Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Lord Jenkin of Roding Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, I shall add a word or two to what the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, said. When the Minister addressed the House last Tuesday, he made it clear, and I certainly accepted, that the exception is very much smaller than had originally been assumed by many of those who read the clause in the Government’s original amendment. It excepts a particular class of itinerant scrap dealer; namely, those who have been the subject of an order under Section 3 of the 1964 Act. I am sure that my noble friend is entirely right that that is a much smaller number of people than many had originally assumed.

I made such inquiries as I could to find out how many of these people there are and whether there is any recent trend in people seeking to include themselves in the loophole—as it certainly is—in the injunction for cashless transactions only. A good many authorities that were questioned were quite unable to supply the answer. That does not suggest that at the moment there are very many people who are subject to this. However—and this seems to me to be important—since it has come out that there is this one exemption from the requirement that dealings should be made otherwise than for cash, the numbers are increasing.

When the section that I referred to was originally enacted, it was with a view to exempting those who would be subject to an order under the Scrap Metal Dealers Act from the requirement to keep records of from whom they acquired the scrap metal and the nature of the metal. I remember that when I was first married, the children were fascinated because there was a man who went down the street with a horse and cart and used to shout out as he went down, which was imitated by the children. They thought he was saying, “Hey, Tubby the Tuba”. Of course, it was not that, but I do not know what he was saying. With that kind of dealer, one can understand the intention that he should not have to keep records. All he was doing was collecting people’s leaking kettles and other forms of waste metal from local householders. It is not like that now at all. It has developed in the 48 years since that Act was passed into an entirely different kind of trade. For instance, when the local authority in Birmingham was questioned, it said that in the course of a year it would normally see 10 or so new itinerant traders seeking inclusion in an order under the Act. In the past few days it has had no fewer than 12. They are already running into this loophole. They want to continue to be able to deal in cash. As the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, has said, this is knocking a very large hole in the measures that we are taking to deal with what has become a very mighty scourge of the community in all sorts of ways.

The more widely this exemption is known, the greater the number of traders who will seek to bring themselves under it. That is what frightens me about this. The exemption does not allow them to go cashless; it is the exemption from other forms of control, leaving people able to continue to deal in cash for materials that will simply never be traceable. That has been defined as the heart of the problem. To their great credit, the Government have introduced a substantial measure, albeit short of the reform that I originally described some months ago as the amendment of the “Steptoe and Son” legislation of the last millennium. That will come, we have been promised that; but in the mean time, they are leaving themselves with a hole.

In addition to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, I have two questions. First, can the Minister explain why the Government are making this exemption? Of course, you could not have expected what I have called the “Hey, Tubby the Tuba” chap with his horse and cart to maintain records and pay by cheque—of course, long before there was any plastic money in the form of cards—and that may have been perfectly reasonable. All sorts of market traders now are able to take payments with the electronic equipment that is available. There is no problem with people like that being able to pay for their products and services and so on in that way. So why are we left with an exemption for people who no longer exist in the form in which they did when the Act was originally passed?

Secondly, how many of them will there be? What is the Government’s estimate of how many are going to, as it were, pour through this loophole in an effort to maintain what has been right at the heart of this burgeoning crime of the stealing of metal of all sorts? The consequences of that crime have been described over and over again, some of them extremely serious in terms of the damage to people, the inconvenience, the cost and so on. Why are we leaving this loophole and how many people are going to be subject to this exemption?

Like the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, I have not found anybody who is concerned with this who has not been deeply disturbed by what is otherwise an entirely welcome piece of legislation, which we are very glad to see even at this fairly late stage in the passage of this Bill. Why is this loophole being left? It is going to be serious. It will increase and we will have to wait for months before we can get the new legislation in place that the Government have promised. I add my words of considerable dismay that we have this now. It may well be that there is something else that I have not understood about the exemption. If so, my noble friend on the Front Bench will no doubt tell us what it is. But at the moment there is not anybody concerned with the trade who for the life of them can see why.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, the Minister’s case last week was predicated almost exclusively on the basis that the group of people who were exempt was small in number. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, has driven a coach and horses through that argument on the basis of the research that he has done over the past few days. It is what we have repeatedly warned the Minister will happen; namely, that the trade will increase in the hands of the itinerants as against those who trade at the moment for cash in this area.

The questions that I asked last week remain unanswered. First, why do we have to wait for a five-year review? It is enshrined in legislation, is it not? Secondly, why can we not have a review, let us say, in six months? In the event that a review were to reveal that what the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, has indicated tonight is true, what mechanism in legislation exists for repealing the provisions that have been driven through Parliament tonight, at nearly midnight, in what is, once again, a late night debate?

The question in my mind is simple: what could go wrong over the next few months? We know now that the itinerant trade will increase. We also know that it is distinctly probable that thieves who steal this material will sell it to itinerant traders who will find some way to break it up, to sell it abroad or to bring it into the market in a way whereby it cannot be traced. Under the new arrangements, it will be very difficult, as we move to greater itinerant control over the market, to track illegal material, which is the very reverse of the intention of the Government in introducing this legislation. It will also move more of the trade into the hands of traders who will not be making VAT returns. They almost exist in a shadow market of people who will always trade for cash and they will always find ways of trading for cash. Nor will they ever be accountable in any way to the Inland Revenue.

The noble Lord smiles in his seat as he dismisses this case, but I think that Ministers are totally out of touch with the real world out there of people who trade in cash and how they operate, and how they simply do not exist anywhere in official records. They are the people who increasingly will take over, as the noble Lord has just suggested, this trade.

We have also not considered the knock-on consequences on traders who trade currently on the margins of legitimacy and who at least could be more effectively regulated if the right regulatory framework was to be put in place at this stage when it is clearly not being put in place. Even at this late stage of this legislation, I believe that Ministers should reconsider the position.

The noble Lord is about to get up and he will tell us all that we have got it wrong; that we do not understand how the market works; that they will be able to regulate the trade; and that these people are already covered by existing legislation. Let me tell the noble Lord that we simply do not believe him. We believe that in a matter of months, or certainly within a few years, it will become quite obvious that this legislation is failing in its intent and it will no doubt be revealed in the tabloids. Stories will surface saying that despite the legislation that was introduced, the trade is still going on. The problem is that an accelerated approach has been taken to the legislating in this area without taking into account the need to accompany this legislation with other legislation, as well as reform of other legislation, as referred to by my noble friend in his earlier contribution.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Henley]

Perhaps the noble Lord could just calm down a bit. It is late at night and we are trying to answer this problem in an appropriate manner.

I want to end by reiterating that we are committed to reviewing the Scrap Metal Dealers Act as soon as parliamentary time allows. That is why I dismissed the idea that it could not be done in less than five years. When we do so, we will be looking very hard at the role and regulation of scrap-metal dealers and itinerant collectors. I want to repeat the point that all noble Lords ought to grasp. It is not true that itinerant collectors can come by their own whim—they must go through a local authority inspection process and one that requires the approval of the local police. That is the important matter.

I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, will accept that the clarification I have given has dealt with the various questions he put to me and that he will be content to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

One of the questions that I asked my noble friend was why it was felt necessary to make this exemption. There is nothing new in what my noble friend said tonight that went beyond what he said last week and what my own researches have shown. Why is there still this exemption for the kind of chap whom I described in my speech of 40 years ago? The 1964 Act was passed a few months before I became a Member of the other place, which is rather a long time ago. Why is it necessary to have this exemption now? My noble friend has not fully satisfied me on that.