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Mr. Fabricant: If my hon. Friend is correct, and he uses that argument to support the insertion of the word "verifiable", would it not be necessary to use the word "verifiable" every time the word "fact" or any other condition is mentioned in a Bill? Clearly, that is not so.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman should address the Chair.
Mr. Wilshire: I am grateful for the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield. There are a further 13 groups of amendments, which do not include the word "verifiable", to be debated tonight, but if he tables amendments on a future occasion, I should be happy to debate whether that was verifiable.
Amendment No. 57 deals with the difficult issue of those without a permanent address. I should be grateful if, before we vote on the matter, the Minister would tell us whether, when we are talking about whether a person has a permanent address, we are talking about whether they have a permanent address in the United Kingdom or a permanent address anywhere. If a person has a permanent address outside the country but enters the country and says, "I have no permanent address here", the Bill does not make it clear whether the qualification of no permanent address would apply.
Another concern that I have about the issues addressed by amendment No. 57 is the fact that I see in a Bill the words "for example". If there is a lawyer in the House at the moment, perhaps that lawyer--or the Minister--will explain whether a colloquial throwaway comment such as "for example" has any place in legislation and could be taken before a court for judicial review, because I rather think that "for example" should come as a footnote. In my 13 years in the House, I have never come across legislation with footnotes. I have seen many a Select Committee report with a "for example" tucked at the bottom, but never in legislation have I seen such a device.
Mr. Maclean:
The words "for example" have been used in legislation--that is, much legislation includes lists of types of things. However, perhaps my hon. Friend should ask the Minister to explain whether the sui generis rule applies in this case and, by quoting these examples, whether other categories of the same generic family would also be included or excluded. That is the important point.
Mr. Wilshire:
That was a fascinating intervention. I should be grateful to hear the answer.
Mr. Brady:
My hon. Friend may not have noticed that the Minister appeared to be nodding assent to the suggestion that the sui generis rule applies.
Mr. George Howarth:
No, I nodded off.
Mr. Wilshire:
My admiration for the Minister knows no bounds if he actually understood the detail of those
This is all about the question, when is permanence permanence and when is non-permanence non- permanence? I do not find that difficult. What we are seeking to do, if I may say "for example", is to draw a distinction between a person who lives on a park bench for months on end and a person who is chucked out for a night by his wife and has to spend the night on a park bench. That is an example of what we are trying to do.
However, it occurs to me that a problem arises from trying to draw such distinctions, because if someone says, "I live on a park bench", that is a non-residence, unless the person is resident somewhere else. Perhaps we need to consider what happens if the other place is also a non-residence. If someone sleeps on this park bench or that park bench, does having two park benches mean that one of them is the alternative place of residence, and therefore the provision does not apply?
The Minister may think that I am being foolish, but I am trying to save the taxpayer money because, if we do not clarify the matter now, judicial review looms on what is permanent and what is not. If we clarify the matter now, we shall save the taxpayer the enormous legal fees involved in letting the courts sort it out later.
Mr. Maclean:
I can give my hon. Friend a better example from a real case, not just what may be regarded as a facetious or spurious case involving people on park benches. When the Newbury protesters were taken to court by the police and the Transport Department, the courts ruled that the holes in the ground, or tree-house, in which the protesters were living amounted to a place of residence, and they were bailed to return to their residence--the piece of land that they were demonstrating on. That demonstration is irrelevant to my hon. Friend's argument, but the point is that a residence can be a tree-house or a hole in the ground, as ruled by the courts in Newbury.
Mr. Wilshire:
That reinforces my feeling that we must clarify the matter before we give the Bill a Third Reading.
Another issue is short-term unemployment. As was said earlier, the word "temporary" should be defined. As a non-lawyer, I am amazed that the drafters of the legislation could use what I consider to be such a sloppy
word. If I were unemployed for three years and then got a job, I could say that it was only a temporary period in my life.
I know what the Government were trying to do. They were trying to catch the sense of "short term". That would have been a better term than "temporary", but both are sloppy.
Mr. Bercow:
Is not the intellectual paucity of the Government's position demonstrated by the conflict in their treatment of Northern Ireland on the one hand and the rest of the United Kingdom on the other? A week is a long time when it suits the Government in the context of Northern Ireland, but six months is a short time in the context of the rest of the United Kingdom because that fits in with their predestined purpose. In a nutshell, are not the Government guilty of what the late Winston Churchill would have called "terminological inexactitude"?
Mr. Wilshire:
Despite occasional appearances to the contrary, I am a kind and generous man at heart. Unlike my hon. Friend, I prefer to believe that that is just sloppiness, not devious Labour politics of the worst kind. I hope that my generosity to the Minister will be repaid by his telling us that he now realises that it would have made much more sense to specify a period of time rather than to throw out a general term such as "temporary". That would have set my hon. Friend's mind at rest and he would not have had to think the worst about the Labour party's motives.
I could be persuaded that three months was not the period that the Minister had in mind. However, for the purposes of the debate and a vote, let us stick with three months. If he wants us to agree to two or four months, I should also be entirely happy about that.
Mr. Fabricant:
I wonder whether the clause could have been better phrased by using the words in the Bill's explanatory notes. If I may read a brief note, they say--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. This is an intervention, which must be brief. Will the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) resume his speech?
Mr. Wilshire:
Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I want to raise one more issue, but my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield may then catch your eye so that he can develop his point.
As well as wondering why the Bill is so sloppily drafted, I am mystified why the concept of unemployment gets dragged into a factual matter, such as whether one qualifies to be on the register. That returns me to the first point that I raised. Surely to goodness, we are dealing with where a person resides, not with whether he has a job. I am wholly puzzled by the fact that the Bill considers what a person does with his time. That is not what the Bill is about; it is about where he lives.
I notice that the Minister has been making careful notes, so I look forward to hearing his answers to my many questions.
Mr. George Howarth:
I shall try my best to deal with the points that have been raised, although I suspect that some were made to fill up time rather than to shed enlightenment.
Mr. Fabricant:
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Would it not it have been out of order if there had been a filibuster and would you not have called the House to order if there had been?
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