Mr.
Turner: I have some sympathy with the hon. Member for
Cheltenham in relation to his amendment No. 144. I am not sure whether
I heard him correctly, but it seemed to me to be slightly curious that
one can require a licence in order for a collection for the
Alzheimer’s Society—or indeed any other body—to be
held in a Tesco car park, but not in Tesco itself. That seems
bizarre.
Clause 45(6) says
that “ ‘public
place’ means...any other place to which...members of
the public have or are permitted to have access and which...is not
within a building.” So
Tesco’s car park could be a public place but Tesco could not.
That does sound pretty curious. I cannot understand why anyone should
complain about a collection in Tesco’s car park. If they did not
like it, they would have two ways to demonstrate their
dislike—more than two ways, in
fact.
6.30
pm My amendment is
about something different. It is about the rules that local authorities
appear to impose on people who are undertaking collections. I raised it
on Second Reading. The constituents with whom I discussed the Charities
Bill—I cannot for the life of me remember how we got on to the
subject; it is not the type of issue that I often discuss with my
constituents, particularly teenage ones—complained that they
were not allowed to shake their collection tins. Ryde carnival was not
the example that they gave—I forget the example that they
gave—but Ryde carnival would have been a perfectly good
example. When I was
once collecting for Marie Curie outside Newport post office, I was
firmly instructed by the organisers of the Marie Curie collection not
to shake my tin because it was illegal. I have subsequently done a
little work—a little research, you might almost call
it—and I find that on page 65, clause 59, line 21, a local
authority may “attach any condition” to the determination
of an application for the power for the right to make a street
collection. If that power currently exists, and I would not be
surprised if it did, it would also not surprise me in the least if a
local authority attached a requirement that collectors should not shake
a tin. It seems to me completely and patently absurd that the local
authority should be indulging in this type of petty nit-picking. I can
understand why it does it; it is concerned that people sleeping nearby
may be awoken if the vessel into which money is deposited is shaken too
vigorously. However,
nowadays, most collecting tins are not tins at all; they are plastic
vessels. It is much harder to shake those and make an effective noise.
If you were collecting money in a milk churn, I would understand the
local authority being concerned. However, I see no reason why the local
authority should have this blanket power to ban the shaking of tins.
Amendment No. 45 relieves them of that power, except in the case of
collections that take
place “between the hours
of 8am and
6pm;” —and only
when they have a good reason to believe that they will cause
trouble. Amendment
No. 46 deals with the Secretary of State exercising similar powers. For
some reason the Secretary of State has taken it upon himself to
regulate, in detail, on page 68, clause 63, line 24.
“The Secretary of State
may make regulations...for the purpose of regulating the conduct
of public charitable
collections”. There may
be a possible justification for that if one is doing so nationally.
Although I would like to hear from the Parliamentary Secretary as to
whether he can think of any. However, there is no justification for the
Secretary of State making regulations about the making of public
charitable collections on the Isle of Wight. That is a matter that is
better left to the Isle of Wight council. I propose that local
collections should be exempt from this power for the Secretary of
State. That is amendment No.
46. James
Duddridge: I wish to speak to amendmentNo. 130,
which is in my name. I put it in my name without the benefit of fully
looking at amendment No. 45 tabled by the hon. Gentleman.
However, having seen it, I am glad that I did put the amendment in my
name, because with all respect to him, I believe that his amendment No.
45 is deficient for the same reason that current legislation is
inappropriate. Both
current legislation and clause 45 are not needed because we already
have environmental health regulation. Therefore, if someone is making a
nuisance by shaking a tin, it is already covered. That is something
that causes distress and, as the hon. Gentleman said, he was briefed
not to shake the tin. The simpler we make these matters, the more
likely we are to raise money. I believe that amendment No. 130 would be
more appropriate. It being one of the first amendments that I have
introduced, I am sure that it is badly drafted, but perhaps the
Government will table another amendment.
Tom
Levitt: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will approve of
the practice used by charities that I have noticed. For noise abatement
purposes, they make collections of notes only, not coins. I am
interested that he wants the tins to be allowed to shake or rattle, but
not yet
roll.
James
Duddridge: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that
contribution. He obviously comes from a more affluent part of the
country than Southend, where parting with our change is charity
enough.
Martin
Horwood: Although other parts of the Bill already exempt
local short-term collections, the hon. Member for Isle of Wight is
proposing under amendment No. 46 that local long-term collections
should also be exempted. If I understand the effect of the amendment
correctly, that seems sensible. An entirely local collection should be
a matter more for the local authority than the Secretary of
State. I come now to
amendments Nos. 45 and 130. I cannot help but read out the note that my
researcher put on amendment No. 130, which is that it does what it says
on the tin. However, the amendments give rise to questions that are
sometimes best not asked, partly because they may land all of us in
Private Eye for having slightly spurious parliamentary debates
at vast public expense, which do not make a great difference on the
ground. Furthermore, during my experiences of fundraising, I never
received one complaint from local collectors that they were not allowed
to rattle their tins. People have more important things to worry about
than that. There would be more risk of having complaints from local
shop workers who might have to listen to the rattling of tins all day
long outside their shops. Such provisions are best left out of the
Bill.
Peter
Bottomley: We have not asked my hon. Friend the Member for
Isle of Wight whether he was forbidden to shake his tin when the island
was under Liberal control or whether it is still the same under
Conservative control. The hon. Gentleman referred to the Ryde carnival
collection. Can the Parliamentary Secretary say whether an
unincorporated organisation like that, collecting money for a public
purpose, is philanthropic, benevolent and charitable? If not, it would
not be covered by the
Bill.
Edward
Miliband: We are having an incredibly important discussion
about the amendments. I accept that the issue has been of concern to
the hon. Member for Isle of Wight, but although the Bill was
scrutinised heavily in another place, this part might not have received
so much attention so I am glad that we have a proper chance to debate
it today. I do not want to try the Committee’s patience too much
at this late hour, but I want to put part 3 of the Bill on public
charitable collections in context. It might benefit the Committee to
know that, at present, the collections are governed by a combination of
the Police, Factories etc. (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1916, which
required individuals or charities to have a licence for street
collection, and an order. Obviously, direct debit fundraising did not
exist
then. The
Act was subsequently amended by a 1974 order, which transferred the
licensing responsibilities from the police under the 1916 Act to local
authorities. That is important because it refers to something that the
hon. Members for Isle of Wight and for Rochford and Southend, East
said. Within the order, regulations governing conduct mean that no
person shall collect in a manner likely to inconvenience or annoy any
person. I suspect that that is from where the tin-rattling objections
arose. The problem with that legislation, apart from the fact that it
was drafted a long time ago, is, as I said on Second Reading, that it
is inconsistent and bureaucratic. It is applied inconsistently
throughout the country. Some local authorities use the legislation to
allow hardly any public charitable collections. Some restrict direct
debit fundraising to once a month. It is also bureaucratic because the
local authority has an incredibly wide range of powers. For example, in
authorising a collection, it has to make a judgment about whether that
collection will raise sufficient resources to justify its taking place.
In the middle of that rather complicated explanation, I give way to the
hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr.
Bone).
Mr.
Bone: Should we not rejoice in local democracy making
local decisions? Are we not seeing this centralising Government wanting
to impose their views on local democracy? Does the Parliamentary
Secretary agree?
Edward
Miliband: No. Surprise, surprise—I do not. We are
trying to develop minimum standards across the country, while ensuring
local discretion. What does the Bill suggest? It suggests two
things—first, that organisations that want to collect in public
will have to apply for a public collection certificate, which will be
issued for five years, from the Charity Commission. I am determined to
ensure that that process will be non-bureaucratic, and one that will
give a sense of the bona fides of a collecting organisation.
Secondly, if an organisation
wants to engage in street collections, it must apply to the local
authority for permission to do so. That already happens. We are doing
an interesting thing, which should reassure the Committee, in the Bill.
Clause 60, which is very important, concerns the refusal of permits. We
shall come to that later, although it relates to the amendments that we
are discussing. The
clause provides narrowly circumscribed reasons for why a collection can
be turned down—for example, if it would cause undue
inconvenience to members of the public. However, the clause sets out
certain clear reasons: the day or days of the week, the time, the
frequency and the locality or localities in which the collection takes
place. There has been
huge consultation on the issue, with local authority licensing
officers, the Institute of Fundraising and a range of parties, all of
which have different and often contradictory demands. In simple terms,
we are trying to balance the need for charities to collect on the
street. There has been huge growth, particularly in direct-debit
fundraising, on the streets. The hon. Member for Cheltenham was part of
that—not collecting on the streets, but working for an
organisation that did so. He was not a chugger, but, as someone said to
me, an Ã1/4ber-chugger. We need to strike a balance between the
need to raise money on the street and the questions of public nuisance
that were also raised on Second
Reading. I turn to the
amendments. Amendment No. 45 stands in the name of the hon. Member for
Cheltenham. I am not sure whether he has completely thought through the
effects of his amendment, which would exclude all private
property—including privately owned sections of the highway, the
common parts of shopping centres, supermarket forecourts and railway
station concourses—from the regulation. Perhaps he wants all
that; he wants such a provision to apply to Tesco’s car parks.
However, if we are to respond to people’s worries about lots of
charity fundraising taking place in a concentrated area, we need to
work out where that is happening and give a proportionate response. The
Bill tries to do
that.
Mr.
Flello: I cite the case of Longton in my constituency,
where the large Tesco’s car park is used by people using shops
other than the very large Tesco store. It has effectively become a
public access route to the rest of the shopping area well away from the
Longton Tesco, which I have now plugged twice, although I did not mean
to. Would my hon. Friend accept that there are places throughout the
country where what would seem to be a private area is very much a
public
one?
Edward
Miliband: I agree with my hon. Friend. He puts the point
extremely
well. 6.45
pm It is difficult
to create such a definition. The broad definition of a public place was
not widely supported, particularly by the Institute of Fundraising, in
responses to consultation on the new licensing scheme.
I hope that that will satisfy the hon. Gentleman. Again, we are trying
to strike a balance between allowing fundraising to take place and
properly regulating
it. That brings me to
amendment No. 130, the tin-rattling amendment. I am sympathetic to the
concerns of the hon. Members who proposed amendments Nos. 145 and 130.
I have good news for them. The 1974 regulations contained a rather
catch-all phrase about inconvenience or annoyance, which has been
interpreted as an objection to tin-rattling. With respect to the hon.
Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone), the reasons for refusal of a
permit are now drawn significantly more narrowly in clause 60. That
will make it possible for such collections to take place without
putting authorisation for tin-rattling in the
Bill.
Mr.
Turner: Will the Minister tell me whether any
qualification apart from reasonableness attaches to clause
59(5)(b)?
Edward
Miliband: Clause 59(5)(b) is relevant, but it must be read
in conjunction with clause 60, which deals with the grounds for permit
refusal. The hon. Gentleman could tell me what he is getting at, but it
seems to me that the material part of that provision is in clause
60(1), which sets out the grounds on which a permit can be refused by
local
authorities.
Mr.
Turner: I shall give an example. I am pleased to say that
my local authority has just rejected recommendations from its officers
that all taxis should be painted silver, which seems patently absurd.
One can rely on the good sense of the now Conservative-controlled Isle
of Wight council to have done that. It might be, as my hon. Friend the
Member for Worthing, West suggested, that tin-rattling is banned on the
Isle of Wight because it was under Liberal control for more than 20
years. It is one
thing to refuse a permit and to limit the reasons for which a local
authority can do so, but it is another thing to attach damn-fool
conditions such as “They must wear a tabard with the name of the
charity on it” or “They must stand to the left of a lamp
post and not on the side towards the road”. That is exactly the
sort of thing that local authority environmental health officers love
dreaming up and imposing. I accept that, fortunately, more and more
councils have sensible Conservative councillors to reject such
conditions, but even so, some are taken
in.
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