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Mr. Forth: Why not?

Mr. Maclean: The new schedule speaks for itself. I offer it merely as guidance for the Minister and hope that he will accept the concept in principle and tidy up the details later. The other place, which is, of course, much closer to the illegal hamburger sellers than we are, may wish to concentrate on refining the schedule.

The new schedule also provides that the person should be given the reasons for seizure, which is common practice, for example, when a health and safety at work notice is issued warning someone of a prohibition, or when an inspector sets out reasons in an improvement notice. In this case, the reasons for seizure should be set out so that the person involved may take them to his lawyer, or whoever.

There should also be a list of the items seized. There is nothing fancy or posh about that; it is a simple form of receipt, which will protect the park constable. If the people involved have criminal links with organised crime, the next new racket will be suing the parks constables for the equipment that they have confiscated. It is a source of distress and annoyance to me that one of the best rackets going is suing the Metropolitan police for no good reason. People who trip over pavements sue the Met. I can see people getting into the same racket with claims that the

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police have confiscated equipment worth tens of thousands of pounds. The parks police will have to spend a fortune defending the allegation and proving that they were right. A receipt would provide protection for the constabulary.

Finally, my model new schedule, to which the Minister or other hon. Members may wish to add, suggests that the person should be told his rights and liabilities. The Minister may say that they are set out in the Bill and that the person could read clause 5 or clause 6. However, when police officers stop and search someone, they tell the person that he has been stopped and will be searched and they give him his rights and liabilities under the PACE rules.

I have tried to replicate that so that a person will be told all his rights--I hope that I have listed all of them, but I may not have. The person will be told that the Secretary of State may hang on to his barrow and trolley until court proceedings are finished. He will be told that the Secretary of State can sell them off and keep the proceeds until costs are paid, and will then return the remainder, if there is one. He will be told that the court may hang on to his goods and that they may be forfeited or destroyed if he is found guilty. He will be told that he has the right to make representations to the court before the court decides how to dispose of his goods.

Mr. Owen Paterson (North Shropshire): My right hon. Friend has taken advice from the Library on the relevant languages. Why did he miss out German and Italian? There are significant German minorities in eastern Europe, and many poorer people from the Mezzogiorno in southern Italy try to come to the UK.

Mr. Maclean: That is a good point. I deliberately missed out languages that I thought were not used by those involved. Perhaps not many English people are involved, but it is a common language, and a parks constable must serve a notice in English when he arrests anyone. I included the languages of people who, I had heard or read or been instructed, might be involved in the activity. I was not aware of many Italians or Germans being involved. It may be best simply to have a schedule of the main United Nations languages: English, French, Spanish, German--American is not a United Nations language, is it?--and some of the main Indian or eastern European languages.

Dr. Jenny Tonge (Richmond Park): Esperanto?

Mr. Maclean: I respect those who participate in Esperanto and recently attended a national conference on it in my constituency, but I did not think it appropriate to the new schedule.

I was speaking about the part of amendment No. 28 that deals with the proposed new schedule. I consider amendment No. 28 to be terribly important, and I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure me that he will accept some of it in spirit or in context.

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The final part of amendment No. 28 relates to the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 1988. Under proposed subsection (4)(c), the constable

should not remove any article until he has performed an assessment under the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations that the removal of the thing or things would not create hazard for his or others' health and safety.

This is a slightly different point from disposing of obnoxious hamburgers. Disposal of the hamburgers into the bushes may cause an environmental hazard. If the constable grabbed the red-hot chestnuts and the burning brazier, he would injure himself. I refer not to the burning Brazier from Canterbury--my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier)--but the burning brazier containing charcoal and chestnuts.

Park constables will be expected to take such articles. Apart from obvious things such as hot fat and burning charcoal, there will be heavy trolleys which may be of an odd construction. Some of the barrows may be built of steel and various contraptions on them may be dangerous to the health of someone who does not know how the barrow is constructed. If the constable takes possession of a mobile cart, which has a steel frame and is covered by a parasol, and he does not know how to collapse that parasol, fold the barrow, load it on to his parks' department vehicle, he could suffer a serious back injury or other injury.

The amendment suggests that, in those circumstances, before the park constable and the police take possession of these contraptions, they perform a quick assessment that doing so will not injure their health and safety or the health and safety of others who may have to do so. The amendment refers to performing an assessment, but I think that in reality it would be a checklist--a simple page of A4, with a list of items that the park constable can run through and tick off. If he is then satisfied that he can confiscate the red-hot chestnut trolley with the burning charcoal brazier with no risk to his health or that of others, he can carry on.

The Minister may pooh-pooh this idea, or say that it is not necessary to include it in the law. I am not a betting man, and one should not, in any case, lay a bet on the Floor of the House of Commons. However, I am willing to bet that, when the Bill becomes an Act and the police have to operate its provisions, they will perform a COSHH assessment before carrying out any of the requirements specified. The requirement to perform health and safety assessments before making any police decisions bogs down the rest of the civil constabulary. It will take only one bobby or one park constable to be injured for a claim for £500,000 to be made, and then the Department will have to ensure that these actions are carried out safely.

Amendment No. 28 is my main area of concern. I will not speak to amendment No. 7. It makes sense to me, but it would make sense to others only if various other amendments were grouped with it. As those other amendments have not been selected for debate, I do not wish to speak to it.

I hope that the Minister can reassure me that clauses 4 and 5 are essential, tell us more about what park trading offences he envisages being designated, deal with the problem of perishable goods, mention COSHH and say what facilities there will be for the safe removal of perishable materials. I hope that he will also be able to

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reassure me that there will be procedures for telling these people--who apparently include many asylum seekers and foreign nationals--in their own language, whatever that may be, about their rights, obligations and duties.

9.45 pm

Mr. Forth: I want to reinforce some of the remarks of my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean), and then cover some other points. I share my right hon. Friend's anxiety about a lacuna in the Bill as drafted. In Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Brooke) said:

It would be helpful if the Minister could give a more graphic account of what will happen to perishable goods.

That is the thrust of what my right hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border has said. I confess that I posed a trick question to my right hon. Friend earlier, because I quoted the first part of the Minister's reply. The Minister said:

The Royal Parks Constabulary will follow the same procedures as City of Westminster council officials, who offer the unlicensed trader the opportunity to take the perishable goods away.

That concerns the man with the hot nuts who is running off in the opposite direction. In fairness to the Minister, he went on to say:

The trader is asked to sign a form acknowledging that he is either taking or refusing to take the perishables, whichever applies.

We now have some documentation entering the scene, although none of that is in the Bill. He went on:

If he refuses to take them, it is on the understanding that they will be destroyed by the enforcing authority to protect environmental health and the general amenity of the surroundings.--[Official Report, Standing Committee G, 21 March 2000; c. 8-9.]

That raises more questions and, at best, is a partial answer to the problem. Never mind that the trader is being offered options, or that documents are being filled in, seemingly on the spot; it raises the question as to how or when the goods will be destroyed by the enforcing authority. So we have a Mafia man with his cart in the middle of a royal park, peddling hot dogs and hamburgers. His collar is felt by the constable, and documents are then filled out in the middle of the park. Then, the enforcing authority appears mysteriously to take away the offending items. That does not sound right to me, and we will have to hear more from the Minister. That is not a credible sequence of events, but it is all we have on record from the Minister in the 35 minutes of the Committee.

I am not happy with the proposal, which is why I am attracted by amendment No. 28. The amendment proposes that when the park constable is exercising his powers, he must ensure that he provides facilities for the safe removal from the park of the perishable materials. That is an explicit requirement, which, at the moment, I cannot find in the Bill, and which we are being asked to take on trust.

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