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Mr. Viggers: Yes, people will seek legal aid. The job will be stressful, so the noise control specialists will need counselling and the councillors will find implementing the scheme stressful, so they too will need counselling.
Mr. Leigh: Surely it is outrageous that people in this country should have to suffer more noise than is the case in other nation states in the European Union? I therefore believe that we should have a European directive on noise control, so that we can have equal levels of noise throughout our great European Union.
Mr. Viggers: And we shall no doubt have an advisory committee to co-ordinate the legislation in this country with the legislation in Europe.
I make one prediction of which I am totally certain, which is that, when my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough and Horncastle (Mr. Leigh) and I are sitting on the Government Benches in 2000, there will be at least 1 million complaints about noise. I make that prediction with absolute confidence.
Why only noise control? Has my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North thought about smell control or light control--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. Not under these amendments.
Mr. Viggers:
I am looking ahead, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to what I am certain will happen, and I fear it. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to throw away the speech notes that have been prepared for him. I ask him to say to his civil servants, "Find another Minister to play Trilby to your Svengali. I will have none of it."
Mr. Piers Merchant (Beckenham):
I support the Lords amendments to the Bill, but I have one or two minor queries which I will put through you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to the Minister.
I have carefully followed the Bill during its passage through the House, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway) knows, and I have made contributions at most stages. I am a strong supporter of the Bill, and I understand its purpose. More importantly, we are here to ensure that it operates in practice as it is intended to operate. That is the significance of the Lords amendments.
On Report, I raised the question whether there should be more than just a discretionary power on local authorities. There was considerable debate about that, and my hon. Friend the Minister, in his winding-up speech, promised that he would look at the possibility of an amendment being introduced in the other place to try to achieve a balance between the people who wished to see a stronger law under which there was more than just a discretionary power on local authorities and those who argued, as many of my hon. Friends have argued eloquently this morning, against such a power.
I believe that the Lords amendment just about gets the balance right. It has a light touch, which would enable my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, where necessary, to impose a requirement on local authorities to enforce the Act, as I hope it will become, but which would leave most local authorities with nothing more than a discretionary power.
Our discussion this morning has revolved round the powers of local authorities and the stage at which the House should insist that a law is applied whether or not a local authority wishes to do so. I have a good deal of sympathy with those who argue that local authorities should have more discretionary powers. I believe in that, too, as a matter of principle and good justice.
It would be excellent to have a system in which more power was devolved to local authorities, so that they had the right not only to take action as is proposed in the Bill--a right that they would not have without the Bill--but not to implement a law if they felt that that was appropriate.
In many senses, the Bill is an ideal example. I readily accept what many of my hon. Friends have said--that, in their constituencies, there is generally no need for the Bill. Sadly, my constituency is different: it is an urban constituency, and there are severe problems of neighbourhood noise. The existing framework of law is clearly inadequate, so the Bill is welcome. It is an excellent Bill, which will address many of the problems.
However, I must be fair: if I lived in Gainsborough, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough and Horncastle (Mr. Leigh), I would probably take a similar approach. If I lived in the countryside where my next-door neighbour was two miles
down the road, as I believe is the case for my hon. Friend, I would know that I or my neighbour could jump up at three in the morning and rave, shout, play loud music and foam at the mouth--[Laughter.] I am not suggesting for one moment that my hon. Friend does that: I hope that he did not mistake me for so doing. I merely use that as an illutstration of how an infernal noise could be created by my neighbour, and I would not know about it. So the law would simply not be relevant.
My constituency is totally different. I live in an area where the houses are a little further apart. I cannot quite touch my neighbour's property from my front door, although it is not far away. In other parts of my constituency, however, the houses are extremely close together, and where there are blocks of flats, people live in even closer proximity, and even the slightest noise can cause a great deal of disturbance. That is the essential difference between different parts of the country.
The reason why the amendment is necessary for areas such as my constituency is that people have a legitimate problem and good grounds for complaint. They need this Bill not only to be on the statute book but to be put into practice. If the power remains only discretionary, people will be crying out for action in some areas of the country where, for one reason or another, the local authority has not got around to using the power. That would be ridiculous. The Bill would be on the statute book, but the law would apply only in theory. The law would not only be an ass; justice would not only be blindfolded: the law would be a blindfolded ass.
Mr. Leigh:
My hon. Friend is advancing a very dangerous argument. We all accept that the Bill is necessary, but there is an argument between those who believe that the power placed on local authorities should be discretionary and those who believe that it should be mandatory. If the problem is so great in his constituency, or, indeed, in Ealing, public pressure on the council will build, and in the end the local authority will take action. That is what democracy is about. My hon. Friend is arguing that democracy should be overcome, which cannot be valid.
Mr. Merchant:
I wish that I shared my hon. Friend's optimism. He knows very well that the world is not quite that simple, and that local authorities do not necessarily respond that quickly to public opinion. My fear is that, even though public pressure may build, the nexus in which, in theory, he believes does not exist in practice. Because of the way elections work, decisions are rarely made on single issues, bureaucrats often hide behind walls some distance from the real problem, and there are financial pressures.
With great respect, my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough and Horncastle advanced the theory that the law could not solve all problems, and that basically we had to learn to get on with each other. It is a fine theory, and there is nothing wrong with it, but if it were true, we would not need to sit in this place very long, since we would not need to pass many laws. I believe in a law-based society and the rule of law.
I challenge my hon. Friend. What would he do? Would he knock on the doors of people complaining about noisy neighbours and explain to them that we all had to be very nice to each other, get on with each other, and ask them
whether they would please turn the volume down? If he is willing to do that, I will invite him to my constituency. He would realise what happens.
Would my hon. Friend the Member follow up the complaints by giving people a long philosophical lecture about the origin of conservatism and why we should all get on with each other in a responsible society? Does he think that, at 3 o'clock in the morning, that would persuade people to turn down the volume of the gramophone or whatever instrument they are using at their party? Such a wishy-washy approach to societal problems just does not work. It is very liberal-minded, but would not cure the problem.
Mr. Thomason:
Does my hon. Friend therefore believe that there should be no such thing as local authority discretion? It would appear to be his thrust that everything must be decided by central Government, because local government is incapable of making a decision until it makes one with which he happens to agree.
Mr. Merchant:
I was not saying that, and I hope that, if my hon. Friend reads my words in the Official Report, he will realise it. I was very careful to say that I strongly agreed with the principle of local authorities having discretion, and that I wished that it could be extended further. We must look at each measure at a time and decide whether it is relevant for such discretion. I am saying that there may be circumstances--that is all that the amendment would add--in which discretion would not work.
10.45 am
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