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“The report produced by Durham University has since been published and we have considered our proposed amendment in the light of that report.”
Leeds city council therefore links its amendment to the findings of that report. When I met a representative from Leeds city council and a representative from Reading borough council earlier today, I certainly gained the impression that both councils were motivated to support an amendment because of the contents of the Durham report and not just because of the reasons that the hon. Gentleman has articulated.
Mr. Brazier: I wonder whether my hon. Friend, of whom I am extremely fond, is not quite close to arriving at the conclusion that, in any proceeding of the House, outside bodies with genuine concerns that they wish to be brought before Parliament would, it seems, be very unwise to engage in negotiations of any sort with him.
Mr. Chope: My hon. Friend will have to answer to the people of Leeds. Two officers travelled to London from Leeds today specifically to have a meeting with me to discuss the issue. I would assert strongly that the expenditure involved in travelling to that meeting was properly incurred, because as a result they may be able to get their legislation on to the statute book in a way that they would be content with and rather sooner than councils that continue to defy the objections of those of us who are keen to protect the rights of pedlars.
Mr. Paul Truswell (Pudsey) (Lab): Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that the main motivation for the negotiations between officers from Leeds and himself is to remove his obstructions and the tactics that he employs?
Mr. Chope: Well, if that is their motive, it is not how they expressed it. I suspect that the hon. Gentleman—I know about his loyalty to the city of Leeds—misrepresents the position of his council officers. I do not know which party is in control of Leeds city council; all I know is that in dealing with the officers, I have been dealing with the issues on their merits and at no stage did those officers employ ad hominem arguments against me or say that they were giving way because of threats or whatever. What they decided is that clause 5 as it stands at the moment in their Bill and in the Bill—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am following the hon. Gentleman’s arguments very carefully. He will remember that we are now debating whether these Bills should be revived or not—not what alterations might be made to them if the House decides to revive them.
Mr. Chope: I absolutely agree with that, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Basically, I have a bit of a split personality on this issue because I am rather sympathetic to the case for reviving the Leeds City Council Bill on account of that council’s compromising attitude, and I have a similar benevolence towards the Reading Borough Council Bill revival motion. I am much less enthusiastic, however, about the Nottingham City Council Bill, which has not yet received its Second Reading—notwithstanding the views of my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury, whose case, I suspect, falls between those two extremes.
Philip Davies: I shall try to help my hon. Friend here. I understand his keenness to support Leeds and Reading, but given that neither of those Bills have actually had a Second Reading, does he agree with me that there is not a great deal to revive?
Mr. Chope: My hon. Friend makes a very fair point. When we decide whether to vote Aye or No in any Division, we will have to weigh up the balance of the relative merits of those four Bills.
Mr. Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con): This is a new process to me and while I am sure, of course, that the procedures before us are correct, I am rather surprised that four Bills have been lumped together. For two of the council, I would be voting one way, but for the other two I would be voting the other way. I would thus be very grateful for my hon. Friend’s advice about which way he believes we should go.
Mr. Chope: I am trying to reach a conclusion to my remarks as quickly as possible. I hope that, when I reach that conclusion, I will be able to provide some clear advice. It is inherent in what I have said so far that this is a very difficult issue for fair-minded people. Ultimately, we can have only one vote on four different Bills, which are all slightly different.
Mr. Greg Knight: Does my hon. Friend share my concern and my surprise and amazement that in the long period during which the House has been looking at these matters, not one speech has been made in support of the Nottingham City Council Bill? Neither have we had any intervention relating to that particular Bill. Does my hon. Friend agree with me that that Bill provides the weakest case here?
Mr. Chope: My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. If we were to give marks for these Bills, I think that the Nottingham City Council Bill would have nil points; the other Bills would have some points, but how many would be a matter of debate. I agree with my right hon. Friend’s conclusion that the Nottingham city council case has not been made in this Chamber, so why should we indulge the council by allowing it another year even to get round to having Second Reading? If one feels that that is the most important argument before us this evening, in order to express our feelings about the failures of Nottingham city council, we would need to vote against this revival motion, notwithstanding our sympathies for the other Bills before us.
I hope that the promoters of the Bills who have not yet expressed a willingness to compromise will be reminded to do so. There is much in these Bills that is not controversial, is of common interest, and will be supported by Members in all parts of the House. Why spoil the prospect of an early legislative achievement by insisting
on including provisions which, according to any view, are highly controversial, are the subject of active Government involvement and discussion, and, as we heard from the Minister, will be the subject of a consultation paper in the summer? We do not know whether that will lead to legislation, but given the present rate of progress, I see little prospect of the Bills that we are considering tonight—whose Second Readings must still be debated in the Chamber, and whose merits must be voted on if they are revived—arriving on the statute book, having been dealt with by this House and the other place, before time runs out for this Government and there must be a general election.
By then, there will be a completely different scenario. Hopefully, my hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown) will be not just the Minister responsible for this area of activity, but a Minister with a wider area of activity in the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform—or perhaps a Department that will have a new title that slips off the tongue rather more easily, and will be more effective. In any event, the situation will have changed significantly.
One is bound to ask, on behalf of council tax payers who will be affected by these provisions, whether continuing to try to put these Bills on the statute book constitutes a good investment of their money. Would it not be much better to wait for the results of the Government’s consultation in the summer, and see whether they will produce guidance or fresh legislation? That seems to me to accord with common sense, but ultimately, of course, it is a matter for the promoters. If they insist on bringing the matter to the House again, we, as Members of Parliament, must make a judgment on whether we wish to support the revival motions.
I hope that one thing will emerge from tonight’s debate: the awareness of the Chairman of Ways and Means that there are now distinct differences between two of the Bills and the other two, and that they should therefore be treated differently in relation to issues pertaining to the Second Reading debates. I put that on the record because I think that it would be disappointing if all the Bills were dealt with at the same time. Similar arguments relate to the merits or otherwise of carrying the Bills over, but that was discussed in our earlier debate, and I certainly do not wish to detain the House by restating those arguments. What I do wish to do is record my appreciation of the efforts being made by Leeds city council and Reading borough council to reflect carefully on the necessity or otherwise of clause 5 in the Bills, relating to pedlars.
Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold) (Con): Does my hon. Friend not consider one thing very unsatisfactory? I seem to recall that in our last debate, in June, the hon. Member for Manchester, Central (Tony Lloyd) said that if these particular Bills were recalled, up to 50 more councils would wish to present private Bills to the House. The House would have to spend a considerable amount of time dealing with the matter. That is why I think that it would be better dealt with through the Government’s consultation route, through a change in the guidelines if necessary and, if further necessary, through a change in legislation.
Mr. Chope:
My hon. Friend has made a good point. Some of us have been involved in extensive debates on these Bills. The Second Reading debates on the Manchester
City Council and Bournemouth Borough Council Bills took place in June last year, were adjourned, and were resumed in October. Those of us who were involved in those debates may like to take some credit for the fact that our actions deterred a lot of the other councils, to which my hon. Friend refers, from bringing forward their private Bills, no doubt much to the relief of the Chairman of Ways and Means and the Private Bill Office, because they wanted to reflect on what was happening, not least in terms of the Durham university report, the response of this House to that report, and now the Government response. Therefore, my hon. Friend’s point is important.
We are concerned about piecemeal legislation making the situation unsatisfactory for the genuine pedlar, who would not know whether different rules applied in different parts of the country if different regimes operate in different places. Concern has also been expressed about the impact on adjoining boroughs and local authority areas, and there is a general desire to have some common practice again in the way in which the police licence pedlars so that those licences apply throughout the country. At present, each individual police force is responsible for licensing shotguns that can then be used anywhere in the country, but they have a common system for doing that, and I think there is a lot to be said for having a similarly common system for the licensing of pedlars.
I hope there will be a response from the promoters of some of these Bills that will help steer us past this difficult dilemma to do with whether or not we should show our sympathy for Reading and Leeds by saying we should either abstain or support the revival motion, or whether we should display our displeasure at Nottingham and therefore say we should oppose the revival motion. The jury will be out on that, but I hope that we will get some responses to help us reach a conclusion.
9.2 pm
Martin Salter (Reading, West) (Lab): I am very happy to help steer the House, and the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope), through the intricacies of this argument, although I doubt very much whether any of the words I choose to utter will steer him into the same Division Lobby as me a little later.
I have some respect for academic studies, but what motivates me is what the police, traders and the public in my town of Reading say to me, not what some professor chooses to write about a problem—they may or may not have a different perception from the ivory tower of an academic institution. What I know is that a significant police operation took place in Reading. It was called Operation Ontology and it was an operation with the council and the Border and Immigration Agency police command team. It targeted immigration offending and criminality by pedlars in Reading town centre. The operation was conducted by local Thames Valley police officers, supported by the neighbourhood policing team and conducted after consultation with Reading borough council licensing department. The purpose of the operation—this is yet another reason for supporting the Bill—was to identify all the pedlars operating in the town centre of Reading during the period of the operation and where necessary to record details, to locate and identify any immigration offenders among the pedlars, to arrest suspected immigration offenders to be dealt
with by BIA personnel, and to minimise the impact of this operation on members of the public, the officers themselves and the subjects themselves.
It is worth reporting that the briefing that elected representatives have been sent by Thames Valley police said that during the operation 10 pedlars were encountered selling a variety of goods and that the stalls from which many of the pedlars were selling items did not lend themselves to being mobile as each time they were pushed the merchandise displayed would fall from the stall on to the ground. This matter was alluded to by not only the hon. Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown), but the hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt). In many cases these are not pedlars under the definition of the 1871 Act, and the Bills merely seek to bring a piece of legislation that was framed in 1871 up to date to reflect modern circumstances and modern pressures.
It is quite clear that in my town, Reading—I suspect that this is the case in Leeds and elsewhere too—the pedlar certificate has become a £12.50 flag of convenience that is causing tremendous resentment among stall holders, who are paying between £500 and £1,000 for a similar facility. I find it strange that hon. Members from the party that supports business and enterprise appear to be setting themselves against ensuring fair competition and an even playing field. I find it even more surprising that arguments are coming from those on the Conservative Benches against the Cameronian notion of localism; we appear to be hearing arguments for the nationalisation of the regulation of pedlars. That runs contrary to the thrust of the new modern Conservatives and it is frankly illogical, and I find it strange that the Conservative Front-Bench team has not sought to make that point.
Martin Salter: The hon. Gentleman has detained the House for about 90 per cent. of this debate and he has complained consistently that he has not heard from the promoters of the Bills, so if he is a little more patient he will be able to hear from those of us who happen to support them.
Operation Ontology, which was undertaken by Thames Valley police, identified a number of people working illegally. The report said that it was worth noting that the offenders had no legal—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. May I gently say to the hon. Gentleman that he is in danger of launching into a Second Reading speech and he must relate his remarks to why these Bills should be revived?
Martin Salter: I take your guidance, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I merely conclude my point by saying that in the course of that operation it was discovered that four people were working illegally, they were removed from the country and none of the pedlars encountered on the day of that operation had any basis on which to stay in the UK. That is in many ways a response to the arguments being made that there is now no case for these Bills to be revived, because these very real problems exist today, they existed last year and they will exist next year.
Martin Salter: I shall give way to the Conservative Front-Bench spokesman.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: I would not wish the hon. Gentleman to mislead, or rather, to misrepresent—I withdraw the word “mislead”—what I have said on behalf of the Opposition. I did raise the issue of competition and the difference in price between a pedlar’s certificate and a street licence certificate. I also said that I think that whether these Bills are revived is a matter for the House, but this procedure is expensive for the individual councils involved and thus a better procedure would be if this matter were considered on a national basis in respect of whether guidance needs to be revised and whether, as a result of that, legislation needs to be altered. I would not wish him to misrepresent what I said.
Martin Salter: I thank the hon. Gentleman for putting the record straight as far as his motives are concerned. I merely respond by saying that there are Conservative-controlled councils that support these measures and that are happy that they have already got legislation of this sort on to the statute book and the system is working well.
I wish to conclude by making one final point, which touches on why these Bills should be revived. Real damage is being done to small businesses that are struggling to cope in the very difficult economic circumstances that we face. Let us consider Reading’s Harris arcade or what is commonly known as “smelly alley”—Union street in Reading. The total cost of rent, rates and overheads for the small units located there probably works out at about £15,000 a unit. One of these Mickey Mouse stalls being erected on the basis of a pedlar’s certificate costing £12.50 can immensely damage the business of legitimate traders who are paying up to £15,000 a year purely for rent, rates and overheads. I do not want to see businesses in my town going to the wall because we have failed to grasp the nettle and deal with a very real problem.
The Reading Borough Council Bill is being promoted by the business improvement district in Reading, which is made up of businesses that have voluntarily joined the scheme and are paying 1 per cent. of their rateable value of business rates to fund that scheme. They want this to happen and it is my job as a local MP to listen to them and to promote this Bill, so I appeal to the House to allow it to be revived.
9.10 pm
Mr. Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter), although I was unhappy about his attack on my hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown), who has now put the record straight.
The most relevant aspect of the revival motion—the one thing that has changed since Second Reading—is of course the Durham report. It concedes that there are some local problems, but concludes that there is no national problem. Therefore, as a localist, I would like to see a national framework—probably requiring legislation—that councils can opt into if they wish to do so. Unfortunately, because that option is not available to councils, these four councils have been faced with two bitter options—either to do nothing about this dreadful problem or to expend a great deal of money, the amount of which has been considerably increased by the efforts of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope), although he remains my hon. Friend, and a small group of other hon. Friends—
Mr. Chope: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Brazier: Each time I raised a point with my hon. Friend last time, he failed to answer it. In the first debate, he promised that he would answer my point in the relevant debate. I will therefore give way to him if he answers my point first.
Mr. Chope: I do not think that I can give the answer in an intervention because, apart from anything else, it would take us outside the scope of this debate, which is on a revival motion.
When we had the Second Reading of the Canterbury City Council Bill, my hon. Friend was gracious enough to accept that it included a provision on touting that he had not addressed and that should be considered in Committee.
Mr. Brazier: I did not think that my hon. Friend would answer my question. The hon. Member for Reading, West succinctly said that the essence of this measure is the fact that illegal street trading is carried out under the flag of convenience, as he put it, of touting. I asked my hon. Friend to explain how he could distinguish between pedlars and illegal street trading—nobody in this House wants to attack pedlars who are not involved in illegal street trading—but he said that it would be out of order to answer that point. However, it would not be out of order and, as on so many occasions, he has failed to answer my question.
Nevertheless I will answer the question. I made it clear on Second Reading that I was happy to negotiate with my hon. Friend—I hoped that it would be in good faith—on the removal of the touting clause from the Canterbury City Council Bill, which would bring it into line with the others. I hope that it will be possible, when the House authorities consider the arrangements for Committee, for the Canterbury City Council Bill to be grouped with the other two Bills that have already received their Second Reading, because that is the only substantial difference.
I do not wish to echo all the points that were made on Second Reading, and very well tonight, by the hon. Member for Reading, West, but it would be scandalous at any time for struggling honest businesses to be ruined by small numbers—or, in Canterbury’s case, by relatively large numbers—of people using peddling licences to act as street traders. It is not only the legitimate street traders, paying their £800 a year, who are affected, but the shops next door, which are also being wrecked by those people. It really is extraordinarily bad news in the current recession. It is no exaggeration to say that businesses in Canterbury will go to the wall because this measure has not gone through, and that greatly saddens me. It is why I ask the House to revive the Bill. My final point is that in his remarks, my hon. Friend—
Mr. Chope: Will my hon. Friend give way?
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