Canterbury City Council Bill
Debate between Lilian Greenwood and David Nuttall
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
I support the Nottingham City Council Bill, primarily because illegal street trading is a considerable problem in our city centre. The Bill is designed not in any way to prevent legitimate pedlars, but to deal with the problem of illegal street trading.
To provide a flavour of the situation, I should say that in Nottingham city centre there are suitable places for legitimate street trading and legitimate street traders pay fees for the location of their stands. They pay between £1,775 and £7,657 per year, depending on the pitch size, the location and the range of goods. Rightly, those people want to ensure that they do not pay such fees only to find that people who are not legitimate street traders, and have not paid for licences, are taking over their pitches or significantly obstructing the streets and taking trade away from them and from the shops in our marvellous retail area.
Pedlars, by nature, are pedlars: they are meant to be on the move, not sited on stalls that are fixed or fixed for periods. Their phrase should be, “Stop me and buy one,” and they should stop only when they sell their goods. In contrast with the amount that street traders pay, which is in the thousands, the cost of obtaining a pedlar’s certificate is just £12.25. Many Government Members have talked about the importance of encouraging entrepreneurialism, and pedlary is an opportunity for people who want to make money or get back into work. We do not want to detract from that opportunity to become a pedlar and travel either door to door or around the streets; we want to give people the opportunity to stop and trade, but not in a fixed position.
Mr Nuttall
Has the hon. Lady done any sort of research among people who have street trading licences to see how many of them started off as pedlars and have now moved up the ladder? Pedlars are essentially the seed corn. People who started off as pedlars may well move on to become street traders, and perhaps their next step will be to have their own shop.
Lilian Greenwood
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. I can speak only anecdotally in saying that that is not necessarily the case judging by the types of people who are involved in peddling, who often come from outside, including from abroad, in order to sell their goods. This legislation is not intended to prevent people from legitimate peddling—it merely makes a clear distinction between that and illegal street trading.