London Local Authorities and Transport for London (No. 2) Bill [Lords]

Peter Bone Excerpts

Tuesday 6th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

I simply repeat the point I have made: if they are a menace in London, or indeed in Oxford, the matter should be dealt with on a national basis and not in a piecemeal way through a London local authorities Bill. As we have heard, pedicabs will not be dealt with in any way at all. We now hear that, having spent all these years on the one clause that might go some way towards dealing with something that someone is concerned about, it will not be dealt with by the Bill. I shall come to that shortly.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for his introduction and for acting on behalf of the promoters in the House. He has been passed the baton by our hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), who, I notice, is not in his place. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East will look to make the same scintillating speed of progress as our hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green made with the London Local Authorities Bill.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East referred to the fact that 10 Bills have been promoted by the London local authorities. I do not know over what period, but I assume it is since the Greater London council was abolished—[Interruption.] I now hear that some were introduced before the GLC was abolished. My hon. Friend said that it was not uncommon for a Bill to be promoted in that way, but if I were a London council tax payer, I would ask why some of those Bills were not consolidated and dealt with in a rather more organised way than the current piecemeal and haphazard approach.

We debated a Bill that deals with three or four things last week and we will debate another one next week, and the London Local Authorities and Transport (No. 2) Bill, which we are debating now, deals with six or seven different matters. I cannot see why they could not be brought together in one Bill, but I can see that it provides a good deal of work for the parliamentary agents who draft Bills and prepare the various petitions that are lodged in opposition to them.

What is common to all those London Bills is that each brings with it more regulation, more red tape, more bureaucracy and more rules for Londoners and visitors to London. This Bill has had a very long gestation period indeed. The petition for it was lodged as long ago as 27 November 2007. We have already heard this evening that the discussions and planning go back some years even before that.

The petition was lodged as long ago as four and a quarter years, and First Reading took place in the other place on 22 January 2008—incidentally, the day after the then Transport Minister, the right hon. Member for Doncaster Central (Ms Winterton), wrote a four-page letter to point out that the Bill was defective in many ways. So, even before it reached the First Reading starting gate, the right hon. Lady had written to the Chairman of Committees, Lord Brabazon of Tara, a four-page letter stating, in a nutshell, that the Bill did not comply with the European convention on human rights, not just in one particular but in several particulars. One would have thought that with all their experience of promoting Bills, the London local authorities would at least have got these matters right before drafting the Bill. Nevertheless, the Bill received its First Reading on 22 January 2008.

Not much happened after that, as we have heard, and on 17 November 2008 the other place resolved that the Bill’s promoters should have leave to suspend further proceedings on the Bill until the next Session. This House concurred with their lordships in their resolution on 19 November. Not much happened until Monday 9 March 2009, when a Select Committee of five noble Lords began a three-day hearing into the Bill’s contents and to listen to the petitioners’ objections. There were three petitions in the Lords, which for reasons of brevity I will not go into, although later I will touch on the Commons petitions.

The petitions were dealt with at length over three days, and the result was 119 pages of evidence. One would consider that pretty detailed analysis but unfortunately most of the evidence related to matters not before the House today. The Bill considered by the other place contained many more clauses than this Bill. I think it contained 38 clauses, whereas this Bill has 23. That is quite an attrition rate in the number of clauses in the four years since the Bill was originally introduced. The Committee reported to their lordships on 2 April 2009. Again, however, unfortunately for today’s proceedings, much of what was considered in the report from the then Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) has been removed from the Bill in the other place. The hon. Gentleman is now the shadow Minister and is in his place this evening, and I am sure he will recall signing the said document and will no doubt be able to recall its contents exactly. There is very little left worth commenting on from that report and from those three days of detailed examination of the Bill in the other place.

On 29 October 2009—more than six months after that report was presented to their lordships—the House of Lords resolved for a second time to give leave to the promoters to suspend proceedings on the Bill and, if they saw fit, to proceed with it in the following Session. This House concurred with the resolution of their lordships on 3 November 2009. I have to give the promoters of these Bills one thing: they are nothing if not determined. It will therefore be no surprise to the House to hear that the Bill was duly reintroduced, on 19 November 2009.

Yet again, it would appear that nothing happened for several months—according to the official Parliament website, that is—until the Bill was for some reason reintroduced on 28 June 2010. However, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East, there was in fact a great deal of activity behind the scenes. Great chunks of the Bill were being removed and it was slimmed down to its current state. [Interruption.] I think I said earlier that it had 38 clauses; in fact, it had 39 in those days. Following what we might refer to for present purposes as the Select Committee stage—obviously the procedure is different with a normal public Bill—clauses 4 to 14 were removed, and amendments were made to clauses 16 and 21. Also, clauses 26 and 27 were removed on Third Reading, to which I shall turn shortly. Either way, the Bill was losing clauses at quite a swift rate.

Third Reading took place in the other place on 28 March 2011. It is perhaps worth noting how few people took part in that debate. After four years, one might assume that this Bill had been considered by dozens and dozens of their noble lordships and baronesses; in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. The Bill was considered by just five noble lords in Committee. On Third Reading, it was discussed by just six more. So, as far as I can see, a total of just 11 noble lords took part in the debates on the Bill in the other place.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

My hon. Friend has made an interesting point about the number of Members in the Committee in the Lords. If there were only five present, was there a quorum?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend says, “Why not?” from a sedentary position. I commend the Third Reading report to all interested Members, as it sets out the problems that their lordships saw with the Bill, to some of which they drew this House’s attention. Indeed, they invited this House to look at it again to deal with the problems they had identified in our further consideration.

Earl Attlee said on Third Reading:

“The Government are committed not to create new offences unless it is truly necessary to do so.”

One problem is that the Bill seeks to create new offences. I would accept that in one respect—responsibility and liability in respect of skips transferred from the police to local authorities—but the general thrust of the Bill is to create more rules and more regulation. Earl Attlee went on to say that the Government had not reached a final conclusion about the matter. He said:

“The Government’s position on increasing the burden on business is very clear and we will be considering”—

we should note the future tense—

“whether, in our view, the Bill would create an unacceptable burden on business in order to make our views known before the Bill reaches Committee stage in the other place.”

We may hear more about the Government’s view when we hear from the Minister later.

According to what Lord Attlee said, I understand that the Government had notified the Bill’s promoters that some clauses could be improved or altered by minor amendments, particularly regarding the affixing of street furniture to buildings. One specific suggestion was made—that the owner of the building should be served with a notice, giving the exact date on which the work would begin, and setting out the terms of the use of electric vehicle charging points installed and operated under the Bill’s powers. The noble Lord went on to say:

“We will be seeking to reach agreement on amendments with the promoters before Committee stage in the other place as it is then that the Bill can next be substantially amended.” —[Official Report, House of Lords, 28 March 2011; Vol. 726, c. 1034.]

I emphasise the words “substantially amended”. Clearly, on Third Reading in the other place, the Government had serious reservations.

[Mr Bone]

My hon. Friend is gracious in giving way. I draw his attention to clause 16 on gated roads, where we seem to be creating an offence that does not need to be made. I see these barriers all over the country. Surely we do not need another law; if they were interfered with, that would presumably be criminal damage in the first place.

[Mr Nuttall]

I have not yet reached the subject of gated roads, but it is probably possible to pick at random a part of the Bill that creates a new offence, rule or law, to which is attached a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale.

As my hon. Friend says, there are gated roads all over the country, and if that is a problem in the capital city of our great country, it is no doubt just as likely to be a problem on a country road somewhere out in the shires. If the correct way of dealing with the problem is to introduce legislation that creates a criminal offence—which is what we are doing here—it is surely correct to deal with it by means of legislation that covers the whole country, not just the capital.

Many things have happened since the Bill’s introduction in the other place as long ago as 27 November 2007, four and a quarter years ago. For instance, we have had a general election, and the Localism Bill—now the Localism Act 2011—received Royal Assent on 15 November last year. I am sure that several London local authorities have undergone a change of political control since 2007, and I wonder to what extent the promoters of the Bill considered those changes.

The Localism Act gives local authorities a general power of competence. It has completely changed the regime in which authorities operate: they no longer have to seek specific authority from this place to go off and do something, because the Act allows them to do it unless another Act tells them that they cannot. To what extent has that been taken into account by the promoters? Moreover, residents have been given the power to institute local referendums. If this is the problem that some Members think it is—as we heard earlier—I am sure that some residents will be hot on the heels of local councillors with petitions asking for something to be done about it.

After many years of delay, things speeded up after the Bill’s Third Reading in the House of Lords on 28 March 2011, and it appears to have been given its First Reading in this House on the same day. I believe that that is the only occasion on which anything to do with this Bill has ever happened speedily. It has, however, attracted four new petitions, from Bugbugs Media Ltd, Reliable Rickshaws Ltd, the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, the Society of London Theatre, the Theatrical Management Association, and the London Cab Drivers Club. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East said, the promoters of the Bill managed to achieve the rare feat of upsetting the petitioners on both sides. They could not really win. Whatever they did, they were bound to upset somebody. I suspect they have probably reached the right conclusion by deciding to upset both sides and withdraw clause 17.

Let us return to the question of the cost to the London council tax payer. The organisations concerned—private limited companies, trade bodies and, indeed, trade unions—have been put to expense in having to raise these petitions. I dare say the solicitors and parliamentary agents were not acting for nothing; they could have been acting on a pro bono basis, and if they were I am sure someone will rise to tell me so—but the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington is not doing so. I therefore assume these people were being paid rather handsomely for their good services. These Bills are by no means a no-cost option, therefore.

Over the past four years there has been an attrition rate of four clauses per year. However, only 10 minutes after the start of the opening speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East, we heard that another clause is to go. We have made good progress, therefore: the first clause went in 10 minutes. If we carry on at this rate, the Bill will be gone in a couple of days—but if we carry on at the same rate as things have been moving since the Bill started its life, we may, sadly, have to wait another six years before it withers away to its natural end.