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Mr. Maclean: I have been stirred up by my right hon. Friend on a point that I may, negligently, have glossed over as minor. The mind boggles when one tries to imagine how traders take their goods away. This morning,
I tried to purchase--for academic and scientific reasons--a hot dog and/or a hamburger from the two chaps at the House of Lords end of Westminster gardens.
Mr. Maclean: No; they smelt rather good. The two men were selling their goods when I passed at 10 o'clock this morning. It would be out of order to comment on the quality--we have already discussed the smell and whether the stink may be objectionable to local people. Clause 4 gives park constables the right to take the equipment: the barrow, or sort of stainless steel and aluminium cart that the chap at the House of Lords end had this morning. He looked as if he was in his 90s--I cannot imagine that he was a Mafia person. I am not trying to make an ageist remark--I hope that, if the Government set up a commission for age equality, it will not prosecute me.
The old boy who was selling hamburgers and hot dogs at the House of Lords end this morning had a large bag of unpeeled onions and a large bag of sesame seed rolls. As I passed, he had a fry-up on the go. It smelt rather good at 10 o'clock. The hot dogs, the hamburgers and the onions were on the griddle. If the park constable had arrived and used his powers under clause 4 to seize anything of a non-perishable nature, he would have taken the aluminium cart and barrow, but he would not have been empowered legally to take the bag of unpeeled onions or the bag of sesame seed rolls. Doubtless, the seller could return those. What on earth would the constable do with the food that was sizzling away on the griddle, ready for the tourists to eat?
Mr. Forth: Perhaps the answer is to include a grandfather clause in the Bill.
Mr. Maclean: I am one of the few hon. Members who, many years ago, passed their articulated truck driving qualification. I believe it was called the national certificate of competence in road traffic management--those are the correct words, but they are not necessarily in the correct order. Doubtless those in the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions could advise. Having done the qualification, I should be better able to advise my right hon. Friend. However, I had better not go down that route.
It may appear that I have been slightly facetious, but there is a genuine problem, which the Bill does not address. I hope that the Minister will deal with it in his reply. Parks police will have to devise extra legal measures to deal with the problem. The Government have given them no help in the Bill. I shall not vote against the clause, but the Government will give the police powers to seize non-perishable goods but no powers to deal with perishable goods, which constitute 99 per cent. of the problem, given that the food sellers cause the main difficulty. What will happen to them?
- The Secretary of State may retain anything which has been seized under section 4 until the end of the period of 28 days beginning with the date of the seizure.
Subsection (3) applies where before the end of that period an information for a park trading offence is laid.
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Subsection (3) allows the Secretary of State to "retain the thing"--or things--until the court case is over. If an award is made, the Secretary of State can hang on to "the thing seized" until the costs have been paid.
Perhaps that is part of the penalty. If the Government say that it is, I have no qualms about it. Part of the penalty that we parliamentarians are building into the legislation is that a parks constable may seize the cart, the barrow, the brazier, and all the rest of the stuff, which are perhaps worth £500. However, the second that they are seized by an organ of the state and are sold off at a warrant sale or a disposal of surplus Government junk and property, they are worth only a tenner--that seems to be standard practice. Are we saying that we are happy with that and that it is another penalty that the person has to suffer when his goods are confiscated? He has not a hope in Hades of getting anything like the real value or a fair market value. With Government sales of surplus property and surplus equipment, or at sales at Waterloo station of all the equipment that people leave on trains, including umbrellas and wooden legs, one gets a fantastic bargain. People do not like going to such a sale because things have been handed in or they may have been stolen and, although they are dirt cheap, it is all awful and tacky.
If the Government confiscate the property, when it is sold on behalf of the people who have committed the offence, the Government will get nothing like its real value--the people from whom it has been confiscated will get nothing like its value.
If that is the case, let us be honest with the House. Then we will know that we are passing yet another sanction. We dealt with the fines in clause 2. Another part of the penalty will be the fact that the goods will be sold for a song and people will have to suffer that penalty as well.
Mr. Christopher Gill (Ludlow): My right hon. Friend will doubtless have seen recent press reports that suggest that bailiffs should no longer sell off the goods and chattels of people who have committed some offence. The argument is that the goods and chattels have so little value nowadays that it is not worth the effort of seizing them. Does he agree that, if the equipment that is be seized under the Bill is re-sold--as he said, it will have a low value--it is likely to be sold back to the same sort of people who are committing the offences in the first place?
Mr. Maclean: My hon. Friend makes a good point. I was concluding my remarks on the amendment and I was about to mention bailiffs and warrant sales. It is a fact that, if one is unfortunate enough not to have paid one's bills and bailiffs seize one's property, one never gets anything like its real value. That is a good allusion to what may happen under this clause. One may purchase a new television for £300 today, but the second that one takes it out of the shop, it is second-hand. If the bailiffs seize it tomorrow, they may get £50 for it, if they are lucky.
The same is true of the hamburger stalls, although they may be of greater value to the sort of people who are in the business than to my hon. Friend and me, who do not want to purchase a hamburger stall, or to the general public. The specialists who trade in the business may pay slightly more for them. I do not think that the Government would want to sell them back to the sort of people from whom they confiscated them, unless those people had got a licence in the meantime.
The main amendment in the group is No. 28, which would provide that the constable ensured that there were facilities for the safe removal from the park of perishable material by the person in possession or control. I will not again discuss the problem of the burgers, the sausage rolls and what one does when someone takes the trolley that they are on but not them.
Amendment No. 28 suggests a solution to the Government. If they are going to give the park constables the powers under clause 4 to seize the fellow's cart and barrow, under my amendment they must stipulate that the park constables and police must have facilities for the safe removal of the perishable materials. If the hamburger seller usually takes away his stuff when the police tell him to move on, he will want to take it with him. For example, the sack of unpeeled onions that I saw this morning must have been worth a few pounds. The seller would want to take it with him--no problem. He would want to take his buns with him, but I bet that he would not take his semi-cooked hot dogs and half-fried onions with him. That would not make sense. So what will happen to them?
The royal parks are meticulously kept. It was a tragedy to see the damage in the park at Millbank after the millennium celebrations. The garbage left behind was appalling. I felt sorry for the park staff as they tried for days to clear up. Nevertheless, Mr. Haselhurst--I mean, Sir Alan--Mr. Deputy Speaker--there have been so many occupants of the Chair tonight--
9.30 pm
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. That is one of the quickest promotions that I have ever received.
Mr. Maclean: It is well deserved, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
I will not discuss further the problem of garbage in the park after the millennium celebrations. However, such problems could be increased, if the park constable exercised his powers under subsection (1) of the clause and had to dispose of the material. He cannot take it with him, because he is not empowered to remove non-perishables. He would probably not want to touch them; they could be dangerous or a health hazard--I shall discuss that matter later. The person from whom he has removed the property would not want it. Those apparent Mafia types are hardly likely to want to put their semi-fried onions into a poly bag to take them away--they will just chuck them into the bushes. They will dispose of them in the easiest possible way. If their non-perishable equipment has been confiscated, they will dump the semi-cooked burgers and hot dogs.
We need to ensure that, when a constable exercises such powers, he brings with him a bucket or a dustbin or insists that there is some facility for getting rid of the
perishable material that the person conducting the illegal or criminal activities is ready to dump in the park. My amendment states that the constable
- shall give to the person having possession or control--
- a document, in an appropriate language, setting out the reasons for the seizure, itemising the things seized and informing the person of his rights and liabilities under section 5.
That is a fundamental principle; it would be a breach of the convention on human rights to take people who are not English to a police station and charge them in English when they do not have a clue about what is going on. The police are under an obligation to make sure that such people understand.
The Minister, with all his excellent advisers, may tell me that my schedule is not perfect or inappropriate--it may contain too many languages. I may have the wrong languages; it might be condensed or improved. However, it is a rough attempt to say that a person arrested in a park who has his property seized should be told what is happening in a language that he understands. I have included English, French and Spanish and many eastern European languages, which the Library of the House of Commons kindly provided for me. I shall not go through them.
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