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12.22 pm
The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Sir John Wheeler): Like the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley), I pay a warm tribute to the work of the late Sir James Kilfedder, who became the first Chairman of the Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs. He is remembered with enormous affection in Northern Ireland as a great constituency Member of Parliament. We are grateful to him and to the people who followed him in the Select Committee's chairmanship for their work. We are also grateful to all members who served on that Committee and for the content of their first report. In the time available to me, I shall try to pick up on some of the points that have been raised in this important debate.
The debate has understandably attracted a great deal of interest in Northern Ireland. Consequently, many Northern Ireland Members are present in the Chamber and have sought to speak. Unfortunately, the debate's short duration has prevented many of them from making the
speeches that I know they would have liked to make. It is therefore important that I should place it on record that the right hon. Member for Strangford (Mr. Taylor) was present and spoke and that the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir J. Molyneaux) was also here, as were the hon. Members for Fermanagh and South Tyrone(Mr. Maginnis), for East Antrim (Mr. Beggs) and for South Antrim (Mr. Forsythe). The hon. Member for South Down (Mr. McGrady) also spoke.
If I may impishly pick up a remark by the right hon. Member for Strangford on the theme of, "They haven't gone away, you know," the hon. Member for Belfast, East (Mr. Robinson) also made it to the debate and made an important speech, with which I shall try to deal. My hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Wolfson), who is a sterling member of the Select Committee, also made some valuable points.
In the brief time available to me, I should like to deal with some of the key, important points that have been a theme of the debate. In his role as the distinguished Select Committee Chairman, the hon. Member for Hammersmith raised the important point of better information on research and development in Northern Ireland. I inform him and the House that the Department of Economic Development has undertaken new research on spending on research and development in the Province. The first results are available. That research will be continued and published in future years, so it will not only assist the Select Committee on future occasions, but guide and inform Northern Ireland Members who consider the effectiveness of investment in Northern Ireland's economy.
The right hon. Member for Strangford and others raised the issue of the action for community employment programme, which I should like to deal with early in my remarks because I know that it is of great importance to Northern Ireland's people and to Northern Ireland Members in particular. I fully understand the concerns that have been raised in the debate and I assure the House that my noble Friend in the other place has received similar representations on the matter. She has advised me that she is preparing measures that will help smooth the transition to an ACE programme that is more appropriate to the current economic circumstances. I assure hon. Members that she will announce those transitional arrangements shortly.
ACE, however, was introduced when unemployment was rising rapidly. As we have discussed during this short debate, that position has changed for the better and employment opportunities have markedly improved.We have 7,000 registered vacancies and we must skill the people of Northern Ireland to ensure that they can take up those vacancies. Next year, ACE expenditure will be about £40 million. In total, about £46 million will be spent on schemes for the long-term unemployed in 1996 and 1997.
The theme of the debate has been, to use the language of the hon. Member for South Down, quality and efficiency, and getting the right jobs in Northern Ireland--not merely low-grade, low-paid ones. The hon. Gentleman made an important point, which I link to the ACE programme. The pot of money that is available in Northern Ireland must be effectively used if it is to realise the Select Committee's objective, as well as meet the interests of the hon. Member for South Down.
The right hon. Member for Strangford mentioned the importance of the rural economy. As the Minister with responsibility for finance, I am only too aware of his point. I assure him that I shall consider that matter in my overarching role. He made a sound point. We must not overlook the needs of people in the rural economy. They are being dealt with, but it is important that that should followed up.
The road to and from Larne is for ever etched on my memory. In constituencies in southern England, the campaign is about not having the motorway at one's front door, but in Northern Ireland the reverse is true; everybody, especially in Larne, would like the motorway to end at his front door. The hon. Member for East Antrim
pleaded his case with his usual eloquence, and I hope that the private finance initiative may ride to the rescue and provide in due course investment that would help to solve the problem.
In the one minute that I have left, I shall touch upon another important issue that several hon. Members raised--the question of Fokker and Shorts. I appreciate the importance of the contracts to Shorts, and confirm that Baroness Denton recently met Dutch Government representatives to discuss that subject. Although it is a commercial matter and will have to be resolved by commercial mechanisms, I assure the House--
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes):
Order. We must now move on to the next topic.
Mr. Gordon Prentice (Pendle):
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to raise an issue of immense concern to my constituents and to many other people throughout the country. In Lancashire, there is a scourge of one-day sales, and people are being comprehensively ripped off by silver-tongued professional swindlers.
Last October, a one-day sale was run in my constituency by William Stephen Beach, of Albert road, Cheltenham. In the previous Session of Parliament, in my early-day motion 1497, I described Mr. Beach as
Beach was previously a director of Gloucester Fancy Goods Ltd. and J. B. Sales (Gloucester) Ltd., both of which are now dissolved. I believe that he is currently a director of Table Top Marketing Ltd. and Steve's Cash and Carry.
Last October, I outlined Beach's technique. He breezed into the area, having booked venues for his sales at the Great Marsden hotel in Nelson and the North Valley community centre in Colne. He leafleted the immediate area around the venues and conned people into believing that the boxes of goods that they bought contained top-quality merchandise that was bankrupt stock. In fact they were getting cheap shoddy rubbish. Beach then disappeared like a puff of blue smoke, until I tracked him down in Cheltenham.
My constituent, Mrs. Lana Ellerton, ended up with two pillows and a clock that she did not want, and she was typical of many people. She told me that people were put under immense pressure to buy goods.
I was so incensed by what had happened that, last October, I called on the Government to review the law on consumer protection and to find out how it could be more effectively applied. Unfortunately, on 30 October, the President of the Board of Trade told me that the Government had no plans to change consumer protection law as it related to liquidation and similar sales.I sincerely hope that the Government will now reconsider their position, and act.
After the experience with Beach, I called on the local council to ban one-day sales on council-owned premises, telling it that local people were being ripped off and that local traders were losing business to fly-by-night operators. Pendle council voted to ban sales in its properties, but unfortunately it displayed a misplaced generosity of spirit in allowing bookings already in the pipeline to be honoured.
At that stage, enter Mr. Steve Johnson, of 2 Princess street, Blackpool, who for £69.30 booked Barnoldswick civic hall on 23 January for what was described as a public sale. I have a copy of his leaflet, heralding an
there was to be a public sale at Barnoldswick civic centre. Goods advertised for sale included a Kenwood food mixer for £8, a Black and Decker cordless powerdriver for £10, a Super Nintendo for £15 to clear, Philips, Sony,
Panasonic, and other top of the range videos for £30 each, a 2 in Casio television for £10, and electronic personal organisers for £5.
said Steve Johnson.
said Steve Johnson.
All that was pure fiction.
On the leaflets that were circulated in Barnoldswick there was nothing to say who was responsible for the sale, nothing like the imprint that one would expect on political leaflets to be circulated in a general or local election; they were anonymous.
Steve Johnson knows precisely what he is doing. He is taking good money from innocent people who believe they are getting a bargain that is literally fantastic. People look at the platform piled high with goods, and willingly suspend their disbelief. They think that they will get a bargain. Johnson preys upon those people; like Beach before him, he is an evil calculating cheat and con man.
At the one-day sale at Barnoldswick on 23 January about 80 people turned up, and they left hundreds of pounds lighter in their pockets and purses. They say that they were sold cheap shoddy goods, and that misrepresentation was rife. The quality brands mentioned in the leaflet, such as Panasonic, JVC and Sony, were not there--or if they were they were not sold. They were stage props. If such goods are ever sold, they are sold only to stooges in the audience.
Johnson targeted an area of Barnoldswick for his phoney "star bargains" and "no gimmicks" sale. For obvious reasons, he did not advertise in the local press. That would have given the game away and alerted people to what was happening. Instead, 24 hours before the sale, he distributed a blizzard of leaflets with no imprint, and people duly turned up, wondering what to expect.
The caretaker of the hall, Mr. Lou Farr, told me what happened. About eight people turned up in a clapped-out van. He said that they had southern accents--but that is not a hanging offence; I do not hold that against them. While 80 people clamoured to get in, Steve Johnson and his friends put plastic bin liners over the windows so that people could not look in and see what was happening.
The goods were brought in by the back door and piled high, and at half-past seven the sale started. There were a few sweeteners. Video tapes and cassettes were sold for £1 or 50p. Torches in blister packs that would ordinarily retail for a tenner were sold for £1. After about15 minutes, the doors to the hall were closed, a couple of heavies were stationed outside and latecomers were told that the sale had started and were turned away.
At that point, Johnson and his team of rogues moved into top gear. He started piling boxes of goods into plastic bin liners, saying that ghetto blasters, toasters and other goods worth £300 were there for the asking, and that he would take only £60 for them. Twenty-seven people fell for it. They bought goods that were not top of the range merchandise but inferior shoddy rubbish manufactured in China, Taiwan and other such places.
The con did not stop there. People who bought goods were told that they could not open their purchases during the sale--only afterwards. They were asked to leave a
blank space for the payee when writing cheques.One victim, my constituent Mrs. Yvonne Farrelly, said that Johnson agreed to take cheques only up to a limit of £100 and if they were backed by a cheque guarantee card, so she wrote four cheques totalling £320 for her purchases. She told my local paper, the excellent, campaigning Barnoldswick and Earby Times:
Johnson claimed that the goods had guarantees.Mrs. Farrelly added:
She also bought a camera for £60 and told me that it was worth £10. Twenty-seven people bought a cheap clock radio for £10 and were promised that they would get something three times as valuable at the end of the evening. They never did.
Given the fuss that I created in October by drawing the matter to the attention of the House and contacting my local council, I was furious when I discovered what had happened on 23 January. On Sunday, I got in my car and drove from Pendle on the Lancashire side of the Lancashire-Yorkshire border to Blackpool to beard the lion in his den--I was going to have it out with Mr. Steve Johnson--but the shutters of his shop were down and he was not about. I took photographs of his shop, which I have distributed among the local papers, and I tried to telephone him, but the contact number that he gave the council when booking the hall was unobtainable. I suspect that he has not paid his telephone bill and BT has cut him off. The sign outside the seedy, crumbling corner shop off the front in Blackpool from where Mr. Steve Johnson operates says that fancy goods and gifts are for sale and that there is also an adult section.
I want a very bright spotlight to be shone on the swindler Johnson, and I do not want him or his friends ever to be within 30 miles of my constituency. One-day sales always end in tears. People who cannot afford to shell out money, who live on council estates and in poorer areas are targeted and find themselves paying out good money for rubbish.
The problem is not confined to my constituency or Lancashire; it occurs elsewhere and it is growing. Last year, the Financial Times estimated that about 90 such crooks were operating in the United Kingdom. Last year's annual conference of the Institute of Trading Standards Administration was told that fly-by-night operators were of increasing concern, especially in seaside towns.
There is protection at the moment, but it is inadequate and limited. The Trade Descriptions Act 1968, the Consumer Protection Act 1987, the Sale of Goods (Amendment) Acts 1994 and 1995 and the Sale and Supply of Goods Act 1994 are good but they do not go far enough. It is often virtually impossible to track down people such as Johnson and Beach for the reasons that I have already given.
Commercial leaflets, like political leaflets, should carry an imprint of the name of the person organising the sale and the business address and telephone number of the salesman or saleswoman. By law, a sign should be displayed outside the sale's venue explaining the purpose
of the sale--whether it is a liquidation sale or a bankruptcy sale, for example--and again stating the name and address of the sale promoter.
Trading standards officers should be given adequate notice of sales. The North Yorkshire County Council Act 1991 already provides for such notice, but obviously applies only to North Yorkshire, next door to Lancashire. That provision should be extended nationwide. I want local authorities to give Johnson, Beach and other such crooks a very wide birth and not to allow them to hire council premises unless the council is prepared to take out joint liability so that if there were misrepresentation or people were defrauded and the sale promoter could not be tracked down, the council hiring out the hall would be liable.
I am not a single voice crying in the wilderness.The chief trading standards officer of my county council, Mr. J. H. Potts, has been in touch with me. In his letter of yesterday, he says
in trading standards--
I know that that is true. Mr. Potts says that, although the Act controls "free" gifts, restricted bidding and "reduced" bids, they are
12.30 pm
"an unscrupulous and wholly disreputable fraudster and cheat".
"Important Announcement
Owing to the harsh economic situation and collapse of many well known companies"
"Please come early to avoid disappointment",
"Beat the Recession and get a bargain of a lifetime",
"Definitely no gimmicks, no tricks--just good value . . . We give 100 per cent. value--Not promises . . . Guarantee on all goods".
"Don't be ripped off like I was . . . The hi-fi cost £60 and I am sure in my own mind that the organisers said that it was a CD player. However, when we opened up the box, it only plays cassettes and you can buy the same thing from Argos for just £34 . . . There are no guarantees in the box or nothing".
"I consider it to be a complete rip-off."
"In my 25 years experience"--
"I have to say that the majority of itinerant traders operating 'rostrum' sales of general goods (rather than the specialist suppliers e.g. textiles pottery, paintings etc or who allow consumers to browse and self select goods) generate high numbers of consumer complaints and often mislead customers into buying shoddy goods at high prices. The Mock Auctions Act 1961 is totally ineffective".
"easily evaded by fast-talking salesman."
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