Protection of Freedoms Bill

Lord Elton Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I strongly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Neill. With this very convenient amendment at this late stage, it seems to me that the time has come for the Government, if necessary, to come forward with a sensible amendment that could be produced extremely quickly. They absolutely do not need two or four years, as the noble Lord, Lord Neill of Bladen, said, to come up with a situation that is obviously not sensible.

I have come from a meeting of the Select Committee on the Merits of Statutory Instruments where we discussed an order on green bananas, which has a provision to deal with the rights of entry. As it happens, it does not deal with the criminal part of that but Regulation 6 says that there may be an application to a magistrate for a warrant. It does not refer to the circumstances but I assume that they are those in which force is required. At the moment, I cannot see why you have to have a right of entry for green bananas when you can perfectly well get a magistrate’s warrant if it is absolutely necessary. What I am telling your Lordships’ House is that it is going on now and that it is time to stop it.

[Lord Elton]

My noble friend is probably old enough —I certainly am—to remember the days when an Englishman’s home was always referred to as his castle. Castles are besieged by mice. What worries me about this is that the officers who will have powers to enter my castle and your Lordships’ castles—mine is a very small place—vastly outnumber the number of mice who are able to do so. The mice are undercontrolled and so, in present legislation, are very large numbers of these officials. I do not think that they should be and noble Lords probably do not think that they should be either.

My noble friend has suggested a simple and elegant way to control the situation. The noble Lord, Lord Borrie, who shakes his head, happens to be a fellow honorary vice-president of the Trading Standards Institute. I was hearted by what he said, although he may not have intended that. He said that the removal of the powers suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, does not go far enough. I join others who think that the provision could be further improved with consideration by the other place. Some of us have been Ministers and have had legislation that we wanted passed. It is ludicrous to leave this legislation as it and to entrust the matter to a departmental inquiry, of all things, in the expectation that it will sort it out within a time limit or achieve something worth while.

[Baroness Crawley]

My Lords, perhaps I may make a brief and slightly croaky intervention—I go one up on my noble friend Lord Borrie—as president of the Trading Standards Institute. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, for engaging so closely with trading standards over the past number of months since first introducing his amendment in February. Indeed, trading standards officers would rather have been included in his amendment than not and therefore I do not decry them for their enthusiasm. However, after much discussion with partners in the intervening months, I should inform the noble Lord that, on behalf of trading standards, I shall not be able to follow him into the Lobby on his amendment.

My reasons are twofold. First, following on from the point made by my noble friend Lord Borrie, the provision made to include trading standards in the list of exceptions does not give enough scope to ensure consumer protection from rogue traders, money launderers and scammers of all types across all sectors. In difficult economic times—and we certainly live in difficult economic times—consumers are more and more vulnerable to these crooks and opportunists. Therefore, the legislation we bring forward to protect consumers must be very carefully enacted and leave no gaps in that protection.

Secondly, Motion A1 allows for an exemption only if provided for by the Secretary of State through regulation. Trading standards officers are extremely concerned that if the Motion is carried they would lose their existing powers of entry—they have been protecting us, as consumers, for over 100 years—until such time as they may be reinstated by statutory instrument. That uncertainty is not in the best interests of today’s vulnerable consumers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Henley]

My noble friend is a great expert on the Human Rights Act and the House always defers to him when we discuss such matters. If there was a case of the sort that he implies, I am sure the courts would look at it in a manner that he thinks appropriate.

I am trying to make clear that we want to conduct a review over two years. I accept that there has been criticism from a number of colleagues, including my noble friend Lady Hamwee, who asked whether we could do it more quickly. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and my noble friend Lord Lawson also implied that we should do it more quickly. We will try to do it as quickly as possible but, as my honourable friend said in another place, we will also update Parliament on a six-monthly basis about how we are getting on. We think that this approach is the better one—to go through all the powers one by one, from department to department. Obviously, some departments will have a bigger workload than others. I understand that my old department, Defra, has rather a lot of powers. No doubt we will encourage them to work harder, and I and my colleagues in the Home Office will encourage them to do that. I think that is the better approach, and my noble friend’s approach—to bring in a blanket approach, accept that it is wrong and then bring in blanket exemptions—is not the right way forward.

[Lord Elton]

Will there be an opportunity in both Houses to debate the combined report when it is laid before Parliament before decisions are taken on legislation?

[Lord Henley]

I would hope that, as and when each power of entry is looked at, we will remove it as appropriate. I can assure my noble friend that we have already moved about 30 or so as part of the review. Most of those will require only secondary legislation to do that. It will be an ongoing process. As I made clear earlier, we will give a six-monthly update to Parliament on how we are doing this. At the end of that process I cannot give a commitment as to exactly what we will do. Certainly I am sure that my noble friend and others will hold us to account if we do not keep to that two-year programme. As I said, we want to do it more quickly if we can.