-morbidities, without delay. We understand that the MHRA has collected and already shared this data with pharmaceutical companies to enable those companies to produce post-authorisation safety studies for their products, so I see no reason why it cannot also be shared with parliamentarians and the public right away. Will the Minister say whether that data has been shared with pharmaceutical companies? If so, why is not being shared with the rest of us?

As the Minister surely realises, repetitive generic assurances that the Government and the UKHSA take excess deaths “seriously” and monitor them “constantly”, and that the MHRA have

“systems in place to continually monitor the safety of our medicines”—[Official Report, 16 January 2024; Vol. 743, c. 235WH.]

do not serve to reassure anybody at all. Likewise, the news from the Office for National Statistics this week that it has revised its excess deaths methodology, and that there are suddenly 20,000 fewer excess deaths last year, has done little to quell public concern. If anything, it has done the exact opposite: people cynically see it as a convenient sleight of hand.

As we say in our letter, if the Government and their agencies are not willing to share the data we have requested, will the Minister explain to us why not? We are all on the same side and want to look after people. We are all concerned to do the best we can for everybody, but until we have all the data, we just do not know what we do not know. If there is any potential that public health interventions, such as covid-19 vaccines, are causing harm and premature death to some, we must act on that without delay. If the evidence shows that that there is no issue, then it is in everybody’s interest for that reassurance to be in the public domain as quickly as possible.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

If that information was in the public domain, then the Prime Minister would have been able to answer the question that he was asked in the GB News interview the night before last.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right. It is in everybody’s interest that the information be in the public domain, so that we can reassure people, or at least let them know. Frankly, there is never any harm in giving people information and letting them make their own mind up about what has happened.

Opinions need to be put to one side, and the data need to be examined in the cold, hard light of day. Otherwise, we will do harm to people, and we will do even more and irreparable damage to trust in public health policy. I hope that the Minister will provide some reassurance that the data will be forthcoming as soon as possible, and that the Government do not give the impression that there is something to hide.

International Health Regulations 2005

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Monday 18th December 2023 Westminster Hall

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I was holding the book as I was about to quote from it, Dame Maria. I was not trying to advertise it, and I have not contributed to it, although I have to admit that it was given to me; I did not pay for it. However, so that I can put it down, and so that people do not have to look at me waving it around any more, I will get to the quote. On the WHO’s recommendation against ivermectin, Doctor Kory says:

“The corrupt anti-recommendation that followed read like this:

We recommend not to use ivermectin in patients with COVID-19 except in the context of a clinical trial. This recommendation applies to patients with any disease severity and any duration of symptoms. A recommendation to only use a drug in the setting of a clinical trials…is appropriate when there is very low certainty evidence and future research has a large potential for reducing uncertainty about the effects of the intervention and for doing so at reasonable cost.”

That recommendation was given in the knowledge, as a result of work that had been done that, there was an 81% reduced risk of dying. Indeed, the reason that India was very successful in reducing the number of deaths immediately after the pandemic started was that it was using ivermectin in extenso. In the eyes of Dr Kory, the WHO’s refusal to endorse a remedy or treatment contributed to the loss of

“millions of lives across the world.”

Those are quotes from his book, which I will now put down, Dame Maria.

When I first read about that aspect of the work of the WHO, and the way in which it had been corruptly influenced by drug companies that had a direct financial interest in discrediting ivermectin, it raised alarm bells. I thought, “Hang on a minute, why is the WHO engaged in this sort of activity?” I hope that the Government will start looking really seriously, and sceptically, at the work of the WHO, and at the extent to which it is unduly influenced by external factors. A lot of its work is not based on straight science, but is actually political. Reference has already been made to the fact that the WHO does not seem too interested in getting to the bottom of how covid-19 began. Did it begin in a laboratory in China? That narrative would not fit in with the WHO effectively being under the control of the Chinese Government.

[Philip Davies]

This comes back to the point that our hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) made so effectively. The WHO said, prematurely, that it was “extremely unlikely” that covid started from a lab leak. Then, over a year later, I think, the director general said there had been a “premature push” to rule out the lab leak theory. Does that not confirm the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) that there are clearly external factors at play when the WHO gives its advice, and that it should be treated with caution, not as gospel?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Absolutely, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing that to our attention.

Let us reflect for a minute on what other countries are doing. I would have thought that we were one of the proudest sovereign countries, determined to ensure that our Parliament retains control over these sorts of issues; but we seem to have been sidelined by Slovakia, Estonia and New Zealand. If those countries have already come out publicly with their scepticism about the process, why have our Government been sitting on their hands, not saying anything? Instead of being mum about this, I hope that our Government will now say, “By all means, let’s keep the WHO as a body that provides advice, but under no circumstances will we sign up to anything that will give them control over our lives.” It was bad enough that we effectively had a requirement in this country that people should take vaccines—that there was a vaccine mandate.

I spoke the other day to a constituent of mine who worked as an inspector of care homes. He was told that he would lose his job if he refused to be vaccinated; he still refused, and he lost his job. I am pleased to say that he won his case in the tribunal, but that was the sort of consequence for people who fell foul of vaccine mandates. The prospect that it would not be our Government telling people what vaccines they had to take, but rather some unaccountable, foreign international organisation, is even more disturbing.

These are really important issues, and I hope that my friends in Government will take them a lot more seriously than they seem to have done up to now. It is still not clear whether the Department of Health and Social Care or the Foreign Office is in charge of these issues. As has been said, we need to know who among the Ministers will get down to the detail, argue the toss, and ensure that the WHO continues as an organisation but does not take control of our lives.

[Sir George Howarth in the Chair]

I am pleased to see you in the Chair, Sir George. If I sit down now, we will have just shy of two hours in which to hear from the Front Benchers—it is significant that there does not seem to be any SNP spokesman here—on what action they will take to address the concerns of more than 100,000 petitioners on this subject, and a whole lot of other people besides.

Covid-19 Vaccine Damage Payments Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

2nd reading
Friday 20th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his generous comments. He himself has been a valuable member of the all-party parliamentary group on covid-19 vaccine damage, and he is right to say that many people—not just our constituents in this country, but people elsewhere—feel that they have been ignored by the powers that be. There is a glimmer of hope, in that during the public inquiry into covid-19, Lady Hallett, when discussing the terms of reference for what is called the fourth module of the inquiry—which will take place next July—seemed very much minded to deal with the issues that my hon. Friend has mentioned and about which I continue to be concerned.

In order to emphasise that this is not just a subject for the United Kingdom, let me mention a book that was published recently. I declare an interest, as one of the contributors. “Canary In a Covid World: How Propaganda and Censorship Changed Our (My) World” is described as

“A collection of essays from 34 contemporary thought leaders.”

In my own essay, I said a great deal about these issues, including about the failure of our own vaccine damage payment scheme to recognise that people had suffered harm and, in some cases, bereavement as a result of the vaccines. We could not, I said, continue to ignore these pressures. It was encouraging to learn about all that is happening in other parts of the world from contributors in Canada, the United States, the rest of Europe, Australia and New Zealand. I have here a House of Commons Library edition of the book, and I am going to return it to the Library, so if any other Members want to have a look at it, they can.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I commend my hon. Friend for all the sterling work he has done on behalf of the people who have been injured by the vaccine. May I return him to his point about the covid inquiry and what Baroness Hallett said? I would not want him to give the impression that that means the Government should be able to leave it to the inquiry to deal with this issue, given that it may not produce a full report for many years. People need compensation now. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government should adopt his proposal—which provides for a much shorter timescale—and get on with it, rather than using the inquiry as a get out of jail card?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend has anticipated what I was going to say later, namely that the Government need to take their head out of the sand and face up to the reality that this issue will be debated at the inquiry next year. People with the rights of audience have already made their preliminary statements. Would it not be so much better for the Government to undertake the action set out in the Bill now, rather than waiting for the inevitable next summer?

In a sense, the Government have been found out now: everybody realises that, contrary to the impression given for a long time, for some people—an unfortunate minority—the covid vaccines were very bad news. In some cases, they resulted in deaths and bereavements. The failure to face up to that is at the heart of my concern and led to my producing the Bill. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for sponsoring it.

Unlike many Bills that I have introduced in this place, this Bill has some explanatory notes, so people who look at it can see that what we are asking for is reasonable. It does not need legislation; all it needs is will on the part of the Government to act now and do the things set out in the explanatory notes.

As my hon. Friend said, this is an issue that will not go away, and it is now very much on the agenda. In the meantime, thousands of people have put in their claims, and those claims are being dealt with pitifully slowly. Only about half of them have been assessed. Some of the latest statistics that I have got—it is quite difficult to drill them out of the Government through parliamentary questions—say that, as of 19 September, 221 claims would have been successful on the basis of causation but fell short because they did not meet the 60% disability threshold, and 142 claims have been awarded because they did exceed the 60% threshold. That is 363 cases where it is accepted that the disabilities suffered are as a direct consequence of the vaccine. Is it not interesting that of those 221 claims that fell below the 60% disability threshold, some 116 would have exceeded a 20% threshold? Does that not show that the Government are being unreasonable in sticking to a 60% disability threshold, rather than reducing the threshold in the way that I suggest in the Bill?

In the response to parliamentary question 199355, which I received on 19 September, I was told:

“From 1 October 2021 to 1 September 2023…6,809 claims relating to COVID-19 vaccinations”

had been made under the scheme,

“and 251 claims relating to vaccines for other illnesses”,

including 15 for measles, mumps and rubella.

I think most reasonable people would say that the alarm bells should be ringing very strongly, because almost all the claims that the vaccine damage payment scheme has received in the last two years have been in relation to covid-19 vaccines. There have been hardly any in relation to MMR—15, as against 6,809—and failing to deal adequately with those 6,809 claims is actually undermining the case of vaccine confidence. As a consequence, we are seeing a lower take-up of vaccines. People do not trust the vaccines and do not trust the Government, and their lack of trust is centred around the way in which the Government have responded—or failed to respond—to the vaccine damage that has resulted from covid-19 vaccines. This is a very serious issue.

This is a serious issue. I just hope that the Minister will be rather more forthcoming in her response than she and her predecessors have been in the past. We have not really got beyond the point of the Government accepting that people have died or suffered serious injury as a result of the vaccines.

[Philip Davies]

I am sure that my hon. Friend will come on to this point, and I do not want to steal his thunder. However, the authorities are now accepting that people have been damaged. They would not be making these payments unless they accepted that damage had actually taken place. Nevertheless, in some cases the compensation being given does not cover the costs of dealing with the disabilities that people have as a consequence. Given how the Government coerced people into taking the covid-19 vaccine, without particularly warning them about the adverse reactions that might happen in some cases, does my hon. Friend think the cost of dealing with the disabilities caused should be covered by the Government in full, rather than up to the arbitrary limit that is in place?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Absolutely. In essence, that is what the Bill calls for. At the moment, someone can put in a claim and it is resolved months or years later. Even if they are found to have suffered serious injuries, the maximum payment is £120,000, which is meant to cover all the consequential losses, the cost of care and perhaps the lifetime support that they may need as a result of those injuries.

The Government say, “Don’t worry, you can bring a civil claim in parallel,” but the civil claims that some people are bringing in parallel are being frustrated by Government lawyers. In some cases, months have gone by and then the Department of Health and Social Care has said, “You should be making your claim against AstraZeneca rather than against the Department.” However, essentially that is a claim against the same organisation, because the Government are the indemnifier of any liabilities on the part of the producers of these—at the time—experimental vaccines.

I will quote briefly from a reply that the Prime Minister gave to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) on 22 March this year. My right hon. and learned Friend has a constituent who is a litigant; he suffered four weeks in a coma and has permanent injuries as a result. He has carers, with all the associated costs and loss of earnings, and the £120,000 does not begin to get near the compensation to which he would be entitled under normal circumstances. My right hon. and learned Friend asked the Prime Minister about the £120,000 maximum payment and about the arbitrary 60% threshold, but did the Prime Minister respond to either point? Sadly, he did not. All he said was:

“We are taking steps to reform vaccine damage payment schemes, by modernising the operations and providing more timely outcomes”.—[Official Report, 22 March 2023; Vol. 730, c. 330.]

That was not an answer. It was hardly accurate either, because the outcomes are not timely. Many people have been waiting for more than 18 months for their application to be dealt with. There are many hundreds of applications for which the medical notes have still not been received. The Government, under pressure from me, said that they would introduce subject access requests to ensure that people could get the medical notes. Subject access requests have been put forward, but not in respect of every case. A lot of those requests have been outstanding for more than three months, against a statutory limit of one month. I do not think that the Prime Minister was correct in saying that effective steps are being taken to modernise the operations and provide more timely outcomes.

I turn briefly to what is in the Bill, particularly to link it in with the UK covid-19 inquiry. On 13 September this year, Lady Hallett held the preliminary hearing for module 4 of the inquiry, which, as I have said, will take place in July next year. The issue of the adequacy of the vaccine damage payment scheme will be fully on the agenda for that meeting in July. At the hearing, we heard from legal representatives of some of the groups of people who have suffered vaccine damage. Ms Morris was their counsel. She said:

“The primary causes of these injuries and deaths are: vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia, or VITT; vaccine induced vasculitis; stoke; cerebral venous sinus thrombosis; and Guillain-Barré syndrome. Survivors are having to cope with the aftereffects of their injuries, including brain damage and physical disablement, whilst the bereaved are struggling to live without their partners, children or parents. All VIBUK members have a confirmation that their injuries were caused by the Covid-19 vaccine.”

That issue will be debated at the inquiry next year. Ms Morris KC goes on to say:

“In addition to their injury and bereavement, those we represent have also experienced a second trauma: a lack of medical knowledge and understanding about the risk and presentation of vaccine injury has left injured people undiagnosed and without treatment. Furthermore, the prevailing institutional mindset within medical bodies and the government has been fixated solely on acknowledging the benefits of the vaccine. This has led to those reporting vaccine injury to feel disbelieved, unheard and marginalised.”

She goes on:

“Censorship is a very real issue, my Lady for the vaccine injured and bereaved. Their support groups have been shut down by social media platforms and their experiences censored by the mainstream media. They have to speak in code online for fear of having their only source of support taken away from them. They face stigma and abuse for sharing their symptoms in the context of the Covid vaccine and even been branded as anti-vax for sharing very real and medically proven vaccine injuries.”

She then says:

“In August of last year the UK CV Family lost its first member to suicide and a survey of their members reported 73% have considered suicide.”

These issues are going to be debated at the covid inquiry. Why are the Government not doing something more actively now?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend, as ever, is making a powerful case. Has he had any indication of whether in the covid inquiry—or even his Bill; it was not entirely clear from my reading of it, although perhaps he will correct me—any changes should be made retrospectively, so that cases that had already been considered, either on the disability threshold or maximum compensation, would be revisited in the event of any changes being made?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. My view is that the changes should be retrospective in relation to those whose claims have already been dealt with. The relatively small number of people in respect of whom causation has been established but the disability threshold of 60% has not been met could be dealt with in a routine way.

There is also the bigger issue of whether the £120,000 payment, which has not been increased since 2007, should be updated in line with inflation. When I have raised this with the Minister in the past, she has said she is looking at it or taking into account the points that have been made. It is a blatant abuse. If in 2007 the Government thought that £120,000 was a reasonable payout, why do they now think that a significantly lower sum in real terms is appropriate? The Government are the cause of this rampant inflation, and they are one of the main beneficiaries of it, because they are refusing to index tax allowances in line with inflation.

The Government’s coffers are filling up as a result of these inflationary pressures, and yet they continue to be Scrooge-like in relation to people who did the right thing and got themselves vaccinated in the interests of public health but suffered consequences because of an adverse reaction. This is just not good enough. Will the Government listen? That is what I hope will happen as a result of this debate and of the pressure that the Government must be feeling from what will happen at the covid inquiry.

There are other points made in the submissions to the covid inquiry, but what is most important is that Lady Hallett and the counsel to the inquiry have made it quite clear that they will be spending a lot of time looking into these particular issues. No longer will the Government be able to avoid answering questions, as they are able to in this House when we raise questions and they can give us non-answers. They will be facing the cross-examination of the counsel to the inquiry and be held to account for their actions or lack of action. That is why, although the Bill obviously will not get a Second Reading, the Government need to take into account and act on the recommendations in it, because this issue is not going to go away.

I am conscious that other Members want to speak in the debate, so I will just make a couple of other points. If the Government are not prepared to increase the rate at which people can be paid, how are we going to get anywhere? At the moment, people who are sadly victims of the contaminated blood scandal do not have to show 60% disability in order to qualify for compensation. Should there be some equivalence between the compensation that is payable under the contaminated blood inquiry and that which should be paid to those who have become victims of covid-19 vaccines?

If we look at personal injury payouts under the Judicial College guidelines, a 60% disability is the equivalent of an above-knee amputation of one leg. Under the guidelines, that would give rise to damages—just for that trauma—of anything between £105,000 and £137,000. The consequential loss flowing from that—the loss of earnings, the health costs and all the rest of it—would be in addition to that. Does that not just show how paltry these sums are? It makes the case for a no-fault system. Why are we messing around with trying to establish liability? If somebody confirmed as being perfectly healthy has a vaccine and then suffers a lot of adverse consequences, why can we not accept that, in the absence of any other explanation, it must be assumed that those consequences were as a direct result of the vaccine?

Interestingly, Oxford University’s Centre for Socio-Legal Studies has described the Vaccine Damage Payments Act 1979 as a “no-fault compensation scheme”. Would that it was. If it was, we would not be where we are now. That is one of the most important issues that should be addressed the Government. Indeed, it is being addressed in other jurisdictions. Let us remember that for years the Government said that these vaccines were absolutely safe and effective—there was no qualification at all. Germany’s Health Minister said something similar, but more recently retracted, saying that he had got it all wrong and that although they were safe and effective in most respects, they were not safe and effective for everybody. As a result, Germany is paying out significant sums to people who were adversely affected. Our Government need to address this issue seriously and try to get back on to the right foot in advance of the hearings at the covid inquiry next July. So I ask that the House supports this Bill on Second Reading.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Deputy Speaker. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) for not only a tremendous speech setting out his inarguable case, but the ferocious and tenacious way in which he has pursued this matter. He is like a dog with a bone, and I am sure that victims of damage from the covid vaccine are very grateful to have him as a champion for their situation. As he pointed out, I am a sponsor of the Bill and so I support it wholeheartedly. I would also like to encourage him to think about extending about its scope a bit further so that it not only deals with the damage caused by the vaccines, but seeks to try to prevent such damage from happening in the first place. Obviously, once people have been severely disabled or, as in some cases, have died as a result of the vaccine, that is no comfort; we want to prevent this from happening in the first place and some things could usefully be done to try to help in that regard too.

Of course, the authorities love to play down the fact that some people have suffered adverse reactions to these covid-19 vaccines. I am sure many of us have had contact from constituents who have experienced serious symptoms following vaccination. I am talking not about a sore arm, which many people suffered as a result of the vaccination, but about a range of life-changing conditions such as strokes, heart attacks and blood clots, to name a few. My hon. Friend mentioned Anna Morris KC and her submission to the covid inquiry; as she said, these are not normal side effects that anybody would reasonably expect from a pharmaceutical product. I very much hope that, when the Minister responds to the debate, she puts it clearly on the record that she and the Government accept that some people have suffered adverse reactions to the covid-19 vaccine and, in some cases, very serious adverse reactions. In some cases, people have died as a result of taking the vaccine. This is an opportunity for her today to make that clear on the record for everybody to hear. I can anticipate her speech in some regards. She will no doubt say that the vaccine programme was a great success and that it gave the vast majority of people a great deal of benefit. But that is not the point in this particular case, as my hon. Friend said at the start of his speech. Nobody is arguing about that. We are talking about the small proportion of people—it is a large number of people—who have suffered adverse reactions as a result of the covid-19 vaccine. That is what I hope she will address directly in her speech.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

The point my hon. Friend makes is important. On 1 June 2022, in answer to a question as to whether the Government accepted that some people had died as a direct result of having received the covid-19 vaccine, the Minister’s response was that the MHRA published a weekly report

“covering adverse reactions to approve covid-19 vaccines”,

which were available on a following link.

[Philip Davies]

Quite. My hon. Friend is right, and today gives the Minister the opportunity to make it unequivocally clear that the Government do accept that that has happened. That would be a big step in the right direction and would at least give some comfort to those people who have felt ignored for far too long.

The authorities are of course playing down the adverse reactions that people have had from covid vaccines because, first, they do not want to pay up, as my hon. Friend has set out clearly, and, secondly, it was they who pushed these products so strongly to the public in the first place—or dare I say it, coerced the public into taking them at the time. It was of course coercion when this House, back in July 2021, voted to mandate the vaccine for care workers, resulting in tens of thousands of hard-working carers leaving their jobs. We also came within an ace of mandating the vaccine for all health workers. Just think of the damage that that would have been done, with potentially 100,000 workers leaving the NHS on the back of that.

In December 2021, this House voted for plan B, which introduced vaccine passports for large gatherings, among other things. As we knew then and as we know now, the vaccine does not stop infection or transmission. There was no evidence base for the policy. There was no impact assessment done on the policy. Thank goodness that that ugliness that we saw in this House was short-lived. I was—and still am—proud to have been one of the 126 who voted against that mandation.

People were coerced in other ways. People were told that they were not allowed to go on a flight anywhere unless they had taken two vaccines. They were not allowed to visit anywhere. In effect, everything was done to force people to take the vaccine. Whether that was, in utilitarian terms, a good or a bad thing is neither here nor there with regard to my hon. Friend’s Bill. What is here or there is that, given all of that, when people do have adverse reactions to the covid vaccination —in some cases, very serious ones; in some cases, sadly, people have died—the Government have an absolute duty to pay the appropriate compensation to people when they moved heaven and earth to force them to take it in the first place. In some cases, they forced people to take it against their will— otherwise, they would have lost their jobs. The Government have a duty to do something here. Where we are at the moment is just not good enough.

It is worth noting how shocking the treatment of unvaccinated people became. Our policies led to untold damage to their livelihoods and mental health. Friends and family turned their backs on them, because of the prevailing narrative in politics and the media that they must be bad people for making up their own mind about a personal medical intervention. I think my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Sir Charles Walker), one of the greatest people in this House, summed it up best:

“suggesting that these people who, for whatever reason...have chosen not to get vaccinated are somehow deserving of our bile is a disgrace. It does not reflect badly on them; it reflects badly on us.”—[Official Report, 31 January 2022; Vol. 708, c. 76-77.]

In black and white on the Pfizer website, one can read important safety information concerning the Pfizer/BioNTech covid-19 vaccine:

“Myocarditis and pericarditis have occurred in some people who have received”

that product,

“most commonly…adolescent males 12 through 17 years of age.”

It goes on to say that the chance of that occurring is “very low”—I am sure the Minister will reiterate that today—but, of course, the chance of somebody of that age suffering serious illness related to covid is very low as well. The Minister might not be so keen to point that out, and Pfizer does not seem to point it out on its website, but we should make that clear, too.

I raise that because—I hope the Minister will address this in her remarks—I have been rather alarmed to hear of a clinical trial for a Moderna mRNA covid vaccine involving healthy children aged 12 and up. That is not something from the past, from during the pandemic; it is happening now. It has been approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and involves the Bradford patient recruitment centre, which is on the edge of my constituency, so some of my constituents could be involved.

I wrote to the Health Research Authority in August to ask what ethical rationale there is for the inclusion of healthy children in the trial, because it is known, and has been for a long time, that healthy children are at a vanishingly low risk of covid-19—they were at the height of the pandemic and they certainly are now. So far, I have not received a coherent answer to that simple question. But it has come to my attention that the centre has been recruiting children for the trial using advertisements that have not been ethically approved, as is required by UK law. Children can be recruited to a clinical trial only if they as individuals have some reasonable expectation of significant benefit when balanced with the risks associated with their participation. Potential benefits for adults that may flow from a trial are not a good enough rationale and do not trump that principle.

So, given that there cannot be any expectation of significant benefits for a cohort of people who are not at significant risk, what is going on here? Why are those decisions being made? It comes back to where I started: the authorities seem completely unable, and in some cases unwilling, to protect people—in this case, children—from potential harm. The cost-benefit analysis, if it has been done—I am not sure that it has—certainly does not appear to stack up.

I will finish by commending the recommendations of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch in the Bill. The Government have a duty of care to the people who have been injured by or lost loved ones to the vaccine, which they took because the Government pressured them into doing so. The Government also have a duty to prevent harm from happening in the first place. Failing to act on this will only lead to more harm and further damage to the public’s trust in authority. I hope that the Minister will, in summing up, refer to what is happening in Bradford and explain why that particular trial has been allowed to go ahead.

During the pandemic, the authorities did not go big on warning people of the potential damage or adverse effects of the vaccine; they were just interested in coercing as many people as possible into taking it. They must accept responsibility for those who have done the right thing but faced damage as a result. I hope that the Government will put that right today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope]

If that is the explanation, I am sure that also covers the fact that only 15 cases have been referred to the vaccine damage payment scheme in relation to MMR vaccines, compared with 6,809 in relation to covid-19. If the Minister thinks they are all equivalent then so be it, but all I can say is that the evidence suggests otherwise and there are serious questions now about whether the VDPS is fit for purpose. That is why it is great news the inquiry will be looking into that issue.

[Philip Davies]

Was my hon. Friend disappointed with the Opposition response? They are usually all over real-terms cuts like a rash. Any time there is any hint of a real-terms cut, the Labour party is blasting about it at every opportunity. On this, we have had no increase in the payment for 17 years—that must be a world record real-terms cut—yet the Labour party did not seem to have anything to say about whether it should be increased.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I share my hon. Friend’s concern, but that was not the only aspect of concern I had about the response by the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare). It seemed to me that she was still, essentially, refusing to accept that people have died as a result of taking covid-19 vaccines and that many more have suffered severe injury or other adverse health effects. The Opposition are concentrating all the time on the benefits of vaccines without seeming to recognise the importance of looking at those people for whom vaccines were not beneficial.

BBC Licence Fee Non-Payment (Decriminalisation for Over-75s) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

2nd reading
Friday 20th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope]

With the leave of the House, I would like to thank my right hon. Friend the Minister for his comprehensive response to this debate, based on his wide knowledge and experience. It was interesting to see the contrast between his command of this subject and the relatively light touch applied by the Opposition spokesperson today. My right hon. Friend really understands this subject and I hope that he will be able to stay in his position and bring forward the media Bill, following the King’s Speech. I hope that we will be able to come back to this subject again, perhaps with a new clause to that Bill—who knows?

What is encouraging is that the market is working, with 1.9 million fewer licence fee payers—that is great, is it not?—and evasion has gone up to 10.3%. The licence fee is now £159. I am very concerned that if it goes up by inflation next April—it may be 15% or 20% since it was last increased—there could be another £20 on the licence fee at a time when there is a cost of living crisis. Who knows? From what my right hon. Friend was saying, it sounds as though the Government will do something to prevent such an increase taking place in April—just before the local elections, in the year of a general election—but we will have to wait to find out more about that in due course. In the meantime, let us be grateful for the fact that there is, in effect, a de facto decriminalisation, rather similar to the situation in relation to shoplifting, so that is something that we can take into account.

[Philip Davies]

Did my hon. Friend note that the Minister said that he did not agree with decriminalising it for a particular age group, and that the policy should be the same for all age groups? Given that my hon. Friend was uncharacteristically modest with his proposal in this Bill to just decriminalise it for the over-75s, will he reflect on what the Minister said and come forward with a proposal next time to decriminalise it altogether?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent suggestion. It was only because I sometimes believe in salami slicing. I thought that we would start off with the over-75s—that is without declaring any personal interest in this. As with the previous debates, this is a subject that will continue to be of interest to Members, and for that reason I will ask that this debate be adjourned.

Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Scott Mann.)

Debate to be resumed on Friday 27 October.

Regulatory Impact Assessments Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

2nd reading
Friday 20th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

This Bill has not had the benefit of being discussed previously, but I think it is a very important issue and I am delighted that we have the opportunity to give it a bit of airtime.

Regulatory impact assessments lie at the core, or should lie at the core, of policymaking and public legislation. If the tool if a regulatory impact assessment is not properly applied, the quality of the legislation suffers. We have seen a large number of examples of that. Perhaps one of the most telling is that we have legislated for net zero without ever really going through the full implications of what it will entail. I have the privilege of serving on the Environmental Audit Committee. It is willing to discuss almost everything on the environment, but it is not prepared to engage in an inquiry into an audit of the costs and benefits of net zero. The Government should have introduced an audit of the costs and benefits of net zero before the legislation was passed. The same is true of the Climate Change Act 2008. It is also true of HS2. There was never a proper cost-benefit analysis regulatory impact assessment of HS2.

More recently, the Renters (Reform) Bill—which I see, much to my horror, is having its Second Reading on Monday—was published in May. It was the subject of severe criticism by the Regulatory Policy Committee because no proper impact assessment was produced at the time the Bill was introduced. It was introduced by Ministers who had not gone through the process of thinking through the implications of what they were doing. That is what the Bill before us is about. I had the privilege of being a Minister for six years or so—some time ago now, Madam Deputy Speaker—and it was very important, when introducing legislation, to think about the implications and consequences. That should be done in the first instance internally by Ministers with officials before it is exposed to public debate. A well organised regulatory policy framework should ensure that that is what happens.

The Bill is based on the fact that, too frequently, that is not what happens. Even more frequently recently than in the past, the requirement for impact assessments to be produced prior to a Bill being published has not been complied with. The consequences, to which I have referred, are that Bills come forward that are badly formulated and unnecessarily contentious. Was it not extraordinary that two or three weeks back, we had a statutory instrument in relation to the implementation of the Windsor framework? The Windsor framework agreement was back in spring. We were told that there had been insufficient time for the Government to produce an impact assessment of its contents. How ridiculous is that?

The Bill basically says that we have rules in place, but there is no point in having a command without a sanction. Clause 1 sets out in plain language a requirement that the

“Government must, on or before the appointed day, lay before Parliament a qualifying regulatory impact assessment for—

(a) any Bill introduced to Parliament by a Minister;

(b) any draft statutory instrument laid before Parliament by a Minister that may not be made unless it is laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament; and

(c) any statutory instrument made by a Minister and subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.”

Clause 2 is the sanction:

“If His Majesty’s Government fails to comply with the duty under section 1, subsection (2) applies.”

We cannot have a proposal requiring that the Minister be locked up, suspended from the House or whatever, so I did the best I could, which is basically to say that the Minister would be embarrassed into action. That embarrassment will require the Minister responsible for the Bill or the statutory instrument in question to

“make a statement to the relevant House…as soon as reasonably practicable, and…on every third sitting day until a qualifying regulatory impact assessment has been laid before Parliament.”

If that had happened in relation to the Renters (Reform) Bill, we would not be where we are now, with a totally inadequate impact assessment that has been produced late and much amended; at one stage it was given the red pencil treatment.

My Bill would enable this House, and the Members of this House who take legislation seriously, to be properly informed. Quite often, it is impossible to get answers to questions about Bills; there are questions that should have been raised during the impact assessment process, but have not been raised; and Ministers are ignorant of the implications of what they are doing. That is why I suggest that this is a sensible way forward. I do not often say this in relation to a Bill of mine, but I cannot see why anybody would be against it—except a Minister who does not want to comply with the normal rules. This is a short Bill, but I think it would be revolutionary in improving the quality of legislation.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

This is not written into the Bill, but if the cost-benefit analysis in a Minister’s impact assessment shows that the cost outweighs the benefit, what does my hon. Friend feel should happen as a result? He will remember that when the Labour Government introduced the Bill that became the Climate Change Act 2008, they had done an impact assessment and a cost-benefit analysis. By their own admission, the costs were twice as big as the benefits, yet they pressed on with the Bill anyway. Is my hon. Friend saying that where the costs outweigh the benefits the Government should do something about it, or is it enough just to publish the analysis?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I think it is sufficient to publish it. It is then for Members of Parliament to look at what it contains, including the costs. My hon. Friend and I were two of the five people who voted against the Climate Change Bill on Third Reading. Why did we vote against it? Because we could see that the costs would far outweigh the benefits. We had read the impact assessments—well, I cannot remember reading them at the time, I must say, but I had the very strong feeling that we were entering unknown territory and the costs would be very significant. I am not saying that we should not bring forward legislation when the costs are greater than the benefits; I am saying that Members of Parliament should be able to take responsibility and say to Ministers, “Why are you bringing forward legislation whose costs will be far greater than the benefits?”

This debate takes place just after the Government have changed the rules on business impact targets, the provision on which has been repealed. Despite the Government’s policy of zero increase in the total costs of regulation on business in this Parliament, the Regulatory Policy Committee, which is responsible for looking at better regulation, has stated:

“When combined with the figures for the previous two years, the total increase for the parliament to date is £14.3 billion.”

That was in February 2023; I think there has since been an update. Having said that they would not increase the costs on business in this Parliament, and that we would have better regulation and an independent scrutiny process for holding them to account on that, the Government have found themselves on the wrong side of their own rules—so what have they done? They have decided to change the rules. They are now saying that for the last period, they will no longer calculate the cost of Government regulation to business.

If one starts with from a cynical viewpoint, one becomes even more sceptical after looking at the detail. I do not think that, at heart, the Government really want to be held to account by the House for their measures. They would much prefer measures to be nodded through with no questions to be answered: they would like everyone to be nodding donkeys. However, if that is not the Government’s view, I hope they will accept the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

My right hon. Friend makes a fair point, but I am not entirely sure that that necessarily follows, and I will give another example as to why.

I should say in passing that I cannot for the life of me understand why any Minister would not want to do a cost-benefit analysis of any proposal they were bringing forward. It seems to me extraordinary that a Minister would want to bring forward a proposal and not say, “Can somebody do a cost-benefit analysis of this, or an impact assessment?” Why on earth they would not want to do that Lord only knows, but that is a slightly different point. My point is this: what benefit does it have for the decision-making process?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Before my hon. Friend goes on to his next example, may I say that there is no reason why an impact assessment should not look at the behavioural consequences of a particular policy measure? One of my gripes has been that the Renters (Reform) Bill does not give any account of its consequences for reducing the number of people who will be making their houses and homes available to let.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I agree wholeheartedly. That is why, as I say, for the life of me I cannot see why a Minister would not want to do that impact assessment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

If I have to choose between the Minister and my wife, I know who I am going to agree with, and the Minister is on a loser here. Unusually for me, there might be a compromise option, which is that a cost-benefit analysis should be done, but it may not necessarily need to be done before the original decision is made. Perhaps that could be a fair compromise and be considered subsequently.

I want to come back to the reason why what my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton said earlier might not flow, though it logically should. She said that if we have a cost-benefit analysis, MPs can scrutinise things and make sensible decisions on whatever. I guess in an ideal world that would happen, but it seems to me that in the real world that does not happen. The House should not just take my word for it, because it did not happen during the passing of the Climate Change Act 2008.

As I touched on briefly in my intervention, when the Labour Government brought forward the Climate Change Bill, they did a cost-benefit analysis, as my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch would have urged them to do. These were not meaningless numbers—we were talking serious money, and literally hundreds of billions of pounds were in the credit and debit columns on this cost-benefit analysis. It was not one with a few hundred thousand here or a few million there.

The Labour Government at the time brought forward the Climate Change Bill with a cost-benefit analysis, as my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch would have wanted. The original impact assessment showed that the potential costs of introducing the Climate Change Bill were almost twice the maximum benefits, as calculated by the Government who were bringing forward the legislation. One would think that when a Government bring forward a Bill where the potential costs are twice as high as the maximum benefits, Members of Parliament would be fighting over themselves to vote it down. How on earth could anybody support such a ridiculous notion, let alone why a Government would bring forward such a Bill? However, on Second Reading just five MPs voted against it, when a cost-benefit analysis showed it was a non-starter.

What then happened was that Lord Lilley—at that time he was my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden—kicked up a fuss. I must add that during the passage of the Bill the potential cost barely came up—none of the Front Benchers from any party raised the cost, even though it was going to be hundreds of billions of pounds. However, Lord Lilley seized on the fact that the costs were twice the benefits and asked how on earth that could be, so the Government went away with a flea in their ear. But—would you believe it, Mr Deputy Speaker?—they came back having recalculated the cost-benefit analysis and having discovered hundreds of billions of pounds of new benefits that they had not identified when the Bill started its passage through this place. It was miraculous that they found hundreds of billions of pounds of benefits that they had not even thought about.

Either we should believe they were utterly incompetent and had not fully thought through the implications of their Bill before they brought it forward, or, if we are more cynical—I probably fall into that camp—we might believe they redid the figures and came back with some dodgy figures to make it look as if the Bill had a greater benefit than cost.

I am not sure the Bill succeeds on any level. The Climate Change Act 2008 showed me two things. First, the Government will come back with any figures they want just to prove there is a bigger benefit than cost, even if that is dubious, to say the least. Secondly, Members of Parliament are not even interested in cost-benefit analysis. If they were, more than five of us would have voted against the Bill on Second Reading. I am not being funny, Mr Deputy Speaker, but if you go into the voting Lobby and ask people what we are voting on, half the time they do not know, let alone know the cost-benefit analysis of what they are voting on, so I am not sure that a cost-benefit analysis would serve the purpose that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch thinks it would. Therefore, I think the Climate Change Act 2008 represents an argument against his Bill.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough was absolutely right to mention a third Bill, which was about HS2. Everybody has known for years that HS2 was a catastrophic waste of money that was not even intended to benefit the north. History has been rewritten to say that it was going to be some great thing to benefit the north. The last Labour Government envisaged HS2 in order to try to reduce short-haul flights from Leeds Bradford and Manchester airports to Heathrow. It was never intended to benefit the north—that was not the purpose of HS2. History was rewritten and if we listen to Andy Burnham it was going to be the saviour of the north. What an absolute load of tripe. The cost went up and up. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton said, it went from £37 billion until it eventually got to £180 billion, and pretty much all the people who were arguing for it when it was £37 billion were still arguing for it when it was £180 billion.

In many regards, the only person to have a sensible approach to HS2, in terms of cost-benefit analysis, has been the Prime Minister. He said, not unreasonably, that he supported HS2 when the cost was £37 billion, but he could not support it when the cost reached £180 billion. That is a sensible decision for somebody to make, having looked at a cost-benefit analysis. The Leader of the Opposition will not be interested in a cost-benefit analysis—he opposed HS2 when it was £37 billion and supported it when it was £180 billion. How on earth are we expected to make sense of that? The decision making is absolutely ludicrous.

Politicians do not tend to make logical or financially sensible decisions; they make political decisions. They are not really interested in the cost-benefit analysis. They are interested in what it might look like in a headline in a paper, or in a campaign in a by-election. In many respects, the reason why HS2 goes against what my hon. Friend is trying to achieve here is that actually the Government had done a cost-benefit analysis of HS2. They just kept it quiet, because it did not deliver what people wanted it to deliver. Andrew Gilligan, who was the transport adviser when Boris Johnson was Prime Minister, revealed that, even before the latest increase in cost, the Treasury’s cost-benefit analysis had shown that for every pound spent on HS2, it would deliver only a 90p return. Although that was the Government’s official cost-benefit analysis, they were still pressing ahead with it at the time, until the costs became even more astronomical.

Although my hon. Friend is right that cost-benefit analyses should be at the forefront of decision making by Government and by Members of Parliament when they are scrutinising legislation, I just wonder, really and truly, how often people care that much about it. I can only conclude that they do not really care that much at all.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Going back to the HS2 example, I was one of those supporting the objectors who wanted more of the track to go in tunnels. I was supporting them because I thought that it would push up the costs so much that the project would become unviable. That never materialised. Essentially, though, is my hon. Friend not arguing for additional impact assessments during the course of the project?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is highlighting how shrewd a politician he is and what shrewd decision-making skills he has. Ultimately, he was successful in getting the project stopped, but I cannot speculate on whether that was due to the number of tunnels. However, perhaps he helped, and more power to his elbow, because in places like Shipley we support the Prime Minister in wanting better connectivity across the north. The bit that works is north to south; it is across the north that it does not work, and the Prime Minister is absolutely right to focus his money on that. Whether it was down to the cost of the tunnels, I do not know, but it cannot have done much harm.

Finally, the other element of the Bill that I am nervous about, even though it is logical, is how much extra power it gives to what my hon. Friend described in a previous debate today as “the blob”. If we were to be, in effect, governed by cost-benefit analyses in the way that he envisages and in the way that I would like things to be done, I do not think that it is beyond anybody’s imagination that the civil service would, if it was particularly keen on the Government adopting a policy, miraculously produce figures that showed a tremendous benefit and not much of a cost. I am pretty sure that it is not beyond people’s imagination to think that, were the blob, as he described it earlier, particularly determined to block a proposal from the Government, its advice to the Government would be that the cost far exceeded the benefit. I am rather nervous about giving civil servants more power over Government decisions than they already have.

Green Belt (Protection) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Friday 20th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Let me explain briefly, for those who may have been expecting debates on the other Bills, that unfortunately today’s proceedings will finish at 2.30 pm, and it is not possible to debate all these worthy subjects on the Order Paper. However, the quality of the debates we have had today shows that the Leader of the House was mistaken in seeking, at one stage, to change the rules and, in effect, exclude debate on most of the subjects we have been able to enjoy today.

This is the last Bill I have down on today’s Order Paper and it deals with a subject that has been close to my heart ever since I was privileged to be a Minister in the Department of the Environment, as it then was, and we were celebrating one of the great anniversaries of the green belt. It was brought home to me how important the green belt is, not just for being green—it is not always green—but for preventing ribbon development across our country. If one travels out of London, as I will later today when going to my constituency by car, one will be able to travel through many miles of relatively green fields and countryside, which is there only because of the green belt. It has been protected over the years against ribbon development. If we contrast what it is like when one goes out of London with what it is like going out of Bangkok, Delhi, Cairo or a lot of other foreign cities, one can see that we have been able to create for our country a much better environment by having green belts around the big conurbations, including that of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole. So we want to ensure that we do not erode the green belt.

One of my concerns is that all the talk about the need to erode the green belt is producing dire consequences, because people who own land in the green belt think they are going to be able to sell it for a fast buck at some future stage and may already be negotiating options on it. As the Government no longer seem to be committed to ensuring that the green belt remains sacrosanct, we see things happening in areas such as Dudsbury golf course in my constituency. A fortnight ago, the golf club was told that the golf course is no longer going to be available after next April, apparently because a company called Wyatt Homes has bought it. The company has no planning permission to build on it—it is bang in the middle of the green belt—but it obviously thinks that at some stage in the future if they get rid of the golf course and allow the land to deteriorate, it may be able to get its dream of a massive housing development on that land.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I spend much of my time trying to stop Bradford Council concreting over the green belt in my constituency. It seems to want to build more and more unaffordable houses on the green belt, and I want it to build more and more affordable houses on brownfield sites in Bradford. Was my hon. Friend, like me, concerned that the Leader of the Opposition recently suggested at his conference that, were he to become Prime Minister, there should be much more building on the green belt and he would want to overrule local objection to that?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I think that what the Leader of the Opposition was proposing is a complete nightmare. It will destroy at a stroke all that land, which, as I have said, is protecting the environment of people who live in cities. Why should people who live in cities and towns be prevented from being able to venture outside them to enjoy open air and countryside?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope]

In essence, my right hon. Friend is right. This is an issue of local democracy, and it should be for local people to decide the quality of the environment in which they live, but there should also be some national rules. The green-belt policy was originally for the metropolitan green belt, because on a cross-party basis people thought, “We can’t allow our towns and cities to expand exponentially without any control.” There was always an argument for saying, “The next field in the countryside is one on which we should build to deal with the housing crisis.” Why not build some more new settlements?

[Philip Davies]

I know that time is against us, so I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. One of the flaws in his Bill, as I see it, is the proposal to allow local authorities to de-list green belt so long as they substitute it with something else. Is the danger of that not that we devalue the green belt and, in effect, local councils give up plum green-belt sites and replace them with land that is not what most people would consider green-belt land, therefore devaluing the whole essence of the green belt and making it easier for future politicians to come along and concrete over that too?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

My hon. Friend is right, but the problem is that local authorities already can de-list green-belt land and, indeed, are encouraged by the Government to do so. It is because of that reality that I thought, “Let us try to introduce a deterrent against that de-listing.” The Government go around saying, “You won’t be able to build on the green belt, but you can apply for that piece of land to no longer be designated as green belt,” thereby avoiding the protection that this House decided to give when it introduced the green-belt legislation. That erosion is already taking place, but the Bill is designed to try to limit the effects of that.

I take my hon. Friend’s point, however, that for years and years people sitting on green-belt land, perhaps with a big offer from a building firm to give them large sums of money if they get planning permission, have thought, “Let us put pigs on the land, or allow Travellers or squatters to get on the land” so that in the end people say, “It would be much better to build on it than have to put up with these ghastly antisocial activities that are already on there.” That has been the strategy by many people who own green-belt land to try to persuade people that it is a good idea to get rid of it. Green-belt land does not have to be green; it has to be land that is undeveloped and is a breathing space for people who are otherwise confined to living in our towns and cities.

I am not expecting the Government to approve the Bill, because they have already said that they are against it—indeed, throughout this Session they have objected to this and all my other Bills—but that does not mean that we should give up. We have to keep on trying to protect that which is worth protecting. For the reasons that I have set out, I believe that it is worth protecting the green belt, as I think do most people in the country. They should be reminded when they visit London that it would not be such a green and pleasant land outside it but for the green belt.

Overseas Electors Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 22nd March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend has gone way beyond my expertise, which people will probably think is not a difficult task in itself. I am afraid that it would take greater minds than mine to answer the question whether those permissions are needed, have been acquired, would be required and have been given. I do not know. This shows the benefit of having proper scrutiny of legislation in this House and I commend my hon. Friend for doing that, but I am not sure that I am the right person to answer those technical questions.

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

On the importance of being able to scrutinise proposed legislation, does my hon. Friend accept that he is essentially being chided by my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien) for not having provided an explanatory statement for the new clause?

[Philip Davies]

I think that my hon. Friend is the one doing the chiding. I suspect he is probably right to do so. I was unable to find the time to do that, and he is right to pick me up on it. If I had, colleagues might have had more of their questions answered. I listen to him a great deal, and particularly on these issues pertaining to Fridays, how things should be done and the importance of their being done, he tends to be right.

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[Philip Davies]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I certainly do not object at all to my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) interrupting me with his point of order, with which I agreed wholeheartedly. Thank you, Mr Speaker, for your response. I seem destined not to get through my amendments, for different reasons.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

My hon. Friend has been identifying the complexity of these matters in relation to both overseas electors and domestic electors. Does he agree that it might be a good idea if the Government were to commission the Law Commission to draft some legislation on the subject that could then be brought forward as a draft Bill and properly discussed? The attempts in this Session—including in my Voter Registration Bill—to get consensus across the House have failed, as indeed this Bill has failed to get consensus. Is it not time to get some expertise from the Law Commission?

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his suggestion, which has a great deal of merit. I am not entirely sure that a private Member’s Bill was the best route for this legislation, and we probably do need a bit more expertise, as he suggests. I certainly would not disagree with that.

I am not entirely sure whether I had got to new clause 12 or new clause 13, but, in the interests of trying to get through my amendments, I am going to move on to new clause 13 and hope that that was where I had got to.

Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 15th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to the Minister for that. I appreciate that we are in a strange situation in which the Government do not have time to decide whether to agree with the amendments, but they certainly have time to write speeches on why they will disagree with them because they are not in a position to accept them. We have got ourselves into a completely farcical situation. The Minister is going to read out the speech that has been prepared to say why she cannot accept the amendments, but we all know that the reason why she cannot accept the amendments is that she does not have the Department organised to get things decided within eight days. As I said, that gives the impression that the Government have been taken hostage by the civil service. The Department of Health and Social Care is probably one of the worst offenders for being taken hostage by its civil servants. I am being charitable in saying that, because I presume that that is why so many socialist, nanny-state proposals come from the Department. I cannot believe that the Ministers actually believe in all that rubbish, so it must be the civil servants who are running the Department if those things are coming forward.

With this Bill, it seems that the civil servants, who never want to accept any amendments tabled by anybody other than themselves, are doing their best to try to stop any improvements to the Bill. It is a shame that we have got ourselves into a farcical situation. The Minister is absolutely right: there is nothing to prevent Members from tabling amendments—we know that because we have tabled them, and we are grateful to you for selecting them, Mr Speaker—but we have got ourselves into a rather farcical situation in which we have done an awful lot of work, and my staff have done an awful lot of work, I might add, to try genuinely to improve the Bill, and then we come across this ridiculous bureaucratic situation, about which I have only just found out with this Bill but which no doubt applies to every Bill. It is important that everyone knows that if Members table amendments at this stage of a Bill, they are wasting their time. It is a completely pointless exercise.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I do not think that we are wasting our time when we table amendments. Contrary to what my hon. Friend says, I still have faith in the Minister, as I think she believes she is in charge. I believe she comes to this debate with an open mind, and, if, having heard the merits of a particular amendment, she decides that she will allow it, then she will say so from the Dispatch Box.

Let me mention another issue. We often find that because of the constraints on private Members’ business, people say, “We’ll amend it in the Lords.” If the Bill is amended in the Lords, its progress is jeopardised because it then has to come back here again for us to consider the Lords amendments. So in fact the Government should be more assiduous and quick in dealing with amendments to private Members’ Bills than amendments to their own legislation.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, but he is being slightly naive in thinking that we will get some rapid decision making. As, I think, Mr Speaker, you were alluding to in your response to my point of order, the only time that the Government appear to be able to act with speed is when they think they are going to lose a vote. At that point, they seem to be able to react with miraculous speed. We do not seem to need any write-arounds at that point, or eight days of write-arounds; they appear to be able to cobble something together within seconds, particularly if my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) clicks his fingers. They then appear to swoop into action in no time whatsoever. It seems to me that if hon. Members actually want to improve the Bill, they should be busily telling their Whip that if we put these amendments to a vote, they will vote for them—I hope, Mr Speaker, that you will allow some of them to be put to a vote, particularly where the hon. Member for Croydon North says that he actually agrees with them. Perhaps then we might have some rapid decision making after all. We will see, but it has been yet another depressing morning in the history of Parliament for me. I have been here 13 years, but have found out only today how these things work. I started off cynical and I have become even more cynical as time has gone on.

I shall go through the farce of speaking to my amendments, even though we cannot actually make any headway on them. As the hon. Member for Croydon North alluded to, amendments 44 to 78 apply throughout the Bill and change the wording from “use of force” to “use of restraint”. I was encouraged to hear him say that he had originally believed that the term should be the “use of restraint”, but had been persuaded to change it to “use of force” by, I think, the Government.

The comments I make here largely come after consultation with my local Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust. The amendments that I have tabled would ensure that the terminology used in the Bill was correct and in line with that commonly used by mental health trusts. The term “use of force” is predominantly used by police forces in reference to the use of physical force while carrying out their duties. It is important to note that, although the police do play a part in the restraining of patients, it appears that the Bill’s primary focus is on the restraint methods used by staff in a mental health unit. Although we must not forget that the police are on occasion called to assist in the physical restraint of patients, it would be more appropriate to adopt the correct mental health terminology for actions used predominantly by mental health staff in a mental health setting. Not only that, but the use of the word “force” in this regard is somewhat misleading and suggests that the restraint being used on patients is being conducted with a degree of aggression, violence or excessive force, which is simply not the case.

I am told that restraining a patient, particularly in a mental health unit, often involves little to no use of actual force in the sense that most of us would understand it. The term “restraint” has been adopted as common terminology within mental health trusts and covers varying degrees of interaction with a patient. It can be applied, for example, to a person simply holding out a hand to stop someone advancing towards them, or to methods of calming such as simply talking to a patient. They are examples of the use of restraint.

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[Philip Davies]

I understand the points that my hon. Friend makes, and I will come on to some of them later on, as they probably sit better with other amendments that have been tabled. I certainly accept his point, and as always, he makes it well.

I am also concerned that using the word “force” might worry people who are thinking about seeking treatment for mental health conditions. If they see that, it might scare them into wondering what may happen to them in some mental health settings. My view is that the word “force” in this case is not appropriate, not sensible and not actually what is generally used. Of course an element of force is used at times to carry out some methods of restraint, but common sense would suggest that the terminology used in the Bill should be what the sector uses.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

When one looks at the drafting of clause 1 (6), references to the use of force are to

“the use of physical, mechanical or chemical restraint”.

Force is being limited there to restraint, except that there is also,

“the isolation of a patient.”

Is it not the case that the drafting is really confusing? It suggests that the only difference between force and restraint is the addition of the isolation of a patient in the definition of use of force.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He has made the point that I was literally just about to make. The use of force is defined as being physical restraint, mechanical restraint and chemical restraint. I reiterate my earlier point that, quite clearly, the most appropriate term to use is “use of restraint”. That is what the definition of the use of force is in the Bill. It sounds more sinister than it actually is, and that is clearly more appropriate terminology. I have tabled more than 60 amendments, but that point deals with more than 30 of them—about 35—in one fell swoop. I hope that other Members will accept that “use of restraint” is the more appropriate terminology.

Let me move on now to my other amendments. Amendment 9 to clause 5, which is about training on the appropriate use of force, would remove paragraph (c), which is about

“showing respect for diversity generally”.

The hon. Member for Croydon North mentioned that earlier. Restoring the faith of the public in their services is a key element and purpose of this Bill, and why not? We should all have the confidence and reassurance of knowing that when we go to any public service, we will be treated properly. However, when it suggests that illnesses are not diagnosed in proportion to the demographics of our society, I question whether people will draw the wrong conclusion from that. We could question whether anything in our daily lives mirrors social demographics. Of course it does not; it would be absurd to think that it does. What we need to keep in mind is that any illness, and specifically mental illness, is not selective in whom it touches and the outcomes that it can cause. It does not discriminate by people’s ethnicity, sexual orientation, religious belief or gender or in any other way. Mental illness is a very complicated and personal experience, which—as is well documented—can have a harrowing and life-changing effect on those who are directly affected by it, and on the people and families around them.

It has been argued that different ethnic groups have different rates and experiences of mental health problems, with people from black, Asian and minority ethnic groups in the UK more likely to be diagnosed with mental health problems and more likely to experience a poor treatment outcome. It is documented that for every 1,000 people of the black/black British population, approximately 41 are in contact with secondary mental health services. What is not mentioned so much is that for every 1,000 people of the white British population, approximately 37 are in contact with the same level of service. In actual numbers, 1.3 million of the total 1.5 million patients in contact with this service are of a white ethnicity, so the use of the ratio format instead of the actual figures over-exaggerates a point that is already not entirely convincing. For example, for every 1,000 people of the Asian/Asian British population, approximately 26 are also receiving secondary mental health care. In actual numbers, this is approximately 69,000 patients—higher than the total of mixed ethnicity and other ethnic groups combined, and 16,000 patients more than the black/black British category.

I do not want to make it sound like a competition for numbers; it clearly is not. These numbers represent people. But the Bill currently makes it appear as though this is an issue that only affects one ethnicity, when that is quite clearly far from the case. The suggestion that there should be a conscious overview of regulating the diagnosis and treatment of a patient not according to their symptoms, but according to their ethnic background, may result in turning it into a competition. By putting in place such measures, the good intentions of stopping ethnic discrimination—the existence of which is already questionable—would instead create discrimination against those who are not of a BAME background or, more specifically, not of black/black British ethnicity. This would therefore generate another problem altogether. In the simplest of terms, asking to provide further intensive training on unconscious bias and diversity, on top of what has already been established at the core of the service that is currently being provided, not only creates an unnecessary segregation among patients but is patronising towards staff to an unwarranted level.

I draw a parallel with the stop-and-search issues in London. It seems to me that a very well-meaning intention to stop a disproportionate number of black people being stopped and searched has led—directly or indirectly—to an increase in the amount of knife crime in London and in the number of people who are dying as a result of knife crime in London. I might add that it is largely young black men who have been the victims of that well-meaning policy.

I fear that mental health staff, rather than being asked to treat people exactly the same irrespective of their backgrounds, may well—directly, indirectly or because they feel some pressure—start to treat people differently as a result. That will have serious consequences. I fear that it is some people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds will who suffer most and not get the treatment they should as a result.

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[Philip Davies]

The hon. Gentleman’s motives are entirely honourable and decent, and I support them 100%. My fear is about what will happen in practice, because of the evidence of what happened with stop and search in London, to be perfectly honest. Exactly the same thing happened in that case, so it is not as if we have no evidence on which to base this fear. If the hon. Gentleman speaks to police officers, they will tell him that they were petrified of stopping people from a particular ethnic background because they feared they would be castigated for being racist. That is absolutely what happened. All I am saying is that my fear is that that may well happen as a result of this legislation, although I accept that it is not the hon. Gentleman’s intention.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent point. Is it not also the case that substance and drug abuse has developed enormously, particularly in urban areas, as a result of this misguided policy on stop and search? It is then drug and substance abuse that so often leads to mental health issues.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw that comparison. It goes to show that well-meaning initiatives can often have the exact opposite result to what was intended.

In addition, diversity training programmes do not show any particular progress in the area that they are trying to improve. In fact, they have often proved to have the opposite effect. In a 2016 edition of the Harvard Business Review, an article entitled “Why Diversity Programs Fail” states:

“It shouldn’t be surprising that most diversity programs aren’t increasing diversity. Despite a few new bells and whistles, courtesy of big data, companies are basically doubling down on the same approaches they’ve used since the 1960s—which often make things worse, not better.”

The article says that companies have been heavily reliant on diversity training to reduce workplace bias, and bias during the recruitment process and employee promotions. It also says that studies have shown that this consistent and forceful approach to tackling diversity can

“activate bias rather than stamp it out.”

The article points out that social studies have found that people too often rebel against rules in a bid to assert their autonomy, and argues that companies—in our case, public services—will see far better results when they drop control tactics to make people conform. Even eminent people at Harvard are not particularly convinced that such a measure would have the result that the hon. Member for Croydon North intends.

On top of that, there are so many variations of diversity these days that there is a vast array of specifics to cover. For example, to my knowledge there are at least 71 variations of gender. I have a list here, but I will not test the patience of the House by reading them all out. Hon. Members who thought that there were only two genders are, I am afraid, well behind the times; there were 71 at the last count. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) knows about this, as an esteemed member of the Women and Equalities Committee. I am sure that he can reel them all off from the top of his head, but most people could not.

Then we get on to the variations of religion that could be discussed. There are estimated to be approximately 4,200 different religions around the world, going far beyond those commonly observed in the UK. They include beliefs such as mysticism, paganism—which has, I think, 47 variants within it—Raëlism, Judaism, the ghost dance movement, chaos magic, and the happy science movement. The one that I personally liked most of all—I had not heard of it before but I am thinking about becoming a convert to it—is the Prince Philip movement. Being a great fan of Prince Philip, that sounds to me like a marvellous organisation.

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[Philip Davies]

I cannot accept that at all, Madam Deputy Speaker—it is a delight to see you in the Chair. My amendment is clearly pertinent to the Bill given that I am trying to remove something that is in it. If it was not pertinent, no doubt Mr Speaker would not have selected it. I am afraid that I cannot accept my hon. Friend’s challenge to the authority of the Chair. I am sure, Madam Deputy Speaker, that were I to be out of order, you would be the first to leap to your feet and put me right.

Will all these different religions, genders and all the rest of it be covered in the diversity training that I am trying to remove from the Bill? We cannot ignore the fact that they exist and therefore have as much right, presumably, to be detailed in diversity training as anything else. Let us not forget diversity of ideological beliefs. Will that be covered too? This is a throwaway phrase—one of those things that everybody puts into everything. It is meaningless. There are lots of meaningless things in political discourse: social justice—nobody knows what it is but everyone is in favour of it; sustainable development—we are all in favour of it, but nobody has ever been able to tell me what it actually means; diversity training—let us shove it in as a little part of our Bill, but nobody really knows what it is trying to achieve. I am not entirely sure that there is any point to it, and if there is any point, it will be counterproductive. I cannot accept this aspect of the Bill, and that is why my amendment 9 tries to remove it.

Amendment 10 to clause 5 is about training on appropriate use of force. It would remove paragraph (k) on training on

“ethical issues associated with the use of force.”

I am trying to make sure that legal issues are the focus of the training, not ethical issues. How does one go about taking account of ethical issues in the use of force or restraint? As I said earlier, staff have a very difficult job as it is. When they are focusing on whether they should be using restraint with a particular patient, are we seriously saying that they have to start considering, at that moment, the ethical issues associated with it? Surely this House is about making sure that people act within the framework of the law, not about what I, the hon. Member for Croydon North or somebody else thinks are the relevant ethical issues. How do we decide what the ethical issues are that people should be considering? The ethical issue that I might think is particularly pertinent may be different from the one my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) or the hon. Member for Croydon North thinks pertinent. What sort of a situation are we putting staff in when they have to be thinking about the ethical issues, as intended in this Bill? I would not be able to explain that to them. We should be removing these bits of flim-flam from the Bill and making sure that we are instead asking people to follow a legal framework.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

As always, my hon. Friend is making an excellent point. In his extensive research, has he been able to ascertain the source of the support for the flim-flam that he is describing with regard to the use of the word “ethical”? The Minister said earlier that the Bill has the support of all stakeholders—I do not think she used that word, but she might have chosen to do so. Where is the evidence that the stakeholders are behind the use of ethical issues being part of the training?

[Philip Davies]

I am afraid I cannot answer my hon. Friend’s question. I do not know. The Minister was absolutely right to highlight the fact that although stakeholders do welcome this Bill, it would be wrong to say that they welcome every provision within it. That is certainly the feedback that I have had from my local care trust. While it certainly agrees with the thrust of the Bill and many of its provisions, there are still some it is not comfortable with. I cannot tell my hon. Friend about the genesis of this or any widespread level of support for it, because I am not aware of it. Perhaps the hon. Member for Croydon North or the Minister can help out. All I can say is that that definition of “ethical” is

“relating to moral principles or the branch of knowledge dealing with these”.

I am not sure whether my hon. Friend is any more enlightened by that definition that members of staff may have to take into account. I have no idea what it all means, to be perfectly honest, and yet we are expecting members of staff who are dealing with patients in difficult situations to be weighing up all these things.

I think it can be established that everyone has their own individual take on morals, but surely we cannot start applying ethical and moral views in serious situations such as these. This will end up being the beginning of a long list of other factors that it will be demanded people be mindful of. My view is that healthcare should be provided in a legal and law-abiding way, and not with the addition of anybody’s personal, individual ethical take on what is moral and not moral.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend may well be right; I do not know. I have not been able to find any evidence for that, but it may exist somewhere. Perhaps the promoter of the Bill or the Minister will be able to enlighten us. If my hon. Friend has any evidence, I would be very happy to change my mind, but as it is, I cannot see any purpose to the provision.

The general thrust of my argument is that while this Bill should indeed be making staff and institutions accountable, it should also be helping them in their daily job, but it is making their life far more difficult than need be. I do not see that it is helping to protect the rights of patients, which is at the heart of what it is supposed to do.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

My hon. Friend has referred to the definition of “ethics” and “ethical”. Paragraph (k), to which he is addressing his remarks, talks about the “principal” ethical issues—not all ethical issues but the “principal” ones. Does he have any insight into which ethical issues are “principal” and which are not?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I do not know the answer to that—who knows? It is a mystery to me, and therefore it will almost certainly be a mystery to any institutions trying to implement these measures. We have to bear in mind that this is not just meaningless. This will be the law of the land. Institutions and members of staff could well be taken to court over whether they have sufficiently taken into account these “principal” ethical issues. Surely it would be intolerable to put people in that legal uncertainty. I am not entirely sure that we, the people who are passing this piece of legislation, have any idea what it means ourselves, so how on earth are the people who are supposed to implement this meant to?

Surely laws have to be fit for purpose. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch is an eminent lawyer by background, and no doubt his profession will be dancing in the aisles at the prospect of all this uncertainty, because they are the only people who will benefit. The patients will not benefit, the staff certainly will not benefit, and the institutions will not benefit, because they will probably find themselves facing expensive legal suits. Unless this is simply a benefit for the legal profession, I cannot see any point to it whatsoever.

I am confident of scoring a few more runs on amendment 11, because the hon. Member for Croydon North indicated that he supported it. As I indicated to Mr Speaker at the start, I may wish to press the amendment to a Division and test the will of the House on this matter. The amendment would insert new paragraph (l) in clause 5(2), which relates to training in the appropriate use of force, to include training for mental health staff about who is responsible, and the roles and procedure when the police are called to assist.

Some people may say—I would not necessarily dismiss this out of hand—that clause 5 is already too prescriptive. There is an argument for saying that we should take out this detailed list of things that people should be trained in and effectively leave it to institutions and local experts to sort out training for themselves, rather than putting every little element of what that training should consist of in statute. There is certainly an argument for saying that we should get rid of all these areas of training that are prescribed. Of course, the problem with prescribing everything is that what will happen is that everything prescribed will be covered, but nothing else will be. Something may well have been missed out from the list, but if it is not on the list, institutions will not bother with it. That is my problem. Given that we are prescribing so much, it is essential that we get those things right, otherwise important things will be missed in the training. It seems to me that we go one of two ways: either we do not prescribe any of it; or we prescribe everything, because otherwise things will be missed out.

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[Sir Christopher Chope]

I certainly agree with my hon. Friend about the necessity of putting the two amendments in the Bill, and I think that everybody who has been listening to his speech will be of the same opinion. I wonder whether he would be able to tempt the Minister to intervene now and say that, having heard my hon. Friend’s compelling case, the Government will indeed accept amendments 11 and 12.

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. If the Minister wishes to intervene, I will not stop her.

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[Philip Davies]

There you go, Madam Deputy Speaker. What can you say? The civil service script has been brandished. There is always a reason in the civil service why anything should not be done, but all I can say to the Minister is that, to be perfectly honest, the idea that it is not necessary could apply to every single individual thing that is already listed. If we wanted to go down that line, we could say that all these things are being done anyway individually by this person or that person. Either there has to be a comprehensive list of things that the Government feel are essential, which must be covered in the training, or they do not. How on earth, knowing what happened to Mr Lewis and in the other cases that I have mentioned, can anybody stand up and say, “Having listened to that, we do not think these things are absolutely necessary.”? It is literally beyond belief. We literally could not make it up. It is a shameful situation that we have got ourselves into, to be perfectly honest. I will let people decide which side they are on. I hope that we can test the will of the House on those amendments, so we can see what people make of them and whether they want to be in the civil service box of deciding that nothing needs to be done, having listened to those cases. We will let the House make its mind up, and that is that.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Looking at the amendments on what should be in the training, has my hon. Friend had a chance to look at my amendment 98? It would introduce into clause 5(2)(a) the involvement of “patients” and “their families” in the planning, development and delivery of care and treatment. It seems that with the cases that he has cited, family involvement can be crucial, and this should also be part of the training.

[Philip Davies]

The answer to my hon. Friend’s question is yes—I have looked at his amendment and agree with it. If he would allow me, I had planned to go through my amendments first, before moving on to other people’s. I have his amendment in my sights and I will come to it later. I have read it and very much agree with him.

My next amendment—amendment 14—moves us on to clause 7(2), which states that reporting the use of force

“does not apply…where the use of force is negligible”.

My proposal would amend it to include restraint that does not include physical contact. The amendment would ensure that there is a not a series of pointless recording of every interaction with a patient that falls under the category of restraint. I am still using the word “restraint”, but I am appreciate that I am in danger, at the end of these amendments, of losing the battle, and that it will be called “force”. However, for the purposes of putting forward my amendments, I will still call it “restraint”, as I am seeking to do. Restraint is defined in the dictionary as the

“deprivation or restriction of liberty or freedom of action or movement”.

It must be reiterated, however, that it can be conducted in the most subtle of ways. The law entitles people to freedom of movement provided that they are not harming others or themselves while exercising that right. The policies of NHS services vary between trusts. Overall, the guidance for all medical staff follows the same basic principles, but specific details are more varied.

It would be fair to say that health trusts across the board consider physical restraint to be a last resort that should be used only following the exhaustion of all other methods. Staff are advised to call for the assistance of security when physical restraint is considered, as they will have been trained in restraint techniques. Bradford District Care Trust advises that the assistance of police be called upon only as a final resort when usual restraint methods have failed and there is a serious concern for the safety of the patient, staff or other patients on the ward. I have been told that as a general rule a patient would have to be exhibiting sustained high levels of physical aggression, often involving some kind of weapon, before the police were called.

Some services, such as the London Ambulance Service, apply a different approach and advise that police be called at the earliest sign of physical restraint being required. That is due to the service not providing its staff with training in physical restraint and therefore leaving them vulnerable without the back-up of police services. In all cases of restraint, staff are required to apply the principle of using the least restrictive and most proportionate option to control behaviour, for the least time possible. Again, the word “proportionate” is reiterated through the guidelines on restraint, which reminds us that it is consistently a consideration when restraint is conducted.

The types of restraint fall into three categories: low-level restraint—interventions that prevent a person from behaving in a way that threatens to cause harm to themselves, others or trust property and/or equipment; physical restraint—any manually applied method, be it physical, mechanical, material or equipment, that immobilises or reduces the ability of a person to move their arms, legs, body or head freely; and chemical restraint—a drug or medication used to manage a patient’s extremely violent or aggressive behaviour that can be administered, if necessary, against the patient’s wishes. Such drugs might, of course, also be used when the threat of harm is less immediate, with the patient’s consent, or if it is in the assessed best interests of a patient who lacks capacity.

Low-level or psychological restraint methods are the initial exercises conducted to try to prevent a situation from escalating quickly. Most often, this will be a variation of calming methods, which are less restrictive than methods in other categories, and which can ultimately allow the patient to have a timeout in isolation to calm down. Essentially, that can be as simple as telling someone not to do something or depriving them of equipment or possessions that may enable them to do what they otherwise would do—for example, removing glasses, hearing aids and mobility aids. It is less invasive and more frequently used with those who suffer with dementia.

Those less invasive approaches to patients allow them to retain a certain element of control over the outcome, but it is precisely those approaches that I fear will fall through the loophole of being constantly recorded, which will take the time of carers and care trusts away from the patients who actually need help. The key restraint methods the Bill is concerned with are those that require an element of physical contact, which should be reported appropriately. It is important that we remove the need to report minor interventions, which are not really at the heart of the Bill.

In the interests of time, I will group the next few amendments together. Amendment 15 to clause 7, on recording the use of force, would remove paragraph (k). Amendment 17 to the same clause would remove subsections (9) and (10), which require the recording of relevant characteristics of the patient—race, sexuality and so on. Amendments 21 to 30 are to clause 7 and amendment 31 is to clause 8, on statistics prepared by mental health institutions. Amendment 21 would insert new paragraph (q), which would add

“the relevant characteristics of the staff involved (if known)”

to the list of relevant characteristics in subsection (9). The other amendments would change the list to include the relevant characteristics of both patients and staff, make the list plural to cover both patients and staff and include the relevant characteristics of the staff involved.

Amendments 32 to 35 to clause 7 would remove paragraphs (c), (e), (f) and (h), which deal with a patient’s marriage status, race, religion and sexual orientation. Those amendments would remove such unnecessary labelling of patients. I am not one for putting people into categories, and I am not a fan of labels. All these things are irrelevant to the treatment of people with mental health problems, and we should not be getting bogged down listing everybody’s gender, race, sexual orientation, marital status and so on. It is all irrelevant to the treatment of people with mental health problems, and we should not be bogging down the staff with all this political correctness.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Is it not extraordinary that the list to which my hon. Friend refers makes no reference to whether the patient has any family or relatives?

[Philip Davies]

Again my hon. Friend is absolutely right. One could argue that that is important and should be logged. I am sure we would all want to involve the family in discussions about the treatment of family members. That might well have helped in the case of Mr Lewis. Yes, it is extraordinary that the bit that could actually be relevant to the treatment of the patient is not included and all this other stuff, which is completely irrelevant to their treatment, is included. It seems like unnecessary political correctness.

In recording the use of force, the inclusion of race to help tackle racism, of sexuality to tackle homophobia, and of gender to avoid sexism, will do nothing to aid the patients. Surely, if we believe in equality, all those things are irrelevant. We should not be pointing out people’s differences. Those things cannot be changed and are not relevant, and we should not be passing legislation that tries to make them an important part of treating people with mental health conditions.

If we will insist on going down this route, however, I am confused about why the Bill requires only the recording of the patient’s characteristics, and not those of the person giving out the treatment. If there is institutional racism, or whatever it is that people try to hang a hat on, surely the characteristics of the person using the force must be relevant. Surely a complete picture can never be grasped only by recording the characteristics of the patient. If we are trying, as I think the hon. Member for Croydon North is, to uncover unconscious bias, institutional racism, or whatever he wants to call it—people have their different terminology to hang their hat on—surely it cannot be done without amendment 21. He indicated in his opening remarks that he had sympathy with it, and I am grateful to him for that. I hope he agrees that it is not just useful but essential if we are going down this route.

The Bill also asks that the police wear body-worn cameras so as to literally give a full picture of their involvement in these cases. Why are we only reporting one side of the story when the police are not there? If the relevant characteristics of the staff are included in the report, the recorded statistics might give a better representation of the matter. I feel that the provision I suggest in the amendment was not originally added because it might highlight a very different narrative from that which some would like to present. One particular concern I have is that these reports will be used to try and back up the questionable argument of institutional racism in the health service, despite studies showing a lack of early diagnosis of mental health illness and psychosis because of a lack of trust in mental health services among people from BAME communities.

It is consistently documented that BAME patients, particularly those with African and African-Caribbean backgrounds, are more likely to be diagnosed with a form of psychosis, and to enter the mental healthcare system via a more confrontational approach than would be the case through a routine appointment with a GP. That is the basis for the institutional racism argument. However, it should be considered that the suggestion of institutional racism in the mental healthcare system is what is preventing people from seeking early medical help in the first place. It is not helping the situation; it is making the situation worse. People are being told, “Don’t enter these services, because there is institutional racism”, and that is not helping anyone.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I think we have all encountered constituency cases in which people suffering from mental illnesses are shifted from one location to another—from one clinical commissioning group area to another, or from one part of the country to another. In one of my constituency cases, someone is being told that they must go up to Manchester to be treated for a mental condition. If people are being dealt with in different locations, it is all the more important for there to be one set of medical notes that records everything that has happened.

[Philip Davies]

That is a very good point. I had not mentioned that people might be moved from one institution to another, but that, of course, makes the amendment even more important. I am not in favour of excessive bureaucracy, but that strikes me as being an essential part of what the Bill is intended to achieve. The purpose of my amendment 16 is to deliver the Bill’s original aim. In fact, that is the theme of all my amendments. They are certainly not intended to weaken the Bill; if anything, they are intended to encourage the hon. Member for Croydon North to go further. The amendment is not just something nice to tag on to the Bill. I think that it goes to the heart of what the Bill should be about. Restraint techniques should be documented in medical notes to provide other medical practitioners who are treating the same patient with an overview of how that individual patient responds to the use of that form of restraint. I cannot see why that should not be part of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

As I said at the start, I genuinely appreciate the constructive way in which the hon. Gentleman has approached the Bill, and he has just given another indication of that. The question is—this is the dilemma that we always seem to have on a Friday—whether we should rush through legislation that we know is not as it should be, and try to patch up little defects with a bit of sticking plaster here and a bit of sticking plaster there, or whether we should make an effort to ensure that the Bill is in a fit state in the first place.

The hon. Gentleman is arguing—it is a perfectly respectable position to hold—that it is all right to gloss over the fact that lots of really important things are missing and to provide a big sticking plaster called guidance, telling people, “Here is some guidance. We forgot to put this in the Bill, by the way. It should have gone in, but we did not sort it out in time. Parliament couldn’t be bothered to do its job properly, so here is a list of all the things that you should and should not be doing.” That is a perfectly reasonable case to make, but I take the view that when we pass legislation in the House, we should be a bit more mindful of the people who will have to implement it, and make sure that it is fit for purpose the first time round.

It seems to me that it is possible for everyone to be satisfied. The last thing that we want is for the Bill not to go on to the statute book. It is broadly a good piece of legislation—although, as I have explained, I have reservations about it—but I think that we have an opportunity to make it better. We have three options. The first, which is the ideal option, is for the House to put the Bill into proper shape and accept some of my amendments, which I think are clearly necessary. The hon. Gentleman himself accepts that some of them should have been in the Bill originally. Secondly, we can opt for the sticking plaster route: we can cock it all up ourselves, then put a sticking plaster called “guidance” over it and hope that someone will be responsible for sorting it all out. Thirdly, we can give the Bill another slot at a future date so that the Government have time to consider and do their write-rounds, and the hon. Gentleman can do a bit more consultation. Hopefully we can deal with the Bill later in the year, along with some of these amendments—either agreed or not agreed—on the basis of the write-rounds and the consultation. That seems to me to be the most sensible way of going about it.

I think that what is important is for a sensible piece of legislation to go on to the statute book. There are plenty of days left in the current Session on which we could deal with the Bill. Putting everything that should be in the Bill in guidance at the end does not really do it for me. It might do it for the hon. Gentleman, it might do it for the Minister, and it might get us over a little hurdle, but I do not really think that it is the best way to pass legislation in the House.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

My hon. Friend sets out the three options very clearly, and if we went for the last of them that would give the Government an opportunity to produce the draft guidance so we can see what will be in it. What has concerned me so far is that the Minister has said that quite a lot of the things my hon. Friend and I think should be in the Bill are not necessary, and the Minister is not even saying they should be in the guidance. If we get the draft guidance, we will be able to see where we stand.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right. The Minister is doing her best; she does not decide the Government’s bureaucratic nonsense of decision-making strategies and all the rest of it. This is not her fault; she is left in a difficult situation, and I am the first to appreciate that. But as my hon. Friend says, at present we are not even getting a guarantee that these things will be in the guidance; we are being told they might be dealt with in the guidance, and even that there is an expectation that they might be. But I have been here long enough; I have been shafted before on private Members’ Bills where I have been promised that an amendment will be tabled in the Lords to deal with something and then it never arrives. So a bird in the hand is certainly worth more than two in the bush, particularly when it comes to Government promises on amendments and guidance in my experience. That is not a party political point; both sides have been guilty of that in the past. I am therefore looking for a bit more than a waft here and a waft there suggesting this might be covered in guidance; I am looking for something a bit more concrete than that. Indeed, I do not think it does the Bill justice if it goes through Parliament when it is not in a fit in a state; we all want to see it in a fit state.

My amendments 18 to 20 to clause 12 relate to police body cameras. I propose to change subsections (1) and (2) to say that police “should…try to”, rather than “must”, take a video recording. I also want to remove subsections (4) and (5) which make police “liable to criminal…proceedings” if they fail to take a video.

As the College of Policing has stated, it is an indisputable fact in today’s society that law enforcement officers carrying out their duties, and the tactics they use, are under greater scrutiny than ever before. That is a good thing, and I am a massive fan of police body-worn cameras; they are fantastic for the interests of justice, and they safeguard the interests of police officers, who often face vexatious complaints. The footage can be produced to show that what they did was absolutely right, which is almost always the case. That is fantastic for the courts, too, because they can see at first hand what actually happened, rather than have to deal with conflicting accounts and have to choose to believe one witness over another and so forth. I am therefore a big fan of body-worn video cameras, and they are often the modern method of detailing interactions with the public by the police. Their aim is to improve the accountability and transparency of police conduct when police officers encounter the public. This is a move that the Home Office highlighted at the time of their launch as being the technology of the future, and as a means to help save police time and improve working practices.

General procedure for using the devices is that they are to be used only for recording encounters with the public and are not to be constantly recording for the duration of a shift. The policy of West Yorkshire Police, which covers my area, on body-worn camera video advises that it is to be used where a degree of investigation or exercising police powers is required unless there is a good reason not to. The rationale for not using body-worn video cameras may need to be explained at a later stage, and justified to a supervisor and/or during court proceedings. The recording must be proportionate, and the effect it may have on individuals and their privacy must be taken into account. It is advised that the cameras be switched on the moment the incident becomes apparent, and in some cases this may be en route for the incident. However, it is stated that officers must announce that they are using the recording equipment in clear wording: for example by saying, “I am wearing and using body-worn video. I just need to tell you that; you are being videoed and audio recorded.” The recordings taken are stored on the camera until they are returned to their docking station at the police station. From there, clips are downloaded and sent to the central system for viewing. These clips cannot be altered, changed or deleted by the officer in any way, which keeps them completely authentic for evidence purposes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to the Minister for that, and I am sure that police officers will be grateful, too. However, I just feel that there are occasions when it may be practicable to wear a camera, but for whatever reason—the pressure, time or the heat of the situation—they forget, and I wonder what will happen in such cases. There could be a situation in which it is practicable for them to wear a camera but, owing to the noises they make and the flashing lights or whatever, they think, “You know what? In this circumstance, I’m unsure I’m going to do that, because it might make this patient worse.” I worry that there are insufficient loopholes, so to speak, for police officers who are trying to do the right thing in difficult situations and that we are in effect trying to make things more difficult for them. I fear that, as a result of this Bill, criminal proceedings will be brought against a police officer that never should have been brought. It is all right to say, “We don’t think that that will happen,” but these things do happen. I want the law to be worded to make that as unlikely as possible. That is my only concern, and we will see whether my fears are realised.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Is there any evidence to suggest that the police will not want to protect themselves by taking body-worn cameras to such incidents? Why do we need this measure in the Bill at all?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. The evidence is that police officers are the biggest supporters of body-worn cameras. They are crying out for them and want to use them more often, and they want the cameras to have a longer battery life. I agree that it is entirely unnecessary, so do we need to go down the road of criminalising police officers because they forgot to wear a camera? It might have been entirely practicable, but they may have simply forgotten. Should that really be a criminal offence? I am dubious. We ought to be giving our police officers more support, not trying to make their lives harder.

I have been discussing my amendments, but other right hon. and hon. Members have tabled several amendments, and I want to start on those by discussing new clauses 1 and 2, tabled by the hon. Member for Croydon North. I understand what he is seeking to do, and it was perfectly reasonable for him to say that if there is death at the hands of the police, the Independent Police Complaints Commission—although I think it has a new title these days—will get involved and all the rest of it, so why should other deaths not be subject to a similar procedure? That is a perfectly respectable point, and I have every sympathy with that view.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

We have been around that issue, so I do not intend to revisit it again. The fundamental amendments 11 and 12, which I have addressed at some length, go to the heart of what happened to Mr Lewis on that terrible occasion. They would ensure that training was given to staff to ensure that those things could not happen again. It is therefore essential that those amendments are made to the Bill and that these things are not just dealt with as part of guidance, which may or may not then be covered off by individual trusts. We have a duty to make sure that the things that happened to Mr Lewis are absolutely covered in the training given to staff.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right not to fall foul of the scaremongering, because we are fortunate to be in a much longer Session than usual, and the Government are still to announce the extra Fridays that will be available to discuss private Members’ Bills. If a Bill such as this is supported by everybody in the Chamber—by the Government and the Opposition—but there is need for further improvement, why not improve the Bill, rather than putting it on the statute book in an imperfect state, given that we know jolly well how difficult it would be to amend it later through a further private Member’s Bill? Let us make this a good Bill.

[Philip Davies]

The Bill will definitely conclude its Report stage at some point, but if it does not pass today, it will not be my fault. For goodness’ sake, we still have two and a half hours to go. The Government still have plenty of opportunity to say that they will accept amendments 11 and 12, and if they do so, the Bill will go through today. If they need more time to do a write-around before those amendments can be agreed, that is literally in not my hands, but the Government’s. If they want the Bill to get through today—

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

But we do not know what will be in this guidance. I am making the case that it is absolutely essential that amendments 11 and 12 are made to the Bill. The hon. Member for Croydon North said quite clearly that he agreed with them and that he also thought they should be made to the Bill. I appreciate that he is trying to find a compromise but, strictly speaking, he would be happy for the provisions to be in the Bill. I think they should be in the Bill; he thinks they should be in the Bill. The Minister has not even made a commitment that these specific amendments would be reflected in the guidance. I am literally being offered nothing, apart from her saying, “Oh, we know this Bill is not good enough. We will try to sort out a bit of guidance here and there. It’s not perfect, but just let it through because it has a worthy sentiment behind it.” We must start treating legislation with a bit more respect in this place. The Minister says that the Bill has gone through parliamentary scrutiny, but this is parliamentary scrutiny. This is the Bill’s Report stage for goodness’ sake.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

The Government’s line seems to be that this legislation is an urgent measure. If it is so urgent, may I ask the Minister—through you, Madam Deputy Speaker—what state the guidance has reached?

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

Absolutely. It appears, to me at any rate—I do not know about anyone else—that the Government are just making things up as they go along, desperately trying to get this Bill through in any form whatever. Whether it is good, perfect or indifferent is neither here nor there. They just want to get it through, presumably so that they can say at next questions, “We got the Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Bill through Parliament.” Well, perhaps they just want to pass any old legislation, include a few decent clauses and hope that it will do the job, but I am afraid that is not what this House should be about. It is about saying that we have identified areas where the Bill should be strengthened, and we therefore have a duty to find a way to do that. If the Government will not agree to do it today, I am afraid that we will have to try to ensure that they do it in the future.

I am determined that the Bill will go through in a proper form that will help to stop what happened to Mr Lewis ever happening again. We have to get back to the central reason for the hon. Member for Croydon North introducing this Bill in the first place. The points on which I am focusing are not just useful add-ons here and there; they are at the very heart of the purpose behind the hon. Gentleman’s Bill. I do not really see why he should be so complacent about letting it through without these things being included.

Anyway, hon. Members have tabled amendments that deserve to be scrutinised. The right hon. Member for North Norfolk has tabled quite a few. With amendment 40, he wants to include the threat of force as part of the use of force, so that the threat of restraint would be considered the same as the use of force. I am afraid that I cannot agree with that. We do not want to deter people from warning of the threat of force, when warning of the threat of force may actually stop them having to use it in the first place. I do not really see how the threat of force can be treated in exactly the same way as the use of force. Often, threat of force seems to be a legitimate restraint technique. If staff are not threatening to use force before they actually use it, the use of force might become more likely. I do not agree with that amendment.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

And, of course, every threat of the use of force would have to be recorded, would it not? The threat of force was actually included in the original drafting of the Bill and was taken out in Committee, so I do not understand why the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) wants to include it again.

[Philip Davies]

I agree. The same applies to amendment 41 —also in the name of the right hon. Member for North Norfolk—which would include the “threat of isolation” alongside isolation itself, and to his amendment 42, with which he wants to include the “coercion of a patient”. I am not entirely sure why such an amendment is needed, to be perfectly honest. He includes a definition of coercion in amendment 43, as

“the use or threat of force, with the intention of causing fear, alarm or distress to control a patient’s behaviour or elicit compliance with the application of a use of force.”

I am not really sure what that adds to the Bill, to be perfectly honest. I do not think that anything it does add to the Bill is something that I could support anyway. I think that he is taking these definitions a bit too far given the Bill’s purpose.

The right hon. Gentleman’s amendment 37 would insert into clause 3:

“A policy published under this section must set out that the use of force will only be used without the sole intention of inflicting pain, suffering or humiliation, or subjecting patients to tortuous, inhumane or degrading treatment, or without inflicting punishment or intimidation.”

With regard to using force with

“the sole intention of inflicting pain, suffering or humiliation”,

I look to people who are more legally qualified than me, but surely that must already be illegal. I cannot believe that that can already be lawful in this country. Therefore, this amendment is not necessary either.

Amendment 36 refers to a

“description of each of the methods of restraint that may be used…what steps will taken to reduce and minimise the use of force”

and

“a description of the techniques to be used”.

Paragraph (d) is the worst bit. It refers to

“a commitment to reducing the overall use of force in the mental health unit.”

Would that potentially mean that restraint and force is not being used when it should be used because somebody had a commitment to reduce its overall use? Surely, we should be seeking to make sure that restraint and force are used appropriately—at the right times, in the right situations, with the right patients. As long as that is being done, the number of cases is neither here nor there. It is the appropriateness that matters, not the numbers. This amendment would mean that restraint would not be used when it should be used. The lack of trust in staff in this is something that I cannot possibly support.

Amendment 38 says that

“subsection (1) must include a patient’s right to advocacy and how to access an advocate.”

Again, this may deter staff from using restraint even when it is necessary, thinking that they are going to get into a compensation culture with vexatious legal claims being made against them. We should not be passing laws that encourage that.

Amendment 79 says:

“The Secretary of State must publish quality standards for training”

and

“The Secretary of State may delegate the publication of quality standards for training”.

There is already a requirement to have standards for training; the right hon. Gentleman seems just to want to add the word “quality”. I am not sure that there is any indication that the standards for training would not be of quality anyway. It goes without saying that we want quality standards of training; we do not need to put that into the Bill.

Amendment 80 refers to “trauma-informed care”. I do not have a particular problem with that. Again, it is an issue of how prescriptive we should be in relation to the training. I have already spoken at length about that. The right hon. Gentleman makes some fair points.

The right hon. Gentleman’s other amendments include amendments 83, 84 and 85. Amendment 83 says:

“The Secretary of State must make a statement to Parliament, as soon as practicable following the publication of report under subsection (2).”

It is difficult to disagree with that, to be honest. I do not see why that should not happen. I would be perfectly happy about it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch has also tabled some amendments. His amendment 88 would

“leave out ‘mechanical or chemical’ and insert ‘or mechanical’.”

I think that he wants to get rid of the chemical type of restraint from the Bill. A chemical restraint can be described as a medical restraint to restrict the freedom of movement of a patient. Such chemical restraints can sometimes also be used to sedate a patient if necessary. I think that his amendment is understandable. My only concern is whether it might lead to perverse outcomes whereby chemical means of force are used more often than they should be to get round the Bill. I am a bit nervous that that may happen. I would therefore deter him from pressing ahead with it, although I certainly understand where he is coming from.

Amendment 90 to clause 1 seems to be a consequential amendment, so we do not need to deal with that. Amendment 89 would leave out paragraph (b) from clause 1(6), to remove the isolation of a patient from the list of things referred to by “use of force”. I am much more sympathetic to this amendment, because my hon. Friend makes a good point. I am sure he will express his own opinion when the time comes on why he feels so strongly about that, but my view on first reading is that it is perfectly sensible. Amendment 91 is consequential to that.

Amendment 98 is one to which my hon. Friend referred in an earlier intervention. It would insert the words “and their families” after “patients”, to allow patients and their families to plan, develop and deliver their care and treatment in a mental health unit. This is an excellent amendment. It is essential that families are involved in the treatment of their family members. In many cases, if the family could have been more involved from the start and been able to help and warn what the situation was, such problems and terrible situations would not have happened. It is a very sensible amendment, and I hope that he will pursue it with vigour, because it is really important that we involve family members in treatment.

Amendment 100, which would ensure that guidance is published no later than six months after the Act is passed, is particularly pertinent to the discussions we have been having. My only quibble is that six months may be too long, but I certainly agree with the thrust of it, which is that there should be a time limit.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

It all depends on when the draft guidance is produced. My amendment is referring to the guidance that emerges after any consultation. As I said earlier, I think that the consultation should take place very early, but six months is a maximum.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is on to something with that, and I certainly agree. It is quite extraordinary that we do not have the draft guidance already, but I will not go over that again.

Amendment 101 is sensible. It would insert the word “significant” after “any”, to require a record to be kept of any significant use of force on a patient by a member of staff. That is sensible because we do not want to include other things that should not be included. The point I make is that the word “significant” is rather subjective. One person’s “significant” may not be another person’s “significant”, and it might be a bit difficult for trusts and staff to understand what counts as “significant”. My only concern is whether that adds confusion.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

At the moment, clause 7(2) states that subsection (1) does not apply to cases where the use of force is “negligible”. That is refined in subsection (3). I am effectively saying in my amendment that “significant” is non-negligible.

[Philip Davies]

I hope that my hon. Friend will expand on that later. He makes a good point, and I am broadly sympathetic to it.

I have now gone through the amendments on the amendment paper. Different Members have tabled quite a few amendments, and therefore it takes a bit of time. I would like to think that, like the hon. Member for Croydon North, people have been convinced of the necessity of amendments 11 and 12, which go to the heart of what the Bill is supposed to be about.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Some people looking at today’s proceedings may say that my hon. Friend has been speaking for a long time, but we need to remember that when Bills are considered, the amendments are often grouped so that we do not consider all amendments in one discussion. Today, we are considering all the amendments to the Bill in one group, which I think explains why he has spoken for a bit longer than he might sometimes do.

Draft Dorset (Structural Changes) (Modification Of The Local Government And Public Involvement In Health Act 2007) Regulations 2018 Draft Bournemouth, Dorset And Poole (Structural Changes) Order 2018

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Wednesday 16th May 2018 General Committees

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Exactly. I obviously was not party to the conversation, but as I understand it, nothing about potential changes to council tax or business rate valuations was discussed.

Subsequently, last October the Government indicated to council officers across Dorset that they were no longer content with a 20-year harmonisation period, and that the period would be much shorter. That was confirmed to me by the chief official at the Department—he is in the room today—when I met him on 7 November at the behest of the Secretary of State. I was told then that the Government thought that the maximum period for harmonisation would be five years, but in practice it has never been more than two years in the past, and a maximum of two or three years is likely. A harmonisation period of two or three years would completely transform projections on savings, yet there has been no update from the councils to show what the impact would be in practice.

The issue of harmonisation is fraught. The Government invited all councils in Dorset to make submissions on harmonisation in time for the 8 January deadline. I know that Christchurch did that, but not whether other councils did. Unlike with the Government’s decision to go ahead with the two unitary authorities proposal, which they announced on 26 February, they have not yet said where they stand on the fraught issue of harmonisation. Their criteria for judging the issue are so broad and vague that it gives them absolute discretion over what answer they provide. As the issue has now been raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West, I hope that when the Minister responds he will say unequivocally what harmonisation and equalisation period the Government will set in the event of these orders going through.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the campaign that he has run energetically on this issue in the House of Commons. For those of us not from Dorset, am I right in thinking that the situation could be summed up in this way: what is proposed is a good deal for Poole and Bournemouth but a very bad deal for people in Christchurch, and the Government have decided to impose a bad deal on Christchurch against people’s wishes, for the benefit of people in Bournemouth and Poole? That seems to be my hon. Friend’s case. Am I right in that analysis?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

That is a succinct but absolutely correct analysis, and if it was not correct, the people of Christchurch would not have voted as they did. More than 17,000 people went to a local poll to express the view that they do not want to be subject to Bournemouth and Poole control. I say “control” because in a Poole, Bournemouth and Christchurch unitary authority, Christchurch will have 13% of the councillors, which means that they would always be outvoted and in a minority. The green-belt area around Christchurch would be open to being removed at the behest of Bournemouth and Poole, so that they could land grab and so on.

Middle Level Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 28th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I think the principle is that if the farmers—I know my hon. Friend has a significant interest in farming—are going to benefit from land drainage schemes, and this is essentially one mega land drainage scheme, I do not see why they should not have to pay for the benefit that they get from the scheme. That is what this is all about.

I am told—I do not hold myself up as an expert on anything, but certainly not on this—that if there was no longer any land drainage, the navigation would be much wider, more effective and deeper. In a sense, the land drainage enables the farmers to make their profits off the land and is of direct benefit to them, whereas the navigation would be there even if there was no land drainage. I do not know whether my hon. Friend accepts that that is a true analysis—perhaps he is a better student of geography than I—but that is what I am told.

When the commissioners were first given their role, it was on the basis that they would recover charges from the landowners, rather than from the users of the navigation. If charges are to be introduced for the use of the navigation, the argument is that those charges should be used to keep the navigation open and usable by those who are being charged for using it. That seems to me a perfectly equitable principle on which to proceed. That is the background to the first new clause.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I apologise to my hon. Friend for missing his opening oration. Can he tell me how many times this water is not maintained to this depth? Are we dealing with a solution looking for a problem or is this a genuine problem?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I am not briefed to have an answer to that. All I can do is make the general comment that this has been raised by the March Cruising Club, which I imagine would not be concerned about it if it was not a problem. The March Cruising Club believes it is important to have this adequate depth of water set out to make sure the navigation is available.

That brings me on to new clause 2, which would require the provision of specified facilities at Stanground Lock and Salters Lode Lock. It states:

“The commissioners must, within twelve months of the day on which the Act comes into force, provide facilities at Stanground Lock and Salters Lode Lock including a lavatory, a fresh water point, bins for the disposal of refuse”

and so on. It also states that they should provide

“a minimum of ten moorings, each available for up to seven days at any one time and capable of accommodating a boat of up to fifty feet in length.”

Again this is a quid pro quo: if the commissioners want to make money out of the navigation and the vessels using it, it would be sensible for them to make sure there are proper facilities for those vessels, which will be paying significantly for the privilege of using the navigation.

A similar point is raised in new clause 3 by the March Cruising Club. This clause states:

“The Commissioners must, within twelve months of the day on which this Act comes into force, provide facilities within the town of March including a lavatory, a coin operated water shower”

and so on. I understand that the commissioners have more or less guaranteed that that is what they are going to do, but the petitioners understandably want to ensure that those undertakings and expressions of good intention are properly reflected in the legislation, rather than just being left as a matter of good will.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I particularly support new clause 5 and struggle to find a reason why anyone could not, because it seems to be only fair and proper. Has my hon. Friend had any discussions with the Bill’s sponsor or the people behind it to find out whether they think it is a common-sense clause that they would accept or, if not, what logical reason they have for not accepting it?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

We have not yet reached that stage. That might be my fault, because I have not sat down with the Bill’s promoters to discuss these issues in detail. I understand that there was quite a lot of discussion of such issues in Committee. For the reasons that I have set out, the petitioners are still unhappy and feel that there should be a new clause to incorporate this provision.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. We will come to clause 4 and the amendments to it later. I shall say nothing other than that the petitioners and I were pleased that clause 4 was introduced in Committee in response to the concerns that were expressed. As I mentioned at the outset, just because it was introduced at that stage, that does not mean that it is perfect, which is why we are dealing with these new clauses and the amendments to clause 4, to which I shall come in due course and in order, because it is much easier for people to follow proceedings if people start at the beginning and go through clause by clause.

[Philip Davies]

Does my hon. Friend agree that if new clause 5 is not accepted, that would effectively mean that people think it would be fine for the charges to be made but the facilities not to be in good repair and working order? That would clearly be intolerable—[Interruption.]

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I hear my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay, who speaks on behalf of the promoters, saying from a sedentary position that my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) is wrong about that. Let us wait until we discuss clause 4, which was introduced in Committee, to see whether we can tease out a little more information on all the implications.

Amendment 1 basically says that the time given between the Bill obtaining Royal Assent and being implemented is unreasonably short. The period is currently specified as only 28 days; it seems to me that it would be reasonable for it to come into force six months after the day on which it was passed. I would not say that it is the most important of the amendments, but it would be interesting to hear why the promoters do not think that that is a reasonable position to have. We know that, under the provisions of this Bill, some byelaws will have to be drawn up. That does not mean that work on the byelaws cannot start in advance of the Bill being passed into law—a period of six months will then need to be left for the Bill to be implemented—bearing in mind the fact that we are dealing with a lot of lay people who will probably need quite a lot of notice of the changes that will have to be made under the provisions of this Bill.

Amendment 2 is, in a sense, a drafting amendment. As we get a definition of “polluting matter” under clause 2, it seems much easier to keep it as an objective test. I have no quarrel with defining polluting matter as

“sewage or any other injurious matter, whether solid or liquid”.

We will not let our imaginations run riot on that. What I find more difficult is what is meant by the word “offensive”. What is added by including that word? Essentially, what is offensive to one person may not be offensive to another, and it is a subjective test. I would be interested to know from my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay what that subjective test adds in that particular part of the clause on polluting matter.

Let me turn to amendment 3. I am going through these amendments quite quickly, because there is no need to spend a lot of time on amendments to which there should be a short and succinct answer, saying, “Yes, I agree with my hon. Friend, these are good amendments and we will be happy to incorporate them in the Bill.”

Amendment 3 is more of a probing amendment. We are in the new age of electricity, and the definition of power-driven vessel here includes

“any vessel propelled by a detachable outboard engine”

but it does not include a sailing boat, a rowing boat or a canoe—fine. However, now that we have a new generation of electric motors, why do we not introduce in a Bill such as this an incentive for people to use electric power on these waterways? Obviously, electric power is much less polluting and better for the atmosphere. If it is as quiet as many of these new cars seem to be, it will hardly disturb anybody, as the boat, powered by an electric motor, glides down the route of the navigation. I am interested in hearing the thoughts of my hon. Friend on that.

Indeed, in recognising the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food on the Front Bench, who has come along to help us in our deliberations, I could perhaps say that this is an issue for the Government. Perhaps the Government might be interested in thinking about introducing some sort of incentive for the use of electric motors rather than outboards. I know that a lot of my constituents would be very happy if there were more electric-driven vessels rather than power-driven vessels. This could open up a much larger issue, but why not start raising it now on the first occasion today?

That takes me on to amendment 4, which is about the “use”. Are we talking about the use of vessels? The Bill says:

“‘use’ in relation to any vessel on a waterway, includes launching the vessel onto the waterway, keeping or mooring it on the waterway”.

I have no quarrel with the rest of it, which is

“navigating it on the waterway, and letting it for hire on the waterway”.

There seems to be a lot of concern about what happens when people have a vessel that is kept at the side of the waterway or even in a marina, or is used as a houseboat. Are we really saying that that amounts to using the vessel on a waterway? Under this definition, it would amount to using the vessel on a waterway and that does not really seem to be common sense. Surely using a vessel on the waterway means actually using it—navigating it and letting it for hire on the waterway—but it does not include keeping or mooring it on the waterway.

Amendment 5 is a more extensive version of a similar concern that has been raised by a number of the petitioners. They say that the amended definition of waterways, compared with the definition before the Bill was in Committee, is a

“move in the right direction”,

but that

“it still serves to extend the jurisdiction and control of the Commissioners into privately owned property (such as marinas), which will usurp the rights of property owners to decide who and which boats can use the water over their land.”

The petitioners feel that this is an

“unwarranted interference with the rights of private citizens”,

and that, at the very least, there should be a provision for boat owners whose vessels remain permanently in the marina to make an off-the-water declaration—a sort of waterways statutory off road notification—so that they are no longer liable for the charges. In fact, that is a very good analogy. If individuals do not use their motor vehicle on the road, they do not have to pay road tax, so if people are not using their houseboat on the water, why should they have to pay these charges? That issue could be resolved by having a narrower definition of waterway, which is what amendment 5 would do.

Lines 11 to 18 of clause 2 say that

“‘the waterways’ means the waterways in respect of which the Commissioners are the navigation authority…including…the waterways set out in…Schedule 1”—

what we would all understand as the waterways—

“water control structures…or…the banks of, those waterways; and…any watercourse in the Middle Level”,

which is obviously what this Bill is about. However, I do not see why that should include a lake, pit, pond, marina or substantially enclosed water adjacent to those waterways and from which any vessel may be navigated, whether through a lock or into the waterways themselves. If a vessel is navigated into the waterway, it is in the waterway and is liable under the provisions of this Bill. But if it is not navigated in there, it does not seem relevant to say that it could be navigated. One way of reducing the scope of the definition of “waterway”, about which the petitioners remain concerned, would be to support amendment 5.

I turn to amendment 6 to clause 3—a clause that was introduced as a result of the work done in Committee. The clause establishes a navigation advisory committee, and the petitioners are very pleased about that, but they also think that it needs further definition. That is not a criticism of the people who tabled the amendment. However, given the way that we deal with legislation in our two Houses, sometimes an amendment can be improved when further considered.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Unfortunately my children and I are so old that they do not benefit from visits to Toys“R”Us, but it is very sad when any long-established business goes into administration.

[Philip Davies]

With regard to whether people are representative or appear to be so to the commissioners, perhaps the commissioners might fear that there could be some kind of legal action on the basis of whether and how someone could be determined to be representative—that somebody might say, “Well, I don’t think these people are representative of X, Y and Z”—and so a qualification was put in to help to get them out of a potentially sticky situation. Does my hon. Friend think that that is why the amendment was worded as it was?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

If I may say so, that is a more plausible explanation than the one being put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay, but I think we have said enough about that. We will hear what he thinks when he responds to the debate.

I turn to amendments 6, 7 and 8 to clause 3. The petitioners are concerned that the requirement that the commissioners must take the committee’s views into consideration has limited use, because the commissioners could say that they have taken those views into consideration but found them to be of no value. The only remedy for any such failure to take the committee’s views properly into account would then be judicial review, which is strictly time-limited, expensive and hugely unreliable, with historical bias, they think, in favour of authorities. I do not know about that, but certainly they are right in saying that judicial review is a long-winded and potentially expensive way of seeking redress.

In the light of those concerns, I have tabled amendment 7 to clause 3(6), which would mean that instead of the commissioners being required to “take into consideration” any matter, they must “give full” consideration. There is a difference between taking into consideration and giving consideration. If the commissioners gave full consideration to any matter, that would be useful.

To reinforce that point, amendment 8 would add a sentence to the end of subsection (6), which would then say that the commissioners give full consideration to any matter, recommendation or representation which may from time to time be referred or made to them by the committee

“and in the event of not accepting such a recommendation or representation give full reasons for that decision.”

That would provide the sort of protection that the petitioners seek and would strengthen clause 3 and make it an even more effective addition to the Bill.

Amendment 9 to clause 4 would leave out subsection (2). It is in essence a probing amendment, to draw attention to the whole issue of charges and constraints upon the way in which charges can be made, which, as has been said, is a useful amendment to the Bill. I am suggesting that it could be linked more specifically with each of the different uses for which charges will be recoverable.

Amendment 10 would mean that in exercising the power under clause 4(1)(a), rather than the whole of subsection (1),

“the Commissioners must aim to secure that, taking one financial year with another, the income from charges under that subsection does not exceed the annualised costs incurred by the Commissioners in exercising their functions in respect of navigation under the navigation Acts.”

It seems that that relates to the use of any waterway by any vessel. Those would be the charges for the use of the waterway, and they would link in directly with the functions in respect of navigation under the navigation Acts.

I am much more dubious about linking in the reasonable charges for the provision of services and facilities in respect of the waterways and their banks, because they are not separated out from the more general, nor is the requirement for registration of any vessel under navigation byelaws. Those charges should be separately identified and accounted for, and they should undergo this test: taking one financial year with another, the charges under those subsections should not exceed the annualised costs. This is a refinement of clause 4, and I think that it would improve the clause significantly.

Amendment 11 also deals with the annualised issue. The effect of amendment 12 would be as follows:

“The Commissioners may revise, waive or remove any charge fixed under subsection (1)(a), and different charges may be fixed for different cases or classes of case.”

The amendment would extend the commissioners’ discretion, while making sure that it was specific to the different categories of activity for which they can recover charges.

Amendment 13, which is a probing amendment, would leave out subsection (4). I hope that we will hear further explanation of why the commissioners want to

“make the use of the services and facilities referred in subsection (1)(b) subject to such terms and conditions as the Commissioners may specify in writing.”

The most radical amendment that I have tabled to clause 4 is amendment 14, which I hope will find favour with Members from across the House. The amendment would add, at the end of the clause:

“No charge shall be payable in respect of the use of a waterway by a vessel being used by a person who is registered disabled”.

I raise that because there is quite an issue about disability, the use of waterways and the use of powers similar to those sought by the promoters of the Bill. Such powers have been abused on occasions, and disabled people have been severely pilloried and discriminated against. Why should it not be possible to exempt disabled people from these charges?

I have been sent a press cutting dated April 2015 from Wiltshire, where a disabled boat owner who lived on the Kennet and Avon canal faced costs of up to £76,000 as a result of action that was taken against him by the Canal and River Trust. The individual was living on incapacity benefit and disability living allowance. Instead of allowing him to repair his boat over a period of time, the trust strictly imposed the conditions of his licence and required him to vacate his boat, which was also his home. Insult was added to injury by the fact that he was denied legal aid, and he was instead represented by the legal officer of the National Bargee Travellers Association.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Obviously, they would get the exemption only if they applied for it. Disabled people are proud, and I have a lot of disabled residents among my constituents, but that does not mean that, for example, they do not cherish the ability to park their cars using a discretionary parking permit.

In direct answer to my hon. Friend’s intervention, I had not received any representations from disabled constituents of his before making this speech; if I had, I would have referred them to him. However, what I can say is that the Canal and River Trust, which was dealing with this issue in Wiltshire, has now accepted in principle that disabled boaters should not have enforcement action taken against them in the same way as able-bodied boaters, but it has not yet been very keen to communicate that policy to disabled people there.

All I can say is that, given how the powers have been used on inland waterways in other parts of the country, there is potentially an issue, and by putting forward amendment 14, I have at least ensured that it is discussed. As we know, there is even more interest in the other place in promoting the cause of disabled people than there is in this House. It may well be that, when the Bill gets to the other place, Members there will wish to pursue the content of amendment 14 if it is not accepted by the sponsor today.

Amendments 15 and 16 are designed to leave out clauses 5 and 7. I tabled them to enable us to have a debate on the content of those clauses, should that be thought desirable. However, having regard to the time, the best thing to do is probably not to speak to those amendments but to go on to one or two of the later amendments.

[Philip Davies]

That’s a shame.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

My hon. Friend says that that is a shame—

Local Audit (Public Access to Documents) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 24th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, and it is in essence what I have been saying about the position in Bournemouth. If Bournemouth is to take over or merge with Christchurch in a unitary authority, the people in Christchurch need to know the nature of Bournemouth Borough Council’s debts and liabilities and how it conducts its proceedings, particularly in planning. One of the key losses in such a merger would be the loss of Christchurch Borough Council’s control over its own greenbelt and planning policy. That is one of the biggest concerns that my local residents have. They fear that they will lose control over the quality of their local environment, which they currently control through local planning policy.

The amendment seeks to ensure that anybody can get access to such information, rather than just limiting it to journalists. Obviously, the information to which I referred earlier will become available only when the audit for this financial year is conducted, and that may be rather later in the day than most people would wish.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

As my hon. Friend knows, many local papers are stretched financially and therefore deterred from publishing things—perhaps including things about the leader of Bournemouth council—because they fear being sued and do not have the resources to defend themselves. Does he agree that that is why it is so important that not just journalists but the public have access to such material, so that they can make up their own minds and are not dependent on newspapers being able to afford to risk publishing things that may cause them to end up in court?

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We in this place are trying to do the job of holding councils to account. I tabled a parliamentary question earlier this year to find out the level of non-domestic rate arrears in Bournemouth. I eventually got the answer that there were between £10 million and £12 million of uncollected non-domestic rates. To the council’s credit, within weeks it had issued summonses against all those who owed arrears—I like to think I had some influence on that. We are talking about £10 million to £12 million of non-domestic rate arrears, at a time when we are saying that it is absolutely essential to save 1% of turnover by abolishing existing sovereign councils. It is farcical.

Trying to get councils to address these issues themselves is often very difficult. The idea of setting up scrutiny committees, which was part of the Localism Act 2011, has not really worked because those committees are often occupied by people who do not really understand, or are not interested in, genuinely holding the council to account. There is also the problem that scrutiny committees are not entitled to look into planning issues, which are often among the most controversial local issues.

There are lots of other things I could say about neighbouring councils, but I will not trouble the House with all that now. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson) is here, and he may wish to add to that catalogue in due course if he contributes to the debate. The essence of the amendment is that everybody should be able to access such information. It should not be limited to journalists and other interested parties.

The idea is very much supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley, who wanted to extend those rights to everybody. I anticipate the probable response of the Bill’s sponsor, my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills, to this point. On Second Reading, she resisted arguments to extend the rights by saying:

“If the rights were extended to anyone and everyone, there would be great potential to make mischief through multiple requests to inspect or copy documents, without the accompanying ability to make a meaningful contribution towards raising awareness or improving the accountability of the body concerned.”—[Official Report, 25 November 2016; Vol. 617, c. 1199.]

I implore my hon. Friend to reflect on what she said, because it is a sweeping generalisation and no evidence was adduced in support of it. Where is the evidence that the freedom to look at documents would be abused? Indeed, if it is abused, there are already safeguards to deal with vexatious behaviour. That, in summary, is the case for amendment 2.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

Mr Speaker, I was not actually going to go into that level of detail.

[Philip Davies]

Why not?

[Mr Chope]

Because I am seeking to make quite a lot of points. I am sure that, however many members the society has, it will have even more members if the Bill is amended as I propose.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is beginning to lose me. It seems to me that he made a good case earlier for his amendment 2, which would provide access for as many people as possible—I am absolutely with him on that—but he now appears to be arguing for restricting the number of people who have access to such things, which flies in the face of his earlier amendment. Will he clarify whether he really supports his earlier amendment, rather than what may be seen as these probing amendments?

[Mr Chope]

Yes, I absolutely support my amendment 2. I tabled these alternative amendments 5 to 7 because in the event that my earlier amendment is not accepted by the Bill’s promoter—

[Philip Davies]

That’s very defeatist.

[Mr Chope]

Yes, it is indeed defeatist, and it is uncharacteristic of me to be defeatist about such things. In a sense, this is a case of belt and braces: if we are going to give privileged access to a group of people—my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills wants it to be journalists—they should be accredited, professional or qualified journalists, rather than people who simply call themselves journalists.

[Philip Davies]

I hope that my hon. Friend will not be defeated on amendment 2—I encourage him to strive for it and I think that he will garner a lot of support—but surely if his first amendment fails, the second-best option is for as many people as possible, within the terms of “journalist”, to have access to this information. Surely that is a better fall-back position than trying to restrict it even more?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

rose—

[Philip Davies]

rose—

[Mr Nuttall]

Ah, a dilemma. I will give way first to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. There would be considerable interest from local residents in accessing all the accounts of all health service bodies.

My hon. Friend’s amendment 11 would extend the period in which inspections can be carried out beyond 30 days. I have heard no explanation as to why the period is 30 days and not 60, 25 or another number. I entirely agree that no logical reason has been advanced as to why we should have a 30-day limit. I would support him on the amendment.

Amendments 12, 13 and 14 are more technical amendments dealing with commercial confidentiality. I welcome amendment 13 and recommend it to the House. The fact that something was commercially sensitive in the past should not prevent the accounts and associated paperwork from being inspected now.

Those are my views on my hon. Friend’s amendments, but I reiterate that I commend my amendment 1 to the House. I hope this is not the case, but if the amendment is opposed, that will draw into question everything said about the Bill’s extending access to a wider number of people and giving information to the public. I have sought only to put in the Bill what the explanatory notes say the Bill is about.

At the very least, if for whatever reason my amendment does not find favour with the promoter of the Bill, I would first be interested to know why. Secondly, the public would be suspicious of the Bill. Let us not forget that the Bill was brought before the House because the initial Acts were defective. I advise the House to be wary of any arguments advanced by the Government against my amendment, because Governments of various hues down the years have led us to the position we are in this morning. I have attempted to be clear and open. One can argue over individual words, but I submit to the House that my amendment is perfectly clear. It seeks to give clarity to the phrase “citizen journalist”, which, whether we like it or not, appears in the heading of clause 1. I commend my amendment to the House.

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch (Mr Chope) and for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), who have given a compelling and comprehensive account of their amendments. I rise to adjudicate between them. It is a rare occurrence when my two hon. Friends come at things from slightly different perspectives, but I sense that they have their differences on the Bill. I will do my best to be fair to their amendments in my adjudication.

I join my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North in congratulating the Bill’s promoter, my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), on getting her Bill to this stage. It is a good Bill, but if it were to incorporate some of the points made by my hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch and for Bury North, it would be a better Bill. The whole purpose of the Report stage is to try to improve a Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) is an excellent Minister, and I hope that he and my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills have listened carefully to my hon. Friends, and that they appreciate, on reflection, that the Bill could be better. I will try to set out which of the amendments the Minister and my hon. Friend should be minded to accept. If they are minded not to accept them, I encourage my hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch and for Bury North to consider pressing them to a Division to test the will of the House.

My hon. Friends have made compelling cases for some but not all of their amendments, which is where I will focus my attention. Amendment 2 is the lead amendment in the group—rightly so, in many respects. It is my contention that it is the most powerful amendment in the group and if my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch is tempted to press any of his amendments to a Division, I hope he focuses his attention on amendment 2, which states:

“Clause 1, page 1, line 5, leave out from ‘after’ to the end of the subsection and insert ‘any members of the public who are registered to vote in local elections in the United Kingdom’”.

In simple terms, my hon. Friend is basically saying that everybody in the country should have a right to know what is going on in local authorities. His compelling case was based on what is happening in his local authority and the neighbouring authority in Bournemouth. Clearly—it seems obvious to me—if two local authorities are potentially merging, a member of the public in one should have the absolute right to full access to all the information from the other to assess whether it is in their best interests for the merger to go ahead. Without access to the information, how on earth can they be in a position to make that judgment? That completely flies in the face of democracy.

It would be perverse in many respects if, in respect of my hon. Friend’s local authority area, the editor of the Evening Standard, who was mentioned earlier, was able to access the documents relating to his neighbouring council by virtue of being a journalist—a fine and leading one, at that, as the editor of a prestigious newspaper—but my hon. Friend’s local residents were unable to get the same information. That would surely be a perverse outcome, and it cannot really be the one envisaged when the Bill was in its infancy. I do not see what possible argument there could be against his amendment. If we believe that, in extending transparency, local authorities can rightly be held to account and the public can have greater awareness of what is going on, why do we not give them all the opportunity to see the information for themselves rather than relying on journalists to do the job for them?

I agree with the principle of extending the range of people who have access to these documents. However, the problem is that this proposal, while a step in the right direction, is not sufficient because, as we all know, the newspaper industry, and local newspapers in particular, are going through a pretty torrid time financially at the moment—I do not think there is any secret about that. With things moving on to the internet, newspapers find it very difficult to adjust and to monetise their content. We therefore tend to find in many local areas that, unfortunately, despite the best efforts of local newspaper groups, they are not increasing the number of journalists who would get access to all these documents and go through them with a fine-tooth comb; they are actually shedding journalists, and they are being spread more thinly. It is slightly naive to hope that, on the back of having given local journalists access to this information, all this stuff will suddenly be in the public domain, because I am not entirely sure that the journalistic trade has the capacity to do that. We will therefore be enabling something that is very worth while but which may not happen in practice. If we want this information to be in the public domain so that the public are able to hold local authorities to account, we cannot just rely on journalists because it is difficult to see how they will have the capacity. We have to allow the public to do it themselves.

I do not see why anybody should not be able to have access to this information. In practice, the chances of somebody in Shipley gratuitously showing an interest in the local authority in Christchurch are very remote. Nobody is going to be inundated with requests for that kind of scrutiny, but residents in Christchurch may well want to know what is happening in Bournemouth, which is just down the road, and they should absolutely have the right to inspect and see whether the council is behaving in the way it should. I was rather shocked to hear the allegations made by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch about the conflicts of interest of the leader of Bournemouth Council. Without going over the detail myself, it certainly did not sound very good. It is absolutely right that local residents in adjoining authorities should be able to know what is going on.

I genuinely do not see why my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills or the Minister would want to resist this greater transparency and scrutiny, because surely that is the whole purpose of the Bill. In his amendment, my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch is, in effect, taking the Bill to its logical conclusion. I am pretty sure that if we do not do this now, there will be another private Member’s Bill further down the road introducing the measures that he proposes, because there is a clear logic to what he is trying to achieve. I believe in transparency, and I think it is very difficult to argue against it. If we are to go down the route of transparency, let us have full transparency so that nobody can claim that they did not have an opportunity to access any detailed information that they wanted to see.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend mentioned the shortage of local reporters and the pressures on local newspapers. Does he recall that only last month the BBC said that it was setting aside £8 million a year to pay for 150 reporters to work for local news organisations across the country? Is not that stark evidence of the plight of many of our local newspapers?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

May I begin by thanking the promoter of the Bill, my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton)? She has been assiduous in addressing the amendments that we have tabled. Would that that were always the case. She has also been charming and courteous in how she has dealt with us throughout the proceedings, so it is with some dismay that I say I cannot agree with everything she has said.

Before I go into detail, however, I should like to point out how helpful it has been to hear the views of the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce). She supports some of the amendments, which gives me extra enthusiasm and confidence that I am on to a good thing here. I have always been in favour of trying to find consensus across the House and gaining cross-party support. The shadow Minister expressed support for amendment 2 and amendment 10. I am not going to push amendment 10 to a vote, but I certainly hope to do so with amendment 2. We will need to come back to amendment 10, because I think my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills —and indeed the whole House—will agree that there is a strong case for extending those powers to health bodies.

Let me turn to the objection to amendment 2 put forward by the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy). He said that it would place a new burden on local authorities, which would have to be funded by the Government. In fairness to him, however, he made no bones about the fact that he had no idea of the extent of that burden. He has made no estimate of it. In my submission, it would be relatively small and it would tend to be a burden only for those local authorities that were not already sufficiently transparent and accountable. It is those authorities that would, because of their secrecy, prompt people to try to inspect their books and accounts.

[Philip Davies]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this scrutiny of local authorities would probably lead to their saving more money in their everyday business than it would cost them to implement the provisions in amendment 2?

[Mr Chope]

I absolutely agree. As with all such things, the issue is one of proportionality. There is a balance between the burden on local government and the benefit to the public interest. In the case of amendment 2, the benefit to the public interest far outweighs any miniscule burden on local authorities, even if the argument put forward by my hon. Friend was not accepted by those authorities.

My hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills said that the Bill does what it says on the tin and talked about wanting to confine the Bill to extending rights to journalists. However, I remind her of the long title of her own Bill. It is a Bill to

“Extend public access to certain local audit documents under section 26 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014.”

It is not limited to journalists. If my hon. Friend had wanted to limit it to journalists, she could have done so when she put down the long title of the Bill. It is sensible that we should take this opportunity to see whether we can make this Bill a bigger, more substantial piece of legislation than it would otherwise be, so I want to press amendment 2 to a vote.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

Merchant Shipping (Homosexual Conduct) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 24th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

The amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) is trying to introduce retrospective legislation, as my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight) said. Like my right hon. Friend, I am not naturally in favour of retrospective legislation—it is a bit like rewriting history—and I have opposed it in the past. However, as I think I said on Second Reading, the law should never have been put in place, so in that sense I absolutely understand why my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) wants to make the law retrospective. Many people in the House agree that the law should never have been put in place, so in effect he is neatly correcting that situation.

We should start by looking at the effect of the amendment. I asked the Library, which is always helpful, about its effect. One of its staff said that

“the amendment would have retrospective effect, going back to 1994. The Bill is seeking to repeal law which provides that it would not be unfair to dismiss a seafarer for a homosexual act. The amendment would mean that any dismissal on that basis since 1994 would not enjoy the statutory protection against being deemed an unfair dismissal.”

It went on:

“So far as I can see, the amendment would have no practical effect. Any dismissal of a seafarer for a reason relating to a homosexual act could already constitute sexual orientation discrimination. This has been unlawful, in respect of seafarers, since at least 2011. Claims in respect of the period before 2011 would be well out of time under, among others, the Limitation Act 1980. As such, any seafarer dismissed since 1994 for a homosexual act would, already, have a claim or be out of time for making one. The amendment/Bill would not change either of those things. It would therefore appear that the amendment is intended as a symbolic gesture.”

We are in the rather bizarre situation that, in effect, the Bill makes no real practical change, because equality laws are already in place, and the amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch would have no practical impact either. It must be a first that a Bill going through Parliament would make no real difference to the law and that an amendment to it would make no difference to the law either. There may be some historical precedents for such a situation, but I have certainly not been aware of one during my few years in the House.

I suspect that that is, in many respects, my hon. Friend’s case: as the Bill is only symbolic, there is no harm in his symbolic retrospective amendment, even though we may in essence be against the principle of retrospective legislation. In that sense, the amendment is not retrospective, because it will not change the impact of anything. To be perfectly frank, I am not entirely sure where that leaves us. It seems to me that it leaves us wherever people want to be left: you pays your money and you takes your choice. People may want to be a purist, like my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire, and say, “I will vote against retrospective legislation come what may,” or they may want to take the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and say, “As we are dealing with symbolic legislation, there is nothing wrong with retrospective symbolism in the Bill.” I do not know which is right.

I asked the Library to help me with any other examples of retrospective legislation. Under the heading, “What is retrospective legislation?”, the Library briefing on this subject says:

“Retrospective legislation is generally defined as legislation which ‘takes away or impairs any vested right acquired under existing laws, or creates a new obligation, or imposes a new duty, or attaches a new disability in respect to transactions or considerations already past’.

[Mr Chope]

If my hon. Friend pauses to look at this again, he will see that, under that definition, the amendment would not be retrospective legislation, would it? The amendment would not take away or impair any vested right that has been acquired under existing laws, would not create a new obligation, would not impose a new duty and would not attach a new disability in respect to transactions or considerations already past.

[Philip Davies]

Exactly. My hon. Friend is right. Unfortunately, he is slightly arguing against himself. The explanatory statement, which, as ever, he helpfully printed alongside his amendment, states that it would make the repeal retrospective. Having explained that to the House, he now appears to be arguing that he would not make it retrospective. I am not really sure where that takes us.

[Mr Chope]

The distinction is that this would be retrospective, but it would not amount to retrospective legislation under the terms of the definition to which my hon. Friend referred.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

You are exactly right, Mr Deputy Speaker. I was sidetracking myself. Let me return to the principle of retrospective legislation.

The Alan Turing (Statutory Pardon) Bill is, in many respects, from the same stable as this Bill. During its very short and sweet Third Reading in the House of Lords, the great Lord Tebbit made a pertinent point. He said that he had “no intention of obstructing” its progress, but added:

“As it continues on its journey towards the statute book, though, there is something that should be said. As we know, Mr Turing committed, and was convicted of, an act that would not be a crime today. So have many others, and many other crimes have been committed similarly. I hope that the Bill will not be used as a precedent. Even more, I hope that we will never seek to extend the logic of the Bill to posthumously convict men of crimes for acts that were not criminal when they were committed, but would be if they were committed today. There is a dangerous precedent within this Bill.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 30 October 2013; Vol. 748, c. 1584.]

I think that the warning given by Lord Tebbit then is very relevant to the Bill that we are discussing today, and that is the particular issue that I have with it.

[Mr Chope]

Both the quotation used by my hon. Friend that caused you to intervene, Mr Deputy Speaker, and the quotation that he has just used relate to criminal retrospection. Does he accept that the Bill is not about criminal retrospection?

[Philip Davies]

I do accept that.

Guardianship (Missing Persons) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 24th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I have read the consultation, to which there were 40 responses, of which eight commented on the proposal that applications should be made only after 90 days. Some of the responses said that 90 days was too long—I accept that—but practical points on timing were made, including by the Finance and Leasing Association, which had concerns about the 90 days. The consultation response therefore states:

“We accept that the 90 day period may create problems in some cases, but are also conscious that over-hasty applications may result in unnecessary expenses being incurred.”

The period is 90 days and not 60 or 100, so I am seeking the rationale for 90 days. My hon. Friend was helpful in his intervention and has made it clear why he has gone for 90 days, and I am grateful to him for that.

As hon. Members can see, amendment 4 would reduce the maximum period of guardianship from four years to two years. Clause 7 sets out the period of guardianship and requests that the period for which the guardian is appointed be stated in the court order. The maximum possible is four years, and I propose to halve it. Again, I am trying to tease out from my hon. Friend why he believes four years is right, and why the period should not be longer or shorter. I can see the attractions of making it longer to avoid people having to go back time and again, given the cost of doing that. I was not sure whether the primary purpose was to avoid that or there was another rationale as to why four years was the appropriate time.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

My concern arises from the same issue, and it is what happens when a missing person is found. That does not automatically negate the guardianship, as I would have hoped that it would, and is an argument for saying that the guardianship should be for a shorter period. Otherwise, as soon as somebody is found, the guardian will have to apply to the court to end the guardianship before they can again be treated as a normal person.

Prayers

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Friday 24th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. On Wednesday morning, the Order Paper included four Bills whose remaining stages could take place today. However, the remaining stages of a fifth Bill—the Kew Gardens (Leases) Bill—appeared on the Order Paper on Thursday morning. That Bill only completed its Committee stage on Wednesday. I do not attach any blame to my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset (Mr Liddell-Grainger) and I have no particular issue with the Bill in general. My particular issue is a point of principle, in that amendments to private Members’ Bills on Friday have to be tabled by the end of play on Tuesday, yet the Kew Gardens (Leases) Bill did not appear on the Order Paper until Thursday morning after finishing in Committee on Wednesday. Therefore, people were given no opportunity to table amendments if they so wished. What is your view, Mr Speaker, as to whether this should be the state of affairs?

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I noticed that the Kew Gardens (Leases) Bill had appeared on the Order Paper yesterday morning, and I tabled some amendments to it, but obviously those amendments are starred because, although I tabled them at the first opportunity, it will not be possible to debate them unless there is a ruling to the contrary. I inquired as to the practice relating to the issue and was told that the convention is that a Member of this House should not put forward their private Bill for Report and Third Reading if that Bill has only come out of Committee on the Wednesday, rather than the Tuesday of that week. That was certainly the practice adopted by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) when he brought forward the Homelessness Reduction Bill, which I had the privilege of chairing in Committee. It was quite clear that that Bill would not be put forward for Report until there had been a clear period in which amendments could be tabled. Would you rule on that, Mr Speaker? If the Kew Gardens (Leases) Bill is heard today, will it be possible to discuss the amendments to it?

Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 24th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I do not accept that. Having said that my right hon. Friend is virtually always right, I fear that this is one of the rare occasions when he is not. These things all sound wonderful when one signs up to them, but one does not necessarily understand the full implications of doing so. As an illustration of that, we might focus on the European convention on human rights. It would be very difficult for anybody to disagree with anything in that convention, but we did not realise at the time how it would grow and start to get ahead of itself, interpreting things in a way that could never have been envisaged and getting above its station. That creates all sorts of problems further down the line. In this context, my fear is not necessarily all about what is in the Istanbul convention, although I do have concerns about that—I am more concerned about the way in which a foreign body will interpret its role and start growing to a level that was never envisaged either in the convention or in the Bill. The votes for prisoners issue in relation to the European convention on human rights perfectly illustrates how these things can grow in a way that we never envisaged. I therefore do not accept the premise of my right hon. Friend’s intervention.

New clause 6 is absolutely essential to maintaining our sovereignty in the United Kingdom and to making sure that that is set out clearly in the Bill so that there is absolutely no doubt that we retain all sovereignty in these matters and in what we are implementing.

New clause 10 follows on from that. I would have hoped that the SNP and the campaigners for this Bill would very much welcome it, because it says:

“Any recommendations…by GREVIO…or the Committee of the Parties…must be debated in Parliament before any Government response is given.”

My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North argued that Parliament should be in charge of these matters. If we sign up to this Bill as currently drafted, Parliament will be excluded from anything that goes on. Once we have ratified the convention and the Bill is passed, Parliament will suddenly become redundant. If a foreign organisation is producing reports saying that the Government are not meeting what they signed up to—if that is the view of GREVIO and the Committee of the Parties and they produce a report along those lines—then surely it is only right that the matter is debated in Parliament so that Parliament can have its say on whether it agrees before the Government respond to GREVIO and the Committee of the Parties.

I cannot see why anybody who is in favour of this Bill and is campaigning for it could possibly object to giving Parliament more scrutiny over the process and more power to hold the Government to account. If anybody who supports the Bill would like to intervene and tell me what objection they have to new clause 10, I would be very happy to hear it and try to deal with it. If people do not have any objections to it, they will obviously remain quiet and we can proceed on that basis—we can press it to a vote and hopefully get people’s endorsement. I will give people the opportunity again: if anybody has any objection to new clause 10, perhaps they could speak now. If they do not, we will press it to a Division and hopefully get full support for it. It looks as though we have that.

[Mr Chope]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Bill as currently drafted includes some provision for parliamentary scrutiny, in clause 3(1)(e), but Government amendment 14 seeks to remove even that modicum of scrutiny?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I will come on to the Government amendments in due course. The Government, in cahoots with the SNP in the cosy little deal that they have put together, have removed any post-ratification scrutiny of how the Government are doing. That is quite extraordinary, but no doubt the Government and the SNP will be able to answer for themselves in due course.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend says that the Government have removed it, but so far the Bill has not been amended at all. He will obviously ensure that any Government amendments are tested in this House, because it may well be that quite a lot of the people who were originally supporters of this Bill would not want to see it watered down in the way that the Government wish.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Far from watering down the Bill, he is seeking to strengthen it; I will come to his amendments and new clauses in due course. We have an important role to play in Parliament in making sure that any legislation is fit for purpose. We ought to test the will of the House on any attempts to hoodwink the public. People should know where each MP stands on watering down the convention and on whether Parliament should have any role post-ratification—or whether we should just ratify the convention and leave it at that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

Of course I am in favour of people reporting crimes, but I am not entirely sure that we need to ratify the Istanbul convention for them to do so. We already encourage people to report crimes. If my hon. Friend wants to send a message today to every victim of violence that it is essential that they report that crime to the police, she is welcome to do so and I will endorse that message wholeheartedly. Any victim of any kind of violence, in any shape or form, irrespective of their gender, should report it to the police. It should be fully investigated and the perpetrator brought to justice and much more harshly punished than they currently are. Let that message ring out from the Chamber today, but we do not need to ratify the Istanbul convention for people to report that they have been the victim of a violent crime—we already have measures in place to deal with that.

The rollercoaster effect in Portugal that I described has also happened in Poland, which ratified the convention on 27 April 2015. It seems that the figures went up after it signed the convention, but that lately they have gone down.

There is no pattern to the figures in the countries whose ambassadors kindly sent me them, but it is important to put it on the record that they show that Sweden, Portugal and Poland clearly take the issue very seriously. I commend those countries for doing so and for laying bare their figures to me. In some cases the figures are good and in others they are not, but those countries have been open and transparent enough to share them with me so that I can share them with the House.

I worry about the countries that did not share their figures. I appreciate that I have no evidence to support this and that I am making an assertion that can be countered, but I fear and suspect that some countries did not supply me with the information because they are slightly embarrassed that the figures have gone in the wrong way since they ratified the convention. I could be wrong, but people can draw their own conclusions.

I have also seen figures from Albania and Austria. In Albania, they show an increase since ratification from 4,599 to 5,281. In Austria, the trend is the same. Its first annual report, which came out last September after the convention came into force in 2014, showed that the number of female victims of violent offences had increased from 37,546 to 37,677—so I think it is fair to say that we are not going to make a massive difference to levels of violence against women by ratifying the treaty.

After Austria ratified the Istanbul convention, the number of women murdered there went from 118 in 2014 to 165 in 2015. That seems quite a significant increase in murders against women a year after the country ratified the convention.

[Mr Chope]

Does my hon. Friend think that the number of murders of women results from a higher reporting rate?

[Philip Davies]

I suspect that it is harder for a murder victim to report that crime—so clearly not. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that that statistic cannot be explained away by increased reporting of crime. I think it is fair to say that murders are known to the public authorities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I commend my hon. Friend for tabling new clause 17. It is effectively a probing new clause trying to find out the Government’s policy on the issue. They say they wish to ratify the convention, but they have made no statement about whether, in ratifying, they wish to have reservations under the powers in the convention.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and I hope that the Minister will make that clear. I have given up the hope that SNP Members know anything about what is in the Istanbul convention. They clearly have no idea. If they bothered to read it, they would know that it contains powers for Governments to reserve some areas—not sign up to them—but still ratify the convention. We have no idea, however, whether we are going to sign up to these things. Before Parliament agrees to something, we should at least know what we are signing up to. At the moment, we have no idea. Perhaps the Minister will be good enough to tell us, before Third Reading, what the Government envisage us signing up to.

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch is right in one sense about the new clause being a probing measure to tease out from the Government which bits of the convention we will sign up to as part of ratification, but he does it a slight disservice. I am not entirely sure I agree that it is just a probing new clause. To describe it as such suggests that I do not particularly agree with it and am just seeking information, whereas I do agree with it, so I cannot agree with him.

If my hon. Friend was to make the same accusation about new clause 19, however, he might have a point. It states:

“Nothing in the Bill shall prevent the United Kingdom ratifying the Istanbul Convention with reservations as provided for in paragraphs 2 and 3 of Article 78.”

In effect, that would allow the Government to ratify the convention with the maximum number of reservations allowed. It is important to highlight what reservations are allowed and therefore what would be covered by the new clause. The reservations apply to the following outline areas: compensation, which I have just covered on new clause 17, jurisdiction, statute of limitation, residence status and the right to provide for non-criminal sanctions for psychological violence and stalking.

I have talked about article 30 and compensation already. The new clause 19 would also allow the Government in effect to opt out of paragraphs (1)(e), (3) and (4) of article 44, on jurisdiction; article 55(1), as it relates to article 35, on minor offences and ex parte and ex officio proceedings; article 58, as it relates to articles 37 to 39, on the statute of limitation; and article 59, on residence status, especially in relation to spouses. Finally, article 78(3) declares that a state

“reserves the right to provide for non-criminal sanctions, instead of criminal sanctions, for the behaviours referred to in Articles 33 and 34”—

on psychological violence and stalking respectively.

There is a good case for saying that the UK Government and Parliament should be sovereign in all these areas and that where we can leave matters to the UK Government, Parliament and the UK courts, we should take that opportunity, mainly for the reason I outlined in response to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight): we have no idea necessarily how these things will develop over the years, so it is best to reserve as many rights as possible. That would be the most sensible strategy for the Government to adopt, because it would allow them to retain as much control as possible.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. In fact, I was just about to come on to that. Of the 22 countries that have already signed and ratified the convention, 11 have done so with reservations attached, and a further four have signed it stating they want reservations too. It is clearly a reasonable approach for Governments to take—it is in the convention that countries can do it, so it must be an accepted approach. It is clearly a reasonable approach, as all countries, Governments and legal systems are different, and it is important that that be recognised as much as possible so that provisions can be to the taste of particular countries. I hope, therefore, that the Government will make it clear where we are with these reservations and what implications there might be. If they are seeking the maximum number of reservations, as I would advise them to do, perhaps the Minister can confirm that she has no objection to new clause 19, which would simply make that clear in the Bill and put the matter beyond any doubt and further debate.

[Mr Chope]

Does my hon. Friend really think that Parliament should be prepared to contemplate having only non-criminal sanctions against stalking, for example?

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

No, I do not. I was going to come to that later, but as my hon. Friend has raised it now, I should make it clear that I absolutely do not think that. In fact, colleagues will remember my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) waging a fantastic campaign trying to double the maximum sentence courts could impose on people convicted of stalking. I was a strong supporter of his 10-minute rule Bill that sought to do that, and I was pleased that the Government agreed to adopt that measure. That was fantastic.

I differ with my hon. Friend, however, in that I do not accept the premise that providing for reservations from the convention means that we necessarily always have to disagree with what is in those articles. It just means that we are free to do what we think is right, rather than having another body telling us its view of the matter. We can be trusted to do the right thing by victims of stalking, as the Government have already done. Not signing up to an article does not mean disagreeing with what is in it; it just means we want to retain sovereignty for our own country.

[Mr Chope]

Does my hon. Friend understand why, when the last Labour Government were negotiating the convention, they were prepared to allow other countries to have non-criminal sanctions in respect of stalking? Why were they prepared to allow a reservation of that nature, given that only a very limited number of reservations are allowed?

[Philip Davies]

That is a very good point. No doubt the Labour spokesman will be able to explain why Labour thinks it is absolutely fine for other countries to have non-criminal sanctions for stalking, and for psychological violence against women. The Labour Government obviously agreed to that being part of the convention, and people are happy for us to sign up to it on the basis that it is a gold standard for protecting women. Well, I hope people realise what is in this “gold standard for protecting women”. Those who campaign most vociferously seem to be the ones who have read the smallest amount of it. There is a direct correlation: the people who seem to be the most wound up about it are the ones who have read it the least. If some of them take the time to read it, they may be shocked to find what is in this “gold standard”.

I actually think that the UK can do a damn sight better than the Istanbul convention. I think that by signing up to it we will be levelling things downwards rather than levelling them upwards, which is what we should be seeking to do. If the Government want to do something useful around the world, they should be encouraging other countries to adopt the practices in which we engage in this country, rather than our agreeing to adopt their practices, which are much weaker when it comes to dealing with violent crime and, in particular, violence against women.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: Labour Members have a great deal to answer for in this debate. Perhaps they will be able to explain why they think that stalking and psychological violence against women should be subject to non-criminal sanctions in other countries, and perhaps the Bill’s promoter will be able to explain why she would adopt that policy as well. I suspect that it is not something that she tells people about very often when talking about the Istanbul convention.

New clause 20 provides for a requirement to denounce the convention after five years. In effect, it is a sunset clause—I think that more Bills should contain sunset clauses—enabling us to review whether or not the Istanbul convention has been a force for good in the United Kingdom. If everyone is so confident that ratification will indeed be a force for good, they have nothing to fear from a sunset clause, because it will become apparent that the ratification has been a great triumph, and we can all agree to put the provision back on to the statute book in time for it to continue. If, of course, the ratification proves to be a turkey, the Bill will fall, and we shall be able to start from scratch. We shall be able to introduce legislation that is much more sensible and effective. I have no idea why anyone might not support a sunset clause. It seems a very good safeguard, because it requires us to continue to focus on what a Bill is designed to achieve, and to ensure that that is what it is achieving.

Those are my new clauses. I shall now deal with the amendments—14 of the 36—that are tabled in my name. Amendment 22 relates to the report that subsection (1) requires the Secretary of State to lay before Parliament on the timetable for ratification of the convention. The subsection states that the report

“must be laid within four weeks of this Act receiving Royal Assent.”

What is required within four weeks is for the Secretary of State to set out

“the steps required to be taken to enable the United Kingdom to ratify the Istanbul Convention; and…the date by which the Secretary of State would expect the United Kingdom to be able to ratify the Convention.”

I think that is a rather unrealistic timetable. No doubt the Secretary of State could rustle something up to hit that arbitrary four-week target, but I think it would be much more sensible for the report to be meaningful and accurate. Surely we should be aiming for that, rather than sticking to an artificial timetable.

I should love to know why the Bill specifies four weeks. Perhaps its promoter will be able to tell us. Why four weeks? Why not six weeks, or two weeks? What is so special about four weeks? I suspect that there is nothing special about it at all. I suspect that someone said, “We shall have to put in a figure. What shall we put in? Let’s go for four weeks, shall we?” I do not think that that is a sensible way of drafting legislation.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is effectively supporting one of the Government amendments, but may I present an alternative point of view? The Government have had since 2014 to draw up a list of the legislative requirements that will enable the convention to be ratified. The Bill was published on 29 June last year, and we still have not heard from them any indication of what they believe must be done in order to enable the United Kingdom to ratify it.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend seems to have made my point for me. I understand what he is saying: that the Government have had ample time in which to do this, and we should therefore be able to put to them a fixed time in the near future. My contrary point would be that, if after such a long time they still have not been able to do it, how on earth are we to expect them to do it all of a sudden within four weeks? That seems unrealistic to me. Surely the fact that the Government have not managed to do it in all those months suggests that they will not be able to do it in four weeks. My point is that the timetable is unrealistic.

[Mr Chope]

But it is not just four weeks, is it? One of the Government amendments says that the Act should not come into force until two months after Royal Assent, which means, effectively, that after Royal Assent the Government would have three months on top of all the time that they have had up until now.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is clearly right. I cannot disagree with anything that he has said. The points that he has made about Royal Assent are factual. However, I am not entirely sure that that timetable is achievable either, given the delay that we have already seen. My point is that, rather than rushing to meet an artificial target that they are clearly finding it difficult to meet, the Government should be left to set out those steps at a reasonable time.

My amendment 22 would extend the timetable from four weeks to three years, and I should like to think that everyone would agree that it allows the Government ample time to get their ducks in a row and their house in order. I should like to think that the Government would have no excuse for not sticking to that particular timetable. However, my hon. Friend thinks that that would let the Government off the hook too much. My amendment 24 replaces the four weeks with “when reasonably practicable”.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right, and I shall go into that in a bit more detail later. The Government really are selling people a pup. They, and the Scottish National party, are trying to get all the plaudits for putting their shoulders to the wheel to ensure that the Istanbul convention is ratified, but the “filleting” amendments are designed to do the exact opposite. My three-year amendment, as my hon. Friend puts it, may mean a long time in the waiting, but at least it will mean that there is a fixed deadline for the Government to meet. Amendment 24, which says that the report must be laid “when reasonably practicable”, mirrors the Government amendment. It is very similar. Obviously, great minds—mine and the Minister’s—think alike on the matter. However, I concede that the amendment allows for a never-ending timescale. Perhaps that is what the Government, and the SNP, have in mind. I do not know. I am perfectly relaxed about either measure—I will take soundings from colleagues as to which they think is the best. My general point is that the four-week target is never going to be achievable, particularly given all the other things that are going on for the Government at the moment.

[Mr Chope]

On the point about so much else going on, how does my hon. Friend define

“as soon as reasonably practicable”?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I am sure, Mr Davies, you are not going to go down that route.

[Philip Davies]

My word, Mr Deputy Speaker! If we were to abolish Bills that were just about gesture politics, that would abolish private Member’s Bill Fridays altogether. However, that is a debate for another day. I do not want to be sidetracked down that line today.

Amendment 29 would delete paragraph (d). The provision says that the Secretary of State shall lay before each House of Parliament a report on

“the measures to be taken and legislation required to enable the United Kingdom to ratify the Istanbul Convention”.

Surely it is clear what legislation is required to enable the UK to ratify the convention. Why on earth do we need an annual report for the Government to tell us what legislation is required to ratify the convention?

[Mr Chope]

It should be the Minister intervening on my hon. Friend because it is the Government’s case that they do not know yet what legislation is required.

[Philip Davies]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

As ever, you are absolutely right, Mr Deputy Speaker. There have been lots of interventions and I will try to resist the temptation to be as generous in taking them as I normally am—for a bit, at least.

Amendment 54 again addresses clause 3 and the reports on progress. The amendment says that the first annual report should be laid no later than 1 November 2017. That is interesting in itself, because what the Government are leaving in the Bill is all about before ratification, but I want to keep in post-ratification reports, and my amendments say that the first one should be from 2020 onwards—they should be done from 2020 and then every two years. That would be the effect of amendments 53 and 54.

Amendment 55 is my final amendment and it relates to when this Bill, when it becomes an Act, should come into force. The Bill says it should

“come into force on the day on which this Act receives Royal Assent”,

and the Government have amended that, but I suggest it should

“not come into force until 90% of the signatories to the Convention have ratified it and there has been a proven reduction in violence against women in 75% of the countries who have ratified the Convention.”

It seems to me to be perfectly clear that we would want to ratify the convention only if it is actually shown to work. As I made clear earlier, we do not have the evidence at the moment to support that.

Those are my amendments, and I will now touch briefly on the other ones in the group, which I can race through fairly quickly, I hope. All of the new clauses in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch are about making sure that the Government do not apply any of the reservations. I have explained why I think the Government should apply some reservations, however, and that is why I would reject new clauses 14, 15 and 16. If I might be so bold as to say so, I think my hon. Friend’s best attempt here is new clause 18 on psychological violence and stalking. It is inconceivable that those things would not come with a criminal sanction in the UK, so in that sense we have nothing to fear from signing up to that. It might be my hon. Friend’s argument that if we were to make it clear that we would sign up to that—that we would be happy to make sure they would always have a criminal sanction—it might encourage others to do the same. I do not know whether that would work, but I would not be averse to that, and if my hon. Friend were to push new clause 18 to a vote, I would be more sympathetic to that than I would be to his other new clauses, if that is helpful to him.

The Government amendments—which the SNP has endorsed, let us not forget that—are extraordinary. I have made it clear that I am opposed to this convention, but this cosy deal shows that they do not care too much about it either. They pretend—

[Mr Chope]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Philip Davies]

I am going to resist the temptation to give way to my hon. Friend for now, Mr Deputy Speaker, just to show that I always take notice of the Chair.

They are attempting to fillet this Bill without anybody noticing, claiming to be champions of the Istanbul convention while getting the Government off the hook of ever having to actually implement it. These amendments are all about making sure either that the Istanbul convention is never ratified or that its ratification is delayed as much as possible. Only SNP Members will know why on earth they have agreed to this. Only they will be able to explain that, or perhaps they are so embarrassed about it that they will not be willing to explain it at all. I hope they will have the guts to admit to what they have done.

Government new clause 1 would remove clause 1 and therefore would remove the ratification of the convention on violence against women, because clause 1 imposes a “duty” on the Government

“to take all reasonable steps as soon as reasonably practicable to enable the United Kingdom to become compliant with”

the Istanbul convention. The Government want to delete that. They want to leave out clause 1, yet clause 1 is the whole point of the Bill, in that it imposes a duty on the Government

“to take all reasonable steps as soon as reasonably practicable to enable the United Kingdom to become compliant”

with the convention. The Government want to remove that provision from the Bill, and the SNP is quite happy for them to do so. This is absolutely extraordinary stuff, Mr Deputy Speaker! You literally could not make it up.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

Under the rules of the convention, reservations are not put in at the time of signature, but at the time of ratification. I will take the Minister’s remarks as a commitment that there will be no reservations when it comes to ratification.

[Philip Davies]

The Minister asked whether I would be minded to withdraw my amendment. For the benefit of the House, I would like to make it clear, through my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), that I will be very happy to withdraw my amendment and will not push any of my amendments to a vote.

[Mr Chope]

I am glad that my hon. Friend has been satisfied by the Minister’s response.

One reason that I have been interested in the subject for a long time is that I was present at the Standing Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe when this convention was first discussed. I remember vividly the representations that were made to me and my hon. Friend, the then Member for North Dorset, explaining that the United Kingdom Government really wanted the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to pass an amendment to the draft convention—as it then was—to enable a signatory party to the convention to have a reservation in respect of extraterritorial jurisdiction.

The Foreign Office representative who lobbied us in Paris on that occasion— unfortunately, only half an hour before the decisions were to be taken—expected us to persuade everybody to accept an amendment from the United Kingdom Government at very short notice. The Government, through their Foreign Office representative, were very concerned then about the extraterritorial application of the convention, which is why they wanted to allow a participant party to have a reservation. In the end, the convention went through without that power being granted. Everybody who is suspicious about the length of time it is taking for the Government to get their act together on the issue needs to bear in mind that background—that in 2011, on the basis of a convention that had been negotiated by the previous Labour Government, the Government were concerned about the issue of extraterritorial application. We have not heard, even at this very late stage, anything from the Government precisely about what measures need to be brought in to satisfy those requirements before the convention can be ratified. It seems to me that we are owed something from the Government on that because the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan and others have been pressing them to come up with a list of what is required.

Even the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), in her short contribution from the Opposition Front Bench, asked the Minister whether the forthcoming legislation on domestic violence, to which the Minister referred, would incorporate the necessary legislative requirements to enable the ratification of the Istanbul convention, but my hon. Friend—I do not think she is listening, which is a pity—was not even able to respond. That must surely cast doubt on how long it will be before the convention is actually ratified.

One of the Government amendments says that the Government do not want clause 2 implemented before clause 3. Therefore, no report may well have been made under clause 2 by the time we reach 1 November 2017 and the report on progress under clause 3. That seems to show an acceptance by the Government that they will not be in a position to ratify the convention for some considerable time. The strong feeling on both sides of the House is that people want the convention ratified, but the Government seem to be wriggling about when and how they will achieve that.

I have tabled a number of amendments and new clauses. I think I have a commitment from the Minister, in so far as one can tell, that when the convention is ratified, it will not be ratified with any reservations, and I am grateful to her for that. However, I still fear that the impression being given to the world outside is that we are passing today a Bill that will require the United Kingdom to ratify the Council of Europe convention, when, in fact, it does no such thing, and that needs to be made absolutely clear.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

Sometimes one despairs at one’s colleagues, but I will not do that in public.

[Philip Davies]

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

Awards for Valour (Protection) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Report stage: House of Commons
Friday 24th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a pertinent point. I will come to that in a moment.

I know that it is not the intention of the Bill to create the outcome I have just described, but it remains a possibility. As my hon. Friend says, the Royal Air Force Families Federation said in its written evidence to the Defence Committee:

“Yes, there should most certainly be safeguards for family members. The key question is who ‘qualifies’! The definition we use is ‘anyone who is a blood relation’ but this may not be ?appropriate in these circumstances and can be difficult to prove on occasions. Interestingly, the MoD is struggling with its own definition of a family member but it may be sensible to align any definition for these circumstances with the MoD definition if and when they decide what it should be. Otherwise, it’s probably a matter for common sense.”

I know that the issue is dealt with differently now, but I believe that it is worth having a definition of “family” in the Bill, in its new sense.

As I mentioned on Second Reading, the Defence Committee’s report states:

“A number of our witnesses emphasised the importance of ensuring that relatives of deceased or incapacitated medal recipients can continue to wear their relations’ medals at commemoration events without risk of prosecution.”

The report also states:

“Mr Johnson indicated that family members would be doubly protected as they would lack the necessary intention to deceive, as well as being able to avail themselves of a specific defence that will be placed in the Bill.”

I agree that a specific defence should be included in the Bill, and that is the reason for this new clause. How we define “family” is an issue. Crucially, the report goes on:

“The term ‘family member’ must however be defined in terms of the proximity of the relations that it is seeking to include in the defence. It is not a legal term of art with a single definition. Acts of Parliament which use the term commonly carry a definition of ‘family’ within them to be used for the purposes of that Act. Mr Johnson suggested in oral evidence that he was minded that this defence should be quite narrow, so that for example a nephew deceitfully wearing medals could not rely on the defence by claiming that they were his uncle’s awards.”

It also states:

“The inclusion of a defence to ensure that family members representing deceased or incapacitated relations who are recipients of medals is vital, but ‘family member’ must be properly defined to ensure that there is no room for uncertainty or abuse. We suggest that the Bill include a definition of ‘family member’ in order to provide certainty over who will be covered by this category.”

That is what I am trying to do in the new clause. I have taken it as read that spouses should be included, as should blood relatives and step relatives. I have also included provision for those who are adopted into families, which slightly extends the basic definition of “family” according to section 113 of the Housing Act 1985. In reality, there will be only one actual award, so we can assume that the closest family member might have it, or that it would be shared by close family members, in which case it is unlikely that a distant relative would use the award.

The new clause would also prevent the situation from arising in which, for example, a son pinches his father’s medal for a bit of fun and goes around bragging that it is his. However unlikely or unbelievable that claim might be, the act of intending to deceive does not take account of the perception of others. They might well laugh out loud at the absurdity of a 17-year-old wearing a medal when everyone knows he has never been in the armed forces, but as the Bill stands that does not prevent the offence from being committed. I hope that the new clause will help with that.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

My hon. Friend has obviously done a lot of work on defining what he means by a family member for these purposes. Did I hear him correctly when he said that this was based on housing legislation?

[Philip Davies]

I took the basic definition of a family member from section 113 of the Housing Act 1985, although I am conscious that my definition is wider. The 1985 Act’s definition was a starting point, but I would like to think that I have brought it a bit more up to date.

[Mr Chope]

In that case, I congratulate my hon. Friend on his innovative drafting.

[Philip Davies]

From someone as esteemed as my hon. Friend, that is high praise indeed.

New clause 8 would require the Government on, or as near as possible to, the 12-month anniversary of the Bill’s enactment to place before each House of Parliament figures showing the number of convictions, and the sentences handed down, for the offence of wearing medals with the intent to deceive. That would ensure that we monitor the effect of the legislation, both in terms of the number of convictions and the sentences handed down for those convictions. As we have no figures now, we do not know the extent of the problem. When I asked my local police force and the Metropolitan police, they could not tell me of any incidents relating to the existing offences in relation to military uniforms, and so on.

The Defence Committee heard evidence from various sources, and no one could quantify the problem, although people gave anecdotal examples. The problem seems to be very small, from what I can glean from the evidence that the Committee heard, so the idea that we need a law seems like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. If the Bill came into effect, new clause 8 would give us a clearer idea of the extent of the problem and the sentences being handed down.

[Mr Chope]

Under the Fraud Act 2006 it is still an offence to make, or to attempt to make, a financial gain by fraudulently wearing uniforms or medals. Does my hon. Friend have any information on how many times that provision has been applied in law?

[Philip Davies]

I apologise to my hon. Friend for not being well enough prepared to answer his question, but I do not have that information. I do not even know whether anyone has that information. Someone might have it, but I do not.

New clause 9 states:

“(1) This Act shall expire at the end of 2022 unless an order is made under this section.

(2) An order under this section shall be made by statutory instrument; but no order shall be made unless a draft has been laid before, and approved by resolution of, each House of Parliament.”

Basically, this is a sunset clause. If it became apparent that the Bill was not doing as intended, new clause 9 would be a nice way for the Bill to fall without any fanfare. Of course if the Bill were enacted and doing particularly well, someone would be able to rehash it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

The policy background to the Bill was set out in the explanatory notes, which state:

“Since 2009 it has not been an offence for an individual to wear medals or decorations that they were never awarded.”

It does not seem as though the law before 2009 covered the wearing of false medals. I cannot understand—I wonder whether my hon. Friend can—why we are seeking to extend the law beyond even what applied prior to 2009.

[Philip Davies]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend. The Bill goes over the top in making these things a criminal offence, potentially with a custodial sentence attached. That is bad enough in terms of going over the top, but when we are dealing with things that have “the appearance of being an award”, we are going way beyond what anybody has ever envisaged before, and we are going too far.

My amendment 3 proposes to delete the words “including in particular” from clause 2. That seems a strange phrase to have in legislation, as it is general and does not strike me as being a particularly helpful legal phrase. How do we define “including in particular”? Does that mean something else is included that we do not know about? I do not really know what definition we have in mind for “including in particular”. How on earth is anyone to know whether they are committing an offence if they are wearing something which is not mentioned “in particular”? It could be interpreted that they did break the law without having any idea that they were doing so because the provision just includes things “in particular”, but not exclusively those things. That is a strange phrase.

We can take amendments 4 and 6 to 15 together, as they all deal with the fact of this being an imprisonable offence. They would remove the custodial sentence for the offence in England and Wales.

As I have said, I do not think we should have this legislation. As I pointed out on Second Reading, the Defence Committee called its report on the Bill “Exposing Walter Mitty: The Awards for Valour (Protection) Bill”, but it would not expose Walter Mitty; it would criminalise him and potentially send him to prison for three months. If it was just about exposing Walter Mitty, probably none of us would have a problem with the Bill, but that is not what it would do.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

No, I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman.

[Mr Chope]

rose—

[Philip Davies]

I will give way to my hon. Friend.

[Mr Chope]

It is disappointing that anyone should wish to try to use emotional blackmail against my hon. Friend and what he is proposing. In his last intervention, my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) referred to people who were wearing medals that they had not been awarded. He did not deal with the issue of them wearing things that had the appearance of being an award. I cannot understand why some of the amendments of my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) are not acceptable to the Bill’s promoter.

[Philip Davies]

I agree with my hon. Friend. Perhaps if the Bill had been drawn as narrowly as my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford is now trying to draw it, it may well have been acceptable to all concerned. Unfortunately, he did not do so, and decided to go way over the top to include all sorts of people who were never envisaged to be included originally. That is why we must try to sort out some of these issues.

Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 16th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

The hon. Gentleman is going down an interesting route, as he is basically saying that, no matter the injuries a person sustains in a violent attack, all we should be concerned about is the motivation. If the motivation is not what the hon. Gentleman thinks—[Interruption.] That is fair enough. It seems to me, though, that if somebody comes up to a person because they hate them and beats them to a pulp, the nuance of why they hate that person is less important than the scale of the injuries they suffer and the need for the person who perpetrated the crime to be punished. The hon. Gentleman clearly has a different opinion on that. I am more interested in the violence and the punishment of the perpetrator.

[Mr Chope]

In the preamble to the convention there is a reference to the Geneva convention of 1949, which is gender-neutral despite the fact that most of the victims of breaches of the Geneva convention are men.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a perfectly valid point. If we follow the logic of today’s debate, the Geneva convention should have applied only to men, as they were much more likely to be subjected to what it was intended to cover. I think that that would be nonsense, and I suspect that my hon. Friend and most people here think that it would be nonsense too, but it is amazing that when it falls on the other side, everyone is silent. That is the hypocrisy I want to expose today and I am going to press on and expose it.

To highlight the fact that men are more likely to be the victims of violent crime, I will quote the recent statistics from the Ministry of Justice on the representation of females and males in the criminal justice system. They confirm that men are nearly twice as likely to be the victim of violent crime than women. According to the crime survey of England and Wales, 1.3% of women interviewed reported being victims of violence compared with 2.4% of men. My point also applies to children. Again according to the crime survey for England and Wales, in 2015-16 a smaller proportion of girls than boys reported being victims of violence—4.2% of girls versus 7.7% of boys.

It is not just with violence generally that men do worse than women. When it comes to the most serious cases, according to the crime survey for England and Wales, in 2015-16 women accounted for 36% of recorded homicide victims while men were victims in 64% of cases. Clearly, on every possible level of crime, a man is more likely to be the victim than a woman.

Although we have not heard much, if anything, about this today, men are also victims of domestic violence. It is right that in two thirds of domestic violence incidents a woman is the victim, which is absolutely outrageous, but in a third of cases the victim is a man. It may well be that some people in this House think we should only be concerned about the two thirds who are women, but I do not. We should be concerned about all victims of domestic violence equally. They are all victims of domestic violence and we should consider them equally whenever we consider a response to it, not just the two thirds who happen to be women.

According to the Office for National Statistics report “Focus on Violent Crime and Sexual Offences”, which relates to the year ending March 2015 and which was released in February, the crime survey of England and Wales estimates that 8.2% of women and 4% of men reported experiencing any type of domestic abuse in the last year—that is all forms of abuse. That is equivalent to an estimated 1.3 million female victims and 600,000 male victims, all of whom, in my opinion, equally deserve our support. The ONS also confirms that 6.5% of women and 2.8% of men reported having experienced any type of partner abuse in the last year, equivalent to an estimated 1.1 million female victims and 500,000 male victims.

The Bill refers to preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence. Although the first part is relatively clear, the second bit, about domestic violence, is not so clear, because of the definition of domestic violence. Our definition of it includes non-violent components, so we need to be very careful when bandying around figures about domestic violence. That is inevitably the problem with a wide definition. It has the word “violence” in the title, and people then understandably assume it relates to physical violence, but that is not always necessarily the case and that can be quite confusing. We must also remember that domestic incidents include people in relationships, as well as those in family and other relationships that could be considered domestic in nature. What I am trying to say is that the notion that in every case of domestic violence or abuse the perpetrator is a big, burly wife-beater is just that—a notion, not fact.

I asked the House of Commons Library for some information on what is known as the Istanbul convention, which this Bill seeks to ratify. The Library said that it is a Council of Europe convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence. It was adopted by the Council of Europe on 7 April 2011, was open for signature on 11 May 2011 at the 121st session of the Committee of Ministers in Istanbul, and entered into force on 1 August 2014. The UK signed the convention on 8 June 2012, but has not yet ratified it. Some countries have signed the convention, like the UK, and some have signed it and ratified it as well. I will not go through all the countries and give their positions on it, although it is very illuminating and relevant to the debate, but I do not want to test the patience of the House.

Some countries have signed the convention but not ratified it, like us. Sudan was mentioned as an illustration earlier. As my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) rightly highlighted, Germany has not ratified it. Nor has Iceland, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, Croatia and Cyprus. They are all members of the European Union, which is apparently such a fine institution that SNP Members are desperate for us to remain part of it, yet their wonderful partner countries have not bothered to ratify the convention either. There was no mention of that, strangely, in the speech made by the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan. It is particularly interesting to note that Ireland only signed the convention on 5 November 2015, and has also not ratified it. Perhaps the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) might want to have a word with his friends in the Irish Republic to ask why they have not ratified it.

SNP Members were up in arms earlier about something that they never bothered to read and that they knew nothing about, but I will help them out, as I can tell them what article 1 says. It sets out five purposes, and the first is to

“protect women against all forms of violence, and prevent, prosecute and eliminate violence against women and domestic violence”.

The second is to

“contribute to the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women and promote substantive equality between women and men, including by empowering women”.

The third is to

“design a comprehensive framework, policies and measures for the protection of and assistance to all victims of violence against women and domestic violence”.

The fourth is to

“promote international co-operation with a view to eliminating violence against women and domestic violence”,

and the fifth is to

“provide support and assistance to organisations and law enforcement agencies to effectively co-operate in order to adopt an integrated approach to eliminating violence against women and domestic violence”.

Let us consider the first point. Of course we are all united in our opposition to any violence against women and girls. I will repeat that, Mr Deputy Speaker, if you do not mind, because I want to make it clear so that nobody misunderstands the terms of this debate. We are all united in our opposition to any violence against women and girls. I would be astounded if any of us were not. I pride myself on being one of the most hard-line Members on matters of law and order and sentencing, and I always find it rather strange that those who speak passionately about how we should have zero tolerance of violence against women and girls and violence against people—which I agree with—are often the same people who then argue that the perpetrators of violence should do anything but be sent to prison.

[Philip Davies]

My hope is that, by the time I have finished speaking, the hon. Lady will be much wiser about why I wholly oppose the Bill.

[Mr Chope]

May I suggest one answer to the hon. Lady’s intervention? Our legislation in this country has a much broader definition of domestic violence than the one in the convention.

[Philip Davies]

Yes, my hon. Friend is absolutely right, and he makes a good point. As I made clear, our definition of domestic violence is very different from that used in most other countries. However, there are other reasons, which I will come to, and article 1 contains something I fundamentally disagree with.

We are in the ridiculous situation where 66% of men convicted at Crown Court in England and Wales of violence against the person are sent to prison, compared with 37% of women. If we really want to send out a message—I heard a number of Opposition Members say that that was the purpose of the Bill—of zero tolerance of violence against the person, the first thing, and perhaps the main thing or even the only thing, we should do is press for much tougher sentences for people who are found guilty. One way to prevent and eliminate violence is to send people to prison for longer, because while they are in prison, they cannot perpetrate any violence against anybody in their households, or anywhere else for that matter.

The Labour party, which is apparently so concerned about violence against women and girls, actually introduced a law in a previous Parliament whereby somebody who is sent to prison for committing violence against a woman or a girl has, by law, to be released halfway through their prison sentence, whether or not it is considered that they will go straight back into the household they came from and commit the same crime again. By the law of the land, those people have to be released halfway through their sentence. The last Labour Government introduced that, so it is no good Labour Members coming here today and saying how committed they are to stopping violence against women and girls, when they are the ones who are responsible for these people being let back out on to the streets and back into their houses much sooner than the courts originally intended.

If people want to do something worth while to prevent violence against women and girls and against other people, let us all press for stronger prison sentences. Let us all press for people to spend more of their sentence in prison, rather than being released out on licence. How many people are up for that in the House today? They all go amazingly quiet, because when it comes down to it, they want to huff and puff about being tough on violence against women and girls. When it comes down to the actual thing that most of our constituents would recognise as being tough on violence against women and girls—tougher prison sentences—Opposition Members run away, because they do not like people being sent to prison.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This is not rocket science: the more criminals who are in prison, the fewer criminals are out on the street committing crimes. That is not really a massively difficult concept to grasp, although Opposition Members appear to be struggling with it. It is not that difficult to understand that if the people who commit these crimes are in prison, they cannot be committing these crimes. My hon. Friend must therefore surely be right in his suspicion.

The convention does not just cover violence, as article 1b mentions, and that is one of the reasons why I have a fundamental problem with the convention. Article 1b wants

“the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women”,

but I do not see how introducing a specific duty to eliminate all forms of discrimination against just women is not discriminatory in itself—I sometimes wish people could see the irony of their proposals. Surely, we should want to eliminate all forms of discrimination—full stop. Article 1b is, in effect, saying that discrimination against a man is okay because all we want to do is end discrimination against women. Well, it is not okay; no discrimination is okay. If this convention said, “Actually, what we want to do is end all forms of discrimination—full stop,” I would be the first to support it, but it does not say that. It talks about discrimination against women only. Surely, Members cannot support that form of discrimination. It flies in the face of everything we are supposed to believe in if we believe in true equality.

Then we have the phrase “including by empowering women”. This is obviously a legal document, and I am not entirely sure what the legal definition of that is supposed to be. We have some very respected people of the law in the Chamber today, and they may be able to help us out with the legal definition. I genuinely do not know, and I will bow to other people’s superior knowledge. The English dictionary definition of empowering is

“approving having qualities that give a person or a group of people the means to take more control of their lives and become stronger and more independent”,

and we are all in favour of that I would like to think.

Most concerning to me, however, is the fact that this whole strategy seems to be based on the premise that all this violence against women is committed by men. Why else would it link discrimination, stereotyping and violence? That certainly seems to be the thought of many of the people who are supporting the convention and the Bill. The impression people might be under is that the perpetrators of all these crimes against women are men. Indeed, on the website of one of the campaigns endorsing the Bill, women were holding up placards with the slogan:

“Together we can end male violence against women”.

So it would seem that they are not interested in ending all violence, regardless of whether the victim is male or female, or even in ending all violence against women.

Despite what people want to believe, violence against women is not caused only by men. Indeed, there is no evidence to support that underlying assumption. A letter I received from the Crown Prosecution Service said:

“We are unable to provide information on your specific requests of ‘the sex of both the defendant and the victim’... This is because we record the sex of the defendant and victim as separate statistics rather than as a joined statistic.”

So today’s Bill is based on an assumption that can quickly be proved wrong. We only have to look at the individual cases that come to our courts to see that there are plenty where violence has been committed by a female offender against a female victim. Let me just give a flavour of those cases.

How about the case of Samira Lupidi, who stabbed her two young daughters to death in a refuge in November last year? Lupidi had been placed in a refuge with the girls after she called the police to their house, claiming her partner had been violent. Speaking about Lupidi’s relationship with the father, the judge said:

“You reacted to this very difficult situation by saying ‘If I cannot have them’”—

the children—

“‘neither can he’… This is a crime which speaks of rage and I sentence you on the basis that you killed them in anger and out of a desire for revenge.”

A jury of six men and six women found her guilty of murder after only 90 minutes’ deliberation.

What about the case of Sadie Morris, a female paedophile who was sentenced to five years in jail after photographing herself abusing a three-year-old girl? The offences took place between 1 and 31 July 2013, with photographs involving one category A image—the most serious level—and one category B and one category C image. What about the case of a Romanian sex gang led by women who trafficked vulnerable women into Britain and forced them into prostitution? The gang raked in more than £15,000 a month and forced the prostitutes to deposit the cash across 14 separate bank accounts.

Ending male violence against women would not have prevented any of these cases, as the offenders were also female. Crime does not discriminate. We have to get real: instead of speaking of female victims of male perpetrators, we should speak of all victims, regardless of sex, and all offenders, regardless of sex. Why do so many Members find that so difficult to do?

There are many female perpetrators of violence against both men and women, according to official Ministry of Justice figures. Its report, “Statistics on Women and the Criminal Justice System 2015”, says that violence against the person and theft were consistently the two offence groups with the highest number of arrests for both females and males. In fact, violence against the person accounted for 34% of all male arrests and 36% of all female arrests in the criminal justice system—we have not heard any of that in the speeches so far—while theft offences made up 21% of male arrests and 26% of female arrests.

Again, this is not restricted to women but also applies to girls. In 2015-16, violence against the person was the most common offence group for which juvenile females —10 to 17-year-olds—were arrested. In fact, 40% of arrests of girls aged 10 to 17 were for violence against the person. It is no good people shaking their heads; these are the facts—the official statistics—although they might be inconvenient. I am not surprised that Opposition Members have not heard about it; we never hear any of this in this place because we are so blinkered in only wanting to look one dimensionally at all these issues. I am not surprised that it has come as a shock to Opposition Members.

This is backed up by reports of cases such as that of Katie Neild, a 27-year-old mother of two who was rushed to hospital after a woman bit her and ripped a chunk out of her face, which left the victim with permanent scarring, even after an emergency skin graft. A case heard at my local court, Bradford Crown court, was that of a female who burgled a 79-year-old woman’s house in August last year. In her defence, the defendant’s barrister claimed that she would be extremely vulnerable in prison with a baby due in less than three months, despite her not being pregnant at the time of the burglary. However, Judge Thomas at Bradford Crown court—a fine man—said that his duty was to the pensioner whose life was so significantly affected that she had not left her home since.

This just gives a flavour of the vast array of cases where female offenders target female victims. The discriminatory underlay of this Bill is pointless and wrong, because not all victims are female and not all offenders are male. We should be bringing forward gender-neutral legislation that seeks to help all victims of crime—men and women—and to punish all offenders, men and women. Even in cases where people may assume that all violence is male on female, such as domestic violence, this is not so.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend has been referring to statistics from the United Kingdom. He may be aware of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, which issued a very big report on violence against women—an EU-wide survey—in which it found that 11% of non-heterosexual women in Europe have experienced physical or sexual violence at the hands of other women.

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for alerting me to that fact, of which I was unaware. I was just coming on to that point, because it seems that the figures are worse than that in the United Kingdom.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the subjects of those articles. It was probably remiss of me not to do so myself.

It seems that the Government are hanging their hat on article 44. Perhaps the Minister will be able to explain more about the difficulties that they are experiencing in relation to it and the other articles mentioned in it, to which my hon. Friend has just referred.

[Mr Chope]

Will my hon. Friend expand on the link between article 44 and article 77, under which a party ratifying the convention can specify the territories to which it applies?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, but I am not sure that I can do as he asks, because this is a thorny issue. My hon. Friend has a great advantage over me, in that not only is he experienced in legal matters—which I certainly am not—but for many years he was a member of the Council of Europe. I hope that we may benefit from some of his expertise later, when he may, in passing, be able to answer his own question, which I am not able to do.

The hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North tabled an early-day motion on this subject, which read:

“That this House notes that 8 June 2016 marks the fourth anniversary of the UK Government becoming a signatory to the Istanbul Convention on violence against women and girls; expresses disappointment that the Government, despite outlining their commitment to do so several times, has still failed to ratify this important convention; recognises that women still face a significant amount of inequality, with one in four women experiencing some form of domestic, sexual or psychological abuse during their lifetimes; further notes that ratifying the Istanbul Convention should ensure that a series of preventative policies will be introduced to help tackle and end violence against women, such as non-violent conflict resolution in relationships and the right to personal integrity being included in school curricula at all levels; congratulates the campaign group ICchange for their continuing work in applying pressure on the Government to ratify the convention; and calls on the Government to accede to this pressure and ensure ratification as soon as possible.”

There are a couple of interesting things to note about that motion. First, when I last looked it had 47 signatories, so despite the contention by the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan that the House was unanimous in its support for her proposal, that unanimous support does not seem to have found its way there. Secondly, notwithstanding Members’ attempts to do a bit of back-tracking now, and to start saying that they care about violence against men as well—they offered no such views in the speeches we heard earlier— the EDM lets the cat out of the bag. Those Members do not care about violence against men. The EDM makes no mention of violence against men. It is all about violence against women. Let us not try to pretend now, at this late stage, that this is about gender neutrality; it is not, and people obviously know that it is not.

There is an awful lot to the convention—far more than I intend to go into today; I am sure Members will be relieved to hear that. Although I am sure that I would be deemed to be in order if I went into all of it, I want to hear from other speakers. Given that the Bill requires the ratification of the convention, however, it is all very relevant, and I want to put on record some of the key facts that it contains.

The Council of Europe’s website sets out the position. It says:

“In simple terms, preventing violence against women and domestic violence can save lives and reduce human suffering. Governments that agree to be bound by the Convention will have to do the following: train professionals in close contact with victims; regularly run awareness-raising campaigns; take steps to include issues such as gender equality and non-violent conflict resolution in interpersonal relationships in teaching material; set up treatment programmes for perpetrators of domestic violence and for sex offenders; work closely with NGOs; involve the media and the private sector in eradicating gender stereotypes and promoting mutual respect.”

That last bit sounds a bit like media censorship to me, but I am not entirely sure what the Council of Europe has in mind.

“Preventing violence against women and domestic violence should not be left to the state alone. In fact, the Convention calls on all members of society, in particular men and boys, to help reach its goal of creating a Europe free from all forms of violence against women and domestic violence. Violence against women is pervasive because misogynistic attitudes towards women persist. Each and every one of us can help challenge gender stereotypes, harmful traditional practices and discrimination against women. It is only by achieving real gender equality that violence against women can be prevented.”

It is clear that the convention goes well beyond trying to combat violence against women, and has a much wider remit than people would have us believe.

The website goes on to say:

“When preventive measures have failed and violence incidents have happened, it is important to provide victims and witnesses with protection and support. This means police intervention and protection as well as specialised support services such as shelters, telephone hotlines etc. It also means making sure that general social services understand the realities and concerns of victims of domestic violence and violence against women and support them accordingly in their quest to rebuild/resume their lives.

Some examples of measures set forth in the Convention include:

Granting the police the power to remove a perpetrator of domestic violence from his or her home: In situations of immediate danger, the police need to be able to guarantee the safety of the victim. In many instances this may mean ordering the perpetrator for a specified period of time to leave the family home and to stay away from the victim.

Ensuring access to adequate information…victims are usually traumatised and need easy access to clear and concise information on available services, in a language they understand.

Setting up easily accessible shelters in sufficient numbers and in an adequate geographical distribution: Victims come from a wide range of social realities. For instance, women from rural areas or disabled women need to have access to shelters as much as women from big cities.”

There is not one mention of a male victim of domestic violence. In a moment I shall say something about the supply of refuges for men and women, because I think it important to establish the extent to which the Government are fulfilling that requirement.

The website continues:

“Making available state-wide 24/7 telephone helplines free of charge: Specialised helplines for victims of violence against women and domestic violence can direct the victims to the services they need…

Setting-up easily accessible rape crisis or sexual violence referral centres: These centres provide immediate medical counselling, trauma care and forensic services and are extremely rare across Europe. It is important to make these services more widely available.

It should be borne in mind that it is not enough to set up protection structures and support services for victims. It is equally important to make sure victims are informed of their rights and know where and how to get help.”

I absolutely agree that victims should be better protected and have more of a voice in the justice system, but as far as I am concerned that applies to male victims as much as it does to female victims. When it comes to domestic violence, it is actually male victims who have the least support, not female ones.

An Office for National Statistics report from February 2016 on violent crime and sexual offences relating to the year ending March 2015 states:

“Overall, 27.1% of women and 13.2% of men had experienced any domestic abuse since the age of 16, equivalent to an estimated 4.5 million female victims and 2.2 million male victims.”

Those are shocking figures. New data from the ONS for the year ending March 2016 found that, of those who said that they had experienced domestic abuse, 1.2 million were female and 651,000 were male. As I established earlier, of every three victims of domestic abuse, two will be female and one will be male. Yet despite that split of two thirds and one third—we must all agree on that; they are the official figures and I have not heard anybody argue against them—there is absolutely no such funding split. Perhaps the Minister will explain why.

According to the Mankind Initiative:

“20 organisations offer refuge or safe house provision for male victims in the UK—a total of 82 spaces, of which 24 are dedicated to male DV victims only (the rest being for victims of either gender).”

Men have a chance of accessing only 82 spaces, only 24 of which—in the whole country—are guaranteed for them. The Mankind Initiative continues:

“For female victims, there are nearly 400 specialist domestic violence organisations providing refuge accommodation for women in the UK with c4,000 spaces for over 7,000 women and children.”

Two thirds of victims of domestic violence are women and a third are men, but there are 7,000 places in refuges for women and a maximum of 82 for men. How can that possibly be gender neutral or fair? I genuinely want to know why people think that that can possibly be fair, if we are genuinely interested in being gender neutral. Of course, we know that many people are not interested in being gender neutral.

It is interesting, too, that male victims are much less likely to come forward than female victims, which again suggests that it is male victims who need more encouragement. According to the Mankind Initiative:

“Male victims (29%) are over twice as likely than women (12%) to not tell anyone about the partner abuse they are suffering from. Only 10% of male victims will tell the police (26% women), only 23% will tell a person in an official position (43% women) and only 11% (23% women) will tell a health professional.”

On discussing sexual abuse during childhood, the recent Ministry of Justice report, “Statistics on Women and the Criminal Justice System 2015”, states:

“12% of female victims and 25% of males told someone they knew personally about childhood sexual assault by rape or penetration (including attempts) at the time, usually a family member (18%). Only 10% of female victims told someone in an official position, with 8% reporting the abuse to the police. Only 2% of male victims reported the abuse to the police.”

Although sexual abuse is an absolutely huge issue among girls, with only 30% of victims telling anyone at all, it is also an issue among boys, but it is being massively under-reported, with only 27% of victims telling anyone, and only 2% telling the police.

The convention’s position on the prosecution of perpetrators is interesting, too. The Council of Europe says:

“The convention defines and criminalises the various forms of violence against women as well as domestic violence. This is one of the many achievements of the convention. To give effect to the convention, state parties will have to introduce a number of new offenses where they do not exist. These may include: psychological and physical violence, sexual violence and rape, stalking, female genital mutilation, forced marriage, forced abortion and forced sterilisation. In addition, state parties will need to ensure that culture, tradition or so-called ‘honour’ are not regarded as a justification for any of the above-listed courses of conduct.”

I am not sure how we deal with psychological violence, but most of those offences can have male victims, too. That does not include female genital mutilation, obviously, as that clearly relates only to females, and male circumcision is still considered to be legal. In the case of a forced abortion, which on the face of it is a female issue, if the person doing the forcing is not the father, there is potentially a father who is the victim of a lost child, so it is not just the woman who might suffer in that situation.

According to figures obtained by the Mankind Initiative:

“Of those that suffered partner abuse in 2014/15, a higher proportion of men suffered from force (37%) than women (29%). For emotional and psychological abuse the proportions were 61% and 63% respectively.”

There is not a fat lot in it, as it happens. There is almost exactly the same number of male victims of psychological abuse as female victims.

On the issue of psychological abuse of children, the recent MOJ reports states:

“Of those who experienced psychological abuse as a child, the perpetrator was most likely to have been the victim’s mother (40%) or father (35%). Women were more likely to have experienced this form of abuse from their mothers (42%) than fathers (33%), whereas men were equally likely to be abused by either parent.”

The matter of actual violence and injury is also interesting. The Mankind Initiative states:

“Of those that suffered from partner abuse in 2012/13, 29% of men and 23% of women suffered a physical injury, a higher proportion of men suffering severe bruising or bleeding (6%) and internal injuries or broken bones/teeth (2%) than women (4% and 1% respectively). 30% of men who suffer partner abuse have emotional and mental problems (47% women). Only 27% of men sought medical advice whilst 73% of women did.”

This Bill would ensure the ratification of a convention that does nothing to address domestic violence against men, just women.

I want briefly to mention the other offences that might, on the face of it, seem to apply only to women. Government figures show that one in every five victims of forced marriage is a man. In 2013, there were 234 cases of forced marriage in the UK where the victim was a man. On stalking, which many will no doubt assume involves a man stalking a woman, 2.4% of men and 4.9% of women experienced stalking in 2014-15. Again, of every three victims of stalking, two are women and one is a man.

The Council of Europe says:

“Once these new offenses have found their way into the national legal systems, there is no reason not to prosecute offenders. On the contrary, state parties will have to take a range of measures to ensure the effective investigation of any allegation of violence against women and domestic violence.”

It does not say that state parties will have to take a range of measures to ensure the effective investigation of violence against men. It seems to me that that does not matter to the Council of Europe. It goes on:

“This means that the law enforcement agencies will have to respond to calls for help, collect evidence and assess the risk of further violence to adequately protect the victim.

Furthermore, state parties will have to carry out judicial proceedings in a manner that respects the rights of victims at all stages of the proceedings and that avoid secondary victimisation.”



In February 2015, the Joint Committee on Human Rights published a report, “Violence against Women and Girls”, on the UK’s progress towards ratification of the convention. Again, the report is about violence against women and girls, with nothing about violence against men and boys. I do not know what anybody else thinks, but if the son of somebody in this House is the victim of violence, would they consider that to be less important than if their daughter was a victim of violence? I would like hon. Members to explain why they think violence against their sons would be less important. We may hear about that from other Members later, but we have not so far.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I am sure the Minister will get the chance to do so.

It is worth noting that the Equality and Human Rights Commission acknowledges in its briefing that

“most of the Istanbul Convention obligations are implemented through UK legislation”,

and recent steps have been taken on many areas. For example, a prohibition on possession of rape pornography was introduced by section 37 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015. This applies in England and Wales, and brings the offence of possession of extreme pornographic images more in line with that applicable in Scotland. A new offence of controlling or coercive behaviour in intimate or familial relationships was introduced by section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015. An offence of forced marriage is now provided for in sections 121 and 122 of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. The Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 was amended by section 73 of the Serious Crime Act 2015 to include FGM protection orders, civil measures that can be applied for through a family court which provide a means of protecting actual or potential victims of FGM.

An email I received from the Muslim Council of Britain in support of the Bill quoted the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon:

“Violence against women continues to persist as one of the most heinous, systematic and prevalent human rights abuses in the world. It is a threat to all women, and an obstacle to all our efforts for development, peace, and gender equality in all societies… Let us take this issue with the deadly seriousness that it deserves”.

I do not understand how violence against women can be an obstacle to gender equality—I sometimes think I must be speaking in Swahili—because this would mean that all violence against women is committed by men, and as I have already said, that is patently not the case. Perhaps someone can explain to me how violence by women on women can be an obstacle to gender equality? In relation to making the Istanbul convention law, the Muslim Council of Britain goes on:

“This is indeed a unique opportunity in the UK so that we can show our support to women and girls who should be living free from any form of violence, and the fear of it.”

I agree with the sentiment, but I would agree more if it talked about everyone, not just women and girls.

The Fawcett Society has said:

“This new landmark treaty of the Council of Europe opens the path for creating a legal framework at pan-European level to protect women against all forms of violence, and prevent, prosecute and eliminate violence against women and domestic violence. It also establishes a monitoring body to evaluate implementation and progress.”

There will be more meddling from afar if we ratify this convention.

The Council of Europe provides details of the monitoring mechanisms that must be put in place if we ratify the convention. It says that there would be

“an independent expert body, the Group of Experts on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (GREVIO), which is initially composed of 10 members and will subsequently be enlarged to 15 members following the 25th ratification”,

and

“a political body, the Committee of the Parties, which is composed of representatives of the Parties to the Istanbul Convention. The task of GREVIO is to monitor the implementation of the Convention by the Parties.”

We will not do that in our own country; we will have an international body interfering and telling us how we are doing.

[Mr Chope]

Does my hon. Friend share my view that such a threat of interference is one reason why the German Government do not wish to ratify the convention? If that was the case, a lot of searching questions would be asked about their attitude to what happened in Cologne on new year’s eve last year.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend may well be right. I am loth to speak up for the German Government—I do not know what their motivation is—but that is entirely possible. It may well be unwelcome to have these meddling, interfering bodies telling us how we are doing when many of those people are doing far less in their own countries than we are doing in ours. We have seen that time and again with international bodies that are supposed to monitor what we are doing. They would be better off monitoring what they are doing in their own countries, rather than monitoring what we are doing in this country.

The Council of Europe also says:

“GREVIO may also adopt, where appropriate, general recommendations on themes and concepts of the Convention.”

This would be a living document, and would not just stick at where we are today. We have seen that with the European convention on human rights. It goes on:

“The Committee of the Parties follows up on GREVIO reports and conclusions and adopts recommendations to the Parties concerned.”

We would be signing up to an ever-moving feast. It adds:

“It is also responsible for the election of GREVIO members.”

There would be two forms of monitoring procedures: a country-by-country evaluation procedure, and a special inquiry procedure. A special inquiry procedure

“may be initiated by GREVIO when there is reliable information indicating that action is required to prevent a serious, massive or persistent pattern of any acts of violence covered by the Convention. In such a case, GREVIO may request the urgent submission of a special report by the Party concerned… After having been examined by GREVIO, the findings of the inquiry are transmitted to the Party concerned and, where appropriate, to the Committee of the Parties and the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, together with any comments and recommendations.”

What an absolute bureaucratic nightmare we will get ourselves into if we ratify this convention.

We have seen how public confidence in the European convention on human rights has been undermined time after time by ridiculous findings and perverse rulings that could never have been intended at the time it was ratified. It is perfectly clear that this convention would end up in exactly the same way: an ever-moving feast, with the goalposts always being changed to suit some politically correct agenda. The Government would be hamstrung because they had ratified something, not really knowing what they were getting themselves into.

There is even a flowchart to explain what happens under the urgent inquiry procedures. I will not say any more about that, other than to note that agreeing to be party to things obviously has consequences, and the procedures to ensure that the obligations are met are clear for all to see. There are integrated policies that parties have to follow. Again, I would like the Minister to put some meat on how he sees the Government implementing those.

The Council of Europe states:

“An effective response to such violence requires concerted action by many different actors.”

These bodies would therefore be interfering in

“law enforcement agencies, the judiciary”—

even the judiciary is mentioned on the website. Some of the people who are today arguing for the convention are the same people who have been most robust in saying that people in this House should not interfere in the judiciary in our country and should respect the independence of the judiciary, yet clearly if we ratify the convention, as it says on the website, these bodies would look for actions from

“law enforcement agencies, the judiciary, NGOs, child protection agencies and other relevant partners”

that they deem should

“join forces on a particular case.”

What on earth would we be getting ourselves into by signing up to the convention? We can sort these things out for ourselves. We can pass any laws we want in this country to sort out any problems we deem it necessary to sort out. We do not have to sign up to some supranational, interfering, meddling body that wants to intervene, potentially, in the independence of our judiciary in order to sort out violence against people—even violence against women and girls.

I oppose the Bill because it would introduce unnecessary meddling from supranational bodies that we can quite do without to sort out problems that we can deal with perfectly well ourselves in our courts if we have the guts and the willpower to send perpetrators of violence and domestic violence to prison and keep them in prison. That is the best thing this House can do, but nobody on the Opposition Benches today seems to want to do it. They would sooner do some virtue signalling with this Bill.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend says that he is against the Bill, but at least we have a Bill. If it had not been for the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) bringing forward the Bill, the House might never have been able to discuss this issue before the Government went ahead and ratified the convention.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As I did at the start, I congratulate the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan on bringing the Bill forward, because it is important that the public know the full implications of something with a worthy sounding title and a worthy sentiment behind it, and why some of us are opposed to these supranational bodies interfering in what we do in this country.

I am against the Bill for that reason and because we should have a convention that deals with all violence: violence against men as well as violence against women. Of course we oppose violence against women, but I for one equally oppose violence against men and boys. Having a strategy for one but not the other is just not acceptable to me. It really is as simple as that. I cannot understand for the life of me how political correctness has become so entrenched in this country that people here today can see nothing wrong with a whole policy on violence being based on just one sex, when, unbelievably, the evidence shows that it is the other sex who are more likely to be the victims of violent crime and when there are lots of male victims of domestic violence too. As I find myself saying all too often, you couldn’t make it up.

Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Friday 11th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) and for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) on, between them, ensuring that we are debating the Bill this morning, because it deals with a matter that is of great concern to my constituents.

I want to focus on two questions relating to the Bill. The first is the question of whether it is needed, and the second is the question of whether its provisions are satisfactory. It could be argued, in answer to the first question, that the Bill is extremely timely. Members may have seen, only yesterday, an article in The Times which focused on the fact that five foreign criminals leave UK jails every day and stay in the UK. It stated that nearly 6,000 are waiting to be deported. The number of foreign offenders in the community has risen by 53% in five years, despite Government attempts to speed up deportations.

I think that support for the Bill is more widespread than many Members may imagine. The Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), was quoted in the article as saying:

“The Prime Minister promised to make the speedy removal of foreign national offenders a priority but these figures show the Home Office has failed…The public will be alarmed that 1,800 offenders are still here after five years. This demonstrates either incompetence, inefficiency or both.”

The number of foreign offenders released from jail pending deportation rose from 3,772 in 2011 to 5,789 in the final quarter of last year, and, as the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee made clear in his remarks—I think that this needs to be reiterated—more than 1,800 of them have been living in the community for five years or more. That is a disgrace. Moreover, a further 1,300 have been living here for between two and five years, and of 416 prisoners who were released in the last three months of last year, only six were deported. That is an absolute disgrace. The Bill is, as I said, very timely.

Probably the most shocking thing of all—I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering will be particularly shocked by this—is that the Home Office figures that were released showed that foreign offenders convicted of 16 murders, 56 rapes and hundreds of robberies and violent attacks were still living in the UK at the end of last year. That is the nature of the beast with which we are dealing. I am afraid that, whatever the Government are doing, it simply cannot be seen as good enough. Those figures should shock all of us, and I hope that they shock the Government.

The widespread support for the Bill is also made clear by an intervention, during questions on an urgent question in 2014, from the former shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), who said:

“When people come to Britain, they should abide by the law, and the whole House wants to see foreign criminals being deported.”—[Official Report, 27 October 2014; Vol. 586, c. 903.]

She said that only a couple of years ago, from the Labour Benches. I look forward to seeing support for the Bill not just from Conservative Members, but from Members on both sides of the House.

Given that the EU referendum is to take place on 23 June, and given that EU national offenders make up an increasingly large part of our prison population each year, I think it right for people to be informed of the realities of our EU membership, and of what control this country actually has over the removal of foreign national offenders, particularly those from the EU.

[Mr Chope]

Is it not depressing that the Government are not even prepared to name and shame the member states of the EU that are not taking back foreign prisoners? Their excuse is that publishing such data could undermine diplomatic relationships with those countries.

[Philip Davies]

I agree with my hon. Friend. In my view, it is the failure of those countries to take back foreign offenders that is undermining diplomatic relationships, rather than the release or otherwise of the information.

The Bill clearly aims to do something that I think most people would consider to be common sense: to deport criminals who are not citizens of this country if they commit an offence that is serious enough to warrant a prison sentence. I think that it is important to establish whether someone qualifies for deportation, but I shall come to that when I go into the details of the Bill.

Governments have not resisted the principle of deporting foreign criminals. In fact, it was the last Labour Government who introduced measures for their automatic deportation in certain circumstances, in the form of the UK Borders Act 2007. I do not propose to bore everyone rigid by quoting from its provisions here and now, but suffice it to say that it made a clear attempt to define foreign criminals and to ensure that, in certain circumstances, they were removed from prison. The key part of that Act, the first condition, was that a person is sentenced to a period of imprisonment of “at least 12 months”—along the same lines as what my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) mentioned in his speech. The Labour Government introduced that provision back in 2007.

There were some exemptions within the Act. I shall not bore everybody rigid by going through every single one, but there were quite a few, if anyone would like to look through the legislation. The exceptions included where deportation would breach a person’s convention rights under the ECHR; where people were covered by the refugee convention; where the offender was under 18 years old at the time of offending; where the deportation breaches the offender’s rights under Community treaties; and where the foreign criminal is subject to the Extradition Act 2003 or to the Mental Health Act 1983.

Herein lies the problem, because the exemptions make it virtually impossible to deport anybody. That is the key issue. It is all very well saying, “We’re going to have an Act of Parliament with this particular provision in it”, but if people cannot be removed because of a potential breach of the Human Rights Act or rights under the Community treaties, which provide for the free movement of people, we are in big difficulties. Given the high proportion of EU citizens who count as foreign offenders, the legislation is barely worth the paper it is written on.

[Mr Chope]

Is that not why clause 1 of this Bill includes the words

“Notwithstanding any provision of the European Communities Act 1972”?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and he explains why that part of the Bill is essential. I shall come on to some of the detail in the Bill later.

Our former colleague and the former Member for Wells, David Heathcoat-Amory, in his book “Confessions of a Eurosceptic”, reminded us of what happened when it was reported that more than 1,000 foreign prisoners were released without being considered for deportation when Charles Clarke was the Home Secretary. That particular scandal cost Charles Clarke his job. The public believed it was a huge scandal, which it is. The release of 1,000 foreign prisoners without being considered for deportation was sufficient for the Home Secretary to resign, yet as a newspaper reported yesterday, 1,800 of them have been here for more than five years. If 1,000 was enough for the Home Secretary to resign, one wonders what the trigger point for a scandal is these days.

A fair deportation system should, it seems to me, treat all foreign offenders in the same way. I do not think there can be any justification for saying that a foreign offender from one country should be treated differently from a foreign offender from a different country. This has become a growing problem. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering said, there have been more than 10,000 foreign national offenders in prison since 2006. This is not a new problem. Given current levels of immigration into the UK, of course, there is no prospect at all of the number going down anytime soon.

EU Membership (Audit of Costs and Benefits) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Friday 26th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend again makes a telling point. I was going to come to it later, but as he has raised it now, let us put on the record, for example, the concern many of our constituents have about TTIP, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership being negotiated between the EU and the United States. A legal opinion has been circulated to a number of us over the last 24 hours saying if TTIP goes ahead as proposed, it would potentially be disastrous for our national health service. I do not know whether that is correct or not, but there is an opinion saying that that could be the impact. Why are we relying on the EU to negotiate a trade deal with the US? Why do not we, as the fifth largest economy in the world—English-speaking, committed to free trade—make our own trade deal with the US? The short answer is that we are not allowed to do so until we leave the EU.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I wholeheartedly agree with what my hon. Friend is saying. On TTIP, does he agree that the following is an interesting factor in any cost-benefit analysis? We are always told that if we want a free trade agreement with the EU, we will have to accept free movement of people. Does he think America will accept the free movement of people—of all EU citizens—into the United States when it signs its free trade agreement with the EU?

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a good point—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

Absolutely. The fall-back position if we did not negotiate such a deal would be that we would have a continuing relationship on WTO rules, which are signed up to by the EU. So any suggestion that there would be a complete curtailment of trade between us and the EU when we leave is absurd. Why would the EU not want to sign up very quickly with the UK? They are selling us more than we are selling them, so it must be in their interests to try to maintain those connections. Tellingly, and disappointingly, in addressing this point in Monday’s statement the Prime Minister did not talk in absolute terms. Instead of facing up to the fact that we sell less to the European Union than it sells to us, he started talking in percentage terms. That is completely misleading because we are but one of 28 countries in the EU, so if we start talking about the percentage of EU exports that come to us compared with the percentage of our exports that go to the EU, we will present a distorted picture. It was very sad that the Prime Minister chose not to use the absolute figures and instead resorted to such misleading percentages.

[Philip Davies]

We are also told that if we had a free trade agreement with the EU, we would still have to have all our laws decided by the European Union. When my hon. Friend had his discussions with his American friends, did he become aware of whether the Americans were going to accept their law being changed for them by the European Union, by qualified majority voting, when they entered into their free trade agreement with it?

[Mr Chope]

We did not get down to that sort of detail, because the feeling was that we are a long way apart on this. There is also a feeling that there is a lot more commonality between the British people and the people of the United States; we share a common language, the common law and a common heritage, and that is very different from the approach of so many other EU countries. On the basis that we have this special relationship with the US, we would be able to prosper and develop our trade together through bilateral open trading arrangements far more effectively than is being done at the moment with the EU. That is an important factor to take into account when assessing the costs and benefits of membership.

I am conscious of the fact that a number of other people wish to participate in this debate, so I will not say much more now. I merely wish to point out that the Bill proposes terms of reference, whereby the independent commission that would be set up to examine the current costs and benefits would be

“taking into account the impact of membership on the UK’s—

(a) economy (including consideration of public expenditure and receipts resulting directly from membership”).

Of course, we know that in round figures we are paying in about £10 billion more than we get back every year. Interestingly, in yesterday’s statement on the EU solidarity fund and flooding the Minister made much of the fact that we would be applying to get some money back from the fund, but he did not think this would amount to anything more, at best, than about the equivalent of one day’s net contributions to the EU. He admitted that even getting back one day’s net contribution would involve an enormous amount of bureaucracy on both sides, which typifies the costs at the moment and how unfair it is that our people should be paying £10 billion net a year to the EU.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes his point well, as always, but we should not be in this situation. Such decisions should be taken in this House for the benefit of our constituents, but they are not.

We are signing up to a treaty, and the EU is saying to us, “You sign the treaty, and if we want to change things against your wishes, we have the freedom to do so through qualified majority voting.” If I said to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, “Let’s sign a deal on something, but by the way, I can change the terms at any time, and there is nothing you can do to stop me”, I do not think you would sign up to it—nobody would sign up to such a deal, but that is in effect what we are being asked to sign up to in the EU referendum if we vote to remain.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend has not mentioned the part of the deal that states that we will now lose the little influence that we had in the past in relation to the deeper integration of the eurozone. For example, we will not be able to argue that Greece would be better off outside the eurozone, or have any influence on the consequences of a sclerotic eurozone being uncompetitive, and the result that that leads to of more people from the eurozone wanting to work in our country.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right. I have already covered economic and trade matters and regulations, and I know that other people want to speak so I shall not go on for too long. National security and immigration are crucial issues that are mentioned in clause 5 of the Bill. National security is a key area, and the remain campaign seems to think that it is one of its trump cards, and that we are more secure and safer from terrorist attacks within the European Union. I would love them to go and tell the people of Paris how much safer they were from terrorist attacks as a result of being in the European Union, but I suspect they would not get particularly far.

Last night in a debate at York University we hit a new low in the tactics of the remain campaign. I was making the point that we cannot stop people coming into the UK from the EU if they have a valid EU passport, and that that applied to everybody, whether law-abiding people or criminals. But would you believe what the remain campaign announced last night? Perhaps the Minister can confirm it. I am on the Justice Committee, but I was not aware of it. It emerged last night during the debate that, apparently, when an EU national comes to the UK, our robust border controls mean that we check who people are. Apparently, when passports are scanned—this was a new one on me—it flags up whether or not a person has criminal convictions in their home nation, which enables us to stop them entering the United Kingdom. If only that were the case. The most generous thing I can say about that claim is that it is an absolutely blatant lie, because no system exists across the European Union to scan passports, trigger a huge list of criminal convictions and enable us to stop people coming into the country. That claim is simply untrue—I cannot be any clearer than that. The Minister may want to confirm or deny that when he comments, but let us please have an honest debate about these things. That system does not exist.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

Yes, indeed. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The problem is that there are much richer pickings in the UK than in some of the countries these people come from.

The other aspect of this is that, even if these people run the risk of being caught, they would, I suspect, much prefer to spend their time in a British prison than in a prison in their home nation. So this is a win-win, given their chances of being caught and what happens when they are caught. I am afraid that that does not quite work the same in reverse.

[Mr Chope]

When I visited Denmark with a Select Committee in the last Parliament, we heard directly from the Danish about the problem they have with eastern Europeans coming into Denmark and committing crimes. If those people are convicted of those crimes, they will earn more in prison than they would have been able to earn in their home country, so there is no deterrent.

[Philip Davies]

That is another interesting point I had not factored in. I will bow to my hon. Friend’s superior knowledge. I have visited prisons in Denmark, and that is not something I was aware of, so I am grateful to him for putting that point on the record.

Suggesting that our national security is enhanced by being in the EU, when we let thousands of EU criminals in every year, is fanciful in the extreme. Being susceptible to crime from such individuals is doing nothing at all for the security of my constituents.

[Mr Chope]

May I give my hon. Friend an example of where our security is much worse as a result of being in the European Union? People from outside who come into the European Union at the moment often do not give their fingerprints, as they should. I suggested that we take DNA samples from people coming from outside, but I was told that that is unlawful under the Eurodac regulations, so we cannot take that precaution.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that. I very much agree that people wanting to come and live in the EU should have to give their fingerprints and DNA, so that if they do commit a crime, it is easy to track them down, convict them and deport them. As he says, however, that is not what happens. The best the Government have come up with so far is that if somebody comes into the UK and commits a crime, the police can go through some burdensome procedure of asking other EU countries whether they have a fingerprint match for a crime that has been committed there. If those countries ever manage to get back to us, which they probably do not half the time, Lord knows what may happen on the back of that. However, that is not the same as stopping people who are criminals coming into the UK.

Bat Habitats Regulation (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Friday 5th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Madam Deputy Speaker, it is a surprise and a privilege to be able to address the issue of bat habitats again in the House so soon, relatively speaking, since I last spoke about the matter back in January 2015. You may recall that, in the last Session of the last Parliament, my Bat Habitats Regulation Bill attracted a lot of interest. The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice)—I am delighted to see him on the Front Bench today—responded then by promising that various matters would be progressed. I see this debate as an opportunity to find out a bit more about what exactly has happened since he last addressed this issue in the House and about what he thinks should happen in the future.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am sorry to cut off my hon. Friend in full flow. This is further to my point of order earlier this morning about the security risk this country faces from a European Court of Justice decision to stop the UK kicking out of this country a Moroccan national whom the Home Office believes to be a severe threat to national security. It now appears that the person concerned is Abu Hamza’s daughter-in-law. Whoever it is, this is a very serious matter, and this country and this House should be aware of it. What can be done to get a Home Office Minister to come to the Chamber as a matter of urgency to tell the House about this matter and about what threat this country faces?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order and for bringing this matter, which is indeed important, to the attention of the House again. As he knows, I have no power to require a Minister to come to the House, but I am quite certain, now that the hon. Gentleman has raised this matter on the Floor of the House, that those who ought to take note of what he has said will do so. I trust that the matter will be brought before the House in due course, and the hon. Gentleman is of course well aware of the many methods that he can use next week to ensure that it is brought before the House.

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for what you have said in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies). I share his concern that this is a very important issue, particularly in the light of what has been said about the need for us to be able, as a result of the current EU renegotiations, to improve our own national security.

The EU is of course a significant issue in relation to the regulation of bat habitats. The only way in which my Bill, as currently drafted, can be put on the statute book is either for the Government to agree to exclude it from the application of the European Communities Act 1972 or for us to leave the European Union. If the Bill does not reach the statute book, the need for such a Bill may be significantly reduced if we can leave the European Union. I do not know whether I will be able to draw out the Minister on that matter in this debate. Last year, I described him as one of the leading Eurosceptics. I hope that in the course of the next few weeks or days, he will re-establish his credentials in that respect.

This morning, I received a written answer to my question. I asked:

“what progress has been made…on developing a toolkit for effective and safe management of bats in churches as recommended in the University of Bristol report on Management of bats in churches, a pilot, published in January 2015.”

The Minister referred to that report when he responded to the debate in January 2015.

The answer that I received from the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), stated:

“The Government has invested significant resources into research and development to assess how we can reduce the impact caused by bats in churches. This has included a three year research project that concluded in 2013, as well as a pilot project led by Historic England that focused on churches with significant bat issues. Natural England is currently creating a licensing framework to provide the mechanism through which the impact of bats will be controlled in churches.”

I will pause at that point. Natural England seems to be taking an inordinately long time to create the licensing framework. One can only assume that either the matter is incredibly complex or Natural England is not investing sufficient resources in that objective. I hope that the Minister will put more pressure on Natural England to come forward with the licensing framework sooner rather than later.

The second paragraph of the ministerial response to my written question causes me concern. It states:

“A partnership of five organisations, including the Church of England and Natural England, is seeking Heritage Lottery Funding for a five year project to support the creation of a national support network for churches that have bat related issues. The outcome of the bid for funding will be known in March.”

That is an incredibly long timescale. Why can the funding not be provided directly by the Government now? Why do we need to go to the Heritage Lottery Fund to try to get it? Why will it take a similar length of time to the duration of the last world war to come up with a solution, if indeed that funding is available? Why, for all the talk, are we not able to do more, more quickly, to resolve what is for many churches and places of worship a really serious issue?

The seriousness of the issue is recognised in the material that has been produced by the Bat Conservation Trust and the University of Bristol. The Bat Conservation Trust has identified a number of case studies of churches where the problems with bats have been mitigated, rather than resolved. It also sets out in detail all the problems that bats can cause in churches, such as droppings and urine, health concerns, what happens when they fly inside churches and the problems that they can cause when building and conservation projects are under way in churches.

The Bat Conservation Trust has a helpful brief entitled “Solutions to bat issues in churches”, and it answers certain questions such as “Why can’t I get rid of bats in my church? What can I do about bat droppings in my church? Why do churches have to foot the bill for bat conservation? What help is available to churches with bats?”, and so on. It is clear from the way that those questions are asked that we are a long way short of finding a solution to this intractable problem that is causing an enormous amount of concern to churches.

In the previous debate my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley referred to the fact that it is not just churches that are affected by this issue. The Bat Conservation Trust took up my response to that intervention, in which I said that we should perhaps start with just one small area, such as churches. The fact that I then contemplated the possibility that we might extend that provision to other buildings caused an enormous amount of angst among members of the Bat Conservation Trust, and it placed a riposte on its website. My point is that we have to start somewhere and try to get some urgency into the matter.

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for taking up my point about other buildings as opposed to just churches, and in order for progress to be made, I am very happy to drop my wide ambition to see this measure extended further. If it means that my hon. Friend can make progress on churches alone, I am happy to limit my ambition to that.

[Mr Chope]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend, and I hope that when he responds, the Minister will accept that dealing with churches would be a good place to start.

One criticism made of the Bill last year was that it contained no definition of a building used for public worship. To address that I have added clause 3, which defines a building used for public worship as

“a building used for the purposes of religious worship by a congregation or religious group whether or not the building is also used for counselling, social events, instruction or religious training.”

I hope that that will overcome the objection raised about the lack of definition in the Bill.

When responding to our previous debate, the Minister said that there were issues that were going to be addressed, and that in light of their vulnerability, bats have been subject to protection under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. At European level, that was augmented by protection under the European habitats directive in 1994, which was transposed into UK law with the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2010. He said that there would be a review of the relevant European directive, and that

“the European Commission has committed itself to reviewing certain elements of the directive to establish whether they are proportionate. So, in addition to all the work that we are doing nationally, a European-level review is under way.”—[Official Report, 16 January 2015; Vol. 590, c. 1199.]

Will the Minister tell the House where we are with that European level review, and say when he thinks it will reach a conclusion? What sort of conclusion does he think it will reach, and what evidence has been submitted by the Government to that review?

It is a great concern to me, and to a lot of my hon. Friends, that we have European legislation to deal with bats who do not fly across Europe. These are bats who reside in the British Isles. What business is it of the other countries in the European Union to dictate to us how we should look after our own bat populations? This could almost be a starting point for addressing the much-vaunted but totally ignored principle of subsidiarity. If we have a species in our country that does not move from one country to another, it should surely be a matter for domestic, rather than European, law. I would be very interested to know from my hon. Friend the Minister where he thinks we have got to on that.

There is some good news. Last year, I talked about the impact of wind turbines on bats. I put a provision in that Bill largely because of a proposed massive offshore wind turbine project in Dorset. The good news is that the project has now been rejected by the Planning Inspectorate. There will no longer be the adverse impact on bats on the mainland there would otherwise have been if connecting cables had been constructed through forest areas.

In responding last year to the aspect of that Bill concerning the impact of wind turbines on bat habitats, my hon. Friend said:

“That evidence is fairly mixed. Some studies in the United States and Canada suggested that there could be an impact, but, in order to clarify the position in the United Kingdom the Government are conducting their own research, which will be completed later this year.”

The research must therefore have been completed by the end of 2015. I would be grateful if my hon. Friend could tell us the outcome of that research into the wind turbine impacts on our bat populations and habitats. He went on to say:

“If that research establishes that the current approach to planning in respect of wind turbines is insufficient to protect bats, we will review our approach at that point.”

There is a useful purpose to be served by having an almost regular review of progress on issues such as this. The other thing my hon. Friend said last time was this:

“In a changing landscape, where hedgerows and other linear features that are so important to bats have been lost as roosting sites, churches can be important to, in particular, some of our rarer birds. However, the Government recognise, and are sympathetic to, the concern of parishioners who are suffering from the effects of bat droppings on pews, precious artefacts and equipment in the public and private areas of their churches. To address that concern, we have invested considerable resources in research and development to establish how we can reduce the impact of bats in churches.”—[Official Report, 16 January 2015; Vol. 590, c. 1198.]

He then went on to refer to the three-year research project completed in March 2014.

At the beginning of my remarks, I referred to the answer to the question of where we are getting to in establishing a toolkit for effective and safe management of bats in churches. The answer seems to be that it is a long way off. In the meantime, what are we going to do? Something has to be done to make things better for churches and for the parishioners and others who use them. There must be a better solution than their having to put up umbrellas in church to avoid being defecated upon.

Why must our fantastic church monuments be covered with paper—not plastic, because it adds to the adverse impact on the artefacts—so that bats can carry on doing their thing inside our churches to the detriment of that important part of our heritage? It must be possible for bats to co-exist with historic churches. The challenge for the Government, which is reflected in the Bill, is to demonstrate a will to make it happen. For that reason, I ask that the House give my Bill a Second Reading.

Benefit Entitlement (Restriction) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Friday 5th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention, but I am not going to go down that route, because my view is that, even if the high watermark of what the Prime Minister said in his recent statement, which is reflected in the documents produced by the European Commission, is maintained, it still falls significantly short of what we promised in our manifesto, and we will still be a million miles away from being able to remove access to benefits, which is what this Bill aspires to achieve and what the British people overwhelmingly support.

The Prime Minister answered questions after his statement to the House on renegotiation on Wednesday.

He said:

“40% of EU migrants coming to Britain access the in-work benefits system, and the average payment per family is £6,000…I think that more than 10,000 people are getting over £10,000 a year, and because people get instant access to our benefits system, it is an unnatural pull and draw to our country.”—[Official Report, 3 February 2016; Vol. 605, c. 939.]

There is a dispute about the extent to which such access brings large numbers of people in, but in any event the British people find it an affront that the money of those who have paid their taxes and into our insurance system for years is being used to fund people from another country who have not made such contributions.

There is a big issue here. Like my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Scott Mann), I am not convinced that the Government have achieved enough, even at the high watermark, to satisfy myself and others. The only solution is to leave. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) is laughing, but she will see that clauses 2, 3 and 4 of the Bill have to include the words

“Notwithstanding the provisions of the European Communities Act 1972”.

In other words, in each of those clauses I acknowledge that, under current European Union law, we cannot change our own law as we would wish.

In answering the debate that we had two years ago about this issue, the Minister then responsible, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), said that, although he might be tempted, he could not support the Bill because he would be in breach of the ministerial code in supporting a policy that could give rise to infraction proceedings. I fear that the Under-Secretary of State for Disabled People, my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), whom I am delighted to see on the Front Bench today, is in exactly the same position: despite the temptation, he could not support the Bill because in so doing he would be in breach of the ministerial code for raising the prospect of infraction proceedings.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Is my hon. Friend suggesting that, in a couple of weeks, when it seems that the Prime Minister will allow a free-for-all for Government Ministers, this Minister will be able to say that he agrees with the Bill?

[Mr Chope]

That is an interesting point. Perhaps the ministerial code will have to be adjusted to take account of the fact that those who remain Ministers while supporting notwithstanding clauses, for example, should have an exemption. However, I am sure that there are more important issues at stake than the ministerial code.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

But this country does not really have a contributory system in the same way as other EU countries. That is part of the problem. It is no good the hon. Lady wanting to protect something that does not exist and opposing something that would actually do what she claims she wants to achieve. Her actions on this issue are more important than her words, and if she opposes the Bill, her actions clearly do not follow on from her words. I do not see the need for evidence. This is a Bill about a principle that is important to many people. It is about fairness, not evidence.

I would have some sympathy with the hon. Lady’s opinion if we had to give all these benefits away to secure a free trade agreement with the European Union, and that had a net benefit for our economy. If we had to give away something in order to achieve that, it might be worth doing. Given that we had a £62 billion trade deficit with the European Union last year, and that if we were to leave the EU we would be its single biggest export market, it is perfectly clear that we could have a free trade agreement with the EU for nothing. We do not have to give it access to our benefit system, and we do not need to give it a £19 billion a year membership fee. We can have what we want from the EU—free trade—for nothing. That is the deal that we should be seeking to secure. I do not think anybody can sustain the argument that if we were to leave the EU and stop giving benefits to EU citizens when they came to the UK, Germany would want to stop selling Mercedes, BMV and Volkswagen cars to people in this country. Of course they would not; it is complete nonsense for anybody to suggest that.

[Mr Chope]

Does my hon. Friend accept that people’s aspirations for retaining control over our own benefit system are gradually being eroded? It is extraordinary that back in 2014, the then Deputy Prime Minister said that he could not understand

“why it is possible under the current rules for someone to claim child benefit for children who aren’t even in this country.”

That was his view then, but he seems to have resiled from even that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that, because the situation regarding child benefit is probably one of the most indefensible in the benefit system. It does not matter how much evidence there is of how many people it applies to; it cannot be right, as a point of principle, that somebody can come into this country from Poland to work and claim child benefit for their children, who still reside in Poland and have never set foot outside Poland. It cannot possibly be right, on principle. We do not need any evidence to know that that is wrong; it is clearly and palpably wrong. It is strange that the Labour party is so wedded to its European credentials that it will inevitably have to see restrictions in benefits for all UK citizens to pay the bill for benefits to European citizens. I am sure that that does not go down very well in many of the estates in the hon. Lady’s constituency.

I do not intend to speak for long, because I appreciate that we need to press on, but I want to make a point about clause 3, which will ensure that nobody is paid a level of benefit above that of the equivalent benefit in their own country. I think I am right in saying that the Prime Minister is trumpeting something similar in his deal regarding child benefit. As I understand it—my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, who is far more knowledgeable on the matter than I am, will correct me if I am wrong—the Prime Minister is saying that under the great deal that he has secured for the nation, Polish people, for example, who claim child benefit will be able to claim only the child benefit rate in Poland, or whichever country the children reside in. That seems very similar to clause 3.

[Mr Chope]

My understanding of the documents that were published this week is that it would not be as simple as that. The amount of child benefit that could be claimed would be related to the difference in the standard and cost of living between this country and the other EU country. That, of course, would be incredibly bureaucratic.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, but the Prime Minister is trying to secure the same kind of principle that my hon. Friend seeks in clause 3. For the benefit of not only our deliberations on the Bill but those who are trying to weigh up the Prime Minister’s renegotiation, I want to say that there is a huge danger in this aspect of the Bill. We have said that if somebody comes from Poland, they can claim child benefit at the UK rate for their children in Poland. If that is changed and the amount of child benefit that they can claim becomes only £2 or £3 a week, or whatever the equivalent might be in Poland, there is a danger that rather than saving the taxpayer money, as we all intend—including the Prime Minister, I might add—we may inadvertently increase the bill to the taxpayer. We are working on the basis that people will just carry on doing as they do at the moment. Who is to say, if we limit the child benefit to the rate in the home country, that they will not take the opportunity to bring their children to the UK in order to claim the higher UK rate? On top of that, there is the cost of schooling, any medical care and all the rest of it. We must be very careful about what we wish for.

A much more sensible approach to matters such as child benefit would be that if a foreign national comes to this country but their children still reside in the home country, they should not get anything. Whether it is the UK rate, the Polish rate or any rate whatever, the UK Government should not give them anything. That would avoid the unintended consequence of more and more people bringing more and more of their children to this country at a higher cost to the taxpayer.

Having made those points, I will sit down, because we all want to hear from the Minister. We all know that he is a very good man. The Bill did not find any favour with the shadow Minister, but as he is far more sensible, we hope he will have warmer words to say about it.

Male Suicide and International Men’s Day

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Thursday 19th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for coming to the debate and making that point. I would have preferred the debate to be in the main Chamber, especially given that the International Women’s Day debate is held there, but I am grateful that we have the opportunity to raise these issues, which we have never done before, so it would be churlish of me to be too critical.

I want today to be the day when we in this House start to deal with some of the forgotten men’s issues and realise why the political correctness that underpins issues relating to the differing treatment of the sexes can be damaging to men. It might sound odd for someone leading the debate on International Men’s Day to say this, but in many respects, I would rather we did not have to be here having this debate, because when we think about it, in so many ways, considering men and women separately as if they live their lives in complete isolation from one another is ridiculous. Neither group is isolated. Both sexes have mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, uncles and aunts, grandmothers and grandfathers, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends. Every woman has related male parties and therefore a vested interest in men’s issues.

The problem is that virtually everything we do and debate in the House seems to start from the premise that everything is biased against women and that something must be done about it. There is never an appreciation that men’s issues can be just as important and that men can be just as badly treated as women in certain areas.

The hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) supported my request for a debate, and I know he is sorry that he unfortunately cannot be here today. Had he been here, he no doubt would have shared the fact that last year, Belfast City Council hosted its first event to mark International Men’s Day. I understand that the event was held in Belfast castle and opened by the First Minister and the Lord Mayor of Belfast at the time, Nichola Mallon, following a proposal by Alderman Ruth Patterson. It seems our Ulster friends appreciate that there are some specifically male issues that should be addressed, with both sexes involved.

I want to be very clear: I do not believe there is actually an issue between men and women. Often, problems are stirred up by those who might be described as militant feminists and the politically correct males who sometimes pander to them. Members do not just need to take my word for it. Before the Equal Opportunities Commission was merged into the Equality and Human Rights Commission, it conducted research that found women had very clear views on these matters. Its findings included the following conclusion:

“There was little support for the idea that women, as a group, are unequal in society today.”

Presumably, that went down like a lead balloon in an organisation dedicated to fighting for women’s interests and rights, so it was pretty much swept under the carpet.

One of the most depressing things to happen recently was the introduction of the Select Committee on Women and Equalities. After everything else, in 2015 we have a separate Committee to deal with women’s issues, on top of the Women’s Minister, Women’s Question Time and the many strategies in this country that only deal with women.

For the record, I could not care less if every MP in this House were female or if every member of my staff were female, as long as they were there on merit. To assume that men cannot adequately represent women is a nonsense, just as it is to say that only women can represent other women. As a man, I can say quite clearly that Margaret Thatcher represented my views very nicely indeed, but I am not sure she would be a pin-up for many of the politically correct, left-leaning women who are obsessed with having more women in Parliament today.

It seems to me that we have an “equality, but only when it suits” agenda in Parliament that often applies just to women. The drive for women to have so-called equality on all things that suit the politically correct agenda but not on the things that do not is a great concern. For example, we hear plenty about increasing the number of women on company boards and increasing female representation in Parliament, but there is a deafening silence when it comes to increasing the number of men who have custody of their children or who have careers as midwives. In fact, there generally seems to be a deafening silence on all the benefits women have compared with men.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

Would my hon. Friend add to that list the deafening silence about the shortage of male teachers in primary schools, who are important male role models?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right; we hear very little about that. If there were a shortage of female primary school teachers, I suspect we would hear a great deal more about it.

The fight for equality on all things that suit women has ended up in a situation where we are quick to point out that women need special protections and treatment in certain areas but need greater equality in others. Let me give the example of prison uniforms. Men in prison have to wear a prison uniform; women in prison do not. How, I have asked on many occasions, can that possibly be fair? Where is the equality in that? I will come on to the treatment of men and women in our justice system later, but that is clearly an issue. What is the explanation? I am told that it is because women are different. As I have said, it is a question of equality, but only when it suits.

Hospital Parking Charges (Exemption for Carers) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Friday 30th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

That is the point I was making. If I did not make it, I apologise for not being clear. For the avoidance of doubt, those decisions are made locally and I support that fact. Labour Members clearly do not believe that they should be made locally. They believe that the rules should be set nationally. In a nutshell, that is where we have a difference of opinion. I believe the decisions should be made locally; the hon. Member for Burnley clearly believes they should be made centrally. That is a perfectly respectable position to hold, but it happens to be one that I do not agree with. That is the nub of the point on localism.

[Mr Chope]

In Scotland within the past week there has been enormous criticism of the quality of healthcare being delivered by the Scottish Government. Is not that an example of a place that has free hospital car parking but does not necessarily have a better quality of health service?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I will say more about Scotland and Wales in due course, because we have seen the impact of this policy in those countries. There is not a never-ending supply of money, and if more is spent on free car parking in the NHS, less will inevitably be spent in other areas. Labour Members seem to think that money grows on trees and that there is a never-ending supply of it, but back in the real world, we have a certain amount of money and we choose how to spend it. If we choose to spend it on one thing, we inevitably have to take it away from somewhere else. The hon. Member for Burnley did not mention the need to make that choice, but it is important that we face that fact.

The hon. Lady has clearly had difficulty in finding evidence to support her Bill, so I thought I would help her out a bit. She has clearly spoken to lots of carers groups, and she has set up the Park the Charges campaign with Carers UK, for which I commend her. For the sake of balance, however, we should not just listen to the views of carers, important though they are. We should also seek the position of the hospitals on this matter, because they would ultimately be the most affected by the proposed changes.

I am not sure what discussions the hon. Lady had with the hospitals, given that her Bill would force them to change their car parking policies. I contacted the East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, which I believe is the hospital trust that covers her constituency. I asked the trust what consultations she had had with it on this policy. I put in a freedom of information request to ask what communication Burnley general hospital had received from the hon. Lady on the issue of carers and hospital car parking charges. I received a response on 25 September, which stated:

“I can now confirm that we have not had an enquiry of this nature from Ms Cooper”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I have been accused of many things in my time. A burst of socialism is a first, even for me. I may try and put that out to my left-wing constituents to show them that there is hope for me yet. If I did come out with a burst of socialism, I apologise profusely, not least to my hon. Friend, who always keeps me on the straight and narrow. I apologise for a burst of socialism; it was not intended to be such. I feel chastised.

We should consider why hospital car parks are not already free. There is an argument, I guess, that instead of picking out parking for carers, all hospital car parking should be free. In its 2009 report, “Fair for all, not free-for-all—Principles for sustainable hospital car parking”, the NHS Confederation stated:

“Charging for car parking is often necessary, but needs to be fair – and to be seen to be fair.”

It is important for Opposition Members to recognise that the country and the NHS do not have millions of pounds to spend on covering the cost of parking for a certain section of the population. The Labour Government left this country in a huge financial black hole which we are still struggling to recover from. Policies such as this could severely affect local NHS hospitals and services and their budgets.

There is an analogy that I always give in such situations, which I first heard Lord Tebbit use. I hope that goes some way to restoring my hon. Friend’s faith in me after my earlier lapse. The analogy in this context, which is not necessarily the context in which Lord Tebbit used it, is this: if somebody asked, “Do you think we should have free hospital car parking?”, the chances are that virtually everybody who was asked would say yes. If they were asked, “Should we have free hospital car parking? By the way, that will mean having to get rid of lots of doctors, nurses and essential staff”, people may give a different answer. In the analogy that Lord Tebbit used, the question was, “Would you like a free Rolls-Royce?”, and he suspected that the vast majority of people would say yes. If they were asked, “Would you like a free Rolls-Royce? You’ll have to live in a tent for the rest of your life to pay for it”, people may come up with a different answer.

Of course, in principle, people would love to have free hospital car parking, but we have to think what the consequences would be and whether people would want to face those consequences. When it comes to the crunch, I suspect the answer may be different. If the Government had an additional £180 million to spend, which would be the cost of free hospital car parking, I am sure there would be many other pressures to spend that £180 million on in some part of the NHS. For example, it may pay for another 2,500 doctors or 8,000 nurses for the NHS. If we had a vote on what is the most important thing that we should do with that money, I suspect that the additional doctors and nurses would carry quite a weight of support, not just in this House, but across the country as a whole. It is not just a free-for-all. The harsh reality is that there are consequences of doing these things.

[Mr Chope]

We are talking not just about free car parking, but about car parking? Too many hospitals do not have adequate car parking. That is one of the great complaints that so many patients have—that they cannot find anywhere to park when they go to hospital.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. The hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South made the point that people find it very stressful to have to pay after they have been to visit a relative in hospital, but as my hon. Friend rightly points out, it is probably even more stressful if they cannot find a car parking space at all. We need to bear that in mind.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I very much agree, Mr Deputy Speaker. I will move on. I will discuss how it might work with my hon. Friend in the Tea Room afterwards.

[Mr Chope]

If there is increased demand for car parking spaces at hospitals and it is desirable that those hospitals provide extra provision, that has to be paid for. How will it be paid for?

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. Again, I will move on.

As the Torbay scheme is the nearest to the one that the hon. Member for Burnley proposes, I asked some questions through freedom of information requests about the impact and take-up of the scheme. I asked how many people had used the scheme since it was introduced, and the reply from Torbay was:

“We are unable to provide you with the information requested as it is not held electronically or in a central location. We do not record the details of carers, only a verification that they are on the register.”

We do not even know how many people take up the scheme that has been introduced.

[Mr Chope]

Surely that is a good thing, because it shows that there is a light-touch approach without too much bureaucracy and administration.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I agree. This is hard work, Mr Deputy Speaker, and you are right—I am anxious to press on.

[Mr Chope]

Before my hon. Friend concludes, will he address clause 7(2) which states that the Act extends to England only? Does he think that, as with free school meals, there will be Barnett consequentials?

Access to Medical Treatments (Innovation) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Friday 16th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I merely read out, word for word, Cancer Research UK’s response to the consultation; I can do no more than quote its words. I will take my hon. Friend’s point in that regard.

[Mr Chope]

If there is such widespread opposition to this Bill, why was it that the Saatchi Bill made such good progress in the other place during the last Parliament, when I understand it had the benign support of the Government?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend often asks me questions that I cannot answer. He has now asked another that I am not in a position to answer. I often think it is a mistake to give way to him; he is far too clever for my liking. Again, he has stumbled across something that I cannot answer. He raises a very good point, so perhaps we shall leave it hanging there for others to have a crack at later in the debate.

The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges said that it applauds the intentions of the promoters of the Medical Innovation Bill:

“The stated purpose of the Bill is to encourage responsible innovation in medical treatment, and accordingly to deter innovation which is not responsible. Those are aims which medical Royal Colleges would wholeheartedly support and welcome.”

That is an important point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is very kind, although it would have been rather better if he had not had to be prompted to say that. Nevertheless, I will take those comments in the spirit in which I know my good friend intended.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend has not responded to the intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart). Surely the point is that if we want to discuss this in more detail in Parliament, the ideal opportunity for that is in Committee when it can have detailed scrutiny.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I have not heard anything so far today to suggest that the Bill should not at least go into Committee for further scrutiny, and perhaps even for some improvement, if I may be so bold as to suggest that may be possible. I do not think I have heard anything today that suggests the Bill should be stopped in principle on Second Reading. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes will appreciate, however, that I am also trying to be balanced in setting out some of the concerns that have been expressed, perhaps so they can be considered if we do get into Committee, which would be a useful exercise.

Another concern raised by some of my constituents is that the database may compromise patients’ anonymity. Innovative medical treatments will be applied on a case-by-case basis with a specifically honed technique for one particular individual. The fear is that a degree of detail will be needed in the register, which would end up compromising a patient’s anonymity. That is a valid concern, and protections would need to be put in place to ensure all information is stored securely within the database to protect anonymity. However, that may be at the cost of using innovative treatments. There may well be a tension between those two factors.

While the information stored in the database should only be accessible by doctors, it will need to remain confidential aside from access for medical purposes and, ultimately, it should be the patient’s choice whether to use an innovative treatment that will be recorded for medical purposes. Furthermore, in an age when we want more doctors to spend more time with patients and not at their desks, we need to be careful to ensure that the register does not become overwhelming to the point where doctors are put off from using innovative techniques for the sake of the amount of paperwork and red tape that would accompany it. The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges said

“current experience in the NHS show that establishing an effective register for far more standard procedures is a complex task. Establishing and maintaining a register of innovations would be a costly and potentially burdensome and bureaucratic task.”

My hon. Friend the Member for Totnes made that point. That is another factor that needs to be considered when the database is created. Of course the database and the information gathered should be rigorously checked and regulated. However, that is not always easy when doctors are already busy.

Overall, I believe this clause, originating from an amendment to Lord Saatchi’s Bill, is one of the key clauses. For rare diseases such as some cancers there is a lack of published evidence on which to rely when determining treatments to try. It is also widely regarded that some methods used to treat some types of cancers have remained similar for many years, with only slight modifications to the techniques. With this in mind, a database that allows knowledge to be stored and accessed at a doctor’s level will be not only desirable but probably essential for allowing doctors to innovate responsibly. It will encourage a culture of knowledge sharing, which, importantly, will include both successes and failures. This is a vital part of the Bill, and indeed I do not see how the power to innovate can move forward without the inclusion of a database recording the results of these treatments. I therefore commend my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry on including this clause.

We need to look at what we consider to be a responsible innovative treatment. Clause 2(2) states that a treatment is regarded as

“‘innovative’ if it involves a departure from the existing range of accepted medical treatments”

for a condition. We can therefore assume a wide scope to cover the cases that should be recorded in the new database.

However, concerns have been raised regarding the distinction between innovation and research. While clause 5(2) specifically states that this Bill does not apply to medical research, some medical organisations have raised concerns as to how this would work in reality. The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges states:

“We do not understand the distinction between ‘individual patient innovation’ and ‘research’. The distinction seems false and potentially dangerous. As a college president stated ‘Innovation without research isn’t innovation, it’s more often just advertising’.”

Although the Bill uses the two in harmony, it is important to raise these points and for them to be considered in Committee.

One of the main differences that separates the two is that this legislation allows doctors more freedom to modify and specifically cater treatments towards the individual they are treating. That is very important and worthwhile. Although they will not be finding a brand new cure for cancer, it allows doctors to cater treatment plans more specifically to the patient’s needs and wishes. Many patients will benefit from that, and often would prefer it.

We have discussed the Bolam test. By working from the current common law Bolam test, the Bill identifies the steps a doctor can take to show that they have acted responsibly before innovating. The common law Bolam test is defined as the test

“used to determine the standard of care owed by professionals to those whom they serve, e.g. the standards of care provided to patients by doctors.”

Established from the case Bolam v. Friern hospital management committee in 1957, it shows that if a doctor acts in accordance with a responsible body of medical opinion, he or she will not be negligent. Subsequently this standard of care test was amended—the Bolitho amendment—to include the requirement that the doctor should have behaved in a way that “withstands logical analysis” regardless of the body of medical opinion.

This determination of whether a professional’s actions or omissions withstand logical analysis is the responsibility of the court. The Bill, through clause 3, aims to reflect as closely as possible the steps under the current common law which a responsible doctor could be expected to satisfy when innovating. However, clause 3 has caused specific concern for many of my constituents and I would like to raise some of their concerns today.

Most groups and individuals from the medical profession seem to be satisfied with the current Bolam test as a standard for regarding medical innovation, with the Royal College of Surgeons regarding it as “adequate”, so there are concerns that, instead of clarifying the legal position, clause 3 will confuse the current mechanism for judging responsible innovation.

Subsection (2)(a) requires a doctor to

“obtain the views of one or more appropriately qualified doctors in relation to the proposed medical treatment, with a view to ascertaining whether the treatment would have the support of a responsible body of medical opinion”.

This implies that the innovating doctor need only rely on an interpretation of a responsible body, and need not gain the support from a responsible body itself. In practice this might not be a problem, however, as the Bill specifically states that those supporting views must be obtained from “appropriately qualified doctors”—that is, those with appropriate expertise and experience in dealing with patients with the condition in question. It may therefore be taken that the doctor is qualified in the relevant field, which would provide reassurance. It is this clause that many of my constituents are concerned about, however.

This brings me to another point that was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes. Some of my constituents fear that the database could be used as a tool by quacks, crooks and charlatans, giving them the flexibility to use devious experimental treatments. Indeed, that concern has been echoed by the Royal College of Surgeons, which claims, in reference to clause 3(2)(a):

“This sub-clause could also provide post-hoc justification for an unethical treatment from a doctor asserting s/he sought the view of one other doctor.”

We must be sure, therefore, that appropriate safeguards are in place to protect patients from such doctors. I do not think that many of them exist, but I do not know. My hon. Friend the Member for Totnes and I might have some disagreement about that. The important point is that there needs to be a safeguard, because it is inevitable that some such doctors will exist.

Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Friday 16th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I will not give way again because time is pressing and I do not want to embarrass the hon. Gentleman further about his record as leader of Croydon Council—[Interruption.] It was Lambeth Council. I apologise to the hon. Gentleman, although I am sure the same principles apply.

It has to be said that a rather broader view came to be taken, under the influence of Lord Atkin, on what was considered fitness for human habitation. In his opinion:

“If the state of repair of a house is such that by ordinary use damage may naturally be caused to the occupier, whether in respect of personal injury to life and limb, or injury to health, then the house is not in all respects reasonably fit for human habitation.”

That definition was approved by the House of Lords in the case of Summers v. Salford Corporation. In that case, a defective sash cord on the only window in the bedroom of a small house was held, in the circumstances, to make the property not reasonably fit for human habitation. Lord Atkin equated the requirement of reasonable fitness for human habitation with habitable repair, which had been defined earlier.

There was an attempt to come up with a specific definition in the Housing Act 1936. It is clear from the definition relating to sanitary defects that this approach was derived from the regulations made under the housing Act of 1925. There have, therefore, clearly been developments in the definition. The Bill proposes to change that definition once again, despite the fact that for all the previous stages of the definition there was not the other legislation in place that is in force now. We did not have all the legislation that came into being in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. None of that was in place, yet even then there was a narrow, if evolving, definition of homes fit for human habitation. There is even more legislation in place to protect the rights of landlords now, yet the hon. Lady wants to change the definition once again.

The report also gives the history of the fitness for human habitation provisions. That is key to understanding why they originally came into being, as they are the subject of the changes proposed in the Bill. I would, if time had allowed, have gone through the origins of the legislation and the definition, because if we are trying to fiddle with a definition, it is very important to know why it was introduced in the first place. I will not test your patience by doing that, Madam Deputy Speaker, because time is precious.

The hon. Lady argued that the Bill will merely do as the law originally intended on human habitation, but I do not accept that. Yes, the Bill seeks to address the original rent limits which exist to trigger the fitness for human habitation provisions in the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, but it does so in such a way that includes nearly all properties, not just those with a certain level of rent. That was certainly not the intention when this was first introduced. It also extends the list of matters in the fitness for human habitation list and ignores the fact completely that there has been so much other legislation covering landlords since. The Bill covers nearly all properties, not just those in a certain rent band. The only exemptions appear to be those—the hon. Lady can correct me if I am wrong—contained in section 14 of the 1985 Act, which states:

“Section 11…does not apply to a new lease granted to an existing tenant, or to a former tenant still in possession, if the previous lease was not a lease to which section 11 applied…Section 11 does not apply to a lease granted on or after 3rd October 1980 to—a local authority…a new town corporation, an urban development corporation, the Development Board for Rural Wales, a co-operative housing association, or an educational institution”—

or housing action trust.

The hon. Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed) made a point about the terrible state of repair of houses in the private rented sector. I will make no comment on the back of it—people can draw their own conclusions—but of all the people who have come to me in my surgeries to complain about the standard of their housing, I think I can count on one hand the number who come to me in a year to complain about the standard of housing in the private rented sector. However, the numbers who come to see me about the standard of their housing in the social rented sector by their social housing provider is huge. I get no end of complaints about social housing. People can draw their own conclusions from that fact.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

Would my hon. Friend therefore join me in bringing forward a private Member’s Bill directed specifically at social landlords?

[Philip Davies]

Again, I do not want to deviate. I was merely asking whether the Bill addressed the right problem. It seems to me that there are many other problems with many other housing providers that are not being addressed. Labour Members seem to think that social housing landlords can get away with anything and do not need regulating. All they ever want to do is clamp down on private landlords, even though the problem does not seem to exist to the extent they believe—

Consumer Rights Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Monday 9th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

The hon. Gentleman kindly said that he had a great deal of respect for what I had to say, which is certainly more than can be said for most people on the Government Benches, so I am very grateful to him for that kind comment. It probably will not do much for his reputation within his party, but I am grateful for it, because I have a great deal of respect for him, too.

I believe in the free market and am not ashamed of doing so. I believe it acts in the best interests of the consumer. The hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) said he was surprised that I was not standing up for my constituents as consumers, but I am. I believe in the free market; I believe that people should have the right to sell on their ticket if they buy one and then find that they cannot go to the event or that somebody else is prepared to pay a higher price for it. I will happily take my chances with my electorate at the general election, to see whether they are happy that I look after their interests, just as he will put his record before his electorate at the general election—we shall see how we both get on.

The Minister glossed over the fact that the Government have done a complete U-turn on this issue. I do not know whether she is embarrassed about that or not, but I would be if I were in her shoes.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I am surprised to hear about the extent of the U-turn. Can my hon. Friend explain why there has been such a U-turn? Surely the Government are normally consistent—or try to be consistent—from one week to the next.

[Philip Davies]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on keeping a straight face when he said that, but it is not for me to explain it. I have certainly kept my position consistent, and I have to congratulate the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport on maintaining a consistent position on these issues. I can only presume that the interference of our Liberal Democrat coalition friends in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has led to this about-turn.

We have an issue here, because the Minister seems to be arguing that nobody in the secondary market has anything to worry about and that their industry is going to thrive, prosper and flourish, yet all the sporting bodies and events organisers, and some of our hon. Friends, are cock-a-hoop about this. They are not cock-a-hoop because they think the secondary ticketing market is going to thrive and prosper as a result of this Lords amendment being accepted; they are cock-a-hoop because they think the exact opposite will happen. I have to congratulate the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), who has been very persistent on this issue, and my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Mike Weatherley). They obviously knew what they were dealing with in Liberal Democrat Ministers; they knew that they were always in the game for a U-turn whenever the Lib Dems were involved, and I congratulate them on their industry and initiative in that regard.

The question nobody has asked is why are the sporting bodies and events organisers so keen for the full details of the ticket—the row number, the section number, the ticket number, the seat number and the whole lot—to be published online? Let me give hon. Members the answer. They are so desperate to have that information so that they can see who bought the ticket, cancel the ticket if it gets sold on to somebody else, blacklist the person involved and prevent them from ever buying a ticket in the future. The only reason they want this information is so that they can use that information to stop this market.

The Government have said that these bodies will not be able to do that—the law will say they cannot do that—but I would like to know from the Minister who is going to police that? When somebody turns up to an event with a ticket bought from a secondary ticketing site and the event organiser says, “Sorry, I’m not going to let you in. We don’t like the look of that ticket. We saw it in the secondary ticketing industry”, who is going to be there from the Government to say, “No, this chap should be allowed into this event”? Nobody will be there. That person will be sent away and never get to see the event they wanted to see—the Government will have let them down. Even if the person went to court and won the case, they would still have not got to the event they particularly wanted to see. It is an absolute con if consumers think this will protect their interests when they buy a ticket from the secondary market. The sporting bodies know it and the hon. Members here who have been agitating for this measure know it, and that is why the sporting bodies and the events organisers are so keen to have this information. The Minister says that people cannot be blacklisted, but who is going to police that? Who is going to stop it? What resources are the Government putting in to make sure that does not happen? The answer is none. Basically, there are just warm words. The Government are repeating what they did on immigration, which is making a promise that they know they are in no position to keep. It is that kind of thing that brings politics into disrepute.

The Minister said that consumers could now have confidence in the market, but where is the evidence that consumers do not have confidence in the secondary ticketing market? Consumers have confidence in the secondary ticketing market, but the sporting bodies and the big event organisers do not. If people did not have confidence in it, they would not be buying tickets there in the first place. The problem for these big bodies and these multi-millionaire music organisers is that too many people do have confidence in the secondary ticketing market, which is why they want to damage it. That is why we should reject these Lords amendments this evening.

House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Friday 27th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) for introducing his new clauses and emphasising the importance of natural justice.

New clause 3 and amendment 18 link in with the theme already established in our discussion of new clauses 1 and 2. The Bill essentially concerns the conduct of Members in the other place—the noble Lady Baroness Hayman on Report called it a disciplinary Bill—and it was in that context that I tabled my new clause and amendment. At the moment, there is a lacuna in the drafting: there is no linkage between the provisions in clause 1 on conduct and the House of Lords’ code of conduct. Subsection (1) reads:

“Standing Orders of the House…may make provision”

to

“expel…or…suspend a member…for the period specified in the resolution”.

Subsection (4) reads:

“A resolution passed by virtue of subsection (1) must state that, in the opinion of the House of Lords, the conduct giving rise to the resolution…occurred after the coming into force of this Act, or…occurred before the coming into force of this Act and was not public knowledge before that time.”

The clause does not, however, spell out what that conduct should amount to, and that is why new clause 3 would link the provision to breaches of the code of conduct of the other place:

“Standing Orders of the House of Lords may provide for the adoption of a code of conduct… A resolution passed by virtue of section 1(4) must include a reference to the relevant provision of any code of conduct which the House of Lords may have adopted and which has not been superseded by a subsequent decision of the House.”

Amendment 18 would insert at the end of line 6, page 1, clause 1, the words

“on the ground of that member’s conduct as set out in the resolution”.

Under my proposals, it would not be possible to use the extensive powers in the Bill other than in respect of breaches of the code of conduct in the other place.

It is important to put that safeguard in the Bill, given comments bandied around by Members of the other House. On Report, when discussing clause 2, the noble Lord Wallace of Saltaire—

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

A constituent of mine.

[Mr Chope]

I am delighted to hear that he is one of my hon. Friend’s constituents. I am sure it is just as well he does not have the chance to vote for my hon. Friend.

The noble Lord Wallace of Saltaire said:

“I read the latest Code of Conduct again this morning, thinking that we need to be sure what we are on about”—

I think that is always wise advice. He continued:

“One of the issues that perhaps we need to discuss informally off the Floor is how far this measure is intended to refer only to conduct that is mentioned in the Code of Conduct or to egregious conduct of other sorts conducted by Members of this House. However, that is a question that we need not have in the Bill itself, but it is certainly a question that the Committee for Privileges and Conduct and others will need to consider at a later stage”.

I think this issue should be considered in the Bill. If we are to enable expulsion or suspension from the other place on the basis of breaches of conduct, we need to know whether the conduct needs to be linked in with the code of conduct under the Standing Orders or whether the provisions apply, as the noble Lord put it, to

“egregious conduct of other sorts conducted by Members of this House”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 21 November 2015; Vol. 757, c. 650-51.]

In discussing these issues, people sometimes bandy about expressions such as “bringing the House of Lords or Parliament into disrepute”. Judgments about areas of conduct or behaviour can be extremely subjective. I hope that the promoter and indeed the Government, who have hitherto been slightly underwhelmed by the contents of the Bill, will accept that the wording needs to be much more precise than it is at present.

When the ill-fated 2012 legislation came before this House, it was withdrawn by the Government because of the threat of it being properly considered; they did not want it to be properly considered, so they decided that rather than have it considered without a guillotine, they would not have it considered at all. That Bill was withdrawn, but it made reference to suspension and expulsion on grounds of conduct, and it was linked with breaches of the House of Lords code of conduct. However, in this Bill, that has been dropped.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) inquired earlier why the provisions of this Bill were not included in the private Member’s Bill proposed by our hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles). The answer is—it was given by our hon. Friend—that he did not want these provisions in his Bill because he thought they were far too controversial, and he wanted to get his Bill on the statute book, which he succeeded in achieving, before he retires from this House after one term in our Parliament. Rather than venture into an area of controversy, he decided to stick to the principles contained in his Bill, which enable expulsion on the ground that a person has been convicted and sentenced to a period of imprisonment in excess of one year, rather than go into this linkage with the code of conduct or conduct defined more widely, as it might be in due course by the noble Lord Wallace of Saltaire.

People are talking about bringing the House of Lords into disrepute, so in preparation for today’s debate I tried to establish how this could be viewed as analogous to the disciplinary processes in some firms where it is a disciplinary offence for an employee to bring the company for which the person works into disrepute. Case law in this area is fraught with difficulty. It is extremely difficult for an employer legally to control the actions of an employee outside their employment, and there is often little reason why an employer would wish to do so. However, the notion of an employee bringing the company into disrepute following actions in their personal life is one situation in which the parallel might occur.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. Would tax avoidance also be relevant? It has been a topical issue of late, and it could be that Members in the other place engage in activities that are within the law, but which a majority of their lordships might find distasteful. Does my hon. Friend think that someone who was abiding by the law could fall foul of the Bill’s provisions? We could end up in a very difficult situation, with people not being sure what they are or are not allowed to do.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. I fear that the sort of conduct to which he refers could be regarded as conduct that brought the House of Lords into disrepute and that the person accused of such conduct could be sanctioned under the terms of the Bill. The Bill refers to the Standing Orders of the other place—it does not even cover the code of conduct—and we know that their lordships are understandably jealous of their reputation and want to maintain it in the eyes of right-thinking members of the public. I suspect that a number of them would regard the sort of tax avoidance to which my hon. Friend referred as behaviour that redounded to the detriment of other Members of that place.



However, we are not talking about a firm of accountants. We are talking about a part of the legislature of our great nation, and if we are going to restrict people’s ability to participate in it, we need to do so on a clearly defined basis rather than resorting to the ad hoc pandering to public opinion of which I am afraid we have seen a great deal recently.

For example, a number of political parties—I shall not mention any cases that may have arisen quite recently—now take the view that the best thing for them to do is distance themselves from any Member who is accused of a certain type of conduct and whose membership of his party is taken away from him, because, although it may not have been established that that conduct is in any way illegal, it might be regarded as potentially embarrassing that the accusation has been made. Such Members are suspended, or the whip is withdrawn, which is exactly what happened to Lord Rennard.

It is clear that we are increasingly moving away from a system whereby we rely on the rule of law to a system whereby the dictates of public opinion determine the outcomes of cases. That is why I think that we need to be extremely careful before we introduce legislation that would give the other place significant scope to introduce its own house rules, which could deny those Members who have been appointed or are in the other House as a result of their election as hereditary peers the opportunity to participate in the legislative process and other proceedings of the other House.

[Philip Davies]

Would not Members of the other place be making decisions about who could or could not sit there while having no democratic legitimacy and, perhaps, having some dubious motives for making those decisions?

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend has made another good point. When we look beyond the immediate subject of the debate, we see that there is pressure to reduce the numbers in the other place because the Government have been increasing the number of appointments to such an extent that I have complained. Indeed, my House of Lords (Maximum Membership) Bill is on the Order Paper today, although it is, of course, being blocked by the Government. It would restrict the Government’s ability to increase inexorably the membership of the other place.

At present, because of the pressure of numbers, the House of Lords is creating what is almost a culture, aided and abetted by the current Lord Speaker, who has said that she will retire at a particular time in an attempt to set an example to others. The implication is that when they reach a particular age, they too should choose to retire. That is entirely outwith our constitution. However, if the Bill were passed, any Standing Orders passed by their lordships requiring Members not to stay on beyond the age of, for instance, 70 or 75, could mean that a Member who refused to give up their seat would be the subject of the sanctions specified in the Bill, namely expulsion or suspension.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I shall be characteristically brief in my comments on this group of amendments. There is a great deal of merit in the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) in this group and they deserve closer scrutiny.

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch proposed amendment 1, and I have a great deal of sympathy for the points he made about expulsion. His amendment is made even more persuasive by the fact that his new clause 3 was defeated in the Division earlier. If the new clause had been accepted in the previous group of amendments, amendment 1 may not have been necessary. In the circumstances, I think it is necessary.

My hon. Friend has said that the punishment is draconian, which, of course, it is; it does not get much more draconian than expulsion from a House. I share his concern that the definitions of conduct that will lead to expulsion are not sufficiently tightly drawn. This is about whether we think that expulsion is an appropriate sanction and about the democratic accountability and legitimacy of Members of the House of Lords to make such decisions. My right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury touched on that issue when he moved new clause 1 and it is also addressed by amendment 1.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch has rightly said, the decisions about who is made a life peer are not made by Members of the House of Lords, because life peers are appointed. Given the circumstances, it should not necessarily be for the House of Lords to determine whether someone should continue to be a life peer. There may be some merit in asking the person who appointed them in the first place whether they would have appointed them had they known everything they know now and whether the appointment was justified at the time. I am not entirely sure that the House of Lords is the appropriate body to second-guess what the person who appointed them had in mind when making the appointment in the first place.

I fear that people who are appointed for good reason may find themselves on the wrong end of a decision, not because the person who appointed them or Members of this House, who have democratic legitimacy, think they should be expelled, but simply because their actions did not meet the taste of Members of the House of Lords at a particular moment in time.

I have always been a strong supporter of the House of Lords, as shown by my votes in this House. I have always shown myself to be a strong supporter of the status quo; as a Conservative, I rather like the status quo and enjoy voting for it. I have to accept that I shall never be subject to any of the decisions under discussion—there is no self-interest at play here. I am surrounded by people who are much more likely than me to be affected by future decisions in the House of Lords. However, my support for the House of Lords, and the good sense I always thought it previously exercised, has been tested somewhat by some of its recent decisions. I no longer have the same faith that Members of the other place will continue to make wise decisions.

One reason for that is that, instead of being composed of people of great experience and expertise, the other place seems to have become a haven for failed parliamentary candidates who could not get elected and have therefore been shoved into the other place. That has undermined not only its legitimacy but my confidence in its being able to make sensible decisions about the basis on which peers should be suspended or expelled. Therefore, it would be sensible to have as much rigour as possible so that peers cannot make decisions that we would find completely unacceptable. The Bill as drafted does not make the case that the House of Lords should have the power to expel a peer who was appointed by somebody else and without allowing anybody else to have any input into the decision. That is a dangerous game to play and I do not think that the House of Lords has the democratic legitimacy to be entrusted with that decision. That is why I think that amendment 1 is very sensible.

Largely for reasons of time, I do not intend to speak to all the amendments in this group, because that would be time-consuming, but I want briefly to touch on a few that have a great deal of merit. They are amendments 8, 14 and 15, tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury, who spoke in some detail about whether the behaviour that may lead to expulsion or suspension happened before or after the person involved became a Member of the House of Lords.

Clause 1(4)(b) introduces retrospective legislation—we should always be wary of doing so, although it may well be justified—and that demands at least that there should be a debate and that somebody should make the case for it. The clause states that people can be expelled or suspended if the action in question

“occurred before the coming into force of this Act and was not public knowledge before that time.”

I know, or I think I know, what my right hon. Friend has in mind. I guess that some people would call it the Jimmy Savile issue, although he was obviously not a Member of the House of Lords. He has in mind actions committed by someone before they got a title and that were not known at the time; once that person has a title and those actions become public knowledge, they are deemed so outrageous that the only possible course of action is for the person to be expelled. I suspect that that is what my right hon. Friend has in mind, and many people in the country would support that on the basis of such an extreme example.

My concern is that the provision is not limited simply to such extreme actions. There are shades of grey in all such areas, and I fear that its retrospective nature may come back to penalise people who did something that was not unlawful at the time. Clearly, the actions of Jimmy Savile were not only completely unacceptable but unlawful, but my concern is that the provision may be used against people who have done something that was not unlawful and may not even have been unacceptable at the time, but has become unacceptable with the passage of time. We all know that what the public will tolerate moves on over time: things that were seen as perfectly reasonable 100 years ago are now quite rightly seen as completely unacceptable. As things move on with time, it may well be that people get caught out by actions that were once seen as reasonable but are no longer seen as such.

Allowing the House of Lords to expel people on that basis is very dangerous territory to enter. In effect, it would lead not to the rule of law, which my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch quite rightly advocated, but to the law of the lynch mob. The Bill might give rise to the application of the law of the lynch mob in such circumstances.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury is quite right to seek to leave out any reference to conduct that happened before the Act comes into force and was not public knowledge before that time in relation to expulsion: people could not be expelled for such actions, although they could be suspended for them. That is probably a very happy compromise. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch said that it would be draconian to expel somebody. I think it would be draconian to do so on the basis of actions that are no longer acceptable but were acceptable when they took place.

[Mr Chope]

We have yet to hear my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Sir George Young) respond to the debate, but my amendment 20 provides that

“nothing in this section shall authorise the expulsion or suspension of members of the House of Lords on the grounds of age, health or length of service”.

Does my hon. Friend agree that that safeguard should be the bare minimum?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right. He anticipates my remarks, because amendment 20 is one I want to comment on, but I have not quite got to it yet. If he will show his customary patience, I will comment on it, but he is absolutely right.

I commend my right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury for amendment 15, which seeks to remove some of the uncertainty that will be introduced by the Bill. He is forensic when he looks through Bills and he has hit upon a good point. What constitutes public knowledge in relation to the Bill? All sorts of things are out there in the public domain somewhere, particularly in this day and age, with the internet and all the things one can find on Google. However, what is out there on some obscure blog or website might not be widespread knowledge.

When does something become public knowledge? Is it when it is out there somewhere and someone can point to a blog that was published somewhere or other? Could somebody use that as a defence and say, “Well, actually, it was public knowledge. It was on an obscure blog, which barely anybody reads, 25 years ago”? Alternatively, does it become public knowledge when it is much more widespread than that—perhaps when it is in the mainstream media? How can anybody be expected to know everything about everybody that may be out there in the public domain? Amendment 15 would be helpful because it would remove some of that uncertainty.

I do not know whether this is the intention of my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Sir George Young), but I suspect that the phrase

“was not public knowledge before that time”

might well be used by people as an escape route. The purpose might be to deal with what might be called the Jimmy Savile issue, but people like Jimmy Savile might not even be captured by the Bill, because it could be argued that accusations and revelations were out there and were public knowledge beforehand, even though they might not have been acted on. It is therefore not entirely clear whether the Bill, as currently framed, will even catch out the people it seeks to catch out.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend refers to the Jimmy Savile precedent. Of course, if Jimmy Savile had been alive when the allegations came to light, he would undoubtedly have been prosecuted and sentenced to a period of imprisonment in excess of one year. I am therefore not sure that thinking about Jimmy Savile is as appropriate as thinking about people who, historically, have committed much less serious forms of what might be regarded as bad behaviour.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right. He shows why the Bill is unnecessary and perhaps dangerous. He returns me to my initial fear, which is that people will be expelled for doing things that do not warrant expulsion, just because the tide of public opinion has gone in a different direction.

In an intervention, I mentioned tax avoidance. Somebody might have taken part in activities that were perfectly legal at the time and, in fact, seen as acceptable behaviour. Their actions might not have attracted any controversy at all at the time but, as public opinion changes, they might subsequently be seen as unacceptable. The person will be judged on that basis and may well be suspended or expelled from the House of Lords not because they did anything illegal or anything that was seen as unacceptable at the time, but because they did something that had become unacceptable. I worry that that is the dangerous route we are going down with the Bill. I predict that we will be in that situation at some point if the Bill is passed in its current form, so amendments 8, 14 and 15 are important safeguards that I hope my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire will consider.

I promised to touch on amendment 20, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), and I do not intend to break that promise. Because he was being even more brief than normal, he did not expand on it in any detail. It states that “nothing in this section”—clause 1—

“shall authorise the expulsion or suspension of members of the House of Lords on the grounds of age, health or length of service”.

I would like to think that all Members agree with my hon. Friend’s sentiment that people should not be expelled or suspended on that basis. He is right to be alert to the fact that if we do not tightly define the rules under which people can be expelled or suspended, we will open up the possibility, whether or not it is intended or likely, of people using the Bill as a Trojan horse to pursue a different agenda from the one that Members currently envisage.

My right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire is a very reasonable man, and I am sure that he would not countenance anybody being expelled or suspended on the grounds of age, health or length of service. I am absolutely sure that that is nowhere near his mind. However, the point is not what is in somebody’s mind now, even the mind of the promoter of the Bill; it is how the Bill could be used at some future date if we do not define the rules tightly.

It may well be that because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch said, the size of the House of Lords has become completely ridiculous, people will look for an easy way to reduce the numbers. Of course, one of the easiest ways of reducing the numbers at a stroke would be to say, “Anybody above a certain age—you’re out. We’re going to take a particular point in time, draw a line, and if you’re on the wrong side of it, you’re out. If necessary, we’ll use these powers we’ve now got to enforce that new rule, because the public mood is that the House of Lords has got too big, and we’ve got to do something about it. This is the easiest way.” I really do fear that that could well happen. I am not saying that it will happen in the short term, but I can certainly see it happening in the medium term. People may pooh-pooh my hon. Friend’s amendment at the moment, scoff and say, “It’s absolutely ridiculous—that would never happen.” Well, let’s see.

HS2 Funding Referendum Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Friday 23rd January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

I plead guilty to a serious omission, as I should indeed have mentioned the hon. Gentleman, as Coventry is one of the areas that is probably going to suffer as a result of HS2; not only is it not going to benefit from HS2, but there will be an adverse economic effect on Coventry. We may hear a little more about that later.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

HS2 is often seen as being done in the name of constituencies such as mine in the north of England. I want to put it on record that although there are undoubtedly some supporters of HS2 in my constituency, it is clear to me from speaking to my constituents that there are far many more opponents. They would much prefer that the money was spent on infrastructure in our local constituency economies than on a grandiose project that is going to waste billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money.

[Mr Chope]

Any Bill that has the support of my hon. Friend is obviously a very good one, and I am grateful again for his support.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. He will be aware that the New Economics Foundation published a report in June 2013 entitled “High Speed 2: The best we can do? Creating more value from £33 billion”. The essence of this debate is that if we are to spend that amount of taxpayers’ money—assuming that that is affordable—are there better ways in which to do so?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend referred to speed, but I have never yet come across anyone from a business in Shipley who has said, “Unless you can get me to London half an hour or so quicker, we are out of here and we’re going to relocate.” In fact, many of my constituents fear that this emphasis on speed will not benefit the north, but merely increase London’s commuter belt.

[Mr Chope]

What my hon. Friend says is not just an assumption, because there is a lot of academic evidence about what happened when high-speed rail was built in other countries. For example, using a high-speed rail to link Paris with an outlying city generated more traffic coming into Paris than leaving Paris to go elsewhere. That highlights another incorrect assumption behind the project.

Control of Offshore Wind Turbines Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Friday 16th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Has my hon. Friend noticed the remarkable situation in that it was not long ago that the Labour party claimed to be the champion of low energy bills, yet now Labour Members in the Chamber are arguing vociferously for a form of energy that does more to put up energy bills than anything else? Has my hon. Friend noticed the great contradiction in the points made by Opposition Members?

[Mr Chope]

As so often, my hon. Friend is spot on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

All I can say to the hon. Gentleman is that I am sure that that will be a great consolation to the bird population. We in our country are responsible for less than 2% of global emissions, and the idea that we have to invest—if that is the right use of the word—or put subsidies into the most uneconomic form of renewable energy seems to me to be absolutely senseless. We do not have to do that; we could invest more in nuclear power or other renewables that do not have such an adverse impact on migrating birds.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is talking eloquently about the effect of wind turbines on the bird population. One thing missing from his Bill, which he may seek to correct at some point, is the impact of wind turbines on aviation, and particularly on radar. Is he aware of the aviation industry’s concerns?

[Mr Chope]

I am aware of that, not least because Bournemouth international airport is in my constituency. One irony in relation to the developers’ proposals is that such issues have been left to bilateral discussions after the public inquiry, with people being told, “Oh, don’t worry about that. We’ll sort that out between ourselves and the airport after the inquiry.” Our hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth), a private pilot, is concerned about the strong vortex that wind turbines can generate and its impact on those engaged in private recreational aviation. We know that if wind turbines are more than 100 metres high, they must be illuminated so that they can be seen from aircraft, which makes them look even more unsightly on the horizon. That is an issue, as the developers accept, but instead of being dealt with in a public inquiry, it is being kicked into touch to be dealt with later, which is thoroughly unsatisfactory.

Clause 3 covers the length, location and environmental impact of the connecting cables. One would have thought that the cables from an offshore wind farm would be connected to the national grid at the closest possible point on the shore, thereby minimising the need for disruption on land. In my representation 1713 to the Navitus Bay wind park inquiry, dated 19 June 2014, I referred to such an impact, among others:

“The off shore cables should be connected to the national grid at the closest point to the sea which is Fawley Power Station. This would avoid the need for twenty two miles of connecting cables over ground across sensitive habitats.”

Members of Hurn parish council, particularly Councillor Margaret Phipps, have produced a really compelling case against laying the cables across Hurn forest, which includes an area of special scientific interest. They are concerned that there is an unnecessary additional adverse impact on the environment just from the cabling. There is no reason why the developers should not link up to the national grid at Fawley power station if they so wish. The Bill would require them to do so, rather than to create further adverse environmental impacts with cables crossing the New Forest national park, areas of special scientific interest and special areas of conservation.

Under clause 3, rather than having cables in cut-and-cover connections or left on the surface, cables would be placed in a tunnel under the ground. The main pipelines from the on-land oil development at Wytch Farm in Dorset were put underground, which minimised the impact on nature and the environment. Clause 4 is about subsidies.

The Bill is not confined to the Navitus Bay wind park development, but it would ensure that such an obscenity could not be proposed again, with all the uncertainty and opposition that such developments generate among local people. Surely we are mad as a country to invest tens of millions of pounds in subsidising a development that will have an adverse impact on one world heritage site at the same time as we are quite rightly proposing to protect another, Stonehenge, by building an enormous tunnel nearby to reduce the impact on it. We are prepared to put subsidies into saving one world heritage site, while at the same time using taxpayer subsidies to wreck another. That seems mad to me, and I am sorry if it is Government policy—I fear that it is not so much Government policy as Liberal Democrat policy.

Last week I said that the Bills I was promoting were in a sense a contribution to the development of the Conservative party manifesto. If Ministers are not free to adopt the Bill today because of the constraints of coalition with the Liberal Democrats, I hope that they will be free to do so when we have a majority Conservative Government after 7 May.

Asylum (Time Limit) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Friday 16th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend. I just wondered where the three-month time limit came from. I am pretty sure that many constituents would say, “Why should it be three months?” Three days is more than enough. Surely it should be on the day that they arrive. Why should we be so tolerant as to give people three months to decide that they are fleeing persecution? Surely they must know that the moment they arrive in the United Kingdom.

[Mr Chope]

I am very sympathetic to my hon. Friend’s point, but I am trying to propose a Bill that will get the support of the Government and I thought that nobody could argue that three months was not a more than reasonable time. His point is that three months is a more than reasonable time in which to decide to apply for asylum, which is why I hope that he can accept the Bill.

Once the Bill is on the statute book, the limits could be tightened further but in the first instance we must alert all those people who are already in the country and who are here illegally—we know that there could be between 500,000 and 1 million of those people at least—that if they wish to claim asylum they have three months in which to do so. That would be a reasonable time during which the word could spread on the street that if they were going to make an asylum application, they would have to get it in before the given date. Having decided that we would give a reasonable period of time to people who are already here, it seemed to me that to fit in with that I should say that the same three-month limit should apply to people who arrived after the Bill became law. That was my thinking, but I am prepared to accept the implied criticism from my hon. Friend that I have been far too reasonable and understanding on this point.

Bat Habitats Regulation Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Friday 16th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

This Bill has attracted a lot of outside interest. Indeed, there was a letter in The Times earlier this week saying what a brilliant Bill it is and that it should command the support of hon. Members. It builds on the concerns that the Second Church Estates Commissioner, my right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) has raised in debates in Westminster Hall and those expressed by church conservation authorities.

I hope it is not out of order to say that, in his Christmas card to me, the noble bishop whose diocese is situated in my constituency wished me good luck with my bats Bill. The reason for that is that this is a narrow but significant issue for churches up and down the country and for our built heritage, including the fabric of churches, whether it be their stone or marble structures, and the brasses and other artefacts inside them. It also applies to people: we may be able to tell those who worship at the church that they should keep wearing their hats if there is a problem with bat infestation, but that does not really work if a children’s day centre or nursery group meets there: we cannot expect all the children to wear bonnets to protect themselves against the bat infestation.

The Bill seeks to increase the number of bat habitats while at the same time introduce measures to prevent bats from being in what might be described as the wrong place. Clause 1 sets out provisions to enhance the protection available for bat habitats in the non-built environment. In that respect, I hope the Bill will find favour with organisations such as the Bat Conservation Trust, because by enhancing that protection we will be able to support our bat population.

Interestingly, a 2013 survey by Hurn parish councillors in my constituency identified eight different species of bats in Hurn parish and Hurn forest in particular. They are concerned about the adverse impact of the cabling for a proposed wind turbine development on that bat habitat. Such situations are covered by clause 1, which would ensure that when a problem in the non-built environment may affect bats adversely, developers should take remedial measures, such as providing a bat box or artificial roost for each bat species located in the vicinity. It would also prevent onshore wind turbines from being constructed unless a local bat survey had been conducted and had established that there was no bat habitat in the vicinity, because of the direct adverse effect of wind turbines on bats.

Clause 2 deals with the issues raised by the Churches Conservation Trust and others about the impact of bats on our churches and those who worship in them. Currently, the habitats regulations and the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 work together basically to make it impossible for bats roosting and living in our churches to be controlled in any way whatever. In essence, they are above and beyond the law.

If the Second Church Estates Commissioner says that it is absurd that the EU habitats regulations should apply to our United Kingdom domestic bat population and that we should use our common sense, it seems to me that that should be reflected in legislation. I know that the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice)—I am delighted that he will reply to the debate—has Eurosceptic credentials second to none. I hope that he shares my concern about the European Union dictating to us what we can and cannot do with our domestic bat population. We are not talking about migrating mammals—bats are of course mammals, not birds—but our own domestic bats. Surely this is an issue for subsidiarity, to use that ghastly EU word, and an area on which we in the United Kingdom Parliament know what is best for our own bats.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I naturally agree with that sentiment. Why is my hon. Friend seeking to apply the clause only to places of public worship, because I am pretty sure that its provisions would equally apply to other buildings from time to time, and that that would be very much welcomed in different communities, depending on their circumstances? Why is the clause restricted to places of public worship?

[Mr Chope]

As the Bill is a private Member’s Bill, I was trying to restrict the degree of controversy that might develop about it. I know that the mere prospect of legislating on bats has already created an almost hysterical reaction among some members of bat conservation societies. I am therefore loth to make the Bill wider than is necessary to deal with the immediate problem, which has been drawn to my attention by the Churches Conservation Trust and the Countryside Alliance. They are concerned about the adverse impact of bats and bat roosts in buildings used for public worship. I recognise that other buildings could be similarly embraced by the Bill, and perhaps if it goes to Committee, an order-making power might extend the provisions to other areas in due course.

I am promoting this Bill because everybody recognises that there is a genuine problem. The Church Monuments Society is collectively tearing its hair out at its inability to do anything to address effectively the problem of bat damage that is affecting the conservation of furniture, liturgical objects, funerary and ensemble, works of art and so on, in buildings used for public worship and community functions. I hope the Minister will not say that having no control at all over bats in such places is reasonable. Surely we need some sensible control, and I hope the Bill finds favour with the House.

Defence Expenditure (NATO Target) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Friday 9th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

This is my third contribution today to the manifesto development of the Conservative party for the next general election, and this Bill was inspired by the Bill of the right hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (Michael Moore) to introduce a target of 0.7% of GDP for international development expenditure. It occurred to me that if the Government are in favour of that Bill, surely they must be in favour of a similar Bill on defence expenditure, in line with the communiqué from the NATO conference in Cardiff and what has been enunciated on numerous occasions by Defence Ministers from both the main parties. If NATO’s policy is that each country in NATO should spend a minimum of 2% of GDP on defence and we support that, why are we not prepared to incorporate it in statute?

The argument traditionally deployed against such a move is that the Exchequer should not fetter its own discretion, and therefore it would be unreasonable to have various areas of earmarked expenditure. As the Government have abandoned that principle in favour of having earmarked expenditure incorporated within statutory limits, as in the case of overseas aid, why not do the same in respect of defence expenditure? This is a straightforward proposition and, as far as possible, the drafting of this Bill is designed to mirror that in the similar Bill on overseas aid.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Given that it was supposedly so important that we introduced a 0.7% target because it was supposedly an international commitment made in 1970, does my hon. Friend agree that this international commitment on defence made in the 1990s should surely take precedence over the one made in 1970?

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a compelling point, and I am sure it will find favour with the Government. If the Minister is going to say that he cannot do this because the Liberal Democrat minority do not support the NATO target, let him say it. In any event, I hope that the Conservative party will have no inhibitions about making clear in its next manifesto its commitment to spending in each year of the next Parliament—when it is the governing party—a minimum of 2% of GDP on defence.

International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Friday 5th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I want to begin by saying how regrettable it is that the Minister and the shadow Minister have treated the House with such contempt this morning by making no attempt at all to engage with the debate. Basically, they think they have a right to just come along, stand up and sit down without offering any explanation of the Government’s position or that of the official Opposition, in an attempt to railroad through the House a Bill that has very little public support. They really should be ashamed of themselves for treating the House with such contempt today. We are no wiser about the position of the Government or the Opposition on the amendments, or about their arguments for or against them, even though they supported some of them on Second Reading and supported the money resolution passed in the House. It is unfortunate that the Minister and shadow Minister have chosen to adopt this tactic today; it does neither of them any credit. I will attempt to fill in some of the gaps that they have left unfilled today.

If you will allow me, Mr Speaker, I will go through the new clauses and amendments tabled in my name first. Then I will comment briefly on those tabled by my hon. Friends. New clause 3 deals with the relevant period for annual reporting. The international agreement, which we keep being told makes the Bill so essential, actually dates back to the mid-1970s, yet all of a sudden it has become a matter of urgency that, in 2014, we should implement something that was agreed back then. That agreement included provisions for reporting on a calendar basis, and the Bill proposes that the target should be reported and calculated on that basis. However, we do not work on that basis in this House. We have a financial year. We could end up with some unintended consequences with this legislation, whereby it tries to put into a calendar year what this House does in a financial year. The Office for Budget Responsibility, the Treasury and all Departments calculate things on a financial year basis—all departmental budgets operate on that basis. So it is just not practical to decide that one Department should be able to opt out of that framework and have its budgets determined on a calendar basis, unlike every other Department.

[Mr Chope]

Is it not worse than that, because the Bill suggests that it should start on 1 June 2015, which is the beginning of neither a calendar year, nor a budgetary year?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right about that. I know that what he says reflects a proposal that he has put forward, with which I have much sympathy. I will discuss it a little later, if he will allow me.

What is in the Bill will mean that in a financial year in this House the Government may not be spending 0.7% of their budget on overseas aid—they may be spending more or they could be spending less. Whatever this House decides, it must treat the Department for International Development in the same way as every other Department, and a financial year should be the basis for that. I hope that the Government will reflect on this matter, because I do not know how this arrangement will work otherwise. I have no idea how they propose it will work either. It would have been helpful if the Minister had set out how it would work from a Treasury, OBR and general reporting perspective and what implications there may be. As he failed to take the opportunity to do so, we are none the wiser.

New clause 4 would set the Bill back up as it was on Second Reading, by putting in place the independent international development office. That was deemed necessary by the Bill’s proponents on Second Reading, but now, all of a sudden, it has become completely unnecessary. We have been given no explanation from anybody today as to why a few members of the Committee decided to strike it out. No doubt the shadow Minister, the Minister and the promoter of the Bill all connived to take it out, yet no explanation has been given this morning as to why they choose to do so. That is why I say that they have treated the House with contempt. We have been given no explanation of why the Committee chose to act in the way it did. My new clause has provided the opportunity for the House to revisit this matter. If it thought this body was important on Second Reading, I want to know why it is no longer important.

I worry about this situation very much. I am not one for having bureaucratic bodies set up willy-nilly, with limitless budgets, in order to empire-build for no particular purpose, but when the right hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (Michael Moore) proposed the Bill he thought that this independent international development office would have a serious purpose. That purpose was to evaluate

“the relevance, impact, value-for-money and sustainability of ODA.”

It was also to

“develop systems to verify the extent to which ODA is spent efficiently and effectively.”

We have to worry about why the Government and the official Opposition are so keen that that is no longer the case. Does that mean they do not want any body being given a remit to evaluate the relevance, impact, value for money and sustainability of overseas aid? Might it be embarrassing for the Government and for the official Opposition—if they one day hope to be in government? Their actions will not now be independently monitored by a body that commands any great confidence—that seems to be the implication of the Government and the Opposition taking this bit of the Bill out. It means that they do not want to be scrutinised on how well this money is spent—and no wonder. We have seen time and again—I gave some examples on Second Reading, which I will not rehearse again today—that money has been spent on the most ridiculous things in the name of overseas aid. These things would not command any support among the British public, but they come under the overseas aid budget. Of course what is happening here is that Ministers do not want that level of scrutiny.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) has proposed an alternative, and it may well be that it makes more sense than mine.

I am not precious about whose new clause is accepted, which body we have or whether an existing body could do the job properly. That is of no concern to me. My concern is that there is some independent evaluation and scrutiny of how the money is spent. Many people around the country feel that overseas aid is about taking money from poor people in rich countries and giving it to rich people in poor countries. They see millions of pounds siphoned off by dictators around the world for a new fleet of Mercedes, or whatever it may be. Dictators of some countries probably think that the Government should include a Mercedes catalogue with the aid that they are giving. Those are the legitimate concerns of many of my constituents and many people around the country. Those concerns will only be enhanced when they realise that the two main parties and the promoter of the Bill have removed from the Bill any attempt to ensure that the money is spent effectively, wisely, and for the good of the people it is supposed to help. We have not had any explanation as to why they have made that decision today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. You would not let me get sidetracked into discussing the definitions of benefits and how they should be paid, Mr Speaker, and I do not want to do so either, but it is worth mentioning in passing that £1 million a year of jobseeker’s allowance goes to people who live abroad. Like my hon. Friend, I am not entirely sure how they can qualify as a jobseeker, but that is a slightly incidental point.

I have the figures now for your benefit, Mr Speaker. In 2013-14, £3.6 billion of DWP money was given to people living abroad. That is a considerable amount of taxpayers’ money that benefits those countries and I do not really see why it should not count in the overseas aid budget. On all three counts, the Minister might want to explain why his Department does not think that that is the case, because he has given no indication of that at all.

New clause 5 also covers the administrative costs of the Department for International Development, its agencies and its associated public bodies. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North touched on this and I am grateful to him for his support for my new clause in that regard. I am not entirely clear where the administrative costs for DFID and its agencies stand, and if people did not rattle through their speeches so fast, we might all actually learn something. Are administrative costs counted as overseas aid or do we say that overseas aid is paid over and above them? I am not entirely clear. I am clear, however, that they should be included in the overseas aid budget because, as my hon. Friend said, that gives the best possible guarantee that the Department will cut its cloth to ensure that as much money as possible is handed over to the people who need it most rather than being spent on self-serving bureaucracy. We are none the wiser today, but perhaps that might be clarified at some point in the future.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend’s point about administrative costs is very important. Does he recall that when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, she vetoed having the Department responsible for overseas development based in what is now Richmond house in Whitehall? She thought that that would be an ostensible gross waste of money and that money being spent on overseas aid should go to the countries in need rather than being spent on administrative costs.

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. As in virtually everything, Lady Thatcher was right about that. To be honest, it is a pity that her views do not carry more sway today because we would not find ourselves debating such a ridiculous and pointless Bill if she were still at the helm.

New clause 6 is about the calculation of gross national income, which, in many cases, is one of the most important parts of the Bill. We certainly should not gloss over this quickly because it involves the spending of a considerable amount of taxpayers’ money based on whatever happens to be the calculation at any one time.

This is very serious. The Minister is a good man normally—I have no idea what has come over him today. He should be ashamed of himself for not treating the matter with the seriousness that it deserves. He should explain the Government’s position.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that. I am sure everybody in the country will be pleased to know that the taxpayer has been stuffed because of the European Union—not for the first time and, no doubt, not for the last time.

The fact remains that we have a new calculation. This is not a pledge that was made in the 1970s or even when the proponents of the Bill first wanted to enshrine it in law. We are being asked to sign up to something entirely different from what we were originally told, and it will cost the British taxpayer more. If 0.7% of the old calculation was good enough, why can we not stick to that figure and that calculation? Why do we have to move to the new calculation? What evidence is there that that is necessary? What is the thinking behind it? We have had no explanation of that. Nobody has even touched on the issue. The taxpayer is expected to hand over a few extra hundreds of millions of pounds. Some in the House do not care that they are spending other people’s hard-earned money willy-nilly, but I care about people’s hard-earned money and the taxes that they pay, and I want to make sure that those are spent properly. It is just an accountancy figure to many Members, who do not care.

The GNI figure is essential. By passing the Bill unamended and without my new clause, we are at the whim of any future recalculation of GNI which requires the Government to hand over even more to hit the arbitrary 0.7% target. We should not allow that to happen. My new clause 6 would put in place safeguards for the taxpayer.

New clause 7 is also extremely important. It deals with one of the assertions from the Opposition. It provides that the Bill would take effect only after a referendum had taken place and had resulted in more than 50% of the people voting in favour of the target. I am constantly told that the target is extremely popular out in the country, that everybody wants to see it met, and that only a few reactionaries do not. I am prepared to take my case to the country and have it tested in a referendum. If more than 50% of people vote to spend all that money on overseas aid, I will be the first to accept that. I will try to make sure that the money is spent as well as possible, and I will accept the will of the people in a referendum.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. The 2012 British social attitudes survey shows that, when asked what should be the priority for extra Government expenditure, 42% of respondents said health, 30% said education and 0.5% said overseas aid.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes the point particularly well. I am pretty confident that the majority of the public are on our side on this issue. It is important to note, in relation to new clause 6 and the percentage of GNI, that the OBR’s figures, published only this week, show that spending in every Government Department—that includes spending on health, defence, schools and education—will go down as a proportion of GDP over the next five years. I suspect that the majority of my constituents would want to protect the health budget, if anything, as a proportion of GDP.

Is not it extraordinary that we are effectively being asked to rubber-stamp a provision that will ensure that although spending in every other Government Department will go down as a proportion of GDP, spending on overseas aid will remain the same as a proportion of GDP? I cannot accept that that is the will of the British public. In fact, I am not entirely sure that we will see that it is the will of the House. I have proposed that 50% of the public should have to vote for it, but I suspect that we will not get anywhere near 50% of MPs voting for it today. Let us have some democratic legitimacy for the policy. Let us have it out in a referendum. Let the people decide what they want their taxes to be spent on.

I suspect that I will be proved right and that those arguing for the Bill will be proved wrong. Of course, if they are right, they have nothing to fear from a referendum. I want to know why they fear the public’s opinion so much—we did not hear it today because they were so determined to rattle through their speeches. I think that we should put this to the people in a referendum, given that we seem to be embarking on a new constitutional settlement. In our constitution we have never gone down this route of protecting spending for one Department as a proportion of GDP. Let us see whether the British public are in favour of that new constitutional arrangement. I fear that they are not.

Of course, if the Bill is not amended today, overseas aid will become a bigger and bigger proportion of Government spending every year, because spending by every other Department will go down as a proportion of GDP. Nobody has admitted it so far, but that, in effect, is what the Bill will sign us up to. Is that really what Members think the public want, when there is so much pressure on our public services, our military and our transport system? Do they really think that they want a higher and higher proportion of Government spending to go on overseas aid? I do not think they do. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) has given us the polling, which suggests that is not the case either. I would like other Members to trust the public with their own money.

Subsection (3) of new clause 7 states:

“This Act shall only have effect in those years where the United Kingdom records a budget surplus.”

We are borrowing more than we expected this year. The Chancellor gave us the figures this week. He has done an excellent job in getting the deficit down—I am the first to praise him for that—but it is still far too high. It is about £5 billion higher than he anticipated it would be at this stage. The hon. Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker) talked about how much money the British public give to charity. We are very generous in this country when it comes to helping those less fortunate than us. That is a proud tradition that I suspect and hope will continue. I would much prefer individuals to decide which charities to give their own money to, rather than the Government deciding what they should and should not be supporting through their taxes. That is an essential principle of mine.

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[Mr Chope]

Will my hon. Friend clarify that he is not saying that there should be no expenditure on overseas aid until we have a budget surplus, but that this rigid formula should not come into effect until such a time?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I would be the first to say that when countries face some terrible humanitarian situation or natural disaster, the United Kingdom should always be at the forefront in helping them in their hour of need. However, if anybody thinks that our entire overseas aid budget goes on helping countries in their hour of need, they need to study much more closely what the budget is spent on.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I do not want to go down that cul de sac either, but it is worth noting in passing that we made a promise to spend 2% of GDP on defence, and that promise does not appear to have been legislated for anywhere. In fact, the OBR has calculated that, on current projections, it will actually drop to 1.5% by 2020. My hon. Friend makes a very good point on what is the most worthwhile thing to spend our money if we are to help other countries around the world.

[Mr Chope]

Is my hon. Friend aware that that promise is incorporated in the Defence Expenditure (NATO Target) Bill, which the Government have consistently blocked?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes his point well and I agree with it, but I will make no further comment, because we would be going off the rails if we started debating a different Bill.

Subsection (4) of new clause 7 would allow the Secretary of State to

“vary the target… by an order contained in a statutory instrument in response to the UK leaving or joining a multilateral organisation which itself disburses”

overseas aid. I think that we need more flexibility in the Bill. We might join an organisation that is giving aid to something we already give aid to, in which case it would be ridiculous to in effect doubt the money that is already being spent. We have no idea what our future international relationships will be and what these international organisations may or may not be doing. The Bill should therefore have some flexibility whereby if we join an organisation that is already doing what we are doing, we do not, in effect, end up doing it twice, and the Government can adjust the target to take account of that.

The final part of new clause 7 is a sunset clause whereby the Act would cease to exist in the fifth year of its being in force. I am a big fan of sunset clauses generally; they should be used more widely. Often when we pass legislation in this House, we guess or second-guess its implications, and then find that it has no end of unintended consequences, yet it stays there on the statute book causing problems because nobody can be bothered to get rid of it or find the parliamentary time to do so. It would be much more sensible if, as a matter of routine, we introduced sunset clauses so that we were forced as a House to assess how legislation was working and whether it needed to be tweaked. That would force people to come back either with the same proposal or a revised proposal taking into account what we had learned.

If overseas aid is doing what it should be doing, then it should not be there in perpetuity. This goes to the heart of why this Bill is completely ridiculous. We should be saying to countries around the world: “You’ve got some issues that you need help with. It’s your responsibility to sort out your own issues, but we’ll give you a helping hand. We expect you to sort out your own arrangements on the rule of law and governance and so on to enable inward investment to be encouraged. Once you’ve sorted yourself out with our helping hand, we can then walk away and leave you to stand on your own two feet.” Surely the purpose of overseas aid, if it has any purpose whatsoever, is to help countries to stand on their own two feet; it should not be there in perpetuity. Why, therefore, does this Bill enshrine this level of spending in perpetuity? Are we accepting that overseas aid does not make any difference to these countries—that they do not get any long-term benefit from it and it is just a short-term sticking plaster to make us feel better? If it is achieving anything on a longer-term basis, then surely we should not need to keep spending all this money but should instead be tapering it off.

A sunset clause is a sensible provision to allow us to assess five years hence what is an appropriate figure for us to spend in order to deal with the world as it then is. It is complete lunacy to say that we are going to spend 0.7% in future years when we have no idea of what the world’s circumstances will be—what countries will need help, and how much.

There is no doubt about why Labour Members agree to these things. They believe that people should be judged simply on how much money they spend on something—that it is all about input. That is what the Labour party is all about. I remember, years ago, asking the then Government why truancy had got worse under their stewardship. They told me that they had spent £1 billion on tackling truancy, as if that made it all right; they wanted to be judged simply on their input. I thought that the fact that they had spent £1 billion on something that had got worse was terrible, but that is because I am a Conservative. I do not doubt that Labour Members think they should be judged on how much they spend and that it is all about input. What astonishes me is that people who like to describe themselves as Conservatives think we should be judged only on how much we spend and on our input, and have no judgment made on our output whatsoever. A sunset clause would help by making us look at the output of what we had done and whether it was worth persevering with.

I have previously outlined the difficulty of basing how much money we spend on an ongoing calculation throughout a year. Under amendment 16 the 0.7% figure that we spent would be based on the final adjusted figure for gross national income in the preceding year. No guesswork would be involved—it would be the final adjusted figure that everybody accepted as such. The figure that would be spent the following year would be 0.7% of the previous year’s GNI.

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[Mr Chope]

Is it not serious that we are proposing to pass legislation that will raise public expectations, which could then be dashed in such a spectacular manner because there is no enforcement mechanism?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This sort of thing brings this place into contempt with the public. We have to guard against that.

I agree wholeheartedly with amendments 5 and 6, which were tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset, who will be able to offer a much better explanation of their merits. He also tabled amendments 7 and 8. Amendment 7 is very good. At present, the only sanction is that the Government will have to make a statement on why they have not achieved their target

“as soon as reasonably practicable”.

When will that be? What does that mean? Will we have to wait for a report to come out a year hence? It is completely meaningless and I cannot believe that anyone has fallen for it. My hon. Friend’s amendment, which is very sensible indeed and should be welcomed by the whole House, says that the statement should be made after

“no more than 10 days during which both Houses of Parliament are sitting”.

That would genuinely hold the Government’s feet to the fire, but, of course, in their haste to get anything on the statute book, it appears that, as usually happens on a Friday, hon. Members on both sides of the House are happy to accept it, even though it is completely meaningless.

I have to say to my hon. Friend that I do not agree with amendment 8. He wants to leave out the subsections in clause 2 that give reasons for why the Government have not hit the target. I will conclude shortly, so I hope my hon. Friend will be able to offer an explanation. Perhaps I have read it wrongly, but it seems to me that there are some reasons in the Bill as drafted for why the Government may not have hit their target of 0.7%. I would like to see as many of those reasons as possible in the Bill, but my hon. Friend wants to take them out.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I take my hon. Friend’s point. He is usually right on most things, so I always err on the side of thinking that he is right. I am still not entirely persuaded; he may be able to have a better go in a bit. I am happy to see some reasons for why the Government may not have been able to hit their target, and I would like to see them expanded rather than taken away. My hon. Friend has some work to do to persuade me to accept amendment 8.

Amendment 9 is very good. It basically says that if the Government do not hit the target, no action needs to be taken, which seems sensible. Amendment 10 does the same thing. Amendment 11 is a hybrid amendment in some respects, because I agree with clause 2(3), but disagree with subsection (4). My hon. Friend wants to take out both subsections. As I made clear earlier, I think that subsection (3) is helpful, because it gives reasons for why the Government may not have hit their target. Subsection (4) is completely pointless, so I agree with removing it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch has tabled some amendments as well. Amendment 1, which would leave out clause 3, is very sensible. It relates to the point about accountability to Parliament. It is clear that it is a meaningless clause. There is no accountability whatever for the measures in the Bill. Rather than pretending that there is, we ought to put the Bill out of its misery, be honest that there is no accountability and leave it at that.

We have discussed amendment 3, which is about the Bill coming into force on 1 January 2016. I cannot see how anyone can disagree with that—it is just common sense.

Amendment 2 is also a very good amendment. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch has a track record of tabling telling and sensible amendments, and he has struck oil again. Clause 5 states:

“The Secretary of State must make arrangements for the independent evaluation”

to show that there has been

“value for money in relation to the purposes for which it is provided.”

He wants to add that the way in which the money has been spent is

“relevant, sustainable and capable of having a measurable impact.”

I agree absolutely. Does anyone here disagree that the money should be spent in a way that is relevant, sustainable and capable of having a measurable impact? If they vote down amendment 2, they will, in effect, be saying that they do not think that it should be spent in that way. Of course it should be spent in that way. It would be helpful if the proponents of the Bill accepted that amendment as an improvement to the Bill to ensure that the money is spent as properly as possible.

The only point on which I take issue with my hon. Friend is the use of the word “sustainable”. It is one of those words that everybody bandies around, but nobody really knows what it means.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is exactly why I put the word in. I thought that it might appeal to the promoter of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

Absolutely. That is one area in which the British people are traditionally incredibly generous. I am talking about humanitarian disasters such as Ebola and the ghastly happenings in Syria at the moment. The British people as individuals are prepared to put their hands in their pockets to get out their own money and to contribute to these causes. Taxpayer support is at its best when it is in the form of matched-funding, because then the taxpayers’ money follows what the people want. We get into problems when we have an administrative Department second-guessing what people think and then saying, “Let’s have a slab of money thrown here and another slab there.” That is when overseas aid falls into disrepute.

In an earlier intervention, I quoted from the 2012 British social attitudes survey. I think it is worth re-emphasising what I said. When asked what their highest priority would be for extra Government spending against a list of possible options, 41.9% of people said health, 30% said education and 0.5% said overseas aid. When asked for their next preference, 31.5% said education, 29.5% said health and 0.5% said overseas aid. The problem is that people do not want extra taxpayers’ money to be spent in this area at a time when the increases in public expenditure on health and education are not as great as those on overseas aid.

[Philip Davies]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important for the public to know the whole truth about this Bill? As all parties have agreed that spending cuts need to take place in the next Parliament, the truth is that the more that is spent on overseas aid, the more that will need to be cut from other Departments such as health and education.

[Mr Chope]

That must be correct. If we have a pot with a declining amount of money, we may be taking out more from that pot for one particular topic—overseas aid. We know now that, as a result of the change in the GDP, we will be spending an extra £400 million next year on overseas aid, raising the total amount to £12.4 billion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

That takes me back to the debate we had in this House on the climate change legislation, when my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) and I, along with three other Members, voted against Third Reading. One of the arguments in favour of the Bill was that it would set a global example and everybody would follow us. What has happened is quite the opposite. We have put on our hair shirts and increased the subsidies for electricity, thereby increasing the costs to consumers, whereas the rest of the world has carried on as though nothing much has happened. I do not see any evidence of other precedents that shows that the high-minded idea of setting an example means that everyone will follow us. We have already been spending roughly 0.7% of GDP on overseas aid, as has been said earlier, and very few big countries, if any, are following our example.

[Philip Davies]

Is it not the case that since we have been increasing the amount we have been spending as a proportion of our GDP, other countries have been reducing the proportion they spend? That completely blows a hole in that argument and it looks as though other countries are leaving it to us to spend the money rather than doing it themselves.

Tenancies (Reform) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Friday 28th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Before I start, I should draw the attention of the House to an interest declared in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. As I have made clear before, I am a landlord, or an accidental landlord as I think it was described by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) in his speech. I am also a tenant. In fact, I am a tenant in two places and landlord in one, so I am more of a tenant than a landlord. I thought I should confirm that before I start. I am also delighted to confirm that my tenants seem quite happy with everything and I have certainly never had to even consider evicting them. I have also not been evicted myself. That is probably a good thing all around.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) on introducing the Bill. She was very lucky in the ballot. Not only has she brought forward a Bill, she has persuaded the Government to abandon everything they have ever believed in up until this point. Her powers of persuasion are clearly very good. although they may not quite have worked on me yet. I have been listening carefully and I note that we have had about two-and-a-quarter hours of contributions to the debate, all from people who are in favour of the Bill. There are about two hours left, so we do not quite have the time to cover all the points, but I will try to go through as many as I can in the time allowed.

Should I ever need to sell my property or move into it myself, I would need to ask my tenants to leave and find another place to live, not out of revenge or retaliation, but for reasons that have nothing to do with them but are a fact of life. The whole point of a tenancy is that one person rents from another person for a period. Some tenancies can last for a long time, but the only guaranteed length of time is that in the contract. That is clear to all parties and is the whole basis of the rented sector.

Should my tenants decide they would like a bigger property or to move out of London, they would not tell me they are leaving. There is nothing I can do about that, apart from trying to find new tenants to take over from them as quickly as possible to maintain the income to cover the costs of the property and hoping very much that the new tenants are as good as my current tenants. So here we have the principle of simple economics, despite there being plenty of regulation doing its best to interfere with it.

I have a property, somebody wants to live in it and for an agreed price and term, we make an arrangement for them to do just that. That is what we are talking about. The legalities, however, can be rather complex. I have taken advice from, and am grateful to, John Midgley, the enfranchisement and property litigation partner at Seddons solicitors. I have also taken advice from other organisations within the private rented sector, because they understand these matters well. I have also seen myriad briefings and reports on the subject.

In law, when a tenant wants to leave a property after the agreed time, they just leave. In theory, they pay their last month’s rent, hand over the keys, get their deposit back, or part of it, and walk away. They just abide by the terms of the lease for the term of the notice period, and then they are free to go. In fact, even if they do not pay their rent, they often just leave. It is then up to the landlord to decide what, if anything, they do to recover the money. The tenant does not have to give any reason for leaving—they just can leave—but that is not the case for landlords. That is a clear example of the already in-built bias in favour tenants.

The tenants have no obligation to say why they are leaving or to give notice months in advance. They can just leave and say goodbye. This leaves landlords at a disadvantage, because they will normally want to re-let the property to maintain their income, in many cases to cover a mortgage, and they might well have had little notice that the tenants planned to vacate the property. Yet landlords have to serve notice on tenants to get them out. In the case of a no-fault situation, under an assured shorthold tenancy, where the landlord just needs to get the property back, for whatever reason, notice under section 21 of the Housing Act 1988 needs to be served by the landlord on the tenant in order to bring the letting formally to an end. Only after that can the landlord instigate possession proceedings if the tenant fails to leave as requested.

[Mr Chope]

Will my hon. Friend deal with the issue of landlords who find that their tenants not only leave without notice, which is bad enough, but trash the place? I have constituents who say that because of that experience they will never be private landlords again.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, although, in fairness, the point has been made by others that there are good landlords and less-than-good landlords, and good tenants and poor tenants who leave properties in a terrible state and without paying. I do not see this as a one-sided issue. I do not think it is all in favour of the landlord, as opposed to the tenant. That is not my reading of the picture.

I must say in passing that those who claim there is a terrible bias in the system owing to problems of supply and demand are the same people who do not want to tackle immigration, which is one of the main reasons there is so much demand for property. If they really wanted to tackle the root causes of any imbalance in the market, they might at least be consistent and approve policies on immigration that would do some of the job they want to do through regulation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I was merely pointing out that others had said there was a problem with supply and demand—that there was too much demand—and therefore that landlords had too much of a whip hand. I was merely pointing out that there were better ways of dealing with the supply-and-demand issue than through this Bill, so my point was very pertinent to the Bill. The hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) seems to be slower on the uptake than normal, so I shall repeat that point: there are better ways of dealing with the supply-and-demand issues than by passing the Bill, which makes my remarks very pertinent to whether we need to pass the Bill.

As I was trying to say before I was rudely and repeatedly interrupted, the private rented sector has been a topical issue for many years, and there have always been arguments for greater regulation of the industry. The historical context of assured shorthold tenancies and section 21 notices, which are the subject of the Bill, can be easily traced. The 1987 Conservative manifesto recognised that there was a problem with the shortage of rented properties available, and to help increase the supply of rented dwellings, it pledged to make renting easier for landlords. I will not read out the whole section of the manifesto, under the “Better Housing for All” heading, but the relevant bits read, under the sub-heading, “A Right to Rent”:

“Most problems in housing now arise in the rented sector. Controls, although well-meant, have dramatically reduced the private rented accommodation to a mere 8 per cent of the housing market. This restricts housing choice and hinders the economy. People looking for work cannot easily move to a different area to do so. Those who find work may not be able to find rented accommodation nearby. Those who would prefer to rent rather than buy are forced to become reluctant owner-occupiers or to swell the queue for council houses. Some may even become temporarily homeless. And it is not only these people and their families who suffer from the shortage of homes for rent. The economy as a whole is damaged when workers cannot move to fill jobs because there are no homes to rent in the neighbourhood.”

Many might say we face similar challenges today. It went on:

“The next Conservative Government, having already implemented the right to buy, will increase practical opportunities to rent. We must attract new private investment into rented housing… First, to encourage more investment by institutions, we will extend the system of assured tenancies. This will permit new lettings in which rents and the period of lease will be freely agreed between tenants and landlords. The tenant will have security of tenure and will renegotiate the rent at the end of the lease, with provision for arbitration if necessary. Second, to encourage new lettings by smaller landlords, we will develop the system of shorthold. The rents of landlords will be limited to a reasonable rate of return, and the tenant's security of tenure will be limited to the term of the lease, which would be not less than 6 months. This will bring back into use many of the 550,000 private dwellings which now stand empty because of controls, as well as making the provision of new rented housing a more attractive investment.”

That touches on the point made by the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). The reason for the system used today was to bring into use lots of properties that were out of use, because unfortunately the system then was not conducive to encouraging people to rent out their properties.

The figure of 550,000—the number of private dwellings to be brought back into the rental market—is staggering and shows starkly the dangers of too much regulatory interference. The fewer properties on the market, the worse is the supply-and-demand issue, so if people think there is a problem with supply and demand now, I must point out that it can only get worse if we introduce too much regulation into the sector.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is accurate in his recollection of the history. Would he like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the then Member for Bristol West who was the Minister responsible for housing—now the noble Lord Waldegrave. The Department of the Environment at the time, in which I was privileged to serve as a very junior Minister, carried this forward as a really popular piece of legislation.

[Philip Davies]

I am very grateful. I was not aware of the history that Bristol West has in respect of Ministers from this Department. I would happily praise Lord Waldegrave. I know that my hon. Friend must have been in that Department if it was doing something sensible; I am sure it was more down to him than to the Member for Bristol West. I will leave that to be determined.

The 1987 manifesto also said it would

“strengthen the law against harassment and unlawful eviction”.

All this was from a Thatcher Conservative manifesto.

The legislation relating to section 21 notices came about because, against this backdrop of the manifesto, the Housing Act 1988 was passed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) will know. Section 21 deals with the landlord issuing a no-fault notice to terminate the contract. This is what today’s Bill is about. It is therefore crucial to understand the section through which this Bill is seeking to ride a coach and horses. The section in the original 1988 Act is titled “Recovery of possession on expiry or termination of assured shorthold tenancy” and it states:

“Without prejudice to any right of the landlord under an assured shorthold tenancy to recover possession of the dwelling-house let on the tenancy in accordance with Chapter I above, on or after the coming to an end of an assured shorthold tenancy which was a fixed term tenancy, a court shall make an order for possession of the dwelling-house if it is satisfied…that the assured shorthold tenancy has come to an end and no further assured tenancy…is for the time being in existence”

and

“the landlord or, in the case of joint landlords, at least one of them has given to the tenant not less than two months’ notice…stating that he requires possession of the dwelling-house.”

In essence, the tenants need to be given two months’ notice in order for the request to regain the property to be valid.

The section continues:

“A notice under paragraph (b)…above may be given before or on the day on which the tenancy comes to an end; and that subsection shall have effect notwithstanding that on the coming to an end of the fixed term tenancy a statutory periodic tenancy arises.”

If there is a six-month tenancy, say to 31 July, notice can be served any time up to that date. Strictly speaking, the original tenancy ended on 31 July and the periodic tenancy started thereafter. It goes on:

“Where a court makes an order for possession of a dwelling-house by virtue of subsection (1) above, any statutory periodic tenancy which has arisen on the coming to an end of the assured shorthold tenancy shall end”

on the day on which the order takes effect. That means that the periodic tenancy is wrapped up and no further notice is needed. That is basically the point.

Another point is that

“a court shall make an order for possession of the dwelling-house”

let on an “assured shorthold tenancy”, which is a “periodic tenancy” if the court is satisfied that at least one of the landlords in the case of joint landlords has given to the tenants a notice stating the last day of the tenancy not less than two months after the date, and the date specified is not earlier than the earliest date on which the tenancy could be brought to an end. So if a notice is not served in the contractual term, and a periodic tenancy has arisen, a further notice is required which must be for a minimum of two months.

The original section of the Act had four subsections and it has been amended in a few ways since its introduction—for example, any notice under section 21 must now be done in writing, which was not in the original Act. This change, other minor amendments, and five new clauses have been added by the Local Government Act 1989, the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008, the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003, as well as by various statutory instruments.

Today’s Bill seeks to curtail this section and place an additional restriction on landlords. Section 21 applies to an assured shorthold tenancy. On the Government website there is a section called “Tenancy agreements: a guide for landlords”, which explains what an assured shorthold tenancy is, saying:

“The most common form of tenancy is an AST. Most new tenancies are automatically this type. A tenancy can be an AST if all of the following apply: you’re a private landlord or housing association…the tenancy started on or after 15 January 1989…the property is your tenants’ main accommodation…you don’t live in the property”.

It continues:

“A tenancy can’t be an AST if: it began or was agreed before 15 January 1989…the rent is more than £100,000 a year…the rent is less than £250 a year (less than £1,000 in London)…it’s a business tenancy or tenancy of licensed premises…it’s a holiday let…the landlord is a local council”.

Now the Communities and Local Government Select Committee looked at the private rented sector for its first report of the Session 2013-14. pointing out that sector was growing.

“The private rented sector is growing. In 1999, 9.9% of English households rented privately. By 2011/12, the figure had risen to 17.4%, with the number of households renting privately overtaking the number in the social rented sector...In the course of our inquiry, witnesses suggested a number of reasons for this growth including: the deregulation of the private rented sector and changes to tenancies in the late 1980s generating increased investment;…the introduction of new lending instruments in the late 1990s;…constraints on the other two main tenures—social housing and owner occupation—forcing more people to rent privately…and economic, social and lifestyle factors leading to an increased demand for more flexible forms of housing tenure…Most likely, all these drivers have contributed in some way to the growth.”

[Mr Chope]

Those drivers could collectively be called “supply-side measures”. Is that not why it has been successful and has created the flexibility in the market for which there was a latent demand?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Obviously, the more supply there is in the market, the better it is for the tenants—the more choice they have, the more likely it is that prices will be lower than if there was less supply.

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[Philip Davies]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. If the hon. Gentleman would let me get on with it, we might get to a conclusion, instead of having him delaying proceedings all the time.

It is interesting to note in that Select Committee report the clear reference to the deregulation of the private rented sector and changes to tenancies in the late 1980s as being reasons for the increase in rented accommodation. That was exactly the point made in the 1987 Conservative manifesto, which I mentioned earlier. The exact figures are interesting, too. The number of private rentals nearly doubled from 1999 to 2012. In 1999 there were 2 million; in 2011-12 there were 3.8 million; whereas the social rented sector declined from 4 million to 3.8 million, but just below the number of the private rentals.

When it comes to understanding the procedure in relation to a section 21 notice for an assured shorthold tenancy, let me tell the hon. Member for Islington North that that is what the Bill is about. I do not know whether he has read the Bill, but that is what it is about. I am sorry to have surprised him by telling him that the Bill is about section 21 notices for an assured shorthold tenancy.

The Department for Communities and Local Government has guidance called, “Gaining possession of a privately rented property let on an assured shorthold tenancy”. It is dated 14 November 2012, but is the current online guidance on the DCLG’s webspace. It says:

“You cannot use Section 21 to gain possession of your property during the fixed term. You can serve a Section 21 notice on your tenant during that time, providing the date you state you require possession is not before the end of the fixed term. If your tenant paid a deposit, you cannot use Section 21 unless the deposit has been protected in accordance with the tenancy deposit schemes.”

This idea that landlords can go along willy-nilly using section 21 at any time a tenant decides to complain about the condition of their property is just for the birds. It is just not accurate. The guidance on the Department’s website is perfectly clear about that.

The tenancy deposit scheme is another regulatory burden on landlords, and it is relevant to the Bill because it is a crucial element of the qualifying criteria for a landlord to issue a section 21 notice. However, that is the only respect in which it is relevant, so I do not think that I need to dwell on it any further, which will please the hon. Member for Islington North.

The guidance on the Department’s website goes on to say:

“You must give at least 2 months notice in writing. If the fixed term has expired the notice will end on the last day of the rental period and you must explain that you are giving notice by virtue of Section 21 of the Housing Act 1988. You will need to give more than 2 months’ notice if the fixed term has expired and the gap between the dates that the rent falls due is more than 2 months (e.g, a quarterly rent).”

Serving the notice is only part of the story, however. Giving notice under section 21 is merely that; it does not constitute a guarantee that the tenants will actually leave. The Department gives a helpful explanation on its website, and I shall set out some quotations from it:

“What do I do if my tenant refuses to leave on the date specified in the notice?

You will need to apply to the courts for a ‘possession order’.”

“What do I do if my tenant refuses to leave by the date given in the court order?

You must apply to the courts for a warrant of possession and the court will arrange for a bailiff to evict the tenant. You will need to use the ‘Request for Warrant of possession of Land (N325)…form.”

“How can I speed up the process?

You can use the possession claim online service if you are seeking possession of the property together with any rent arrears. The service allows you to access court forms online”.

“Where possession is sought under Section 21, an accelerated procedure can be used which is a straightforward and inexpensive procedure for getting possession of your property without a court hearing.

In most cases using this procedure the court will make its decision on the papers, and can order possession to be given up within 14 days unless exceptional hardship would be caused, in which case the maximum time that can be allowed is 42 days.

You can only use this procedure if you have a written tenancy agreement and you have given the tenant the required notice in writing that you are seeking possession. You cannot use this procedure if you are also claiming rent arrears.”

The landlord therefore still has plenty of hoops to jump through, even after serving notice, unlike the tenant, who will have no problems at all if he or she wants simply to leave.

[Mr Chope]

Is it not the case that a fair number of tenants know through the grapevine that they can allow themselves to get into arrears because those cannot be claimed against them if the landlord is able to exercise his section 21 notice?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is already a big problem for landlords. Many landlords also worry about not being paid for weeks on end and, for example, being unable to have any benefits paid directly to them.

The issue with which we are dealing today is what is described as “retaliatory eviction”. The House of Commons Library says:

“Retaliatory eviction, also sometimes referred to as revenge eviction, is used to describe the situation where a private landlord serves a section 21 notice on an assured shorthold tenant (seeking to terminate the tenancy) in response to the tenant’s request for repairs, or where they have sought assistance from the local authority’s environmental health department.

Retaliatory eviction is said to be a by-product of the fact that private landlords can evict assured shorthold tenants without having to establish any ‘fault’ on the part of the tenant.”

The problem is that unless one knows the specifics of the case, or is in possession of an admission that that is what the landlord has done, it is difficult to know whether an eviction falls into that category. A landlord could, for example, coincidentally need the property back at the same time as the issuing of a complaint or a request for repairs.

I know of an example of a woman who went to Australia with her then boyfriend. They let their property in Clapham to go off on what was supposed to be a three-year secondment. Unfortunately, the woman’s boyfriend decided to end their relationship after just a few months. Her visa was dependent on him, so she had a very short time in which to leave Australia. She was homeless on her return to the United Kingdom, as the property had been let to cover the mortgage while they were out of the country. She had no choice but to give her tenant notice so that she could at least have somewhere to live and regain part of her life back in the UK.

Under the Bill if, by sheer coincidence, the tenant—who had been dealing with managing agents—had given notice of a problem, the woman would have had to wait a further six months. Given that she would be the one moving back into the property, she would hardly have not wanted to do whatever work was needed, because such work would have been to her benefit. The delay would have made an already upsetting situation even more distressing and stressful. Such a situation could well be just one of the Bill’s unintended consequences.

Similarly, if someone wanted to move back into a property to be near an ill or dying relative and to help with that relative’s care, in the event of the same coincidental timing of a notice or complaint, that person could be prevented from regaining his or her property, with the obvious emotional problems that would naturally arise in such distressing circumstances. Moreover, the tenant’s complaint might not be genuine. In the cases cited by the proponents of action, such as the Bill’s proposer, complaints are always genuine rather than bogus or spurious, although such complaints obviously occur from time to time.

Landlords already have obligations in relation to repairs and maintenance under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, so they have a legal duty. We are talking about tenants who complain about a landlord who is not carrying out his legal duty. Resorting to evicting tenants would not remove the legal duty in section 11 of that Act, which states:

“In a lease to which this section applies…there is implied a covenant by the lessor…to keep in repair the structure and exterior of the dwelling-house (including drains, gutters and external pipes)…to keep in repair and proper working order the installations in the dwelling-house for the supply of water, gas and electricity and for sanitation (including basins, sinks, baths and sanitary conveniences, but not other fixtures, fittings and appliances for making use of the supply of water, gas or electricity), and…to keep in repair and proper working order the installations in the dwelling-house for space heating and heating water.”

The Communities and Local Government Committee considered retaliatory evictions as part of its 2013-14 report on the private rented sector.

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[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to you, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I am surprised that the hon. Member for Ealing North has led with his chin by drawing attention to the fact that he has absolutely no idea what the Bill is about. The Bill is about retaliatory evictions. That is the whole purpose of it, and that is what the campaign that resulted in the Bill was about. The moment I mentioned the Select Committee’s report that considered retaliatory evictions, the hon. Gentleman stood up to say that that was irrelevant to the Bill. Either the hon. Gentleman is wasting time himself, or he has not the first idea what he is talking about. I have no idea why he is sitting on the Opposition Front Bench masquerading as some sort of expert on the subject.

[Mr Chope]

Does my hon. Friend agree that what the Select Committee did was to engage in pre-legislative scrutiny, and that it reached a conclusion that was very different from that reached by the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather)?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right. I know that this is very inconvenient, but the whole point of Select Committees is to look at and scrutinise issues in detail and to take evidence, with the Committee then making recommendations on the basis of its expertise. It is a sad day in this House when Members seem not to want to know what that Select Committee, under its Labour Chairman, said about the issue we are debating. Free speech is a long way away from the Labour party. The detailed Select Committee report is a hefty 79 pages long.

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[Philip Davies]

Very much so. The specific point about retaliatory eviction in the Select Committee’s report is relatively short but insightful:

“A number of witnesses raised concerns about ‘retaliatory eviction’, whereby landlords would serve notice on a tenant if they complained or asked for repairs to be carried out. Bradford Metropolitan District Council”—

my local authority—

“stated that one of the consequences of the relative lack of security of tenure in the PRS is the incidence of retaliatory evictions. We have concerns that when some landlords become aware that their tenants have contacted the local authority for assistance with the poor standard of their accommodation, that they then serve notice on their tenants, who are then required to move out.”

Retaliatory eviction was said to be a by-product of the fact that private landlords can evict assured shorthold tenants without having to establish any fault on the part of the tenants.

I will come on to what happens in other countries but, sticking to the conclusion that is relevant to the Bill, the Select Committee said:

“We are not convinced, however, that a legislative approach is the best or even an effective solution. Changing the law to limit the issuing of section 21 notices might be counter-productive and stunt the market. Rather, if we move towards a culture where longer tenancies become the norm, tenants will have greater security and also more confidence to ask for improvements and maintenance and, when necessary, to complain about their landlord. Moreover, if local authorities take a more proactive approach to enforcement, they will be able to address problems as they occur rather than waiting for tenants to report them.”

The Committee cited the word “perception”, as opposed to the reality, and rejected the need for legislation, going as far as to say that that could be “counter-productive”. I could not have put it better myself, and I praise all the Committee members who listened to the evidence and reached that sensible conclusion.

The issue of retaliatory evictions is not new—in fact, it has been raised time and again—yet no Government, whether Conservative or Labour, have felt the need to take action. The issue was the subject of an amendment in the name of Lord Dubs that was moved by Lord Williams of Elvel in 1996. It is worth considering the reasons behind the amendment. Lord Williams said:

“This amendment deals with the difficult problem of retaliatory eviction. The effect of the amendment is to extend the notice period in such cases…Retaliatory evictions, apart from being very distressing to those who are evicted as a result of something they may have done inadvertently, can seriously hamper a local authority's attempts to tackle poor housing conditions.”

Exactly the same issue was therefore being discussed in 1996. The interesting bit is the response of Earl Ferrers, the then Minister:

“I have difficulty with what the noble Lord is proposing. It could prevent a landlord from regaining possession of his property for more than a year after the end of the initial six-month period or after the end of a pre-agreed fixed term”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 10 July 1996; Vol. 574, c. 311-313.]

Of course, those problems remain. The then Minister’s argument—that such a measure could create unnecessary problems for genuine landlords—is as relevant today as it was when that amendment was moved and the then Conservative Government rejected it.

The issue was also raised when Labour was in office. Lord Williams of Elvel—a very persistent Member—had another go in 2008. The then Labour Minister, Baroness Andrews, responded by saying:

“We have to understand the scale of the problem. It is not at all clear how many people are affected. We also need to avoid unintended consequences. We need a thriving private rented sector and we need to keep good landlords in the market.”

She was right.

I shall not go into the other notable comments that were made during that debate, but Earl Cathcart and Baroness Gardner of Parkes also made good points. Baroness Andrews summed things up by saying that it was

“in everyone’s interests to get the balance right”. —[Official Report, House of Lords, 2 April 2008; Vol. 700, c. 1039-1041.]

That was what the Labour Government thought they had done. I agree with them, as they did get the balance right between the rights of the landlord and those of the tenant.

I know that the hon. Member for Brent Central has the support of many of her Liberal Democrat colleagues, but I was interested to read the position of the former Communities and Local Government Minister, the right hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Sir Andrew Stunell), during the passage of the Bill that became the Localism Act 2011. He said:

“section 21 is one of the key characteristics of assured shorthold tenancies to which the tenancy deposit scheme relates. It allows a landlord to evict a tenant, having given reasonable notice, on a non-discretionary basis and without having to give a reason. The ability to gain possession of their property is key to a landlord’s confidence in letting out that property in the first place, and in the current economic climate, we would not want to undermine that confidence.”––[Official Report, Localism Public Bill Committee, 10 March 2011; c. 952.]

Once again we have the Liberal Democrats all over the place on an issue. They tell landlords one thing on the one hand, but tell tenants something completely different on the other. However, I think that what the right hon. Member for Hazel Grove said was very sensible.

[Mr Chope]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this is also an issue for landlords who are borrowing, because lenders may be very worried about lending money to landlords if it cannot be guaranteed that those landlords will be able to get the property back should the need arise?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. An unintended consequence of the Bill would be that there would be fewer properties on the market for people to rent, and I am not sure how that that would help anybody.

The Communities and Local Government Committee report also dealt with the fear of retaliatory eviction in relation to energy efficiency requests. It said that Friends of the Earth and the Association for the Conservation of Energy were concerned that tenants would be unlikely to request energy efficiency measures from landlords for fear of eviction. This is mentioned in the Bill, although that was not a recommendation of the Committee. Actually, the Committee’s recommendation was very landlord-friendly, while recognising that this would also help tenants, because it asked the Government to

“convene a working party from all parts of the industry, to examine proposals to speed up the process of evicting during a tenancy tenants who do not pay rent promptly or fail to meet other contractual obligations. The ability to secure eviction more quickly for non payment of rent will encourage landlords to make properties available on longer tenancies. The Government should also set out a quicker means for landlords to gain possession if they can provide proof that they intend to sell the property.”

The Committee was in effect urging the Government to take the exact opposite view from that proposed in the Bill. It says that they should make it easier for landlords to evict tenants more quickly, which would mean there would be more properties available and landlords would have much more confidence in offering longer tenancies, with the security that that provides.

The Committee’s report did not agree at all with what is proposed in the Bill, yet apparently all parties are supporting it today. Before we start running around doing something about a problem, we need to be sure it is so concerning that it is impossible to ignore.

The English housing survey is a good place from which to get important statistics for this debate. According to the 2012-13 survey, 84% of private renters said they were very or fairly satisfied with their accommodation, with 10% being either slightly or very dissatisfied. Three fifths—61%—of private renters reported that they anticipated owning their own property in the longer term, with about a quarter reporting that they expected still to be renting from a private landlord in the longer term. In the private rented sector, a fifth of households were of other nationalities—not British or Irish—in comparison with only 3% of owner-occupiers, and 7% of social renters. The private rented sector had the largest proportion of full-time students and only 13% of private renter households earned less than £200 a week. In 2008-09, 12% of private renters were couples with dependent children, but by 2012-13, that figure had increased to 20%, compared with 39% of people with a mortgage. Private renters had been living in their current home for an average of 3.8 years, so most private renters stay in a property much longer than many might imagine.

It is important to paint that illuminating picture of the types of people who rent. It is clear that there are reasons why they would choose to rent rather than buy, not least of which is that people of different nationalities might be working over here temporarily. Students might live away from home for a fixed period of time but then want to return. It is also important to note that the vast majority of private renters are very happy with their accommodation. I certainly fall into that category as somebody who rents a property in London and in Shipley, and I hope that my tenants do too. That is not the picture that some people would like to paint in justifying the Bill today.

The housing survey also assists with the numbers of people leaving their properties, which is crucial in understanding the position of eviction in the market. The survey states that four fifths of private renters who moved in the past three years said that their tenancy had ended because they had wanted to move; only 7% said that it was because they had been asked to leave by their landlord or agent—and that covers every possible circumstance before we even move on to retaliatory eviction. The other reasons were that the renter wanted to move, that there was a mutual agreement or that the accommodation was tied to a job that had ended.

[Mr Chope]

Does my hon. Friend agree that accommodation that is let to students represents a good example? Students take it for a year and the landlord knows that at the end of the year they will go and he will have to let to a fresh lot of students.

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[Philip Davies]

I am absolutely not going to go over the same ground, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am going to compare the official figures with those given by the campaigning organisations that have asked for this Bill to be introduced, because they simply do not tally.

Shelter, which has been making a lot of noise on this subject, says on its website that last year 200,000 renters faced eviction just for speaking out about bad conditions. The official figures are nowhere near 200,000; Shelter has just picked a figure out of thin air and decided to run a campaign on the back of it. In the briefing note for this Bill, Shelter says that more than 200,000 renters have been evicted or served notice in the past year because they complained to their local council or their landlord about a problem in their home—that is simply not true. I am confused: is Shelter saying that 200,000 renters faced eviction, that 200,000 were either evicted or served a notice, or that 200,000 were evicted and many more live in fear of eviction? I do not know which it is, but I am certainly not sure that that is true. The Liberal Democrat Lord Stoneham has said that every year 300,000 tenants are evicted after making a complaint to their landlord about the state of their home, so we have fantasy figures inflation about this. I am not sure where the figures come from, and I would be very interested to know, but that is 150% of Shelter’s worst-case scenario of 200,000 people being evicted.

[Mr Chope]

The Minister has fallen back on saying that he is relying on anecdotal evidence to justify this Bill. Bearing in mind the impact it will have on the whole of the private rental market, is it not right to look at the exact scale and try to find some evidence to justify the case for this Bill?

[Philip Davies]

Absolutely. The official figures are there; but the Government have just decided, presumably because an election is coming and the Minister thinks he might get a few cheap votes out of it, to ignore the evidence Paul Shamplina of Landlord Action has said that Shelter is

“engaging in a lot of guesswork”

on the figures. He said that the Government statistics show that last year there were 170,000 possession claims issued—the Minister might want to confirm that these are his Department’s figures—of which 113,000 were for the social sector. So that just leaves 57,000 in the private rented sector, 23,000 of which were through a hearing route—section 8—and 34,000 of which were through the accelerated possession routes. He says that

“most of the time tenants may not know the reason”

why a section 21 notice is issued, because it is the landlord’s prerogative. Does the Minister want to confirm that that is the case and so those figures from Shelter are just completely wrong?

Landlord Action also carried out a survey of landlords who had served section 21 notices, finding that 28% of landlords said they had served a notice because their tenant was in rent arrears, with 2% advising that their tenants had asked for repairs to be carried out so they served a section 21 notice. It could be argued that those were retaliatory evictions, but the precise details are not known. The Competition and Markets Authority also notes that the database it analysed in preparing its review of lettings did not identify retaliatory eviction as a problem of any significance at all.

Given all that, we could be forgiven for being completely confused and wondering what the reality of the situation is. Helpfully, however, the Government have been answering parliamentary questions on this subject. My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) asked how many section 21 notices were served in each of the past 12 months and in each of the past five years. The Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis) said:

“The Government does not collect this information.”

But he went on to say that the serving of such notices was

“like any other termination of a contract…a private matter between the landlord and tenant.”

That raises the question of why the Government now do not seem to think it is a private matter between the landlord and the tenant, and seem to have figures that they did not have when the question was asked.

My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport also asked what records the Department keeps and what criteria they use to define retaliatory eviction. Again, the Minister replied that none of that information is collected centrally. Having looked at that some more, it seems that my assessment of the situation chimes with what previous Housing Ministers have said. My right hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps), now Conservative party chairman, when he was Housing Minister, referred to the English housing survey and gave the figures I have used today. He was using those figures as the official Government figures. If they are the official Government figures, why does the Minister not accept them? Why are the Government now trying to pretend that a YouGov poll is more important and worthwhile than the official figures that his predecessors used when discussing the matter?

The hon. Member for Eastleigh (Mike Thornton) asked earlier this year, on 28 April—

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[Mr Chope]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Having heard the Minister say that a local authority “ought to” be able to do this in two months, I could not agree with him more, but my concern is what happens when a local authority does not do what Members think it ought to do. We have already heard many examples of areas in which local authorities are already falling down on their statutory duties. Nothing in the Bill sets out a timescale within which a local authority has to act in response to the requirements set out in the Bill. If the Minister thinks that two months is reasonable for the whole process, we should be able to incorporate that time scale in the Bill, perhaps through amendments in Committee. Perhaps such amendments will be tabled by the Government.

In each paragraph in clause 1(4), we should specify that the relevant local housing authority must decide within, say, two weeks. There are four parts to the process, so if the Minister thinks that two months is a reasonable time for those four activities, two weeks for each would equal eight weeks. Each of those decisions by the relevant housing authority would therefore have to be taken within the two-week period or be deemed to be a negative decision. That would be a necessary protection for the landlord and, if the tenant has a genuine concern, it would be an opportunity for him to be assured that if something is wrong in the house that he is occupying it can be put right in a reasonably short time. I would be happy to give way to the Minister if he thinks that my interpretation of the need for such an assurance to be included in the Bill is reasonable and the Government would be willing to take it on board to meet the concerns that I have expressed. I note that the Minister has not responded.

The hon. Member for Brent Central said—and I agree with her—that a heck of a lot of people are tenants in properties whose landlord is falling down on the responsibility to keep the property in good repair. Those responsibilities can already be enforced by the existing law, especially the provisions of the Housing Act 2004. That Act deals with the enforcement of housing standards. It defines two categories of hazard. In section 5, the local authority is under a statutory duty with regard to category 1 hazards. Under the title “Category 1 hazards: general duty to take enforcement action”, the Act states:

“If a local housing authority consider that a category 1 hazard exists on any residential premises, they must take the appropriate enforcement action in relation to the hazard.”

For category 2 hazards, local authorities have the power to take enforcement action. We know that in many cases local authorities are not exercising those powers. That is par for the course and there is nothing that we can do about it.

We know also that in many areas local housing authorities are not exercising their statutory duties, which means that they are letting down the tenants whom they purport to want to assist. Because local authorities are failing to exercise their responsibilities, they are permitting—through their lack of intervention—a larger number of properties to be in disrepair than should be the case. That is unacceptable.

[Philip Davies]

Given that many of the hon. Members who support the Bill today claim that local authorities are short of resources, does my hon. Friend have any idea as to what extra resources local authorities will need to meet the Bill’s requirements and expectations, and whether they have had any discussions on the matter?

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that very pertinent question. I think it comes back to the lack of a regulatory impact assessment. The Bill has the potential to put more responsibility on to local authorities, but we know they are already not exercising those responsibilities. The Minister said that they had been given specific grants by the Government in the past year. I think he talked about £6.7 million, if my memory serves me. Despite that, the amount of activity he described by local authorities dealing with problems relating to housing in a bad state of repair was very small indeed in comparison with the vast number of properties—some 4 million—that are currently let by landlords to tenants.

That deals with one of the issues relating to the further exemptions under section 1 set out in clause 2. It is still far from clear that putting the burden on the landlord to show that a complaint is totally without merit is a solution to the problem that the Minister and the promoter of the Bill identified, which is how to deal with tenants who are mischievous, who want to prolong their tenancies, who cause trouble for the landlord or who effectively are in what might be described as the tenants’ awkward squad. If this is to be any use, the burden should be the other way around. The burden should be on the tenant to show that the complaint has merit—the burden of proof should be reversed.

Clause 2(1) states:

“Subsections (1) to (3) of section 1 do not apply where the condition of the dwelling-house or common parts that gave rise to the service of the relevant notice, or consideration of whether to serve a…notice, is due to a breach by the tenant of—

(a) the duty to use the dwelling-house in a tenant-like manner, or

(b) an express term of the tenancy to the same effect.”

That will be subject to litigation. Whether a tenant has failed in a duty to use the dwelling-house in a tenant-like manner is ultimately something that has to be justiciable by the courts, even where it is alleged that there is a breach of an express term of the tenancy.

Why would tenants want to play the game of engaging in litigation? If they are impecunious, they know they can engage in retaliatory action against their landlords by using the courts against them. They could turn the powers in the Bill, which are designed to try to protect tenants, upside down and use them as a weapon against landlords. That is the concern being expressed by landlords’ associations. It is a pity that in listing the bodies the Minister has consulted, he did not mention the Residential Landlords Association, which represents many independent private landlords who are responsible and want to comply with the law, but who are extremely concerned about the consequences of the Bill were it to get on the statute book.

If we start raising questions of whether a tenant has breached an express term of a tenancy or failed to use the dwelling house in a tenant-like manner, we effectively return to the litigiousness of the landlord-tenant law that preceded the assured tenancy regime and section 21 notices, the whole purpose of which was to avoid the litigation and doubts associated with the termination of an assured shorthold tenancy after it had run its six-month course or at some subsequent time. The Bill would resurrect, almost covertly, those old litigious opportunities.

Before I entered the House, I was a practising barrister, and I spent many an enjoyable occasion before judges in the county courts—I will not list those I had the pleasure of practising in—representing tenants and landlords. I was familiar with how the complicated law, as it was prior to 1988, was used by the unscrupulous to prolong the agony, to themselves, often, and the landlord, and at great expense—I am talking about fees as well as the cost to the Courts Service and legal system. The purpose of section 21 notices, which would be undermined by the Bill, was to curtail that activity and the adversarial approach to dealing with tenants’ problems.

The Minister and promoter of the Bill say that clause 2, introducing further exemptions to the application of clause 1, balances out the rights of a tenant as against the landlord, but I do not think that is so. That point is reinforced by clause 2(3), which would provide for a further exemption where the dwelling is

“genuinely on the market for sale”.

Who will assess whether it is “genuinely” on the market? The explanatory notes mention family members, and clause 2(4) spells out specific cases where the landlord would not be regarded as being engaged in a genuine sale—

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[Mr Chope]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Before we had the interruption, I was expressing some concern about the reference:

“Subsections (1) to (3) of section 1 do not apply where the dwelling-house is genuinely on the market for sale.”

My concern is about the use of the word “genuinely”. Clause 2(4) states that a dwelling house is deemed not to be genuinely on the market for sale if the landlord intends to sell the landlord’s interest to a person associated with the landlord. If somebody wished to sell their house to their child, a divorced wife, a cousin or somebody like that, they would not be allowed to in these circumstances as it would not deliver an exemption from subsections (1) to (3) of clause 1.

[Philip Davies]

The Bill states that the landlord cannot sell to a person associated with the landlord. Given his legal background, can my hon. Friend give us any guidance on what “associated” means? Does that mean that it could not be sold to anybody whom the landlord knows in any way whatever?

[Mr Chope]

The answer can be found in clause 2(5):

“For the purposes of subsection (4), references to a person who is associated with another person are to be read in accordance with section 178 of the Housing Act 1996.”

I do not have section 178 of the 1996 Act immediately to hand, but although we might not agree with it, that is probably a proper and adequate definition in this Bill.

A second category of people to whom one would not be able to sell a property in order for it to be deemed to be genuinely on the market for sale would be those associated with the business partner of the landlord or a business partner of a person associated with the landlord. Again, that goes far too wide, and the landlord could well be in a situation such that he has to sell his house to pay off his debts to a business associate, for example. He might be a minority shareholder who can no longer sustain his position. All sorts of issues could arise. If we are saying that a dwelling house has to be genuinely on the market, we should not then go further and prohibit its sale to a relative, friend or business partner, or to an associate of a business partner.

People looking at the Bill will think that it is rather slanted against the landlord, yet it is being presented as neutral as between landlord and tenant. Another reason that I think it is slanted against the landlord is that the Residential Landlords Association, which represents the responsible landlords, is against the Bill. The Minister did not refer to the association when he was talking about those whom he had consulted in preparing his view of the Bill.

Clause 2(7) states that subsections (1) to (3) of clause 1 will not apply if the landlord is

“a private registered provider of social housing.”

There is no explanation for that provision, and in my experience some of the worst problems relating to premises in a state of disrepair are found in properties that are owned and let by private registered providers of social housing. Why should that category of person be exempt from the provisions of the Bill? Could this be based on anything other than an ill-conceived prejudice against independent private landlords?

When I first looked at clause 2(8), I thought it might meet one of the concerns that I expressed earlier about a landlord whose mortgage had been granted before the beginning of the tenancy. However, my reading of the subsection is that all three conditions set out in paragraphs (a), (b) and (c) will have to be satisfied, rather than just one of them. If the Bill goes into Committee, or if it comes back to the House to be reworked on an iterative basis, I hope that we can insert the word “or” after paragraphs (a) and (b), in place of the word “and”. This is another weakness of the Bill.

There are also weaknesses in the way the Bill seeks to change the notice process. I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Brent Central’s justification for changing the process, but I was not convinced by what she said. Similarly, the Minister justified clause 4 by saying that it would be perfectly reasonable to introduce new time limits, but, again, I was not convinced.

We are running out of time, so I shall turn quickly to clause 5. This is potentially one of the most dangerous in the Bill. The Bill gives the Government the power to bring forward regulations. The Bill itself is bad enough in undermining the whole shorthold tenancy regime, but the provisions of clause 5 would enable the Government to introduce regulations covering a whole host of other things that could be used as a reason for not allowing a landlord to recover possession of his own premises. Under the clause, that could occur if a landlord were in breach of requirements relating to

“the condition of dwelling-houses or their common parts”,

or to

“the energy performance of dwelling-houses”.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley said so ably, this is about privity of contract. People wishing to enter into an agreement can ask themselves whether they wish to take on the tenancy of a particular property. If the property has not got a good energy performance rating and the person is suffering hard times, the better choice is not to take a tenancy on that property but to look for a newly built property with proper central heating. We must not treat the people who enter into these contracts as imbeciles—

Zero Hours Contracts Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Friday 21st November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I would like to think that I made it clear at the start of my speech that I do not support the Bill. For many workers, particularly students, zero-hours contracts are a good thing. They suit their patterns, they help them and they are a good way into the employment market. It suits their lifestyle to have zero-hours contracts. Some people have zero-hours contracts through choice; they are not all awful. I do not want to ban something that many people have by choice. So no, I do not agree with the Bill.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a brilliant speech. When is he going to get on to that part of the Bill that makes it clear that those proposing it are not against zero-hours contracts completely and do not wish to outlaw them? They just wish to limit them, yet all their rhetoric has been about outlawing zero-hours contracts.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a good point and I would have liked to have humoured him by going through all this in as much detail as he would want, but it appears that time is against us. He is right to draw attention to the fact that once again—the situation is very similar to the previous debate—the Labour party is trying to give an impression to its voters, perhaps running scared of UKIP in its constituencies, that its Members believe in something. Yet the Bill proposed is nothing like the rhetoric that accompanies it.

Responsible Parking (Scotland) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Friday 5th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

Clause 1, however, refers to “Obstructive parking”. If that phrase is all right in clause 1, surely it would have been all right in the title of the Bill.

I have more serious reservations about this Bill, however. As has been said already, it is premature because of the proximity of the referendum. However, it does not matter which way the people of Scotland Vote: if they vote for independence, which I sincerely hope they will not, they will take over the responsibilities set out in this Bill; and, as I understand it, a deal has been done—I am not saying it has been approved by this House—by all the leaders of the main political parties to the effect that if the people of Scotland vote against independence, they will be allowed what is called devo-max. I do not know exactly what devo-max involves, but I think it probably includes allowing the Scottish Government to decide on such issues as obstructive parking, rather than having them dealt with by the United Kingdom Government.

[Philip Davies]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a slight irony in the fact that Opposition Members are on the one hand arguing that we should not have independence for Scotland and that we are better together, while on the other hand they are acknowledging that this is an issue that is the same right across the UK but that it should be dealt with by more independence for Scotland? Is there not some slight irony and contradiction in the arguments they are putting forward?

[Mr Chope]

Well, there is nothing new in that, as my hon. Friend knows.

I was surprised, however, that the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) did not deploy the argument, in support of the no campaign in the referendum, that if Edinburgh was to become a diplomatic capital, the amount of obstructive parking by cars with diplomatic number plates would make the situation far worse than at present. If the people in his constituency and Edinburgh as a whole think there is a problem with obstructive parking, they should be very determined to vote no in the referendum to ensure it does not get any worse, with a whole lot more diplomatic vehicles there. That is a point that I make on behalf of the hon. Gentleman; it is a pity that he did not refer to it himself.

A further issue is that the Bill duplicates existing legislation. On too many occasions—not only on Fridays—the House tries to legislate on activities that are already against the law. The problem is that the existing law is not being properly enforced. I think the hon. Gentleman would accept that it is already against the law to obstruct the highway or to park on the pavement, thereby preventing disabled vehicles, buggies and people who are blind or have other handicaps from being able to move along the pavement. That is already against the law, and if that law is not being enforced, that should be a matter for the law enforcement authorities rather than for the lawmakers. People keep saying that we want more lawmaking, but let us think about whether we really want to litter the statute book with another piece of duplicate legislation.

There is a strong argument for applying the same road traffic laws across the length and breadth of the United Kingdom, and I am not quite sure why Scottish Ministers want to get involved in introducing separate offences for obstructing the highway.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is touching on some important points. Does he agree that Opposition Members have probably fallen into the Scottish nationalists’ trap? The nationalists are saying that they do not have the power to make these changes, simply in order to hide their own uselessness in governing Scotland. Rather than challenging them and telling them that they do indeed have that power and they need to pull their finger out and do something for the people they are supposed to be representing, Labour has fallen into the nationalists’ trap and accepted that more legislation is needed, thus giving the nationalists an excuse for not doing what they should be doing.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Why would we want to give the Scottish Parliament more powers when it seems to be agonising at great length over issues as trivial as the one we are discussing today? I do not think it has demonstrated that it can be decisive and in control of events.

Benefit Entitlement (Restriction) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Friday 17th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

I am not going to answer that question; as with so many of my hon. Friend’s interventions, he perhaps already knows the answer, in which case he will be able to adumbrate it if he contributes to the debate. The point he makes is that we are net contributors, and if the European Union thinks that we can be kicked around and we will do whatever Mrs Reding or anybody else wants us to do, it is about time they started concentrating their minds on the fact that British taxpayers pay a lot of their salaries.

Again, if fines or penalties are imposed, that creates distortions. I suppose we could set them off against our contributions to the European Union.

I became particularly interested in this subject early last year, because I thought that it was absolutely fundamental that our country can distinguish between our nationals and nationals of other European Union countries in dealing with benefit issues. A few parliamentary questions have been asked on the subject. In answer to a question asked on 14 January 2013, the then Minister of State at the Department for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban), said:

“The UK’s benefit payment systems do not currently record details of a claimant’s nationality. Looking forward, the Government is considering ways of recording nationality and immigration status of migrants who make a claim to universal credit”.—[Official Report, 14 January 2013; Vol. 556, c. 466W.]

I hope that the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), who is on the Front Bench today, will tell us what has happened in the subsequent year regarding recording nationality and immigration status, because if we do not even have basic information about the nationality of migrants or people claiming benefit, and have no means of finding that out, how can we ever have the tight controls that the Government keep talking about to ensure that migrants from other EU countries do not abuse our benefit system in their first three months here, or ensure that they are genuinely seeking work?

The first provision in the Bill would ensure that national insurance numbers were issued only after the applicant had declared their nationality, and would not make it possible for anybody to claim benefit without declaring their nationality. In that way, we could at least gather some statistics about the use of our benefit system by nationals from other countries, which we certainly cannot do at the moment.

There is a big problem and I fear that it suits the Government not to give the people the full facts on this issue. They have statistics measuring net migration, for the purposes of meeting a commitment they made at the last general election to reduce net migration to the tens of thousands. However, there are different ways in which net migration is calculated. The labour force survey estimates that the number of A2 nationals living in the UK has increased by 25,000 a year in the six years between 2007 and 2013. However, the Government’s figures, which are based on passenger surveys carried out at ports and airports, suggest that there were fewer than 10,000 new people from Bulgaria and Romania a year. As we do not have a way of measuring people’s nationality when it comes to national insurance numbers or benefit claimants, the Government have to rely on passenger surveys to find out how many people have come from Romania or Bulgaria. The Office for National Statistics has been critical of the cavalier way in which the UK collects those statistics.

Clause 1 of my Bill would make it much easier for us to have a proper public debate on these issues, based on the facts rather than on conjecture. I hope that the Minister agrees that is a good idea.

Clause 2 of my Bill says:

“Notwithstanding the provisions of the European Communities Act 1972, no non-UK citizen who is a national of a member country of the European Union or the European Economic Area shall be eligible for housing benefit or council tax benefit in England and Wales unless the benefit entitlement arises by reason of having the status of a spouse or dependant of a UK citizen.”

In other words, the clause would close down access to housing and council tax benefit for people who have come to this country to work or to play.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

As my hon. Friend knows, I fully support his Bill and the intention behind it. Does he think that child benefit falls under the clause on dependants, because one thing that irritates my constituents is when people come over from other countries in the EU and claim child benefit for children who have never left their country of origin and seemingly are entitled to it? I think that that is an absolute outrage, and I am certain that most of my constituents think so too.

[Mr Chope]

It is an outrage, but, unfortunately, it is in accordance with European Union law and case law. The other day, the Deputy Prime Minister, ever the populist or attempted populist, said in relation to child benefits that there was “complete unity” in the coalition—that is probably the first inaccuracy—on tightening up benefit rules for European migrants. He then said that he did not quite understand

“why it is possible under the current rules for someone to claim child benefit for children who aren't even in this country.”

He might not understand that, but if he had looked at the legal advice given to the Government and published on their own website, he would find the answer set out for him. The legal annexe on the issue of free movement cites a number of European Court of Justice cases. Specifically, in the case of Martinez-Sala, case number 85/96, it says that it is possible to require the payment of a “child-raising allowance” to a person for children outside the country in which they reside. That is why, despite the huffing and puffing, we cannot do anything about it.

[Philip Davies]

I agree with that, and that is why I want to get out of the wretched European Union at the first opportunity. I just wondered whether my hon. Friend’s Bill would deal with that issue and stop that payment of child benefit. Under the clause on dependants, he talks about housing benefit and council tax benefit, but does not specifically mention child benefit. I am just worried that he is going a bit soft. He is not going far enough with his Bill.

[Mr Chope]

Clause 4 of my Bill says:

“Notwithstanding the provisions of the European Communities Act 1972, no UK taxpayer-funded benefit”—

which is obviously what child benefit is—

“shall be paid to a citizen of another country in membership of the European Union…unless the entitlement to that benefit arises from an insurance-based contribution which the claimant has made.”

In that case, such a person would not be eligible for child benefit. Clause 3 would also have a bearing on that. It says that

“no UK taxpayer-funded benefit shall be paid to a citizen of another country…at a rate which exceeds in cash terms the equivalent benefit which would be payable to such a person if that person were resident in the country of his nationality.”

In other words, a Pole working here would be able to claim child benefit in respect of his children in Poland at the rate prevailing under Polish national law, rather than at the rate prevailing under UK law.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I agree with my hon. Friend. If the Government were more open with the people about the fact that they have no scope under existing law to do anything about the people’s concerns on other European Union citizens’ access to our taxpayer-funded benefits, that would help the Government to make the case for a completely fresh arrangement with the European Union. At the moment, we are deluding ourselves and the people in thinking that we can address those very serious concerns.

When my hon. Friends and I launched our Bills after the Queen’s Speech, the noble Lord Ashcroft commissioned a survey of the popularity of the proposed measures. I remind my hon. Friend the Minister that the proposal in clause 1 to record the nationality of everyone with a national insurance number or on benefits received the support of 71% of the sample, with only 8% of people against the proposal and 21% undecided. On the proposal to restrict welfare benefits to UK citizens only, which is effectively the rest of the Bill, 74% were in favour, with another 13% undecided.

I hope the Minister will realise that he should not be in any doubt, if there is any doubt, about the public demand for the measure. At the moment, the public are demanding the measure and the Government are not saying, “No we can’t do it because we are tied by European Union law. We therefore have to change the European Union law or get out of the European Union.” The Government are pretending that they have freedom and flexibility to act under European Union law when they do not. I suppose no one really wants to admit impotence, least of all a Government, but that is their situation in the face of the evolving European Union law in this field.

I will not address in great detail the way in which European Union law has evolved, but I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will answer some of the questions I asked in the debate on 5 June 2013 that were never answered. I asked:

“Does the Minister agree with the basic proposition that if someone from another European country decides to move to the United Kingdom, they should not expect to receive taxpayer-funded assistance for their housing, health care, education or living expenses?”—[Official Report, 5 June 2013; Vol. 563, c. 256WH.]

If the answer is that the Minister does not agree, let us have it on the record. It is no good ducking these questions. If a non-British EU national cannot afford to live in the United Kingdom without recourse to taxpayer-funded services, should not that person return to his own EU country rather than relying on UK taxpayer handouts? If the Government do not agree with that they should say so and then we can have a proper debate. I am sure we will then get even more letters than we do at the moment from UK Independence party supporters saying how out of the touch the Government are with the feelings of the people—but that is only an aside, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I hope that we will get some answers to those questions and will move away from the very carefully worded statements that on close analysis mean absolutely nothing, such as, “People will not be allowed to have benefits subject to their European Union rights.” Since their European Union rights give them access to almost all benefits, I submit that such a statement is without any value.

In essence, what happened was that we joined the European Economic Community, the fundamentals of which include freedom of movement, but over a period of time freedom of movement has been extended by treaty, directive, regulation and case law into areas that nobody could ever have contemplated. None of those extensions was discussed with the British people and hardly any of them were discussed with our Parliament.

The legal annexe, which is a scholarly document, spells out in frightening detail the extent to which the European Court of Justice has extended the scope of the various directives. For example, paragraph 47 states:

“In the case of Metock”

in 2008, the European Court of Justice made it clear that the free movement directive

“should not be interpreted restrictively and that its objectives must not be interpreted so as to deprive them of their effectiveness. The particular impact of the case in terms of the UK’s competence was its clear assertion that a member state should not be imposing additional requirements on those seeking to rely on free movement rights in addition to those set out in the existing legislation”.

The European Court of Justice is extending the law because it has direct application and because of the so-called shares of competence, which effectively mean that if the European Union legislates in this area it is not open to the UK Parliament or the UK Government to legislate in conflict with that.

Through the process of treating people from other countries in Europe who come to the United Kingdom as equals, we are moving inexorably towards the ever-closer union whereby people would not be citizens of an individual country but would just be citizens of the European Union. That is the agenda. When one sees the European Court of Justice’s interpretation of the various expressions in the legislation, one can see exactly what the threats on the horizon are and that they go beyond those that we have already witnessed.

[Philip Davies]

Will my hon. Friend expand on that? Many people are confused about whether the EU rules allow free movement of people or free movement of labour. If it is free movement of labour, does he agree that if somebody from another EU country does not have a job that should give the Government every entitlement to send that person back to their country rather than allowing them to stay in the UK accessing UK benefits?

[Mr Chope]

The problem is that the definition of “worker” is being extended. A significant case is pending in the European Court of Justice—that of Saint Prix v. the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions—and a preliminary reference concerns

“whether a person who gives up work… can remain a worker under Article 45.”

One is bound to sympathise with the Secretary of State, because the language—well, normal language just does not apply. It might be because the European Court of Justice works solely in French and delivers all its judgments in French. None the less, I think that it is extending the language somewhat to say that someone who gives up work can remain a worker. That is linked to the current provision, which states that a person cannot access means-tested benefits if they are going to be a burden on the social assistance system, but that system is being defined so narrowly that almost everyone is entitled to means-tested benefits.

I could give further examples, but I will draw my remarks to a close. Even if the Bill does not become law in this Session of Parliament, I hope that it will form a core part of the Conservative party manifesto at the next general election, because I am sure that its contents really accord with the wishes of the British people, as exemplified in any number of opinion polls.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. He is leading with his chin on these matters. He is getting out increasingly bigger spades with which to dig himself into a hole. He has now suggested that nobody from the EU comes here to claim benefits, but that everybody who comes here from outside the EU does so to claim benefits and that we need to restrict access to benefits for them. If he is not saying that, presumably his argument is that we should allow a free-for-all of benefits for anyone from anywhere around the world. That is certainly not an argument that I support, and I do not think that the majority of my constituents would support it.

[Mr Chope]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the question is not just whether people arrive here with the intention of claiming benefits, but whether, having been here for a bit of time and seen our generous benefits system, people decide not to seek employment but to claim benefits? For example, I had a constituency case in which a person came here from another European country and, after a year, gave up work and went on housing benefit, saying, “There’s no need for me to work.”

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I suspect that many Members have had similar cases. A man from Poland came into my constituency surgery who had come here to work, as he was entitled to do. He had heard on the grapevine in his local community that he was entitled to claim child benefit for his four children who were still residing back home in Poland. He thought that seemed like a good wheeze and that, if all his colleagues were doing it, he might as well do it himself. Of course, he found that, bizarrely, he was entitled to child benefit for his four children, who had never in their lives set foot outside Poland and who were living there with his wife, their mother. There is absolutely no justification for anybody from another country in the EU claiming child benefit for children who have not even had the decency to come over to this country and who are still residing in their home country.

The reason I support the Bill so strongly is that I believe we should treat all non-UK citizens the same, irrespective of where they are from. To me, that means restricting their access to benefits in this country. That is a simple proposition that I think most people in this country would support. We cannot afford to carry on handing out benefits willy-nilly to people who choose to come here from all over the EU—it is not sustainable for the welfare state or for our citizens. It will collapse the welfare state for UK citizens if we keep having to add to the burden.

Illegal Immigrants (Criminal Sanctions) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Friday 17th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Flushed by my success on the previous Bill, I start by saying that many Members will remember the Government’s publicity campaign in which vans went around telling people that, if they were here illegally, they should leave or face penalties or arrest. In fact, on closer examination, it is clear that the warning signs on those vans were of no more value than the sign that someone puts at the end of his garden saying, “Trespassers will be prosecuted.”

There is no criminal law against normal trespass. Likewise, it is not a criminal offence to be in this country having entered without authority or having overstayed once the legal authority to be here has expired. I do not think I am alone in finding it extraordinary that people can be in the United Kingdom without legal authority with impunity. They are not guilty of any offence because there is no offence. We are prosecuting hundreds of thousands of people for watching television illicitly without a television licence, but people who are here having broken our immigration laws are not subject to any criminal sanction.

When I raised the matter with the Immigration Minister, whom I am delighted to see on the Front Bench for this debate, he said, “Wouldn’t it be rather pointless to make it a criminal offence, because you would be prosecuting people and locking them up in prison when what you want is for them to go home?” I have built the Bill around that point. The penalties set out in clause 2 would accommodate his concerns.

Clause 1 states:

“Any person who is present in the United Kingdom after 30 June 2014 without legal authority shall be guilty of an offence…Any person who after 30 June 2014 enters or attempts to enter the United Kingdom without legal authority shall be guilty of an offence.”

We need to make it clear that the Government and our country do not tolerate people who break our immigration laws by coming into this country illicitly or by staying on after they should have left.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way and I very much support his Bill. Does he agree that there is currently no deterrent to somebody chancing their arm and trying to get into this country illegally, because the worst that can happen to them is that they will be sent back to where they come from? If his Bill was passed, the risk of losing their liberty might deter them from trying in the first place.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Let me give a bit of background. I discovered that when a bystander in the port of Poole sees illegal immigrants from the continent getting out of the back of a van or lorry and decides to call the police, the police are not interested because they have no power of arrest as the person has not committed a criminal offence. All they can do, if they are feeling generous with their time, is tell those people to go to Croydon to report to the immigration and nationality directorate, which will tell them how to get back home. Not surprisingly, such people do not go to Croydon but go elsewhere.

[Philip Davies]

Did my hon. Friend consider a more draconian measure for his Bill, such as saying that anybody who entered the country illegally would be greeted by the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz)?

[Mr Chope]

I do not think I can comment on that, particularly because the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) is not in the Chamber.

We then come on to the question of penalties. Let me illustrate the point with an example. I have a constituency case of a person who came here on a visitor’s visa. As they are married to a British citizen, all they needed to do was keep renewing that visa but they did not apply for an extension within the specified time and as a result they have been refused a new visa. I discussed with them whether they should appeal against that refusal, but there is no power of appeal and the advice that is given is that if an in-country application for a visa extension is rejected the person should voluntarily make their own way back to the country from which they came as it is possible they might be subject to a deportation order in due course. Of course, under the law a deportation order is subject to appeal so the authorities do not want to make many such orders as the appeals would clog up the immigration tribunal system. People therefore overstay their visas with impunity as there is effectively no sanction against them. The only sanction arises if they want to visit their country of origin to see a relative or something like that, when they suddenly find that they do not have the right paperwork to get back into the country. They can lie low in this country with impunity for months or years.

I think it would be reasonable to say that somebody guilty of an offence on summary conviction should be subject to a maximum penalty of six months’ imprisonment or a fine that would be unlimited in England and Wales and would not exceed £5,000 in Scotland or Northern Ireland. A person would be brought before the court and, under the provisions of clause 2(2), would be ordered to be deported.

Unlike the present laws relating to deportation, which are rarely exercised, certainly for relatively minor offences—they are not applied in the cases to which I have referred—the deportation order would be mandatory unless the Secretary of State certified that it was against the public interest. In practice, the person would come before the court and, if found guilty, would be fined and deported or imprisoned, probably not for very long, pending deportation. The deportation would be ordered by the court, rather than the immigration authorities—the Border Agency—which is what happens at present.

An official from the Scotland Office contacted me, wondering what will happen in Scotland when the Bill is on the statute book. She pointed out that in Scotland deportation orders are not made by the courts; they merely make a recommendation to that effect. She agreed that there is nothing to stop the courts being given the power to make specific deportation orders, which I think is fundamental to clause 2. If people are here without legal authority, the most important thing is that they are deported as soon as possible, rather than kept in custody at great expense. Rather than being subject to a recommendation of deportation, they should just be subject to deportation.

While driving to the House this morning, I saw a big, brand-new van on which were the words, “Home Office Immigration Enforcement”. I could not see whether there was anybody inside the van, other than the driver. I suspect that the large lettering was designed to reassure the public that something is being done about all this, but my experience, which I have referred to briefly today, leads me to believe that that is another game of bluff and bluster by the Government and that, in reality, they do not have the will to ensure that our borders are kept secure and that people who enter illegally are found guilty of an offence. [Interruption.]

The hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) is chuntering from the Opposition Front Bench. He might think it unusual for me to be concerned about Government policy, but I think that this is another area of Government policy that could be tightened significantly. That would be in accordance not only with public interest, but with the will of the public. In the popular mind, illegality means being against the criminal law, and if someone is guilty of a criminal offence they should be subject to the consequences.

London Local Authorities and Transport for London (No. 2) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Wednesday 11th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

My hon. Friend knows I am with him on most of his activities, but does he acknowledge that there is a certain smell of the nanny state in his amendments? Is he suggesting—this seems totally out of character for him—that drivers of non-electric vehicles should in effect subsidise drivers of electric vehicles through car parking charges?

[Mr Chope]

Far from it—I am with my hon. Friend on subsidies. I am suggesting that the cost of charging an electrically powered motor vehicle should be self-financing. Obviously, when someone goes into a public off-street car park and charges their vehicle, they can expect to pay for the parking, the service and the electricity. I am not suggesting that other car park users cross-subsidise those who have chosen to have electric vehicles. Electric vehicle users are already cross-subsidised to an extent because of their different treatment under the vehicle excise duty regime.

[Philip Davies]

I am relieved that my hon. Friend has not gone completely nanny state in his approach. However, his proposal would depend on sufficient demand for electric charging points in such locations. If there was insufficient demand, the drivers of non-electric cars would, in effect, be subsidising the very few drivers of electric cars at the charging points.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is getting into an interesting argument on which we could have an academic discourse. Obviously, to encourage an embryonic service, we might have to provide it and hope that people start using it. Many years ago, when I was the Minister with responsibility for roads, I was involved in promoting the use of lead-free fuel. It seems amazing, Mr Deputy Speaker that, within our living memory, we moved from full-leaded fuel to the unleaded version. To begin with, relatively few vehicles ran on unleaded petrol. If a pioneer bought a vehicle that used unleaded fuel and there was nowhere to fill it up, it would have been a deterrent to people taking up unleaded vehicles. In the same way, if we want to increase the uptake of electric vehicles, we need to increase the number of places where people who own them can recharge them, so that they do not just leave them with an empty battery in the middle of the highway.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I understand my hon. Friend’s point, but I cannot believe that, when he introduced unleaded fuel, he insisted that every local authority had an unleaded fuel pump outside every available car park. I presume he left it to the private sector to run the show. Why does he believe that we need the state to be involved so heavily in providing charging points?

[Mr Chope]

rose—

[Mr Chope]

Absolutely, Mr Deputy Speaker. As so often, you are spot on in reading the language not necessarily expressed between my hon. Friend and me.

In my hon. Friend’s most recent intervention, he asked why local authorities are being given this responsibility. The Bill does not leave it to the private sector to provide charging points for electric vehicles; it gives powers to London local authorities to provide and operate charging apparatus. In my submission, that is acceptable only if there is a requirement for them to provide that. What is the point of giving them a power without any certainty about whether they will exercise it? My hon. Friend paints a scenario in which the public sector can be kept out of this completely. Indeed, I could support that where there are no public sector London local authority-owned car parks. However, if London local authorities wish to take powers to establish charging points for electric vehicles, my point, and the point of these two amendments, is that they should provide them in all their car parks.

[Philip Davies]

I assure you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I will not mention unleaded fuel again. Coming on to the nitty gritty on electric charging points, as the Bill is currently written it may well still be that the local authority will not get involved and that it will be left to the private sector—there is no requirement. It is only if my hon. Friend’s amendment is accepted that local authorities will be forced to do this, rather than the private sector.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is making an argument against the whole of part 5. He is basically saying that if we are to have charging points for electric vehicles, it should be left to the market, and that the private sector will come into the market and fill any gaps. I find that to be a persuasive argument.

My counter-argument relates to the provisions in part 5. If London local authorities are to be given powers to set up charging points we should, at the same time, say that they shall set up charging points. Otherwise, we could have a situation where they pick and choose where they think it will be most advantageous for them to set up the charging points, and effectively undermine the potential private sector involvement to which my hon. Friend refers. One consequence of part 5 may well be that in London the private sector will be inhibited from coming forward to provide and operate charging apparatus, because local authorities will be competing unfairly by providing that apparatus in their best positioned off-street public car parks, rather than in all their car parks. That is the point I am trying to make: it should, effectively, be compulsory.

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[Mr Chope]

I accept that, which is why I am disappointed that relatively few spokespersons for London local authority taxpayers are present in the Chamber. There is a lot in this Bill that could ultimately result in additional costs for London local authority taxpayers, mainly through council tax. As somebody who represents a constituency outside London, all I can do is share my hon. Friend’s concern about that. Indeed, we are doing a public service in raising the issue, although it does not seem to have yet reached the ears of people across London, who are normally very concerned about whether they are getting value for money for their council tax.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend says that this is a matter only for London, but it is not, because if the strategy goes hopelessly wrong, London local authorities or the Mayor of London might at some point look to the Government to bail them out. That is why we all need to be aware of this issue on behalf of taxpayers in our constituencies.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I suppose the counter-argument is that it is important that a motorist setting out for London from Shipley in an electric car should be able to find somewhere to charge up their car with electricity.

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[Mr Chope]

Thank you for that ruling, Mr Deputy Speaker. Obviously it means that when the Minister responds, he should address his remarks to the issue of charging points for electric vehicles in London, without straying into whether there should be charging points for electric vehicles beyond London. I am glad that you have effectively given him that warning in advance of him making his contribution, and I am sorry if I was going to lead him down the wrong path.

[Philip Davies]

The Government have set out their position in “Driving the Future Today”, as published by the Office for Low Emission Vehicles, which has been given money to provide such points. My concern is that if my hon. Friend’s amendments are accepted, that could lead to the national budget for this issue being used up.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. I know that you wanted to make a short intervention, Mr Davies, and I know that you may wish to speak later, in which case I would not want you to use your speech up now, but instead to recognise that we need to continue with the amendments before us, rather than causing further distractions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

Given the discussion that we have already had about the desirability of the private sector being involved, would not these amendments strike out the opportunity for such involvement by preventing a London authority from allowing the provisions to be operated on its behalf?

[Mr Chope]

Maybe my hon. Friend is right, but my submission is that if the London authority is going to provide charging points, it should do so itself, on its own land. The Bill does not deal with charging points on private land. It deals only with charging points in public off-street car parks that are in the control of the authority, and on any highway for which it is responsible as the highway authority. If someone is going to set up a charging point on a highway, the highway authority should be responsible for it, rather than the person who is setting it up. If anyone wants to set up private off-street charging points for electric vehicles, I would encourage them so to do. They would not need the permission of the local authority to do that. Indeed, they might be able to access the subsidies that were mentioned earlier. Clause 16 allows a London authority to give an “authorised person” permission to set up a charging point on the highway, for which that authority would not be directly responsible.

[Philip Davies]

Surely any person granted such permission would be acting on behalf of the local authority, which could revoke that permission any time it saw fit. My hon. Friend seems to be going down the road of enforced nationalisation.

[Mr Chope]

Well, if that is not sufficient to intimidate me into withdrawing my amendment, I do not know what is! I would certainly not wish to go down any route that could be interpreted, even mistakenly, as enforced nationalisation. I will reflect on my hon. Friend’s point. I look forward to hearing his speech, and I shall perhaps come back to that point when I have the privilege of winding up this short debate.

Amendments 26 and 27 propose leaving out subsections (6) and (7) of clause 16. The effect would be to deal with the issue of liability. One of the privileges that the Bill gives to London local authorities is to exempt them from the common law relating to nuisance on the highway or in public off-street car parks.

It says in subsection 7(b),

“in relation to permissions granted under subsection (2)”,

that nothing

“is to be taken as imposing on a London authority by whom a permission has been granted any liability for injury, damage or loss resulting from the presence on a highway or public off-street car park of the charging apparatus to which the permission relates”.

What is effectively happening under this provision is that the London local authorities are seeking to say, “Not me, Guv”. If anything goes wrong with the charging apparatus and it results in an accident or in somebody being injured, which would normally lead to a claim for damages against the local authority, that authority is going to be exempt from the consequent liability. I think that puts the local authorities in a privileged position, enabling them to have an unfair competitive advantage compared with other people who are involved in providing charging points for electric vehicles.

Amendment 27 emphasises the same point in respect of paragraphs (c) and (d) of subsection (7). Paragraph (c) states that nothing in the section

“is to be taken as imposing on a London authority any liability for injury, damage or loss resulting from the presence on a highway or public off-street car park of a connecting cable”.

If somebody puts a connecting cable across the highway or a public off-street car park, but it is not constructed in such a way as not to be an obstruction, resulting in somebody tripping over it and injuring themselves, one would expect that local authority to be liable for the consequences of that action. According to the drafting, however, the London local authority is seeking to absolve itself from liability for people who fall over connecting cables, on the highway or in public off-street car parks, which connect to charging points for electric vehicles. The subsequent paragraph specifies that a London local authority has “the right” to “indemnify” itself

“against any claim in respect of injury, damage or loss arising out of the grant of a permission granted under subsection (2).”

It seems to me that these provisions give to the London local authorities far too many privileges above the law. If they are keen to set up these charging points for electric vehicles, they should, in my submission, also accept the responsibility that goes with that, which is that they should be constructed in a responsible way and should not cause danger to members of the public which can result in injury, damage or loss.

Amendment 28 is designed to leave out subsection (8), which reads:

“For the purposes of determining, in any proceedings in a court of civil jurisdiction, who is liable for injury, damage or loss resulting from the presence on a highway or public off-street car park of a connecting cable at or near charging apparatus…it shall be presumed that the person in charge of the relevant vehicle at the relevant time had responsibility for and control of the cable.”

Why should that presumption be made? Why should it not be a matter of who has responsibility for and control of the cable? That should be the test, rather than making a presumption that the person in charge of the relevant vehicle has the responsibility for and control of the cable. It seems to me that this is another way of introducing a statutory exception that benefits local authorities and overrides the common law of the land.

[Philip Davies]

I am glad to observe that my hon. Friend is back on track with the amendments, because they are faultless. Does he not think it bizarre that a driver who has an accident caused by a cable while he is driving along should be treated as if he were in control of that cable, although he may not have been aware of its existence before the accident?

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. That brings us back to the question of whom we are trying to encourage to use electric vehicles, and hence to use electric vehicle charging points. If using a charging point can make someone liable at law for events for which that person would not have been responsible but for the provisions of this statute, that in itself will deter people from using electric vehicles. I know of no legislation that provides for someone who fills up his tank at a petrol station to be automatically liable, as the person in charge of the vehicle, irrespective of whether he or she is at fault. I assume that normally, whether the petrol station was owned by a private sector company or by a local authority, its owner would, could or should be responsible.

Important issues of principle underlie these provisions. The danger, as always, is that if they are passed without adverse comment, it will be possible for them to be replicated in other Bills. We have observed that iterative process for many years. Throughout the country, we have encountered more and more—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that clear, and I am happy to move on.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) may have accepted this amendment, but I am not sure that I shall accept it as easily. May I therefore suggest that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) does not move on quite so quickly, and instead outlines why this is necessary, because I do not see why?

[Mr Chope]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) will be able to make his own speech in due course, and when our friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), replies on behalf of the promoters, my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley can intervene on him to ask why he thinks this amendment is so good. That might be the better way of proceeding, because the situation from my point of view is that I thought my amendment was a good idea and now it has been accepted by the promoters, which I think that is a doubly good idea.

Amendment 31 addresses the definition of connecting cable. It is defined in clause 16 as

“any cable or wire, whether provided by the authority or otherwise, used to connect the charging apparatus to a vehicle and that is not permanently attached to the charging apparatus.”

As a consequence of the other amendments, I do not think the definition is sufficient.

[Philip Davies]

If my hon. Friend’s earlier amendments ensure all of this has to be done by the London local authority alone, am I right in thinking there will not be any wires, connecting cables or anything else provided by people other than the local authority?

[Mr Chope]

That is absolutely right, but in drafting these amendments I had to anticipate the possibility that my earlier amendments would not be accepted by the promoters or the House—after all, it seems that there is even some difficulty in getting my hon. Friend to accept them. I therefore thought, to employ a lawyer’s phrase, that it was probably sensible to plead in the alternative, or move an amendment in the alternative. I agree that it would not be sensible to accept all the amendments en bloc because some of them are in the alternative. That would have to be sorted out if a lot of these amendments were carried or were accepted by the promoters.

Madam Deputy Speaker, you have arrived in the Chair just in time for us to get on to clause 17. It deals with notices to be given before the exercise of powers under section 16. I have tabled some amendments to this clause. Amendment 32 would leave out subsection (2), because that is consistent with the argument I was putting forward earlier that it would not be right to allow authorised persons to be involved in this process. This is therefore a consequential amendment, consequent upon being able to remove references to authorised persons from the Bill.

[Philip Davies]

I follow the logic of that, but it does not necessarily follow. It might be thought that the authorised person does not need first to publish a notice under this section. Has my hon. Friend given any thought to whether the publishing of the notice was relevant in his deliberations?

[Mr Chope]

Clause 17(1) states that

“a London authority shall not exercise any power…unless they have first published a notice under this section.”

[Interruption.] Okay, well that is what clause 17(1) says. Clause 17(2) says “unless the authorised person”—[Interruption.] Yes, but I am seeking to remove authorised persons from this entirely, whether or not they had published notices. That is why this is a consequential amendment, consequent upon the removal of any references to authorised persons. That is because they would not be able to operate this equipment, whether or not they had published any notices under clause 17. That is made clear by subsection (3), which states:

“A London authority or an authorised person, as the case may be, shall publish a notice”.

My amendment 33 seeks to remove the power for an authorised person to publish such a notice. Amendments 34, 35 and 36 make similar amendments, and it is not necessary to repeat the argument in support of them.

I shall now deal with the amendments relating to clause 18, which is entitled:

“Duties to consult or obtain consent of other authorities”.

It is invidious to try to evaluate the significance of one’s amendments, but amendment 37 is significant. Clause 18(1) states:

“A London authority shall not exercise any power conferred by section 16(1) unless they have consulted any authority other than themselves who are a local planning authority, as defined in the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 for the area in which they propose to exercise the power.”

Consulting a planning authority is a very different proposition from obtaining its permission, which is why amendment 37 would replace “consulted” with “obtained the consent of”.

When people are faced with the possibility of having an electric charging point provided by a local authority or a London authority on the highway outside their house, they need to be protected from it being sited in the wrong place or being a health hazard. The local residents look to the local planning authority, in the first place, to try to ensure that those safeguards are available, through the process of needing to obtain planning consent. That involves publishing a notice, giving notice of what is proposed and obtaining the consent of the authority. The Bill states that that would not need to be done and someone could put their charging point on the highway without having to get the permission of the local planning authority.

[Philip Davies]

I agree wholeheartedly with what my hon. Friend is saying; it would seem absurd that someone could consult the authority and have it reject the suggestion, yet they would still plough on regardless. Does he understand that this amendment, which I support, highlights the folly of his amendment 21, which sought to force London local authorities to provide these places everywhere? He is making a good point, but it flies in the face of his earlier amendment.

[Mr Chope]

Giving my hon. Friend the benefit of the doubt, my response to his intervention is that that is not necessarily so. This provision presupposes that the London authority, which might be Transport for London, would be providing the charging points and doing so against the wishes of the local planning authority in whose area it was going to put those charging points. That is what I am trying to get at: it is possible that there will be two different authorities. The London authority exercising its power under clause 16(1) is not necessarily the same as the local planning authority as defined in the Town and Country Planning Act 1990.

Amendment 38 will leave out subsection (2), which talks about an “authorised person”. The same issue arises about consultation and, as I have already said, I do not think that the powers in the Bill should be extended to authorised people. The same point arises from amendment 39, which will leave out subsection (3).

Last but not least comes amendment 40. Clause 19 creates a new offence of unlawful use of a charging point—[Laughter.] My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley laughs, and I think that many people coming to the issue for the first time would laugh as well. The clause provides for a new offence—have we not enough offences on the statute book already—and states:

“A person shall be guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale if he uses charging apparatus in contravention of a sign displayed on the apparatus which indicates that…the apparatus is not to be used for any purpose other than charging a vehicle; and…it is an offence to so use the apparatus…A person is not guilty of an offence under subsection (1) if…he had the permission of the person who operated the charging apparatus at the time to use the charging apparatus for the purpose in question”—

although it was a non-authorised purpose—

“he had reasonable cause to believe he had such permission; or…at the time there was on the charging apparatus an indication given by the person who operated the charging apparatus that it could be used for the purpose for which it was used.”

Effectively, the clause creates a new offence of stealing electricity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend might well be on to a good point, but we will find out when we hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East on behalf of the Bill’s promoters.

Section 13 of the Theft Act makes abstracting electricity an offence. It is triable in either the magistrates court or the Crown court, and there are Sentencing Council guidelines on the appropriate punishment. Case law suggests that, for a person who installs a device that causes the electricity meter in their home to give a false reading, a sentence of one month’s immediate imprisonment might be appropriate. I tabled amendment 40 because I was worried that the clause would be another example of putting a further small offence on the statute book and complicating the criminal law, instead of relying on basic law, which is that someone who steals electricity—who takes it dishonestly and without authority—is committing an offence under section 13 of the 1968 Act.

[Philip Davies]

I agree with my hon. Friend, but is not clause 19 also deficient by focusing in subsection (2) on the fact that someone would be not guilty if

“he had the permission of the person who operated the charging apparatus”?

Surely we should be focusing on the person who was paying for the charging apparatus, who might not be the same person as the operator.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I am grateful to him for citing another reason why the clause is defective. He is making an additional argument in support of amendment 40, given that it would remove clause 19 completely.

I anticipate that my hon. Friend will make a speech, so I shall throw out the invitation that I made in connection with the previous group of amendments. It would not be reasonable to press more than one of the amendments in this group to a Division, so it is important that we listen to hon. Members’ arguments so that we can determine which amendment they think should be put before the House. I shall be interested to hear in due course the views of my hon. Friends the Members for Shipley and for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) and anybody else, including perhaps the sponsor of the Bill. When he responds to my remarks in relation to the amendments, we will be able to judge which one he thinks is the strongest and the one in respect of which he has the greatest difficulty in putting forward a cogent response.

The issue of charging points for electric vehicles is one that we need to take seriously. The provisions of the Bill could be a precedent that is established across the country. It has taken a long time for the Bill to reach this stage. Bearing in mind that it is Government policy to facilitate the production and use of electric vehicles and to try to make it practical for people who have such vehicles to travel around not just the conurbation but the country, I hope we will hear from the Government on the subject and also from the hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue), who I welcome to the debate to speak on behalf of the Opposition. Her predecessor, the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), attended the previous debate in his capacity as a Front-Bench spokesman. I was very sorry that he chose to resign his position because he had been a great servant of the House and had contributed well to debates such as this. All I can say to the hon. Lady in anticipating her contribution to the debate is that she has a hard act to follow, but I am sure she will be up to the task.

These issues are important and are worthy of the scrutiny of the House. In due course, if we get the right charging regime for electric vehicles, it may well be that you, Madam Deputy Speaker, start using an electric vehicle in London if you do not already do so, as might I. If we do not have unfair subsidies and an unfair regime for local authorities, organisations such as this Parliament of ours may be able to set up charging points for electric vehicles. Who knows, this could be a very significant debate for the future of green energy in our country.

I hope that after we have heard the debate we will be able to decide whether amendment 21 or some other amendment is the one on which we wish to divide.

[Philip Davies]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope). I was a little worried when he began. I thought he had been got at by the Whips Office and had been turned into a more left-wing version, but as he got through his speech I realised that the authentic voice of Christchurch was once again being heard.

I congratulate my hon. Friend, who does such a great service on private Bills, which the promoters understandably would like to be nodded through in the minimum time. I echo his praise for our hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), who is not somebody who wants to see legislation nodded through, but engages in the debate and the process. We should commend him for that. Without my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, some rather nasty parts of private Bills would go through without anybody raising an eyebrow. Even if his amendments do not always find favour, it is essential that they are debated and considered, and that people can see their merits or otherwise. I hope that plays its part in making the legislation that goes through this House better than it would otherwise be. So I am grateful to him for the amendments that he tabled.

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch set me a challenge to give him some guidance as to which amendment I thought was the one that he should press, so I shall try to give—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I am not suggesting what my hon. Friend has just said. I would support him in an aspiration that the number of public off-street car parks under the management and control of local authorities should be significantly reduced by means of being sold by those authorities. My amendment is saying that if car parks are managed and controlled by the local authority, that authority shall set up charging points.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend puts a slightly different complexion on matters, if I understand him correctly; if I have not, he must pull me up. If he is suggesting that the onerous requirement on local authority car parks is to encourage authorities to sell off the car parks so that they do not have to fulfil that requirement, I do at last see what he is driving at. I start to see the merits of his plan. I was not aware of what his real agenda was; it is a “privatisation of car parks” amendment, rather than one about the privatisation of charging apparatus. I will have to rethink my views.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend, the sponsor of the Bill, is getting ahead of me. He is clearly a much faster reader than I am. He is ahead of the game and is absolutely right that amendments 35 and 36 are also relevant.

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch is on to a good thing with amendment 37. It seems ridiculous that the only duty in clause 18(1) is to consult. The title of the clause is: “Duties to consult or obtain consent”. Somebody taking a fleeting look at the Bill would think that obtaining consent was an important part of it, but my hon. Friend is right that subsection (1) mentions only consultation, which is not good enough. Consent must be obtained; otherwise it is a potential affront to local democracy. What on earth is the point of consulting if no regard is to be given to the views of the consultation? That would be a pointless exercise. If an authority has decided that it is going ahead with something and then simply goes through the motions, that would be a waste of time.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is making a good point about the contrast in clause 18 whereby the local planning authority has to be consulted but Network Rail Infrastructure Ltd and London Underground Ltd have to give their consent, so they are being given a privileged, elevated position compared with the local planning authority, to which local residents look for protection against unwanted developments.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One could argue that it should be the other way around: companies such as Network Rail are not accountable to the public in the same way as the planning authority or as responsive to the public mood. Surely we should expect the consent of the relevant local authority to be obtained.

The point is—I am sure we all have examples of this in our constituencies—that the public have completely lost faith in consultations, and this Bill reinforces that. People are conned into thinking that statutory consultations are meaningful and that they matter and will make a difference, only to find that their views are completely ignored and overridden. People lose faith in the whole process and end up not engaging in anything, because they think it is a waste of time.

I am afraid that this clause reinforces something that does a great disservice to our democracy: sham consultations which people go through simply because there is a statutory requirement to do so. Nobody takes notice of them, because the decision has already been made and they are a minor inconvenience. People say, “We’ve got to waste a bit of time on this consultation, go through the motions and look as if we’re doing something,” knowing full well that not a blind bit of notice will be taken of what anybody says. The only thing worse than not consulting people is to consult them and take no notice of them. I say to the sponsor of the Bill that if there is no requirement to take any notice of the consultation, do not have a consultation in the first place. The local authorities should be open and honest about the fact that they do not care what local residents think and plough on with what they are doing, without going through what we all know is an absolute sham which does a great disservice to public life and public bodies.

London Local Authorities and Transport for London (No. 2) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Wednesday 10th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[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 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 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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

The hon. Gentleman suddenly seems rather nervous about committing himself. I am grateful to him for acknowledging the strength of the argument, even if that is not carried forward into support in the Lobby.

[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—

[Philip Davies]

Spam.

[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]

That could well be an unintended consequence—

[Philip Davies]

Or an intended consequence.

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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 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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

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[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?

[Mr Chope]

I am afraid that that is the exam question I hoped would not be asked, because I do not know the answer off the top of my head. What I do know, however, is that a fine not exceeding level 1 is much lower than a fine not exceeding level 5.

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[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.

Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill [Lords] (Programme) (No. 3)

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Tuesday 26th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I am always suspicious when a deal is done between the usual channels, and that is what has happened in this case. The Minister said that she thinks it reasonable that there is less time to debate the Bill on Report than was originally intended on 19 November because we do not need more than three hours to scrutinise it. That is very paternalistic. She then argued that because the Committee spent less time discussing the Bill than it might have done, we need less time to discuss it on Report. Surely the reason we need more time on Report is that only then do Members who were not members of the Committee that considered the Bill in detail have a chance to participate in the debate and to table amendments.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Does he agree that there is bound to be no proper scrutiny in Committee because the Government pack it with people who agree with them—supporters of the Bill whom they want to be there?

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is right. I am not aware of anybody on the Committee feeling that the Bill was too strong and should be weakened; the only people there either supported it or wanted it to be strengthened. That shows how unrepresentative the Committee was. We now have three groups of amendments and only three hours in which to debate them, after deducting such time as we will spend on considering this programme motion.

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[Mr Chope]

I do not expect hon. Members to apologise to me. I think actions speak louder than words on these issues.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend said that there would be only an hour to debate each of the three groups of amendments because there are three hours and three groups. He was being overly generous, because any Divisions will eat further into that time, so there may be only a maximum of 45 minutes for each group.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is right.

I am going to finish soon because other people want to participate in this very short debate. Before I do so, let me point out that the Minister says that one of the justifications for curtailing the amount of time to debate the Bill on Report is that the Committee changed the Bill to introduce an ability for the adjudicator to fine without that having to be the subject of regulations in future. That is a fundamental change to the Bill. I would have thought that that is an argument for having more, not less, discussion on Report.

Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill [Lords]

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Tuesday 26th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, but again, I do not want to get on to parts of the Bill that are subject to amendments in future groups, so I will resist that temptation.

Supermarkets can operate properly only with the good will of their suppliers. There are often cases in which, for example, a supplier has a problem at short notice—we have seen that recently with the issue of horsemeat. Things have to be taken off sale at short notice and production dries up quickly. That happens when foreign bodies are found in certain products, which have to be taken off the shelves. A supermarket can operate only if it then has other suppliers that it can go to and ask to fill the void at short notice. It goes to another supplier and says, “We’ve got some empty shelves and a lack of supply. Can you come and help us out?” Do people really think that the supplier would help out a supermarket chain that was trying to bankrupt it or screw it into the ground? Of course it would not.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood made the point that the limits in my new clauses may impede small business at some point in future. However, new clause 2 specifies a turnover of £1 billion a year, and all I can say is that, my word, supermarkets must be a force for good if they can turn small and medium-sized enterprises into firms with a £1 billion-a-year turnover. That should be something to celebrate, not to criticise supermarkets for. Suppliers would be delighted to be companies of that scale. I am not entirely sure which ones in his constituency he is thinking of, but if he has any examples of firms that he is worried may have a turnover of £1 billion a year, I would like to meet them to find out what their fears are.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Can he illustrate to the House what he thinks would be £1 billion-worth of cauliflowers?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, which strikes at the heart of new clauses 1 and 2. We can argue about the necessity of the Bill, and as far as I am concerned it is not only unnecessary—as my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) made clear, there are no complaints about the existing code, so it is a solution looking for a problem—but the most unconservative-minded thing that we could possibly see. I have no problem with the Liberal Democrats supporting it, because of course they are always a left-wing tribe, but I am worried that members of my own party are supporting this intervention in the free markets.

Two companies, free to make their own decisions, are making agreements and signing a contract, and then we in the House think that we should intervene in that contract that they have both entered into freely and say, “By the way, we don’t think you should have signed that contract.” I have always thought that companies are more than capable of deciding those things for themselves.

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[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is for ever an optimist, but I am afraid that, in my experience, logic is not usually the great winner in these debates. Unless the Government come up with an idea themselves, they appear reluctant to accept anybody else’s amendment, simply because they did not come up with it themselves.

Do we think the Bill should be directed at Walkers snack foods? What about Coca-Cola? That is a poor, small firm that needs looking after when it negotiates with supermarkets!

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend refers to Walkers snack foods. Potatoes are among the raw materials that that company uses a lot of, but there is nothing in the Bill that would protect the suppliers of potatoes to Walkers.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. The Bill would still allow Walkers to screw the potato suppliers—who provide the raw materials—into the ground as much as it liked, but it would prevent Asda, for example, from trying to negotiate the best deal with Walkers for its crisps.

I have mentioned Coca-Cola. I also wonder whether Heinz Ltd would really need to take a complaint to an adjudicator. Is Heinz not big enough to look after itself? Why on earth are we passing legislation to intervene in disputes between big supermarkets and big suppliers such as Heinz, Diageo, United Biscuits, Kraft Foods, Nestlé, Premier Foods, Fullers Foods, Britvic Soft Drinks Ltd and Mars? Are we really saying that the House must set up a state regulator to intervene in negotiations or disputes between massive multinational companies? Those companies have recourse to the courts if they feel that a contract has been breached. Are we really saying that Heinz does not have the wherewithal to take a case to court if it feels that a supplier has dealt with it unfairly? Does anyone want to stand up and say that Heinz does not have the wherewithal to take such a case to court? Who wants to make that point?

City of London (Various Powers) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Tuesday 26th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

Indeed, Mr Deputy Speaker, I was tempted to ask to intervene on my hon. Friend. I am grateful to him for expanding on that important point, and I am grateful to you for your indulgence in enabling the point to be made. I accept that the City of London is in a separate position from that of other local authorities.

I want to move away from the generalities and turn to the specifics of the Bill. The power in clause 3 relating to temporary street trading is effectively a liberating provision when compared with the current regime. It will enable street trading to be carried out over a limited period and, as the explanatory memorandum makes clear, it represents a relaxation of the restrictive code. I am not going to argue against that, because to do so would be to argue against the principles that I have fought hard for in many similar Bills in the House. I would not quibble with the detailed contents of the measures on temporary street trading.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I share my hon. Friend’s view, but when it comes to scrutiny of the Bill, is he happy that the arrangements have been sufficiently relaxed?

[Mr Chope]

I think my hon. Friend knows the answer to that: I would like to see a much more relaxed arrangement. Any relaxation, however, is probably better than none. It is important for people to be able to enter the marketplace as business men without the need for much capital. I view that as fundamental in an entrepreneurial society. The City of London obviously epitomises the entrepreneurial society, which is why it is good for the City of London to encourage street traders and people starting out in their business life and career to be able to show what they are worth, perhaps initially by getting a street trading licence, perhaps operating like interns on a temporary basis and seeing how it goes. I believe that clause 3 is—I hope I do not have to eat these words later—a clause for good, so I support it.

The issue of temporary licences is not one that greatly concerns me, but I am concerned about whether the case for increased penalties has been made. It is easy to say that it is expensive to prosecute. We know that companies will say, “We do not prosecute people who are shoplifters because it is not worth the candle. It will cost us too much to prosecute and when we get people before the courts, the fines will be so derisory that we will not achieve much purpose and we will have been put to a lot of needless expense.” That argument is often put forward on behalf of public authorities, which are funded by local or national taxpayer resources.

Having said all that, this country is one that believes in the rule of law, and I would have thought that an important principle of the rule of law is that if an enforcement authority feels that breaches of specific local byelaws or local legislation are to the detriment of the people living in the area, it should be quite happy to prosecute, recognising that a cost is associated with that. Ultimately, the taxpayer pays a lot of money for prosecuting people and even more money if those people are convicted and sentenced to prison, but we do not say that it is not a good thing to do that, as it is an important matter of principle. I am not impressed, in respect of clause 6, with the idea that prosecuting authorities should not bring prosecutions just because they think it is not financially expedient to do so on the grounds that insufficient money will come back to them. Apart from anything else, the penalties that will be increased will be court penalties; as I understand it, they will not be to the benefit of City of London local council tax payers. The penalties would go to helping to meet the costs of the national Exchequer, as they are pooled for very understandable reasons. In the absence of hard evidence, I am not convinced of the case for increasing the penalties as set out in clause 6.

I have a much greater problem with clause 7. As I said in an intervention, the provisions on enforcement of seizure, the return of seized items, compensation, forfeiture of seized items, seizure of perishable articles, motor vehicles and disposal orders have been considered on a number of occasions by Members, most recently in respect of four private Bills promoted by the city of Leeds, the city of Nottingham, the city of Canterbury and Reading borough council. Those provisions were removed from all four Bills. My hon. Friend may say, “Ah, but this Bill relates to London, and the same provisions have been passed in the case of other London local authorities.” That is true, but they were passed against the wishes of my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), who I am pleased to see is present, and against my wishes, as well as, I believe, those of many other people.

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[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend’s comments serve to remind me that last night I was in the City of London Guildhall library where our party colleague the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon) made a speech entitled “Deregulating for growth,” which is a principle I am sure my hon. Friend and I both support. Too much legislation adds new regulation, however, which is counter-productive to the policy of promoting growth in our economy, and anything the City of London does in adding further regulation will come under more scrutiny than if that is done by a little borough council somewhere else in the country, as the ethos of the City of London is based on having the minimum amount of regulation necessary to ensure we get economic growth and successful financial and professional services industries in the City. It is against that background that I raise my concerns about clause 7.

[Philip Davies]

As my hon. Friend knows, I agree with his views about giving local authorities of any description the power of seizure, especially on such flimsy evidence as provided for in this clause. Is he reassured in any way by proposed new subsection 16A(2), which says an article can be seized only

“if it may be required to be used in evidence in any proceedings in respect of the offence in question”,

or is that merely a mask covering something that is still unacceptable?

[Mr Chope]

On the face of it, that does not seem too bad, but if we look at other provisions in clause 7, we see that there are difficulties. Proposed new subsection 16A(1)(c) states that an authorised officer may seize

“any receptacle or equipment being used by”

the person in question. My hon. Friend will know from having read the Bill that a receptacle could be a motor car or van from which ice-creams are being sold. These receptacles or pieces of equipment are therefore potentially quite valuable, and the fact of having them seized could cause the person concerned a significant problem, particularly if they are seized on dubious grounds.

[Philip Davies]

It is stated that such an item can be seized only

“if it may be required to be used in evidence.”

Does my hon. Friend agree that that does not really provide any safeguards at all, because anything could be seized on the basis that it may be required, as that does not mean that it is required?

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is on to a good point. It is stated later in the Bill that such an item could be retained for up to six months on the basis that it may be required in connection with a prosecution. However, a prosecution may then never take place and the person will have been deprived of their goods for six months. That may have achieved the enforcement authority’s objective, but it generates a grave injustice for the victim of that seizure. That is why there needs to be a proper balance struck between the rights and responsibilities in the Bill’s enforcement provisions. We should be most reluctant to give powers of seizure not only to constables, but to authorised officers, who could be

“any officer or employee of the Corporation”

or

“any person by whom…any enforcement functions under this Part fall to be discharged”

or

“any employee of any such person”.

That is getting quite remote from the person in charge, and the more remote we go, the more scope there is for abuse.

If the only redress is something that may come six months later, there may be no redress at all. For example, if the ice cream van—the “receptacle”—is seized in March, it might only be returned in September, by which time the main ice cream selling season will have passed and so the person’s livelihood will have been taken away from them for the duration of the season. That illustrates the potential gravity of what is being proposed.

My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) might say that new section 16B deals with the return of seized articles, with subsection (3) stating:

“Subject to subsection (8), following the conclusion of the proceedings the article or thing shall be returned to the person from whom it was seized”.

Again, however, the devil is in the detail, as we see in the provisions dealing with the return of an ice cream van. New section 16B(5) provides that

“where a receptacle seized…is a motor vehicle used for ice cream trading, the Corporation or the Commissioner of Police…shall, within 3 days of the receipt of an application in writing by the owner or registered keeper of the vehicle, permit the person to remove it.”

In other words, the person would be able to take it back. However, the Bill goes on to state that they would not be able to do so

“where the circumstances mentioned in subsection (7) apply”.

One of those circumstances is perfectly reasonable— the person has been convicted of an offence under the legislation already. I am not going to quibble about that, but I do quibble with new section 16B(6)(b), which states that one of these circumstances is where

“the owner or registered keeper of the vehicle is being prosecuted for a previous alleged offence”.

In other words, someone gets arrested and prosecuted, and the proceedings have not been determined—so the presumption of innocence surely continues to apply—yet the mere fact that they are being prosecuted puts them in a more prejudicial position than if there were no prosecution. It is reasonable to look at some of the issues that we might want to raise in Committee, and that provision removing a person’s ability to recover their ice cream van within three days of it being removed if they are being prosecuted for another offence is draconian, over the top and unnecessary.

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[Philip Davies]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend, but will he turn his eye to clause 16B(6)(c) as well? Not only is the position as he suggests, but another circumstance is where

“the vehicle has been used in the commission of such an offence or previous alleged offence.”

Is he aware of exactly who determines whether it has been used in such an offence or how an allegation of an offence would apply? That provision seems rather loose too.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is on to a good point. The Bill does not say that the vehicle must have been used by the same person in the commission of such an offence. It could have been acquired in all innocence from a previous ice cream vendor in market overt, in an auction or by a private treaty sale. The vehicle’s new owner would not know that it had been used in the commissioning of an offence in the past, so he would be penalised because, unknown to him, the vehicle had been used in such a way. Surely that would be unreasonable. If the EU services directive wants to create level playing fields, I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to consider whether there should be a level playing field, which we do not have at the moment, between those who have purchased ice cream vans but find out later that they have been used in connection with an offence in the City of London and those who purchase ice cream vans that have not been used for such offences. There should be a level playing field between those two categories of person.

[Philip Davies]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, who is very good at picking up on these anomalies in Bills. Will he talk a little about how that measure applies to an alleged offence, as it applies even to an offence that has not necessarily taken place and that has merely been alleged?

[Mr Chope]

Exactly. When people are given free rein to bring legislation before this House and to create new offences, the temptation always seems to be to draft the offences in the widest possible terms. It is incumbent on us to put pressure on the promoter of the Bill and to ask whether the proposals are reasonable or whether they go over the top. This is a good example of the drafting being far wider than it needs to be.

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[Mr Chope]

Mr Deputy Speaker, you are quite right to have a go at the victim, which is me. I was led astray by that intervention, and I accept full responsibility.

If a product is perishable, the consequences of having it seized may be that it loses all its value. That is important. I am not sure that the provisions relating to perishable items in clause 16E are sufficient. The clause says:

“No article or thing which is of a perishable nature … shall be seized under the provisions of section 16A … unless the Corporation gives a notice in writing under subsection (2) to the person from whom the article or thing is seized.”

I would have thought it best to say that nothing perishable should be seized. Ice-cream could be removed and, if necessary, the van seized. The seizure of perishable articles is quite an oppressive power.

Proposed new section 16E(2) states:

“Where a perishable article or thing is seized…the person from whom it is seized shall be given a notice in writing…giving the address from which the article or thing may be collected; and…stating that if that person is not the owner of the article or thing, then that person should give the owner the information referred to in paragraphs (a) and (b).”

On the face of it, one would think that that would ensure that perishable articles were not seized, but when one looks at the small print one sees that they will be seized, and that is unfair and unjust. Indeed, such provisions have been removed from similar Bills because Members on the Government Benches—I cannot speak for Opposition Members—thought that they were disproportionately heavy in their application to ordinary people.

I have some grave concerns about the powers of seizure, especially when dealing with items of greater value than the maximum penalties under the Bill. A specific provision provides that it is open to the authorities to seize equipment, including motor vehicles, of a value higher than the maximum fine that could be imposed under any circumstances. That, in effect, deprives people of their assets, perhaps temporarily, in a disproportionately heavy manner.

[Philip Davies]

I wondered whether my hon. Friend was going to mention the provision on compensation for seizure. Proposed new section 16D(4) states:

“The court may only make an order for compensation under subsection (3) if satisfied that seizure was not lawful under section 16A.”

That comes back to reasonable grounds for suspicion, which appears to me to be framed so as to ensure that compensation never has to be paid, even when seizure has happened wrongly.

[Mr Chope]

As so often, my hon. Friend is right. By looking at all the language in the Bill, one is able to see the consequences. The exemptions are so hedged around that it will be difficult for anyone to comply with them, especially if the ultimate test is whether someone has a reasonable suspicion. That particular fault-line runs throughout these clauses. I have many concerns about the powers, especially as they relate to motor vehicles and perishable goods, but I do not need to go into the detail of disposal orders at the moment.

Clause 8 deals with charges for licensed street traders. I have always tried to be fair and give credit where it is due, and I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster makes a strong case on this issue. If one side of the street is controlled by one local authority and the other side by another local authority, there is an argument for saying that the prices charged for street-trading licences should be the same. My hon. Friend may remember the days when the Foreign Secretary lived on one side of a street in Lambeth and the other side of the street was in Wandsworth, and there was an enormous disparity in council tax—the figure in Lambeth being very much higher than that in Wandsworth. That shows the sensitivity when one part of the street is in one borough and another part of the street in another local authority area, resulting in differential pricing.

[Philip Davies]

I intervene to remind my hon. Friend that the Ministers have changed places and he can now commend the current incumbent of the Front Bench for his excellent speech last night.

[Mr Chope]

I have already done so.

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[Philip Davies]

Absolutely, particularly if the products are just going to be disposed of.

[Mr Chope]

Does my hon. Friend share my hope that the sponsor of the Bill will intervene to explain that such goods would be sold in Petticoat lane?

[Philip Davies]

That would be a helpful intervention, but I am not entirely sure that the Bill’s sponsor can give that commitment, to be perfectly honest. I certainly do not think we should press him to do so. However, such anomalies in the Bill make it unclear what will happen.

I do not want to dwell on the issue of vehicles, but where people are being prosecuted for a previous alleged offence, or where a vehicle has been used in a previous alleged offence, that is dangerous territory. The clause makes it clear that no offence needs to have been committed for things not to be returned to the owner; it just needs to have been alleged that things were used in a previous offence. That is no basis on which to take things away from people and refuse to return them. That flies in the face of all natural justice and the British way of doing things. I must say in passing that I am not known for being soft on crime, but I draw a distinction between where a crime has been committed and where one has been alleged. The Bill does not adequately draw a distinction between the two.

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[Mr Chope]

Does my hon. Friend think it would be helpful if Mr Double, the City remembrancer who signed the statement saying that the provisions in the Bill are compatible with the European convention on human rights, were to expand on why he believes that to be the case?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend made that point very well during his speech and I do not want to reiterate his point, but he is absolutely right.

Remaining on the subject of the return of seized items, I have some minor worries about this section. Proposed new section 16B(8)(a) refers to circumstances in which:

“if no proceedings have been instituted before the expiry of 28 days beginning with the date of seizure”.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) made clear, 28 days can be an awfully long time to go without goods if one’s livelihood depends on them. It would be a bit of a kick in the teeth if one were not allowed to have one’s goods when no offence had been committed or was being pursued, and it could have a big impact on one’s livelihood for that month.

Proposed new section 16B(8) goes on to state that an article shall be returned:

“unless it has not proved possible, after diligent enquiry, to identify that person or ascertain the person’s address.”

I am not entirely sure what the definition of a “diligent enquiry” is, or how diligent a “diligent enquiry” needs to be. I fear that some of the provisions will be used to give an excuse for not returning goods to their proper lawful owner. We should be minimising the opportunities for that.

Although my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch did not mention this point, it is worth noting that proposed new section 16C(4) states that the court may order forfeiture of goods even if the value exceeds the maximum penalty for the offence that has been committed. We are in the strange situation where we are levying a maximum penalty, but if the goods exceed that maximum penalty they can still be forfeited. I am not sure on what basis that can be either right or fair. If there is a maximum penalty, surely that should be the maximum penalty. The provision flies in the face of natural justice, and it would be interesting to have some clarification on it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch made the point that proposed new section 16D(1)(b)(ii) states that people might have to wait six months before compensation, which is a lengthy period of time. The court will only be able to make an order for compensation if it is satisfied that the seizure was lawful under proposed new section 16A. I hope my hon. Friend will come back to section 16A and whether we can strengthen

“reasonable grounds for suspecting that a person has committed an offence”.

Otherwise, the corporation would never have to pay compensation, irrespective of how it acted, but that cannot be the intention of my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster. Surely, it should be forced to pay compensation if it has acted in a way that is not becoming. We would all like to see that, I am sure, yet we are in danger of giving it a get-out-of-jail card and letting it get out of paying compensation.

I agree with the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch about perishable items. I thought he made them very well, so I will not repeat them—[Interruption.]—despite the encouragement from Opposition Members to extol the virtues of his argument a bit more. Perhaps I will, under their provocation, Mr Deputy Speaker—

Humber Bridge Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Tuesday 26th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend draws attention to the fact that the Bill does not even use the word “reasonable” with regard to allowances and expenses.

[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.

European Union (Approvals) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Monday 11th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

It is a pleasure to move amendment 1, and to consider amendments 2 and 3 with it. As hon. Members who are following the Bill closely will realise, the substance of the amendments lies in amendment 3, which proposes to leave out paragraph (b) of clause 1(2). That would have the effect of making the Bill apply only to subsections (1) and (2)(a). It would no longer include any reference to

“the draft decision to establish a Multiannual Framework for the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights for 2013-2017 (document number 10449/12).”

On Second Reading, the Minister expressed the view that we would be able to go into the issue of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights in more detail in Committee, and the amendment gives us the opportunity to do just that. I want to reassert the concern that I expressed last week on Second Reading that, although this Government and this country were always against having such an agency, we are tremendously relaxed about extending its budget and its range of activities now that it has been established. There must come a time when we say to the European Union, “Enough is enough. You have gone too far already and we want to rein back the range of activities of the Agency for Fundamental Rights in the coming five-year period.” I hope that the Minister will be able to give us some words of encouragement on the action that our Government are taking to rein back the activities of the agency and, in particular, to prevent it from encroaching on the competences and activities of the Council of Europe, which covers 47 member countries, including the 27 members of the European Union.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend tell the House exactly what this Agency for Fundamental Rights does? As I understand it, its job is to collect and give evidence on data regarding fundamental rights in all the EU countries. Given that we are all already signed up to the European convention on human rights—much against my will, but there we are—which apparently has nothing to do with the European Union, can he explain why on earth we need this body in the first place?

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I know that the hon. Gentleman takes a pride in living in the past, and that is fine and dandy, but of course he was talking about what the convention was set up to do in the first place, many years ago, whereas I am talking about the present. I am sure that he did not envisage our having to have ridiculous things such a votes for prisoners as a result of our membership of the European convention on human rights. I do not want to get sidetracked on to something that is not, strictly speaking, dealt with in this group of amendments, Mr Evans. The hon. Gentleman was tempting me down a path that I fear you might have intervened on had I pursued it any further. My point is that whether we are in the convention rightly or wrongly, we are in it and so it is utterly pointless to have the agency trying to mimic what is already being done there.

My second point relates to the agency’s desirability. Even if it was not pointless, it would certainly be undesirable. Let me give hon. Members an example of the types of issues the agency is trying to interfere in. It had a speaker on a panel discussing:

“Guaranteeing access to healthcare for undocumented migrants in Europe”.

We now have a new term—undocumented migrants. I think my constituents know them as illegal immigrants, but in the politically correct-speak of the EU they are undocumented migrants these days. Of course what the agency is trying to do is encourage all these illegal immigrants to access health care in countries such as the UK. My constituents are sick to the back teeth of the national health service being used by illegal immigrants and rather prefer these people to go back to the country that they should be in to access the health care in the country they come from. I hope that the Minister will address the following question: are the Government really using taxpayers’ money to fund an agency within the European Union that is actively encouraging people from within the EU illegally—this discussion was on illegal immigrants—to access this country and use the services provided for people in this country? It would be a ridiculous state of affairs if it was the official policy of Her Majesty’s Government to use taxpayers’ money to fund an agency to give out that kind of advice. If the Government’s policy is that they do not like this particular organisation and do not approve of what is it doing, what on earth are we doing with this Bill? Why are we being encouraged, in effect, to allow taxpayers’ money to be spent this agency?

[Mr Chope]

I am sure that my hon. Friend will not welcome this information, but this all goes wider than what he has described, because what is often being suggested is that these people seeking to access health care should be able to do so without disclosing their own identities.

[Philip Davies]

Absolutely, and again I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The situation makes the Government’s position on these matters unjustifiable and completely ridiculous. If the Government do not support all this, why on earth are we in this situation? If we are in this situation because the Minister is utterly powerless to do anything about it because he has no influence whatsoever, I hope he will admit that. When our referendum comes, in 2017 or thereabouts, it will be another argument for why we should leave the European Union.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a telling point, and I am sure that the Minister will respond to it with the benefit of his knowledge when he winds up. So often we talk hard on these EU issues—sometimes the Government and Ministers talk hard on them—but when we have it in our power to do something about them, we pull our punches and let the matter slide away. Especially now, in the build-up to the decision that the British people will be invited to take on whether we should leave the European Union, it is vital that the Government do not duck these issues, but face up to them.

I very much welcome what the Prime Minister said in his statement to the House earlier today. It was against the background of it being pointed out in the German newspaper Die Welt that the Prime Minister was wrong to suggest that hundreds of eurocrats were paid more than him or Chancellor Merkel, because its research had shown that the actual figure is 4,365. The Prime Minister said how disappointed he was that the administrative costs will still be some 6% of the EU budget, and he said that reducing the level of those costs would be “a long-term project”. Well, this modest amendment would be a start.

Just because there will be more EU Commissioners, it does not mean that the expenditure incurred by them should increase pro rata. The amendment does not ask for any real-terms reduction in the total spent on EU Commissioners, but it suggests that the total amount spent at the moment should be redistributed among the 28 or 29 Commissioners.

[Philip Davies]

Obviously this is a sensible amendment that is totally in line with the Prime Minister’s announcement earlier today, and I presume that the Government cannot possibly disagree with it. Does my hon. Friend think that he has stumbled across another area in which the Government might have to admit that they do not in fact have the power to do what my hon. Friend would like them to do?

[Mr Chope]

I hope that that is not the case, although I do not know whether my hon. Friend has been tipped off about what the Minister will say in response to the debate. I cannot see the point of the Bill if we cannot pass an amendment that has been accepted as in order. The amendment would simply make it a condition of our acceptance of having an EU Commissioner for each member country that the total budget should not be increased if the number goes above 27, but should be shared among however many Commissioners there are. I would be amazed to be told that such a modest amendment was not within our power, especially when we know that it would be going in the direction of travel—to use that ghastly expression—of many other members of the European Union who are concerned that its administrative expenditure seems to absorb far too much money.

[Philip Davies]

Given the Minister’s form tonight, does my hon. Friend not expect him to say that even if the amendment were accepted, the EU would just carry on anyway and recruit the number of staff and expend the resources it wanted to, because it does not take any notice of decisions in this Parliament?

[Mr Chope]

That is a fair point, and it was reflected in what the Prime Minister said earlier. He said that the European Commission simply has not looked at what it can do to constrain its administrative expenditure. He has a lot of knowledge about that issue because he sees it face to face every time he goes to Brussels or any other European institution. He can see the amount of money wasted on bureaucracy in Brussels. There is obviously scope for a modest reduction, and that is why I had hoped that I would have already received notice that the Government intended to accept my amendment.

[Mr Chope]

Absolutely, and I would have thought that this amendment would be supported by Opposition Members too, as they have been in the forefront of calling for a reduction in expenditure by the European Union. Whether or not they believe that sincerely, they have been calling for that.

[Philip Davies]

Is not the opposite point to the one made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) more pertinent? What message would it send to the European Union about the Government’s determination to clamp down on administrative costs in the EU if they resisted such a modest amendment as this?

[Mr Chope]

That is a very powerful point. By their actions shall people and Parliaments be judged. This is how we are going to send out a message to our European partners. Are we really serious about these issues, or are we just going through the motions? I look forward to hearing from a Member of this House who thinks it is wrong to limit the expenditure of the European Commission to what it is at the moment so that it cannot be increased. If there are such Members, I hope that they will have the courage of their convictions and stand up. If that does not happen, then I hope the Government will accept the amendment. It gives me great pleasure to have moved this modest amendment. Looking at it, I wonder whether it is too modest. On the other hand, it would be better to get this on the record than to create too much controversy.

Canterbury City Council Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

To clarify that point, a message has gone out from the Whip’s Office to all colleagues saying that we are officially on a one-line Whip.

[Mr Chope]

I am pleased to have that confirmation. It means that our attendance is voluntary.

Since we have a new Minister, I hope that she will take the opportunity to expand on what her ministerial colleague said briefly in an intervention in the previous debate. In other words, will she explain the full implications of the Government’s consultation paper, in which the Government said they had no choice but to abolish the Pedlars Act 1871 to comply with the European services directive? I hope that she will explain how, if that is correct, the Government can support amendment C9 passed in their lordships House.

In conclusion, I hope that I will be able to move formally amendment (g) to Lords amendment C9, because it is the most telling amendment down in my name in this group of amendments. Amendment (g) would remove the provision allowing designation in order to prevent obstruction of the highway. That is such a wide provision that it effectively reintroduces by the back door the touting provisions in clause 11, which Lords amendment 15 would remove. Anybody could be thought to be able potentially to obstruct the highway; therefore, the local authorities concerned would be able to designate areas where no activity could take place whatever, which would be a total abuse. That is why I would like the opportunity in due course to test the will of the House on amendment (g).

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful for that clarification, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Sometimes during the course of discussing these pedlars Bills, we who have been on the side of the pedlars have, in a sense, been given an insight into what it must be like to be a pedlar, against whom there is a lot of prejudice among ordinary members of the public. Similarly, quite a lot of prejudice has been generated against those Members of this House who have stood up for the interests of pedlars. It is helpful for us to reflect on the real changes that we in this House, collectively, have made to the Bills.

[Philip Davies]

Does my hon. Friend note the irony that, previously, Members stayed behind to vote against the amendments that he and I tabled on touting, yet now they are staying behind to vote for them because the Lords tabled them? It is ironic that Members want to stay behind so late in order to vote differently from how they voted last time.

[Mr Chope]

I fear that, on too many occasions, parliamentary colleagues do not actually look at what they are voting on. I cannot think of any other explanation of why Members would wish to vote in a completely different way from how they voted earlier.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and he is right to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and make it clear to the House that he knows so much more about matters than I do; his expertise spreads far and wide. I have certainly learned a lot over the years, and I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer) is also learning a great deal from him.

Given that so many people have shown a belated interest in this Bill, it seems only right that before they vote on the Lords amendments they understand what they have been invited to vote on. In previous discussions on this matter—as my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch said, we have been debating these Bills for around six years—we were, to be perfectly frank, talking to a small audience. We could therefore, through various nods and winks, understand each other’s arguments, and the Bill could rapidly progress and rush to a Division because we all knew what we were talking about. Tonight we are in a unique position where lots of people who want to participate in the voting do not know the Bill’s six years of history as I and my hon. Friend do. We must lay out exactly what people will be voting for in this group of amendments because I would not want anyone to vote inadvertently for something in which they do not believe.

The amendments relate to clause 11 of the Canterbury City Council Bill, and this is the right time to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier). During the passage of the Bill, he has probably felt a great deal of frustration on occasion, as have other Members who have sponsored the Bills. In all fairness to him, he did not sit there in frustration without listening to the arguments and taking on board what was said. He was good enough to listen to the force of the argument. We had a long debate on touting in relation to the Canterbury City Council Bill, and he was good enough to listen to the arguments. As he made clear in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch—I did not hear all of it because of the hoo-hah going on at the time—the amendment results from the promise given by my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury at previous stages. He said it would be a fair deal to get rid of clause 11.

Hon. Members know that my hon. Friend is one of the most honourable people, if not the most honourable person, in the House. As ever, he has been as good as his word. However, we cannot leave it at that—the Scrap Metal Dealers Bill is a precedent—because assurances given in the House on how legislation will be dealt with in the other place have not always been kept. We cannot therefore take it as read that their lordships decided to accept the amendment on the word of my hon. Friend, because they have decided to ignore the words of other hon. Members in the past. We must therefore presume not only that their lordships wished to keep to my hon. Friend’s word, but that they were persuaded by the case.

It is striking that, whereas the Lords have decided to delete clause 11 from the Canterbury City Council Bill—that is the amendment we are debating—they chose not to delete clause 11 from the Reading Borough Council Bill, which is virtually identical. Clause 11(1)(b) in both Bills lists the places to which the provisions will apply. However, whereas the Reading Borough Council Bill refers only to “a street”, the Canterbury City Council Bill refers to

“a street or esplanade, parade, promenade or way to which the public commonly have access, whether or not as of right.”

That is the only difference in the clauses in the two Bills.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch said in his opening remarks, it is perhaps a shame that we have not had a great explanation of what their lordships were thinking when they made the amendment to delete clause 11 from the Canterbury Bill. Is the difference in the wording of the two Bills a matter of principle on touting or a matter of practicality? In essence, the measures are the same.

[Mr Chope]

Does this not present a perfect opportunity for the Minister to make her maiden contribution to our discussions on the Bills?

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I am—I think—grateful to my hon. Friend. The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) may have been becoming confused, but I am beginning to think that I am becoming confused as well. I am not aware that the extra description in subsection (1)(b) has anything to with the fact that this is a city council Bill, as opposed to a borough council Bill. My understanding was that this particular difference related only to the different natures of the places concerned. I presumed that in Reading there was no promenade, parade or esplanade to which the Bill could apply. I could be wrong but my hon. Friend seemed to be arguing that, in effect, it is the same provision but there is a local difference based on the fact that one is a city council and the other is a borough council. My understanding, however, is that it is essentially the same, but it reflects the different nature of the towns and cities concerned. Clause 11 of the Canterbury Bill mentions “parade”, however, and I find it difficult to imagine that there is not a parade in Reading. That would lead me to ask why it is so important to ban selling on a parade in Canterbury, but not on a street in Reading.

[Mr Chope]

Is not this whole situation complicated by the fact that we have now agreed to Lords amendment C9, the consequence of which is to have designated areas rather than streets? The area set out in clause 11 of the Canterbury City Council Bill could now be regarded as a designated area under amendment C9.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right in that some of the earlier amendments that were so enthusiastically accepted by the House might have implications for this part of clause 11, which is about the designation of where people can or cannot tout their tickets and other goods and services.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is on to a good point, however, particularly when we take into account the potential impact of the decision in Cooper v. the Metropolitan Police Commissioner of 1986, where the courts decided that somebody who was working as a tout for a Soho club was guilty of obstruction. The obstruction provisions as amended by amendment C9 could be used against touts, notwithstanding this amendment, which takes out clause 11.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. He tried to do something about the issue of causing obstructions in the previous group of amendments. Amendment C9 has been agreed to, and we must consider clause 11 in relation to provisions already accepted. My hon. Friend may well be right that that amendment could make clause 11 redundant, as we have already got the job done. I am not entirely sure whether that is the case, but I am not a lawyer, whereas my hon. Friend has the considerable advantage over me of being a very distinguished lawyer, so I bow to his superior knowledge. These points should be taken into account when Members decide whether to agree to the Lords amendment under discussion.

The other amendments are all consequential, so we do not need to worry ourselves with them. I shall therefore conclude my brief remarks, which took us on a quick canter around the course on touting in general. My hon. Friend said at the end of his speech that he was minded to accept this Lords amendment but would reserve judgment until he had heard what I had to say. Given that the House may choose to vote on this group of amendments, Members will be pleased to know that, as far as I can see, it would be sensible for the House to accept the amendment. It is a sensible amendment and it defends people’s freedoms. I remain curious, however, as to why it applies to Canterbury alone, and not to Reading, and I would prefer it to apply to both, but we will just have to live with that on this occasion. However, I advise the House to accept this Lords amendment, as it makes the Bill much better.

[Mr Chope]

I am sure that the House is greatly indebted to my hon. Friend for the expertise he has brought to this discussion.

[Philip Davies]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for that. We have reached this stage, where we are in a position to vote for an amendment that improves the Bill and protects freedoms, which for me is what this place is all about, only because of the tenacious way in which he has approached the Bill. We should all be indebted to him for the work he has carried out, because when we accept the final group of Lords amendments, as I hope we will, the Bill will be in incredibly better shape than it was when it first came to this House six years ago. So I support these Lords amendments.

Commercial Lobbyists (Registration and Code of Conduct) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Friday 1st February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

rose—

[Philip Davies]

rose—

[Thomas Docherty]

I have a delightful choice. I will give way to the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) first.

Canterbury City Council Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Thursday 31st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I have listened with interest to the three contributions to the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew), with typical understatement, said that their lordships had some concerns about the Bill—the disproportionate powers, the power of seizure and so on. We will discuss the pedlars aspect of the Bill under the second group of Lords amendments, but essentially, their lordships have filleted the Bill. The Bill originally extended to some 18 clauses, but it now has only 13. The clauses that have been taken out are the subject of the Lords amendments we are discussing under this group—clause 6, on seizure; clause 7, on the seizure of perishable items; clause 8, on the return and disposal of seized items; clause 9, on the forfeiture of seized items; and clause 10, on compensation when seizure is unlawful.

You, Mr Deputy Speaker, may recall that the concerns expressed by their lordships were also expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) and I, and by other hon. Members, during the passage of the Canterbury City Council Bill and the three other Bills we are considering.

Let us briefly remind ourselves of the history. The Canterbury City Council Bill was presented to Parliament as a private Bill on 27 November 2007. I do not know whether the fact that we are still considering it is some sort of record. The Bill was read the First time on 22 January 2008. Second Reading began on 12 June 2008 and continued on 29 October 2008. The Canterbury City Council Bill was completed, but the need to keep the four Bills together meant there was a third day on Second Reading on 3 June 2009. Significantly—this is one of the important messages that should go out from this exercise—because there were no Commons petitions against the Bills, the matter went to a Committee on Unopposed Bills, which rubber-stamped the provisions on 8 July 2009. The fact that the Bill came straight back from a Committee on Unopposed Bills meant we were unable to debate the Bill on Report. We were therefore able to express our concerns further only on Third Reading on 14 January 2010, just over three years ago.

Fortunately, Members of the other place took the Bills seriously—we owe them a great debt of gratitude. My noble Friend Lord Lucas, who took an interest in earlier Bills, did not serve in Committee in the other place, but he has been instrumental in working closely with pedlars and their representatives to ensure that the importance of the Bill was raised in the other place. As a result of that and Lords petitions against the Canterbury City Council Bill and the other Bills, the House of Lords Opposed Bill Committee sat for three days in November 2011. The other place debated the Bill in Committee on 24 November 2011, which was followed by a debate on Third Reading on 3 December 2012.

I welcome my hon. Friend the Minister to the Front Bench. I was hoping that my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose), who was in his place earlier in the Bill’s passage, would continue his interest in today’s subject matter, but unfortunately he is unable to do so. What the Minister failed to tell us about in his short contribution was that between the Committee stage on 24 November 2011 and Third Reading on 3 December 2012 in the other place, the Government issued yet another consultation paper on the subject of pedlars. I will refer in more detail to some aspects of that consultation paper in relation to the second group of amendments, to which I think it has a greater relevance, but let us remind ourselves that the effect of the Government’s proposals is to abolish all existing legislation relating to pedlars and to replace it. They argue that the existing legislation is at odds with the European Union services directive. When I raised this matter in the House in 2010, people thought it was a device to try to prolong proceedings. However, it is apparent that this was an important issue of substance and, although it seems to have taken a long time, the Government have realised that the EU services directive did and does impinge on the Bills.

One consequence of what the Minister said—if the Government are happy for the Bills, as amended by their lordships, to go on to the statute book—is that we will have several different regimes for dealing with the regulation of pedlars operating in this country: the regimes of councils that got their Bills through before now and that tend to have a tighter regulation than this one; the Bills before us today; and all councils continuing to operate under the existing law relating to pedlars. The Government have said that they do not think that that is satisfactory. I am therefore surprised that they seem to be relaxed about allowing to go on to the statute book four new local Bills that will be inconsistent with the Government’s intentions as set out in the consultation paper. My hon. Friend the Minister could argue that the closing date for contributions to the consultation paper is not until 15 February 2013, and that the Government will then listen to the representations received. In the light of that, I am surprised that the Government are not saying, “Hold on a moment, let us see whether what is proposed by their lordships as a result of these amendments is consistent with what we have in mind.”

In the Third Reading debate on the Canterbury City Council Bill in the other place—

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Before my hon. Friend moves on, given that a number of the amendments relate to the amount of training that would need to be given to people by local authorities, would it not be a spectacular waste of money for local authorities to spend an awful lot of money on training people, only for a Government Bill to make all that training completely redundant?

[Mr Chope]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend on that point. He refers to the money that has been wasted. Councils and council tax payers will need to ask questions about how they got themselves into this mess. They have each probably spent hundreds of thousands of pounds to try to promote legislation that was ill-conceived from the outset and was certainly ill-conceived following the implementation and introduction of the EU services directive. It has also been much criticised at all stages in this House and in the other place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

Given the extent to which the Lords amendments fillet the Bill, as my hon. Friend described, where do they leave its substance? He will recall that when we were debating these matters in the previous Parliament, we were told that all the clauses relating to seizure were essential for local authorities, and that without them the Bill would be pointless and worthless. Does my hon. Friend have any comment on where it would leave the Bill if we were to accept the Lords amendments?

[Mr Chope]

It would leave the Bill exactly as it is now, but with those aspects removed. The point needs to be made—my hon. Friend is probably making it—that there are going to be a lot of words to be eaten as a result of this. Some of my hon. Friends and Opposition Members were saying how essential these powers were, and that the Bill would be wholly unworkable without them. Now that these powers have been removed and they are carrying on quite contentedly. Either their bluff has been called, or they do not want to face up to the new reality. I cannot ascribe motives to my hon. Friends or to Opposition Members; all I can say is that the councils will need to think carefully about whether they took the right line in promoting the Bills. Apart from anything else, Baroness Knight said that

“the four Bills presented would undoubtedly have given councils a disproportionate power in relation to suspected street trading offences.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 3 December 2012; Vol. 741, c. 446.]

That is why they reduced those powers significantly and, in relation to the issuing of fixed penalty notices, introduced a requirement that councils trained all officials. Viscount Eccles was even more robust, saying:

“I want to talk briefly about fixed penalties. I think that in principle fixed penalties are undesirable. They may be necessary but, when they are, they are a necessary evil. The problem is that many people acquire the power to impose fixed penalties. We try to offset that by training and I hope that that works, but”—

it had to be recognised that—

“all power corrupts.”

He could see the dangers in the Bill as originally drafted, and that there is still potential danger in the Bill as amended by their lordships in relation to training. Then the noble Lord Strasburger explained:

“We added a requirement for better training of council officials on trading laws and”—

my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey did not make this point—

“constrained the value of fixed penalties.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 3 December 2012; Vol. 741, c. 452.]

That differentiated, for example, the fixed penalties imposed for failing to give a name and address from those imposed for giving a false name and address. That was a sensible amendment from their lordships’ House.

The amendments on enforcement are steps in the right direction, but I have tabled amendments to amendment C27 on information and training, which inserts a new clause after clause 17, but leaves rather a lot of loopholes. For instance, amendment (a) would leave out “on its internet website”, so that subsection (1) would read:

“The council shall publish information about—“

Why tell a council that it only needs to publish such information on its internet website?

It might have been a slip of the tongue, but my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey said that all street traders could access the internet and find out what was going on, but the Bill is primarily concerned with pedlars, and pedlars and street traders are very different animals. Pedlars are on their own and normally travelling from town to town and from street to street. It is important, therefore, that a pedlar registered with the police in, say, Liverpool, when visiting Canterbury can find out what the rules are. A pedlar who has travelled to Canterbury from, say, Gravesend, might not have had access to the internet—perhaps because the local library was shut over the weekend, or whatever.

[Philip Davies]

I have much sympathy with my hon. Friend’s point, but were we to remove “on its internet website”, how does he imagine that the information either would or should be published?

[Mr Chope]

I imagine it would be published in a form that people could read, without having to access the internet—in other words, in a document or notice that could be obtained from local council offices or sent in advance.

[Philip Davies]

I am presuming that, in essence, my hon. Friend’s amendment would actually help local authorities. Under their lordships’ amendment, the information would have to be published on the council’s internet website, whereas if his amendment was accepted, presumably the council could publish it in any form it liked. It could still be on the website, but the council would have a choice.

[Mr Chope]

I accept that. If my hon. Friend is saying that my amendment is ill-conceived because it would not achieve the objective of enabling pedlars in a city such as Canterbury to find out what was happening, I am beginning to understand his point. That, however, is why I tabled amendment (e), stating that the information

“shall also be displayed prominently in any designated area”.

That would mean that when a pedlar arrived in a street on which he was not allowed to operate as a pedlar unimpeded, there would be notices in the street telling him so.

[Philip Davies]

I certainly agree with that, but I was merely making the point that my hon. Friend’s initial amendment seemed to help the local authority by being less prescriptive and bureaucratic, and that perhaps it was an indication that he was going soft in his old age.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I take those sorts of allegations very seriously, particularly if one is talking about going soft in the head. I think my hon. Friend was referring to the Local Government Association. It is worth pointing out, therefore, the disparaging remarks made in the other place about how the LGA responded to the Government’s consultation in November. The noble Lord Lucas said:

“It would have been nice, too, to be able to praise the Local Government Association, but its reaction to the consultation was immediate, negative and silly.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 3 December 2012; Vol. 741, c. 450.]

Even if I am going soft on the LGA, my hon. Friend will be pleased to know that the noble Lord Lucas is not pulling his punches.

Amendment (b), which stands in my name and those of my hon. Friends the Members for Shipley and for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), would insert a new paragraph after paragraph (a). The clause would then read:

“The council shall publish on its internet website information about the provision of this Act and of the 1982 Act as amended by this Act; and any street comprised in any area designated in section 5.”

If particular streets are to be brought within the ambit of streets on which pedlars cannot carry on their business normally but have to comply with requirements set out in these Bills, it is essential that there be no doubt about the ambit of those streets and that pedlars be given proper notice of where they may operate. That is why I tabled amendment (b)—so that the council has to publish information about any street comprised in a designated area.

Amendment (c), which would insert a new paragraph after subsection (1)(b), deals with information about

“the boundaries of areas designated under section 5.”

It would require that the information provided cover not only the streets but the boundaries of those areas. At the moment, the Bill enables the council to designate an area either on health and safety grounds or because the highway might be obstructed. The Bill gives it those powers but without the requirement to specify exactly how they are being applied.

[Philip Davies]

I totally support my hon. Friend on these amendments. Does he agree that it is in the local authority’s interest to make this information clear, because if it wants to deal with an issue in a particular part of its city or district, it would be helpful for that information to be made clear? Given that my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey seemed to dismiss his amendments very quickly, are we not in danger of repeating the scenario where amendments are discarded but later shown to have been perfectly sensible?

[Mr Chope]

It is a significant danger, and that is the problem. Whenever anyone suggests we should deal with something on the nod, it means that the full implications of the proposal are not examined, but that is the whole purpose of scrutiny in this place. That is why I hope that in responding to this debate my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey will address the substance of the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley and I are making.

[Philip Davies]

Has my hon. Friend had any discussions with the local authorities concerned to understand better why they seem to object to his sensible amendments?

[Mr Chope]

In all honesty, I had not expected that there would be objections, save perhaps on the basis of the “not invented here” formula, because people are not always generous in accepting other people’s ideas and suggestions.

However, I would like to put on record the fact that in considering these four Bills, I had a constructive meeting with a representative from Leeds city council, from which came the idea that the way forward would be to impose constraints on the size of the trolleys that pedlars can use in Leeds city centre. That theme has now been picked up in the other Bills and the Lords amendments, as well as in the suggestions in the Government’s consultation paper on where we go from here. That was a good example of constructive working between a Member of this House and an official from one of the councils seeking to promote this legislation. My hon. Friend might remember that when the question arose of whether any of the other councils would be prepared to accept similar constraints or amendments, they resolutely refused to engage. In a sense, they have now been forced to do so as a result of what happened in the other place, but there is always a lot more scope for those promoting these Bills and the officials behind them to speak with colleagues directly about issues such as the one my hon. Friend identifies.

Let me turn to my amendments to subsection (2) of the proposed new clause to be inserted after clause 17 by Lords amendment C27. Subsection (2) of the proposed new clause currently reads:

“The information published shall, in particular, be such as the council reasonably considers is sufficient to enable those wishing to trade in the city to understand the circumstances in which they may lawfully do so.”

That would be much stronger if, instead of saying that the information shall be such as “the council reasonably considers”, it said that the information shall, in particular, be “such as is sufficient”. The important thing is that the information should be sufficient to enable those wishing to trade in the city to understand the circumstances. Whether the council thinks that information is sufficient is of subsidiary importance.

[Philip Davies]

Is my hon. Friend contending that if the council reasonably considered that it did not need to provide any information at all, that would be fine under the current wording? He is much more skilled in the law than I am. What constraints would there be on the local authority before a court if the existing wording was not amended as he seeks?

[Mr Chope]

It would be open to a council to provide minimal information, on the basis that the council reasonably considered it to be sufficient. Somebody who felt that it was insufficient—a pedlar who was potentially suffering a fixed penalty—would not be able to argue that the information was not sufficient to enable him to understand the circumstances under which he could trade, because all the council had to do was provide information that the council itself reasonably considered sufficient. The council would therefore be introducing a subjective test, thereby removing the effectiveness of what, on the face of it, seems perfectly sensible—that the information provided should be sufficient. The notion that the information is sufficient if the council considers it to be sufficient effectively negates what would otherwise be a worthwhile amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I would like to press my hon. Friend on the words “the council reasonably considers”. Would what the council reasonably considered sufficient be materially different from what anybody else reasonably considered to be sufficient?

[Mr Chope]

It may well be, and that is my concern. Let us look at what has happened in the past. Their lordships found a lot of evidence that councils were making assertions about the conduct of pedlars that they could not back up with evidence before their lordships’ Committee, so a council might consider something to be sufficient when it is not sufficient, because of that council or its officers having a particular prejudice or taking a cavalier approach.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

Absolutely, and I am sorry if I did not make that clear. There was an occasion—you may remember it, Mr Deputy Speaker—on a different private Bill earlier in this Parliament when one of my hon. Friends felt a certain reluctance to do anything other than what he had been told to do by the promoters. I explained to him that he would be doing the promoters, himself and the House a good service if he showed some flexibility. In fairness to him, he did show such flexibility. That is a good precedent, and I draw it to the attention of my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey in case he was not there at the time.

[Philip Davies]

Going back to the substantial issue of notices, as my hon. Friend knows, I am with him on virtually all of this and have been for a number of years. However, we are in danger of parting company, I fear, on the issue of the notices being different in every local authority. Surely the whole point of the objection is that people going from one place to another cannot be expected to know the exact regime in a particular place. Surely therefore it would be helpful if the same notice were in place in each local authority. Just as “no parking” notices are the same across the country, should not the same thing apply to pedlars’ notices?

[Mr Chope]

Fortunately, if we disagree on this issue, it need not concern us because the amendment does not spell that out. It was only in response to an intervention from our hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) that I ventured to suggest that if any notices were produced, they need not be uniform across the country. That, of course, would be left to the discretion of the local authority, so I think my hon. Friend and I can probably live together on that particular interpretation.

[Philip Davies]

That is next Tuesday’s business.

[Mr Chope]

Sorry, I should not anticipate next Tuesday’s debate. I can see that my hon. Friend is going to be on really good form next week.

Amendment (f) to subsection (1) of the inserted new clause on training deals with the same theme of trying to remove the subjective test for the council so that there is some objectivity about it. Instead of saying:

“The council shall not authorise an officer to act for the purposes of this Act unless they are satisfied that the officer has received adequate training”,

subsection (1) of the inserted new clause on training would say:

“The council shall not authorise an officer to act for the purposes of this Act unless the officer has received adequate training”.

It would no longer be an issue of whether or not the council was satisfied, but a more objective test of whether the officer had received adequate training. Obviously, if the council is doing the training and it is by any objective test inadequate, that would not be a problem under the current wording. Only when the council has to satisfy an objective test in relation to training will we ensure that the right quality of training, to which our noble Friends in the other place referred, will be implemented. My amendment would strengthen this part of clause 17.

[Philip Davies]

I am sympathetic to what my hon. Friend says, as he is making a good point. Does he know how this compares with what is required for other officers employed by local authorities—whether it be parking attendants or even perhaps the police force? Are my hon. Friend’s proposals the norm or is what is in the Bill the norm in that respect?

[Mr Chope]

In all honesty, I do not have the comparable statutory provisions before me to be able to answer my hon. Friend’s point. I am sure, however, that with the resources that have gone into the budgets of the promoters’ advisers, that sort of information should be available. Perhaps we will hear in due course from our hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey and find out whether similar provisions apply anywhere else.

This issue should not be treated lightly. Their lordships were quite concerned that, if we are going to allow people who are not constables or police community support officers to intervene in these areas, and we are going to allow “authorised persons” to intervene, it is essential that those authorised people are properly trained.

[Philip Davies]

In many respects, this amendment is more important than my hon. Friend’s previous amendment. The provisions on information at least ask the council “reasonably” to consider whether they are sufficient, whereas without my hon. Friend’s amendment, the wording on the training provisions is that the council needs only to be “satisfied”—not that it “has reason” to be satisfied or is “reasonably” satisfied. It is literally as blanket as that. Surely my hon. Friend would agree that his amendment on the training aspect is even more important than the one on information.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful for what my hon. Friend has said. If we cannot vote on all my amendments and have to select one—

[Philip Davies]

A shame.

[Mr Chope]

Yes, it would be a shame if we could not vote on all of them—perhaps some of them will be accepted. I must not be downhearted at this stage, as they might all be accepted. However, in the event that this one is not accepted, I can understand my hon. Friend’s point that it would be a useful amendment on which to test the opinion of the House. The essence of my amendment (f) is that it is designed to prevent the officers of the local authority from being judges in their own courts. That is a pretty fundamental principle, and I would have thought that all Members would like to sign up to it and apply it in practice.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I take my hon. Friend’s point, but I trust that police and crime commissioners have bigger fish to fry.

I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey will support my amendments. As was made clear earlier, they also apply to the other Bills with which we are dealing today. We are not picking on Canterbury in particular, but it is the first Bill on the Order Paper.

[Philip Davies]

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) not just for his speech, although it was of the customary calibre, but for his dedication in ensuring that, if the Bill ever leaves this place, it will leave in a much better state than the state in which it arrived. Without my hon. Friend’s personal dedication to this issue, and his determination that we should do what we ought to do in this place—that is, defend people’s freedoms and defend enterprise—the Bill would have passed through Parliament in a much less satisfactory manner.

Like my hon. Friend, I am grateful for the work that was done by their lordships. I do not know whether my hon. Friend felt the same, but I feared that the Bill would go through on the nod in the House of Lords. Their lordships should be commended for going through it in great detail and considering the arguments properly, and, consequently, tabling some amendments with which I think we can be particularly pleased.

I agree with what my hon. Friend said about many of the amendments. He focused on the subject of seizures, and on the Lords amendments that proposed the omission of various clauses relating to it. He may recall that the issue caused great controversy when it was debated for the first time in this place. It struck me as unacceptable that local authorities should employ authorised officers to go around seizing people’s goods willy-nilly. As my hon. Friend will recall, we argued the case vehemently for many months. We were told that the clauses were essential to the Bill, and that without them it would be unworkable and meaningless. We were also told that the proposals in the amendments would be unenforceable, and that they were in effect wrecking amendments: that, if I remember rightly, is what my hon. Friend was accused of when he tried to persuade the promoters that what they were saying was over the top.

I should be interested to know why the promoters thought that removing those clauses then would wreck the Bill, whereas removing them today apparently does not wreck it all. It seems that it will still be fit to proceed into law. It is difficult for us to consider the merits of the amendments until we are given some satisfactory answers to the question of how important the clauses are to the Bill as a whole.

I have the impression that we have reached a stage at which the promoters are determined to produce an Act of Parliament, irrespective of what is in it and whether anything that is in it will ever be applied. This seems to have become a war of attrition, a battle of wills. The promoters seem merely to want an Act of Parliament to hang their hat on. I certainly support the removal of all these clauses—page after page of them—and I think we should be grateful for the fact that the promoters may have come round to my hon. Friend’s way of thinking.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important that other promoters preparing private Bills take into account the verdict of their lordships on these seizure powers? We have seen a lot of attempts to introduce or smuggle equivalent powers in other private Bills.

[Philip Davies]

I absolutely agree. I hope that, in many respects, what their lordships have done will set a precedent and that we will not have to worry so much about some of the worst consequences of such legislation.

A notable omission from my hon. Friend’s speech was the issue of touting, although I appreciate that he was trying to be as brief as possible. If he did mention that and I missed it, I apologise to him. One amendment before us today deals with touting. He did not mention it—[Interruption.] I think it comes later on in our proceedings. It is in the third group, so I will save up my expertise on touting until that time; I apologise for mentioning it now.

The amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch were focused mainly on training. My hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) is my parliamentary neighbour and an excellent Member of Parliament. The only bad thing about having him as my neighbour is that he puts me to shame. He has already successfully steered a private Member’s Bill through Parliament in his short time in the House. He did so with an awful lot of panache and charm, and by being practical and reasonable about what it was sensible to do in order to get that legislation through. I very much hope he will adopt the same strategy now, because he saw how well it worked with his Bill; I hope he will use that experience when considering this legislation, too.

Let us consider the debate we have had so far from a layman’s perspective—from the point of view of people who have no vested interest in the legislation and who have not been going through battles which started six years ago, as my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch said. People who do not have that baggage and who listened to the argument that my hon. Friend made for his amendments to Lords amendment C27 could not fail to have been persuaded by his case. We started from the position that these Bills were designed to give local authorities far too much power—that was the whole point for us when we started out. As a result of my hon. Friend’s work and what happened in their lordships’ House, gradually, bit by bit, the excessive powers have been whittled down. We hope to end up with legislation that, although perhaps not ideal—it may not be something we particularly agree with—will certainly be an awful lot better than it was when we started out. We have an opportunity to carry on the theme that my hon. Friend started, and that their lordships continued, by removing some of the remaining parts that put far too much power in the hands of local authorities and give far too little protection, literally, to the man on the street.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

Is not one of the problems the fact that local authorities have form on this issue? On Third Reading in the other place, the noble Lord Strasburger said that the Select Committee spent a lot of time trying to find out why the four local authorities wanted the powers to seize and introduce fixed penalties. It was told that pedlars sell substandard goods, but as he said

“no evidence whatever was offered to prove this allegation”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 3 December 2012; Vol. 741, c. 451.]

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right. In many respects, the attitude that some local authorities have adopted has been sad—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, and I therefore presume that the Government will vote against Lords amendment C9, which was passed in the other place in 2011, as it has been overtaken by events. It tinkers with amendments to the pedlars legislation, but the Minister says the legislation should be completely repealed.

[Philip Davies]

On this basis, it is irrelevant whether Members vote for or against that amendment. It does not matter which way the Government vote, therefore, because it will be a complete waste of time whichever way they go.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

That may be the case in the future, but our national Parliament is still sovereign to the extent that, until we implement the services directive in legislative form, we will have the existing law on the statute book. If we accept Lords amendment C9, we will in effect be re-enacting something the Government tell us is no longer consistent with European law.

Many Members—and, I suspect, many pedlars, too—would be very pleased if we were to free ourselves from the shackles of Brussels, and we are greatly looking forward to the referendum on the matter. The points being discussed today are part of the campaign, as we are setting out reasons why we would be better off out. Until we rid ourselves of distractions from Brussels, however, we are stuck with having its rule of law apply to our own legislation. I hope that in due course the Minister will explain the Government’s position: do they support or oppose amendment C9?

[Philip Davies]

Is my hon. Friend in favour of Amendment C9?

[Mr Chope]

I have some sympathy with amendment C9 as it contains many of the proposals that we were trying to persuade councils other than Leeds to accept when this Bill was before our House. Leeds conceded that instead of having a regime under which pedlars could only go from door to door, it would be content with one where pedlars could go to pedestrianised high street areas, provided they did not cause an obstruction by having a very elaborate and large apparatus. That is where the concept of having trolleys of limited size came from; it came from Leeds city council, and the idea was discussed with me and some of my hon. Friends. The proposal to give pedlars the freedom to operate on the street with a trolley of sufficient size to enable them to display their goods and provide articles to those who wish to purchase them is a valuable development and makes a lot of common sense. Although the Government consultation specifies a maximum size of trolley rather larger than the one specified in amendment C9, they appear to accept the principle.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I am surprised about that. I am also a bit disappointed in myself, because I should have tabled such an amendment so that the House could have discussed it. I failed to do that, so the House does not have the opportunity to compare the alternative proposals for the best size of trolley.

[Philip Davies]

While we are on the sizes of trolleys, my hon. Friend will see that Lords amendment C9 gives specific measurements for trolleys, including a width of 0.88 metres, a depth of 0.83 metres and a height of 1.63 metres. First, can he help those of us who do not understand the meaning of 0.83 metres by telling us what those measurements mean in old money? Secondly, does he have any idea why those measurements are so specific?

[Mr Chope]

The short answer is that I am not able to convert metres into feet and inches. I take my hon. Friend’s point that it would be much better if the measurements were expressed in a way that most people can understand. Most people understand feet. I am told that I am approaching 2 metres in height, if that gives my hon. Friend any guidance on the size of the trolleys.

[Philip Davies]

How wide are you though?

[Mr Chope]

The issue of depth is also an important one.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Such measures are quite often a matter of interpretation. The trained police officer is in a far better position to interpret the law than a council that is prejudiced against the interests of pedlars. To reinforce the point about prejudice, the noble Lord Strasburger said on Third Reading that:

“It was alleged that pedlars create a situation that attracts pickpockets, but…no evidence was offered. It was also said that pedlars cause obstruction of the highway. Little evidence for this allegation was offered apart from a small number of cases where wide and expanding trolleys had been used…The witnesses who spoke for the local authorities were somewhat unconvincing. We heard evidence from pedlars that many council officers and the police are ignorant about the 1871 Act, and we also heard much evidence of a bullying culture on the part of council officials towards honest and hard-working pedlars.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 3 December 2012; Vol. 741, c. 451-52.]

That is why we need to be alert to the precise wording of the Lords amendments. We need to ensure that the intention is to establish a level playing field for pedlars and street traders, and to ensure that pedlars cannot be undermined by over-zealous or prejudiced council officials. For those reasons, Lords amendment C9 would be much improved by amendments (a) to (h), which I have tabled.

Amendment (h) would remove subsection (8), which states that:

“The provisions of sub-paragraph…(2)…of Schedule 4 to the 1982 Act shall apply to a resolution under this section as they apply to a resolution under that paragraph but as if…for ‘street’ there were substituted ‘area’”.

That completely undermines the concept of pedlars’ freedom to go from house to house and sell their wares on the public highway by trading from street to street.

The Lords amendments grouped under the heading “Pedlars and street trading” are a significant improvement.

[Philip Davies]

I was concerned that my hon. Friend seemed to be coming to a close. He does not seem to have mentioned—if he did, he glossed over it very quickly—Lords amendment C8, which relates to leaving out clause 4, something I think he mentioned only in passing. Does he have a view on whether leaving out clause 4 is a requirement of the services directive? It is unclear to me.

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing that to the attention of the House, because it takes us back to our discussions on clause 4 in the previous Parliament. It was in the context of the provision of services that the issue of the services directive was raised. That was why, as I recall, we were arguing that the provision of services should not be covered under these particular local Acts. There seems to be a recognition that clause 4 is outlawed by the services directive. What I do not understand—I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about this—is why the directive also applies to pedlars who are dealing not in services, but goods. How does the directive apply to the sale of goods by pedlars? That is causing concern among the pedlar fraternity.

There may be as many as 4,000 pedlars in this country, so the implications are significant. They are concerned that if the legislation, which sets out a separate regime for pedlars and has been established for well over 100 years, is torn up and repealed, it may be that the significant status and freedom that pedlars have hitherto enjoyed—of being able to obtain a certificate and, as long as they are of good character, trade from door to door, place to place and town to town—will be removed from them.

As was said in their lordships’ House, pedlary goes back long before the time of Shakespeare to the time of Chaucer, if not before. Therefore, to tear up the 1871 Act, as the Government seem to be proposing in their consultation paper, would be damaging to the interests of pedlars.

[Mr Chope]

That may well be so. If councils are going against Government policy, one would expect the Government to say to their supporters in the Chamber that they wish them to vote on the amendments in a particular way.

Sadly, my hon. Friend the Minister is temporarily not in his place, but I am delighted to see my hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands) in his place instead. I am sure he will make a careful note of what I am about to say. Under the heading, “Chapter 1 - Proposal to repeal the Pedlars Acts 1871 and 1881 (Part 2 of the draft Regulations at Annex A)”, the Government’s consultation paper, which is still out for consultation, reads:

“Below we detail our proposals (reflected in the proposed draft Regulations set out at Annex A) to repeal the Pedlars Acts 1871 and 1881 in relation to the whole of the UK.”

That is not a discussion of the possibility of repealing the Acts, but a specific proposal to repeal the Acts in toto. The proposal might still be out to consultation, but the Government have effectively made up their mind to repeal the Acts.

For reasons that my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) and others explained, the Government have been diffident about declaring their hand in relation to the provisions in the Bills when they have had the opportunity to do so. One of the difficulties when considering Lords amendments is finding out why they were proposed. As my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) just pointed out, removing clause 4 from this Bill and equivalent provisions in the other Bills was not referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey. It was taken as a given, despite its having significant implications.

Neither was there proper explanation of why, if they thought that removing clause 4 would satisfy the services directive, the Government now say that to satisfy it we would effectively have to repeal clause 5 in toto and not replace it with any other provision relating to pedlars.

[Philip Davies]

During the debate on the first group of amendments, my hon. Friend said, quite rightly, that the Lords had “filleted” the Bill. On the second group, does he contend that the removal of clause 4 and the total rewriting of clause 5 has the same effect of destroying the original arguments for why the Bill was necessary?

[Mr Chope]

Absolutely. This takes us back to the precursors to these Bills, one of which was the Bournemouth Borough Council Bill. The argument put forward by the promoters was that life was intolerable for retailers in the city centres because of the activities of pedlars, and therefore that pedlars needed to be banned outright from the city centres. Now, as a result of their lordships’ amendment, the promoters have recognised that pedlars are welcome and free to operate in city centres—or is that really what they intend? Does the local authority really want pedlars to be free, or will it seize on the provisions about obstructing the highways to create designated areas where pedlars cannot operate?

[Philip Davies]

Does that mean that clause 5, as amended by amendment C9, would cause more confusion about what would be allowed, making it difficult for a pedlar to be clear about how each of the four local authorities might interpret the same clause, even though the provisions are the same for each authority?

[Mr Chope]

Absolutely, because this clause—new clause 5, as I am calling it—effectively gives local authorities the discretion to interpret in their own way what they regard as a road safety issue or a potential obstruction of the highway, and what it is necessary to do to ensure road safety or prevent an obstruction of the highway. If local authorities are able to persuade themselves that something is necessary for the purposes of road safety—a wide concept that includes pedestrian safety—and they couple that with the need to prevent obstruction of the highway, that almost drives a coach and horses through the provisions. Local authorities would thereby retain almost absolute discretion to designate areas as they wished, potentially arbitrarily way to the detriment of the pedlar fraternity.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend’s amendment (f) would remove the words

“it has reason to believe that”

from subsection (7) of the clause inserted by Lords amendment C9. I apologise for appearing for ever to be picking his legal brains, but does he have any idea what, as far as a court is concerned, would constitute a legitimate “reason to believe”?

[Mr Chope]

Obviously I cannot give any legal advice, but the short answer is that if we are talking about a subjective test, all the council has to do is to say that it has reason to believe, whereas if we are talking about an objective test, the issue is not what the council believes, but what actually happened and the impact. If something was going to be an obstruction to the highway or have an impact on road safety, that could be objectively verified.

[Philip Davies]

Is not the key to this the word “reason”? The council must have a reason to believe, as opposed to just believing without reason. Presumably, there must be some tangible reason to justify the belief; I am just concerned about how strenuous that reason would need to be.

[Mr Chope]

I cannot advise my hon. Friend on that. Obviously the reasonableness of any reason that was put forward could, I suppose, be tested, although that is more an academic or theoretical question, rather than a question about what will happen in practice. My concern is that the provision will be used to perpetuate a campaign of discrimination against pedlars and try to drive them out of particular cities, which was of course the original intent behind the four Bills.

[Philip Davies]

What I am trying to get at is this: if my hon. Friend’s amendment (f) were accepted and we removed the words “reason to believe”—so that subsection (7) read: “only if it is necessary to do so”—what difference does he think that would make in practice to how the council had to operate?

[Mr Chope]

If we left out the words “it has reason to believe that”, subsection (7) would read: “The council may designate an area for the purposes of this section only if it is necessary to do so to ensure road safety”. That is something on which evidence could be drawn from all angles. One could argue that designating an area was necessary for road safety or that it was not, but it would not depend on the council. Under subsection (7) as currently worded, as long as the council says that in its view designating an area is necessary for road safety, that is the end of the matter and it cannot be challenged.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I understand the thrust of what my hon. Friend is saying and, as he knows, I am sympathetic to it, but if subsection (7) was simply left to read: “The council may designate an area for the purposes of this section only if it is necessary to do so”, would not the people deciding whether it was necessary to designate an area still be the council?

[Mr Chope]

Yes, obviously they would—I am sorry that it seems to have taken my hon. Friend quite a long time to drill out the answer he was looking for from this particular stone—because the council will be the one determining the matter. I do not know whether my hon. Friend is going to make reference in his own contribution to the circularity of the argument, but I understand the point he is getting at. I think the way to put it is to say “I surrender”.

Looking at the amendments in the context of the revisions to the legislation envisaged by the Government, my own view is that it would be wrong for the House to accept amendment C9 as drafted. Amendment C9 is a lot better than the provisions that were in place before it. If it were simply an amendment to leave out clause 5, that would be fine, but to

“insert the following new Clause”

as set out in C9 risks the danger that the provisions, when enacted, will be totally at odds with legislation brought forward by the Government, whether it be legislation relating to the size of the trolleys or to the circumstances in which those trolleys can be used by pedlars, particularly because C9 seeks to amend the pedlars legislation at a time when the Government are saying that those Acts have to be repealed.

Disabled Persons’ Parking Badges Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Friday 9th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[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.]

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

In this amendment my hon. Friend establishes himself not as draconian but as fair-minded, and for that reason it is a commendable measure.

[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 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.

Scrap Metal Dealers Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Friday 9th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful for that explanation, which is the purpose of this stage of the Bill. The Minister talked about spending ages on this issue, but his answer took longer than my question. He has spent more time on this point than I have—I should have thought he would congratulate me on rattling through my amendments with great haste. I cannot say that I am dwelling on my amendments, but if the Minister thinks I should spend more time on them, I am sure I could. However, I will resist that temptation.

Amendments 53 to 57 relate to the site manager named in the licence and, as I have said, were tabled for consistency with earlier amendments. Amendments 58 to 64 relate to clause 8 which states that when a scrap metal dealer has stopped dealing, they must notify the local authority within 28 days. Why is that the case? If someone has stopped trading, I presume that they will not renew their licence, so why must we place that extra burden on them? That seems quite unnecessary. If we are to have a notification period, why must it be 28 days? That seems a short space of time and it might not be that easy. Businesses do not always have neat cut-off points, and if sales were increasingly infrequent, notifying the local authority might not be at the forefront of someone’s mind. That might put them in breach of the clause and mean they fall into disrepute, so to speak. I am not clear why we need this measure, and my amendments change 28 days to either “three months” or “six months”, which would give businesses more time to meet that requirement. I am not persuaded, however, that such a provision needs to exist.

Amendments 62 and 63 relate to the time given to people to deal with issues. Under clause 8, the local authority has a duty to pass information it receives to the Environment Agency within 28 days, which the amendment would change to three months. Amendments 78 to 84 relate to clause 13 of the Bill which confirms that council officials have the powers to execute a magistrates’ warrant. I flag that up because I wonder whether it would be more appropriate for that to be done by the police. I am rather suspicious of giving council officers police powers that are not entirely necessary. When my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch discussed another proposal, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) said that reasonableness is a matter of common sense. All hon. Members have at some point in their lives come across the pettifogging council official. I am not saying that such officials are in the majority or even that there is a sizeable number of them, but by the law of averages, there are bound to be some. Giving council officers police powers is a worrying development, and I hope the Government look again at the proposal. My other amendments in that sphere relate to the same issue.

Amendments 140 to 143 to clause 19 relate to the fact that responsibility for the registration of the scheme will lie with district councils. Amendment 140 would mean that county councils or unitary authorities would be responsible. If I remember rightly—I do not have my note to hand—the 1964 Act refers to county councils, but for some reason, strikingly, the Bill changes that to district councils. Given the scale of each district authority, I believe the matter would be better dealt with at county council or unitary authority level. I hope the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South will consider that. It might be a mistake in the drafting of the Bill.

[Mr Chope]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is a matter of regret that the Minister has not yet intervened on this point, which I have also made?

[Philip Davies]

I agree with my hon. Friend. Perhaps that is a sign that the Minister, too, is concerned about this aspect of the Bill and does not want to reveal his hand at this stage.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

While my hon. Friend is trying to find his place in his notes, I wonder whether he would like to comment on my amendments, which specify property from war memorials and places of worship as part of the definition of scrap metal. Does he think that that would be helpful?

[Mr Chope]

I think that it would be extremely helpful. It comes back to the point we were making originally about the lack of any clear definition. If a church roof is renewed and the new lead is taken away and sold, that is new product, not old product. It is used product, however, which is why I have tabled the amendment to incorporate the word “used”, which is not in the Bill at the moment. Perhaps the Minister will tell us that he will accept amendment 102, which would clarify that matter for the benefit of all.

Amendment 98, the last of my amendments, concerns the power to amend the means of purchase by regulation. I do not see the need for that and the Minister has not made the case for it. Amendment 87 deals with the need for a test in relation to SmartWater, and amendment 101 deals with the definition and uses the exact words provided by the scrap metal dealers association, the British Metals Recycling Association, which thought they were already incorporated in the Bill. If the Minister responds to nothing else, perhaps he could explain to members of that association why what they told us in their briefing for Third Reading and Report is not in the text of the Bill.

These amendments contain a lot of constructive suggestions to strengthen the regime for controlling scrap metal theft and to ensure that those guilty of it are brought to justice. I regret that the Government are not prepared to be bigger-hearted, particularly on the eve of Remembrance Sunday.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I thank my hon. Friend for listening to my case and responding so positively. As it happens, amendment 116 would bring forward the review from five years to three years, and I have also tabled amendments to explore whether we could bring it forward to two years or one. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his helpful comments and suggestion, and although the expiry date he offers is not nearly as soon as I would wish, I accept the spirit in which it was offered and the principle behind it.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) may have noticed that my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway) prefaced his helpful suggestion by saying he would seek to persuade the Government to introduce the measure in another place. I hope the Minister will now say that he is persuaded, so that we do not have to speculate.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right—I, too, noted that form of words. As my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South is promoting the Bill, I trust that what he says will happen will happen, and urge the Minister to accept his suggestion. I would be happy to pause in my remarks to allow him to leap to his feet, as he has been prone to do throughout my contributions, to confirm whether the Government will accept my hon. Friend’s suggestion.

London Local Authorities and Transport for London (No. 2) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Tuesday 6th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[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.

Daylight Saving Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Friday 20th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a good point—of course he is a signatory to amendment 58 and he made the same point in Committee. This is about not only collecting evidence, but evaluating that evidence using the relevant criteria, including those to which he refers. That is probably one reason why he has misgivings about aspects of this Bill, as do a number of other hon. Members.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

As my amendment was mentioned, I am anxious to ensure that it is not misrepresented. Does my hon. Friend agree that it does not say that the concerns of those faith groups should take precedence over everybody else’s view? The amendment merely asks that regard be given to their concerns when a decision is taken.

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point.

Amendment 3 stands in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset and I look forward to hearing his speech in support of it. The amendment proposes to leave out clause 2, and I may well share the scepticism of my hon. Friends who have supported that amendment, because they obviously feel that the Bill would be better if it made no reference to what is described as the “Independent Oversight Group”.

One thing seems to be absolutely clear: this so-called “Independent Oversight Group” will not be independent of the Government. Its members will be chosen by the Secretary of State, who will be able to remove them on a whim, and subsection (3) provides that they will not even be entitled to have all their expenses defrayed, because instead of using the word “must” the Bill refers only to “may” in this regard. They will not be allowed to choose their own terms of reference and they will have to do as they are told by the Secretary of State, even to the extent that he will be able to order them not to publish their advice quickly. They might produce their report quickly, but the clause means that the Secretary of State will be able to say to them that they should not produce the report based on their findings until a given time, perhaps closer to a year or 18 months after they had been asked to start their work. So I can understand the scepticism.

My hon. Friends the Members for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) and for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) and I have tabled the more modest amendment 63, which would require the independent group to be comprised of “independent academic experts”. We did so not because we believed that a group of independent academics is necessarily best suited to this task, but because the Minister promised in Committee that the group would be so limited and the amendment would prevent him from changing his mind later. The amendment would also provide the opportunity to probe him further as to how and why he believes that independent academic experts are the best people to advise on a report on the potential costs and benefits.

I have been campaigning for a long time for the Government to carry out work and produce a comprehensive report on the costs and benefits of UK membership of the European Union. I find it interesting that although the Government resolutely refuse to do that, they are prepared to contemplate such an inquiry into the costs and benefits of changing the time zones within this country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I am much more in favour of harmony than harmonisation, particularly on the European Union.

Amendment 22, which again stands in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley, states:

“Membership of the Group must be ratified by a resolution of both Houses of Parliament.”

It introduces a modest safeguard to try to ensure that the group is truly independent. What could be wrong with this House having an opportunity to ratify the membership of the group or to table amendments to remove individual members from or add them to it?

[Philip Davies]

Given the slightly different tack that my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) and I have taken in our amendments, does my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) feel that if my amendment were accepted, the necessary safeguards would be in place and he would then be happy for the independent oversight group to take shape?

[Mr Chope]

It would go some way to addressing the problem, but what the amendment in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset bears out is that there is a certain amount of scepticism about whether the “Independent Oversight Group” will actually be independent. Giving this House the opportunity to ratify the membership or otherwise might obviously provide some safeguard, but this is not my preferred approach. If amendment 22 was, however, incorporated in the Bill, a Select Committee could perhaps try to get involved in the process and interview the people who were going to be cited on the Order Paper as appointments needing ratification by this House.

[Philip Davies]

But if we accepted amendments that made this group genuinely independent, surely that would be better than having no independent oversight group at all.

[Mr Chope]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend about that.

Amendment 64 stands in my name and those of my hon. Friends the Members for Wellingborough and for Gainsborough. It proposes to omit subsection (4) from clause 2—this is the subsection that, above all, constrains the activities of the so-called “Independent Oversight Group”. From the Government’s perspective, the group can be independent, provided that it does as the Government say—I shall try to illustrate that with two specific examples. Under this subsection, the Secretary of State could prevent the group from examining separately the issues of whether to have experiments advancing the clocks by one hour: in the summer alone, in the winter alone, or across the whole year. Why do the Government insist on holding the whip hand? Another example of what could happen unless subsection (4) is removed is that the Government could prevent the publication of any minority report from the group. They could suppress dissent, because although the group might contain people who took a different view from the majority, the Government would be able to use their powers to say, “You are not allowed to produce a minority report.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I should have anticipated my hon. Friend’s intervention; I am sure that the Government would wish to receive representations and would be very sympathetic towards representations along those lines. Let us hope that that is so. As somebody who spent quite a lot of my late childhood in Cornwall, I think it would also be useful to have a representative from England who came from the far south-west, as the circumstances there are rather different from those in what might be described as the soft south-east. I do not know what, if anything, the Government have against the amendment. I know that in Committee it was proposed that the independent panel should have three experts from each of the four nations comprising the United Kingdom. This amendment is modest in comparison, but it introduces a worthwhile safeguard to ensure that any report is fully informed by the perspective of all parts of the United Kingdom.

Amendment 95, tabled by my hon. Friends the Members for Shipley, for Hendon (Mr Offord) and for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) and others, addresses the same issue as amendment 58 in slightly different language. The amendment talks about the impact and effect on the practices of the mainstream faith groups in the United Kingdom. It is a very sensible amendment although, as with amendment 58, if my amendment 59 were agreed, it would be redundant.

Amendment 5, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset and supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley, me and my hon. Friends the Members for Wellingborough and for Gainsborough, would leave out clause 3(2). Clause 3(1) requires the Secretary of State to publish the report of the independent oversight group within one year of Royal Assent, but subsection (2) gives the group a possible additional six months. Why? Why do they need an additional six months? If amendment 59 were accepted, the group would have less work to do but, in any event, surely one year is long enough for its work. If the group's members know that they have a chance of extending their work by another six months, they might be tempted to do so, but they should get down to the work they are being asked to do. In this country, we have a tendency to delay and delay and to think that that is a solution to our problems. As I said earlier, last weekend I was in Kazakhstan, where they have built a new city of 800,000 people in less than 15 years. If they can do that in 15 years, why will it take more than a year for this group to consider such a modest issue? We tolerate delay to far too great an extent and if we want to get on with this, we should get on with it—I hope my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point, who is promoting the Bill, would agree—for better or for worse. We should not, however, use the delaying tactic.

That brings me to amendment 25. I am rushing through these amendments, but I think it is important to address them. Sometimes, the people who are impatient to take the debate forward try to move a closure motion, which means that Members with amendments in the lead group do not have a chance to speak about them before there is an attempt to curtail such debate by using the procedures of the House. What I am doing by going through these amendments seriatim is giving those who tabled them the opportunity to expand on them if they so wish. In any event, I am ensuring that the full nature and extent of the amendments is officially on the record so that if the Bill goes to the other place for debate, those who pick up these issues there will be able to look at the report of today’s proceedings and decide which, if any, of the amendments find favour with them.

Amendment 25 would leave out “18” and insert “24” in line 14 of subsection 2(b). This is the only one of the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley with which I do not agree. I think it contradicts absolutely amendment 5, which he has also signed.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right that it does, but the time scale for the independent oversight group surely depends on its terms of reference. The amendment was tabled in case the terms of reference were extended in the way I have requested, considering the impact on other faith groups, and the way the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid) mentioned, considering energy consumption. If those amendments were accepted, the group would need longer to consider those issues, but if they were not accepted, the shorter period of time that my hon. Friend mentioned earlier would be more than acceptable.

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for explaining the thinking behind amendment 25.

On the amendments relating to clause 4, amendment 60, is consequential on amendment 59. Clause 4 gives the Secretary of State the power to make an order advancing the time in the United Kingdom throughout the year by one hour. Following on from my lead amendment 59, amendment 60 would restrict that power to advancing summer time alone by one hour.

Amendment 67, in my name and those of my hon. Friends the Members for Wellingborough and for Gainsborough, would change the name of such an order from a “daylight saving” order to a “summertime extension” order. That wording would promote both accuracy and transparency. Frankly, I object strongly to the expression “daylight saving” because it is against nature to be able to save daylight. I think the Bill’s promoter is effectively committing daylight robbery of the English language in using that expression.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I will try again with this group to persuade my hon. Friends of the merits of the amendments, the purpose of which is not to damage the Bill or prevent it from progressing, but to strengthen it. Lest anyone be in any doubt, some of the amendments in this group are similar to amendments in the previous group. I should make it clear that, as with the previous amendment that we have just voted on, if any of my amendments in this group were accepted at this late stage, I would be happy to support the Bill enthusiastically, because my amendments would, without doubt, strengthen the Bill. However, we have to deal with the Bill as it is and not base our decisions on the assurances that we have received from the Minister.

Amendment 44 would delete clause 9(1)(b). The clause relates to the end of the trial, and I have to say in passing that there seems to be a slight contradiction in the wording of the Bill—it may well just be a legalistic point. The clause is entitled “The end of the trial”, but the first sentence beneath the title states:

“The Secretary of State must, during the trial period, do one of the following”.

I was slightly confused about that, because it seems to give the Secretary of State the power to do one of the things listed at any point in the trial period, not just at the end as suggested by the clause title. Perhaps the Minister might be able to explain why that is the case.

Clause 9(1) states that the Secretary of State must do one of the things listed. The first is to make an order to abandon the trial—that makes sense. The second, in paragraph (b), is to make an order during the trial period to advance the time by one hour permanently. Given that the Bill regrettably does not contain the safeguards that I and other hon. Members sought in the previous group of amendments, I wish through amendment 44 to prevent the Secretary of State from making such an order. I do not believe that is appropriate without the safeguards that we have discussed previously, which I will discuss again under this group of amendments.

Amendment 46 relates to clause 9(3), which states:

“An order under subsection (2) is subject to negative resolution procedure.”

All the way through the Bill I have been pleased to see that each provision is subject to the affirmative procedure, but clause 9 appears to me to be the only part of the Bill that is subject to the negative procedure. The amendment is merely intended to change that to the affirmative procedure, which is standard in the rest of the Bill. Given that that procedure has been happily accepted in all other parts of the Bill, I would like to think that the House would be very happy to see it applied to clause 9 too.

The other amendments in this group that relate to clause 9 are amendments 73 to 75, which were tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope). I am sure that we all look forward to him speaking at great length about why he introduced them. It seems to me—I am sure he will correct me if I am wrong—that amendment 73 would simply delete clause 9(1)(c). He may well be able to explain why he felt that was so important.

Amendment 74 would delete clause 9(2). I must say that as ever, my hon. Friend was far more alert than me in seeking to do so. It appears to give the Secretary of State wide-ranging powers without any great safeguards. I suspect that is why he has sought to delete that subsection, but of course he may well have had better reasons than that. I am sure he will be able to tell us what they were.

Amendment 75 would delete clause 9(3), which is the subsection setting out that the clause is subject to the negative resolution procedure. My hon. Friend may well have wanted it deleted because he, too, was unhappy with that. I would like to think that my amendment 46 would make his amendment 75 redundant.

[Mr Chope]

I hope to have the chance to address my amendments, but I will say now that the reason for amendment 75 is that it is consequential on my amendment 74. If amendment 74 succeeded and subsection (2) were left out, there would not be any need for the provisions of subsection (3).

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I am pleased that he has cleared that up.

I am afraid that, through no fault of my own, time is pressing, so we do not have much time to go through these amendments or give them the kind of scrutiny that they deserve—but I shall press on. Amendment 48 would delete clause 11, which gives the Secretary of State the power permanently to advance the time by one hour. I seek to delete the clause partly for the reason that I gave earlier. Given that the amendments in the previous group were not accepted, we should not be giving the Secretary of State this power based on a trial period that I do not think has adequate safeguards built into it. To be helpful, however, I tabled amendment 51 to get around that problem. If it were accepted by the Minister and the promoter of the Bill, I would be satisfied and perfectly happy to support the Bill, because it would provide adequate safeguards.

That touches on amendment 15, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid), which is similar to his amendment 13 in the previous group. Amendment 51, too, relates to the power to advance time by one hour permanently and not just for the trial period. If we are to do it permanently, it is not only important to obtain the agreement of the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister in Northern Ireland but essential to obtain the agreement of the Scottish and Welsh First Ministers. To go ahead with a permanent time change without obtaining the agreement of the First Ministers would fatally undermine the future of the United Kingdom. We cannot be seen to railroad the people of Scotland and Wales into something that might be against their wishes and hope that the United Kingdom will stay together. Clearly, it would no longer be sustainable. Whether people thought it appropriate to obtain the agreement of the Scottish or Welsh First Ministers for a trial period is one thing—that is what we voted on in the previous group of amendments—but it must be clear to everybody that if we believe in the United Kingdom, we must obtain that agreement before permanently changing the arrangement. That is what my amendment 51 would do.

My hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute has taken a different tack, as he has done throughout. His amendment 15 would do pretty much the same as mine, except that he seeks to obtain the agreement of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly rather than just the Scottish and Welsh First Ministers. I would be satisfied with either amendment. In fact, I prefer his amendment. I think that the requirement to get the agreement of the Parliament or Assembly as a whole would provide a much better safeguard than the obligation to seek only the agreement of the First Minister. I commend him for having come up with a far better amendment than mine, and I am happy to fall on my sword to pursue his agenda.

Amendments 20 and 21 have been tabled by our friends from the Scottish National party, the hon. Members for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) and for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford). If I read the amendments correctly—I am sure that they will correct me, if I am wrong—they seek to do exactly what I and my hon. Friend seek in our amendments: to put in place extra safeguards for the consultation of Scotland and Wales. Of the 11 amendments in this group, therefore, four or five would have the same effect. As for the future of the Bill, I must emphasise that it cannot progress unless we make it abundantly clear that we have the endorsement of people in Scotland and Wales, and not just through a consultation, which is what it provides for at the moment. People who are consulted can then simply be ignored. That is totally and utterly unacceptable.

London Local Authorities Bill [Lords]

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Wednesday 7th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

The answer to my hon. Friend’s second question is yes. As for what uniform would be appropriate, I think that there is much to be said for requiring the accredited people to wear bowler hats, because they could be easily identified. People would know when an accredited person was approaching, and would be able to scarper. There is a lot of common sense in that suggestion from my hon. Friend. A better solution, however, would be not allowing the Bill to extend the power to accredited persons in the first place.

Amendment 8 mirrors amendment 5, again proposing the insertion after the word “payable” the words

“by the person being served”.

I do not think that I need go into it further.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Why not?

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his sedentary intervention, because it has given me an opportunity to welcome him to the Chamber. Unusually for him, he has been a bit late in arriving. I am afraid that he will have to look at the Official Report to find out what I said in support of amendment 5.

Amendment 9 proposes that clause 4 should be left out completely. Clause 4 relates to the power to require names and addresses. This goes to the heart of the whole issue of civil liberties. Increasingly in this country, we are seeing a departure from the principle that people cannot be required to give their details to anyone who comes up to them and says, “I require your name and address.”

In preparation for the debate, I looked at a website called freeBEAGLES, which provides “legal advice for activists” and includes some helpful advice on when people are and are not required to give their details. For instance, it states:

“Other than under road traffic and anti-social behaviour legislation, you do not commit an offence in English law by refusing to give your name and address to the police.”

The Bill refers not to the police but to accredited people and police civilians. The advice continues:

“However there are certain situations where the police may arrest you if they cannot establish your name and address”

—Members should note that it is the police who can do the arresting—

“and if you are arrested and charged with an offence you will be unlikely to be granted bail unless they can establish these details.”

It adds that the general principle

“is that you never have to give your name and address to the police prior to arrest”

unless

“the police reasonably suspect you of a non-arrestable offence, and require your name and address for the service of a summons …where you are the driver of a vehicle…where the police say they suspect you of ‘anti-social behaviour’”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

Will my hon. Friend explain how this will work in practice? If someone who is asked for his name and address by a representative from the council makes up a name and address, what mechanism will the council have to check the information and establish whether it was genuine?

[Mr Chope]

At present, a council officer has no more power than any other individual. Let me cite a constituency case. Someone with a shopping trolley ran into and damaged a car belonging to one of my constituents in Christchurch. My constituent saw that the trolley had dented the car, but the person who had been pushing it then got into her own car and drove away. My constituent tried to identify the person by asking the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency for details of the registered keeper of the vehicle. The DVLA could not give her the details, however, because no criminal offence had been committed. It might have been accidental criminal damage, but it was a civil matter and therefore the DVLA could not release the details that would have enabled her to bring a civil action against the individual.

That is similar to the situation before us: if somebody commits a civil offence but their identity cannot be ascertained or they were not photographed, hard luck! Nothing can be done about it. Obviously if the person is driving a vehicle, specific laws apply requiring them to give their name and address to the police. [Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) looks a bit perplexed and disappointed, but if he analyses the matter, I am sure that he would agree that it would be wrong to allow people to make accusations and then immediately, on the back of those accusations, require people to give their names and addresses, and to back that up with criminal sanctions for failure to give either a name and address or an accurate name and address.

[Philip Davies]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend—I take his point and I support his amendment—but there is one thing that I still do not understand. The clause that he wants to delete states that someone

“commits an offence if…he gives a false or inaccurate name or address”,

and would be liable to conviction and a fine. If his amendment is not accepted and someone gives a false name and address, how on earth would they be found out in order for a fine to be imposed?

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a good point that the sponsor of the Bill may wish to address later.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

Again, my hon. Friend is spot on. I am not sure whether the promoters have thought about that. It seems that if someone gave their name but could not give an address—because they did not have one—they would automatically be guilty of failing to supply a name and address, if there were not the defence of reasonable excuse, so they could be penalised merely for being itinerant or vagrant. This is another example of the law of unintended consequences that so often applies to private Bills that have not been thought through properly.

[Philip Davies]

I suspect that my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) is right: the officials would probably use the electoral register to check the names and addresses that people give. Would my hon. Friend agree, though, that there are a multitude of reasons why somebody’s name might not yet be on the electoral register at a particular address, so that does not mean that they have given a false name and address? The register may not yet have been updated. Would it not be worrying if local officials were handing out fixed penalty notices or fines on the basis of who is on the electoral register?

[Mr Chope]

I agree with my hon. Friend, but this opens up a much larger debate that we will not go into now—the whole question of the electoral register and the proposed changes to it. The Government are thinking of effectively making filling in the registration form voluntary. The powers in the Bill, coupled with people’s freedom to decide whether to put their name on the electoral register, could result in a significant reduction in the number of people choosing to do so.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend cites another good example. Again, the conscientious law-abiding citizen could find himself penalised, while an irresponsible person from overseas might get away scot-free. That will create increasing resentment. There is already enough resentment in this country against some foreigners, and we do not want to do anything that will increase that resentment.

[Philip Davies]

If a constituent of mine, confident that they did not have to give their name and address to a local council official in Shipley, came down to London and was asked by a council official to give their name and address, they would reasonably expect the same rules to apply in London. Would it not be perverse were they found to be breaking the law because of some rather officious rule introduced in London that did not apply in any other part of the country?

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is on to a really important point: if we are to change the balance between officialdom and civil liberties, it should be done nationally rather than on an ad hoc, case-by-case basis, which could lead to laws in London being different from those in Shipley—different, indeed, from those anywhere else outside London.

It should be for Home Office Ministers to come forward with these proposals, if they think it reasonable to extend such powers to councils in the way suggested in the Bill, but they manifestly have not done so; there have been extensions, but nothing in this area, despite the fact that the Bill was printed back in 2007. The Government have not chosen to extend these powers to police community support officer and others, or to extend officials’ ability to require names and addresses nationally. Implicit in that is that the Government would not support such an extension of restrictions on civil liberties. If they do not support such restrictions on civil liberties nationally, why should they support them in London?

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[Mr Chope]

I do not want to advertise, but I agree that readers of tourist guides such as those produced by Lonely Planet and Rough Guides might find it useful to know about such penalty regimes. I am sure that if this legislation is put on to the statute book in its current form the editors of those books will want to ensure they are up to date in respect of the fact that there are fewer civil liberties in London than in other parts of the country, as visitors may wish to steer clear of London in order to enjoy the full range of English freedoms outside London. Those are important points.

[Philip Davies]

In respect of this group of amendments, instead of simply restricting the provision so it applies to community support officers and not the accredited persons of the county, would it not be better to delete it entirely, because if it applied solely to community support officers, councils would be for ever tying up their time by ringing them up to ask them to come and carry out these functions, when the public want community support officers to be a visible police presence on the ground deterring proper crime?

[Mr Chope]

I agree, which is why I have tabled amendment 9 seeking to leave out clause 4 entirely. I have provided an alternative solution so that if we cannot leave out the whole of clause 4 we can at least leave out the part of it relating to accredited persons. Fortunately, both amendments have been selected for debate by the Chairman of Ways and Means, so it is up to the House to decide whether it prefers the entire removal of clause 4 or a modified version of it deleting the reference to the accredited persons.

[Philip Davies]

Has my hon. Friend any idea how often these provisions would be enforced, if his amendments were not accepted? How many times would local authorities expect to be demanding somebody’s name and address? It would be nice to know how much time our PCSOs would be expected to give to pursue this line of inquiry on behalf of local authorities.

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[Mr Chope]

Amendment 14 is, again, a consequential amendment relating to the need to remove references to an “accredited person”. Amendment 21 deals with a different part of the Bill, but again no explanation is given as to why it is thought necessary to include the change being made in the Bill. The explanatory notes state:

“Clause 8 amends the City of Westminster Act 1996 which provides Westminster City Council with enhanced enforcement powers in relation to unlicensed sex establishments. The first amendment is a minor typographical amendment and the second amends section 8 of the 1996 Act, which relates to the service of notices. Under section 8, if notices under the Act are to be served by post, then they have to be served by registered post or the recorded delivery service. The amendments would enable notices to be served by ordinary post.”

Surely it is important that the notices should be served by registered post or recorded delivery, because that means there is a tracking service and Westminster city council will know whether or not the notices have been properly served. The idea is that the notices should be sent by what is described in the explanatory notes as “ordinary post”, but that is becoming very much below par for many people, as it is increasingly unreliable. Are we really saying that delivering a letter with someone’s name on it to a block of flats is going to count as proper service in respect of the enforcement powers in clause 8? Nowhere is it explained why it would be fair, reasonable or equitable to change the long-established way of sending out such notices, which is by recorded delivery or registered post. Apart from anything else, some of us are keen to encourage Royal Mail and give it income, and this proposal would deprive it of income that it is currently able to obtain from such notices being sent by recorded delivery or registered post. The case for this change is just not made, so my amendment 21 would remove subsections (3) and (4) from clause 8.

[Philip Davies]

May I tap into my hon. Friend’s legal expertise, because his amendment could well be very helpful to Westminster city council? What would happen if something was sent out by ordinary post and the intended recipient simply said that they did not receive it, whether or not that was the case? Would that nullify the provisions detailed in that letter? Perhaps he knows whether or not that would make a difference.

[Mr Chope]

Again, I do not purport to be an expert on this Bill, and my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green may wish to respond on that matter when winding up this debate. The explanatory notes are totally silent on this issue and to obtain the right answer one would need to have a greater knowledge than I have of the enforcement powers in relation to unlicensed sex establishments in the City of Westminster.

I have almost got to the end of this group, but I shall now deal with amendments 35 to 39 to clauses 18 and 20. I find clause 18 to be particularly offensive, because it creates a new criminal offence, stating:

“Any person who intentionally obstructs any authorised officer acting in the exercise of his powers under this Act shall be guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale.”

In other words, they would be subject to a fine of up to £1,000. There used to be an offence on the statute book of obstructing a police officer in the execution of his duty, and there probably still is. In the days when I used to practise a bit in the criminal courts as a barrister, what one might describe as an “over-enthusiastic” or “over-zealous” police officer might often throw in a couple of charges of obstruction in the execution of duty to press a point home against a hapless defendant. If that was happening with the police, how much more dangerous is it for civil liberties for the authorised officer to be able to say, “You’ve obstructed me, so I will make sure you get a £1,000 fine”? The decision about what the obstruction would be and so on would be left to the officer, and I think that goes far too far.

[Mr Chope]

That might be the situation. They seem just to have gone for level 3 fines, which are a maximum of £1,000, but there is no explanation for choosing that penalty, so I cannot answer my hon. Friend’s point, I am afraid.

The provision on the obstruction of authorised officers goes far too far, giving rise to the creation of an inappropriate criminal penalty.

[Philip Davies]

The clause actually refers to somebody who

“intentionally obstructs any authorised officer”.

Has my hon. Friend any idea what constitutes an intentional obstruction and what might be termed an unintentional obstruction?

[Mr Chope]

Exactly. To go back to the example given by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), somebody who sees the authorised officer with a bowler hat and heads off in the opposite direction might be regarded as intentionally obstructing the officer. Who knows? If we are going to create new offences, it is important that they should be very tightly drawn so that they can be clearly understood. The offence in the Bill is wide and vague and therefore oppressive, and that is why I find it particularly offensive.

I was amazed to see the wide terms in which clause 20 has been drafted. Without taking up too much of the House’s time, it is worth spelling out exactly what it says. It states:

“Where an offence under this Act committed by a body corporate is proved to have been committed with the consent”,

we can understand that,

“or connivance of, or to be attributable to any neglect on the part of, a director”,

again, we can understand the reference to a director,

“manager, secretary or other similar officer of the body corporate or any person who was purporting to act in any such capacity, he, as well as the body corporate, shall be guilty of the offence.”

Subsection (2) states:

“Where the affairs of the body corporate are managed by its members, subsection (1) above shall apply to the acts and defaults of a member in connection with his functions of management as if he were a director of the body corporate.”

If the clause was the result of a competition among law students to see who could draft the most unreasonably wide new criminal sanctions against corporate bodies, the person who drafted this would probably get a capital alpha. It is drawn so widely and so unreasonably that, I would submit, it cannot have been analysed properly. I cannot believe that the promoters of the Bill really want the clause to be in the condition it is in at the moment.

[Philip Davies]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend. It is not only unreasonable but totally and utterly ridiculous. Can he offer any suggestion at all as to why the Bill and the clause specifically pick on secretaries? I can imagine that if someone was particularly illiberal, as the people promoting the Bill appear to be, they might want to pick on directors and managers—I can see why they would be the obvious target for people who wanted to go down this illiberal route—but can my hon. Friend think of any reason whatsoever why anybody would reasonably want to attack secretaries in particular?

[Mr Chope]

I can think of all sorts of reasons, but I do not necessarily want to share them with the House in response to my hon. Friend’s intervention. I would not say, as my hon. Friend did, that it would be reasonable to include a manager. A director of a company or organisation has a particular responsibility and although it might be over the top to extend the provision to them, I thought the best thing to do was to try to limit the corporate liability to a director who committed an offence directly.

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[Mr Chope]

I hope that we will have the opportunity to test the opinion of the House on amendment 9, because most of the debate has centred on the powers under clause 4 to require names and addresses, and the penalties associated with the refusal to provide them. My hon. Friend is addressing the same issue, which is one of the most fundamental civil liberties issues in the Bill.

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I said earlier that this would be a red letter day for him, as so many of his amendments are being accepted. I am beginning to think that it is a red letter day for me too, because I appear to have persuaded him that amendment 9 is the most important amendment to put to a Division. I fear that I must now rely on you, Madam Deputy Speaker, to complete my red letter day, which would be a rarity for me in this House.

I think that I am right in saying that the sponsor is minded to accept amendments 35 to 39, the final amendments that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch has tabled to the Bill. In case I have got that wrong, I want to touch on clause 18 and amendment 35, which relates to it. The clause talks about

“Any person who intentionally obstructs any authorised officer”.

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[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who makes a fair point, but of course the big difference between the cases that he mentions and this one is that there is quite a large volume of those notices to go out in the post, so there is a substantial cost saving to the taxpayer in having them sent out by post rather than registered post or recorded delivery.

That brings me back to my question about how many notices my hon. Friend expects to be sent out under the provisions of the 1996 Act about the closure of unlawful sex establishments. I cannot for the life of me believe that the local authority will send out hundreds of thousands of them in any given year. Surely we are talking about a handful at the most—maybe, on the generous side, 15 or 20. I cannot imagine it could possibly be any more than that. So what cost saving would there be? It seems to me that the local authority might save itself £50 or £60 if the change were made, and I suspect that that is a very generous estimate. I am all for local authorities saving money, but surely there are far bigger fish to fry in that context.

I believe that the change would not save the local authority money but end up costing it more. When somebody is sent something simply through the post rather than by registered post or recorded delivery, we do not know whether it has been delivered. When something is sent by registered post or recorded delivery we do know that, because it can be traced back through the Royal Mail. Nobody can deny that they have received the letter. If it is sent out by ordinary post, who is to know whether it has been received by the intended recipient? It may well have been, but it may not.

If the intended recipient claimed, rightly or wrongly, that they had not received it, and the council intended to pursue an enforcement notice on the back of the letter that they sent out, where would the local authority stand? Would it be able to pursue an enforcement notice if the recipient said, “Well, you may have sent it by post, but I never received it, and you’ve got no evidence at all to say that I did”? Might that be contested in the courts? Might a magistrates court or district judge say, “Well, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that this person did not receive the letter, so we’re not allowing this enforcement notice to go ahead until we can be sure that they’ve received the official documentation from the local authority”? To risk going down that road to save a maximum of £50 or £60 a year, or whatever, seems to me unbelievably ridiculous. I suspect that the change would cost local authorities more in the long run. As my hon. Friend has been so generous in accepting other amendments, I really do not see why he is not prepared to accept one that seems so very small.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case against clause 8(3) and (4). Does he accept that one problem with the proposed change is that it could well result in a lot of injustice? People could find that they faced the closure of an establishment alleged by the council to be an unlawful sex establishment, although they had not received the notice because it had been sent by ordinary post.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

We have had an excellent debate. I thank all who have participated, including those who have made telling interventions. The right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) was not present for much of the debate, but I am grateful to him for his participation, although he did not go into much detail. I am also grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer) for listening to the arguments and, as a result, giving notice that, on behalf of the promoters, he will accept a fair number of my amendments.

I thank my hon. Friends the Members for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) and for Shipley (Philip Davies) for supporting the amendments, thereby contributing significantly to the decision of my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green to accept so many of them. They go some way towards improving some of the clauses in the Bill, but, as was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset, they do not do anything other than ameliorate the Bill. They do not address some of the most fundamental issues.

My hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset spoke for some time about clause 4, which contains the power to require names and addresses. He cited a number of historical precedents. I thought the Homeric example was the most telling, but the reference to P. G. Wodehouse was also very pertinent. However, underlying his argument, which he made in his inimitable and witty style, were some serious issues that touched on the reason why we have not had revolutions in the United Kingdom for centuries. We have always accepted the primary importance of allowing citizens their liberties, and we take away those liberties only if there is a strong case for so doing. Recently, however, there has been a gradual erosion of the right to which he referred—the right of a person not to tell anybody their name, address and identity unless they have committed, or are thought to be committing, a criminal offence, and even then only if that information is demanded by a police constable.

That right was jealously guarded when the House considered the legislation relating to police community support officers. The House realised that PCSOs might need to ask the identity of individuals who they thought were committing criminal offences. Even then, however, the House did not allow PCSOs to have the power of arrest. Instead, it said that PCSOs could ask someone who refused to give their name and address or whom they suspected of giving an inaccurate name and address to stay behind for up to half an hour, during which time a police constable could come along and effect the necessary arrest.

Clause 4 would significantly extend that power to borough councils and police community support officers, although as a result of the amendments that my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green has accepted, clause 4 will no longer apply to accredited persons. Obviously we are grateful for that, but we think that the power in clause 4 to require names and address, coupled with the power effectively to criminalise a person and subject them to a maximum £1,000 fine for refusing to supply that information, is wrong in principle.

It is all the more wrong that the law should apply in one part of the country and not across the country as a whole. The House should deal with issues of civil liberties on a national basis, rather than on a piecemeal basis. Nobody has made the case for why borough councils or PCSOs in London should have greater powers to obtain names and addresses and to impose penalties if they are not supplied than powers elsewhere in the country. At the heart of the provision, therefore, is a problem. It is a misuse of a private Bill to extend powers at the expense of ordinary citizens in London, especially if the same is not being done elsewhere in the country.

The hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson) and the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington said, quite reasonably, that the Bill was supported by the 33 London boroughs, but that is not an end in itself. If this was simply a matter of byelaws, those London boroughs could implement them; but here we are introducing public law and criminal restrictions in London and not elsewhere in the country. It is incumbent upon the House to consider the matter not only from the point of view of a resident of a London borough, but in a national context and from the point of view of people who work in London, visitors and others.

[Philip Davies]

Is that not the crux of the matter? It is no surprise that local authorities are in favour of the provisions. If the House is to provide for hugely extended powers, it is perfectly likely that the bodies getting those increased powers will be in favour of them. Is it not the House’s duty to prevent such bodies from having undue extra powers at the expense of individuals in our constituencies?

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is right, and he made a powerful speech asking why people in Shipley should be dealt with differently from people in London, and why people from Shipley who happen to be visiting London should find they are subject to a different set of laws from those that would apply if they were in their own constituency. We realise that the laws will be different if we visit a foreign country, but we do not expect that to be the case between different parts of England—such as for people from Shipley, Christchurch or even Derby—let alone the rest of the United Kingdom.

Employment Opportunities Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Friday 17th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

I doubt it, frankly. I am delighted to see the Minister of State on the Front Bench, but we do not have a Conservative Government, we have a coalition Government, and that is the Achilles heel. In due course we will see that my hon. Friend speaks not from a Conservative party brief but from a coalition Government brief. None the less, I and, I hope, some of my colleagues will be able to speak freely on behalf of the Conservative party.

The hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) will recall that back in 1997-98, when his party introduced the minimum wage legislation, the Conservative party strongly opposed it on principle and on the basis that it would prove to be counter-productive and not in the long-term interests of Britain’s competitiveness or, indeed, of people wanting to get into work.

The initial level at which the minimum wage was brought in was so relatively low that it did not bite as acutely as some people had feared it might, but since then the level has risen by the best part of 70%, far ahead of average earnings and of inflation, and as a result it bites a lot more than it used to. That is why I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister and, certainly, my party will look again at the issue and see what is happening in the real world as a result of the minimum wage legislation that we have.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend also recall that it was not only the Conservative party that opposed the minimum wage when it was first introduced, but the Liberal Democrats?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course, that treatment also prevents people who are being held in prison-like conditions by the person who is looking after them from breaking out, for fear of a worse penalty being sustained.

[Philip Davies]

As my hon. Friend knows, he and I agree on virtually everything. However, as I reflect on the delicious irony of the Labour party stacking up to oppose a Bill that would allow asylum seekers to work, I wonder whether he thinks that his measure would be a further magnet for vexatious attempts to claim asylum in this country.

[Mr Chope]

If it would be, I certainly would not put it forward. In fact, I want it to be the complete reverse. I want the Bill to put pressure on the Home Office to deal with asylum applications a lot more quickly than it does. If asylum applications were regularly dealt with within a few weeks, the issue of asylum seekers being unable to work and support themselves would not be as serious. However, I have had constituents come to me—I am sure my hon. Friend has had similar experiences—and say that they have been waiting for seven or eight years to have their asylum cases dealt with. That goes back to the days when the Government of the hon. Member for Harrow West were trying to run the country. That puts asylum seekers in an impossible position. They want to work, but they are prevented from doing so by the law of the land.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I did come across a document that seemed to say just that, but I am not sure whether it was the one to which the hon. Gentleman refers. I read it, but I was not convinced. Indeed, I shall refer in due course to an article that I believe is much more in tune with my views on this matter. It is interesting that he refers to documents from that body, which includes in its title the words “social research”. If anybody should examine this issue, I would have thought it should be the Low Pay Commission and objective, independent commentators.

[Philip Davies]

On that point, is it not bizarre that the previous Labour Government used to believe that if we put the price of something up, we would get less of it? Hence they fervently increased the price of tobacco, because they thought that would mean that fewer people would smoke, and increased the price of alcohol on the basis that fewer would drink. Surely by the same logic, if we increase the cost of employment, there will be less employment.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is certainly true that we would get less official employment, which goes back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Mr Binley) on the black economy. If the minimum wage results in higher numbers of people in work, why are more than 1 million people working in the black economy below the minimum wage, as the Low Pay Commission assesses?

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

Mr Deputy Speaker, you would not want me to start talking about the national health service in this debate, so I shall resist my hon. Friend’s tempting offer, but he is absolutely right that it is considered unacceptable in politics to argue for certain unpopular causes. I always ask people to celebrate anybody in politics who will stand up and say something controversial or unpopular, because I think they are doing a great service to our democracy, even though they may be insulted by Labour Members. I therefore commend my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch on bringing this important issue before the House, and for trying to generate a grown-up debate about the benefits, or otherwise, of a fixed national minimum wage that people are not allowed to get out of.

I have always believed that a political consensus is usually a precursor to a disaster. Every party in this House supported joining the exchange rate mechanism, yet it turned out to be a complete disaster. The setting up of the Child Support Agency had cross-party support and it was seen as a great thing, but it has been a complete fiasco. Everyone across the political divide has had to support the setting up of tax credits, too, yet anybody who has had any dealings with the system knows that it has been a complete fiasco as well. The fact that there is political consensus in support of a measure does not mean to say it is good, therefore; it just means to say the measure is likely to be politically expedient.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a good case. Does he agree that that problem is not confined to our Parliament? The political consensus getting it wrong is precisely what happened in Greece: there was cross-party consensus that the country should join the euro, and what a mess they have made of it!

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We should never allow political expediency to prevent a serious debate about what is right, which is why I particularly commend my hon. Friend for raising this issue.

I apologise for not having been present in the Chamber for the beginning of my hon. Friend’s speech. He may well have said then what I am about to say now, but if he did not, I certainly wish to do so. We must acknowledge that the introduction of the national minimum wage has been a huge benefit to a lot of people in employment. As a result of the national minimum wage, the pay of a lot of people who were being paid a low wage went up, so it has been a great success for them. It would be churlish to argue otherwise. I certainly would not pretend that the national minimum wage has been a total disaster for everybody, because it clearly has not. However, just as I would not argue that, I think it would be churlish for Labour Members to put on their political blinkers and just see the benefits that have been accrued by certain people, without being open-minded enough to look at the potential downside of a national minimum wage in its current form. If Labour Members do not think there are any downsides whatever from having a national minimum wage, they are either totally blinkered in their view or they do not live in the real world.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I will tell the hon. Gentleman what is an outrage. It is an outage that in 1997, 47,000 people had been on incapacity benefit for five years or more, but by the time his party had ruined the country that figure had risen to 1.5 million. That is an outrage that he should be reflecting upon. He should think about the fact that so many people were either priced out of the jobs market or were just out of that market as a result of his Government’s policies. That happened either because of the national minimum wage or because the benefits system penalised people for going out to work. That is the real outrage, rather than what he is pointing out.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is making a brilliant contribution. Does he accept that one of the tragedies is that this situation was forecast? Back in 1998, the Low Pay Commission said that

“minimum wages may cause a transfer of jobs between groups such as the substitution of more skilled for less skilled workers”.

The less skilled workers are the ones who have lost out as a result of the minimum wage.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course, it is very easy for everyone to try to sweep such matters under the carpet, but we would be doing this place a great disservice if we did. I am appalled that Labour Members, who supposedly—as they claim—represent the most vulnerable in society, are perfectly happy for those people never to be given the opportunity to get a job as a consequence of Labour’s policies either on this matter or on benefits.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend might think that such choices should be available only to people who are highly paid, but a firm in which all the staff are paid the minimum wage might be faced with the same predicament. Why does he think that the only people who should have the choice are highly paid people? Why should more lowly paid people not have the same option to take a pay cut or to be made redundant? Why does he want to deprive them of that choice? Why does he think that only highly paid people are capable of making that decision? Why are not more lowly paid people capable of doing so, if they feel it is in their best interests? To force those people to be made redundant in such circumstances is, I think, an outrage. It is an outrage that we would not allow them to make the choice themselves. The whole principle is that the Government and state know best and know what is best for everybody, so they will not even allow anybody to make the choice for themselves.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend knows that our hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) can be a bit paternal at times, but I wonder what he would think of what happened in Ireland? Owing to the centralised situation to which my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) refers, the Government decided to reduce the minimum wage in order to get out of a financial hole.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend raises an interesting point. As I have said, I have lost the philosophical argument and so I think some of the practical arguments should be explored. He pre-empts my speech—I am not sure whether he has been looking over my shoulder—because I was about to make the point that, although a national minimum wage might well be sustainable during periods of economic growth, the Government ought to consider introducing some flexibility to the system during an economic downturn. For example, during a recession they could consider suspending the minimum wage or reducing it. If we are to try to help people into employment during difficult economic times, it is obvious to everybody—bar Labour Members, it seems—that it will be easier without a national minimum wage.

Let me return to the point I made in an intervention. The Opposition have based their whole policy on a number of things on the argument that if we increase the cost of something as much as possible, we will reduce its consumption. For example, the argument goes that if we increase the tax on tobacco and alcohol, we will have fewer people smoking and drinking alcohol to excess. The same principle must apply to employment: if we increase the costs of employment, we will see a reduction in it. That follows the same logic. If the Opposition have decided that if we tax something more, we will not see less of it, I would welcome their conversion, but they cannot have it both ways. They cannot say one thing about tobacco and alcohol and think that the principles are somehow completely different as regards employment.

I want to return to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch about the tax and benefits system, because he was on to something. He powerfully made the point that many people who are self-employed in this country do not earn anything like the minimum wage, particularly when their business faces financial problems or uncertainty. I never hear Labour Members speaking up for those people and arguing that they are being underpaid. It is usually those people who are criticised by Labour Members for trying to reduce the wages of their staff, glossing over the fact that the person who runs and owns the business may well not be making any money at all at that time. It comes back to a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Mr Binley) about the attitude of Labour Members. I will be charitable and put it down to a simple lack of understanding of what it is like to run a business. I am sure that they are not really nasty people; they are just misguided. They do not understand, because so few of them have ever employed anyone, run a business or faced the pressures of that. They simply do not understand what it is like.

Further and Higher Education (Access) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Friday 4th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful, Mr Deputy Speaker; I was indeed tempted by the Minister to go down a route that neither you nor I want us to go down.

I will keep my remarks brief because I am intrigued to hear what the Minister has to say. I want to hear some kind of confirmation, not only that while he lives and breathes he will support grammar schools, but that while he is the Minister and while our right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr Cameron) is the Prime Minister, he will ensure that universities recruit people on merit alone and that people are not allocated places simple because of their background, the school they went to, the socio-economic environment in which they live or the wealth or otherwise of their parents. If we started going down that route, it would be a disaster for this country. The idea of positive discrimination, which lies behind such proposals, is a disaster. Positive discrimination is discrimination, and we should not advocate it, because it demeans people. Many parents make terrific sacrifices to send their kids to private schools. People who cannot ordinarily afford to do so make the most amazing sacrifices, because they understandably want their children to have the best start and opportunities in life.

My parents made terrific sacrifices to enable me to go to a boarding school that they really could not afford to send me to, and I am immensely grateful to them. I do not see why this Government, in particular, or anybody for that matter, would want to say to such parents, “Well done. You’ve made these sacrifices to help your children get the best possible start in life. What we’re going to do now is rig the rules to make sure that all your sacrifices have been in vain, because we’re going to stop your daughter or son having the opportunity to go to the university they deserve to go to, based on the hard work that they put in, as you don’t meet the criteria, you’re not from the right socio-economic background or they didn’t go to the school we would have preferred them to go to.” What an appalling message.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a very powerful point. Does he share my concern that the Government, in their desire to bring about social engineering, are going to penalise people who pay off their loans early— perhaps with the help of their parents making the sort of sacrifice to which he refers? Does he condemn that as a gross interference?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As it happens, I voted against the Government on tuition fees for the simple reason that I did not want people from poorer backgrounds to be denied the opportunity to go to the best possible universities. Tuition fees are being increased to pay for more and more people to go to university, and the argument is that if we want more people to go to university, students are going to have to pay a higher price. That is a perfectly logical argument, but I do not want more people going to university. Too many go to university; I want fewer to go. I want universities to be the bastion of high standards again.

In an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset, my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) inadvertently touched on that point when he asked, “Shouldn’t people who want to go to university have the opportunity to do so?” My answer to that is no. It should be a question not of whether someone wants to go to university, but whether they have the aptitude and have reached a high enough mark to do so on merit. That should be what determines whether they go.

Otherwise, it is like asking athletes whether they would like to compete in the Olympics—I am sure they all would, but surely nobody is advocating that any athlete who happens to fancy a crack at the 100-metre sprint should be allowed to compete at the Olympics. Most people accept that athletes have to reach a certain level before they are even considered for the Olympics, and the same should apply in education: people should not go just because they want to; they should go because they have reached the level in their education that allows them to go. That is the whole point of merit and, as I see it, of this Bill.

All the other factors that people are trying to introduce into the system can only devalue our education system—dumb down the standards. Then the Government will say, “Isn’t it marvellous? Haven’t we been good for education, because now X% of people have a degree?” Well, no it would not be marvellous—not if the result had been achieved only by dumbing down standards.

Anonymity (Arrested Persons) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Friday 4th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a good point. Does he share my concern that if someone is arrested and they wish their identity to be revealed, we would be interposing an enormous bureaucratic burden on them before it could be revealed?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I do not know whether it is envisaged that reporting restrictions would be lifted in most cases. If so, would it not be more sensible to have a legal framework in which there is a presumption that everything could be published and in which people could apply for their details not to be published in exceptional circumstances? That would be a more sensible way forward than doing it the other way round. The proportions in the Bill are the wrong way round. My hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe might be right to say that some cases involve particular issues, but it is those cases that should be treated as the exception, rather than the vast majority that take place without incident. The Minister will know the figures better than I do, but let us think about the number of people who are arrested in this country every year. How many of those cases give rise to concern? It seems completely disproportionate to make a presumption that reporting restrictions should apply in all cases and that people would need to apply for an exemption. All the evidence suggests that it should be the other way round.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

Does my hon. Friend know whether the Contempt of Court Act applies throughout the United Kingdom? Even if it does, Scotland has a different system, whereby the Advocate-General for Scotland is responsible for enforcing the Act there, and the Attorney-General is responsible for enforcing the Act here. There is already that distinction.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right. There is the added complication that the law might be applied differently depending on the characters of the individuals who happen to hold the positions, so there is scope for tension.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend made a very good point about the case in Bristol. As I said at the beginning of my speech, I am not claiming—and I do not believe that anyone is claiming—that the media are without flaw, and never make mistakes. The media have made some horrendous mistakes, as they themselves will accept. We need only consider the case of Madeleine McCann. The press made some horrific mistakes in their reporting of that case, and I think that they would be the first to acknowledge it.

No matter how hard my hon. Friend tries, we will never have a system in which the media are perfect, and everything that is reported is accurate and for the public good. There will always be instances in which the media make mistakes, and we make mistakes. We all make mistakes in life. The only people who do not make any mistakes in life are those who do not make any decisions. Anyone who makes decisions makes mistakes, and the press are just as liable to make them as the next person—as are politicians, I might add. The thrust of my argument is about the bigger picture: a free and open press and an open justice system are far more worth while than attempts to try to restrict them, no matter how good the motives behind that restriction.

[Mr Chope]

Does the problem not stem from the fact that the Bill is premised on a number of hard cases? We know from our experience in the House that if we begin to legislate for those hard cases we are likely to make bad law. As the phrase goes, hard cases make bad law.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. There are a number of examples of people being appalled by an event in a certain part of the country. We have rushed to do something about it with a general feeling of “Something has happened; the Government must do something about it.” As a result, we have introduced laws that, with hindsight, were rushed and, from a wider perspective, did not serve any particular good. The thing that those cases have in common is that they are all well intentioned and are all based on highlighting a real or perceived problem that matters to many people.

I return to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe has hit on something about which many people are concerned, and which they regard as a problem. I therefore commend her on opening the debate. We are all interested to hear the Minister’s reply, so I do not intend to detain the House any longer. Whatever the merits of my hon. Friend’s argument and the problems that are out there, whether perceived or real, we should tread very carefully indeed, because we restrict the freedom of the press and the information that we give the public at our peril. I hope that the Minister will show caution in his response to the Bill, and it would be far better if my hon. Friend went back to the drawing board and returned with something much more limited in scope that might be more acceptable to all concerned.

Sale of Tickets (Sporting and Cultural Events) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Friday 21st January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a tempting offer and it would be churlish of me to turn it down, so I look forward to receiving that invitation. I am encouraged: the longer I speak, the better the invitations I get. That encourages me to keep going a little while longer. I do not mind the free market—if anyone has a better offer, I would be prepared to hear it. I can assure my hon. Friend that I have already heard these arguments, as the Select Committee heard the views of promoters. I suspect that even the mere mention of my name to a certain Harvey Goldsmith is likely to give him a near-heart attack. Some of the spats that he and I had—not just in the Select Committee, but on radio interviews afterwards on the issue—seem to have done his health more harm than good. I am certainly aware of the arguments, but I was not persuaded by them.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North made a good point about who the real fans are in this case. Who are we trying to protect? Who are the people who are losing out as result of ticket touting? I have never worked out who the losers are, but they are certainly not the promoters. They do not lose out in any shape or form from ticket touting and nor do the artists.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

Is my hon. Friend sure that the promoters are not losing out? They could be selling their tickets at a higher price, and if they are worth more on the open market than the promoters are selling them for, then they are losing out.

[Philip Davies]

If my hon. Friend does not mind my saying so, he states the obvious. Obviously, if the market would guarantee a higher price for the tickets and the promoters were to sell them at a higher price, they would make more money. My point, however, is that that is their choice. If a promoter has 50,000 tickets to an event and chooses for one reason or another to sell them at £20 per ticket, their ambition is to bring in £1 million from the sale of those tickets. Rather than ticket touts causing a problem for the promoters, I assert that they are helping, because the more tickets they buy, the more likely the promoters are to sell the amount of tickets required for them to raise the sum of money for which they have budgeted. The ticket tout is therefore helping the promoters reach their targets. If there is no ticket touting, the promoter is not going to bring in more than £1 million; the tickets will still all be sold for £20 each. That is the only income the promoters are going to get, so they are certainly not losing out.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I am glad that you think that the points that I have made are relevant to the Bill. I am genuinely disappointed that Opposition Members do not wish to engage in a debate. I thought that that was the whole point of Bills going through Parliament—that we debated them. When I have finished making the points I have to make I will, in customary fashion, sit down. I always thought that that was the way that debates worked in this place—that people spoke until they had finished and then they stopped.

[Mr Chope]

Does my hon. Friend accept that if there was a secondary market in the ability to have a private Member’s Bill first on the Order Paper on any day, the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) would not be so frustrated?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is ingenious as ever. That might be something that the Procedure Committee will want to consider. I suggest that my hon. Friend mentions it to our right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight). I shall look forward to that system being introduced.

I do not think that things work against the interests of the promoter. The promoter gets all the income that they were ever going to get in the first place, so the promoter is looked after. The issue is then whether things work in favour of the consumer. As I hope I have argued, the fact that the consumer can buy tickets right up to the end means that it works in their best interests, too. I must say in passing that if ticket touting is such a big issue for concert promoters and sporting promoters—if it is the be all and end all and the biggest single threat to their business—it is a wonder that they do not do more imaginative things to try to stop the antics of ticket touts. My hon. Friend the Member for Hove said that it should be up to them what they do, and it is. Perhaps, rather than selling all the tickets in one go right at the start so that they are sold out in five minutes flat, which provides a perfect market for the ticket tout because no tickets are on open sale, why not sell tickets gradually week by week, so that there are still some tickets on open sale right up to the day before the concert? There would therefore be no market for the ticket touts.

I do not think that the solutions to the problems lie with more legislation, but of course that is what the Labour party always reaches for. If Labour Members perceive a problem—for the avoidance of doubt, I am not saying that there is a problem—they think the only solution is more Government legislation, more Government interference and more of a nanny state. The solutions to these things are often in the hands of the promoters and I want to see an explanation of why more promoters do not sell tickets bit by bit, week by week and day by day, so that tickets are still available on the open market the day before. There would then be no market. Perhaps the hon. Member for Dudley North could explain what is wrong with that solution. I see that he does not want me to give way, so perhaps I have talked him round. Perhaps this is a triumph that I did not anticipate. He appears not to disagree with me, so I shall leave it at that.

I want to refer to the Office of Fair Trading. People seem to think that not allowing the person who owns the property to set the price will make the price more expensive for the consumer. I take issue with that, because when I had the pleasure of working for Asda, it challenged the net book agreement. I do not know whether hon. Members remember the net book agreement, which allowed publishers to set the price of books and which prevented anyone else from selling the book at a different price.

I presume that my hon. Friend the Member for Hove supports the net book agreement, because the book belongs to the publishers, who should therefore be able to force everybody to sell it at a particular price. At Asda, we thought that that was against the interest of the consumer, that it was a protection racket and that it flew in the face of the free market. We took our case to court to argue that we should be able to sell books at the price that we wanted to sell them at and that there should be a free market. After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing and a lot of expense, I am delighted to say that Asda won its case and the net book agreement was broken.

What has been the upshot of the end of the net book agreement? If the argument advanced by the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West holds, prices would have risen: people would have abused the system by charging all sorts of prices. The nice, kind publisher would have wanted as many people as possible to read the book, and would have sold at the cheapest possible price, while the nasty retailers would have hiked up the price to increase their profits. The exact opposite actually ensued. Since the net book agreement ended, book prices have decreased, so breaking that restriction worked in the best interest of consumers. I do not see the difference between books and tickets, because the principle is the same. The free market won out in the courts, and I hope that it will continue to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his mathematical genius.

[Mr Chope]

Will my hon. Friend confirm that if this debate is not concluded today, it is open to the hon. Lady to put the debate over to another day for continuation?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is, with good reason, considered to be the expert on Friday rules, if I can put it like that. I am sure that the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West is grateful that he has not charged for his advice on getting her Bill through in future weeks. I commend his advice to her.

When the chief executive of the Office of Fair Trading gave evidence to the Select Committee, he did not just say that the secondary market was working in the best interests of the consumer, although he did say that. I add that the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge) also said that when she gave evidence as a member of the Labour Government; she was a passionate supporter of the secondary market. The chief executive also made it clear that he considered that the secondary market also worked in the interests of promoters. Let me quote what he said—

London Local Authorities Bill [Lords] (By Order)

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Wednesday 13th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

I agree with my hon. Friend that this is a very wide-ranging Bill. The fact that it is the 10th such Bill to emanate from London local authorities in a reasonably short space of time shows that London local authorities are pushing at what are reasonable bounds on the powers that they should be taking in legislation. They keep trying to extend those bounds, taking more powers for themselves; indeed, there are powers in the Bill that I think go too far. The consequence of what my hon. Friend has described so pertinently—the fact that the Bill contains a large number of contentious clauses—is that unless its promoters listen to reason and allow it to be amended, it will find it jolly difficult to make fast progress through the House. Even it were to sail through the Opposed Private Bill Committee, it would encounter the same kind of difficulties on Report that the pedlars Bills were up against during the last Parliament.

Significantly, my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green did not refer to the pedlary and street trading provisions in this Bill, but the Bill contains powers to seize commercial goods on the ground not of reasonable belief but of reasonable suspicion that an offence has been committed. We brought in the reasonable suspicion test, reluctantly, under anti-terrorism legislation. It is draconian in the extreme to seize people’s goods or interfere with their liberty on the ground of reasonable suspicion that they might have committed an offence. Because of the strength of that argument, amendments replacing the term “reasonable suspicion” with “reasonable belief” were accepted by the promoters of the Bournemouth Borough Council Act 2010 and the Manchester City Council Act 2010—two pedlars Bills that reached the end of their proceedings during the last Parliament. The fact that no such amendments have been offered by the promoters of this Bill represents a pretty bad prospect for the Bill, because it suggests a certain intransigence and resistance on the part of the promoters to listen to reason. It might also suggest that they want to give themselves extremely wide powers to seize goods. I believe that such powers go far beyond what is reasonable.

[Philip Davies]

As my hon. Friend knows from our debates on the pedlars Bills, I agree with him wholeheartedly on this matter. I believe, however, that this Bill is worse than those Bills. It deals not only with a suspicion that an offence has been committed, but with a suspicion that an offence might be about to take place. A person could be suspected of being about to commit an offence that might take place. Furthermore, in addition to property being confiscated on that basis, the Bill would also confer a power to confiscate the vehicle in which the property was carried. The idea that central Government are bad and local government is good is surely wrong; the problem in both cases relates to the word “government”. We should not allow any government, local or central, to have such draconian powers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I agree with my hon. Friend. I am sure that, when hon. Members start to look at the detail of these provisions, they will be as concerned as he and I are about their implications for civil liberties. I hope that the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) will report back to his colleagues in the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice on our concerns about these fundamental issues of human rights and individual liberty.

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for allowing me a second bite of the cherry. Does he agree that it is unacceptable for the Government to hide behind the idea of localism on these matters? They should not be allowed to say that local authorities are entitled to do anything they want to, simply on the basis that such decisions are being taken locally. Surely localism must come with some responsibilities.

[Mr Chope]

Absolutely; I hope that that is what the Government believe as well, even though my hon. Friend has expressed his concern that that might not be so. Time will tell.

“Localism” is a good term, but it was rejected by Front Benchers in relation to pedlars. I remember Front-Bench colleagues during the previous Parliament arguing that there was a strong case for having national legislation on pedlars, so that there could be consistency across all local authority areas. There is also an enormously strong case for saying that we need consistency in the application of the criminal law, and that people should not have their goods seized unless there is a reasonable belief that they have committed an offence.

May I briefly revert to the petition of the Society of London Theatre and the Theatrical Management Association, as I do not think that my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green really addressed the concerns set out in it? They are concerned that commercial theatre in London, which is not finding it easy in the present economic climate, is going to be burdened with additional charges as a result of clause 8. The petition submits that its members are already making their own arrangements for the cleaning of the pavement and so forth, and that the basis for the additional charge has not been made clear. The petition submits that the existing wording of section 115F of the Highways Act 1980 is sufficient in so far as it enables London borough councils to recover their reasonable expenses in connection with the granting of permission to put items on the pavement. I hope that the promoters will address that concern before the Bill makes further progress.

Let me move on to clauses 9 and 10, which deal with what is colloquially known as Scores on the Doors—a system intended to ensure that the people providing catering services at retail food outlets have to display their standing by putting up a notice in the window. A petition against this has been drawn up by the British Hospitality Association and another petition has come from the pubs organisation, the British Beer and Pub Association. Both those petitions highlight the fact that there should be a voluntary aspect to this scheme, but London councils are usurping the position of the Food Standards Agency, which has already said that it thinks these issues should be a matter for voluntarism.

My hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green has said that he and his council have no faith in the Food Standards Agency. If he brings forward a Bill to abolish the Food Standards Agency, my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) and I will strongly support it. In fact, we put in a bid to become co-sponsors of such a Bill, but unless and until the Food Standards Agency is abolished, the reality is that it has the responsibilities given to it by Parliament. It ill behoves a group of councillors, however experienced they might be, to second-guess that organisation and say that it has no faith in it and is therefore going to try to duplicate its role and go further than it has gone.

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[Mr Chope]

I entirely agree. The disclaimer states:

“Food premises may only be inspected every 6-36 months as specified in the Food Standards Agency Code of Practice.”

There is the potential for an enormous amount of damage to be caused to the reputation of commercial businesses that will have to stick on their doors something that is unrepresentative of the true position.

[Philip Davies]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on wiping the floor with this part of the Bill and illustrating so effectively what nonsense it is. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson), said that the Scores on the Doors process had already raised standards. If the voluntary scheme is working well and raising standards, and if seeing the stars on display is so important to customers, will customers not instinctively prefer to visit only the restaurants that display their stars? If a restaurant or other food establishment chooses not to display its star rating, it will risk not receiving any custom from the people who consider the system so important.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes his point perfectly. We in this House have the privilege of the opportunity to try to introduce some common sense into these measures before they become set in law. I hope this debate will enable that to happen, certainly in relation to clauses 8 and 9, against which petitions have, for good reason, been submitted. Depressingly, the petitions were presented in the other place as well, and they did not have any impact. Nobody seems to have been listening. I hope somebody will start to listen soon because we are talking about potential threats to the viability of lots of small businesses in the ever-important hospitality industry. There is the possibility of gross injustices arising from these provisions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

My right hon. Friend brings his legal expertise to bear on this issue and asks a very pertinent question. I am not in a position to answer it, but if the promoter of the Bill—or the promoter’s representative in this place today—wishes to intervene to do so, I will gladly give way. If the Bill has been as well prepared as one would hope after three years of gestation, one would expect that point to have been taken into account by its drafters—although perhaps we should not be so certain about that.

The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) was enthusiastic about the only parts of the Bill that my hon. Friend the Minister said the Government were concerned about. That is an interesting cameo within this debate. I hope my hon. Friend will stick to his guns in pursuing his concerns about clauses 11 to 22 and will insist that clause 23 is removed as being absolutely redundant.

[Philip Davies]

The Society of London Theatre and the Theatrical Management Association are worried that clause 23 will have a big impact on their theatres. Occasionally, there is some nudity or semi-nudity in a production and this measure may well have a negative impact on such shows. Will my hon. Friend acknowledge that concern as well?

[Mr Chope]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend the Minister said the legislation that had been introduced nationally since the Bill was first produced covers the national picture. I am sure it takes properly into account the concerns that have been expressed, and to which my hon. Friend has referred.

I want to refer back to an earlier part of the Bill. Clause 7 deals with access to public lavatories. I have the privilege of representing a constituency with one of the highest proportions of elderly people in the country, and we in Christchurch are proud to have been the winner of the loo of the year awards on many occasions. Ours is a prudent council, and it has now reached the stage where the councillor and the officers responsible for winning those accolades do not attend the awards ceremony because they cannot afford the cost of the travel, but they are grateful recipients of the awards.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I do not know whether my right hon. Friend had his tongue firmly in his cheek when he was making that observation, but I suspect that he did. If he did not, he is living on another planet. In the City of Westminster, for example, the council raises an enormous surplus in parking charges, many of which are paid by people who do not reside in the borough. The original idea was that those fees should be reinvested to improve public facilities in Westminster, but that has not happened in practice. The idea that if local authorities can impose more charges for access to public toilets, the quality and availability of those toilets will improve is pie in the sky.

[Philip Davies]

Does my hon. Friend accept that this could be argued the other way round? He says that turnstiles are not desirable, and that is a perfectly legitimate view. Even if someone would argue that they are legitimate, surely any local authority should be able to introduce them in their local toilets, not just London boroughs. Why would we just extend this privilege to London, and why would the Government not extend it to every local authority that so chooses to use it? I hope that he would accept that such an approach would be pure localism, as opposed to giving localism only to London.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes another very good point. I am sure that if the coalition Government are short of new policies to enact they will think seriously about my hon. Friend’s suggestion. Before they do so, however, they might look at the document produced a couple of years ago by the Department for Communities and Local Government, which set out a strategic guide, spread over the best part of 100 pages, on “Improving Public Access to Better Quality Toilets”. Nowhere in that strategic guide was anything that suggested that the answer to all the problems was to reintroduce turnstiles, which were outlawed in an enlightened moment in 1963. They should probably remain outlawed and I do not think that the case for reintroducing them has been made.

I am also very concerned about the Bill’s provisions on pedlars and street trading, to which I have already referred—my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley engaged in a short exchange with me on that point. Those powers go far in excess of what is reasonable. I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green did not consider them when he introduced the Bill. In a sense, this is a warning shot, because a number of us have been jealous of the rights of small groups to be able to carry on their activities and not to find themselves subject to harassment by officialdom. The wide powers that are given under the Bill to Westminster city council and to Camden borough council are a licence for harassment. They give tremendous powers to local authorities to harass the people they wish to drive out of business because it does not suit their purposes and because they find it rather difficult to try to enforce the law as it stands nationally. They want to give themselves extra powers to impose penalties on the grounds of suspicion, and I think that that is wrong.

One is left asking whether anything in the Bill is worth saving, or whether it would be much better to put the promoters out of their misery and not give it a Second Reading. My hon. Friend the Minister thinks that we should give the promoters the benefit of the doubt. For my part, I think that they have had three years in which to try to get their tackle in order and they have manifestly failed so to do. They have not really come to terms with the change in the mood out there, which is very much against interference and regulation by local authorities, pettifogging bureaucracy, penalties, putting pressure on people and making it very difficult for them to argue against penalties, which makes them have to go along and pay another fine or penalty. The promoters misunderstand the mood and there is a great demand for some consistency in our criminal law across the whole country rather than having special regimes for licensing in the London area, as proposed in clause 23, or special regimes for penalties for street trading, as found in the clauses that promote powers for Westminster and Camden.

I obviously support my hon. Friend the Minister as regards the parts of the Bill to which he is opposed. There is so much wrong with the Bill that there is a danger that if we allow it a Second Reading, an enormous amount of our colleagues’ time will be taken up in the Opposed Private Bill Committee. If the promoters are as reluctant to compromise as they appear to have been in the other place, we will end up taking up a lot of time on the Floor of the House on Report and Third Reading. It might be better to put the promoters out of their misery at this stage and force them to go back to the drawing board and propose a fresh Bill that is more in tune with current thinking.

Use of the Chamber (United Kingdom Youth Parliament)

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

If the hon. Lady did not keep intervening, we might get on to the arguments so that we could outline them for her. She is far too impatient—she obviously wants to get on with it. I want to get on with it, too, but I am trying to be generous with people who want to intervene. I shall try to outline the arguments, but I am surprised that she seems to think that the only place that a debate of the Youth Parliament can take place is in this Chamber. Why cannot a debate of the Youth Parliament take place in other forums? They can have a very good debate in Westminster Hall and in the House of Lords. Why do they have to be here to have a debate? That is the point that the hon. Lady is making, which I do not really follow.

[Mr Chope]

Does my hon. Friend accept that one of the big complaints at the meeting of the Youth Parliament last year was that debates were truncated? The Youth Parliament member for Christchurch, for example, was not called and so he was unable to participate. Would it not be better if the Youth Parliament met not just one day a year but several days each year, so that there was time for every member of the Youth Parliament to participate and to stand on their feet in this wonderful Chamber?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point and he is living proof that people can change their mind in this place. He seems to be articulating the view that we should have more Youth Parliament debates in this Chamber, an argument with which I am sure that many hon. Members would agree. Many might agree with it secretly because they do not want to let the cat out of the bag now, just like last year when they did not want to let the cat out of the bag that this would be an annual occasion. They now do not want to let the cat out of the bag that they want this to happen more than once a year—in fact, that they want it to happen a few times a year. Perhaps it could happen every week, or every Friday that we did not sit. Perhaps that is what they really think, but they do not have the courage of their convictions to say so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I take your intervention, which I absolutely accept, as a signal not to accept any more interventions. I will try to work on that basis, so that I can set out the arguments that I wanted to set out, but which I have been deterred from setting out by lots of people wishing to intervene in my speech. I hope that other people are just as generous when they make their speeches.

One of the arguments put forward for the Youth Parliament last time was that having its debate in this Chamber would raise its profile around the country. Hon. Members might have done some detailed survey work on that, but I would be interested to see all the opinion polls that show that the public now have a better grasp of the UK Youth Parliament than they did last year, before its debates took place. That was supposed to be one of the key measures of success last year, so I was surprised that neither the Deputy Leader of the House nor the shadow Deputy Leader of the House—nor, indeed, any of the many hon. Members who have made interventions—made the case by saying where it is clearly stated that the UK Youth Parliament’s profile is now much higher.

If we want to raise the profile of certain issues—youth issues may well be one of them—perhaps we can also raise the profile of other issues. I do not understand why we need the Youth Parliament to have a debate in this Chamber in order to raise its profile. Why would a debate held elsewhere not also raise its profile? I hope that Members who are in favour of the motion will deal with that point.

I would also like to talk, Madam Deputy Speaker—[Interruption.] Oh, Mr Speaker, I apologise. I want to deal with one of the interventions made by a Liberal Democrat Member who spoke about members of the UK Youth Parliament being unique in not being able to vote. The Liberal Democrats might like to have a word with their hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne) who in last year’s debate made the same point that I have—that many people, including prisoners, do not have the right to vote. If my point of view is so unacceptable, Liberal Democrat Members might like to speak to the hon. Member for Taunton Deane.

[Mr Chope]

Does my hon. Friend remember the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne) saying in last year’s debate that he thought that the proposals for the Youth Parliament to sit here were seeking to patronise one youth organisation while neglecting other important ones?

[Philip Davies]

I think that is absolutely right, which brings me back to the thrust of my argument. What is so special about the UK Youth Parliament? Why is it so much more important than any other organisation? That is a particular point.

I want to move on to the point about cost. The Minister did not mention the cost. I hope that he will. I will certainly give way to him if he wants to make it clear. What estimate has been made as to how much it will cost for the House authorities to open up the Chamber for a day for the Youth Parliament? In last year’s debate, the figure bandied around—I have no idea whether it was accurate or not—was between £30,000 and £40,000. If the Minister would like to confirm or deny those figures, I am sure it would be particularly helpful. If that is an appropriate figure, I think that we should be discussing whether that is a necessary use of public funds in this age of austerity, and whether the money could be spent in a better way.

The views of members of the Youth Parliament were mentioned earlier by the Minister. Perhaps I can issue a challenge to him. He might like to go out and speak to young people in his constituency and ask them how they would like to see £30,000 to £40,000 spent for the benefit of the Youth Parliament. Would they want it spent on having a debate here? The answer may well be yes—I do not know—or would they prefer the money to be spent on other ways of engaging young people to take part in debates and engage in the political process? Is there no better use of money to deliver what we all want at the end of the day—more young people engaged in political activity and debate?

I was issued a challenge earlier about whether I had asked my MYPs about their views on having a debate here, but I would issue the same challenge to all hon. Members. Have they asked their MYPs how they would like to spend the money that is to be spent on this debate if they had a choice? If we ask people, “Would you like a Rolls-Royce?”, most will say yes. If we say, “Would you like a Rolls-Royce if you had to spend the rest of your life living in a tent to pay for it?”, they might say no. Before we say to people, “Would you like a debate in the House of Commons Chamber?”, we should put the pros and the cons and the costs to them, and then ask them for their view. It might well be a different view. Young people are just as sophisticated as other people here. They may well weigh up the pros and cons and come to a different opinion if all that is put before them.

Canterbury City Council Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Philip Davies

Monday 5th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, which was discussed in the last Parliament in the context of some Bills. For example, in the context of the Bournemouth Borough Council Bill, I raised it as an issue because I represent the adjoining borough and I was concerned about the knock-on effect of banning pedlars in one town and what would happen in an adjoining town. It has been discussed, but I am bound to say that the promoters of the Bills denied that there was ever going to be a problem. In that respect, there was general denial.

On the point about entrepreneurial spirit, I can remember—with a bit of help from the Official Report for 14 January, when we last discussed the Canterbury City Council Bill—drawing the attention of my hon. Friend who was then on the Front Bench to the paper produced by Paul Braidford of St Chad’s college at Durham university, which was all about selling in the street and pedlary as a entry route to entrepreneurship. That was an important paper and my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose), who was then dealing with such matters from the Front Bench, said that he had seen the paper—because I had only just given it to him—and that he was going through it.

I hope that the Minister has looked at that paper, too. He has obviously mastered it, because he seems to have got the message that although pedlary might be based on ancient statute, it is still a unique activity in our country. It is a national means by which people who want to get out and try their hand at enterprise can do so.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, when considering whether the Bills should be revived, we should also take into account the fact that the report on street trading and pedlary that he mentioned was produced after the Bills were initially introduced? Would it not make sense for any legislation on this matter to take note of the report by Durham university, which these Bills do not, because they were introduced before its publication?

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. So much has changed, in regard not just to the national economy but to the information available on the role of pedlars and pedlary, since the Bills were first introduced in late 2007. Two and a half years have passed, and we must now consider whether we want them to be discussed for a further year or 18 months in the other place, or whether it would be better to have a fresh start. Obviously, some of us are asking whether the Bills are really worth reviving. That is the consideration that we must keep at the forefront of our minds.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I am most grateful to the Minister for that intervention. I shall not refer back to exactly what was said in that previous debate, but what he says is a revelation. He is obviously in charge of what is happening in his Department in relation to European legislation, and I look forward to hearing more from him later about the interaction between the Bills and the services directive.

Mr Deputy Speaker, you above all others will know that the issue before us is quite a narrow one. It is a question of whether these two Bills should be revived.

[Philip Davies]

I hope that my hon. Friend will give some thought as to whether he will take different approaches to the Bills relating to Canterbury and to Nottingham. I know that he was disappointed by an earlier intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier), but I would suggest that Canterbury has at least made an effort to deal with some of the issues that have been raised, and he will remember that, in the previous Parliament, the former Member for Nottingham East was very unhelpful when it came to telling the House why the Bill was necessary. We now have a far more genial and constructive Member for that constituency, but my hon. Friend will remember that we were never given much of an idea of why the legislation was needed in the first place. Will he take a different approach to each of the two Bills?

[Mr Chope]

If there were a batting order of unpopularity, Nottingham city council would be top of the league as the most unpopular council promoting a Bill on pedlary. I am not saying that for reasons of prejudice; I am basing it on the lack of co-operation that was received in the previous Parliament. Not only was there a lack of co-operation, but a sullen silence. The former Member for Nottingham East did not wish to engage. He was so arrogant that he felt he did not need to address the arguments.