Local Audit (Public Access to Documents) Bill
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher ChopeFriday 24th March 2017
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Local Audit (Public Access to Documents) Act 2017 View all Local Audit (Public Access to Documents) Act 2017 Debates Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 24 March 2017 - (24 Mar 2017)
Mr Chope
In moving amendment 2, we are mindful that this is a week in which there has been an attack on our parliamentary democracy, and we mourn Keith Palmer and the others who were the victims of that terrorist. This Bill and these amendments deal not with parliamentary democracy, but with local democracy, and their purpose is to strengthen further our local democracy in the United Kingdom.
I will also speak to amendments 3 and 4, which extend the range of individuals who are able to benefit from the powers under section 26 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014—my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) is seeking to achieve that in her Bill. I shall also speak to amendments 5, 6, 7 and 9, which look in detail at what we mean by the expression “journalist” in clause 1. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) has an amendment dealing with the definition of journalistic material, which I shall leave him to address.
Amendment 9 deals with the arrangements for exercising the right to inspect, and amendment 11 would extend the period within which such rights can be exercised beyond 30 days. Amendment 12 would enable documents, which are claimed to be commercially confidential, to be inspected but not copied. Amendment 13 would extend the right to inspect past contracts, and amendment 14 would leave the definition of commercial confidentiality unaltered in common law. Finally, amendment 10, which is arguably the most radical of these amendments, would extend the right of inspection beyond local government to the audit of accounts of any health service body as defined in the 2014 Act.
It will be obvious from that brief summary that all the amendments are faithful to the long title of the Bill, which is to extend public access to certain local audit documents under section 26 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014.
My amendments are also inspired by recent experiences of how secrecy in local government is undermining the ability of members of the public properly to scrutinise what is happening and to hold councils to account. They also seek to address some of the issues raised on Second Reading on 25 November.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
My hon. Friend touches on the Second Reading debate, which is something that I hope to address in my remarks later today. Does he share my concern that the matters that were raised on Second Reading were not addressed when this Bill was in Committee?
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend is on to a good point. On Second Reading, quite a lot of references were made to the fact that we would discuss matters in Committee. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) said that if he was put on the Committee, he would like to raise this and that as an amendment, but he was never put on the Committee. If the records are correct, the Committee stage lasted for all of 21 minutes. I do not think that there could have been proper scrutiny of the Bill. None the less, there were some interesting remarks made in Committee, some of which I shall refer to shortly.
Mr Nuttall
The whole Bill arises from the problem of defining terms. Has my hon. Friend given any thought to exactly what constitutes a “politician”? For example, does it include someone who is a candidate in an election, or only an elected politician?
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend has tried, probably very successfully, to torpedo my amendment. I accept the implied, or even indeed the express, criticism that he has articulated. However, I would fall back on the general common-law interpretation of “politician”, which is probably the best way of dealing with that, without specifically having to define it in the amendment.
Amendment 4 would clarify the law by making it clear that “persons interested” also includes non-domestic ratepayers. I raise that issue because it was the focus of the court case of R. (on the application of HTV Ltd) v. Bristol City Council, reported at EWHC 1219. Paragraph 48 of the judgment of Mr Justice Elias on 14 May 2004 said that he had
“reached the conclusion that the interest which the claimant has as a non-domestic ratepayer is sufficient to bring it within the concept of ‘persons interested’.”
In that case, Bristol City Council had argued to the contrary, citing in support the changes to non-domestic rate legislation in the Local Government Finance Act 1988. With forthcoming changes—the introduction of the 100% retention of business rates, and the pooling of business rates across local authorities—it is worth using this opportunity to clarify and put on the record that the existing legislation should expressly incorporate the rights of non-domestic ratepayers. That is the background to amendment 4.
Amendments 5 to 7 are alternative ways of limiting the term “journalist” in the Bill to real journalists. It is noteworthy that section 1(4)(c) of the 1960 Act provides that
“duly accredited representatives of newspapers attending for the purpose of reporting the proceedings for those newspapers shall…be afforded reasonable facilities”.
The National Union of Journalists website sets out what is needed to establish that someone is an accredited journalist. An accredited journalist must have
“Employer Identification: Business card, employer I.D. badge, or letter of assignment on corporate letterhead. (Letterhead must identify media outlet name, address and phone)”
and
“Proof of Assignment: Sample by-lined article published within the past 6-months, or current masthead that includes the reporters name & title, or official letter of assignment from a media outlet.”
Those are necessary, for example, for a person to be admitted to a press conference as an accredited journalist. It seems to me that if we are to extend such rights to journalists, we should encourage those journalists to be accredited, rather than amateur journalists.
Mr Chope
I understand my hon. Friend’s point, but why should we, to maximise the number of people who have access, distort the meaning of “journalist” by saying that any member of the public can describe themselves as a journalist and thereby come within the terms of the Bill, rather than make it clear that we want to include all members of the public? But if we are talking about journalists, we owe it to them to try to maintain a standard for professional and accredited journalists.
Mr Nuttall
Has my hon. Friend noted the title of clause 1: “Inspection of accounting records by journalists and citizen journalists”? I hope, when I come on to my amendment, he will see that I have gone in exactly the opposite direction: rather than try to narrow the definition of journalist, I am trying to widen it.
Mr Chope
That is probably why I have not sought to address my hon. Friend’s amendment. I am sorry that we cannot reach a consensus on this group of amendments, although there does seem to be a pretty strong consensus on the earlier amendments.
I draw the attention of the House to the fact that the NUJ has a code of conduct.
Mr Chope
I would indeed—absolutely. Editors are included in the wider definition of “journalist”. The hon. Lady makes a good point.
The NUJ code of conduct sets out 12 principles by which its journalists are expected to abide. I will not tell the House about them all, but, for example, one is to avoid plagiarism. Another is to resist threats or any other inducements to influence, distort or suppress information and not to produce any material likely to lead to hatred or discrimination on the grounds of a person’s age, gender, race and so on. The most important of all is for journalists to do their utmost to correct harmful inaccuracies and to distinguish between fact and opinion—although that is not something we always find with journalists.
Mr Nuttall
Before my hon. Friend moves on, amendments 5, 6 and 7 have been tabled as alternatives—we cannot adopt all three. Will he let the House know which of the three alternatives he personally prefers?
Mr Chope
Of those three, I prefer amendment 5 on accreditation, because “accredited journalist” is a well-understood expression. As I said earlier, it is even referred to in statute, such as in the Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960.
Amendment 8 seeks to ensure that we do not define “journalist” in the Bill. The Office for National Statistics lists a series of roles defined as “journalist”. These form the single occupational group of journalists and newspaper and periodical editors—including the editor of the London Evening Standard.
Amendment 9 would ensure that any person making an inspection under section 26(1) of the 2014 Act could do so at all reasonable times and without payment. If section 26 is to achieve the Government’s purpose, we need to ensure that this provision is included, otherwise it would be too easy for the objectives of transparency and accountability to be frustrated. In Committee, the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole, said:
“In 2015-16, it would seem that local electors exercised their rights over a total of 11,000 bodies only around 65 times.”––[Official Report, Local Audit (Public Access to Documents) Public Bill Committee, 7 April 2017; c. 5.]
They did so under section 25, but it would be ridiculous to suggest that extending the same rights to section 26 applicants would be unduly burdensome and too expensive.
Mr Nuttall
Ah, a dilemma. I will give way first to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend is making a fascinating contribution. Although “citizen journalist” is referred to in the rubric of clause 1, there is no definition of it; there is only a definition of “journalist”. Does he agree that that rather suggests that there was originally other material in clause 1 that was cut out as a result of negotiations between our hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills and the Department, and that the Department failed to observe that there was no longer any definition of “citizen journalist” and amend the Bill accordingly?
Mr Nuttall
There may be some reason for why there is no definition of “citizen journalist” in the Bill, but I must admit that I am unaware of what that reason might be. What I can say, before I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), is that the Bill’s explanatory notes state in paragraph 4:
“Accordingly, we are seeking to extend the definition of ‘any persons interested’ in section 26(1) of the Act”—
the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014—
“to include journalists, including ‘citizen journalists’”.
Crucially, paragraph 4 goes on to state that “citizen journalists” means
“bloggers and others who scrutinise local authorities but who may not be accredited members of the press to enable them to access a wider range of accounting material in order to report and publish their findings so that it is available to local electors in an area, thus providing them with information that will enable them to better hold their local council to account.”
Who can disagree with that? It seems an entirely laudable aim, and it is rather disappointing that that laudable aim was not carried through on to the face of the Bill. That is what my amendment seeks to do.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend says that there is no ambiguity, but clause 1’s title refers to “citizen journalists”, yet the clause contents refer only to “journalists”, not to “citizen journalists”. That creates confusion, does it not? Why are we not just talking about journalists and then defining “journalists” in subsection (3)?
Mr Nuttall
To be fair, my amendment does not refer to “citizen journalists”—only the clause title does, although the term is used in the notes and the briefings. With hindsight, I think this should be deleted from the clause title, because it leads people down a cul-de-sac, as they will think a bit is missing from the Bill and will wonder where the definition of “citizen journalists” is. As I said, I decided that rather than trying to define that, it would be better to extend the existing definition of “a journalist”. Perhaps it would have been better to define—somehow— what a “citizen journalist” is, but I was conscious that a number of colleagues objected on Second Reading to the reference to “citizen”, because we are all subjects of Her Majesty. For that reason, I felt it was not sensible to incorporate the term “citizen journalists” in legislation, and I would prefer it if those words were struck from the Bill.
My amendment deals with whether payment being made for a newspaper or magazine, or for access to a website, should affect the situation. I have made it clear that that should have no bearing on whether someone, whether or not a citizen journalist, should have the right to access the accounts of their local council or other body covered by this legislation. The Bill makes it clear that it matters not whether the journalist is paid or unpaid, but I thought it was equally important to clarify this issue about payment to access the site.
Mr Chope
To reinforce that point on clinical commissioning groups, CCGs have a veto over the use of procedures for people living within their areas. Those vetoes are often controversial and are justified on the basis of cost. If people cannot examine the cost bases of decisions, it is difficult to hold CCGs to account.
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.
Mr Nuttall
I agree with my hon. Friend that the new arrival on the newspaper scene in his constituency is good news. Does he know whether the newspaper in question, being a new arrival, is making use of the new breed of citizen journalists we have been discussing?
Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Nuttall
In truth I do not know whether they gave such examples, but I think that the ruling put future deportations at risk. Understandably, it will only serve to increase the sense of frustration that so many of our fellow citizens feel at how powerless this country now is to keep out convicted criminals.
Mr Nuttall
That provision already seems to have run into the quicksand, if I can put it like that. As my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley pointed out regarding the UK Borders Act 2007, despite the Home Office’s latest plan—at least it is trying to do something, to be fair to it—the will of elected Members of this House has yet again been frustrated by the judiciary, who seem to think they know better than those of us who represent our constituents.
Illegal Immigrants (Criminal Sanctions) Bill
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Chope
My hon. Friend says that he is a great man, and I am sure he is. His time in this House happened to coincide with a time when I was not a Member of Parliament, so I do not know him very well. In the other place on Monday, he said in answer to a question from another great man, whom I do know, Lord Green of Deddington, that
“the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and others have been working hard…to increase the discomfort for those who are in this country illegally.”
What an extraordinary use of words—
Mr Chope
Discomfort! What did the Minister have in mind when he referred to discomfort? Perhaps the Under-Secretary of State for Refugees, my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Richard Harrington), who is on the Front Bench today, will be able to explain what was meant by that term. It suggests someone who might have a mild medical condition.
Equally inadequate was Lord Bates’ reply when he was asked
“what difference do the Government estimate that the Prime Minister’s so-called EU reforms will make to the figures”?
Lord Green had stated earlier that migration levels could lead to
“an increase in our population of half a million every year, of which 75% will be due to future immigration”.
The Minister, Lord Bates, accepted that Lord Green had been
“correct in saying that if you use the statistical data available to forecast, you arrive at roughly the numbers he referred to.”
He accepted the premise of the question, but when he was asked what the effect would be of the so-called reforms that the Prime Minister came back with following the renegotiations, he said:
“Of course, we must see what effect they will have, going forward.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 29 February 2016; Vol. 769, c. 576.]
If that is not an imprecise statement on what are being bandied around as essentially good reforms that will transform the status of our relationship with the European Union, I do not know what is. It is an extraordinarily vague response to a very precise question. The Government keep saying that our relationship with the European Union will be debated on the facts, but they cannot even bring any facts to bear in answer to that precise question.
The whole purpose of the Bill is to reduce illegal immigration by identifying, prosecuting and deporting those already here illegally and deterring others who might be planning to come here illegally. How big is the problem that the Bill seeks to address? The Government have very little idea how many foreign nationals are in this country illegally, or so they say. They certainly refuse to gather any data to inform the debate, because of the embarrassment that that would cause. I have some figures that have been produced by the House of Commons Library, and they basically show that the Government have no idea how many illegal migrants there are here. The most recent studies are more than 10 years old, but the figure then was in a range between 300,000 and 700,000. That was 10 years ago, so what would the figure be now? In my submission, it must be well in excess of 1 million.
Mr Nuttall
Does my hon. Friend agree that, given the Government’s trumpeting of the now more widespread use of exit checks, it ought to be relatively simple to ascertain the number of illegals who are in this country by looking at how many have been identified by the exit checks as having left the country and who the records show were not even supposed to be here in the first place?
Mr Chope
That is a very intelligent suggestion, and I wish I had thought of it. I hope that the Minister will take it on board. Many other straws have been put into the wind to try to work out what is happening, but my hon. Friend’s suggestion would provide a good way forward. It would give us at least some idea of the figures. One of the problems is that many of the people who are already here illegally do not have any documents. They do not have passports, so I am not sure that they would wish to exit the country using authorised routes. Notwithstanding that problem, however, there is a lot in what my hon. Friend has said.
Whatever the number of illegal immigrants in this country might be, they are certainly continuing to arrive in record numbers. We know that 1.1 million came into the European Union last year. In January 2016, the rate at which people were crossing the Aegean and arriving in Greece from Turkey was around 1,300 a day, compared with around 1,300 in the whole of the month of January in 2015. The numbers are increasing exponentially. I had the opportunity to see this with my own eyes on the isle of Kos last October, and I could see that this was a really big business being organised by criminal gangs across Europe and beyond.
This brings me to the report published last month by Europol entitled “Migrant smuggling in the EU”. The report points to the fact that many more than 100,000 migrants entered the United Kingdom illegally last year. It does not give a precise figure, but the implication is that the figure was higher than 100,000. It also states that more than 900,000 of the 1 million migrants who entered the EU last year used the services of criminal groups of people smugglers who were heavily connected to organised crime. It identifies the UK, Germany and Sweden as the three preferred destination countries and makes it clear that almost all migrants eventually reach their chosen destination, undertaking what the report describes as “secondary movements”. London and Calais are identified as being among the
“main criminal hotspots for intra-EU movements”.
The Europol report refers to the main countries in which suspects operate. It states that criminal suspects born in Bulgaria, Hungary, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Syria and Turkey concentrate a high proportion of their activities in the United Kingdom. It refers to document counterfeiting having increased significantly, to corruption being rife and to migrant smuggling routes and networks being used to infiltrate potential terrorists, which we know sadly happened during the Paris attacks last November.
The report states that the EU needs to be firm with those who do not need protection, who pose a security risk or who refuse to co-operate with the asylum process. However, we know that that is not happening at all. We now have a system of hotspots that is designed to ensure the rapid return of those without a legitimate asylum case, but again that is not happening.
Another indication of the number of people who may be here illegally came in December 2013, when, following a claim in 2010 that the Government did not have any information on this matter, the Government issued the publication, “Sustaining services, ensuring fairness: Government response to the consultation on migrant access and their financial contribution to NHS provision in England”.
Just as a side issue, let me say that we saw in the papers yesterday that there is a great imbalance between the amount of money that our country pays out to EU countries in respect of the healthcare of British citizens in Europe compared with the amount that we charge European citizens using our health service here.
The NHS document suggested that, at any one time in England, there are about 2.5 million overseas visitors and migrants, of whom 450,000 are from the European economic area, and about 580,000 are irregulars, who include failed asylum seekers liable to removal, people who have overstayed their visas and illegal migrants. Even back then—in 2013—the health service statistics suggested that there were the best part of 600,000 people here.
Earlier today, courtesy of the Mail Online, I listened to what the Home Secretary said to the Conservative party conference in 2014 about the determination of herself and the Government to reduce the number of appeal rights and the number of appeals by foreign criminals against removal from our country. At that stage, she said that there were 70,000 appeals and that she would halve that number by reducing the number of appeal rights from 17 to four. She rightly referred to the abuse of article 8 and the emphasis on foreign criminals and illegal immigrants trying to rely on family connections. At the outset of her speech, she said that she was going to extend the number of “deport first, hear appeals later” cases.
It was with some dismay that I read, on 28 February, in the Mail on Sunday that a Romanian rapist, who had been removed from Britain, had been allowed back in by judges who ruled that his fast-track deportation broke EU law and breached his human rights. This was a person who had been convicted in Romania of rape. He had come to this country illegally, stayed in this country illegally and then, when the rules changed for Romania to join the European Union, he was able to stay here as an EU citizen. The Government have always said that they wish to maintain control of our borders so that we do not have to tolerate criminals from the rest of the EU in our country. It only came to light that that person had a criminal record in Romania when he was convicted of a drink-drive offence. Even in a case as strong as that, the courts have intervened to prevent him from being deported from this country.
The same article refers to another case in which a violent Slovakian sent home under the deport first rule had won the right to return to the United Kingdom for his appeal hearing. The Upper Tribunal ruled that it was unlawful for the Home Office to refuse Roman Kasicky permission on security grounds. The Home Office had said:
“The UK will seek to deport any EU national whose conduct represents a genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat.”
The only problem is that, under our present arrangements with the European Union, we are incapable of being able to deliver on that intent. The only way, in my submission, that we will ever be able to deliver on it is by leaving the European Union, and that is increasingly the conclusion to which people are coming.
In 2014, the Prime Minister said that he recognised that this was a really serious issue, that we needed to take control of our borders, that we needed to reduce the levels of migration to the tens of thousands and that he was going to secure that through fundamental reform of the European Union. There has not been fundamental reform of the European Union; in fact there has been no reform at all. What has happened is that we have a very modest reform of our relationship with the European Union, subject to all the provisos about enforceability and the supremacy of the European Court of Justice. Without fundamental reform, we cannot do anything about these illegal people from the European Union, as exemplified by the case to which I have just referred.
My Bill would cover not just those from the European Union, but illegal migrants more generally. If there are 1 million-plus illegal migrants in this country at the moment, this Bill would enable the Government to get to grips with the matter and to get the authorities working on it. If we got tough with illegal migrants in our country, the people smugglers would divert them away from the United Kingdom, as they always try to use the weakest points of entry. Apart from the weakness of our enforcement and detection procedures, one of the perverse incentives for people to come to the United Kingdom is that we do not have a requirement that people should have identity cards. I do not think that we should have such a requirement, but the fact that we do not have it means that people who are illegal migrants can lie low here for years and years and we do not know anything about them. They come to light only when they are convicted of an offence, and by then we are told that they have been here for too long and we cannot get rid of them.
This is a mega crisis in immigration. I proposed this Bill more in hope than in expectation. None the less, I hope that, at the very least, the Minister will have the opportunity to explain how, if the people decide to stay in the European Union on 23 June, all these serious issues will be sorted out.
Hospital Parking Charges (Exemption for Carers) Bill
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope(9 years ago)
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Mr Nuttall
Madam Deputy Speaker, I think we have a solution. It does not say that on my copy. I must have a first edition, and it might be more valuable! It is priced at £3, but now we have discovered that it is a rare first edition, it might be worth a lot more. I am willing to raffle it and donate the proceeds to Carers UK. I am glad that the matter has been corrected, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I am sorry if I inadvertently addressed my comments to you personally. I was not trying to suggest that you had had any involvement in the preparation of the Bill.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Madam Deputy Speaker.
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq). Like many speakers, she made some good points, but I am not sure that the conclusions she drew from her analysis were the correct ones. We are all full of admiration for the people who do the caring—the carers—across our country, some 6 million of them. If we want to help them more than we already do, we should do it in a general way rather than by supplying free benefits in kind in specific areas, because that inevitably creates a distortion in the marketplace. The hon. Lady says that some carers in her constituency are being put off going to hospital by these charges, and her solution is to provide them with free parking, but what about the carers who do not have cars and go to hospital using other forms of transport? What are we going to do to help them? As soon as one introduces some sort of exemption, it creates a distortion in the marketplace.
In this debate, we have heard, if nothing else, how complex this issue is. One of the great benefits of Friday debates is that we are able to get down to the nitty-gritty of proposals like this, which, on the face of it, seem ever so attractive. I would not wish to criticise The Sun in any way, but sometimes it does not get down into enough of the detail and just goes for the broad-brush approach without looking at, in particular, the unintended consequences flowing from this sort of legislation.
The hon. Lady said that there is stress in parking in difficult situations, and so there is, but there is even greater stress if one cannot find anywhere to park at all. Many of my constituents have for years complained of a lack of parking facilities at Royal Bournemouth hospital. The hospital has been trying to increase its parking facilities but has encountered difficulties from the local council, which takes the view that creating more car parking spaces generates more traffic and therefore more congestion on the roads. The trust itself has invested a lot in improved car parking, and if the proposals to consolidate healthcare provision on the Royal Bournemouth site in Dorset go ahead, it will need a heck of a lot more car parking provision. It is by no means clear how that would be affordable unless the hospital itself is able to put in place funding arrangements so that the capital provision can be paid off through the income generated from charges. The hon. Lady’s speech raised some real issues that underline the Bill’s weakness.
I want to pick up on some of the points that have not been addressed. Clause 1 would provide a duty to exempt qualifying carers from hospital car parking charges, and clause 2(2) sets out the qualifying activities, including
“transporting, visiting or otherwise accompanying or facilitating a person to whom the care…is provided and who has been admitted to, or is attending, a health care facility for diagnosis, testing, treatment or other appointment relating to their health.”
It is very difficult to police such things. If somebody who was entitled to an exemption parked in the Royal Bournemouth car park and then, for part of their stay, went over to the Crown court, which is within easy walking distance and has a similar parking problem, how would that be policed? It would be policed only by having more personnel, who cost money, and that, as often happens, could result in confrontational situations. It is incumbent on the Bill’s promoter, the hon. Member for Burnley (Julie Cooper), to explain how that will be dealt with.
Mr Nuttall
Does my hon. Friend agree that it would have been helpful if we had been given an explanation of the costs of administering the proposed scheme? We could then have based this debate on some actual figures.
Mr Chope
The costs may vary from one hospital to another, but it is clear from the debate that the hon. Member for Burnley does not have the first clue about what the costs would be. We have established that they would be significant, but we have not established who would pay them. Would they be borne by the taxpayer through subventions to hospitals? The Scottish health boards were given £1.4 million to implement a similar policy.
If the money does not come from the taxpayer, would it come from increasing the charges of those who will continue to pay them? My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) made some really good points about that. According to the Government’s guidance, they believe that concessions should be disbursed more widely than just to carers. The perverse and unintended consequence of the Bill—this would be inevitable, in my view—would be that higher charges would be borne by people who are worse-off. To take a topical example, a working family on tax credits may be a lot worse-off financially than a carer affected by this Bill, but they would have to pay higher charges to use the hospital car park. That is an example of the perversity of the Bill.
Mr Chope
I hear what the hon. Lady says. I will not go down that route, Madam Deputy Speaker, because we have had enough debate about tax credits and I do not think you want time taken up on them. My point is that many people less well-off than the carers exempted under the Bill will actually pay for the cost of such exemptions. Interestingly, the hon. Lady did not disagree with that point in her intervention, but that is one of the Bill’s perverse consequences.
There is another problem. Clause 1(1) states:
“providing bodies shall make arrangements to exempt…carers engaged in…the qualifying activities…from charges for parking their cars in spaces provided for service users at hospitals”.
It does not state by whom the spaces are provided.
Mr Nuttall
I apologise that I did not cover that point in more detail earlier. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The implication of the clause is surely that other car park providers may be affected, not just NHS hospitals that provide car parks.
Mr Chope
Exactly. Public bodies increasingly decide to delegate non-specialist responsibilities to other specialists; for example, they delegate to car parking companies the supply and building of car parking facilities close to a hospital. It is unclear from the clause to what extent the people providing the spaces—the spaces may not be provided directly by the hospital, but are designed to be used by those visiting it—will be caught by the provision. Their investment and their business plan may therefore be compromised by the Bill. The hon. Member for Burnley did not make that clear.
Perhaps that matter could be dealt with by amendments in Committee. Many other amendments have been suggested in this debate, particularly during the hon. Lady’s speech. She said that such matters could be dealt with by amendments, but a lot of them would not actually be within the scope of the Bill. That problem arises because the Bill is very narrow in scope. It proposes to exempt carers from hospital car parking charges and is for connected purposes, which seem to be centred around facilities similar to hospital car parks. It is very worrying that, even during this debate, the sponsor of the Bill has suggested that it is far from perfect and said that she would like to amend it. In fact, some of the amendments she has in mind would go beyond the Bill’s scope.
Clause 1(2) extends much further than national health service hospitals. There has not been much discussion of the other facilities mentioned in paragraph (a), such as a
“walk-in centre, GP practice or other health care facility to which patients are admitted, or which they attend, for diagnosis, testing, treatment or other appointment”.
Without exception, GP practices in my constituency provide free car parking for everybody. The last thing a GP practice wants is not to have the flexibility to respond to an increase in demand by introducing charges or restrictions. It is inherent in the clause that a qualifying carer who parks beyond the limit would be exempt. However, at a motorway service area, for example, if people stay for longer than two hours, they can no longer park for free and are subject to a charge. If GP surgeries, walk-in centres or other facilities are subjected to a lot of illegal parking—people taking advantage of their car parks but not using the facilities or using them for only a short time—they might choose to impose charges on people who are there for more than two hours. To what extent would people be exempt from those charges under the Bill? How difficult or easy would it be to enforce against them?
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend is touching on an important point that has not been covered this morning. We have blithely said that about 40% of hospitals do not charge at all. Given what he has just said, does he agree that the Bill would be likely to result in some of those hospitals being required to introduce charging or some other restriction?
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That brings home the point that this Bill has not really been thought through. To what extent has it been discussed with GP practices? I doubt whether it has been discussed with them at all.
If one wanted to bring forward a Bill under the private Members’ Bill procedure and give it a good chance of success, I would have thought that one would ensure that it was very narrowly focused, specific and precise. If the hon. Member for Burnley had discussed her Bill with me before she presented it, I would have given her the same advice that I have given to many other hon. Members from both sides of the House who have aspired to make progress with their Bills: it is better to have a small, modest measure that is carefully thought through than something that is general and easily open to different interpretations, which makes it unlikely to make progress.
On that theme, the inclusion in clause 1(2)(b) of private hospitals is completely absurd. Why do we want to drag private hospitals into the issue of whether to impose car parking charges on carers? I am happy to give way to the promoter of the Bill so that she can explain why she wanted to bring private hospitals into the Bill. Most of the discussion has been about NHS provision. Why does she want to interfere in the private sector? In my experience, most private hospitals do not have any charges for parking.
Mr Chope
Of course, it does not say that in the Bill. That is a point of detail that I am sure was just overlooked in the drafting. I am grateful to the hon. Lady for making that clearer.
The provision applies to
“car parking spaces provided directly or indirectly, including under contract, by or on behalf of a health care provider…for patients and other users to whom car parking charges would otherwise apply.”
Again, my submission is that that goes far too wide because it drags in contractual provisions in the private sector and could impose directly on hospitals that have contracted out by agreement to private providers. They might have said, “Please build this car park and provide spaces for our patients, and in return we will allow you to charge patients,” and a business plan will have been drawn up accordingly. Clause 1(3) would effectively drive a coach and horses through that contractual arrangement. It could result in a compensation bill being payable by the hospital concerned to the private provider because of a breach of contract. That is another example of why clause 1 is far too wide.
On clause 2, which is about qualification for the parking charge exemption, I am indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) for explaining the number of people who have an underlying entitlement to carer’s allowance. In my constituency, where there are a large number of pensioners, a significant number would be subject to the overlapping benefit rule and would therefore be included as carers under the Bill by reason of having an underlying entitlement.
The bigger problem is that the Bill would not help unpaid carers. The vast majority of the 6 million carers in this country do it voluntarily and do not get any help from the state or the taxpayer, yet the Bill would not help them at all. Indeed, it could perversely make them worse off.
Mr Nuttall
One point that we have not covered is that for some reason, under clause 5(1)(b), people who are caring as part of their voluntary work are specifically excluded.
Mr Chope
That is a very good observation by my hon. Friend, who always looks assiduously at the details. Perhaps the hon. Member for Burnley would like to intervene again to explain why those engaged in voluntary work are specifically excluded under clause 5(1). That problem shows that the hon. Lady needs to reconsider the Bill.
As you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, the first stab at getting a private Member’s Bill on the statute book often fails, but there is then an iterative process whereby somebody else is successful in the ballot and brings forward a revised Bill for the House to consider. I believe that Lord Steel’s Abortion Bill, which got the House’s approval, was the sixth iteration of that Bill. I wish the hon. Lady luck in improving her Bill, having considered the points that have been made, and perhaps bringing forward one in the next Session that meets the concerns that have been expressed today.
I have always been concerned about new bureaucratic burdens being placed on organisations, so I am particularly concerned about the job that local authorities would have to do under clause 5(1) and (2), which provide that there would have to be an assessment of
“whether a carer should be eligible for free hospital car parking.”
No criteria are set out for the basis on which such a decision would be made, and there is nothing about how long that process might take. People often need quick decisions, but there is nothing about that. Would there be an appeals system if an applicant believed that the wrong decision had been taken? That would add to the bureaucracy and administration, and the time taken to deal with cases. It would cut across the discretion that hospitals and other organisations have to decide on their own parking charges.
Let me refer briefly to what happens at a few hospitals in my locality, because it shows that current discretionary arrangements are full of common sense and enable individual hospitals and hospital trusts to meet the needs of their communities by using available local expertise and experience.
In Royal Bournemouth hospital, all blue badge holders pay to park, and the only exemption is for disabled blue badge holders with tax-exempt vehicles. That is in line with neighbouring hospitals and other local authorities, and reflects the fact that the Christchurch and Bournemouth area has a large number of blue badge holders. If they were all able to avoid paying to park, relatively few people would have to pay, but they would have to pay a lot more. Sensibly, the Royal Bournemouth hospital offers exemptions for certain visitors and patients, and can arrange exemption certificates for specific patients and their visitors. Surely that is sensible.
Poole hospital has a similar arrangement, and a seven-day parking permit costs £16—a reasonable charge considering that parking normally costs £9 a day. Hospital governors recognise that if those with a long-term need to use hospital car parks have to pay £40 or £50 a week—those are the sorts of figures we have heard—that is not reasonable. Poole hospital chooses to exercise the discretion available to it, which is sensible.
Southampton General hospital is further away, but it is used by my constituents who have severe heart conditions and need surgery that often involves a long spell in hospital. It has a system of free parking or transport for patients who receive certain benefits, and concessionary parking for patients who are receiving certain treatments. A patient can be eligible for free parking or transport if they receive income support, hold an NHS tax credit exemption card, or an HC2 or HC3 certificate, which is a low-income support scheme that covers prescription, dental and healthcare travel costs.
Such sensible arrangements rely on the principle of localism and the idea that the best people to decide on such matters are the local community. Much hospital provision in this country, and too much of the NHS, is far too centralised, and the Bill would further centralise and remove discretion from individual hospitals and healthcare providers. I know that the Bill sounds good and is superficially attractive, but when one looks below the surface one finds that it does not stand up to detailed scrutiny.
I hope that when he responds the Minister will clarify whether—this is on a par with the issue of free school meals—the Bill, if enacted, would have Barnett consequentials. Barnett consequentials are a cost to the taxpayer. There is already free provision in Scotland, and my constituents are already subsidising the Scots to the extent of £1,600 a head, but if my reading of the Barnett consequentials is correct, another hidden cost would be that Scotland would have to be paid more money from the national Exchequer to compensate for the fact that the Bill does not apply to Scotland. That is another example of why proposed legislation can often turn out to be a lot more complex than it might appear on the surface. I hope my right hon. Friend the Minister will be able to help on that point when he responds to the debate.
Mr Chope
That is obviously a matter for the House authorities, but the Bill is bound to cost taxpayers money and would therefore need a money resolution to proceed. It is possible to bring forward legislation which, although prima facie makes exemptions that impose costs on the taxpayer, contains compensating provisions to ensure that those costs are borne not by the taxpayer but by somebody else. It may be that the promoter of the Bill thinks we do not need to seek a money resolution because the costs arising from it will actually be borne by a lot of other people who do not yet know they will have to pay that cost.
I am not sure, however, who would meet the costs of the Barnett consequentials. I do not think there is any provision yet in statute to enable Barnett consequentials to be passed on in the form of higher car parking charges for users of hospital car parks. I am sure that that can be addressed in due course. I am sorry there is nobody here from Scotland today. I am a member of the Scottish Affairs Committee, which enables me to be briefed on issues relating to Barnett consequentials. I know hon. Members from Scotland are always keen for us to pass legislation in this House that would give them more money through the Barnett consequentials. I imagine that if they were here today and voting on this private Member’s Bill—although it extends only to England—they would be rather enthusiastic about it, because it might deliver some more money for them through the Barnett consequentials.
We all think that carers do a great job, but I am not sure that it is only the paid carers we need to think about. We need to think about the unpaid carers, and the Bill does nothing at all for them. It extends a lot of bureaucracy and interference to our already over-regulated hospitals and healthcare sector. It would inevitably impose additional costs on those who are not exempted under its provisions and add additional bureaucracy and administrative burdens.
In summation, the Bill contains elements that may well make progress in this House, but I would not be keen for it to make progress today. There is so much work that needs to be done on the Bill in its present form that the Committee stage would be far too prolonged. I congratulate the hon. Member for Burnley on introducing the Bill. She is a new Member and I am sure that in the coming years she will be able to perfect the Bill, so we can get something on the statute book that meets some of the concerns she has expressed in this debate.
Health Service Commissioner for England (Complaint Handling) Bill
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope(9 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Nuttall
That is right, and it prompts a question about whether some advantage is to be gained by the commissioner providing more help at the initial stages to try to signpost people. Indeed, the annual report states that the ombudsman receives about 40,000 contacts a year, including queries about where and how to complain about public and non-public services. Of those 40,000 contacts, 27,566 were inquiries for the commissioner, which demonstrates that many members of the public will quite innocently contact the commissioner about matters that do not fall within her responsibilities.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
Does that show that new clause 1 is ill conceived? It states that before people make a complaint they must get an estimate of how long it is likely to take to resolve it. However, the bigger issue for people before they make a complaint is what the chances are of it being accepted for investigation.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes a good point. People may assume that they have simply to make a complaint for it to be followed up, but as statistics from the commissioner’s report show, that is not the case. Many complainants would presumably like someone to deal with their complaint, but are disappointed at the outset before they have even got going, and are told, “I’m sorry; you’ve come to the wrong person.” It may be that there is nobody to deal with that complaint, and the complainant is sent off to look elsewhere.
I have one further point on the detail of new clause 1. If the commissioner was expected to make a more accurate assessment of the time within which the complaint is likely to be completed, she would have to find out much more detail about the nature of the complaint. That would obviously entail more work for her and her staff. It is the law of unintended consequences: we may find that imposing more obligations and burdens on the staff of the ombudsman’s office, in an attempt to be helpful, extends the length of time it takes for a complaint to be resolved, because staff will be engaged in assessing how long it would take to deal with a new complaint, rather than getting on with dealing with complaints. That is a problem.
I accept that all these matters could be dealt with by providing extra resources. We have not really addressed that point so far this morning; it is the elephant in the room. I do not think this is outside the scope of the new clause. If we impose, or even just set out, an expectation on the commissioner to follow this provision, there will be implications for the deployment of resources. The commissioner could rightly say, “Well, it is all very well expecting me to give an estimate to every member of the public who approaches my office of how long their case will take, but where are the extra resources?” That would be a legitimate question to ask. Otherwise, the commissioner is likely to say that complaints might take about a year, which would probably not be very helpful to most prospective complainants.
New clause 2 relates to complainants who, perhaps having looked at the website, have decided that regardless of the length of time it will take, they will make a complaint. The new clause states:
“The Health Service Commissioner shall make available to the complainant, at the outset of an investigation, an estimate of the period within which the investigation is likely to be completed.”
That implies that initial details have already been taken. I would expect this to be rather more specific advice than that provided to a member of the public. This is someone who has lodged a specific complaint, which the commissioner has accepted. It is a small point, and I have not bothered tabling an amendment to new clause 2, but I would prefer it to read, “The health service commissioner shall give the complainant, within 14 days of the outset of an investigation, an estimate of the period in which the investigation is likely to be completed.” I would have tried to tighten it up a little bit, but I nevertheless accept that that is the wording put forward by my right hon. Friend.
I raised a point about providing updates. My right hon. Friend’s response was that there was no need to legislate on that, because he felt that the commissioner was providing updates anyway. If she is, I could use the same argument about new clauses 1 and 2. If we have no evidence—no one has been able to provide any—that this is a problem, either for members of the public, in respect of new clause 1, or for specific complainants, in respect of new clause 2, I have to question whether these new clauses are required at all. On balance—I accept that it is a fine balance—I do not think that they are required, and should he press either new clause to a Division, I would vote against it, but only because, as he has said himself about legislation to provide updates, there is no need for legislation to require the commissioner to provide this information to the public or a specific complainant.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend has achieved his wish.
I think that what is set out in amendment 5 would fall into a set pattern, with the commissioner saying every year, “Well, if you gave us a bit more money, we’d have a few more staff and things would get better.”
Mr Chope
With the greatest respect, I think that my hon. Friend misunderstands the amendment. The idea is to increase transparency so that rather than the commissioner being able to complain sotto voce that this is all because they do not have enough money, that would have to be brought into the open, and then the very points that he and my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) have been making about the ability of many public sector organisations to get a lot more bang for their buck could be exposed to public debate.
Mr Nuttall
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that clarification. He suggests that the amendment is purely about transparency, which means it has more merit than I had accorded it.
Control of Offshore Wind Turbines Bill
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope(9 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Chope
This Bill is about offshore wind turbines, and the subsidies going to those are twice as much as any subsidy going into the nuclear industry. Let me tell the hon. Gentleman what was said in an article in The Economist on 4 January 2014:
“Unfortunately, offshore wind power is staggeringly expensive. Dieter Helm, an economist at Oxford University, describes it as ‘among the most expensive ways of marginally reducing carbon emissions known to man’. Under a subsidy system unveiled late in 2013, the government guarantees farms at sea £155…per megawatt hour for their juice. That is three times the current wholesale price of electricity and about 60% more than is promised to onshore turbines. It is also more than the £92.50 which Britain’s new nuclear plant at Hinkley Point will get—though that deal is for 35 years, not 15.”
That is the situation succinctly expressed, showing beyond doubt that the taxpayer subsidies going into offshore wind are obscene. The only people who support offshore wind are those whom I must describe as subsidy junkies.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
My constituents already face the extension of an existing wind farm, Scout Moor. Can my hon. Friend assure them that this Bill would not increase the pressure to have more onshore wind turbines? That would be a cause of great concern for my constituents, who are of course completely landlocked.
Mr Chope
I agree with my hon. Friend. One of the ironies of the situation is that because of pressure from people such as my hon. Friend and members of the public concerned about onshore wind turbines, the Government reduced the subsidies for onshore wind turbines, but in so doing chose to increase the subsidies for offshore wind turbines. I am sure he will be pleased to know that one of our hon. Friends is to have a Bill on the Order Paper to remove subsidies from onshore wind turbines as well, and that will have my support in due course. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”]
On that buoyant note, let me go on to describe the provisions of this Bill. As is implicit in the fact that support for it is largely centred on Members of Parliament in the area around Christchurch bay and Poole bay, a developer is intent on constructing there a wind farm that would be the largest in the world and would have an enormous environmental impact on the local community. It is a joint venture between Eneco Wind UK Ltd and EDF Energy Renewables. The developer wants to construct and operate what it calls Navitus Bay wind park, which would be bigger than any other wind farm currently in operation and the first to be proposed adjacent to a vibrant leisure economy, adjoining a coast of outstanding natural beauty, and bordering a world heritage site. It would comprise up to 194 industrial-scale 200-metre-tall wind turbines; each one would be 15% taller than the Spinnaker tower. They would dominate Poole bay, occupying 153 sq km—an area similar in size to Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole combined. At their nearest points, they would be 9.1 miles from Swanage, 10.9 miles from the Isle of Wight, and 13.3 miles from Bournemouth. The Government guidelines say that no wind turbine should be constructed offshore within a 12 nautical mile limit, and these proposals do not comply with that.
The wind farm is controversial and contentious. As evidence of that, the plans for the development have received almost 2,700 interested representations—the highest number for any proposed offshore wind farm that the Planning Inspectorate has handled. I have not been able to bring along the filing cabinet containing all the representations that I have received from outraged constituents, but I know that I am speaking not just for my constituents, but for those of my hon. Friends along the south coast, in expressing our concern and outrage at what is being planned.
Bournemouth borough council believes that the wind farm
“will cause serious harm to the intrinsic appeal and beauty of Poole Bay’s natural seascape. The industrialisation of our beautiful coastal setting will have an unprecedented and damaging effect on the local economy.”
Surveys carried out by the developer in 2012 and 2013 show that over 1 million visitors a year will stop coming to the area, taking more than £100 million of income from the local economy. As a result of taxpayer subsidy going into developments in Hull, the economy there may receive a temporary boost, but as a direct consequence, on the admission of the developer, there will be a loss of £100 million a year to the local economy, mainly the tourist economy, in the area that I have the privilege to represent. That loss of real spending in our area would negatively affect local businesses and potentially result in business failures, with an estimated loss of some 2,000 jobs. For that reason, the local councils have joined together to spend a lot of money on campaigning against this wind farm development.
I think it is a useful exercise to reinforce those concerns by introducing this Bill. Clause 1 covers the location and height of wind turbines. Subsection (1) says:
“No wind turbine shall be constructed or erected within fifteen miles of the coast”.
That is a necessary minimum requirement that has particular regard to the Government’s guidelines.
Subsection (2) says:
“No wind turbine shall be constructed or erected within twenty miles of the coast…to a height exceeding 100m as measured by the highest point of the turbine blade above sea level from the date of commencement of this Act.”
That means, in effect, that if there are going to be very tall wind turbines that will be more visible, they need to be situated further offshore than those that are not so tall. The article in The Economist referred to the situation in Edinburgh, where a wind turbine under construction was nudging 200 metres in height—and what a monstrosity it was. We are talking about not just one such turbine, but getting on for 200, off the coast of Dorset. Subsection (3) says:
“No wind turbine shall be constructed or erected off shore if it would form part of a group of wind turbines which totals more than one hundred and no group of wind turbines shall be constructed or erected off shore within fifteen miles of any other such group.”
That is designed to reduce the visual and other impacts of such developments, and to stop them appearing like an industrial landscape out at sea.
We now come to a very sensitive matter. Subsection (4) states:
“No wind turbine shall be constructed or erected offshore within twenty miles of any World Heritage site.”
I would have thought that that was a fundamental point and I am amazed and extremely disappointed that the Government have been so laid back in their response to UNESCO’s concerns about the impact of the Navitus Bay wind park on the world heritage site known as the Jurassic coast. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport is supposed to be the guardian of the Jurassic coast. It is promoted as a great tourist centre and we are trying to attract visitors to admire the coast.
UNESCO says that the project’s potential impacts on the natural property of the Jurassic coast
“are in contradiction to the overarching principle of the World Heritage Convention as stipulated in its Article 4, as the completion of the Project would result in the property being presented and transmitted to future generations in a form that is significantly different from what was there at the time of inscription and until today. Specifically, the property will change from being located in a natural setting that is largely free from human-made structures to one where its setting is dominated by human-made structures.”
That is slightly flowery language, but what UNESCO is saying, in essence, is that putting 200 wind turbines so close the Jurassic coast would turn it from being a natural landscape into an industrial landscape. UNESCO wrote in its letter to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on 4 May 2014 that it wanted its comments to be taken into account in deciding whether the matter should even go to a public inquiry. Instead of responding to that request, DCMS Ministers simply shuffled off UNESCO’s representations to the public inquiry itself, which was a completely wrong-headed way of dealing with such major concerns.
There are a lot of examples around Europe and the rest of the world of UNESCO withdrawing world heritage status from sites that have been adversely affected by development. Only yesterday, a colleague from elsewhere in Europe drew my attention to the fact that, because of an insistence on building an unsightly bridge, part of the city of Dresden lost its world heritage status. We cannot be complacent. We need to look at the substance of the issue. Surely it does not make sense to build such monstrosities so close to a world heritage site, and that is what clause 1(4) covers. Subsection (5) sets out the way in which the
“distance between a wind turbine and the coast shall be measured”.
Clause 2 covers the operation of wind turbines and states:
“No wind turbine situated in or within five miles of an established area used by migrating birds shall be operated during the season for bird migration.”
This is a very big issue. Unlike perhaps the coast of north Wales, the coast of Dorset, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight is frequented by migrating birds. It is extraordinary that the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has not been more active in campaigning against the development, because it could have an enormous adverse impact on the migrating bird population.
In the summer months, almost all of the 4,500 nightjars in this country are located in and around New Forest and the Dorset heathland. People cannot develop within 400 metres of the heathland because their dogs or cats might attack the habitat of nightjars, Dartford warblers and so on. We are at great pains to protect the habitat of the nightjar on the Dorset heathlands, but when those nightjars wish to migrate in August they will have to go through a mass of enormous wind turbines extending to 200 metres in height. As their name suggests, nightjars travel at night and the impact of the turbines on their migratory pattern will be immense.
One of the main reasons there has been a significant decline in the number of migrating birds coming into the United Kingdom—this has been witnessed by lots of bird watchers—is the impact of wind turbines, not just off our shore, but off the shores of other countries through which those birds migrate during spring or autumn.
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope(9 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Nuttall
I do not want to be drawn immediately off target. We are considering some rather detailed provisions this morning. I accept that there are different views. There are many on the Government Benches who think it would be a good thing to use some of our public money—moneys that we have taken from the taxpayer—to pay for international aid. To a large extent, I go along with that, but what the Bill does is entirely different. It tries to enshrine in statute one particular area of Government spending, which no other areas of Government spending enjoy. It could be argued that it is better for a Government to spend whatever they want, be it 0.7% or 0.8%, of their own free will, rather than being obliged by statute to do so. There is another point. There may be those who, once they see that the 0.7% target has been enshrined in statute, think the job is done.
The people of this country have a long and proud history of giving generously to charity, and long may that continue, but is not there a danger that some—although not all—might think that, because 0.7% is enshrined in statute, the Government are doing that job for them? I for one do not wish to go down that road. I would like people to feel that it is also their responsibility, as an act of charity, to contribute to international aid.
Mr Chope
Is not the problem with the Bill highlighted by the autumn statement? GDP is forecast to increase by more than 3%, which means more than £400 million extra will have to be spent on overseas aid next year in order to meet the target. At the same time, the Chancellor is saying that we are still in the age of austerity.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Several newspapers have today reported that that would indeed be the effect of an after-the-event revision in gross national income. Some of the amendments that we will consider today attempt to deal with that problem.
Mr Chope
I have not signed new clause 7, but its heart seems to be that the Bill will have effect only in years when the UK records a budget surplus. Does my hon. Friend agree that without such a provision the Bill will require the Government to increase borrowing to fund overseas aid?
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. While we are in deficit we are undoubtedly borrowing money to pay for the overseas aid budget. There is no getting away from that. It is a fact of economic life. Some might think it a good idea to borrow money with one hand and give it away with the other; others might not take that view. It would be an interesting referendum were one to be held on that question.
In one way or another, new clause 3 and amendments 18 and 19 deal with the accounting period in the Bill. I might have missed it—I am happy to stand corrected—but nowhere in our proceedings have I seen a convincing explanation of why the accounting period by which our success in meeting the target is to be assessed is a calendar year, rather than a financial year, which we all deal in. The new clause and amendments would change the relevant accounting period from a calendar year to a financial year, bringing to the Bill much greater clarity, openness and transparency, because all the Government’s accounts are done in financial years. I cannot see why this aspect of Government expenditure should be any different. I hope that those amendments find favour with the House.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It makes sense for those who want to see the United Kingdom making the maximum impact with the money available for international aid, including some who have tabled amendments, to make the reporting requirements—everyone accepts we need some means of evaluation so there must be reporting requirements—as simple as possible. I cannot understand why we make them so complicated by putting them on a different basis from all the other Government accounts. It seems to me logical and common sense to assess the accounting period on the same basis as for all other annual accounts.
Amendments 21 to 26 would reduce the figure of 0.7% to 0.35%. Before anyone jumps up to say that this will mean cutting our aid in half, let me say that that is not necessarily so. This issue reveals the problem with the Bill. At the end of the day, the Government could continue to spend more than 0.35% on international aid; they could continue to spend 0.7% or even 0.8% on it if they were so minded. It is worth while considering why this figure of 0.7% has achieved almost mythical proportions.
School Admissions Bill
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope(10 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
This is a very small Bill. It consists of two clauses, the second of which merely deals with the extent, commencement and short title, and the first of which is also very short. Gaps, anomalies, inconsistencies and injustices in the law or regulations are often brought to our attention as a result of constituency cases, which is what happened in this instance.
The Bill deals with the very narrow issue of whether
“pupils with a parent with a terminal or seriously disabling illness”
should
“receive priority in the admissions process to maintained schools”
in the same way as, for instance, looked-after children. It arises from the case of my constituents Mr and Mrs Amey. Mrs Amey is extremely unwell: she suffers from what is thought to be a terminal condition. She was distraught when her son George was unable to join his sibling at Mudeford infant school, which said that it had no space for him. An appeal was made through the county council system, and was rejected.
I took the view, on behalf of my constituents, that that was absurd. I was able to secure the support of the then Secretary of State for Education, who very helpfully wrote to the county council saying that he agreed with me that the situation was wholly unsatisfactory, and hoped that the council would do something about it. The council set up another appeal hearing, the outcome of which was that George Amey was able to go to that school. However, a similar problem arose earlier this year, when George wanted to move to Mudeford junior school. I will not go into all the details, but ultimately, after an enormous amount of anguish, he has obtained a place there.
Looked-after children are given special priority when it comes to school admissions, and I do not criticise that at all. They are given special priority because they live with foster parents or are in the process of being adopted, which means that they may need to move to a different catchment area. If the adoptive parents of a looked-after child are unable to get the child into the local school, all sorts of additional problems will be created as attempts are made to ensure that the child can have as normal a life as possible.
I think that giving such children priority is perfectly sensible, but I think that it is also sensible to take account of the circumstances of children whose parents are terminally ill or suffer from a seriously disabling illness. The journey to school may be much more burdensome for such a parent, and the child will be under a lot of pressure because of the parent’s illness. A parent with a disability may have to move away from the catchment area of a school that is already attended by his or her child’s elder sibling in order to live in specialist housing such as a bungalow, so that there is no need to climb stairs. Accommodation of that kind may not be available in the catchment area. As a consequence, the child will lose its priority in the system.
I know that the principle of my short Bill has been accepted by the former Secretary of State for Education, because it was on the basis of the very narrow anomaly with which it seeks to deal that he intervened so helpfully in the case of Mr and Mrs Amey and their son George. It seems to me that one way of resolving that anomaly would be to ensure that, as clause 1 proposes,
“Any reference to a looked after child in the Schools Admission Code issued under Section 84 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 shall be taken to include a reference to a child with a parent or guardian who is terminally ill or suffering a seriously disabling illness.”
I do not think that there is any need to elaborate on that.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend think that one way of resolving the problem would be to clarify the existing code by ensuring that it includes those crucial words when it is next issued? Perhaps the Minister could give such an assurance.
Mr Chope
I agree with my hon. Friend, and I thank him for his intervention.
I have a great deal of respect for my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin), who I see is sitting in the Minister’s place. I am not sure whether she is, in fact, now a schools Minister.
Standards
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I pay tribute to the Chair of the Standards Committee, the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Kevin Barron). He has a heavy responsibility and burden in chairing the Committee, which he does with tremendous interest and dedication. He and others of us who serve on the Committee have to undertake that unnecessary but unpleasant responsibility.
In this case, it is awful that one of our colleagues fell so far below the standards that we hold dear. All I can say is that at least it is good that he made a fulsome apology and immediately resigned. I pay tribute to the Government for moving the writ for the by-election immediately, because that ensures that the constituents of Newark will be deprived of their Member of Parliament for the minimum possible length of time.
It is very good that the Committee now has the benefit of lay members—that has been misinterpreted in the press—because they have equal responsibility and participate in debates in Committee. If we counted the amount of time that each Committee member speaks, I suspect we would find that the lay members collectively talk for as much time as all the others put together. That is no criticism of the lay members; I am putting on the record the fact that they participate to the full in the Committee’s work. It has been suggested—because, for technical reasons, they do not have a vote on the final report—that they are somehow second-class members of the Committee, but nothing could be further from the truth. It is really desirable to have their reflections.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
The lay members may not have a vote, but am I right to suggest that they can issue a minority report if they do not concur with the majority decision?
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend is right. That is an important point that should be emphasised. The lay members have not chosen to write a minority report on any of the decisions of the Standards Committee in which they have been involved since the Committee was set up and they became members of it.
The lay members and the other members of the Committee are considering the issue of sanctions, partly because if there is a long period of suspension, it is as much a punishment of the constituents as of the Member of Parliament. If the Member had not resigned in this case, the long period of suspension could have been regarded as counter-productive. We will consider those issues.
My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House said in his opening remarks that there is an interaction between this matter and the Government’s commitment to introduce a Bill on recall. I urge my right hon. Friend—indeed, I plead with him—not to bring forward such a Bill unless there is consensus in the House and it has the support of members of the Standards Committee. The draft Bill was heavily criticised by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee and members of the Standards Committee.
Bearing in mind that we are reaching the end of this Parliament, I think that it would be better, if we are going to deal with recall, to do so properly, rather than as a knee-jerk reaction. We must always be nervous about Members of this House intervening in the decisions of the electorate. There is a genuine question over whether the Standards Committee, with the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, ought to start making recommendations on recall. Is that really what we want? I am not sure that it is. If we are to have recall, we need to work out in advance exactly how it will be triggered.
I hope, therefore, that the Government will come forward with a further draft Bill or provide substantial pre-legislative scrutiny, because if we are to have a recall Bill, we must ensure that it serves the best interests of the public and the House, rather than being seen as a political gesture to appease people who are concerned, quite rightly, about the standards of conduct in public life.
Benefit Entitlement (Restriction) Bill
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Chope
I certainly agree that it is about being sensible, but I am not sure the solution lies in trying to change our benefits system. Surely, we, as a sovereign country, should be able to decide what benefits system we want for our own people and should not have to try to tailor it so that it cannot be abused under EU rules.
The bigger problem was referred to by Dominic Lawson also in an article in last week’s edition of The Sunday Times. He wrote that
“although the great majority of east European migrants are entrepreneurially seeking the much higher wages available in the richer nations, a proportion will be welfare tourists.”
He then referred to the
“point made many years ago by Milton Friedman, who believed in open borders: he asserted that you can have a generous welfare state or open borders, but not both…There is no doubt that free and open immigration is the right policy in a libertarian state, but in a welfare state, it is a different story; the supply of immigrants will become infinite.”
Indeed, that is the concern of people in this country—that the supply of immigrants is becoming infinite. We look in the Government statistics for the numbers, but again we find that they fudge the figures and do not even collect the raw material.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend think that the number of migrants coming into the country and the consequent increase in the supply of labour has had an effect on the cost of labour, resulting in the necessity of the introduction of things such as the minimum wage?
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend makes a good point about public relations; the Government have to be seen to be doing something, but they are constrained by the current state of European Union law, which will prevent them from being able to take any action against people after they have been in this country for more than three months. That is why the Government are making a great virtue of saying, “We are going to get really tough on people in the first three months they are here.” However, they are not emphasising that once those people have been here for three months the world is their oyster and they have free access to all our taxpayer-funded benefits.
Mr Nuttall
Is my hon. Friend aware of any change in EU regulations that has prevented the three-month rule from existing until now? If he is not aware of any such change, does he share my concern that that rule has not always been implemented in the UK?
Mr Chope
As I shall go on to discuss, the problem is that EU law in this area is evolving and changing. That is largely being done through regulation, but it is also occurring through decisions taken by the unelected judges in the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. They are, in effect, giving an interpretation of what was originally a free movement directive—everybody would have gone along with that, because one core element in the European Economic Community was that people should be able to go from one country to another and take up employment there. Following the successive treaties, directives and regulations, the interpretation now is of people having a right to go to claim benefits in any country in the European Union once they have been there for more than three months.
Illegal Immigrants (Criminal Sanctions) Bill
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Chope
I think that responsibility for this rests solely with the United Kingdom. While wearing the hat as I have just described, I have come across a lot of evidence of organised criminal networks bringing people into our country illegally. The networks are usually based overseas and take very large sums from often very unfortunate migrants.
Once the migrants get here, they can be assured that they are here with impunity, because they will be able to lie low and will not be subject to any criminal sanctions. That gives them a perverse incentive to come to the United Kingdom rather than go to another European country where the rules are stricter and being there without authority gives rise to criminal penalties and sanctions.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making a compelling case for his Bill. Since it was given its First Reading, has he received any objections to it from any quarter, and, if so, from which groups has he received them?
Business of the House (2 December)
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope(10 years, 12 months ago)
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Mr Chope
Indeed: all the background.
The purpose of the motion is to enable the House to sit until as late as 11.30 pm on Monday, or even later, in order to consider two motions, one of which proposes to amend Standing Orders. I wanted to know why the Leader of the House had decided that the business should be debated so late on Monday, after a Second Reading debate on the important Mesothelioma Bill. Why could it not be debated at some other time? I believe that the motion proposing amendments to Standing Orders has been on the Order Paper for a long time, and I understand from contacts that I have had with my own Whip that the Government are concerned about the possibility that the House will divide at 10 pm on Monday. The business is highly contentious, which is why Members have been told that they will not be allowed to be “slipped”, or that slips that had been granted to them have been withdrawn. That suggests the Government regard it as highly contentious. If they do, it is all the more reason it should be given a primetime slot, rather than pushed towards midnight on Monday.
On a more serious point, the motion restricts the amount of time during which the two issues can be debated. It states that
“the Questions necessary to dispose of the proceeding on the Motion…relating to select committee statements and the Motion in the name of”
the Chairman of the Procedure Committee, including on amendments, shall be put
“not later than one and a half hours after the commencement of those proceedings”.
That means that a maximum of three quarters of an hour is being given to each subject, including for the discussion of amendments and for votes on the first motion before the second motion is debated.
I am speaking now on the last item of business on a Tuesday afternoon before the Adjournment debate. The hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid), whose Adjournment debate it is, could therefore have an extended debate on the defence police and fire pensions review until 7.30 pm. I cannot understand why the business on 2 December is being so dealt with and why effectively we have to suspend Standing Orders and move this business motion. I am not normally of a suspicious disposition, but this raises various questions.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend think it bizarre that this motion could be debated for longer than the 90 minutes allotted for the actual debate next week?
House of Lords Reform (No. 2) Bill
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope(11 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
It is, as always, a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), who made, as usual, a very illuminating speech on the matter of Lords reform. I was one of the 91 hon. Members to whom he referred. However, on this Bill I do not start from the same position as I started from on the gargantuan House of Lords Reform Bill, because although this Bill’s title contains the word “Reform”, anyone would have to accept that it is not in the same league as the previous Bill.
I congratulate my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) on his courage in dipping his toes into the deep and turbulent waters of House of Lords reform. As an adventurer of world-record-breaking renown, he is no man to shirk a challenge. It is certainly a challenge to try to steer any House of Lords measure through this House, but no one is more capable of doing so than him. He should be congratulated on his bravery in picking up this issue. When he announced that he was introducing this Bill, he wrote on his website:
“Lords reform has been a difficult and controversial subject”.
Few would dispute that statement. It is a topic that has caused problems for many before him. Whatever the merits or otherwise of the Bill, he should be congratulated on introducing it.
Although the Bill’s short title is the House of Lords Reform (No. 2) Bill, it is fair to say that it is not in the same league as the Government’s own blockbuster House of Lords Reform Bill, which hit the rocks and then sank without trace in the previous Session. It is nevertheless a reforming measure. I would take slight issue with my hon. Friend when he said that there was a “slight hint of constitutionality” about it. I would venture to submit that, on any measure, it must be construed as a constitutional Bill, albeit, I accept, a modest one. I wonder whether the private Members’ Bill route is the correct one for bringing legislation of a constitutional nature before this House. This Bill is certainly not typical of a private Member’s Bill.
I urge the Government to consider the merits of putting the Bill over to a Committee of the whole House rather than sending it to be dealt with upstairs, as would be normal for a private Member’s Bill. As I said in my intervention on the Minister, had the Government introduced a House of Lords reform Bill along these lines instead of the leviathan they did introduce, there would be no need for my hon. Friend’s Bill. The matter could have been dealt with in the normal way as a Government Bill, and that would have gone some way towards assuaging the feelings of those who would like more far-reaching House of Lords reform measures. At least, for them, it would have been some measure of progress.
My own approach to constitutional reform, which is particularly appropriate in relation to reform of the House of Lords, is that if it is to be done at all, it should be done on the basis of evolution rather than revolution. I accept that the aims of this Bill are fairly modest, but let us recognise that they have the potential to have a fairly radical effect on the membership of the other place. Because of the nature of the Bill, one can only surmise what its true effect would be. For example, if a statutory retirement scheme were to be introduced, we would have no way of knowing whether there would be a sudden rush of Members of the other place wanting to take advantage of it.
Mr Chope
Does my hon. Friend agree that the number of people who might take up such a scheme would depend on what the incentives were? One of the proposals that I made in my modest Bill is that there should be an opportunity for those who seek to retire from the other place to exchange their life peerage for a hereditary one.
Mr Nuttall
I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for that suggestion, which he says is contained in his Bill; obviously I have not yet reached that provision. That would be an innovative way forward. As the law stands, it would exclude people from membership of the House of Lords, but they would be entitled to stand in any by-election that arose among the hereditary peers and would thus have a potential route back, should they so desire.
According to last Friday’s edition of The House magazine, dated 11 October, the current membership of the House of Lords is as follows: 220 Labour peers, 219 Conservatives, 184 Cross Benchers, 98 Liberal Democrats, 22 bishops, 21 non-affiliated Members, two members of the Democratic Unionist party, two members of the Ulster Unionist party, two members of the United Kingdom Independence party, two members of Plaid Cymru, one Green party peer, and five others. I am not sure where those others come from after such a long list of other parties, but there are five of them. Eight peers are currently disqualified. I understand that disqualification comes through perhaps being a judge, which prevents people from being members of the other House. As has been said, 43 peers are on leave of absence.
That gives a total of 829 peers, or 786 if one excludes—which one usually does—those who have taken leave of absence. Of those 786, roughly two thirds—537 or 68.3%—come from the three major parties: Labour, Conservative and the Liberal Democrats. The rest are the Cross Benchers, the Bishops and members of the various other smaller parties.
I understand that the average attendance is in the region of two thirds of the total, which means that it is a little over 500. That is not that dissimilar to this place. The argument for House of Lords reform is invariably made on the grounds that it is too large and unwieldy. As my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) has said, it is somewhat ironical that over the years Governments of all descriptions have rushed to appoint new peers. The previous Labour Government created 408 peerages when they were in power, which led to an enormous increase in the size of the House.
The Bill would not have much effect—except in the case of the occasional, perhaps forced, expulsion of a Member who committed a serious criminal offence—on the numbers turning up to take part in the day-to-day work of the other place. No one should kid themselves that the problems of overcrowding would be eased that much by the Bill.
The Bill essentially has three different aspects and I will consider each in turn. The first is the retirement or resignation of a peer, the second the removal of a peer for non-attendance, and the third the removal of a peer after conviction for committing a serious criminal offence. I am inclined to agree that it is absurd that a Member of the other place should be required to remain a Member if they no longer wish to do so, but there is already in place a procedure that enables them to take leave of absence. Last Friday, The House magazine stated that 43 noble Lords have taken such leave of absence. Roughly 5% have taken advantage of the process, so it must be fairly widely known and it seems to be working. There is a list on the Parliament website of those Lords who have taken a leave of absence. I will not read it out, but what I will say is that 10 Members of the other place applied for leave of absence and were granted it in the first month of this Parliament back in May 2010. Those 10 knew straight away what the situation was and that they would not be able to attend, so they applied for a leave of absence.
Although the mechanism set out in the Bill is one way of dealing with this—and perhaps we can consider it in more detail if the Bill gets to Committee—it might be better if, rather than starting up a new system, we built on the existing mechanism of a leave of absence and made a provision for something that might be called a permanent leave of absence, whereby peers could simply say that until they write again they do not wish to be bothered by receipt of the writ of summons.
Mr Chope
Is that not exactly the system that is in place? A permanent leave of absence system was established in 2011 and I think that three noble Lords have taken advantage of it. The only respect in which it is not permanent is that it entails at the beginning of a new Parliament that each peer, even when in receipt of a permanent leave of absence, receives a writ of summons.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes a good point. I am not aware of the minutiae of the two schemes, but perhaps the informal voluntary scheme, which was introduced in 2011 and which allows a Member to write to the Clerk of Parliaments indicating their wish permanently to retire, has not been given a chance to work. It has not even been in operation throughout an entire Parliament yet. As my hon. Friend says, in its first two years of operation the scheme has attracted only three Members to take advantage of it, two of whom had been non-attenders for several years.
The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee helpfully produced, only this week, its ninth report of Session 2013-14, “House of Lords reform: what next?” The Committee took evidence during its inquiry and the broad consensus in the written evidence it received was that the current voluntary retirement scheme has not been effective and that it has had no notable impact. That raises the question of the extent to which the scheme has been publicised to their noble lordships. How many of them are aware that it is in place?
I think I am right in saying that my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire said during his excellent opening remarks that, at present, six Members want permanently to retire. If that is the case, it would be interesting to know—perhaps we will find out as the Bill moves through its various stages—why they have not availed themselves of the present voluntary retirement scheme, which, as I have said, was introduced back in 2011. Do they know that the scheme exists? If they do, why have they not taken advantage of it?
Mr Nuttall
I am extremely concerned about the desire to offer an incentive scheme. The danger is that, far from this being a cost-saving measure, it could end up costing the taxpayer a great deal more than the present system.
I accept, as a ballpark figure, that the scheme might involve several dozen Members of the other place who, for whatever reason, are not regular attenders. However, because peers receive an attendance allowance only if they turn up, all those who have taken a leave of absence or who simply do not turn up are not costing the taxpayer anything. If we offer their noble lordships an incentive to retire, we will enter an arms race of incentives. Although some Lords might accept the incentive, others will say that it is not enough, so people will say that we ought to make the incentives more generous. There are dangers in going down that road.
I can understand why peers might want to retire. As I have often said, a peer who is appointed in middle age or at the end of many years in another career will want to spend 10, 15 or 20 years in the other place. However, many of them will feel obliged to keep soldiering on out of a sense of duty to the other place and to the country. Of course, many of them do so.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes an important and worthwhile point. There will be noble Lords in the other place who feel that they have an obligation to continue. One suggestion is that there should be a formal retirement ceremony to mark the service of a peer. There is, after all, a formal ceremony to introduce new peers into the House of Lords. We saw that ceremony only yesterday, when two new peers were introduced. That demonstrates that the figures that I gave from last week’s The House magazine are already out of date because of the new peers who were announced over the summer.
It is reasonable that new peers are introduced from time to time. Inevitably, the numbers will fall over time by reason of death. When there is a diminution in the number of working peers—those who regularly attend and take part in proceedings—because peers have died, it is right that the party leaders should replace them. What is not right—we saw this all too often under the last Government—is the creation of new peers for party political purposes. Currently, the Conservative party has nowhere near a majority in the other place.
The 2011 Leader’s group report, which my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire mentioned in his opening speech, suggested that it should be considered whether a
“modest pension, or payment on retirement”
would provide peers with an incentive to take up voluntary retirement, while also providing an overall saving to the taxpayer. I am not sure that it would provide an overall saving to the taxpayer. To be fair, such a payment is not suggested in the Bill, but I hope that it is not the thin end of the wedge. We should make it clear that there will be no inducement for Members of the other place to retire.
Mr Nuttall
It would have been helpful if there had been explanatory notes to the Bill that dealt with that issue. I have not seen any explanatory notes.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes a valid point. I need to make it absolutely clear that no one is suggesting, and I am sure that none of the hon. Members who have intervened is suggesting, that any noble Lord is taking advantage of the facilities of the other place without playing a full part in proceedings. What we are doing is looking at hypothetical cases that might happen, which is right and proper when we consider legislation of this nature.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend is being too generous, if not naive. In his evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, Lord Cormack said that
“it is difficult to say this but it has to be said. There are those who attend very regularly indeed and do precisely nothing. They do not speak; they do not take part in committees; they vote.”
Mr Nuttall
That is evidence straight from the other place. If that is the case—we have no reason to doubt that it is not correct—the situation we are discussing might not be as hypothetical as I have just ventured to suggest. I still express the hope and desire that it is not widespread. If it is happening, it raises questions about whether we need the provisions in clause 2. My point, which is that there will always be people who try to play the system, is applicable.
Finally on the non-attendance provision, what if someone was in a coma as a result of tragically being involved a road traffic accident, and so unable to apply for leave of absence or attend? I appreciate that it is up to the Lord Speaker to issue a certificate, but I wonder whether someone suffering from ill health ought to be protected by being excluded from the clause.
Under clause 3, a Member could be excluded from the House of Lords if they were convicted of a serious offence and
“sentenced or ordered to be imprisoned or detained indefinitely or for more than one year.”
To get straight to the heart of my concern, human nature being what it is, there is a danger that those involved in sentencing, knowing the accused to be a Member of the House of Lords and knowing that were they to hand down a sentence of 12 months or more they would lose their membership of the other place, might think, “Well, we’d better not give them 12 months, because we don’t want them to lose their membership”, or, “Well, we’ll give them more than would otherwise be the case, because we think they ought to lose their membership.”
I do not know which of those two evils is the worst; they would both be equally unwelcome, so I wonder whether we would not be better to leave the matter to a committee on standards and privileges in the other place to consider each case on its merits. It could then weigh up the different aspects of each case and decide whether it would be appropriate to expel the Member. I entirely agree that there is a danger, if the other place does not have rules in line with those in this House, that people outside will rightly think that there is one rule for some and one rule for others; and they would not expect those who have broken the law in a serious manner also to sit in the legislature making the laws. All we have to do is come up with a mechanism for dealing with that.
I am concerned about sentences handed down by foreign courts. I suspect that such concerns are the reason clause 3(6) provides that if the other place resolves that there are special circumstances, a Member of the other place convicted of a serious offence could still remain a Member of the House of Lords, if the conviction was outside the United Kingdom. Obviously, there could be many jurisdictions in which an offence carries a much more serious penalty than in this country, which is why this provision is in the Bill, and rightly so. I wonder, though, whether anything would be lost by removing the phrase “outside the United Kingdom” and leaving it open to the Lords in any case, even if the sentence had been handed down by a court in this jurisdiction, to waive in certain circumstances the provisions in clause 3(1).
The final three clauses deal with the effect of ceasing to be a Member, the detailed rules about the issuing of a certificate by the Lord Speaker and the short title, commencement and extent of the Bill, all of which I have no comment to make on at the present time. Although this is a relatively modest measure, it could have enormous constitutional consequences for the other place. I again congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire on his bravery in bringing it forward and repeat my request that this matter is considered by a Committee of the whole House.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
It is a privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). His remarks should persuade anybody who has any doubts about the desirability of having this constitutional measure debated on the Floor of the House in a Committee of the whole House of the wisdom of that course of action, because this is a serious constitutional Bill. In the absence of a written constitution, it is this House and the other place that have to look after our constitution, and why should all Members of this House not be able to consider in detail the provisions and implications of this Bill, which could be done if there were a Committee of the whole House?
One of the advantages of the Government supporting any motion in relation to Standing Order No. 63 would be that the Committee of the whole House could meet to consider this not on a Friday, but on some other day of the week, so we could get an even higher attendance than we have been able to achieve today. We could then be sure that, if and when this Bill leaves this place and goes to the other place, it will have been properly thought through and all the constitutional implications will have been explored.
One of my roles in life at the moment is to be the representative of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on the Venice Commission, which looks at written constitutions. Last week in Venice we were looking at the proposed Tunisian constitution, and the time before we were looking at the amendments to the Hungarian constitution. One of the problems with those written constitutions is their rigidity. We are fortunate in having an unwritten constitution, which is inherently flexible. Long may that continue to be so. That is why it is essential that, before making changes to our constitution, which we can do by a bare majority in both Houses, those changes should have been properly thought through in the way my hon. Friend is encouraging us to do.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) on introducing this Bill. It is a pity that he was not able to incorporate in it some of my ideas in the House of Lords (Maximum Membership) Bill, which is also on today’s Order Paper. Some of my Bill’s provisions dealing with retirement are perfectly apposite to his Bill. If his Bill reaches a Committee of the whole House, some ideas from my Bill may well be taken forward by him in the form of new clauses or amendments. I am grateful that my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) made specific reference to his view that we should have a maximum number of peers and that it should be 650, which is exactly what is contained in clause 1 of my Bill.
My Bill sets out a retirement process for peers on a different basis from that proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire, but it does, as I mentioned in an intervention, deal with the issue of incentives for retirement. Clause 5 of my Bill refers to the ability to convert, whereby the title of someone seeking to retire becomes a hereditary one on retirement. That would provide an incentive, not an expensive one, and it would address the issue of a lack of incentive and of compensation, which seems to be very much at the forefront of my hon. Friend’s Bill.
As has come out in the debate, clause 4 of the Bill, which deals with the effect of ceasing to be a Member, is silent on the issue of any costs. Would, for example, severance payments be made? Could we ensure that there was no guarantee of, or no entitlement to, severance payments? I imagine that the issue of whether money should be paid out of central funds to compensate people who cease to be Members would be a matter for the other place. However, that should be specifically excluded from the provisions of this Bill, so that in no circumstances could a Bill which made provision for retirement from the House of Lords be an additional and significant charge on public funds.
As we recall, the Prime Minister has been very hot on the issue of reducing the cost of politics, although he was not able to reduce the numbers in this House because of the duplicitous way in which the minority Government party and the Liberal Democrat leader behaved. Meanwhile, however, the Prime Minister has been increasing significantly the numbers in the other place, and that has added significantly to the cost of politics. So the cost of politics, far from being reduced, is going up substantially. On the way back to this House yesterday, I was looking at the Daily Mail, which was forecasting that yet another tranche of new peers is going to be appointed very soon—perhaps the Minister wishes to intervene on that point. That will increase their number even beyond what we have now.
I do not know whether one reason for the visits to China by the Prime Minister and the Mayor of London was to see the Chinese second Chamber, which is the world’s largest. Our House of Lords is exceeded in size only by the Parliament of the Chinese Republic. Having regard to the relatively modest population in this country compared with that of China, I am not sure that we should be pleased that we have a Chamber of Parliament that is second in size only to that in the Republic of China. The case for reducing the number of people in the House of Lords through having a maximum number is very strong. Having said that, I am not sure that the way that the Bill goes about it is right in its present form.
Clause 1 refers to the issue of retirement or resignation. Essentially, those words have the same meaning. The long title of the Bill makes provision for retirement from the House of Lords; it does not refer to resignation. Obviously, those who were looking at the drafting of the Bill realised that the term “resignation” effectively came within the concept of retirement. The use of the word “resignation” rather than “retirement” is an issue of semantics rather than of substance.
However, I am concerned that clause 1 does not make it clear whether, and if so how, it applies to their lordships spiritual and to hereditary peers. At the moment, it seems to apply to all peers, but I am not sure it would be appropriate for the Bill to introduce rules relating to the retirement or resignation of their lordships spiritual or to hereditary peers. However, that is not spelt out in the Bill.
I am concerned also, in clause 2, about the issue of non-attendance. There are many ways of defining non-attendance and the Bill sets out some of them, but as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset made very clear, one may well be a Member of the other place but not choose to attend. For example, at the moment Baroness Ashton finds herself too preoccupied with trying to rule us from Brussels to be able to attend the other place. One might argue that, in that case, it would be a good idea if she was forced to resign, or indeed expelled, from that place, but that is a separate argument and it is not covered by the Bill. However, there is a wide range of reasons why someone might wish not to attend the other House.
Many of the witnesses who attended the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee discussions on these issues made the point that the relative number of people who would wish to retire at the moment is very modest, so because most of those who would wish to retire do not attend anyway, the provisions relating to retirement would have no significant impact on the numbers in the House of Lords. Those who are currently not attending would be faced under clause 2 with the threat that if they carried on not attending, they would be deprived of their membership, so those people might be given a perverse incentive to start attending. The Clerk of the Parliaments has said that the biggest problem with the other place is not the people who do not turn up, but the fact that so many people do turn up, with the pressure on resources.
Clause 2 is misconceived. It deals with a presentational point. Their lordships seem to think that if there is a suggestion that some people are not very regular attenders, that causes reputational damage to their lordships House. But as we have discussed, there may be any number of reasons why those people choose not to attend, and if, in any event, under the provisions of the Bill, they could receive a certificate from the Lord Speaker to the effect that, notwithstanding their lack of attendance, they could still carry on as Members of the other place, that undermines that provision of the Bill.
The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee took all that evidence, and we produced a report. Some people—even the Minister on the Front Bench today—said that they were wholly in support of everything that is in the Bill. I think that is going a bit far. Sadly, I was not able to be present at the meeting at which the Committee examined the final report and considered possible amendments. If I had been able to contribute at that stage, I certainly would have tabled some amendments.
Having said that, the report accepts that there is a case for dealing with some of the issues covered in the Bill. The strongest case relates to clause 3, on people who have committed offences, because it would bring the Lords in line with what happens in this House to a greater extent. Even on that clause, however, I have some concerns.
As soon as somebody was convicted of a criminal offence and sentenced to a year or more of imprisonment, he would automatically cease to be a Member of the other place. That would apply even before any appeals process had been exhausted. Someone might be convicted in the Crown court and wish to appeal against the sentence, but before the appeal they would lose their position in the other place.
If one wants to go along with the idea of clause 3, it would be much fairer to provide that a person ceased to be Member of the other place after they had been convicted and sentenced to imprisonment in excess of one year, but also after all their rights of appeal had been exhausted. That would still not cover someone seeking an appeal in future through the administrative process by which people can have their convictions reviewed, but the provision in clause 3 should apply only after the right of immediate appeal against a sentence has been utilised and proved unsuccessful, or after the person in question has chosen not to use it.
I agree wholeheartedly with what my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset said about convictions having to be from courts in the United Kingdom. Criminal legal services operate in contrasting ways in different countries, and if we are to deprive people of the right to be Members of our legislature, we should say that a conviction by a court overseas has no effect. We should not leave it to the Lord Speaker to issue a certificate on that issue.
As we heard in the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, the previous Lord Speaker, Baroness Hayman, and some others of their lordships, are keen to extend the provisions of the Bill into the area of expulsion of Lords who are guilty of conduct that brings their House into disrepute. The previous Lord Speaker, along with the noble Lord Goodlad and one or two other witnesses, told us that that would be a good idea. However, the points that my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset made show that we must be extremely nervous about what the impact would be if their lordships tried to extend the range of conduct—misdemeanours as well as criminal law offences—that they considered sufficient to deprive somebody of being able to be a Member of the Lords. Even in this House, we do not have the power to expel Members who have not been convicted by the criminal courts, and it is not sensible to give such powers to the other place.
Mr Nuttall
Does my hon. Friend think that clause 3(2) is unnecessary, and that the Bill could manage just as easily without any requirement for the Lord Speaker to issue a certificate? The Bill could simply say that if someone was convicted, they would cease to be a Member of the House of Lords, and still retain the provision in clause 3(6).
Mr Chope
Yes, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point. This is another issue on which there might be amendments. I am concerned about how the Bill will proceed, assuming that it gets its Second Reading today, because if it does not go to a Committee of the whole House, it is quite likely that there will be so many amendments that people will want to move and debate that the Bill could end up taking up all the time available for discussion on Fridays; that is another good reason why it should go to a Committee of the whole House.
I should not sit down before commenting on what my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset said about the potentially ageist nature of the reference to retirement in the legislation. I have the privilege of representing the constituency with the largest proportion of residents aged over 65; the proportion is just over 35%. Obviously, that means that a much higher proportion than that are able to vote in elections, because those under 18 are excluded from doing so. I therefore have a particular reason for saying that it is important that the older generation be properly represented in this House and the other place.
Quite a lot of people see it as their objective in life to try to bring in, directly or indirectly, a restriction on the age until which people can participate in our democracy in a representative capacity. We should be hostile to those moves. That is another reason why I have always been against the idea of a retirement scheme for their lordships that is based just on age. The proposal in the House of Lords (Maximum Membership) Bill, to which I referred earlier, would not require people to retire based on their age; retirement would relate to the date when they first became Members, which can be a completely different kettle of fish.
As my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire said, the Bill is, on any view, a modest measure, but many modest measures have been brought before the House. Some of the Bills in my name further down the Order Paper are very modest measures—two clauses at most—but that does not mean that they will find favour with the Government Front Benchers.
London Local Authorities and Transport for London (No. 2) Bill [Lords]
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope(11 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
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.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend not agree that the Bill has been progressing through this place for such a long time that the legislative framework against which it was originally drafted has changed substantially? Part 5 may not be necessary, because the Localism Act 2011 allows local authorities to carry out this work.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Perhaps we will hear from the Minister in due course what he thinks is the answer to that issue. The regime being established under part 5 would put London local authorities in a privileged position compared with ordinary private sector operators. Philosophically, my hon. Friends the Members for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) and for Shipley and I would say that that was wrong. The counterweight is that if the legislation puts local authorities in a privileged position, additional responsibilities should be placed on them in the public interest—namely, to ensure that charging points are available not just in occasional car parks, but in every public off-street car park run by the council.
Mr Nuttall
If that was the case, surely it would increase the risk of a burden being placed on the taxpayer.
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.
Mr Nuttall
In view of the point my hon. Friend has just made, is he not as surprised as I am that the Government have not introduced a Bill to provide for the erection of charging points nationally, rather than just in London?
Mr Nuttall
I appreciate that my hon. Friend is completing his summary. Is he as surprised as I am that, notwithstanding the courteous and careful way in which the amendments have been considered, only one has been accepted?
Mr Chope
Having one amendment accepted is more than was achieved during the earlier business—today, yesterday and the day before yesterday, with all the might of the Opposition forces against the Government. I am grateful for small mercies. In fact, two amendments will have been accepted this evening, and that is pretty good. As I said, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East should be made a Minister; perhaps I might have a role in the official Opposition. We might be able to make more progress.
I intend to withdraw amendment 21, move amendment 30 formally so that it can be accepted by the House and test the opinion of the House on amendment 40. It would be a pity if those who have listened so attentively to this debate were deprived of the opportunity of participating in a vote before we reach the appointed time.
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment made: 30—(Mr Chope.)
Clause 19
Offence of unlawful use of charging point
Amendment proposed: 40—(Mr Chope.)
Question put, That the amendment be made.
London Local Authorities and Transport for London (No. 2) Bill [Lords]
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope(11 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Chope
It may be that my hon. Friend, as so often, anticipates the response to come from my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), who speaks on behalf of the promoters. We shall have to wait and see. On the face of it, the issue is worthy of an explanation. If the legislation is untried and experimental, that should be clearly set out in the Bill.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Might not confusion result from the fact that measures are to be introduced on different days in different parts of London? I might not be as generous in my thinking as my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), but could that not be a deliberate ploy to try to confuse people and set up a money-making racket?
Mr Chope
It could be, but I am not going to try to follow my hon. Friend by making accusations against the promoters or London authorities by suggesting that the Bill is designed to confuse and ensure that they can get more in penalty income than they might otherwise be able to. Again, the fact that my hon. Friend raises that as an issue demonstrates the climate of suspicion regarding a lot of local authorities in relation to the imposition of penalty charges, which I recall from having read an article are now giving hundreds of millions of pounds in income to London local authorities alone. Many people feel those measures were brought in almost by subterfuge through Bills such as the one we are considering tonight, and now many years later people can see that has resulted in a significant financial burden and quite a lot of injustice. That is why I think it would be better to have simplicity and clarity, which would require that any provisions in this Bill be introduced in all areas of London at the same time on the same day, rather than causing the confusion to which I have referred.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend raises another point that I had not thought about, which is that these subsections may be superfluous anyway and it is implicit within the powers being given under clause 3 that an appointed day could be a different day for different parts of London in different circumstances, in which case, in trying to keep legislation simple there would be another argument in favour of accepting my amendments 1 and 2, as in leaving out subsections (2) and (3) of clause 3, they would make the Bill clearer. We will have to wait to hear the response to the debate before assessing whether these amendments are of such significance that we would seek to divide the House on them. Speaking for myself, I think it would be reasonable to await the full explanation before rushing to judgment.
Amendment 3 is significant. It is the first of the amendments addressing part 2 of the Bill, and clause 4 in particular, which deals with the attachment of street lamps and signs to buildings, and changing the regulations relating thereto. At present, the regime is pretty restricted under the highways legislation, but this Bill seeks to give much wider powers to local authorities, enabling them to permit the attachment of street lamps and signs to buildings even when that is not approved or supported by the owners of those buildings. This power is potentially quite significant, because the owner of a building could suddenly find they are required to have a street lamp or sign attached to their building.
We know from earlier stages of the Bill that the Society of London Theatre was very concerned about the impact of the measure on theatreland, and it is to the credit of the promoters that they decided that they would therefore exempt theatres, which is why clause 4(14) specifically states:
“This section and section 5 shall not apply in respect of a theatre.”
In a few moments I will talk about amendment 4, which follows on from that. Amendment 3, however, deals with subsection (13), which states:
“A London authority may not, under section 3, appoint a day for the purposes of this section until a code of practice dealing with the exercise of the powers of the said section 45 and the said section 74 as modified by this section has been published by a joint committee.”
My amendment would ensure that the code of practice must not only be published by a Joint Committee but be approved by the Secretary of State for Transport—an appropriate and proportionate safeguard.
Mr Nuttall
Amendment 3 specifically suggests that the approval of the Secretary of State for Transport should be sought. My limited understanding of these things is that the normal practice is to specify “the Secretary of State” and leave the actual office open. Perhaps my hon. and learned Friend would like to expand on why he has specified the Secretary of State for Transport.
Mr Chope
I am not learned in any sense of the term, but this amendment has been selected and I thought that rather than just referring to “the Secretary of State” it would more appropriate if it specified the Secretary of State for Transport. If the Minister wishes to intervene to suggest that it should be the responsibility of a different member of the Government, so be it. The point I am trying to make is that this is a significant issue. It is recognised by the promoters as sufficiently serious in its potential implications as to mean there should be a code of practice to deal with the exercise of the powers. The code should go further, in the sense that it should be approved by the Secretary of State for Transport. It would be unreasonable to expect this code to have to be approved by this House, through a statutory instrument, but it is reasonable to say that there should be a safeguard and that the Government can ensure that the code of practice accords with what is reasonable and proportionate. The Secretary of State for Transport could then be held accountable by this House for approving a code of practice if it did not meet the reasonable conditions we think ought to apply.
Mr Chope
In a sense, that is the other side of the coin my hon. Friend has just used. The answer is that it might not be worth the candle. Why should we force a local authority to try to recover a relatively small sum when the cost of doing so could be disproportionate? That is the best answer I can give to the good point he makes.
Let me turn to amendment 9. This is another example of where the Bill’s drafting is unnecessarily wide. If a highway is damaged as a result of adjacent works, surely the person responsible for paying to repair it should be
“(b) the person carrying out the works; or
(c) the person on whose behalf the works were carried out.”
Why should
“(a) the owner of the land in question”
be the subject of the recovery of expenses if he neither carried out the works nor had the works carried out on his behalf? That seems unnecessarily oppressive, because the owner of the land might know nothing whatsoever about the work being carried out or any damage resulting from it. That incorporates a provision of strict liability in circumstances in which I do not think it is reasonable.
That is why I have tabled amendment 9, which would leave out subsection (a) and ensure that the expenses reasonably incurred could be recovered from the person who carried out the works or the person on whose behalf the works were carried out. That might often be the owner. However, if that person was not the owner, he would not and could not be liable. I look forward to hearing from the promoters of the Bill why they think it is reasonable to expect the owner of the land to be liable in the circumstances that I have described.
Mr Nuttall
Is my hon. Friend aware of the definition of “owner”? Is it a leasehold-owner or someone who owns the freehold?
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend makes another good point. I do not know. The explanatory notes define “owner” in relation to part 3, but he is asking about part 2. That is perhaps an omission. There may be more than one owner. As he suggests, they may be a leasehold-owner, a freeholder, or, indeed, a sub-lessee. That is a reasonable point of inquiry. It might also be another reason why leaving out any reference to an owner would be the best way forward for the promoters of the Bill.
Amendment 20 is in the same group, which is headed “Highways and general”—“general” in this case. It relates to part 4, which has only one clause—clause 15, on the subject of gated roads, which says:
“Any person who opens, closes or otherwise operates or interferes with a relevant barrier without lawful excuse shall be guilty of an offence and liable, on summary conviction, to a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale…In subsection (1) a ‘relevant barrier’ means any barrier lawfully placed in, or over a highway by or on behalf of a traffic authority in London for the purpose of preventing or restricting the passage of vehicles or any class of vehicles into, out of, or along a highway.”
My amendment 20 would leave out all that. If we are to have specific legislation creating a criminal offence for people who open, close or otherwise interfere with such barriers, it should introduce that offence right across the country rather than in a particular part of it. I have no evidence to suggest that there is a bigger problem relating to gated roads in London than anywhere else.
Furthermore, introducing specific offences litters the statute book of criminal law with rather a lot of unnecessary trivia. In this case, if somebody goes along to a barrier and cuts off the padlock or forces it open in some way, they will be guilty of criminal damage, which is obviously already an offence in criminal law. The provision would potentially criminalise somebody who might open a barrier because it was not locked and then find themselves guilty of an offence.
Mr Chope
On reflection, would my hon. Friend agree that the biggest problem with the clause is that it criminalises the good samaritan? As the explanatory memorandum points out, it is an offence to drive along a road in breach of a road traffic regulation, so if somebody finds one of these gates open and closes it to prevent other people from committing road traffic offences by driving through that open gap, they will be liable to a criminal penalty under this clause.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. That is one of the problems with the clause: it will potentially make criminals out of people who seek to do good. That cannot be right. It also prompts the question of what signage would be in place. In the context of the other clauses, we were talking about trying to remove signs, but there now might need to be new signs to warn people that such activity is a criminal offence. I entirely support the amendment and I look forward to hearing from others.
Mr Chope
Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the big problems is that local authorities have already demonstrated through the use of decriminalised penalty notices that they can be over-zealous and keen to get the maximum amount of revenue irrespective of the justice of a situation, which is why we hear all these stories of traffic wardens hiding and then creeping up on unsuspecting motorists so that they can get extra penalty points imposed and extra fines for themselves and their local authority?
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes a good point, as that is one reason why one is slightly sceptical about this sort of clause. Just this day I received a letter from a constituent raising exactly that point about the behaviour of traffic enforcement officers in Bury; it detailed how they have been served with a penalty notice in circumstances where it would have been easy to deal with the matter in another way if more common sense had been applied. That would have avoided having to give a local resident a penalty notice. Such examples make me want to agree with my hon. Friend’s proposition that people will be suspicious that this provision is there to make it easy for the local authority officer to find somebody. It does not matter who they find on this basis; they can give the notice to almost anybody and they will be able to say, “We have done what we can. It is now your problem. If you weren’t responsible, it is now your responsibility to find somebody who was.” I humbly submit that that is clearly not the right way for things to be done. It should be the responsibility of the responsible officer of the local authority to find out who is responsible, rather than expecting a person on whom a notice has been served to identify that other person for the purposes of determining who has committed the offence.
If I were to enter this little competition of saying which amendment I would press, I would opt for amendment 14, as it is entirely reasonable that where someone has taken reasonable steps to avoid committing an offence, they should not be held liable under this part of the Bill. With that, I will wait to hear what others have to say.
Mr Chope
In summing up an excellent debate, may I thank my hon. Friend the Members for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), for Shipley (Philip Davies) and for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for their contributions? If the Minister had contributed, the debate would have been even better, as indeed it would have been had the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) spoken—they demonstrated unusual self-restraint on these important issues, particularly on the issue of “national versus local”.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley said, the promoters of the Bill are now saying that it would be unreasonable potentially to impose on operators from outside London a requirement to put their name, telephone number and address on a skip, given that the legislation that applies outside London requires only the telephone number or the address. Clearly, there is an inconsistency between the approach of the promoters to those of us who argue that we should have national legislation on these issues rather than localised legislation.
Mr Nuttall
I appreciate that my hon. Friend is summing up, but are we not talking about the same case that was made earlier in respect of amendment 20 and gated roads?
Mr Chope
Exactly the same point applies in relation to gated roads, which is why it is a pity that we have not heard from the two Front-Bench spokespeople on where they think the balance should be between individual local authorities, or groups of local authorities, legislating in this area and a responsibility for the Government to try to introduce a national regime.
My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East has gone through each of the amendments seriatim and tried—
Draft Voting Eligibility (Prisoners) Bill (Joint Committee)
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope(11 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I beg to move amendment (a), leave out the names at the end of the motion and insert
“That the membership of the Committee shall be nominated by the Committee of Selection under Standing Order No. 121 following elections within the parties using whatever democratic and transparent method they choose.”
The amendment stands in my name and those of quite a few of my right hon. and hon. Friends, as well as that of at least one Opposition Member.
I must say that the opening remarks from the two Front Benches, otherwise known as the usual channels, caused me to feel that there was every good reason for us to change our present procedures. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House presented objections relating to both principle and practice. One of his points about practice was that it was important for us to be able to deal with Joint Committees very quickly. The decision to set up this Joint Committee was made in late November, but, some four months later, we still have not set it up. I detected no sense of urgency; perhaps, if I am wrong about that, my right hon. Friend will intervene.
I do not think that it was a convincing argument that if we were to elect the members of the Committee through our party groups, there would be an unacceptable delay. The delay that has taken place so far has been due to the Government, and no one else can be held responsible for it. Indeed, I have heard suggestions that the Government have always been rather keen on kicking this whole subject into the long grass, and that my amendment, which was not inspired by the Government, was just an extension of the long grass and meant that this whole issue and the appointment of the Joint Committee could be delayed further.
I do not buy into the notion that there is an issue to do with practical problems because of the question of speed, nor do I buy into the objections in principle. I am not suggesting we should change the standing orders and deal with all Joint Committees on the same basis. I am suggesting that this particular subject is unique—I think we can use that over-used word in this instance—because at present we find ourselves before an international court being told we have to change our law when this elected House of Commons has made it clear that we do not wish to change the law. This is not some run-of-the mill situation, therefore.
It is a unique situation, and it strikes me that it would have been much better for the Executive to have kept their hands well out of it. Whatever they do or do not do is going to be looked at by politicians in the rest of Europe. When the Lord Chancellor introduced the draft Bill, he conceded this was essentially a political issue as much as a legal issue. If the Government were able to say, “We put forward these three alternative proposals in a draft Bill; we then left it to the House of Commons, in its wisdom, to decide who should serve on a Joint Committee; and that Joint Committee took evidence and examined it and reached various conclusions”, the Government would be under no obligation to accept those conclusions. If a Joint Committee, however comprised, was to reach conclusions that were not in accordance with the evidence it received, that would bring the Joint Committee into disrepute.
I do not accept the principle put forward by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House that it will be impossible to have a properly balanced Joint Committee if it is elected. I suggest quite the reverse: if a Committee is elected, its members are accountable to the people who elected them. If those elected Committee members do not participate in the Committee proceedings or if they reach perverse conclusions, they will find it very hard to get re-elected.
When we appoint members to Select Committees or our party groups, we will inevitably be electing mainly the enthusiasts. The Environmental Audit Committee has a lot more enthusiasts for what I would call “greenery” and an acceptance of climate change science than it has members who disagree with that, although I am delighted that my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley) has latterly joined the Committee to try to introduce some balance.
Perhaps the example of that Committee gives the answer to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. If Members feel a Committee is becoming too homogenous and is not being objective in its assessments of the evidence before it, the remedy lies in the Members of this House choosing an alternative member of the Committee to introduce balance. I do not believe only the usual channels can introduce balance into this Committee; quite the reverse, in fact.
On the issue of whether some Members proposed to serve on the Committee have a prior view, we know that some of them do, as that was expressed in the vote in the House on this subject. Other Members put forward a motion to the Committee that decides on the allocation of time for Back-Bench business; they put their heads above the parapet, and we know whether or not they are serving on that Committee. The same point applies in respect of the matters before us today.
My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House says, not totally tongue-in-cheek, that it is open to us, as the House, to put forward amendments for alternatives. I am not criticising any Members of this Committee. My amendment is not designed to do that; it is designed to ensure that the decision on the membership of the Committee is made by the individual Back-Bench groups of the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and the official Opposition. Those groups can then elect the people they would like to see on the Joint Committee. It seems to me that that system would work perfectly well and would distance the Government effectively from any of the Committee’s work.
As the chairman of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, I can say that there is quite a lot of suspicion among the other 46 member countries that the UK Government are trying to ensure that nothing happens very quickly as they realise that the UK Parliament is totally at odds with the judges in the European Court of Human Rights on this issue. If the Lord Chancellor could have said to his counterparts in other countries that he had nothing to do with who was on the Committee, that the usual channels were not involved, that the Government left it to the Members of the House of Commons to choose their own Committee members and that the Government did not have to accept their findings but could merely see what they think, he would have had a better alibi. People looking in from outside might say that the motion is a fix by the usual channels.
I understand that the Select Committee on Justice undertook an informal bidding process, making representations to the effect that it wanted one of its number to serve on the Joint Committee. The Justice Committee is not the lead Select Committee on this matter—that is the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, of which I happen to be a member. The Justice Committee put forward a number of names that were considered by the usual channels, and one of those names was chosen and is among those in the motion.
That seems to me to be a totally non-transparent way of dealing with such issues and it is not appropriate that we should set a precedent whereby a Select Committee can start to lobby the Government covertly to have one of its members as a member of a Joint Committee when that Select Committee is not the lead Committee. The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee has taken evidence on this subject from the Deputy Prime Minister and others, and if we are to give somebody from a Select Committee a place, we have not necessary chosen the right one.
My point is that the process would be much better dealt with without the Government’s involvement and that is why I hope that Members will feel able to support my amendment—not necessarily by voting for it tonight, but by asking their Whips and colleagues whether the natural development of the Wright Committee reforms would be to introduce a further reform in this regard. That would mean that if we choose to set up a Joint Committee in the future we can do so quickly, knowing what the rules are and demonstrating that we are giving power to the Back Benches on such important issues. That is even more the case with pre-legislative scrutiny.
After the Government’s rough experience of setting up a pre-legislative scrutiny Committee on the reform of the other place, I should have thought that they might say that they would do better to draw their neck in and leave it to Members to choose the members of such Committees. They would then be free to decide whether to accept the recommendations, taking into account the extent to which those Members have responded positively or otherwise to the evidence put before them.
I have pleasure in moving the amendment and I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving us the opportunity to speak about this important subject before we go on to other business before the House this evening.
Human Rights Act 1998 (Repeal and Substitution) Bill
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope(11 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Nuttall
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention and I associate myself with his comments. The whole House is indebted to them for their work and diligence in putting together this Bill. I might not agree with every particular of it, as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset has just said, but that is not the point. The point is that the House has been given an opportunity to debate a matter that is of great consequence and concern to our constituents.
We must not forget the manner in which my hon. Friend the Member for Dover managed to obtain the slot for the Bill in the first place. As Members might be aware, I am a member of the Procedure Committee, along with my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset. We had the pleasure of listening to my hon. Friend the Member for Dover when he came before us to give evidence as part of our inquiry into the private Members’ Bills procedure. My hon. Friend regaled the Committee with the manner in which he obtained the slot to introduce the Bill as a presentation Bill—I think that is right, and he is nodding in assent. He slept overnight outside the Committee Room—in the corridor, I understand—with little by way of sustenance. I think he mentioned that he might have slipped out for the odd beer, which is quite understandable. He stayed in the corridor overnight to ensure that he was first in the queue the next morning to secure a slot and have first pick of the dates for Second Reading. It is as a result of his hard work and diligence on that occasion that we are here today. The whole House should be grateful to my hon. Friend for that. He has done us all and the country a great service.
Looking at the Bill, one can see that it is no ordinary private Member’s Bill. Such Bills often run to just one or two pages, but this is a substantial Bill, which runs to no fewer than 21 clauses and has a schedule of several pages annexed to it. That gives some measure of the work that has gone into preparing it and bringing it before the House this morning. It should have been introduced as a Government Bill. Had a majority Conservative Government been formed after the last general election, perhaps it would have been. On page 79 of the Conservative manifesto at the last general election the following commitment was made:
“To protect our freedoms from state encroachment and encourage greater social responsibility, we will replace the Human Rights Act with a UK Bill of Rights.”
We all accept, of course, that the Conservatives did not win that general election and it is therefore understandable that the Government, being a coalition Government, have not introduced a Bill that was foreshadowed only by the Conservative manifesto. The coalition agreement provides for a commission, about which we heard this morning, to be established to look into the appropriateness of replacing the Human Rights Act with our own UK Bill of Rights.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend echoes the views of many millions of our constituents across the country. Hirst submitted a claim to the European court based on article 3 of the first protocol—the right to free elections—which states:
“The High Contracting Parties undertake to hold free elections at reasonable intervals by secret ballot, under conditions which will ensure the free expression of the opinion of the people in the choice of the legislature.”
The wording of article 3 does not actually confer individuals with a right to vote. When the Grand Chamber gave its judgment, it stretched a point; the court had already decided in the case of Mathieu-Mohin and Clerfayt v. Belgium that article 3 included an individual’s right to vote and to stand for election.
It is illuminating to consider how Hirst built on the previous Mathieu-Mohin case. It shows how rights are developed incrementally, case by case, salami-slicing common sense and gradually moving away from what most people would think article 3—in this case—actually meant. As was discussed during our debates on prisoner voting, the Court ruled that this issue had not been considered here. I submit that it was considered in section 3 of the Representation of the People Act 1983. It may not have been debated specifically—I was not here at the time—but presumably that was because both sides of the House took it for granted that prisoners would not have the vote. That was accepted by the whole country and the whole House.
Mr Chope
Is not one of the most critical issues the way in which the Court interpreted the amendment through the protocol, which was contrary to the rules of interpretation of the Vienna convention? If we had stuck to those strict rules, we would not have got into the difficulty we are in at the moment.
Mr Nuttall
I bow to my hon. Friend’s greater knowledge of these matters, and I am sure that he is absolutely right. We have allowed ourselves to stray from the original meaning of the article.
I will not detain the House for much longer on the prisoner voting case, but it strikes at the heart of the issue. The Court is, in effect, saying that this House cannot decide for itself what to do and who it can allow to vote in our elections, and that somehow people such as Hirst, a convicted axe killer, should be allowed to vote and decide who has the right to sit in this Chamber. Most of my constituents would say, without hesitation or doubt, that that cannot be right, and it is because of such cases that it is right for us to consider the Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Dover.
One problem with the European Court of Human Rights is that 47 nations—it is not the same as the European Union, which has 27 members, shortly to be 28—have signed up to the European convention on human rights. With a population of some 800 million, any one of whom can choose to bring a case at any time, it is unsurprising that an avalanche of cases has been brought before the Court. The evidence of the Court’s statistics calls into question how genuine some of those cases are. I looked briefly at the Court’s website, which lists what it calls “rule 39 requests” granted in the past five years for all 47 countries. That gives us an idea of how many countries out of the 47 did not have any cases against them at all. One would have thought that, if the convention were really dealing with serious breaches of human rights, the odd case might be brought before the Court from somewhere in Europe, bearing in mind that all the countries concerned are democracies that operate under the rule of law. One might expect the odd case, here or there, to be brought before the Court.
In fact, only Andorra and Montenegro had zeros beside their name on that list. At the other end of the scale, the United Kingdom soared up to the top with 5,176 cases. Using that yardstick, one would assume that we had a worse human rights record than any other country, but that makes no logical sense. I believe that those figures are, in fact, attributable to the assiduity of our human rights lawyers in bringing cases to the attention of our courts and then taking them to appeal in Europe, particularly since the passage of the 1998 Act, rather than to any failing on the part of our Government or, to be fair, the last Labour Government. Yet anyone glancing casually at those figures might assume that those Governments had been going around inflicting atrocities on people.
Mention was made earlier of the Brighton declaration, and I believe that the Government have done good work in that regard. It was entirely right that we should use our presidency of the Council to try to bring some common sense to the system and to reform the way in which the Court operates, but I am not sure that that endeavour has met with a great deal of success. I looked at the latest figures available, which represent a snapshot taken on 31 January this year. That makes them quite up to date in terms of Government and international statistics. They showed a total of 126, 850 outstanding applications to the Court, including 3,250 from the United Kingdom. We were not top of that particular chart; other countries had far higher numbers than us. Russia, for example, had 27,450 pending cases. This demonstrates the fact that, with 800 million people entitled to bring their cases before the Court, there is a huge backlog.
One advantage of my hon. Friend’s Bill for the British people is that, by effectively repatriating these powers back to the United Kingdom, it will make things far easier for anyone with a genuine grievance, and who genuinely feels that their human rights have been infringed, because their case will be dealt with entirely within this country.
My hon. Friend the Member for Dover has done a wonderful job. Much more could be said on this issue, and I fear that the time available today does not enable us to do it proper justice in many respects. I would have liked to deal with how we could withdraw from the European Court and the European convention and to explain why I believe that even if my hon. Friend’s Bill, which has much to commend it, were to become law, all we would be doing—unless we withdraw from the convention, as my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley said in an intervention some time ago—is creating another hurdle. As long as we are signed up and as long as people have the ability to go to Strasbourg, we will not solve the problem. Equally, as long as we are members of the European Union and as long as it has the desire to sign up to the European convention of human rights and to build on what it calls fundamental rights under the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, which we briefly discussed here a few days ago—and make no bones about it, this is where the leadership of the EU would like to go—we will not, frankly, solve this problem.
Let me finish with two points. First, in yesterday’s by-election, the majority of votes were cast, if not for parties, for candidates who believe as I do that we would be better off out of the European Union. Part of the reasoning is that we would free ourselves from the risk of being tied in to the European convention on human rights by the back door that would result from our membership of the EU. Finally, one problem with having this debate today is that it is the final Friday for private Members’ business in this Session. I only wish that this Bill had been able to be considered on the first and not the last Friday, so that it would genuinely have stood a chance of having further consideration in Committee—a Committee on which I would happily have served. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dover for bringing the Bill forward and look forward to hearing the remaining contributions to the debate.
European Union (Approvals) Bill
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope(11 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Chope
The Government at the time had grave reservations about this being included in the provisions of the Lisbon treaty, for the very reason to which my hon. Friend refers—namely, that it represented a duplication of activity that was already taking place. It was an attempt to set up in the European Union a duplicate body to the European Court of Human Rights and the European convention on human rights.
My hon. Friend asks what the agency does. It was intended to try to create what was called a fundamental rights culture within the European Union, and to that end, the organisation does an enormous amount of research. It holds conferences, one of which I have attended. As I said on Second Reading, it was more a propaganda exercise than anything else. The agency produces large tomes of documentation relating to what it describes as fundamental rights in different countries in the European Union. However, it is clear from everything that it does that its ultimate agenda is to be not an advisory body but a legislative body. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure us that the Government realise that that is the agenda, that they have seen through it, and that they are vigorously opposing it, given that it involves the duplication of so many activities.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
I am still not clear about one point. Will my hon. Friend give the House a precise summary of the difference between a human right and a fundamental right?
Mr Chope
In essence, the Agency for Fundamental Rights tries to deal with collective rights, rather than individual rights, whereas the European Court of Human Rights deals with individual rights. That is a moot point, however. As with so many things, the European Union comes along and confuses the issue by giving a new institution a very similar name to that of an existing body. We have a Council of Europe, and, although we do not have a council of the European Union, we have a European Union Council. We also have a Commission of the European Union. The European Union has stolen the flag that was originally the flag of the Council of Europe. It has even stolen the anthem of the Council of Europe, and it is now intent on stealing the main part of the Council of Europe’s activities—namely, looking after human rights under the European convention on human rights.
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 Nuttall
Given that the decision by the European Council to maintain one Commissioner per country was taken only because of the result of the Irish referendums, and the decision by the Irish people to say no to the Lisbon treaty, would it not strengthen our Government’s hand in their attempt to cut the administration costs of the European Union if the Committee approved the 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.
Canterbury City Council Bill
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope(11 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Deputy Speaker
Mr Nuttall, I was waiting, but you did not jump up as quickly as you normally do. I do not want to stop you from having at least a minute.
Mr Nuttall
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I hope we have a chance to hear from the Minister on the points that have been raised. I am sure she will have read what my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) said in opening the debate last Thursday.
I rise to speak to this group of Lords amendments and the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend for debate in the House last Thursday. I thank him for the comprehensive way he set out the amendments in that debate and in his concluding remarks today. Let me also say how grateful I am for the work undertaken in the other place by the noble Lords. They have thoroughly and efficiently considered all the issues involved in these Bills. Their noble lordships were not prepared simply to nod these Bills through, as some might have feared, including—I have to say, with much regret—myself. One could well have forgiven their lordships for thinking that as these Bills had been trundling along the parliamentary legislative pathway for some time—albeit at the pace of a rather arthritic snail—there could not possibly be any purpose in subjecting them to further detailed scrutiny.
As it is, their noble lordships recognised the importance of pedlars in our society, as those of us who take an interest in these matters in this place do too. The place of pedlars in the life of our nation dates back to the time of Chaucer. Their noble lordships considered the general principles behind the introduction of these Bills and how the detail of the new proposed laws would operate in practice. Pedlars are the ultimate in micro-businesses. The ability for someone with a relatively small amount of capital to start a business travelling from place to place buying and selling goods has been the starting point for many of our great businesses, including some household names.
It would seem that the local authorities promoting the four private Bills before us today were at least partly motivated by a wish to protect the revenue they received from licensed street traders. As right hon. and hon. Members will be aware, it was suggested in the other place that these Bills were seeking to achieve the “total eradication of pedlars” from the streets of the cities of Canterbury, Leeds and Nottingham and the borough of Reading. As hon. Members will be aware, there is a great deal of difference between a pedlar and a street trader. It was submitted that the reason why it was thought necessary to try to remove pedlars from those three cities and one borough was to prevent the streets from being obstructed by pedlars as they stopped to sell their wares. Their lordships did not accept that it was appropriate to remove pedlars completely, but they did think it appropriate that the size of the trolley used by pedlars should be limited. Amendment C9 seeks to do just that. It is worth noting the words used by Baroness Knight of Collingtree, who chaired the Select Committee established in the other place to consider the Bills, to justify amendment C9. Referring to the fact that counsel for the local authorities promoting the Bills had produced photographs supporting their contention that the pedlars were causing unacceptable congestion, she said:
“The members of the committee asked for evidence and they produced photographs of their streets, which of course were very crowded. We scrutinised them carefully and asked questions.”
The crucial sentence follows:
“We concluded that nothing we had been shown, or told, proved the case that the local authorities were making.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 3 December 2012; Vol. 741, c. 445.]
That is a most telling statement. I submit that it provides proof to the House of what my hon. Friends and I have been trying to establish from the outset—namely, that the Bills are far from straightforward. It should not be taken for granted that the case for the legislation has been proven, or that the Bills should simply be nodded through the House without detailed scrutiny. What has happened in the other place has largely justified the stance taken by my hon. Friends when the Bills were previously considered in this House.
We have already seen how, as a result of the first group of amendments, clauses 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10, which deal with seizure, forfeiture and the payment of compensation, were all taken out of the Bill completely. They were not amended, or even slightly modified; they were removed in their entirety. In this group, amendment C8 deletes clause 4 completely and amendment C9 deletes clause 5 altogether and replaces it with an entirely new clause whose purpose is completely different from the original one.
It is worth noting the details of the proposed new clause. It sets out in great detail the nature of the trolley that a pedlar would be permitted to use. It gives overall dimensions for the trolley when it is being used, but it also—rather unnecessarily, in my opinion—gives details of the size of the trolley when empty. I am not sure what the relevance of that could be. Surely the overall dimensions set out in proposed new paragraph (2C) would be sufficient. Provided the trolley did not exceed a width of 0.88 metres, a depth of 0.83 metres or a height of 1.63 metres, I fail to see how it could be prejudicial to the council or to the users of the highway. I also fail to see how it would prevent an obstruction from being caused if the trolley were of a different size from that set out in proposed new paragraph (2B), which specifically states that it should not exceed a width of 0.75 metres, a depth of 0.5 metres and a height of 1.25 metres.
There is no explanation of why those precise, detailed figures have been chosen. What is the special significance of a width of 0.88 metres? Why not a width of—
Canterbury City Council Bill
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope(11 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
I am sorry that I was not in my place to hear the beginning of my hon. Friend’s exposition of his various amendments. On this particular amendment and even allowing for it, it will still be up to the council to determine what is and what is not “adequate”. Does my hon. Friend think that it is right for the council to decide rather than some independent body?
Mr Chope
I would have hoped that we could trust councils to provide adequate training. The purpose of my amendment is to try to ensure that that happens. If the training is not adequate, it will be open to somebody to make a complaint to the council or the councillors; ultimately, it could be used as a defence to a fixed penalty notice or something like that—although I would not want to speculate on that. The test is that the officers must be properly trained: that is what the provisions would require—rather than that the council thought the training was adequate. I hope it would not be necessary to set up a new bureaucracy—an appeals panel or something like that—to deal with the situation, as we are already overburdened with bureaucracy and officialdom in this country, and we do not want even more of it.
My amendment (g) to Lords amendment C27 proposes the deletion of subsection (2), which makes training provided by the council mandatory. It states:
“The council shall make the training referred to in subsection (1) available also to constables and community support officers empowered by section 5(1) to give a fixed penalty notice.”
That is redundant, because constables and community support officers receive training that enables them to perform this function outside the ambit of any particular local Act relating to pedlars, and it is therefore unnecessary to require the council to become involved in training them. Obviously, if the chief constable asks the local council whether it will provide training for constables and community support officers, the council will probably be happy to oblige and to explain the procedure.
Mr Chope
As my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) suggested, we have now come to the meat of the Bills—namely, the provisions on pedlars and street trading. Their lordships looked at the issues and decided that clause 4 should be left out. Amendment C8 covers that. Under amendment C9, clause 5 would be left out and the new clause to which my hon. Friend briefly referred would be inserted.
Confusion has been caused. Since the Lords looked at these issues in November 2011, the Government have come forward with a consultation that effectively says that, because of the impact of the services directive, it is important that the Pedlars Act be repealed nationally. Although I agree that this process has been going on for a while—many years, perhaps—this is the first time we have got what might be described as a European dimension. If the European services directive is going to apply as the Government interpret it, we in this subordinate legislature will not be able to act outside its terms. The Government will not have any option but to proceed along the lines set out in the consultation document.
The Minister is looking at me in a way that suggests he wishes to intervene and put me right. If that is correct, I will be happy to give way to him.
Mr Nuttall
The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills impact assessment states:
“In any case, our assessment is that the Government has no choice but to abolish the Pedlars Act to comply with the European Services Directive.”
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend mentioned that it was suggested in the consultation document that a rather larger trolley be allowed. Is he as surprised as I am that neither the promoters nor the Government have brought forward amendments to bring the new clause in Lords amendment C9 in line with the consultation document?
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.
Mr Nuttall
Does my hon. Friend share my concern that, if the words of the Lords amendment remained and were taken literally, virtually any article in the highway could be construed as an obstruction of it? It would therefore be possible for the authority to name virtually any street as being at risk of falling foul of the provision.
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.
Mr Nuttall
On that very point, is my hon. Friend aware of any reason why such very specific measurements are included in their lordships’ amendment C9? I refer to where a width of 0.75 metres, a depth of 0.5 metres and a height of 1.25 metres are specified. It would have been far better to go with the Government’s originally suggested amendments and measurements of 1 metre and 2 metres.
Mr Chope
The answer to my hon. Friend’s question is that when their lordships drew up these amendments in November 2011, the Government had not declared their hand. They did not do that until November 2012—and nobody can be blamed for not anticipating what the Government would say.
Business of the House (11 July)
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
Before hon. Members go home, they might wish to interest themselves in whether we have Divisions after 7 o’clock next Wednesday, or whether we should arrange our business to ensure that any Divisions are before or no later than that time.
The motion is highly relevant to that question and perhaps I can elucidate its implications. The first part of the motion puts a timetable on the length of the debate on the eight motions on the Order Paper relating to sittings of the House and September sittings. We might find that, in addition, amendments to those eight motions are tabled. I do not know how much interest there is among Members of the House in the subject, but it would be premature to curtail the debate to two hours. Why is it not possible to trust hon. Members to debate sittings of the House for as long or as short a period as they think is reasonable, having regard to the issues and the Procedure Committee report?
My first concern is that the first part of motion 4 limits the debate on the motions relating to sittings of the House and September sittings to two hours. In business questions today, the Leader of the House said that, immediately after debates on sittings of the House, there will be a debate on a motion on VAT on air ambulance fuel payments, which is one of the debates we were hoping to have today, but was squeezed out by the change of business. The motion is supported by a very large number of right hon. and hon. Members and there is a lot of interest in it, so I anticipate that the debate will last for up to three hours, which was the original time allocation. However, I would have thought that the motion would not cause controversy, and that the House would not divide on it.
Under today’s business statement, we could have the first debate on the sittings of the House, followed by a three-hour debate on VAT on air ambulance fuel payments, and then, under the terms of the second part of motion 4, a three-hour debate on private business. Under Standing Order No. 20, on time for taking private business, traditionally and by convention, there has been a three-hour slot allocated to private business, so that the hon. Members concerned with it know exactly where they stand—what the issues are, and when the debate will begin and end. There is quite a lot of subject matter in the private business set down for Wednesday, and I would have hoped that it would be possible to debate it during the time normally set aside for it, namely between 4 pm and 7 pm.
It is important that hon. Members who want to involve themselves in any Divisions should be able to do so at a convenient hour, but if motion 4 was not carried this evening, we would have unlimited time to discuss the sittings of the House—the House could be responsible in its own way for how long that went on. After that, we would have the debate on the private business, unless the sittings of the House debate finished before 4 o’clock, in which case we could start the debate on VAT on ambulances, which could continue either at 7 o’clock or earlier, if the private business did not take the full three hours. That would prevent the problem of people being kept behind.
I say that because I and a few colleagues are what one might describe as specialists in holding promoters of private business to account. We like to ensure proper scrutiny. On several occasions, however, motions not dissimilar to this one have been allowed through, because none of us wants to be unnecessarily awkward. As a reward for allowing such motions to pass, however, the Chief Whip and other Whips have briefed against us, saying that, “Colleagues are being kept back because of the hon. Member for Christchurch or the hon. Member for this constituency or that constituency”—I will not mention their names, because it might embarrass them, but they might wish to participate in this debate.
If we pass such a motion, then, the people indulging the business managers by agreeing to the motion find themselves effectively being put in the dock if the business of the House goes on much later than one would normally expect on a Wednesday.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Is it not true that the private business set down for consideration on Wednesday has been kicking around for several years? In some cases, it dates back to the 2007 Session. It could hardly be described as a matter of urgency.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend makes a good point. I am sure that points like that—if not identical to it—will be made when we discuss the private business motions, because in essence they are motions on whether the House should agree with the other place that private Members’ Bills that, as he says, have been hanging around in the House for a long time should be revived, or whether the promoters should be held to account for the enormous delays.
Some of the Bills relate to peddlers. We know that since those Bills first began five or more years ago, the Government have announced that they will introduce separate provisions relating to peddlers. I will not go into the merits or otherwise of those particular Bills, because you would rule me out of order, Mr Deputy Speaker, but the question of whether they should be further considered or should lapse owing to how long they have been kicking around needs to be debated. I anticipate that the people saying they should no longer be heard might want to put the proposition to the vote, and I suggest that the voting take place at 7 o’clock on Wednesday rather than much later.
Mr Chope
We can speculate as much as we want to about what might or might not happen, but my experience in the House leads me to suppose that we always ought to look for the unexpected to happen on such occasions. We do not yet know how many amendments will be tabled to the sittings of the House motion or how contentious the debate will be on whether we should continue to have September sittings. It might all go through on the nod, in accordance with the primary suggestions of my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight), the Chairman of the Procedure Committee, but it also might not. I have heard rumours about what might be the consensus emerging among Members, and my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) might have heard contradictory rumours, but essentially there is a strong onus on those who want to change the sitting hours of the House to put that case and to argue it successfully against those who would say that they have made their arrangements for this Parliament on the basis of the sitting hours that were already laid down at the end of the previous Parliament.
Mr Nuttall
On the other side of the coin is the danger of having urgent questions or ministerial statements on that day. Indeed, I was present at business questions earlier, when the Leader of the House was not able to give an absolute assurance that that would not be the case next Wednesday.
Mr Chope
That is another issue. We do not know: there may be very good reasons why Mr Speaker would allow an urgent question as a result of what happens on Tuesday. We cannot anticipate that, which is why we should make it clear that the Standing Orders of this House make specific provision to allow for three hours for private business. Standing Order No. 20 specifies those hours as being between 4 o’clock and 7 o’clock on Wednesdays. If the private business does not take as long as those three hours, we can then get on to the following business sooner. If the issue of VAT for air ambulances comes up for debate before 4 o’clock, it can be adjourned at 4 o’clock and then resume as soon as the debate on the private business is concluded. For many years that has been the standard procedure. It is only during this Parliament that the Leader of the House and his deputy have started playing games with those of us who are concerned to ensure that we can hold those who bring forward private Bills and private business properly to account.
I have been very indulgent and tried my best to explain the situation to colleagues who have been told by the Whips that they must stay until late at night because I have initiated a debate on private business that has gone on longer than it would have done if we had not conceded such motions. Frankly, I am fed up. Why should I be blamed for keeping the House late, when the situation is the direct responsibility of motions brought forward by the Leader of the House and his deputy? I am keen—
Backbench Business Committee
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope(12 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) for introducing the debate and the Leader of the House for facilitating it, albeit through gritted teeth. It also gives us an opportunity to congratulate all the Back-Bench Members who have been elected to serve on the Backbench Business Committee this Session. My purpose this evening is certainly not to criticise any of those elections, but to point out that they are elections for one year and that this time next year we will be electing not a Backbench Business Committee, but a House business committee, because the coalition agreement specifically states:
“A House Business Committee, to consider government business, will be established by the third year of the Parliament.”
We are already in the third year of the Parliament, so if a House business committee is not established before the next Queen’s Speech, the coalition agreement will not have been complied with. Given that the powers that be might think it much more convenient to start those new arrangements from the beginning of a new Session, I presume that arrangements will have to be made to ensure that the House business committee can start at the very beginning of the next Session and that we will not have the sort of delay we got this year between the Loyal Address and the Government’s response on what the business of the House would be.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend therefore assume that the formation of the House business committee in due course will automatically mean an end to the Backbench Business Committee? It could be that both could continue.
Mr Chope
Perhaps that is possible, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. The debate gives the Deputy Leader of the House the opportunity to confirm for the avoidance of doubt, as lawyers would say, that the commitment in the coalition agreement will be complied with, and when he gives that commitment perhaps he would also answer my hon. Friend’s question on whether there will be a House business committee and the Backbench Business Committee or just one covering both important subjects.
It would also be wrong if the Members present tonight did not pay tribute to the work of the Backbench Business Committee in the previous Session, which was a very long Session and the Committee’s inaugural one. Its members were effectively pioneers and I think that they served the interests of fellow Back Benchers with dedication and distinction. I would like to mention three Members in particular: my hon. Friends the Members for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) and for Shipley (Philip Davies). They are not on the list of Members to be reappointed to the Committee, and I think that when hon. Members look back on its work over the previous Session they will realise what an enormous contribution those three hon. Members made.
In the previous Session the Backbench Business Committee ensured that Back-Bench debates, to a large extent, reflected the priorities of Back Benchers and our constituents, rather than those of the Government, which I think was a very refreshing change from our previous procedures. Notable highlights included the debates on prisoner voting and on the case for a referendum on our relationship with the European Union. It should be noted that both debates were on substantive motions on which the House was able to express a clear view. I think that the Government certainly found the expression of a view on prisoner voting helpful, although perhaps they did not find the expression of a view by 81 Conservative Back Benchers on an EU referendum quite so helpful. Nevertheless it was an opportunity for the Government to hear what Back Benchers thought on those subjects.
I would urge the new members of the Committee whom we will appoint tonight not to be intimidated by the Whips into always selecting for debate bland subjects that do not have substantive motions with teeth, because if we always did that, we would not be serving the best interests of Back Benchers and our constituents. I urge those Members to ensure that we have some substantive motions.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and I am with him all the way on his campaign to have a debate about that all-important issue of renewing our nuclear deterrent.
This coming year offers an opportunity for the Backbench Business Committee to work with the Government more closely on developing what will eventually become the House business committee, and that work must mean looking at opportunities for such debates and at fitting them in throughout the whole week, rather than thinking of them as something to be held on a Thursday. I hope that that is one thing the first-class Chairman of the Committee takes forward during this Session.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend will recall that, when it suited the Government, on the occasion of the debate about whether there should be a referendum on our membership of the European Union, the debate was moved from a Thursday to a Monday.
London Local Authorities and Transport for London (No. 2) Bill [Lords]
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope(12 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Nuttall
I have not yet reached the subject of gated roads, but it is probably possible to pick at random a part of the Bill that creates a new offence, rule or law, to which is attached a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale.
As my hon. Friend says, there are gated roads all over the country, and if that is a problem in the capital city of our great country, it is no doubt just as likely to be a problem on a country road somewhere out in the shires. If the correct way of dealing with the problem is to introduce legislation that creates a criminal offence—which is what we are doing here—it is surely correct to deal with it by means of legislation that covers the whole country, not just the capital.
Many things have happened since the Bill’s introduction in the other place as long ago as 27 November 2007, four and a quarter years ago. For instance, we have had a general election, and the Localism Bill—now the Localism Act 2011—received Royal Assent on 15 November last year. I am sure that several London local authorities have undergone a change of political control since 2007, and I wonder to what extent the promoters of the Bill considered those changes.
The Localism Act gives local authorities a general power of competence. It has completely changed the regime in which authorities operate: they no longer have to seek specific authority from this place to go off and do something, because the Act allows them to do it unless another Act tells them that they cannot. To what extent has that been taken into account by the promoters? Moreover, residents have been given the power to institute local referendums. If this is the problem that some Members think it is—as we heard earlier—I am sure that some residents will be hot on the heels of local councillors with petitions asking for something to be done about it.
After many years of delay, things speeded up after the Bill’s Third Reading in the House of Lords on 28 March 2011, and it appears to have been given its First Reading in this House on the same day. I believe that that is the only occasion on which anything to do with this Bill has ever happened speedily. It has, however, attracted four new petitions, from Bugbugs Media Ltd, Reliable Rickshaws Ltd, the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, the Society of London Theatre, the Theatrical Management Association, and the London Cab Drivers Club. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East said, the promoters of the Bill managed to achieve the rare feat of upsetting the petitioners on both sides. They could not really win. Whatever they did, they were bound to upset somebody. I suspect they have probably reached the right conclusion by deciding to upset both sides and withdraw clause 17.
Let us return to the question of the cost to the London council tax payer. The organisations concerned—private limited companies, trade bodies and, indeed, trade unions—have been put to expense in having to raise these petitions. I dare say the solicitors and parliamentary agents were not acting for nothing; they could have been acting on a pro bono basis, and if they were I am sure someone will rise to tell me so—but the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington is not doing so. I therefore assume these people were being paid rather handsomely for their good services. These Bills are by no means a no-cost option, therefore.
Over the past four years there has been an attrition rate of four clauses per year. However, only 10 minutes after the start of the opening speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East, we heard that another clause is to go. We have made good progress, therefore: the first clause went in 10 minutes. If we carry on at this rate, the Bill will be gone in a couple of days—but if we carry on at the same rate as things have been moving since the Bill started its life, we may, sadly, have to wait another six years before it withers away to its natural end.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend makes an important point. If this Bill had not been objected to and had instead received its Second Reading on the nod, it would not have been possible for its promoters to reflect upon clause 17 on pedicabs, for example. They have now had the opportunity to reflect on that, and have reached a different conclusion from their original one.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend is right. What has happened with this Bill gives the lie to the notion that these proceedings are meaningless and we are just going through the motions. Although only 11 Lords were involved in the proceedings in the other place, very substantial changes have been made to the Bill, and we do not know what might happen after the Bill has been examined in more detail. The three hours that have so far been allocated to Second Reading may well turn out to be rather brief when one considers the history of this matter and how long it has already been going on and what little progress has been made in four years. Any thoughts the promoters might have that a Third Reading could be concluded within three hours may prove to be somewhat optimistic.
We heard in the opening speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East that despite the fact that the Bill has been on the go for so many years, there are still a number of areas where we have no idea what is being put before us. There is no draft of the agreement relating to the affixing of lamps to theatres. There is no draft of the code. There is no idea of how skips are going to be immobilised. I would have thought after all these years, such basic points would have been covered and the details would be before us tonight.
It seems to me that the Bill is half-cooked and the simplest thing at this stage would be for the promoters to withdraw it and for it to be reconsidered in the light of the Localism Act 2011, the comments made in the other place, the reservations expressed by the Government and the comments that I shall now make.
The Bill is down to just six parts. Part 1 deals with preliminary matters, part 2 effectively deals with the attachment of street lamps and signs to buildings and damage to highways as a consequence of adjacent works, part 3 deals with the law relating to builders’ skips, part 4 deals with two matters to do with road traffic—that is, gated roads, which were referred to in an intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), and pedicabs—part 5 deals with charging points for electric vehicles and part 6 deals with the London Local Authorities and Transport for London Act 2008.
Part 1 contains the standard preamble, giving details of when the Bill will take effect, and states that the Bill
“may be cited as the London Local Authorities and Transport for London Act 2009”—
but perhaps 2012 might be optimistic. I shall therefore deal with the provisions on the attachment of street lamps and signs to buildings in part 2, which is the first substantive aspect of the Bill. The explanatory memorandum, which the promoters have helpfully provided, states that clauses 4 and 5 would alter the London authorities’ existing powers to attach street lamps and traffic signs to buildings by bringing them more in line with those of the City of London corporation. It is a “decluttering” measure, making it easier for the authorities to require that signs and lamps are attached to buildings. I would submit that it is not so much a decluttering measure as a moving of clutter from one part of the highway to another in such a way that there might well be some practical difficulties with how it operates.
The requirement in clause 4(4) is:
“Not less than 56 days before the London authority propose to begin the work to affix an attachment or a traffic sign to a building they shall serve notice in writing on the relevant owner of the building of their proposal to affix it.”
Of course, the owner might not necessarily be the occupier of the building. The Bill is silent, as far as I can see, about the definition of an owner. I would submit that the owner would be the owner of the freehold, but I can understand that someone might argue that the owner could be taken to mean a leaseholder or tenant of the building. There might therefore be some legal argument about that clause, which I suspect will need to be considered in more detail in Committee.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend will have heard what our hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) said about the promoters’ intention to offer an exemption from clauses 4 and 5 for the Society of London Theatre and the Theatrical Management Association. Does he think that that exemption needs to go much wider than just the organisations that have petitioned against the Bill because the points that they make about natural justice and listed buildings could apply to a much larger group of building owners than that particular group of theatre owners?
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes a welcome and interesting observation. It seems to me that the theatres are being given special treatment because they have particularly deep pockets. They have been able to employ parliamentary agents to prepare and submit a petition, which is before the House, and they have been using a firm in Westminster to prepare representations regarding their concerns. There is a danger that other owners of buildings in London may be somewhat jealous of the fact that London theatres have managed to wangle an exemption from the measures for themselves which many others would no doubt welcome if they could benefit from it. That raises the pertinent point that if it is appropriate for the London theatres to be exempt, why is it not appropriate for other buildings to be exempt?
We know from the petition, dated 26 April 2011, that the Society of London Theatre and the Theatrical Management Association are concerned about the effect that the measures could have on their members. They quoted the Wyndham report, which studied the economic impact of London’s west end theatres. Tony Travers of the London School of Economics was commissioned to do the report, which revealed, in 1998, that the total economic impact of west end theatre on the UK economy had been £1.1 billion in the previous year. More recent data imply that the figure is now approaching £1.5 billion. Some 41,000 jobs depend on west end theatre—27,000 directly and 14,000 indirectly. Those organisations went on to say that, crucially, they operate on very tight profit margins and that anything that could add to those costs is a matter of concern. I am sure that many other organisations and bodies throughout the capital city would say, “Those concerns apply to us as well. We operate on tight margins and anything that might add to our costs would be extremely detrimental.” It is therefore difficult to see at first sight why west end theatres should be treated differently from other organisations that have not petitioned the House in the way that those societies did. Equally, however, one could say that they took the time and trouble to do so and therefore it is only right that they should be granted some form of special treatment.
Mr Nuttall
Yes. I hope that, when the time comes to consider the clause in Committee, some explanation for that is given. Perhaps the code of practice will be available at that stage. It is perhaps a matter of some regret that that document is not available for consideration by the House today to enable us to see how effective that particular code is likely to be.
That deals with clause 4, very briefly. Clauses 6 and 7 deal with damage to the highway caused in consequence of works done on land adjacent to the highway. At first sight, I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East that it seems perfectly reasonable that the taxpayer should not be required to pay for damage caused to the public road by those carrying out works on land adjacent to the road, but I wonder whether there is not a better way to do that. I am particularly concerned about small builders, and perhaps people who are not builders at all, but who own land and are carrying out the works themselves. It might come as a surprise to them when they apply for planning permission to build a small extension on their property that they are asked to stump up before commencement of the works in case any damage might be caused to the highway, when the chances are that, although that is a possibility, it will not happen.
I am pleased that clause 7 now appears in the Bill.
London Local Authorities Bill [Lords]
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope(12 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Nuttall
On residents’ parking, is it not the case that, whether or not a car is being offered for sale, it will still be taking up space on a road? Whether or not it has a little sign in the back window, all that would happen is that it would be displaced somewhere else; therefore, the problem that our hon. Friends are describing is really one of lack of space in total.
Mr Chope
Either that or there are too many cars—that might be another interpretation. Or, there are too many people—I should perhaps plead guilty to this myself—who aspire to sort out the car that is firing on only two cylinders, but in the meantime they get another car and keep the car that is not working very well, thinking that at some stage it will be useful to them, so they end up with more cars than they really need. The Government are dealing with that problem by increasing car tax well beyond the rate of inflation.
However, I return to the point that if there is a scarcity of on-road parking space, that is for the local authority to deal with. If somebody has a lot of cars on a space, they can remain there provided they are licensed. However, if the local authority introduces a rule saying that a resident can have only one parking permit, for example—I am sure that is the situation in quite a lot of London boroughs, and certainly Lambeth, which I know for these purposes—that means that each resident in a household can have only one car with a residents’ parking permit. Therefore, introducing a residential control zone will sort out the problem of vehicles being sold on the internet for street trading purposes.
Mr Nuttall
Even if that were the case and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs decided that trading had taken place, it might well be too late. HMRC may not consider the matter until some time after the event. It could be as much as 10 months after the end of the tax year before that taxpayer was required to file an income tax return. The local authority official would be trying to make up their own mind on a fairly random basis, which might differ from borough to borough, whether trading had taken place.
I shall touch briefly on another way in which the Bill would impinge on traders at the other end of the scale who take the plunge and open their own large or medium-sized lot, selling cars as a genuine business. They are quite open about it and have established their business with a trade name, they advertise in the newspaper and they have all their cars together on a car lot. It is often the case with such businesses that from time to time their stock overflows the land that they have, and they must temporarily resort to placing vehicles outside their premises—on the street, perhaps. They would be caught by the provision, even though for the rest of the time they were good, law-abiding citizens. It is very much a case of the law of unintended consequences when we pass such legislation, because the regulations might catch people who were perhaps not at the forefront of our minds when we considered these clauses.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Clause 9 states that the provisions should include any vehicle that is
“kept on a street during the period when it is so exposed or offered for sale”.
He is basically saying that that should be changed to being throughout the period when it is so exposed or offered to sale, because a short period could still make the owner vulnerable to being charged with an offence.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes a good point. It again comes down to the precise wording of clause 9, and I think that that change would be beneficial and would clarify the danger I have identified. Amendment 24, which I will move on to later, might well deal with the matter.
Daylight Saving Bill
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope(12 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Chope
The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful and persuasive point—one that I must admit I had not considered. He makes a worthwhile addition to our deliberations on this aspect of the Bill.
Before moving on to other amendments in the group, I urge the Minister to give his unqualified support to Government research on the potential costs and benefits of my proposal in the event of this Bill not reaching the statute book this Session. The Government do not need legislation or even the authority of the House to prepare a report. I have noted a certain reluctance on the part of the Government to engage in the lively debate consequent on the introduction of this Bill. If the Government are supportive of the Bill, as amended at their insistence in Committee, why have they not already produced or started work on producing a report from experts? I shall not be rude to the Government by suggesting that they have been sitting on the fence and wanting to have it both ways. That is not my nature, but I think that the Government and the Minister have to answer a number of questions about this matter.
At the behest of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), let me turn briefly to some of the other amendments in the group. Amendment 58, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) and others, picks up a concern articulated in Committee that the Bill’s proposals could impact particularly adversely on faith communities. The amendment would require the Secretary of State to have specific regard to
“the interests and concerns of the principal faith communities”
in the UK. It seems a perfectly sensible amendment to me, as I would expect any amendment by my hon. Friend to be. If amendment 59 were carried, however, I believe that many of the concerns of faith communities such as Orthodox Jews would be addressed in any case because their concerns are centred principally around having darker mornings rather than lighter summer evenings. I recognise that amendment 59 would not satisfy amateur astronomers who would have to stay up even later to get a good view of the stars, but it would address the concerns underlying amendment 58.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
In fact, many astronomical phenomena take place early in the morning, so it might not be so clear cut for astronomers as my hon. Friend believes.
Mr Chope
The expression might have been used by that distinguished former leader of our country during wartime, but we know that in a wartime atmosphere people sometimes use expressions that are designed to raise morale but that might not be 100% in line with the English language. If that was what happened, and I have no reason to doubt my hon. Friend, that is probably what caused Sir Winston Churchill to lapse into that sort of language, which is not appropriate in legislation. I do not think my hon. Friend is suggesting that Sir Winston Churchill had that language incorporated in a piece of legislation.
That brings me to a group of 11 amendments that are identical to amendment 67, but I would be trying the patience of the House if I did anything other than say that those amendments—to lines 23, 28, 32, 36 and 40 of clause 4, to line 10 of clause 5, to lines 12 and 19 of clause 6, to line 34 of clause 8, to line 25 of clause 11 and to line 2 of clause 14—all change the wording from “daylight saving” to “summertime extension”.
Amendment 72 in clause 9, line 4, would delete “time” and insert “summertime”. Clause 9 addresses what happens at the end of any trial period, and the amendment would give the Secretary of State the option of advancing summer time by one hour permanently.
Amendment 61, in my name and those of my hon. Friends the Members for Wellingborough and for Gainsborough, in clause 12, page 4, line 35, would leave out subsection (1). Clause 12 is the interpretation clause and subsection (1) defines what is meant by the expression
“advancing the time for general purposes in the United Kingdom”.
That is an extraordinary expression to incorporate in a piece of legislation. Clause 12 says that it means adding one hour to Greenwich mean time in the winter and one hour to summer time in the summer. As I hope is apparent from my introductory remarks, I regard adding an hour to Greenwich mean time in the winter as unacceptable—hence my amendment.
Amendment 79 is the last amendment to which I need to speak in the Chamber. [Interruption.] I hear people saying, “Hear, Hear,” and I agree. It has taken much longer to discuss this group of amendments than I expected, but that is because of the lively interest that so many Members have shown in the content of the various amendments in the group. Amendment 79 would leave out subsection (8) of clause 12. In a sense, this is a completely different topic from anything I have spoken about hitherto. I do not know whether everybody has looked at subsection (8), but it provides that
“A duty under this Act to publish a document may be complied with by publishing it on an internet site.”
I think that is wholly unsatisfactory. The issues raised in the Bill are far too important not to be the subject of physical, hard copy documents. Indeed, we have such documents before us today and they enable us to consider these issues and the amendments. I therefore think that hard copy documents relating to this very important issue should be available to individuals, organisations and businesses the length and breadth of the United Kingdom and that to publish such documents merely on an internet site would be a false economy.
Mr Nuttall
I completely agree with my hon. Friend. In view of the importance of this matter, can he assure me that that amendment will be pushed to a Division if it is not accepted?
Mr Chope
I cannot assure my hon. Friend about that, because there are a large number of amendments in this group and, ultimately, it is within the discretion of the person in the Chair—in this case the Deputy Speaker—to decide how many amendments he is prepared to allow a Division on. However, the point that my hon. Friend makes about this is very—
Mr Chope
Does my hon. Friend accept that an alternative way of dealing with this problem so far as Scotland is concerned would have been for the Government to have moved an amendment to the Scotland Bill, which is still going through the other place, to make this issue a devolved matter for Scotland in the same way as it is devolved for Northern Ireland?
Mr Nuttall
That would, indeed, have been one way of dealing with this matter.
Although I support amendment 30, I strongly oppose amendments 35 and 85. I am often in favour of the amendments of my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) and, indeed, those of my hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch (Mr Chope), for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) and for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), who tabled amendment 85. On this occasion, however, I am not in favour of their amendment, because I think we need a trial period of three years. If the trial is successful and the change proves to be of benefit and to achieve all that the Bill’s proponents say it will achieve, that will lead to a permanent change in our time system that will affect every person in the country. Given those circumstances, it is only fair and reasonable that the trial should be for a minimum of three years. So I would oppose amendments 35 and 85 and stick to the wording of clause 5(1), which provides that the trial period be three years.
Amendments 16 and 17 highlight the fact that even our time is a matter that the European Union has felt it necessary to interfere with, and it has done so by means of European directive 200/84/EC.
London Local Authorities Bill [Lords]
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope(12 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Chope
If a body corporate were liable for the penalty charge, it could be served on its director. My right hon. Friend, who will have looked assiduously at the Bill, will know that there are references in clause 20 to the liability of directors for offences committed by a body corporate. I am not sure, therefore, that my amendment would be out of order in that sense. I think it would improve the Bill, given that the issue of corporate liability is covered by clause 20. Although I say it myself, I believe that amendment 5 will bring about a modest improvement in the drafting.
Amendment 6 is the second in the group; it would leave out subsection (2) of clause 3. That subsection talks about giving these powers, to which I have already referred, not just to the police or police community support officers, but to an “accredited person”. It proposes to make these significant powers available to anybody who is an accredited person. My amendment would leave out the provision to enable those accredited people to have the powers given to PCSOs.
Amendment 7 would likewise leave out subsection (3), which is consequential, as it states:
“An accreditation may only specify that subsection (2) applies to an accredited person”
and so forth. That will be taken out, so that clause 3 would not apply to accredited persons.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Can my hon. Friend explain who accredits those persons? How do they become accredited?
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 Nuttall
My hon. Friend is making a compelling speech, but could he deal with a point that we have not yet touched upon? What about cases in which a visitor to this country from abroad, who may have no knowledge of our procedures, gives a foreign address that cannot be checked against the electoral register?
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.
Mr Chope
Again, that is a very important point. On a Bill such as this, we do not need to have any cost-benefit analysis or any financial memorandum setting out what the costs are going to be, but I imagine that the Bill’s promoters are discussing the matter with their local authorities and that elected representatives in London are conscious of that fact.
On the quantity issue, I know that I speak on behalf of lots of members of the Government—the leader of the other place and others—who have spoken out strongly against Westminster city council’s proposed extension of restrictions on street parking on Sundays. If that goes ahead, we can expect that it will result in many more fixed penalty notices as people are caught unawares, and that in due course will result in more of these notices being served in the way described in clauses 3 and 4, whether or not by accredited people or community support officers. It is likely that there will be an increase in the bureaucracy and the activity of unelected officials, and a consequent diminution in the civil liberties of the ordinary citizens.
Mr Nuttall
On amendment 10, is there not a danger that there would be an expectation, in these straitened times, of these accredited persons covering their salaries by issuing penalty notices?
Mr Chope
That is an important point, because most borough councils are saying that they are short of funds and will want to ensure that these accredited people at least cover their costs. In order to do that, these authorities may well give these people incentives to ensure that they get sufficient income for their activity in any tour of duty. So that is another serious problem. As far as I am aware, we have never had a system in this country where police officers are incentivised for the number of arrests they make, but it seems that people are being incentivised for the number of civil offences they can detect.
Mr Nuttall
Does my hon. Friend agree that it might have been better if the clause, rather than using the word “secretary”, had referred to “company secretary”, which is definable in law?
Mr Chope
That would have been an improvement, but I hope that my hon. Friend will think it better to support my amendment, which effectively removes any references to managers, secretaries, other officers or any person purporting to act in such a capacity.
I have introduced as briefly as I could some of the reasoning behind my amendments, which have been grouped together. I would like to tell hon. Members who have been following this debate—the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson) has been sitting patiently on the Opposition Front Bench and will, I hope, participate—that at about 1 o’clock, when it looked as though this business would start at nearer 4 o’clock rather than 10 minutes to 2, I received a phone call from the counsel acting on behalf of the promoters of the Bill. I needed to sit down at this point, because I was told that some of my amendments would be acceptable to the promoters.
In anticipation of the response that my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green will make to this debate, perhaps I can explain to the House my understanding—and he can correct me if I am wrong—of the amendments that the promoters will be willing to accept in this group. I understand they include amendment 5, which inserts
“by the person being served”
into clause 3 in line 13 of page 3, and its mirror, amendment 8, which inserts the same words into that clause in line 20. They also include amendments 10, 11 and 12, which deal with leaving out the references to accredited persons from clause 4 and remove references to the powers of accredited persons to require a name and address and to instigate a criminal penalty when that name and address is not supplied, as well as amendment 14, which is consequential on the removal of the references to accredited persons. I am also told—I think I am correct—that the promoters are willing to accept my amendment 35, which would leave out clause 18 on the obstruction of an authorised officer. I understand that amendments 36 to 39, which would introduce my amendments to clause 20, thereby limiting the liability to a director or directors, would also be acceptable to the promoters.
We will have to see what happens, and of course the procedural way of dealing with matters will be in your hands, Mr Deputy Speaker, but if that large number of amendments is acceptable to the promoters, I hope the amendments will be able to go through on the nod in due course. There is a lot more meat to this group of amendments than just those that have been accepted by the promoters, but it would be churlish of me not to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green for at least agreeing to those amendments. Of course, none of the amendments could have been discussed if we had not blocked this Bill and required its consideration in the House on Report. Whatever happens, if the promoters accept the amendments, the Bill will be better than it would have been without them.
Employment Opportunities Bill
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope
Mr Chope
If we have a national minimum wage, we should be able to opt out of it. If the hon. Gentleman is arguing that there should be not a national minimum wage but a regional minimum wage, that is a completely different proposition, and it would need a different Bill, but I suppose that my Bill might be amended to reflect his wishes, were that the wish of the House.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Is there not some confusion between the “national minimum wage” and what is described in London as the “London living wage”? That is something entirely different and, as I understand it, something set annually here in London, not by the Low Pay Commission.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I do not know, because I have not inquired, how many hon. Friends of the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Tony Lloyd) employ people as interns for well below what my hon. Friend and the Mayor of London would describe as the London living wage, but perhaps we will hear about that in due course.
I do not want this Bill to go forward without some focus on clause 1, because under current law we deny those foreigners seeking refugee status the right to work in this country.
Clause 2 deals with the problems that the current law restricts British citizens from selling their labour at a price of their own choosing; discriminates against those who are young, inexperienced or seeking on-the-job training; prevents people from agreeing to cut their wages to save their jobs; and imposes nationally uniform rules on the labour market, ignoring regional and local variations. All those shortcomings are tackled in the Bill, which effectively recognises the right to work.
The context for that can be found in article 23(1) of the universal declaration of human rights:
“Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.”
Article 6 of the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights, to which the UK is a party, states:
“The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right to work, which includes the right of everyone to the opportunity to gain his living by work which he freely chooses or accepts, and will take appropriate steps to safeguard this right.”
I think it will come as a shock to many Members to know that currently many people are not given the right to work enshrined in those important United Nations articles. The Bill is designed to address that problem.
To make it clear to the hon. Member for Manchester Central that I have read my own Bill, I have noticed that there is a typographical error in clause 1. As a consequence, it would enable only foreigners who are in detention to work, rather than the reverse, which was the intention. I put that firmly on the record and apologise to the House. I will address my remarks to clause 1 as it should be, rather than as it is.
Clause 1 refers directly to those unlucky enough to be seeking asylum in this country as a result of persecution, and obviously to their families. Why are we depriving people who are seeking asylum of the ability to earn money while in this country, so that they can make ends meet and not be wholly dependent on the state? The shock of seeking refugee status should not be exacerbated by the humiliation of not being able to take employment and contribute to the society that is acting as their host while their application is considered.
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?
Mr Nuttall
So if we continued to increase the minimum wage, would we get rid of all unemployment? That seems to be the logic.
Tribunals (Maximum Compensation Awards) Bill
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope(13 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
May I help my hon. Friend on that point? I suspect that no accurate figures are available because many of these claims are resolved before the application is put to the industrial tribunal. Although figures will be available for those withdrawn or settled after the industrial tribunal proceedings began, I suspect there will be many thousands of other cases that the public do not know about.
Mr Chope
To put the issue in context, I will quote briefly from some newspapers. On 24 October 2008, the MailOnline had the headline “Asian bank worker gets record £2.8m race discrimination payout”. On 10 September 2009, another headline read: “Sacked council manager wins £1 million age discrimination payout”,
and a report has come out in the past few days saying:
“Discrimination compensation payouts hit an all time high.
A recent annual survey of compensation awards in the Equal Opportunities Review has revealed that the amount being paid out by employers in discrimination cases has more than doubled in two years.”
Drugs (Roadside Testing) Bill
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Before I speak to my Bill, may I, on behalf of the whole House and my constituents, congratulate His Royal Highness Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, on his 90th birthday today?
My Bill, which I hope will receive a Second Reading today, is part of an iterative process to try to maintain pressure on the Government to take seriously the issue of drug-driving. They talk the talk—I refer to both the present and the previous Government—but they have not delivered on the action. Since I was a Minister with responsibility for road safety and then a shadow Transport Minister, I have taken a deep interest in the subject of trying to get evidence to ensure that people are deterred, detected and punished if they are guilty of driving with drugs in their body.
There have been some horrific fatal accidents and accidents causing serious injury. I remember one on the A31 in my constituency, in which a young student was killed in a head-on crash because a lorry driver was on the wrong side of the road, having gone to sleep after taking a lot of amphetamines. There is a real problem here, as the Government accept. As recently as last Sunday, the Minister with responsibility for roads, the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), produced an article saying that it was essential to get to grips with the issue. My concern is that unless or until the Government enable roadside drug testing to take place, we will never get to grips with the issue.
Back in 2003 I served on the Standing Committee on the Railways and Transport Safety Bill, which was enacted that year. That Bill included provisions to alter the road traffic legislation to allow a roadside drug test of people suspected of having drugs in their system. The test was to show not whether they were impaired by drugs, but whether they had drugs in their system. We were told then that the technology existed and that in due course the test would be available. It was spelled out in the Bill, however, that Home Office type approval was necessary.
That was back in 2003, and not only do we still not have Home Office type approval for a roadside drug- testing device, but the Home Office has not yet even been able to draw up a specification against which type approval might be given. Until a specification is drawn up, it is not possible for the experts in the field to submit their ideas. The best the Government can do is say that they have agreed a specification and type approval for a testing device which could be retained in police stations. That is something, but it is not the answer to the problem. It means that the police will have to have grounds for arresting somebody at the roadside before taking them to the police station. One can assume that relatively few people will be taken to the police station because of the difficulty of establishing at the roadside a reasonable suspicion that a driver has drugs in his system.
Why can we not have a system of roadside drug-testing devices? The irony—it is so sad—is that in this country we are trying to achieve an export-led manufacturing recovery for our economy. It is British experts and British manufacturers who are the key players in the technology. A firm called Concateno is already exporting devices to enable roadside drug testing to take place. It is exporting them all over the world. Various countries, including Finland, Croatia, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, have introduced legislation to enable roadside testing for drugs to take place, often utilising the very same devices produced by Concateno. Even more ironically, these drug-screening devices are used by the police forces themselves to screen police recruits to see whether they have drugs in their system. They are also used by the Ministry of Justice in the Prison Service and by quite a lot of schools, where pupils who have been caught with cannabis or other drugs are put on a drug abstinence regime which is then reinforced by these screening devices. These devices are therefore widely used.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is rather strange that the police, and by implication the Home Office, should have sufficient confidence in these devices to use them to test members of the police force, and yet they apparently do not have enough confidence in them to test drivers at the roadside?
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. When presented with such evidence, one has to question the motives. Why has the Home Office been so slow in coming forward with a specification against which it might be able to give type approval for these devices? It may be because it knows that were there to be such roadside testing, there would be a lot more work for the police to do, because many drivers have drugs in their system and if they were detected by such screening devices at the roadside following an accident, the whole process of law would come into play and many of them would end up with a conviction. We know that there is a cost associated with that, and I suspect that behind all this delay is a reluctance by the Home Office to open up a Pandora’s box of increased detection of offences and increased burden on the court system, and ultimately, perhaps, increased numbers of people in prison.
What could be happening? Funnily enough, on Wednesday of this week there was a short post from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation from the Limestone Coast police in South Australia, which said:
“Statistics released by Limestone Coast police have shown significantly more people are being caught driving under the influence of drugs, than under the influence of alcohol. Superintendent Trevor Twilley says 6 per cent of people tested for drug driving are coming back with positive results, while less than half a per cent are returning positive results for alcohol.”
That is a direct consequence of the state of South Australia equipping its police with the technology and the means to do roadside drug tests. It is relatively new in South Australia but it is already having a major impact. If it can be done in South Australia, why can we not do it here, and now?
My Bill, like previous Bills along the same lines, says that a type approval for this drug-testing device must be in place within 12 months. My original Bill, introduced under the ten-minute procedure in April 2007, had the exclusive support of those who were at that time Opposition Members. Among those who supported that and subsequent Bills are a number of distinguished Members of the House. The Bill that I introduced in December 2007, which was identical to my ten-minute rule Bill, was supported by none other than my right hon. Friend the Leader of House, who I am delighted to see in his place today, and also by four colleagues who are now Select Committee Chairmen, and one colleague who is now a Deputy Speaker of this House, as well as, of course, what might be described as the more usual suspects, my hon. Friends the Members for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) and for Shipley (Philip Davies). The legislation thus had a wide range of support, and that was back in 2007. The Bill then said that the type approval should be produced within one year. My right hon. Friend was obviously keen that that should happen. He is now in a very powerful position in the Government—arguably even more powerful than the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), who will reply to the debate.
Why cannot the Government, with the support of the Leader of House and that of the Minister with responsibility for roads, who was also a signatory to one of my Bills in identical terms on this subject, deliver on this reasonable proposition that we should have type approval for a roadside drug-testing piece of equipment? I am sure that it would result in far fewer people driving on our roads under the influence of drugs or with drugs in their system. Far too few people are being brought to justice at the moment, so people think they can drive with drugs in their system with impunity. It is relatively rare that the courts are asked to deal with people who are guilty of drug-driving, because it is quite hard to detect at the moment.
One of the most famous recent cases was reported on 14 September 2010 when somebody called George Michael was jailed for eight weeks for drug-driving. He crashed his car while under the influence of cannabis and was given a five-year driving ban. He had also been guilty of driving under the influence of drugs on a previous occasion. I am not sure what Members of the House will think about the sentence that was imposed, but it shows that this illegal activity of drug-driving is taking place in this country, and the police themselves suggest that it is much more widespread than has so far been recognised by the Government.
We have had any number of Government initiatives promising to clamp down on drug-driving and have a publicity campaign about it. Even this week, in the Mail Online, there is an article similar to that in The Sunday Times to which I have already referred, saying that the Minister is determined to do something about it. All he has to do, if he really has the will, is to go to Concateno and ask what type approval would be needed to ensure that we can have a roadside testing device. Concateno would be able to give him that information relatively easily and the specification could be drawn up and the testing device given type approval sooner rather than later.
In the Government’s most recent road safety programme, they refer to this issue but only in the most general terms. Even the target that was set as recently as March, that the type approval for the device that would be used in police stations would be completed, has not yet been met. It was said that it would done by the end of April, but we are now in June and it still has not been completed. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will be candid in explaining the reasons. For one reason or another, we have still not got the type approval that we need for both the roadside testing device and the testing device to be used in police stations. Until we get that we will not have an effective regime for dealing with the scourge of drug-driving.
The principle that Ministers should apply is this: where there is a will, there is a way. If the ministerial team has the will to do something about this and is prepared to override the block in the Home Office, particularly in its scientific branch, they will be able to deal with this. I think that it is an indictment of the Home Office’s scientific branch that, despite all its expertise, it is still unable to come up with the type approval specification.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. As my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) said, people may think that by taking certain substances they are doing themselves great benefit and putting themselves in a state where it will be easier for them to drive. If they are feeling all pumped up and hyped up after being in a nightclub, they think that taking cannabis might slow them down and get them back on the right track. I would submit that it is very dangerous for anyone to go down that road.
That is cannabis. Secondly, there is cocaine.
Mr Chope
I am glad that my hon. Friend has dealt with cannabis.
It is thought that one of the reasons prison officers are so relaxed about the widespread use of cannabis in prison is that it keeps the prisoners—or inmates, as the politically correct would describe them—in a relaxed state.
Mr Nuttall
That might be so, but the fact is that the use of such drugs is illegal. I hope that one of these devices will be authorised for roadside drug testing in the near future, because it would then be a small step for them to be used in prisons, making it easier to ascertain which of the inmates has had access to illicit drugs.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Ultimately, however, it will be for the courts to decide, not the police, so I do not think it could be said that we would be living in a police state. The police will put the evidence before the magistrates court or, in appropriate cases, the Crown court, where the jury will weigh up the evidence and decide whether the person is guilty of the offence. Let us stick to what we are talking about, which is driving under the influence of drugs.
Cocaine causes over-confidence and can cause erratic behaviour. After a night out using cocaine, people often report that they feel as though they have flu. Some people, however—I said that different drugs can affect people in different ways—feel sleepy and lack concentration.
My hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) commented that drug taking among young people, particularly in nightclubs, is still very prevalent. One of the principal drugs used in those circumstances is ecstasy. Ecstasy makes the heart beat faster, which can cause a surge of adrenalin and result in a driver feeling over-confident and therefore taking additional risks that could, and do, cause accidents.
LSD can, depending on the individual concerned, appear to speed up or slow down time and movement, making the speed of other vehicles difficult to judge. It can distort colour, sound and objects, and users often see objects that are not there. LSD can cause people to feel panicky and confused—obviously a dangerous state to be in while driving.
Speed makes people feel wide awake and excited. Of course, I refer to speed, the drug, rather than vehicle speed. People who have taken speed find it difficult to sit still and have difficulty sleeping. Someone who has taken speed and has not been able to sleep at the weekend would probably be tired and dangerous on the road. Speed can also make people feel very panicky.
The problem is complicated by the fact that medicinal drugs that are legally prescribed by a qualified medical practitioner can also adversely affect a person’s ability to drive. It is, of course, the responsibility of the driver to ensure that he does not commit an offence when driving under the influence of drugs. Doctors do, however, advise patients of the dangers of the side effects of medication. The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency issues advice to general practitioners on the possible effects of a variety of drugs. GPs are advised to assume that the majority of adult patients are actual or potential drivers.
The Medical Commission on Accident Prevention has published a booklet, which is available to all GPs, setting out its views on the commoner conditions that affect one’s fitness to drive safely. The booklet, entitled “The Medical Aspects of Fitness to Drive”, contains chapters on prescribed and illicit medicines and driving. Various suggestions are offered to GPs on the advice that should be given to patients, such as not driving at all until any side effects are known, not driving if feeling unwell, and not combining alcohol with drugs. As will be seen from the cases I refer to later, the combination of alcohol and drugs is sadly all too common in cases of death by dangerous driving. GPs are also advised to warn that stimulants and euphoria-producing drugs may lead to unnecessary risks being taken.
In addition to that advice, the DVLA issues the “At a glance guide to the current medical standards of fitness to drive”, which contains sections on driving while taking medication for psychiatric and cardiovascular disorders. Specific illnesses such as epilepsy and diabetes are also covered. A review of the effects of over-the-counter medicines and the associated potential for unwanted sleepiness was published in 2004.
We should not forget the impact of the internet in this area. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency noted in its evidence to the North review, to which I will refer later, that
“there is an increasing trend of buying prescription only medicines over the Internet.”
Clearly there are dangers that medicines purchased in that way may be misused, because there is no opportunity for an individual to be given advice about the possible dangers and side effects.
Publicity was first given to the problems of driving under the influence of drugs, particularly lawful drugs, by a report published as long ago as April 1995 by the Institute for Human Psychopharmacology, entitled “Drugs other than alcohol and driving in the European Union”. Compared with the research into drink-driving, there was little real understanding of the effects of drugs on one’s ability to drive.
Mr Nuttall
That might be so, but, as I have pointed out, drugs are defined as anything that is an intoxicant, and that includes not just illicit drugs but medicinally approved and prescribed drugs and common drinks such as those containing caffeine and, in extremis, water. Although the focus will be on illegal drugs when the device is eventually brought into use, the producers of the device ought to look at the definition of the word “drug” and produce a device that covers both illicit and medically prescribed drugs, because both are dangerous.
Mr Nuttall
I could not agree more. I am merely drawing the House’s attention to the findings of a particular survey. I do not seek in any way to draw any further conclusion from it, but there is clearly a problem if that survey—and it is only a single survey—is to be believed.
Mr Chope
Is there not an even more important survey, which is the one that shows that half of the young people who admit to driving with drugs in their system say that they would not do so if they thought that there was a possibility of their being subject to roadside testing for the presence of those drugs?
Regulatory Authorities (Level of Charges) Bill
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope(13 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. Why should the users of passports be paying for this manifest failure of Siemens Business Services? That really does make the cost a stealth tax. Who knows, when applying for a passport renewal, that a significant part of the cost is actually to pay Siemens Business Services for an inadequate IT system? Having said all that, in 1997 the cost was £17.50, by 2002 it had increased to £33—by then the Siemens issue should probably have been sorted out—and it then increased to £77.50 in 2009, so I am not sure that my hon. Friend has the complete answer. However, what he says is interesting because it shows how these bodies are tempted to pass costs on to the users of their services, no matter how unreasonably those costs may have been incurred.
Another example involves the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency and the Driving Standards Agency. In 2006, the application fee for the UK driving test was £21, but by 2011 it had risen to £31. The fee for a UK driving test practical on a week day increased from £48.50 in 2008 to £62 in 2011. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight) has a great interest in this subject, but I wonder whether he knows the answer to the following quiz question: who was the first person to pass his driving test? If he does not know, I can tell him and the House. The first person to do so was Mr J Beene in 1935, and he had to pay 7/6d in old money, which is the equivalent of 37.5p now. These examples just show how these regulatory costs have risen over the years and how they continue to rise.
Other examples include the significant costs imposed for immigration settlement fees. A lot of cross-subsidy takes place within those and so in the current year the cost faced by a parent or grandparent of someone who has already settled in this country is £1,814, which is a significant fee for that application. You may recall, Mr Speaker, that there was a lively exchange of views a couple of years ago when the issue of fishing licences from the Environment Agency came before the House. Those licences produce a yield of £23 million for the Environment Agency, and my hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin) raised his concern, and that of others, that the EA had arbitrarily increased by 37% the cost of concessionary rod licences for pensioners and disabled anglers. Why was that done? It was done to help the Environment Agency make a larger profit at the expense of the users of those licences. That is another example of a case that would be covered by the Bill, because if the Environment Agency wanted to increase its charges above the rate of inflation, it would have to get specific authority so to do.
At the moment, there is a proposal from the Police Federation that the cost of a shotgun licence should be increased by some 400%. Again, what could be the justification for that? Surely it is an abuse of the system.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that such extortionate increases are in fact likely to lead many people to give up licensing their shotguns altogether, which will mean that the police will have to deal with many people holding unlicensed shotguns?
Mr Chope
I think that that would be a danger were the increase in fees to go ahead. A similar danger arises in the case of 17-year-olds seeking their first provisional driving licence. Is it reasonable that they should have to pay a very large fee for that? That fee might be a deterrent to their getting a licence and they might choose—unlawfully, obviously—to drive without a licence. That was a challenge I faced when I was the Minister for Roads and Traffic because in order to keep down the cost of entry into driving for someone obtaining a provisional licence and in order to make ends meet, it was necessary to introduce a modest charge for people who wanted to renew their licence at the age of 70.
There was a big debate in the Government at the time, egged on by a false leader in The Sunday Telegraph, and the proposal to charge a modest fee for 70-year-olds when they renewed their licences was regarded as a tax on pensioners. Nobody really understood the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) is making, which is that to increase the costs for the person seeking to get his first provisional licence would be a potential deterrent for that person. I have raised a similar issue in the context of the very high rates of insurance costs and the Government’s policy of having increases in insurance premium tax that bear directly and disproportionately on the costs for young drivers who want insurance. My hon. Friend therefore makes some very good points.
A constant problem is: if we have regulators, who will regulate them? That is essentially what the Bill is about. It challenges the Government in a time when money is tight and when we are told that family incomes will fall over the next two or three years. The Government are imposing quite tight targets on many Government Departments, but would it be fair if those Departments responded by increasing the fees and charges they impose on the tax-paying public by more than the rate of inflation? I do not think it would.
Mr Chope
Indeed.
One of the problems we face is moths—I can even see them flying around the Chamber—so I have a very heavy volume by my bedside to deal with them, particularly when I go home after a long sitting in the Chamber. They are eating every woollen thing in my house, so it is a real problem. The way to deal with them is to have a big tome on the bedside table.
Mr Chope
Definitely not.
I could give many examples of charges, but the significance of the Bill is that it imposes no additional charge on the taxpayer. There is no money resolution because there is no need for one. Clause 1(3) states:
“No Minister of the Crown may increase the level of any grant payable to a regulatory authority as a consequence of the provisions in this Act.”
Without that provision, it would be possible to argue that if we did not allow regulatory authorities to increase their charges, the Government, through the taxpayer, would have to give additional grant aid. That is specifically excluded under clause 1.
Subsection (4) gives a definition of “regulatory authority” that is inclusive rather than exclusive. It includes
“any authority or body which regulates the carrying on of any business or activity, or the practice of any profession.”
There is flexibility for the Government, as subsection (5) gives the Secretary of State power to make
“consequential, saving, transitional or transitory provision”
as he or she deems fit. Clause 2 sets out the title and commencement date and states that the Bill applies only to England and Wales.
I hope the Minister will commend the Bill for being short and to the point, and that he will use the opportunity presented by this debate to give some assurances to members of the public that we shall not see increases in the burden of regulatory fees and charges similar to those that took place under the previous Government. Will he assure us that the Government really are committed to ensuring that those stealth taxes are kept under control?
It is in the nature of Ministers not to like the idea that a Bill could not be improved by the Government. There may be problems with my Bill, but even if the Minister cannot accept it in its current form, I hope that the Government will suggest ways it could be improved or modified and that they will not block its Second Reading.
I commend the Bill to the House.
Criminal Records (Public Access) Bill
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope(13 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I beg to move, That the Bill be read a Second Time.
This Bill is similar to my previous Bill in that it comprises just one substantive clause, but it also has a financial provision and it would need to have a money resolution. The Bill arises from what has been accepted for a long time as a big anomaly in public access to court records, particularly magistrates court records. It is most effectively summarised in the Information Tribunal decision EA/2009/0037 in the case of John Carleton and the Information Commissioner on 24 August 2009.
The tribunal looked at the issue of somebody who wished to get access to the record of a conviction in a magistrates court. Because that person was not present at the court hearing, and because the press did not cover the matter and report it, it was not possible for that person to get information from the magistrates court without getting specific permission from the court. In order to do that, they needed to write to the court manager detailing the request and asking for an appointment at court to make a formal request to a justice of the peace. They were able to get that application granted only if they could show that it was in the public interest for them to be able to access that information. The court decided that, although the conviction was on the public record, it was not publicly accessible because of data protection legislation. The relevant paragraphs of the decision read as follows:
“34. The Tribunal notes that there are apparently anomalies created by the current Freedom of Information and Data Protection legislation in this area and which are mentioned briefly below.
35. If the Appellant, as a member of the public, had attended the court on the relevant date there is no reason to suppose that he would not have been able to hear all the information that he was requesting because it would have been part of the normal, public court proceedings.
36. If the Appellant had found out that the press or the media had covered the case and was able to get a copy of the newspaper report or media broadcast then – although the personal data in question would have been processed by becoming part of those reports – the Appellant would have had legitimate access to the information and the personal data he was seeking.
37. If the local newspaper or media outlet put the court report within a webpage on the internet or as a ‘podcast’ to be downloaded by the Appellant – whether there was a ‘search’ facility on the site allowing specific names or topics to be highlighted and retrieved or not - and then viewed, printed out, played or stored, then all of that is legitimate processing of personal data within the current statutory legislation.
38. However he did not attend the Magistrates Court on the day in question and he was seeking the personal data in relation to the individual – from the court itself - after the event.
39. That situation is not permitted in the Magistrates’ Court by the current Statutory regimes save through the filtering situation incorporating permission to inspect the Court Register made in person on application to a Justice of the Peace.
40. It may well be that the Ministry of Justice wish to draw this appeal, the Good Practice highlighted by the Information Commissioner – and these remarks – to the attention of HMCS’s Justices’ Clerks and Legal Managers because it is unlikely that this Appellant’s request is the only one of its kind received by the Magistrates’ Courts throughout England and Wales.”
Only yesterday, Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, was reported in the newspapers as saying:
“I believe that transparency and visibility help the public understand how the criminal justice system works, and shining a light on the workings of the courtroom can only serve to boost its efficiency and effectiveness.”
He was actually speaking in support of a proposal to allow cameras into courts across the country, which is far beyond what I am talking about in this Bill.
This Bill would mean that if somebody was convicted in a magistrates court and that conviction was recorded by that court, as it has to be under a statutory duty, it should be possible for anybody to get access to that information because it is public information and it should be publicly available. At the moment, the only way somebody can get access to that information is by carrying out a criminal records office check. They can do that only if they know a police officer who is prepared to carry out the check, unofficially, on their behalf, with or without a fee, or if they belong to an organisation that can get access to the criminal records office’s information.
The trouble is that the criminal records office’s information goes far beyond just the details of convictions. It includes a lot of prejudicial information, such as details of who has been arrested and not charged, who has been charged and then acquitted in court, and even who has been the subject of suspicion. Such information is all included in the records of the criminal records office. I am not suggesting that people should be able to get easy access to that information, but I am suggesting that they should be able to find out much more easily whether somebody has been convicted in a magistrates court of drinking and driving.
I give that example because if the Government insist on reversing the House of Lords amendment to the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill, it will not be long before this House is enabling people to be elected as police and crime commissioners and that Bill says that it will not be possible for anyone to stand for election to that post if they have a previous conviction, which could include a conviction for a drink-drive offence. Why, therefore, should this information in the magistrates courts not be available? It is already available, but it is not available to everyone and it is not available easily. That is why this Bill is described as a means to facilitate public access to court registers.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Can my hon. Friend confirm that it would be very easy and, indeed, desirable to ensure that this information contained the record of convictions in not only magistrates courts but the Crown courts?
Mr Chope
Yes, it would. Of course there are far fewer Crown court convictions and far fewer Crown courts, so it is much easier to get access to that information. As my hon. Friend will have noticed, the Bill states that
“‘a criminal records office’ means the Criminal Records Bureau or any successor body with similar statutory functions to the Criminal Records Bureau”.
It also states:
“A criminal records office must keep, in electronic form, copies of all Magistrates’ Courts Registers, and any other registers produced by a court listing convictions”.
Obviously, that could include Crown court registers.
In drafting this Bill, I have tried to make the regulation and the demands placed on the criminal records office as light as possible. I have done so by, among other things, saying that none of this would have to be retrospective, and so only after the Bill was enacted would the magistrates courts’ registers have to be communicated in electronic form to the criminal records office. There would be no burden on the criminal records office to collate the information on all those records. All that would happen would be that the records would be available in electronic form and could be investigated on the internet by members of the public.
I expect what would happen—this has already been happening in the US—is that people who were interested in providing a public service would start to collate the records themselves, thereby producing a combined database that would be accessible, perhaps for a fee, by members of the public. It would set up almost a private sector alternative to the Criminal Records Bureau.
Food Labelling Regulations (Amendment) Bill
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope(13 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
I will be brief because I am sure that the House wants to hear from the Minister. I begin by declaring an interest: I have eaten both crocodile and kangaroo meat at various times in my life and I am still here to tell the tale. I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), who reassured me that I had not offended my faith—I did not think that I had—on the many occasions that I shared halal meat with my many Muslim friends.
Not only the Germans are capable of producing spicy sausages. My butcher in the village where I live, Tottington, produces a “Hot Totty” sausage, which is delicious and spicy.
I find myself in what some people might consider an unusual position, although I do not think it is, in that I wholly support the Bill and its aim of introducing honesty in food labelling. That objective was clearly stated in the Conservative manifesto at the general election:
“We will introduce honesty in food labelling.”
Not only that, those very words are repeated in the “Programme for Government”, which states:
“We will introduce honesty in food labelling so that consumers can be confident about where their food comes from”.
That is the aim of the sensible Bill.
The British public want to be sure, when they go to their local butcher to buy meat, that the animal was born and reared in this country; that it was fed British grass in Britain. When they see the flag or the symbol, they do not want to be misled. They want to be assured that the meat is genuinely British.
I am reassured about my view of the Bill because one of its sponsors is my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson), no less, Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Foreign Secretary. I am therefore in good company in believing that the Bill’s aims are entirely laudable.
As with so many good ideas that the House wants to promote, however, the problem is Europe and Brussels. That was mentioned by my right hon. Friend—sorry, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset; I am sure he will soon be “right honourable”. No matter how much we pontificate today about what a good idea the Bill is, food labelling is, sadly, tackled through EU legislation. In my view, that is no reason for not trying to change the regulations, if we are so minded. I am not one for introducing more and more rules and regulations—far from it. I believe that we should have as little regulation as possible. However, when it comes to food, the British people are entitled to know what is in it and where it comes from.
I am not talking about imposing new regulations and extra burdensome bureaucracy, because the rules already exist. Food must be labelled under existing labelling rules. In January 2010, the Food Standards Agency produced a report on “country of origin” labelling. Its main findings were that consumers were aware of “country of origin” labels, although that was perhaps not their main concern. It found that meat products were the food types that consumers would most like to be labelled clearly. The Bill therefore hits the nail on the head and deals with the British public’s concern.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
We know that the Bill is supported by the Prime Minister, so does my hon. Friend agree that it would be a good idea to get the Minister’s comments on the record, in the hope that it can go into Committee?
Mr Nuttall
I certainly agree with my hon. Friend, which is why I do not wish to continue my remarks for too long this afternoon. The whole House will benefit from hearing the Minister’s comments on the Bill, and the Government’s view of how we should deal with what is, in fact, a very simple matter. It can be summed up simply: we want to give the British public honesty in labelling, which is what Conservatives said we would do in our manifesto, what millions of British people voted for, and what was agreed in the coalition document, under which Government Members now operate.
For all those reasons—there is much to commend the idea of honesty in food labelling—it is about time that such a Bill received Second Reading. My hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) is to be commended for his determination and perseverance in introducing such Bills so many times. The fact that he has done so proves that the measure is worth while, and I wholly commend it to the House. I hope it receives widespread support, and look forward to hearing from the Minister.
United Kingdom Parliamentary Sovereignty Bill
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope(13 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Chope
It may be all those—I do not know. However, I suspect that the people who ultimately pay for it are the hon. Gentleman and I through our taxes. Interestingly, on the same page, without comment or criticism, a paragraph states:
“MEPs vote to increase their own office allowances”
to €225 a year. Since that news item is included without any adverse comment, I suspect that the publication is associated with the European Parliament.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Is my hon. Friend completely accurate? Is it €225 a year or a second?
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend’s suspicions are well founded and backed by the facts that he gives the House. As we speak, moves are afoot on that issue.
I wish to address the remainder of my remarks to another matter—the admission of the European Union into the European convention on human rights. Page 113 of the Conservative manifesto states:
“We will never allow Britain to slide into a federal Europe.”
Yet article 6 of the Lisbon treaty and article 59 of the European convention on human rights as amended by protocol 14 provide for the European Union to accede to the European convention on human rights. On that basis, the European Union would become a non-state contracting party to the convention. It is said that it would be entitled to have a European Union judge, joining the other 47 judges from the member states of the Council of Europe, to adjudicate on issues relating to interpretation of the convention.
Clearly, that is not some innocuous move whereby the European Union submits to the European convention on human rights because it thinks that it is a good thing and desirable that European Union institutions should comply with the principles laid down in it. The European Union clearly has it in mind to put its toe in the door—or, perhaps more appropriately at this time of year, to be a cuckoo in the nest—and effectively drive out the convention and replace it with its own charter of fundamental rights, administered by the European Court of Justice.
If one looks back, one sees that the first reference in European Union law to fundamental rights was in article 6(2) of the 1992 Maastricht treaty, which provides that the European Union
“shall respect fundamental rights, as guaranteed by the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms…and as they result from the constitutional traditions common to the Member States, as general principles of Community law.”
Of course, no one would quarrel with that because it basically enunciated that there is no difference between the European Union law and approach to fundamental rights and the approach of the European convention on human rights. However, since then, the EU has developed its interpretation of those fundamental rights far in excess of what was originally thought reasonable.
Mr Nuttall
Is there not the danger that the EU will allow nationals of foreign states to vote in our general elections?
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend has a point—that is part of the European charter of fundamental rights. Thinking along those lines caused one of the witnesses to the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform last month to say that even if we won the day against the European convention on human rights on prisoner voting, we would find a case brought against us by the European Court of Justice—the EU would prosecute us through the ECJ for failing to comply with the fundamental freedoms it has laid down. In the same way, the bizarre ruling the other day will result in my 21-year-old daughter paying a much higher insurance premium for driving than the marketplace says she should pay. How absurd is that? That is another example of the way in which the EU uses its institutions to continue to interfere with what should be our domestic law.
Sustainable Livestock Bill
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope(14 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Chope
Does my hon. Friend share my concern that one of the big problems is that the Bill has been oversold to our constituents, who have been writing to us saying that if it were passed into law, we would save the rain forest, do away with all large livestock intensive production, reduce the amount of meat eating and so on? None of those things will actually be achieved by the Bill. Can my hon. Friend confirm that?
Mr Nuttall
I thank my hon. Friend for that point. It seems to me that there are many groups—and I will mention this later—who have supported the Bill and led their supporters to believe that it will bring about what they have been campaigning for. However, if any of their supporters had actually been sent a copy of the Bill, I fear that they would be very sadly disappointed, because it is silent on the specifics of those campaigns.
Mr Nuttall
I agree. My hon. Friend is right. Many people are concerned about that. They can already support organic farming by buying organic products. That is the way forward. I would like to see the problem resolved by organisations promoting organic foodstuffs and by individuals choosing to support, of their own free will, organic farmers and buying organic products. To try and achieve those aims by putting on the statute book legislation such as the Bill before us is not the way forward.
Mr Chope
Does my hon. Friend agree that the issue goes further than that? Many people who support intensive livestock farming argue that it will help to save the planet by reducing the amount of methane going into the atmosphere. The Bill could be used as an argument in support of intensive livestock culturing.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes a good point. I am sure he will want to expand on it later in the debate.
My concern about the Bill is that it will not achieve what it seeks to do and that, by passing it, all we will have achieved is to put yet another piece of legislation on the statute book imposing a new raft of obligations on the Secretary of State. The effect of those obligations will be that the Secretary of State has no alternative but to increase the number of rules and the amount of regulation imposed on our nation’s farmers.
Mr Chope
Taking up the Minister’s point about pigs, does my hon. Friend agree that there is another inherent contradiction in the Bill? Many people would regard the rearing of outdoor pigs on the landscape, with the attendant corrugated iron sheds, as more damaging to the landscape than intensively rearing pigs in a smaller area.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. There are a number of apparent contradictions in the idea that the traditional—I think the phrase used in farming is “more extensive”—methods will result in any saving or extra protection of the environment. For example, a farmer has to drive to reach the flocks of sheep that are tended on the uplands, but if they are all in one place that is much more environmentally sound.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend reads out that list, and I accept that those organisations no doubt support the Bill. However, I wonder what they have been told the Bill seeks to do, because I suspect that if they had actually looked at it they might have been somewhat surprised by its content. It is probably easier to get people to say that they support a Bill if one tells them that it is going to do something that perhaps it is not going to do.
Of course, the one group who will be more directly affected by the Bill than any other is our nation’s farmers. It is worth noting what the president of the National Farmers Union has said about it. In a press release issued the day after it had been published, he said:
“First and foremost, this Bill represents policy aspiration, not law.
I believe the UK government, present or future, should be free to develop its policy on the sustainability of the food and farming sector, working in partnership with industry and other interested organisations, as it sees fit. While the aspirations of this Bill are admirable, they are unsuited to legislation.
I remain convinced there are better ways of improving farming’s environmental impact, primarily by seeing through the voluntary and industry-led initiatives that are already underway rather than by adding further burdensome regulation.”
As far as I can see, and as we have heard this morning, one of the primary reasons why the Bill has been introduced is the belief of some that farmers in this country are too reliant on feeding their livestock with animal feed based on soya imported from abroad. I appreciate that there is concern about the destruction of the south American rain forest for the purpose of growing soya crops, but that problem is already being dealt with. Farmers have taken steps to encourage the sustainable production of soya in Brazil through the feed materials assurance scheme, or FEMAS. The UK imported 2.2 million tonnes of soya in 2009, mostly from south America, although it should be noted that not all of it was used in animal feed. Some was used in consumer foods such as vegetable oil. Already, about 1 million tonnes of UK imports from Brazil are certified under the FEMAS production module, which not only covers deforestation but ensures compliance with social legislation.
Soya is an important source of protein for livestock production in the UK, although its exact share of the livestock diet varies from as low as 3% for ruminants, through to 10% for pigs and up to 30% for broilers. Those involved in the farming industry have already agreed that the supply of responsibly sourced soya should be expanded by supporting schemes that can properly certify it as having been grown in compliance with sustainable principles, including environmental responsibility, responsible labour conditions and good agricultural practice.
Just in case clause 1 would not generate enough red tape, clause 2 would impose yet another duty on the Secretary of State—a duty to publish targets and report regularly on what progress had been made in achieving them. Subsection (1) would force the Secretary of State to publish the steps that were to be taken to show compliance with clause 1, including a set of indicators showing how progress would be measured. I would not like to venture a view as to whether an indicator is the same as a milestone, or even an horizon, but whatever they are, subsection (2) would require the Secretary of State, having published them, also to publish and update information about what progress has actually been made in meeting those targets. Those progress reports must include an explanation of the actual measures taken to achieve progress, and a comparison against the indicators. It sounds like a civil servant’s dream—new plans, new targets, more indicators, more progress reports.
If all that were not enough to keep the Secretary of State on track, there is a specific requirement in clause 2(4) for an “overall review of progress” to be published every two years. Fortunately, for the sake of all those rain forests that the Bill is intended to protect, subsection (5) specifically allows that the plethora of indicators, progress reports, updates, explanations, comparisons and reviews may be in electronic or hard-copy form. I sincerely hope that they would appear only in electronic form.
It seems reasonable to assume that having gone to such great lengths to spell out the duties and obligations on the Secretary of State, the Bill should contain some pretty blood-curdling consequences for failure to comply with its provisions. In fact, it is completely silent in that regard. Not a single sanction. There are no sanctions, no remedies, nothing. I could suggest that that is because the Bill contains so many vague terms and contentious definitions that any sanction would be effectively unenforceable.
I believe that the view of those who support the Bill is that remedy would be by way of judicial review. I can see the lawyers rubbing their hands with glee already. Day upon day would be spent in the High Court determining what actually constituted research into sustainable livestock practices, or perhaps whether the explanation provided under clause 2(3) was comprehensive enough. The list of potential areas of litigation would, I submit, be virtually endless. I argue that the Bill, which fails to include any remedy or sanction, is bad law. Surely it is the task of this House, and of their lordships in the other place, to determine the appropriate remedy for failure to comply with a law that we put on the statute book. We should not simply leave it up to the courts.
As was mentioned, perhaps one of the most worrying aspects of the Bill is the effect that it would have on public expenditure. As the House will note, it places onerous duties on the Secretary of State to consider numerous matters covering not only every aspect of farming but other matters. They include the provision of public information, food labelling, research, the reduction and disposal of food waste, and extending the nature of the negotiations that we carry on with other countries. It also includes a duty to consult a very wide range of expert individuals and organisations, not just on those matters but on others such as food retailing, the production of animal foodstuffs, climate change, biodiversity, the effects on human health of eating produce from livestock and animal health and welfare. Then, as we have just heard, there are all the progress reports that the Secretary of State must prepare and publish.
There can be no doubt at all that those tasks will be very time-consuming, and time costs money. The need to engage expert consultants in at least seven different areas will not be cheap, and it is fair and reasonable to assume that those experts will charge for the benefit of providing their expert opinion. Even if they all provided a lot of free advice, a raft of new civil servants would be required to meet the new obligations.
Nowhere in the explanatory notes is there any assessment of what all that will cost. Exactly what is the assessment of how many new staff will be needed? What will be the start-up costs to establish the new regulatory framework? What will be the cost of providing new offices and equipment? All that at a time when the Government are trying to reduce the level of bureaucracy and administration.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend is probably about to come on to this, but clause 4, on financial provisions, basically provides for a blank cheque to be given by the taxpayer for all the costs arising from the Bill, not to mention the costs that will fall not on the taxpayer but on consumers.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Clause 4 makes provision for the costs of the Bill to be met by Parliament, but as I said, there is no indication of what those costs are. If we pass the Bill, we will effectively sign a blank cheque. I would be interested to know what discussions, if any, the promoter of the Bill has had with Her Majesty’s Treasury about whether any funds are available to meet the wide-ranging list of new obligations to be imposed on the Secretary of State.
Before I move on to my conclusion, I should add that the Bill covers only England and Wales, and does not extend to Scotland or Northern Ireland. It will be for the devolved Administrations to deal with the matter in those areas.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend mentioned the fact that the interpretation clause refers to
“the United Kingdom and overseas”,
but he also said that the Bill applies only to England and Wales. Is there not some inconsistency there? How will the Bill be able to deal with issues in Scotland and Northern Ireland if it applies only to England and Wales?
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend raises an interesting point, which I must admit I had not noted. It is indeed remarkable that the Bill refers at a number of points to the United Kingdom as the area that the Secretary of State must consider. Clause 1(4) refers to the
“meat consumed in the United Kingdom”.
Clause 3(b) refers to the need to
“prevent biodiversity loss in the United Kingdom”.
Clause 3(a) refers to the need to
“address climate change in the United Kingdom”.
If one is to believe clause 5, all of that would be outside the scope of the Bill to a large extent. There is a clearly a problem, and I would be interested to hear how the Bill’s promoter expects it to be dealt with.
In conclusion, I submit that the Bill is at best premature.
Mr Chope
I do not know whether the promoter of the Bill, the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello), in the light of the very generous offer made by my hon. Friend the Minister, will seek leave to withdraw his Bill. That is open to him at any stage, and he might need time to reflect on the content of my hon. Friend’s helpful speech. I hope that hon. Members recognise that it is far better to have a proper conference and debate with a response from the Department than to put this half-baked Bill into Committee and try to have that conference in Committee time, which is effectively what the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South was asking us to accept in his opening remarks. He said that he realised there were a lot of contentious things in the Bill that should be discussed and so on, and that we could discuss them all in Committee.
We might be able to do so, if we were going to serve on that Committee, but I suggest that that would take a very long time. As the discussion would inevitably be constrained by the fact that each debate would have to take place in the context of an amendment or a new clause, there would be unnecessary constraint of what could be achieved.
The chance of a discussion or proper conference before the middle of next year, followed by a response from the Department, is a very good offer that, if accepted by the hon. Gentleman, will show that he has not used his slot, coming second in the private Members’ ballot, in vain. He will have achieved something and it is always important, for the promoter of such a Bill, to be able to tell his supporters that he has achieved something. Whatever else happens, particularly if he accepts the offer from my hon. Friend the Minister, he will be able to say that he has achieved something. Another thing that he achieved was to bring a number of people together yesterday evening, with support from Friends of the Earth, to listen to MP4 and share sustainable food and beverages in the Attlee suite. That will be welcomed by many Members of this House and others from outside.
As the Minister said, the Bill should be about how to achieve sustainability, not whether sustainability is a good idea. I do not think that anybody who has spoken, including me, is suggesting that sustainability is not a good idea. The question is whether the Bill is the right way to try to achieve that. My hon. Friend referred to the myths around the Bill. Unfortunately, many of the myths have been propagated among our constituents, who have engaged in a letter-writing and postcard campaign. I am not sure whether Royal Mail, in its desperate situation, put them up to that or not, but those postcards and letters have been arriving in significant numbers. Most of them are based on a misconception of the Bill’s provisions and what they could achieve. I suspect that many organisations said that they supported the Bill before it was published. It was published only a few days ago, and it is apparent that much of the campaign in support of it was based on a Bill—an earlier draft, perhaps—that contained provisions very different from those in the present Bill.
My hon. Friend the Minister referred to the 8,000-head dairy unit at Nocton and made the point that ruminants are fed largely on silage, grass and hay, and that ruminant diets contain only about 3% soya, yet the soya debate is the main avowed rationale for the Bill. The explanatory notes helpfully provided by the promoter state at paragraph 4, under the heading “Summary and background”:
“The driver for the Bill is the fact that much of the environmental impact of consumption of livestock produce in the United Kingdom takes place in other countries. For example, the growing of feed crops such as soy is leading to the conversion of rainforest and other wild areas to plantations. Such deforestation causes biodiversity loss and results in large emissions of climate change gases.”
This is not a Bill about the destruction of the rain forest. Nobody in the House supports the destruction of the rain forest. It is an extremely emotive means of trying to get support for a proposition to say, “Vote for this, and we will save the rain forest.” The sponsors have unashamedly used that method to try to exploit public opinion for their own ends. That is perfectly legitimate, but it should be recognised for what it is and exposed to public debate so that the public can see what has been happening.
My hon. Friend went on to talk about traceability and how much the Government are already doing to try to achieve that, without their needing to rely on the contents of the Bill. Going through this list, it seems to me that I might be in danger of making the first speech in this Parliament that is fully supportive of the Government’s position on any proposition. My hon. Friend’s persuasive powers have encouraged me to do so.
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend that the Bill is far too prescriptive. We should be looking for a much less prescriptive alternative. He made the alternative offer of a joint conference, coupled with the partnership approach. He referred to what is already happening with product road maps, as they are called, in the dairy, pig and livestock sectors.
I refer the House to what has been happening in relation to soya, as a result of a scheme to which my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) referred in his magnificent contribution to today’s proceedings. He said that much work was already being done on responsible soya production. One organisation that has been set up for that purpose is called the Round Table on Responsible Soy—
Mr Chope
My information says responsible soy, but perhaps there is more than one round table. I downloaded it from www.responsiblesoy.org, which sets out many sensible measures being undertaken across the globe so that people engaged in the soy value chain—so-called soy value chain stakeholders—will be able to ensure that soy can be produced in countries across the world to a high environmental standard, and that there is some assurance for buyers.
I am sure that farmers who use soy in this country would much prefer to use soy that had not been produced at the expense of cutting down the rain forest, and, because of the work that organisations such as the Round Table on Responsible Soy Association are doing, developing a chain of custody model, that will be possible. At the beginning of 2011, the global market will be able to buy RTRS certified soy. The approval of the principles and criteria for responsible soy by the General Assembly took place in June 2010, and that will be implemented at the beginning of next year. Even now, in the second half of 2010, the new standard is available in the form of a certification system. I do not need to go into the full details of all that, but anybody who is concerned about the fact that the rain forest is being chopped down in order to produce soy should be able to take quite a lot of comfort from that, because it shows that the producers themselves realise that if they cut down the rain forest to produce soy, they will not be able to export that soy to markets such as the UK because people will not want to buy it.
Mr Nuttall
Those are interesting statistics. If we carry on at that rate of progress, it will not be too many years before the entire use of soy products in this country is sourced from responsible producers.
Mr Chope
I hope that that is right. Certainly, that is a much more commonsensical approach than adopting the idea of replacing imported soy with home-grown alternatives.
I drew the Minister’s attention to the statistics contained in “Pastures New”, a Friends of the Earth briefing on a sustainable future for meat and dairy farming. At page 10 of that document, which I obtained last night at the gathering of people interested in the Bill, under the heading “Strength in Numbers: How much soy could be replaced?” it says:
“The RAC’s research for Friends of the Earth estimates the proportion of soy bean meal that could be replaced by UK protein crops…show that: Field beans could substitute 14 per cent of soy bean, requiring 221,000 hectares…Peas could substitute 17 per cent, requiring 323,000 hectares…Lupins could substitute 15 per cent, requiring 263,000 hectares…Oilseed rape could replace 14 per cent, requiring 214,000 hectares…Sunflower could replace 17 per cent, requiring 512,000 hectares…Linseed could replace 14 per cent, requiring 425,000 hectares. In addition, lucerne silage from some 438,000 hectares of pasture or leys could replace 42 per cent of soy bean for ruminants.”
As my hon. Friend pointed out, if such a replacement occurred, over half of our agricultural land would be taken over with soy replacement, and that would squeeze out the production of wheat, barley and other agricultural products, and we would no doubt have to import those as a substitute.
Mr Chope
Mr Deputy Speaker, I have made the offer—made the point—and as you rightly say, it is a matter for the hon. Lady whether she wishes to take up the suggestion.
On the issue of the further duties being placed on the Secretary of State to ensure that there is no increase in the proportion of meat consumed in the United Kingdom that is imported, as my hon. Friend the Minister said that is prima facie contrary to World Trade Organisation rules, and it is probably against EU rules as well, and yet somehow it has found its way into the Bill.
Mr Nuttall
I am concerned that section 1(4) refers only to the proportion of meat consumed. Would my hon. Friend like to comment on why he thinks it does not refer to dairy products?
Mr Chope
I cannot speak for the promoter of the Bill, and unless he seeks to intervene to clarify that matter, I fear that it will remain unanswered.
The final point that I want to make is that there is a real muddle in the Bill about its extent and application. As my hon. Friend the Minister said, the Bill purports to relate to England and Wales, despite the fact that Wales has devolved responsibility, but the body of the Bill contains all sorts of references to applicability to the United Kingdom, and indeed to countries overseas. I think it shows that the Bill was cobbled together at the last minute—but that is not to suggest that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South put the Bill together at the last minute.
I have a suspicion about what happened—I do not know whether I am correct, but it has often happened in the past. Hon. Members bring forward a private Member’s Bill. They get it drafted, but they are not quite ready to have it printed because they are waiting for the Government to provide an answer on various points. Then when they get the Government’s answer they realise that the Government are rather against a lot of the Bill’s provisions, so they redraft the Bill, perhaps on an iterative basis. That means that the Bill is redrafted very close to the time when it should be presented. The consequence is that it contains inconsistencies.
Canterbury City Council Bill
Debate between David Nuttall and Christopher Chope
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
If this is going to be the end of the consideration of these Bills in this place, does that mean that more than 200 newly elected Members will have no say about them?
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend makes a very potent point, and the short answer to his question is yes. One of the extraordinary oddities is that our Standing Orders allow for legislation to be passed on from one Parliament to another, but only in very exceptional circumstances. That does not apply in the case of primary legislation and public Bills; it applies only in the case of private legislation in special circumstances where a strong and compelling case is being made. That is why it is important that when an attempt is made to revive one of these Bills, not just from one Session to another, but from one Parliament to the next, we should have the opportunity to consider it carefully. He makes a powerful point about whether it would not be better to introduce these Bills afresh now with a new House, as could happen, or to pull back and allow the Government to pronounce on the results of the consultation and then introduce whatever legislation might be appropriate. I look forward to hearing him develop his point later in the debate. He is speaking on behalf of many hon. Friends and Opposition Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry), who is not in her place at the moment—oh, I see that she is now. I have already spoken about this subject, and one of her constituents is very exercised about what he sees as a persistent campaign over many years to try to vilify pedlars and pedlary. As my hon. Friend was keen to point out, at this time of all times, when an enormous number of people are without work but are eager to try to find work, tonight’s short debate gives us the opportunity to promote the case for pedlary. If individuals who are keen to try their hand at entrepreneurial activity get a pedlar’s certificate for £12.25, they can try selling goods to members of the general public during the course of the summer season.
Mr Chope
Fortunately, we have until 11 pm, so there should be plenty of time for the hon. Lady to contribute to the debate. When there are so many Members eager to participate in the debate, there is no need for anyone to speak for longer than is appropriate. I have just set out my stall briefly, but the issues before the House are whether the case has been made for reviving the Bills, taking into account the point about the number of new Members and the fact that new Members—
Mr Nuttall
There is another point, apart from the number of new Members. I understand that in the previous Parliament, some of the Bills reached the statute book. It would be interesting to know whether my hon. Friend has had any representations about the effect, if any, that those Bills that were enacted have had on pedlary in the towns and cities that were so affected.
Mr Chope
That is another good question. I am put on the spot by my hon. Friend. I am not sure whether the Bournemouth Borough Council Bill, which got through in the end, has made any difference at all on the ground in Bournemouth. During the general election I met pedlars from my constituency and from Bournemouth who were having a go at Bournemouth borough council for having wasted so much money on trying to prevent them from carrying on their activities in Bournemouth. If Bournemouth borough council succeeds in stopping lawful pedlars trading in the town, the council and the people of Bournemouth will be the losers, because pedlars bring colour and entrepreneurial activity to the area. Now that we do not have the Member for Bournemouth West from the previous Parliament, and as his successor is not in the Chamber this evening, I can say that the problems in Bournemouth were wholly exaggerated, and it is for the people of Bournemouth to assess whether the amount of money spent on the process was proportionate. I do not know the impact on the city of Manchester and have not done any research into it, but my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) might wish to initiate some. Indeed, a Select Committee visit to a major city might be helpful.
There are some important issues, and I hope that he will have the chance to hear from the Minister.