Canterbury City Council Bill

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

It may well be, and that is my concern. Let us look at what has happened in the past. Their lordships found a lot of evidence that councils were making assertions about the conduct of pedlars that they could not back up with evidence before their lordships’ Committee, so a council might consider something to be sufficient when it is not sufficient, because of that council or its officers having a particular prejudice or taking a cavalier approach.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the Bill would surely be clearer if it did not allow the council discretion. If the council were to err in its use of discretion, that could lead to judicial reviews and all sorts of expenses to the council, so the promoters of these Bills would benefit by accepting his amendments.

[Mr Chope]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for that succinct and, I hope, persuasive—indeed, conclusive—argument in support of my amendments. I hope that our hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey has noted it—although sadly I do not see any messages being passed between him and the people sitting in the officials’ Box on behalf of the promoters of the Bills.

Let me turn to my amendment (e), which would add the following words at the end of subsection (2) of the proposed new clause inserted by Lords amendment C27:

“and shall also be displayed prominently in any designated area.”

It is obviously useful for a motorist visiting a town who is thinking of parking somewhere to know where the parking restrictions apply, and the way to find out is by looking at a notice close to where they intend to park. Similarly, it is quite useful for pedlars intending to peddle their goods in a city or town centre to be able to see on a notice whether a different regime operates there compared with the national regime. That is fundamental to ensuring fair play and justice for visitors to a designated area who are not quite sure whether it is indeed a designated area, and so on. What harm would there be in requiring signs on the circumference of a designated area to make it absolutely clear to any passer-by?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I wonder whether my hon. Friend has given any consideration to the design of such signs and how it might be made clear to people that they are in a peddling or non-peddling zone.

[Mr Chope]

It would be useful if there were distinct signs. Indeed, an enterprising local authority might want to invite local schools to enter a competition to see who could produce the best design for such a sign. I do not think there should necessarily be uniform signs across the country, because that sounds rather bureaucratic and top-down. The most important thing is that the signs should be prominent and clear and not contain a lot of detail—unlike the conditions on the back of one’s new credit card, for example. There need to be relatively few words, prominently displayed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

Colleagues elected in 2010 have discovered that when they are asked by promoters to sponsor a Bill in this House, it does not mean that they lose all their discretion over it. It is ultimately up to them as Members of Parliament to decide what to accept and what not to accept, and they do not need to be beholden to the officials.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, as I was getting very worried about this constitutional principle. It is surely up to this House and not up to individual promoters or local councils, to decide what passes into law.

[Mr Chope]

Absolutely, and I am sorry if I did not make that clear. There was an occasion—you may remember it, Mr Deputy Speaker—on a different private Bill earlier in this Parliament when one of my hon. Friends felt a certain reluctance to do anything other than what he had been told to do by the promoters. I explained to him that he would be doing the promoters, himself and the House a good service if he showed some flexibility. In fairness to him, he did show such flexibility. That is a good precedent, and I draw it to the attention of my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey in case he was not there at the time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I absolutely agree. I hope that, in many respects, what their lordships have done will set a precedent and that we will not have to worry so much about some of the worst consequences of such legislation.

A notable omission from my hon. Friend’s speech was the issue of touting, although I appreciate that he was trying to be as brief as possible. If he did mention that and I missed it, I apologise to him. One amendment before us today deals with touting. He did not mention it—[Interruption.] I think it comes later on in our proceedings. It is in the third group, so I will save up my expertise on touting until that time; I apologise for mentioning it now.

The amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch were focused mainly on training. My hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) is my parliamentary neighbour and an excellent Member of Parliament. The only bad thing about having him as my neighbour is that he puts me to shame. He has already successfully steered a private Member’s Bill through Parliament in his short time in the House. He did so with an awful lot of panache and charm, and by being practical and reasonable about what it was sensible to do in order to get that legislation through. I very much hope he will adopt the same strategy now, because he saw how well it worked with his Bill; I hope he will use that experience when considering this legislation, too.

Let us consider the debate we have had so far from a layman’s perspective—from the point of view of people who have no vested interest in the legislation and who have not been going through battles which started six years ago, as my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch said. People who do not have that baggage and who listened to the argument that my hon. Friend made for his amendments to Lords amendment C27 could not fail to have been persuaded by his case. We started from the position that these Bills were designed to give local authorities far too much power—that was the whole point for us when we started out. As a result of my hon. Friend’s work and what happened in their lordships’ House, gradually, bit by bit, the excessive powers have been whittled down. We hope to end up with legislation that, although perhaps not ideal—it may not be something we particularly agree with—will certainly be an awful lot better than it was when we started out. We have an opportunity to carry on the theme that my hon. Friend started, and that their lordships continued, by removing some of the remaining parts that put far too much power in the hands of local authorities and give far too little protection, literally, to the man on the street.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Is it not very reassuring that the upper House has carried out its traditional role of defending the liberty of the subject from the seizure of goods? Such seizure has been unknown and unwelcome in this country since Magna Carta.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that. It is why some of us felt so strongly about these Bills and, in particular, about the issues relating to seizure. It is to be commended that their lordships have done what they have historically done—defend people’s freedoms—but we should not have to rely on their lordships for that; we should be doing that in this place, too. We have a great opportunity to demonstrate how important that is to us through my hon. Friend’s amendments.

The promoters of the Canterbury City Council Bill chose well when they selected my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey as the person to steer it through the House. I am sure that it would be in everybody’s interests if the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch were accepted. I am a signatory to them, so I would say that, but their genesis lies with my hon. Friend and I do not want to take the credit away from him.

I am not so bothered about amendment (a) to Lords amendment C27. Lords amendment C27 seeks to provide that:

“The council shall publish on its internet website information”.

My hon. Friend wishes to remove the words “on its internet website” from that provision. I am not so bothered about that one, not because I disagree with it, but because I am not sure it would achieve what he intends. It would not preclude the council from simply putting the information on its website; the council would still be able to do exactly the same thing, so we would be no further forward. I think my hon. Friend intended that the council should not simply be allowed to leave it at that and that other forms of communications should be used, particularly for people who do not have access to the internet and the relevant website. I agree with his approach, but the amendment would not achieve its purpose and we could end up with a bizarre situation where the unintended consequence was that the local authority published even less information than was available for pedlars. Amendment (a) certainly does not require the local authority to publish more information, so I think we can leave it to one side—I hope my hon. Friend will agree.

There is far more merit in my hon. Friend’s other amendments to Lords amendment C27, and I very much hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey will give them serious thought. None of us wishes unnecessarily to delay further the proceedings on this legislation, and I am sure that the Bill’s promoters do not wish it to be delayed further, so my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey has a great opportunity here. I cannot speak for my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch but I think that if my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey were to give way on these amendments, the progress of this legislation could be much speedier. That would be a small price for the Bill’s promoters to pay, because not only are these amendments designed to make things better for the pedlar, but, as far as I can see, they are better for the local authority.

Amendments (b) and (c) would mean that the council would make things abundantly clear by publishing details of the streets covered by the legislation. That is not catered for in the Bill at the moment. If that is such a big issue for these local authorities and something that needs all this time and expense to deal with it, surely it is in the best interests of these councils that everybody knows which streets are affected and which are not, and the boundaries of these rules. With the best will in the world, I am sure that even my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey would not suggest—I hope he will not—that council officials will be on every corner of every street waiting for pedlars to appear in order to turn them around at the first opportunity and issue them with a fixed penalty notice. I would like to think that council resources do not stretch that far. On those days when there is no council official waiting to move a pedlar on or to issue them with a fixed penalty notice, surely it is in the interests of the local residents and the local area that people are following the rules because things are clear and that they are not mistakenly in a place where they should not be. Through his amendments my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch is striking a blow not only for freedom but for the efficiency of the local authority in carrying out its wishes.