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Sue Doughty: I will not go through the answers point by point, as time is short. I understand the Minister's point on amendment No. 85. The clause states:
''Consent need not be given to any applicant''.
Is the Minister is saying that these things will be proportionate and will not encourage councils to say that someone who has done something once, for pocket money, will not be able to earn pocket money occasionally again because they were in the wrong before? Does the Minister expect councils to be sensible and proportionate?
Alun Michael: I assure the hon. Lady that that is what I am suggesting. It is difficult to write proportionality into primary legislation, but I want to ensure that local authorities have the power to deal with a repeat offender. The amendment would remove that capacity.
Sue Doughty: In that case, as the Minister has clarified the position, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Miss McIntosh: I want to press the Minister for clarification on clause 23, which makes it an offence to distribute, commission or pay for the distribution of free printed material in an area designated by a local authority without consent. It has been put to us that the existing powers available to Westminster City council under section 4 of the London Local Authorities Act 1994 have proved insufficient. It seeks the Minister's agreement to recommend that they be developed further to make them effective and to enable their successful extension beyond London. The council believes that the free literature distribution controls have proved to be ineffective, because operators can continue to distribute free literature from private forecourts, many of which are contiguous with and largely indistinguishable from the public footway. Does the Minister know about that problem, and will he look kindly on that suggestion for dealing with it?
I also run past the Minister the conclusion that he reached on page 39 in his Department's regulatory impact assessment, which sets out the quantification of costs and benefits. It states that
''the total set-up cost to local authorities would be between £450,000 and £750,000; and taking account of the costs of enforcement and the cleaning costs saved, on an annual basis there would be somewhere between a net cost of £37,500 and a net cost saving of £525,000.''
It concludes:
''This illustrates that it is not certain whether there would be a net financial cost or benefit to this measure. However, it is important to note that this is a power that Local Authorities would choose whether or not to use. They would only do so where
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there is an overall net benefit to using it and this is likely to be in key areas where free literature litter is a particular problem and it is a priority of the authority to deal with it.''
That is quite a negative conclusion to draw, and points to the fact that the Bill is very unlikely to meet its major objectives. Will the Minister satisfy us on those two points?
Alun Michael: We certainly drew on the experience in London when designing the legislation, and discussed it with local authorities that applied the London provisions, as well as with other local authorities that strongly supported the provision of these powers more widely across England and Wales, so they are not precisely the same as the requirements set down in the local government legislation that gave the powers to London.
I am always open to considering suggestions, but the problem of forecourts to which the hon. Lady referred has not been drawn especially to my attention. Perhaps she can give me further and better particulars.
In general, the approach is not at all negative, but extremely positive. It is to extend the powers and the range of options available to local authorities with the message, ''If this helps you, use it, but do not feel that you have to if it does not suit your local circumstances.'' Local authorities have generally been very supportive of the greater flexibility and simplification of various parts of the Bill, which enable them to do what they have been doing up to now but with fewer bureaucratic obstructions, at less cost and with greater ability to nip things in the bud. That, of course, is what we want to achieve.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 23 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 31
Extension of graffiti removal notices to fly-posting
Miss McIntosh: I beg to move amendment No. 56, in clause 31, page 28, line 20, leave out
'which is affixed without authorisation to any surface,'
and insert 'affixed to any surface—
(a) without the consent of the surface owner; and
(b) without deemed or express consent under Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisements) Regulations 1992 (as amended) or which is an advertisement to which Part II and III of the Regulations do not apply under Regulations 3(2).'.
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 60, in clause 31, page 28, line 20, leave out from 'affixed' to end of line 21 and insert
'to any surface without authorisation of the owner of that surface.'.
Miss McIntosh: I see why the Government have provided a definition of fly-posting, but it is ambiguous. The clause states that a fly poster is an advertisement,
''announcement or direction which is affixed without authorisation to any surface,''.
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To whose authorisation does the clause refer? Surely it would be inappropriate for a council to have to authorise the use of notices on, for example, BT's telegraph poles to inform residents of local work to be undertaken in their street. The Bill builds on parts of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 and town and country planning regulations, and the amendment seeks to expand the definition of fly-posting to include advertisements allowed by that Act but which do not require authorisation.
Without the amendment, the risk is that all advertisements, announcements and directions that have not been authorised by the council could be deemed to be fly-posting. If that were widely interpreted, it could include paid advertising in telephone kiosks. In BT's view, kiosk advertising contributes to the long-term viability of the public pay phone network. The Minister will be aware that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is consulting on the long-term future of certain pay phones across the country, and particularly in rural areas such as the Vale of York. Therefore, it is important to me how such pay phones, which provide important local benefits, will be paid for.
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The Minister will probably wish to confirm that his definition endeavours to catch fly-posting advertisements that were not allowed by the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 or the 1992 regulations, rather than advertisements not authorised by a council. BT's view is that our amendment clarifies the definition of fly-posting to include advertisements which are allowed by the 1990 Act but which do not require authorisation. Without explicit reference to the 1990 Act and the regulations, the concern is that legitimate advertisements on BT pay phones that currently do not require authorisation by the council could be considered fly-posting. BT's pay phones business is declining, and one of the revenue streams to ensure long-term viability of the network in the countryside is advertising on kiosks.
The Minister will have seen the representation from ENCAMS, his Department's charitable body. It believes that a better fly-posting definition would be that used in its own annual local environmental quality survey—it is not totally impartial about that. The definition is as follows:
''any printed material and associated remains informally or illegally fixed to any structure. It excludes formally managed and approved advertising hoardings and valid, legally placed signs and notices. It includes any size of material from small stickers up to large posters—often advertising popular music recordings, concerts and other events.''
In view of representations from ENCAMS, why did the Minister prefer his own definition?
Westminster city council raised the problem of over-posting. It is particularly pertinent in the present context.
Matthew Green: Will the hon. Lady give way?
Miss McIntosh: I would like to finish my point first.
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Matthew Green: What I want to say is pertinent.
Miss McIntosh: The hon. Gentleman will have to contain himself for a moment, if he can.
Over-posting is a particular problem in London, and it is a pertinent subject in the current context. Where there is a delay in removing posters, a second fly-poster is often put up over the first one, which creates a vicious circle; there is then a delay in removing both the first and the second posters.
Westminster city council's view is that subsection (3) does not address that. It is one of the 12 pilot authorities, and it has used the new power under the graffiti removal notices in sections 48 to 52 of the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003. It considers that the additional means for the removal of fly-posting would be well used, but the process required for the pilot scheme is overlong and requires revision if it is to be effective.. Therefore, it requests that consideration be given to allowing the more rapid process that the city council is able to use by applying its local public service agreement stretch target. That relates particularly to the problem of over-posting.
Matthew Green: We have also tabled an amendment in this group, but before I talk about it, I should point out that what the hon. Lady has just spoken about is covered by amendment No. 61 to clause 34. The issue was raised with me by Westminster city council, and I am sure that the appropriate time to deal with the specific point of over-posting is when discussing clause 34.
Returning to clause 31, there is a potential difficulty with the definition of fly-posting, because it hinges on the words ''without authorisation''. We seek clarification from the Minister that ''without authorisation'' does not cover circumstances in which something has been put up with deemed, but not actual, planning consent. As the hon. Lady explained, there are a number of circumstances in which advertising—in some cases, hoardings—has deemed rather than absolute consent.
The Minister could go further. Another set of circumstances, which I do not think he intends to be covered by the legislation, in which something might be deemed to have been put up without authorisation is the use of political posters on stakeboards during elections. In many parts of the country, such as in Birmingham, councils have set up byelaws dictating when posters can go up and when they should be taken down. However, many parts of the country, particularly rural areas, do not have any local laws governing the issue, in which case, putting up a stakeboard during an election period is technically a planning offence.
Councils do not prosecute political parties because in order to prosecute, they have to give 28 days for the offence to be remedied. As an election period generally lasts for 28 days or less and political parties are good at taking posters down, councils know that it is pointless writing a letter telling them to take the posters down because they will come down at the end of the election.
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However, such posters clearly do not have authorisation because they are technically a planning offence.
I am sure that the Minister does not intend that local planning authorities can issue fixed penalty notices every time a stakeboard goes up. Given that about 3,500 are used in my constituency during a typical general election, that could be a large revenue raiser for local councils. It would not just be the Liberal Democrats paying the bill, but to a large extent the Conservative party and to a smaller extent the Labour party. I hope that he will clarify that the intention is not to issue fixed penalties to political parties using stakeboards where there are no local byelaws covering their use.
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