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Armed Forces (Minimum Age of Recruitment)

Mr. Paul Stinchcombe accordingly presented a Bill to prohibit the recruitment of persons under the age of eighteen into the regular forces, the regular air forces and the Royal Navy; to prohibit the calling up of members of the reserve forces who are under eighteen years of age; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 21 July, and to be printed [Bill 127].

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Orders of the Day

Royal Parks (Trading) Bill

Not amended in the Standing Committee, considered.

Clause 2

Maximum Penalty

4.38 pm

Mr. Eric Forth (Bromley and Chislehurst): I beg to move amendment No. 17, in page 1, line 13, leave out "level" and insert--

"for the first offence level 2 on the standard scale, and for any subsequent offence level".

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael J. Martin): With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 1, in page 1, line 13, leave out "3" and insert "2".

Mr. Forth: The amendment relates to the important question of fines to be imposed on those who commit offences of the nature described in the Bill. I seek to introduce the time-honoured system of imposing different levels of penalty for first and for subsequent offences.

I was at least partly inspired by what the Minister said in the Second Reading Committee--the rather unusual device that is deployed when a Bill has not yet been debated on the Floor of the House. I welcome this first opportunity to air the important issues that it raises here, on the Floor, as hitherto it has been dealt with only in Committee--a perfectly proper procedure, I hasten to add, but one that means, regrettably, that Members who were not on the Second Reading Committee or involved in the Committee stage have not yet had an opportunity to address themselves to the Bill.

On 7 March 2000, in that Second Reading Committee, the Minister said:

fines, however frequently imposed by the courts, do not, as things are, act as an effective deterrent when compared with the income that can be gained from illegal trading.--[Official Report, Second Reading Committee, 7 March 2000; c. 4.]

In a moment, I should like to return to the subject of income, but first it might help the House if I were to remind hon. Members of the origins of the matter. The section of the Bill to which the amendment applies makes reference to the Parks Regulation (Amendment) Act 1926, in which the matter was dealt with, although not originally. In a moment, I shall refer back to the Parks Regulation Act 1872, in which the concept of fines made its first appearance.

Suffice it to say that section 2(1) of the 1926 Act stated:

if any person fails to comply with, or acts in contravention of, any regulations so made--

which are regulations relating to the parks--

he shall be guilty of an offence against the principal Act and shall be liable on conviction thereof by a court of summary jurisdiction to a penalty not exceeding five pounds.

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We therefore know that the level of penalty that was fixed in 1926 was five pounds.

Subsequently, when I looked at the 1872 Act--which was updated in the 1926 Act--rather to my surprise I found in section 4 the provision:

If any person does any act in contravention of any regulation contained in the first schedule annexed hereto, he shall, on conviction by a court of summary jurisdiction, be liable to a penalty not exceeding five pounds.

That is an interesting illustration of the fact that between 1872 and 1926 there was so little inflation that it was not deemed necessary to increase the level of penalty.

Mr. Desmond Swayne (New Forest, West): In fact, in the late 1870s and early 1880s there was significant deflation.

Mr. Forth: That is helpful--it explains what otherwise, to me, seemed to be a bit of a mystery.

Mr. Michael Fallon (Sevenoaks): Of course, an alternative explanation is that there was not the same scale of offences, and that the original fine had proved to be a sufficient deterrent. However, it might be for the convenience of the House--so that we might be better informed--if my right hon. Friend were able, looking at the same Act, to tell us the approximate value, in current terms, of £5 in 1872.

Mr. Forth: I had rather hoped that my hon. Friend would not ask me that question because I should have to guess, and I do not want to have to get involved in guessing. However, I suspect that if any hon. Member were to nip into the Library while I am speaking, he or she could probably find a pretty good answer and come back to inform us.

Mr. Robert Sheldon (Ashton-under-Lyne): May I help the right hon. Gentleman? The general ratio--it varies with the various circumstances that one makes use of--for pre-war to current prices is about 40:1.

Mr. Forth: That is very helpful indeed. It neatly places a £5 fine in 1872 at level 1 on the current scale. That gives us a very good basis on which to consider--as I shall in a moment--the proposals that I am making in amendment No. 17 on levels 2 and 3. I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, whose intervention has been extraordinarily--but not unusually--helpful.

Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham): I agree that what the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) has just told the House is helpful. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is important to establish whether the fact of no change in the level of fine in that 54-year period was due to no inflation, or whether it was due principally to there being no substantial increase in the annual level of offending?

Mr. Forth: That is indeed a perfectly possible explanation. I think that we shall come on later--perhaps not in this debate, but on a subsequent group, and certainly on Third Reading--to consider the nature of the

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trade, which has given rise to the Bill, and of those who are alleged to be carrying out that trade. That will be quite an important consideration when we come to that stage.

Mr. David Maclean (Penrith and The Border): Bearing in mind the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) on the general level of offending, I am sure that my right hon. Friend is aware of all the Home Office research, done under various Governments, showing that since 1945 the average annual increase in criminal offending has ranged between about 4.5 to 5 per cent. It is therefore not the case that there has not been an increase in offending: since 1945, there has been a general average increase of 5 per cent. per annum.

4.45 pm

Mr. Forth: Unusually, that intervention was not as helpful as I have come to expect from my right hon. Friend. We were considering the period between 1872 and 1926, and he has suddenly tried to rush me forward to 1945. I shall forgive him, but on this occasion I shall discount what he has said.

Lest it has escaped the attention of the House, I wanted to remark in passing that section (5) of the 1872 Act makes an interesting reference:

Any park keeper in uniform, and any persons whom he may call to his assistance, may take into custody, without a warrant, any offender who in the park where such a keeper has jurisdiction, and within the view of such keeper, acts in contravention of any of the said regulations.

As early as 1872, the provisions were widely drawn. One can easily trace the genesis of the Bill from 1872 through 1926 and, I think, 1997. We will not necessarily debate the powers available, although we may want to reflect on them. I am sure that the Minister will help us later, but I remain to be satisfied that the police and the park employees use to the full all the powers available to them. We should be satisfied of that before we leap to bring in the draconian provisions in the Bill.

Mr. Sheldon: I walk across a royal park most days and there is a horrible smell of stale fat. That is disgraceful in a royal park and outside Buckingham palace. The police say that they have acted again and again, but that they are wasting their time because they keep having to go to court. They have given up. Anybody who respects our royal parks and our main palaces and places of interest, which people come from all over the country and the world to visit, should want us to maintain the highest standards that we have been able to provide.

Mr. Forth: That is an elegant statement of the aspirations behind the Bill and it is typical of the right hon. Gentleman, but it does not fully explain why we need the Bill. Just this morning, I took myself down to the London Eye on the embankment south of the river. We have been told again and again that the aim of the Bill is to replicate within the royal parks the excellent powers already available to the police outside them. I gather that that is one of the main arguments, although I have not yet heard it because the Bill has not yet been considered on the Floor of the House. To my astonishment, I counted four hot-dog purveyors within 200 yd of the London Eye.

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That gave me pause for thought. If the existing powers are so wonderful and effective that we are seeking to replicate them in the royal parks, why did I find four hamburger purveyors, with customers crowding round them? I saw them making purchases and munching happily. I did not see anyone falling to the ground. I hope that that point will be answered, because we have to tease out these issues before the House rushes to pass such draconian legislation.

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