London Local Authorities Bill [Lords]

Rebecca Harris Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that point. It is, of course, human to err and divine to forgive, so we will be very forgiving of that error in this instance.

I do not like the clause at all. I have tabled my own amendment, which would get rid of it altogether, for much the same arguments as those I made about clause 9. In reality, we do not want high penalties for people who do things that cause modest inconvenience. A few people having a few cars on the road is not the end of the world.

[Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)]

I think my hon. Friend is misunderstanding the scale of the problem, which is often not a modest inconvenience. I have residents in my borough of Castle Point, which will not be covered by this legislation, who have been extremely inconvenienced by large numbers of cars parked on residential streets. That means that young mums with lots of children and paraphernalia have to walk a considerable distance to their homes and the elderly lady of whom my hon. Friend spoke, who might wish to sell her car, is also an elderly lady who cannot get close to her home for other cars and who is frightened by having to walk several streets in the dark at night because she cannot park near her home. I do not think that that is a modest inconvenience.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that wise intervention. It is like squeezing a balloon. I doubt, Mr Deputy Speaker, that you have ever squeezed a balloon, which is rather a childish habit, but if people do, they find that it goes in at the middle and a bit goes up and down and out of the way—[Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire says it is like a water bed; I have never had the disadvantage—or advantage or pleasure—of sleeping on a water bed, so I really cannot comment.

To develop the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), if people shift from the centre towards the suburbs and then further out, it would not be too bad because at least business would be carried on. We rail against the European Union for introducing more and more regulation against business. In speech after speech, particularly from the Government Benches, we say we want more business and we want to deregulate so that business can get on with what it is trying to do. But then what do we do? We have this musty, hangover Bill that has been mouldering around in Parliament for several years, and because nobody is willing to stand up and say that it ought to be a dead duck, it keeps on going. I am sorry for the mixed metaphors; the dead ducks would have had to be stuffed to be in that musty and mouldering condition.

The Bill is an improper and bad way of legislating, and it is fundamentally against Conservative principles. I am glad that there are Lib Dems in the Chamber, because I do not think the Bill upholds Lib Dem principles either. One of the great virtues of the historic Liberal party, and one of the things that I have always thought made it so attractive and why I quite like the coalition, is that Liberals are genuinely liberal in parts; they believe that people should be relatively free and regulated only when it is essential, rather than for the convenience of the bureaucrat. In the order of priority, the bureaucrat comes pretty low down. The measure may be convenient for a few people who are strolling along, but we have to weigh up the inconvenience caused when parking spaces are taken, with the weight of the law coming down on people and the risk of putting them out of business and conceivably out of work.

[Rebecca Harris]

Is my hon. Friend aware of the difficulties imposed on legitimate car traders, who have planning permission and pay business rates and rent for their parking lot? They are being undercut by people who park large numbers of cars on residential streets, without planning permission, and who sometimes evade paying tax or registering the sale. Does he think that is a legitimate or fair way to proceed?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s conversion to deregulation and low taxes. If the problem is that we are encouraging the black market, we should free up the white market and reduce taxes and decrease regulation. If something unfair is happening, the answer of the bureaucrat is always to regulate to make it fair, not to deregulate to make it fair. Actually, we should tell legitimate traders, “Okay, you’re in competition with somebody who isn’t paying rates so let’s have lower rates because otherwise you’ll go out of business.” We should look at whether planning permission is a proper way to regulate business, or whether there are already too many burdens and costs on business. As so often, I am at one with my hon. Friend in feeling that the situation offers a good argument for deregulation, cutting taxes and getting at things from a positive angle, rather than always looking at the negative and stopping people doing things. How do we make the economy grow? We free people from the shackles of the state, removing the dead hand of regulation; not by putting more regulation on them.

One of my bugbears about a number of clauses is the level of proof required and the seniority of the person who can enforce penalties, so I have tabled a number of amendments, in particular 42 and 43, to raise the standard of proof and of the person who will issue a certificate. In subsection (7), amendment 42 would replace the words “reasonable cause” with “proof that”. That would mean that we could be certain.

Right back to Magna Carta, we have had a high standard of legal protection for people and their goods. People cannot have their goods taken from them without a court order. It is a good historic principle of British law and it is in the Magna Carta; no free man shall be taken or his goods taken without the judgment of a court against him. As we know, the principle developed with jury trial—although juries predate the Magna Carta —but in recent years we have been moving to an administrative system that allows not the courts to decide whether something should happen, but people at a much lower level who require lower levels of proof; hence, reasonable cause. Is it really satisfactory that somebody who is not even a police officer and does not need proof that a person is breaking the law can impose penalties? That seems fundamentally unjust.

The Bill provides that if a person sells their car in the street in Westminster, it can be seized by an “authorised officer” who has “reasonable cause” to suspect that that is what they are doing. My amendment would require there to be proof of the activity and that the order should be issued by a magistrate. The magistrates court is the lowest court in the land, but at least the person would have the judgment of a court against them. One of our most ancient liberties is protected if the judgment comes from a magistrate and is not given simply by an authorised officer or a constable.

It is easy to pass private Bills that include penalties and forfeitures that are not to the standard that would be required in a public Bill, because the standard of scrutiny is considerably lower. I realise we have many hours to discuss the Bill—we are on our third set of three hours—but we do so with a relatively thinly attended Chamber and without great enthusiasm for looking at the nitty-gritty and the detail of the Bill.