London Local Authorities Bill [Lords]

Glyn Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s conversion to deregulation and low taxes. If the problem is that we are encouraging the black market, we should free up the white market and reduce taxes and decrease regulation. If something unfair is happening, the answer of the bureaucrat is always to regulate to make it fair, not to deregulate to make it fair. Actually, we should tell legitimate traders, “Okay, you’re in competition with somebody who isn’t paying rates so let’s have lower rates because otherwise you’ll go out of business.” We should look at whether planning permission is a proper way to regulate business, or whether there are already too many burdens and costs on business. As so often, I am at one with my hon. Friend in feeling that the situation offers a good argument for deregulation, cutting taxes and getting at things from a positive angle, rather than always looking at the negative and stopping people doing things. How do we make the economy grow? We free people from the shackles of the state, removing the dead hand of regulation; not by putting more regulation on them.

One of my bugbears about a number of clauses is the level of proof required and the seniority of the person who can enforce penalties, so I have tabled a number of amendments, in particular 42 and 43, to raise the standard of proof and of the person who will issue a certificate. In subsection (7), amendment 42 would replace the words “reasonable cause” with “proof that”. That would mean that we could be certain.

Right back to Magna Carta, we have had a high standard of legal protection for people and their goods. People cannot have their goods taken from them without a court order. It is a good historic principle of British law and it is in the Magna Carta; no free man shall be taken or his goods taken without the judgment of a court against him. As we know, the principle developed with jury trial—although juries predate the Magna Carta —but in recent years we have been moving to an administrative system that allows not the courts to decide whether something should happen, but people at a much lower level who require lower levels of proof; hence, reasonable cause. Is it really satisfactory that somebody who is not even a police officer and does not need proof that a person is breaking the law can impose penalties? That seems fundamentally unjust.

The Bill provides that if a person sells their car in the street in Westminster, it can be seized by an “authorised officer” who has “reasonable cause” to suspect that that is what they are doing. My amendment would require there to be proof of the activity and that the order should be issued by a magistrate. The magistrates court is the lowest court in the land, but at least the person would have the judgment of a court against them. One of our most ancient liberties is protected if the judgment comes from a magistrate and is not given simply by an authorised officer or a constable.

It is easy to pass private Bills that include penalties and forfeitures that are not to the standard that would be required in a public Bill, because the standard of scrutiny is considerably lower. I realise we have many hours to discuss the Bill—we are on our third set of three hours—but we do so with a relatively thinly attended Chamber and without great enthusiasm for looking at the nitty-gritty and the detail of the Bill.

[Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

I find my hon. Friend’s argument persuasive, but does he agree that when we give authority to people, it changes the nature of the people to whom authority has been given? Suddenly, perfectly ordinary, rational people become hugely important and full of the power that they have been given. They make the situation far worse by becoming dominant and forceful.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I have the greatest sympathy with my hon. Friend’s view. It can often be a mistake to give an excessive amount of power in one particular area to relatively junior people. The authorised officer who is entitled to seize a vehicle is likely to be a relatively low-paid official who suddenly has the power to go round and confiscate a car. It might be quite a nice car—possibly that Aston Martin DB5 that I was talking about a few moments ago, which somebody was trying to sell on the internet for a good price. Then some teenaged council officer comes round and says, “I rather like that.” Bang. He says, “I’ve seen that on the internet. I’m going to issue a seizure notice and seize it.”

That does not build in the proper protections that we ought to have as British subjects. I know this is a long-winded speech and that many aspects of it are not entirely serious, but this is serious. The protection of our individual liberties ought to be the daily concern—the hourly concern—of Members of Parliament, because we are the people who can do something about that. It is in the nature of Government to erode people’s liberties because liberties are inconvenient. Liberties make people object to things that Governments are doing. They stop the great steamroller of Government coming down the tarmac. We as Members of Parliament are here to constrain that great urge of Government—to bind them down so that their infringements of liberty can occur only when they are essential.

I find it hard to believe that it is essential for the good of this great nation that my teenage authorised officer should be able to seize a motor car because somebody wanted to sell it on the internet, just because he has reasonable suspicion and not with any proof or any order of a court. I said that I disliked the whole clause altogether, but if we are to have this rotten clause, let us make it a little less rotten so that we can at least have protections for the individual.

--- Later in debate ---

on the uniforms of these council officials.

[Glyn Davies]

This is perhaps one area—the uniform—where I feel rather suspicious of what we are talking about. In my experience we should be careful, because whenever we put a uniform on somebody we immediately enhance their own self-importance. My previous intervention was about junior officers becoming hugely important when given authority, and that importance would be multiplied if we gave them a uniform.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, as always, and it is one of those occasions when one needs balance: one needs the Lib-Dem approach to it—neither one thing nor the other, but something in between. One needs to have sufficient respectability of the person so that people know that it is an officer with some authority, but equally one needs to be in a position where the officer does not let that authority go to their head by being so overburdened with gold braid and pride that they feel they are enormously powerful and must intervene. I should not give them one of those spiked helmets that one sees in old first world war films with the Prussian officers marching out; that might give the wrong impression. I suggested earlier that a bowler hat might be suitable, and that may be the right way.