Peter Bottomley
Main Page: Peter Bottomley (Conservative - Worthing West)London Local Authorities Bill [Lords]
Peter Bottomley Excerpts(12 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Chope
I first congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) on another brilliant contribution to this debate. I particularly enjoyed his peroration, which was a paean of praise for liberty. It is appropriate that the people who support liberty are well represented in the Chamber tonight, whereas those who have always been in favour of restricting liberty are not well represented.
As you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, this group of amendments was first debated on the occasion of our Prime Minister’s visit to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. It was the first time that a Prime Minister had visited the Parliamentary Assembly for some 30 years. As a member of the Parliamentary Assembly, I was in Strasbourg rather than here. That is why I was unable to introduce the group of amendments and to move amendment 22. My hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset has done so with tremendous expertise. He has kept his remarks succinct and to the point, and has given us an example of how we should deal with such matters in this Chamber.
Amendment 22 goes to the root of the Bill and is likely to be the one in this group upon which we will have a Division, but I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer) has accepted amendment 26, and I hope that in due course I will have the chance to move it formally and that the House will support it.
Amendment 22 suggests leaving out clause 9, entitled “Street trading: vehicles and the internet”. The way in which the promoters of the Bill have described the purpose of the clause is slightly disingenuous, because they state that it
“would amend the street trading provisions of the London Local Authorities Act 1990 so as to clarify that vehicles which are for sale in the course of a business on the internet and which are parked on the street fall within the licensing regime.”
That implies that they believe such vehicles may already be covered by that Act. Why do they not have the courage of their convictions and say that the purpose of the clause is to extend the current provisions to bring the sale of vehicles on the internet in the course of business within the ambit of that Act? They say that it
“would not apply to residents or other individuals selling their own vehicle on an occasional basis.”
We must be grateful for small mercies such as that and the fact that amendment 26 is to be incorporated into clause 10, so that it will carry a similar caveat.
I have always believed that we need to examine carefully the text of Bills such as this, to ensure that they have apparent clarity. We are discussing the creation of new offences, and if people are to be charged with those offences, or find themselves losing their trade and livelihood or being otherwise punished, it is vital that they should know exactly where they stand. The exchange between my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset and my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris) illustrated vividly the misunderstandings that can arise when there is ambiguous wording. Clause 9 does not state where the street in question has to be. It states that the motor vehicle has to be
“kept on a street during the period when it is so exposed or offered for sale”.
There is ambiguity about the location at which an offence will be committed. Will it be where the vehicle is kept or where the owner resides? That is a significant question, because if there is a problem in Castle Point—I accept what my hon. Friend said about that—it will inevitably be made worse if we interpret clause 9 as prohibiting people who are resident in London from keeping their cars on a street in London when they are exposed or offered for sale on the internet.
For how long must a vehicle be kept on a street? The clause states that it must be
“during the period when it is so exposed or offered for sale.”
As my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset said, it is possible to put something on the internet and leave it there for some time. Sometimes, one looks at a property on the internet and says, “Gosh, that’s a really well priced property”, but when one looks at it in more detail, one finds that it was actually being offered at that price about five years ago and has long since been either sold or withdrawn from the market. Things can be advertised for sale on the internet without anybody being sure whether that exposure or offer for sale is current and up to date.
The expression
“exposed or offered for sale”
is used in the Bill. What is the difference between being exposed for sale and offered for sale on the internet? I hope that when my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green responds to the debate he will be able to explain why it was thought necessary to include both those expressions.
A lot of people buy and sell vehicles, and it is hard to know when they cross the dividing line between a purely private sale and a sale in the course of a business. How will that be defined and policed? If a person sells one vehicle on the internet, will that mean he is doing so in the course of a business, or will there need to be evidence that he has sold other vehicles on the internet, or that the internet site or advertisement used contains more than one vehicle registered in his name?
Nor do we know whether the person exposing a motor vehicle for sale on the internet will have to be its owner. Many people have agents acting on their behalf who sell things without ownership having passed to them. If a sale is made, a commission payment may be due to them. We do not know whether it is intended that the clause will apply to anybody whose vehicle is advertised whether or not they are selling it in the course of a business. For example, if I were to use an intermediary to advertise my vehicle on the internet on my behalf, although I would be exposing it for sale as a private individual, the intermediary would be doing so as a business proposition. Would that mean that my private sale would contradict the provisions of clause 9? It is disingenuous in the extreme for the promoters to say that it is a clause of clarification, because it significantly extends the restrictions upon street trading by widening enormously the definition of street trading in London.
A point that has already been made in the debate, but is worth making again, is that we are talking about London local authorities. If there is a real problem such as my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point described, it should surely be dealt with in a public Bill rather than in piecemeal, incremental legislation such as the Bill. Clause 9 relates specifically to the whole of London; clauses 10, 11 and 12 relate specifically to the City of Westminster; and clauses 13, 14, 15 and 16 relate to Camden. That follows a pattern that we have seen with a number of private Bills whereby the City of Westminster goes ahead first, and then the legislation that they get through is applied for by the London local authorities collectively, or perhaps by the London borough of Camden or another London authority—the idea being, I think, that nobody will take much notice if just one borough is doing it. Then the precedent is set and other boroughs follow suit, and before we know it we have a whole series of pieces of private legislation that come together and act significantly to restrict the liberties of the individual.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
When I have had responsibility, I have always found that if one tries something out and it works, other people want to copy it. Local authorities will need to promote their own legislation in order to have the same powers as those in places where it has worked elsewhere. Surely the critical thing is whether the powers have had a beneficial effect on the public.
Mr Chope
That is a very potent intervention, because it covers several different issues. My hon. Friend is basically saying that it should be open to an individual local authority to be able to carry out an experiment. I do not think that anybody disputes the advantages that certain experiments can have, but there is no reason why an experiment cannot be contained in a public Bill or have a sunset clause. I am not sure that he has dealt with the concerns that we have been expressing.
As for whether the Bill is in the public interest, it is obviously important that any legislation that goes on to the statute book is in the public interest, but what do we mean by “public”? A private Bill operates differently as between one part of the country and another. My hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green may say that the Bill is arguably in the interests of the public in London, but is it also in the interests of the public in boroughs adjacent to London that will not be covered by it and where there may well be a spill-over effect that is adverse to their interests?
Sir Peter Bottomley
At the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, is my hon. Friend arguing that we should not allow local authorities to apply for powers to try something out, or that because it might be suitable for one local authority, every local authority should have the same powers at the same time? One has to decide whether one is a conservative or a socialist, and I think that my hon. Friend is trespassing slightly from our side of the House.
Mr Chope
If my hon. Friend’s intention is to provoke me by describing me as a socialist, he has certainly succeeded. I have always been a great believer in enabling legislation. There is nothing to prevent the Government from introducing a public Bill that enables local authorities to carry out an experiment if they want to, and then, if they do not like what they are doing, to amend the laws locally. A public Bill with enabling powers is a much better way of meeting my hon. Friend’s concerns.
Mr Chope
I note from my hon. Friend’s gestures that he accepts that that would be a better way forward. I hope that the Minister will also be able to endorse that line of argument when he expresses his views about why local authorities should not be encouraged to bring forward these private Bills, which seem to be taking up an inordinate amount of debating time in the House.
Sir Peter Bottomley
I think that it would be an objective remark to say that the amount of time taken up is determined by those who speak, not by the amount of legislation.
Mr Chope
Again, I differ with my hon. Friend. It is a function of the quality of the legislation. A good Bill that is well drafted and commands popular support will go through very quickly, as we saw earlier in this Session with the private Member’s Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Jonathan Lord). He hardly had a chance to get a word in edgeways on his own Bill—his maiden Bill—because it sped through all its stages, and that is because it was well drafted, pertinent and met a need.
Sir Peter Bottomley
I think that my hon. Friend has taken our hon. Friend’s words too precisely. If these are places where residents park, rather than places restricted to residents parking, and if, in effect, it becomes a street market for cars, why should there not be the same regulations as for street markets of stalls? Will he address his mind to that issue? A local authority does not tolerate street markets without local byelaws. The same thing applies to the sale of cars in places where residents park.
Mr Chope
I understand the distinction between the points made by my two hon. Friends. Surely the solution to the problem raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) is for the local authority to create a residents’ parking regime on the road that is being used, to the annoyance of local residents, by a lot of vehicles not based in that area.
Even in my constituency, which is semi-rural, people are taking literally the idea that the Government are encouraging them to park and ride. They think that they can park on any piece of highway, even if it causes lots of problems. I have an issue involving a residential school for disabled children where the staff can no longer park on the highway by the school because people commuting to London are parking there earlier in the morning—about 7 o’clock—and teaming up for lifts to places such as Southampton Parkway station. That is creating a problem.
The solution is not, however, for East Dorset district council to promote a private Bill; the solution is for it to use the powers it already has to regulate parking in that area. From my experience as a London borough councillor, I would suggest that where a lot of people are parking in residential streets close to rail termini or underground stations, the solution is for the local authority to introduce a parking restriction between, say, 8 am and 10 am, making it impossible for a commuter to park in that space over the period and leaving it available for longer-term residents or people who wish to use the space for legitimate residential purposes.
If there is a mischief here, it applies not just to parts of London but right across the country, and it can be resolved by local authorities exercising their powers sensibly under the principle of localism without having to introduce heavy-handed private legislation.
Mr Chope
Either that or there are too many cars—that might be another interpretation. Or, there are too many people—I should perhaps plead guilty to this myself—who aspire to sort out the car that is firing on only two cylinders, but in the meantime they get another car and keep the car that is not working very well, thinking that at some stage it will be useful to them, so they end up with more cars than they really need. The Government are dealing with that problem by increasing car tax well beyond the rate of inflation.
However, I return to the point that if there is a scarcity of on-road parking space, that is for the local authority to deal with. If somebody has a lot of cars on a space, they can remain there provided they are licensed. However, if the local authority introduces a rule saying that a resident can have only one parking permit, for example—I am sure that is the situation in quite a lot of London boroughs, and certainly Lambeth, which I know for these purposes—that means that each resident in a household can have only one car with a residents’ parking permit. Therefore, introducing a residential control zone will sort out the problem of vehicles being sold on the internet for street trading purposes.
Sir Peter Bottomley
In the last 30 minutes I have failed to distinguish whether my hon. Friend, in his clever way, is saying that he is against local authorities having the powers in question or whether he thinks that they should not have them under this Bill. Could he please clear up the confusion?
Mr Chope
I am sorry that there is any confusion, but I am happy to try to clear it up. I am speaking to the proposals in this Bill that local authorities should have the powers, because I am against cluttering up the statute book with unnecessary legislation, particularly that which purports to be necessary to address a particular mischief, when that mischief can be addressed in another way, without using public or private legislation. In answer to my hon. Friend’s point, my objection is to this particular Bill and the way it is being used to try to deal with a mischief that, if there be that mischief, could be dealt with another way, without the use of these draconian powers.
Mr Chope
I understand the scenario that my hon. Friend is describing, but could not that problem be resolved by introducing a residents’ parking regime, such as the one that already exists in Westminster, under which no resident may have more than one parking permit? That mischief would not exist under such a regime.
Sir Peter Bottomley
I hesitate to suggest a practical answer to the problem, but there are plenty of people living in Westminster who like to park on the single yellow lines after 6.30 and at weekends, and it is also possible for their friends and family members to do so. If they were to discover that some business was taking up all that parking space, and not paying rates as most conventional sellers of cars do, they would want that problem to be solved. When my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) was a distinguished local councillor in London, he and his council occasionally used the kind of legislation that is being proposed here to the great advantage of his local residents, and I suspect that those who are promoting this Bill would like it to allow them to do the same.
Mr Chope
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the latter part of his intervention. I like to think that, when I was the leader of Wandsworth council, we did not waste a lot of money on promoting private Bills to try to oppress our residents. Our policy was very much the reverse of that. If Westminster can deal with this problem, I do not see why other councils cannot do so. My hon. Friend talks about there being a problem after hours, but what would happen to the cars during the day? Would they suddenly appear after hours?
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One of the dangers of these provisions, and one of the ills that the amendments seek to address, is that they send out a very negative message about entrepreneurship. It sends out the message that if someone tries to use their initiative and start off in the motor trade we will jump on them, try to put an end to it and stop them starting out in life.
Sir Peter Bottomley
Regrettably, I suspect that our hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) has misled our hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall).
Sir Peter Bottomley
Unintentionally. If the entrepreneur were selling soap from a stall with four wheels on the public highway, with or without the use of the internet, that would normally be caught by local government regulations. The fact is that selling a car with four wheels on the highway, using the internet, is not the same as selling soap. One can either ignore the fact that the internet has been developed since previous local authority powers over selling cars on the highway were introduced, or say that the internet needs to be taken into account. If a local authority is saying, “We would like to have the same power to deal with trading on the public highway using the internet for advertising as we have for trading using the local newspaper,” I am not absolutely certain that a single sentence of the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North is directed at what the power in clause 9, or clause 10, are aiming to do.
Mr Nuttall
I see where my hon. Friend is coming from, but clause 9 does send out a message, because I do not see such people as street traders. They may well have just one vehicle to sell, and they have to put it somewhere, but, as we have seen from the case to which I referred earlier, there is a danger that it would be caught by the clause.
I also draw the attention of the House to another problem that I have identified with the clause. The clause is headed, “Street trading: vehicles and the internet” and deals specifically and only with
“exposed or offered for sale on the internet”,
in subsection (2). It does not deal with the many other ways in which a vehicle might be offered for sale in the modern world without actually being said to be “on the internet”. Perhaps the biggest example is when a company has an intranet. An intranet is by all definitions, as far I have been able to check in my research, not regarded—
Mr Chope
I think that may well be so. Indeed, I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, because in the course of this Bill’s progress the promoters have accepted a lot of the ideas and criticism put forward by me and my parliamentary colleagues. That vindicates the whole process of giving such Bills detailed scrutiny.
Sir Peter Bottomley
There is a distinction between vindication and the reason for something happening, is there not?
Sir Peter Bottomley
At the risk of repeating myself, there is a distinction between vindication and the result of certain people’s activities.
Mr Chope
I do not understand that, because what happened was that the wisdom of a lot of the amendments that we tabled immediately commended itself to the promoters of the Bill. That is why we have just agreed to a group of amendments that will make the Bill much better than it would have been. Fortunately, some of the most pernicious parts of the Bill were taken out in Committee. Therefore, the Bill that we will be considering when we resume our Third Reading debate will be very different from the Bill that was presented to this House after it had gone through the other place.
Sir Peter Bottomley
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. There are times in Committee when an amendment has been discussed at length and then the Chair can decide that there has been sufficient debate on the issues and the question is put. Would it be acceptable to move that the question now be put that the Bill be read a third time, on the grounds that during the discussions on the various amendments we have had sufficient discussion of the purpose of the Bill, and if so, may I move that the question now be put?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
No. It would not be proper, and no, the Question cannot be put, as a second point of order.