Jacob Rees-Mogg
Main Page: Jacob Rees-Mogg (Conservative - North East Somerset)London Local Authorities Bill [Lords]
Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts(12 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend might want to advance that argument, but I am not entirely clear whether the Bill is simply about cost-cutting. I know that that is what the hon. Member for Derby North would have us believe, but I think that it is slightly more sinister and that it is about the amount of powers to be given to local authorities and their officers.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
Might the provision be not only cost-cutting, but cost-increasing? Some of the buildings that will be included are public buildings, so the charge will simply be taken from a local council to another public authority, but the local authority already has the means of street cleaning, whereas the public authority in a building may not.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Given that local authorities are playing not with their own money but with other people’s, they may not be so bothered if they were caught up in the regulations. It may be businesses that were more concerned and therefore dealing with the problem better themselves. My hon. Friend touches on a good point because no business will attract customers if the area around its shop is in a terrible state, full of litter. I suspect that this is a solution looking for a problem, because most businesses will want to ensure that the streets close by are free of litter. They are probably doing that already, so my hon. Friend may well be right. The measure may well end up applying only to other public buildings, and the local authority may find itself in some accounting exercise where it is passing invoices from one department to another, which makes everyone unhappy apart from the person who is supplying invoices for the local authority, and it will not benefit the council tax payer, but give them an extra cost. My hon. Friend may well be on to something there.
I was slightly sidetracked, particularly by the hon. Member for Derby North. I made the point that the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005 already took the law beyond the Environmental Protection Act, and I gave an example of that. But it does not stop there, because section 21 of the 2005 Act extended street litter notices to any vehicles that act as commercial or retail premises, which was another giant step of mission creep down this particular route. On street litter control notices, which is precisely what this clause deals with, the 2005 Act says:
“In section 93 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990…(street litter control notices), after subsection (3) insert—
‘(3A) A vehicle or stall or other moveable structure which is used for one or more commercial or retail activities while parked or set at a particular place on or verging a street is to be treated for the purpose of this section and section 94 below as if it were premises situated at that place having a frontage on that street in the place where it is parked or set.”
So we have already had an extension of the provisions that the hon. Gentleman seeks to extend further. The Act continues:
“(3B) In subsection (3A) above, ‘vehicle’ means any vehicle intended or adapted for use on roads.”
That may well be burger vans or ice cream vans. That has already been covered in that legislation. The Act continues:
“(3) in that section, for subsections (8) and (9) substitute—
‘(8) A person commits an offence if, without reasonable excuse, he fails to comply with a requirement imposed on him by a notice.
(9) A person guilty of an offence under subsection (8) above is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 4 on the standard scale.’”
Those are already the laws of the land. This is the law that applies throughout the country. Why on earth it should be extended just for London is beyond me.
Philip Davies
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. That sounds like a good initiative. In fact, I think that there are business improvement districts in London. I am not entirely sure if they work in exactly the same way as it does on Merseyside, but they are certainly there. It seems to me that my hon. Friend proposes a far better solution, if there is a problem, which could not only get the support of the local authority, because it would then not have to deal with the problem that it does not think is its responsibility, but local businesses, which I might add probably do a far better job clearing it up than the local authority, because they would feel that they are improving their local area and making a contribution, but are not, in effect, paying twice. My concern is that the Bill is trying to get them to pay twice, once for their rates and once for sorting the problem out.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I wonder whether that establishes a general principle that it is much better to get a free market solution whereby companies come together to make things better, rather than draconian sanctions being imposed from on high.
Philip Davies
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey) will welcome his support for her argument, because he is absolutely right.
We know what needs to be done, because we have plenty of recommendations and evidence that would eliminate the need for clause 5. In June 2006 Environmental Campaigns—ENCAMS—produced the report “What is the Situation with Cigarette-Related Litter in England?”, which set out some recommendations. We know from the sponsor of the Bill and the explanatory notes that clause 5 is intended to tackle above all else, but not exclusively, the new phenomenon of smoking outside, because of the ban on smoking in public places. On research and monitoring, ENCAMS recommended:
“An accessible, repeatable monitoring methodology could be developed to measure the quantity of cigarette butts in the environment, and therefore better understand the impact of interventions.”
One of the problems is that we appear to be going down the route of putting forward legislation without fully appreciating the nature and scale of the problem. On education and communication, ENCAMS recommends:
“The successful ENCAMS cigarette-related litter campaign could be repeated in the future, to build on the momentum it has generated. The learnings from the 2006 campaign should be built into the 2007 campaign”
and campaigns in future years, and:
“Additional communications campaigns could be developed to target specific stakeholder groups in areas where cigarette litter tends to accumulate.”
This is a far better solution and it would target where there is a problem—and cigarette litter tends to accumulate— rather than having a blanket policy that applies everywhere, whether or not there is problem.
On ashtrays and infrastructure, ENCAMS recommends
“ENCAMS existing list of ashtray suppliers could be further expanded and developed to include a description of the characteristics and price of ashtrays. This could be complemented by a set of best practice guidelines to provide advice on the type of ashtrays that are suitable in different contexts.”
On enforcement, it recommends
“Ways to increase enforcement levels could be investigated, such as further training programmes for enforcement officers and street wardens.”
It seems to me that the report was not blaming the non-dwellings. ENCAMS seems to be saying that it is the councils that need to raise their game.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I wonder whether it is not rather an unsatisfactory principle that something that was perfectly legal should be made illegal but then increasingly unpleasant, and draconian penalties are introduced for people who are doing something that used to be legal, having been forced to do it less comfortably. I simply do not think that is the right way to legislate.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This is a tyranny over people who were once able to enjoy a particular way of life indoors who have been forced outside, through no fault of their own and no fault of the premises from which they have been kicked out. Most premises used to offer some kind of smoking room or a place where smokers could go. The legislation has forced them to put those people out on to the streets. It would be a rather perverse kick in the teeth for them, having been once inconvenienced, now to have to pick up the tab—excuse the pun—for a piece of Government legislation. My hon. Friend is right that it would be perverse to go down that, route based on the history of how this situation has come about.
Philip Davies
I absolutely agree.
The ENCAMS report went on to discuss cleaning and stated:
“Efficient, cost effective cleaning equipment that targets cigarette butts would complement preventative measures, especially at the start of an education campaign. Furthermore, the fundamentals of streetscape design could be considered to discourage and prevent the impacts of littering, especially in those areas where cigarette litter accumulates.”
Most importantly, it concluded:
“Ultimately, the reduction in cigarette litter is likely to be more significant in England if the identified solutions are implemented in a targeted, coordinated fashion, with strong partnerships between stakeholders.”
ENCAMS’ conclusion seems to be compatible with the approach that my hon. Friends the Members for Wirral West and for North East Somerset advocate, and surely that is a far better route to go down than clause 5, which is officious and, as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset said, might not even help with the problem but make it worse.
We have also had a Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs report, after the ENCAMS report, on how local authorities can prevent cigarette litter, and DEFRA proposed seven similar guidelines, with
“advice about how to prevent and reduce cigarette litter based on international and local experience. They are:
“1) Ashtrays—choose the right ashtray to suit your context and needs; 2) Signage—provide clear, consistent anti-littering signage; 3) Cleansing—clean up littered cigarette ends; 4) Partnerships—work with local organisations; 5) Leadership—walk the talk and be a leader in your community; 6) Educate—change the cigarette littering behaviour of smokers; and 7) Enforcement—use the legislation and powers available where appropriate.”
Those points are similar to the ones that ENCAMS made, and, given that outside this place there seems to be a consensus developing on what should happen, I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will not go against that report by another Department, which proposed a solution very different from the line taken in clause 5.
Interestingly, in the DEFRA report, “Enforcement” was listed as the last thing to do. It was the last resort: once everything else has failed, enforcement should be the final path; it should not be leapt to as the first solution. Furthermore, the report says:
“Enforcement—use the legislation and powers available where appropriate.”
It suggested not that new powers of enforcement were needed, but that what should be used were the powers already available to local authorities, so I see little evidence from anywhere to suggest that clause 5 is required. That is why it should be deleted.
We do not need to look too far to find out how we can solve, without clause 5, the problems that the Bill’s promoters have—perhaps rightly—identified, because Braintree district council reduced cigarette litter by encouraging smokers to use portable ashtrays. A campaign was launched to raise awareness, and the council purchased 1,000 portable ashtrays. Media coverage was so successful that it had to order a further 400 ashtrays, and in addition the company supplying them found five local newsagents that agreed to sell the product. One shop in Braintree sold more than 200, and follow-up interviews with ashtray users showed that smokers continued to use them and welcomed a means of disposing of their cigarette butts responsibly. More importantly, cleansing staff noticed a general reduction in the number of cigarette butts on the streets.
My hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset advocates a free market solution to the problem, so I hope he agrees that what happened in Braintree was a far better, and truly free market, solution to the problem that the Bill’s promoters have identified.
It is not just Braintree that has found ways of dealing with the problem, however. An interesting idea worked successfully in Australia, so my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green might wish to run it past all his local London authorities. In 2004 Toowoomba city council wanted to reduce smoking-related litter throughout the city, so it ran a small-scale campaign within the council to change the cigarette-littering behaviour of staff before trying to change the behaviour of the public, which in itself makes the interesting point that perhaps London Councils should start closer to home with its solutions to the problem, rather than by interfering with everybody else.
A clean-up was carried out around Toowoomba council buildings, and official and unofficial smoking areas were identified. The number of stubs was counted during the clean-up so that any reduction could be monitored as each measure was introduced. First, all employees were exposed to educational material—a process that continued throughout the campaign—and just that one measure alone reduced the number of littered stubs from 1,849 to 1,164. After one month, all employees who smoked were offered pocket ashtrays—similar to what happened in Braintree—and 150 were given out, producing a further reduction to 966 littered stubs. The following month wall-mounted ashtrays were installed in the smoking areas, and that saw the amount of littered stubs fall to 753—a 41% reduction in cigarette litter in total.
Following the success of the campaign, and with the knowledge that the council was leading the way, a city-wide public campaign to reduce cigarette litter in Toowoomba was carried out.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I wonder whether my hon. Friend would describe that initiative as “nudge” theory. That means getting people to do things by gently pushing them in the right direction, rather than through what we have been discussing—the heavy hand of the state crashing down.
Philip Davies
Absolutely. That is very much the case.
The point of these examples, and the lesson that we should learn from them, is that people can be helped to produce a solution themselves. It would be far better if the Bill were proposing measures that helped people to sort out the problem themselves, rather than introducing a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
Philip Davies
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who displays her expertise once again. As regards not knowing how much people are prepared to spend to go to the toilet, I always thought we knew they were prepared to spend a penny, but perhaps that is somewhat out of date.
The right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) mentions the Disability Discrimination Act, which has been used as cover by my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green. Under that Act, the service provider is obliged to make reasonable adjustments, not to make everything wholly accessible to everybody. A local authority that is denying access to a person with a disability because their disability does not fit in with the equipment that is on display may well argue that it would be unreasonable for it to change its entry system because it would be disproportionately expensive in relation to the one person it helped—in other words, that it would be an unreasonable adjustment. My hon. Friend would be misguided if he put all his faith in the Disability Discrimination Act, because it does not do what he seems to think it does.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
If the Act allowed for turnstiles that everybody could get through, why should that not apply to the whole country? Why are we using a private Bill to repeal a public Act? Surely this is a rather dubious constitutional procedure.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is right. We all know how important toilet facilities are. When we go to a restaurant, we probably judge it as much on the provision, cleanliness and accessibility of the toilets as on the service or the quality of the food. I am as sure as my hon. Friend that Thomas Crapper would be turning in his grave if he thought that we were even contemplating the clause.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I must disagree with my hon. Friend —for the first time in his excellent speech—on the way he judges restaurants.
Philip Davies
I suspect that my hon. Friend visits far better quality restaurants than me. If I had his means, I am sure that I would, too. However, I have to go to establishments where sometimes you take a bit of a risk when going to the toilet.
Philip Davies
I do not want to go on further about public toilets, suffice it to say that I hope my comments have shown that such things should be the responsibility of local authorities.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
To go back to an amendment to which my hon. Friend spoke earlier, that could be a matter of free enterprise. Groups of concerned citizens could come together to improve the trade in their area and ensure that there are convenient public conveniences.
Philip Davies
That is right. My hon. Friend proposes a good solution, but however they are paid for, local businesses pay rates and expect services in return. Such facilities are important in attracting people to a location. The local authority will benefit from those just as much as local businesses.
Philip Davies
I am sure that my hon. Friend is right; indeed, I recall attempts, whether successful or not, to try and develop a café culture in this country. It appears to me that clause 7 is designed to try and thwart such a café-style culture, and I do not really understand why we would want to do that.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I think that it is much worse than that; this is a fundamental attack on the rights of property. The explanatory notes state:
“Subsection (2) of section 115F provides that except where the council are the owners of the sub-soil beneath the part of the highway in relation to which the permission is granted, the charges may not exceed the standard amount”.
That is, the council may charge only reasonable costs. That means that a council would be able to charge someone for doing something on that person’s own land, which must be wrong.
Philip Davies
I commend my hon. Friend for being so eagle-eyed; I agree with him wholeheartedly on that point.
One of my problems with the Bill, and with this clause, is that they appear to intend to damage small businesses. We are in a terrible economic situation at the moment, and we know that small businesses are the engine of economic growth, so why on earth would the House want to pass measures that appear to have been designed to clobber small businesses? That is completely beyond me. These kinds of extra costs and bureaucracy are meat and drink to big businesses. I used to work for a large multinational company, and although these extra requirements were sometimes an irritation, we could afford to employ legions of people to deal with them. Many small businesses are struggling in the current climate, however, and they do not have the financial capability to deal with all the extra regulation and costs that the Bill seeks to impose on them. There seems to be a mindset that owning a small business is a licence to print money, that everyone who owns one has millions of pounds in the bank doing absolutely nothing, and that it is the job of a local authority to extract as much of that money as possible from them.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
With this it will be convenient to take amendments 23, 24, 41, 25 to 28, 42, P1, 29, 30, 43 to 45, 31, 46, 47, 32, 48, 49, P2, 33, 60, 51 to 55, 34, 56 to 58 and P40.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
As you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, I have tabled a number of amendments and have also put my name to a number of others. I would like, if I may, to start by outlining why they have been proposed. The simple reason is that the Bill as drafted is extraordinarily illiberal and seeks to extend the powers of the state into the nooks and crannies of people’s lives as they carry out otherwise lawful activities that would be banned by the Bill, unless the amendments are passed.
I remind hon. Members of what was said in the Conservative party manifesto about protecting civil liberties. We said:
“Labour have subjected Britain’s historic freedoms to unprecedented attack. They have trampled on liberties…giving public bodies extraordinary powers to intervene in the way we live our lives.
The impact of this has been profound and far-reaching. Trust has been replaced by suspicion.”
The amendments I have tabled with many of my hon. Friends aim to restore that trust and to ensure that what is done is proportionate and that civil liberties are maintained. You will not be surprised to know, Mr Deputy Speaker, that some of those civil liberties go as far back as the Magna Carta and they are being undermined by the clauses that we are discussing.
Under the clauses, unidentified officers of councils who might or might not show identification may confiscate things from people, directly contrary to the Magna Carta, which states:
“No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed, or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed…except by the lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land.”
This is not the law of the land, it is the law of some minor council official—some minor bod—going around and confiscating people’s goods without having the proper authority to do so, a proper process by which to do it or a legitimacy that would give people confidence in the laws we are passing in this Parliament.
Philip Davies
I agree with my hon. Friend wholeheartedly. During a previous discussion on this Bill, he proposed that those council officials should wear bowler hats. If they identified themselves with a bowler hat, would he be happy for them to take on these powers?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point, because I specify in amendment 60, which has been selected, that these officers of the council should be in uniform when they carry out their duties. I have left it to the discretion of the council to determine what those uniforms should be.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Absolutely right. I thought it might not be a bad idea if they had the relevant council’s coat of arms.
Mrs Main
Does my hon. Friend have any suggestions as to how this would be promoted, because my constituents, should they come down to London, might not be aware of the purpose of these people in bowler hats or other uniforms and might not be aware of their powers in the regulations.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am very sympathetic to what my hon. Friend says, and I add that many of my amendments take chunks out of the Bill. Therefore, visitors from St Albans, North East Somerset and all over the country—from Leeds, indeed, where the shadow Minister is from—
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Derby—I am so sorry. Those visitors would not be caught out by all sorts of strange people. [Interruption.] I do know where Shipley is.
Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)
Has the hon. Gentleman or any of his colleagues who oppose this legislation had discussions with the Mayor of London about whether he thinks the Bill should be supported or blocked?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am very grateful for that intervention. The Mayor of London is a man whom I admire enormously and whose writ I should think runs across the whole of London and probably should run across the world. However, he stood down from this Parliament and it therefore is not fitting that his views should be authoritative. In this instance, I do not happen to know what they are.
Philip Davies
I certainly do not know what they are, but perhaps my hon. Friend ought to listen to the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) because no doubt he has just come from a meeting with the Mayor of London. He certainly was not here when we debated the first group of amendments, but he seems to think that this is very important.
Mike Gapes
I was watching the proceedings from my office, and I could not believe that any Member of Parliament who had the best interests of London at heart could possibly oppose the proposals, which are supported by Labour members, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in local government all over London, as well as by the Greater London Authority. It is only neanderthals and people who have no idea of what is in the interests of our capital city who oppose the Bill.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Now we see the true face of socialist authoritarianism coming into the House. Those people do not bother with debating in this Chamber. No, they sit watching television in their eyries above and then they condescend to come down and they deign in all their fine glory to say to us that we from Somerset, from Hertfordshire and from other great counties across the country should not have a say in the legislation that affects the law of the land. This is the type of authoritarianism and nanny-stateism that we have come to expect from the socialist.
Let me refer to clause 20(2), which we propose to pull out of the Bill because it is a singularly nasty measure. What it says, Mr Speaker, although I am sure I do not need to remind you, is that if somebody wishes to sell their car throughout all the boroughs of Greater London, advertises it on the internet and then puts it outside their house, they will be committing an offence.
Mike Freer
I hate to correct my hon. Friend because I so enjoy his perorations in the Chamber but he is incorrect. It is not intended that a householder selling their own vehicle outside their own house should be captured by the measure. It is only vehicle traders who in the course of a business sell vehicles on a residential street, using the internet, who will be caught—not residential households.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
That may not be what is intended, but it is, unfortunately, what is said and it is what is described in the notes written by the promoters of this Bill in relation to part 4 on licensing.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I think many hon. Members would consider being called neanderthals remarkably modern.
Mr Speaker
I note the hon. Gentleman’s value judgment, and indeed his sense of humour. If there are no further points of order, we come now to the petition.