Canterbury City Council Bill

Peter Bone Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

I urge my hon. Friend not to do down the communist route of centrally dictating things, because these are individual Bills. It would not be beyond the wit of man to have little signs, as we do with conservation areas, for instance. That would be useful. Will the promoters of the Bill accept these amendments?

[Mr Chope]

I thank my hon. Friend for supporting these amendments. I have yet to hear officially, although in introducing their lordships’ amendments and mine at the beginning of the debate—I know my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough was not in his place at that time—our hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey implied en passant that he did not want to accept any of these amendments. Perhaps in the light of the ensuing debate, he will change his mind.

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[Mr Chope]

I would have hoped that we could trust councils to provide adequate training. The purpose of my amendment is to try to ensure that that happens. If the training is not adequate, it will be open to somebody to make a complaint to the council or the councillors; ultimately, it could be used as a defence to a fixed penalty notice or something like that—although I would not want to speculate on that. The test is that the officers must be properly trained: that is what the provisions would require—rather than that the council thought the training was adequate. I hope it would not be necessary to set up a new bureaucracy—an appeals panel or something like that—to deal with the situation, as we are already overburdened with bureaucracy and officialdom in this country, and we do not want even more of it.

My amendment (g) to Lords amendment C27 proposes the deletion of subsection (2), which makes training provided by the council mandatory. It states:

“The council shall make the training referred to in subsection (1) available also to constables and community support officers empowered by section 5(1) to give a fixed penalty notice.”

That is redundant, because constables and community support officers receive training that enables them to perform this function outside the ambit of any particular local Act relating to pedlars, and it is therefore unnecessary to require the council to become involved in training them. Obviously, if the chief constable asks the local council whether it will provide training for constables and community support officers, the council will probably be happy to oblige and to explain the procedure.

[Mr Bone]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way—he is being exceptionally generous—but did he mean to refer to the police and crime commissioner just now, rather than the chief constable?

[Mr Chope]

I think that it would be the chief constable in this instance. My understanding is that police and crime commissioners are there to decide whether to hire and fire, and to set out the budget for the police authorities, whereas operational issues are dealt with by the chief constables. I would regard the question of whether constables or community support officers on the beat are capable or knowledgeable enough to introduce or apply a fixed penalty notice regime as an operational issue.

[Mr Bone]

I would understand my hon. Friend’s logic if this were national legislation, but given that it is local legislation, by virtue of being a private Bill, surely it should be up to the police and crime commissioner to decide whether he wants to get involved with this nonsense at all.

[Mr Chope]

I take my hon. Friend’s point, but I trust that police and crime commissioners have bigger fish to fry.

I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey will support my amendments. As was made clear earlier, they also apply to the other Bills with which we are dealing today. We are not picking on Canterbury in particular, but it is the first Bill on the Order Paper.

[Philip Davies]

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) not just for his speech, although it was of the customary calibre, but for his dedication in ensuring that, if the Bill ever leaves this place, it will leave in a much better state than the state in which it arrived. Without my hon. Friend’s personal dedication to this issue, and his determination that we should do what we ought to do in this place—that is, defend people’s freedoms and defend enterprise—the Bill would have passed through Parliament in a much less satisfactory manner.

Like my hon. Friend, I am grateful for the work that was done by their lordships. I do not know whether my hon. Friend felt the same, but I feared that the Bill would go through on the nod in the House of Lords. Their lordships should be commended for going through it in great detail and considering the arguments properly, and, consequently, tabling some amendments with which I think we can be particularly pleased.

I agree with what my hon. Friend said about many of the amendments. He focused on the subject of seizures, and on the Lords amendments that proposed the omission of various clauses relating to it. He may recall that the issue caused great controversy when it was debated for the first time in this place. It struck me as unacceptable that local authorities should employ authorised officers to go around seizing people’s goods willy-nilly. As my hon. Friend will recall, we argued the case vehemently for many months. We were told that the clauses were essential to the Bill, and that without them it would be unworkable and meaningless. We were also told that the proposals in the amendments would be unenforceable, and that they were in effect wrecking amendments: that, if I remember rightly, is what my hon. Friend was accused of when he tried to persuade the promoters that what they were saying was over the top.

I should be interested to know why the promoters thought that removing those clauses then would wreck the Bill, whereas removing them today apparently does not wreck it all. It seems that it will still be fit to proceed into law. It is difficult for us to consider the merits of the amendments until we are given some satisfactory answers to the question of how important the clauses are to the Bill as a whole.

I have the impression that we have reached a stage at which the promoters are determined to produce an Act of Parliament, irrespective of what is in it and whether anything that is in it will ever be applied. This seems to have become a war of attrition, a battle of wills. The promoters seem merely to want an Act of Parliament to hang their hat on. I certainly support the removal of all these clauses—page after page of them—and I think we should be grateful for the fact that the promoters may have come round to my hon. Friend’s way of thinking.

[Mr Bone]

My hon. Friend has made a good point. Is there not a chance that because so much council tax payers’ money has been wasted on Bills that were not thought through thoroughly to start with, the promoters are determined to drive through a Bill to justify that waste?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right. A similar attitude was taken by the previous Government. The idea is to waste a lot of money on something that is clearly not working, and then, instead of drawing stumps and cutting your losses, to keep spending more and more, just so that there is something to show for all the money spent. All that happens, though, is that even more money is wasted.

[Mr Bone]

Is that not what the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) said in his autobiography about the Dome? The last Labour Government were affected by exactly the same syndrome.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is far better read than I am. The right hon. Gentleman’s book is gathering dust on my shelf, and I have not got round to reading it. However, I will look out for that section when I do get round to it. I agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch had to say about seizures, and our comments about seized items are on the record from the previous debates. I stand by what I said then and I am sure that he also stands by what he said, and I am delighted that their lordships have agreed.

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[Mr Chope]

Exactly—my hon. Friend is right to make that point.

[Mr Bone]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way—he is being exceptionally generous. In his desire to rush through his speech so that we can complete the business today, he has not admitted the fact that any obstruction of the highway is a police matter, and that they can deal with it. The measure is therefore superfluous.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Such measures are quite often a matter of interpretation. The trained police officer is in a far better position to interpret the law than a council that is prejudiced against the interests of pedlars. To reinforce the point about prejudice, the noble Lord Strasburger said on Third Reading that:

“It was alleged that pedlars create a situation that attracts pickpockets, but…no evidence was offered. It was also said that pedlars cause obstruction of the highway. Little evidence for this allegation was offered apart from a small number of cases where wide and expanding trolleys had been used…The witnesses who spoke for the local authorities were somewhat unconvincing. We heard evidence from pedlars that many council officers and the police are ignorant about the 1871 Act, and we also heard much evidence of a bullying culture on the part of council officials towards honest and hard-working pedlars.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 3 December 2012; Vol. 741, c. 451-52.]

That is why we need to be alert to the precise wording of the Lords amendments. We need to ensure that the intention is to establish a level playing field for pedlars and street traders, and to ensure that pedlars cannot be undermined by over-zealous or prejudiced council officials. For those reasons, Lords amendment C9 would be much improved by amendments (a) to (h), which I have tabled.

Amendment (h) would remove subsection (8), which states that:

“The provisions of sub-paragraph…(2)…of Schedule 4 to the 1982 Act shall apply to a resolution under this section as they apply to a resolution under that paragraph but as if…for ‘street’ there were substituted ‘area’”.

That completely undermines the concept of pedlars’ freedom to go from house to house and sell their wares on the public highway by trading from street to street.

The Lords amendments grouped under the heading “Pedlars and street trading” are a significant improvement.

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing that to the attention of the House, because it takes us back to our discussions on clause 4 in the previous Parliament. It was in the context of the provision of services that the issue of the services directive was raised. That was why, as I recall, we were arguing that the provision of services should not be covered under these particular local Acts. There seems to be a recognition that clause 4 is outlawed by the services directive. What I do not understand—I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about this—is why the directive also applies to pedlars who are dealing not in services, but goods. How does the directive apply to the sale of goods by pedlars? That is causing concern among the pedlar fraternity.

There may be as many as 4,000 pedlars in this country, so the implications are significant. They are concerned that if the legislation, which sets out a separate regime for pedlars and has been established for well over 100 years, is torn up and repealed, it may be that the significant status and freedom that pedlars have hitherto enjoyed—of being able to obtain a certificate and, as long as they are of good character, trade from door to door, place to place and town to town—will be removed from them.

As was said in their lordships’ House, pedlary goes back long before the time of Shakespeare to the time of Chaucer, if not before. Therefore, to tear up the 1871 Act, as the Government seem to be proposing in their consultation paper, would be damaging to the interests of pedlars.

[Mr Bone]

Perhaps my hon. Friend can explain something to me before he concludes his opening remarks on this group of amendments. It is Government policy to encourage micro-businesses, and pedlars are small business men at the very smallest level. Therefore, it appears to me that these councils are going against Government policy.

[Mr Chope]

That may well be so. If councils are going against Government policy, one would expect the Government to say to their supporters in the Chamber that they wish them to vote on the amendments in a particular way.

Sadly, my hon. Friend the Minister is temporarily not in his place, but I am delighted to see my hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands) in his place instead. I am sure he will make a careful note of what I am about to say. Under the heading, “Chapter 1 - Proposal to repeal the Pedlars Acts 1871 and 1881 (Part 2 of the draft Regulations at Annex A)”, the Government’s consultation paper, which is still out for consultation, reads:

“Below we detail our proposals (reflected in the proposed draft Regulations set out at Annex A) to repeal the Pedlars Acts 1871 and 1881 in relation to the whole of the UK.”

That is not a discussion of the possibility of repealing the Acts, but a specific proposal to repeal the Acts in toto. The proposal might still be out to consultation, but the Government have effectively made up their mind to repeal the Acts.

For reasons that my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) and others explained, the Government have been diffident about declaring their hand in relation to the provisions in the Bills when they have had the opportunity to do so. One of the difficulties when considering Lords amendments is finding out why they were proposed. As my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) just pointed out, removing clause 4 from this Bill and equivalent provisions in the other Bills was not referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey. It was taken as a given, despite its having significant implications.

Neither was there proper explanation of why, if they thought that removing clause 4 would satisfy the services directive, the Government now say that to satisfy it we would effectively have to repeal clause 5 in toto and not replace it with any other provision relating to pedlars.

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[Mr Chope]

The answer to my hon. Friend’s question is that when their lordships drew up these amendments in November 2011, the Government had not declared their hand. They did not do that until November 2012—and nobody can be blamed for not anticipating what the Government would say.

[Mr Bone]

I may be wrong, but could it possibly be that 0.88 metres is actually equivalent to a yard?

[Mr Chope]

If that is correct, I am grateful to my hon. Friend; I cannot understand why we do not use yards and feet rather than refer to 0.88 metres. We always say when we come to this place that we always learn something. That is certainly something I have learned today, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for it.

Let me reach a summation on these particular issues. I have seen some movement on the part of my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey, and I hope he will ensure that we have time to listen to the Minister’s response, as it is very important for the Minister to send out some clear messages to pedlars, many of whom are very worried by the proposed changes to the legislation and are confused by the attitude of the Government, particularly towards amendment C9 when looked at alongside the Government’s consultation paper.

I fear that an atmosphere is developing in which the Bill’s promoters think, “Well, it has taken us so long, so rather than try to improve it further, we might as well try to drive it home as quickly as we can and curtail debate as much as possible”, which obviously has the effect of creating a reaction. We know that the House’s procedures have resulted in a considerable curtailing of the rights of Members to speak in some debates. Fortunately, in private business, we still have the right to try to insist on getting the promoters of Bills to listen to our arguments.

I think that that is what we are looking for on this occasion. We are asking the promoters to reflect on the arguments that we have presented, and to consider tabling their own amendments to the Lords amendments. One of the virtues of a debate organised in this way is that, in this instance, we have so far discussed and voted on only Lords amendments C3, C4 and C5, which means that the promoters still have an opportunity to table their own amendments to those on which we have not yet voted.

[Mr Bone]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s full explanation of the position. As I understand it, the benefit of the procedure that we are using today will result, eventually, in a better Act of Parliament. By allowing the promoters to reflect on the arguments and then come up with amendments that may even improve on those tabled by my hon. Friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) and me, we are likely to end up with a much better Bill. Would it not be great if the Government followed the example set by private business and dropped programme motions? Then this could happen week in, week out when we debated Government business.

[Mr Chope]

I think that there is a strong case for asking the Procedure Committee to look into the possibility of applying the principles relating to private business to public business. What has happened today demonstrates the virtues of being able to engage in what might be described as an iterative process, during which we discuss the issues, and the promoters have a chance to reflect on the points that have been made—over weeks, months or years—and to respond to them accordingly.

I do not need to speak any longer on this group of amendments—[Hon. Members: “Shame!”] I know that—