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Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am not sure that it is for the convenience of the House, or indeed appropriate, for the hon. Gentleman to rehearse something that has already been dealt with in Committee, and which presumably satisfied the Committee. If this was the issue at the heart of whether the Bills should be before the House, it was dealt with at an earlier stage. To repeat it now in the kind of detail that the hon. Gentleman seeks to repeat it is inappropriate.
Mr. Chope: I am not seeking to rehearse the arguments, Mr. Deputy Speaker. If you bear with me, I shall come to the Unopposed Bill Committee's conclusion that the provisions were a matter of judgment. I was going to draw that to the attention of hon. Members. Paragraph 86 of the Committee transcript states that a different level of proportionality will apply in the two Bills before us today from that applying in the other two Bills considered in the same Committee. Concessions had been made in the latter two Bills to reduce the ambit of the restriction on pedlars operating in city centres. In summary, it would be fair to suggest that although the Committee was clear that the Reading and Leeds Bills were proportionate, it left open the question of whether, in the absence of such amendments, the two Bills before us today satisfied the third criterion of proportionality.
Mr. Bone: My hon. Friend is correct. However, this is the first opportunity that Members have had to comment on the Committee's deliberations, with whose conclusions I disagree. It is clear that the representative of the promoters even had doubts. He rightly said that the amendments agreed by Reading and Leeds do not affect pedlars' human rights, because they allow them to continue trading door to door, but he had clear reservations about the Canterbury and Nottingham Bills.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. This matter is now in the past. The Bills have been through Second Reading and Committee, and are now on Third Reading. As I ruled at the outset, it is in order to discuss the contents of the Bill, but the hon. Members for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) and for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone) are trying to go beyond the grounds of what is proper on Third Reading.
Mr. Chope: I do not want to do that, Mr. Deputy Speaker. My only question is whether the contents of the two Bills satisfy the European convention on human rights. Ultimately, however, that will be a matter for the courts, unless the House decides to prevent the Bills from reaching the statute book. Having said that, they have yet to go to the other place, and Members there might take an interest in them-after all, they took an interest in the Bournemouth Borough Council Bill and the Manchester City Council Bill and their compliance with the convention. I need not expand any further. I hope, however, that it is clear that that issue was one of the major matters debated in Committee.
Clause 4 of the Canterbury Bill, which deals with the definition of street trading, is slightly different from that in the Nottingham Bill-if my memory serves me well. Clause 4(2) of the Canterbury Bill has only two paragraphs, whereas the same subsection in the Nottingham Bill has three. The extra paragraph refers to
"the purchasing of or offering to purchase any ticket for gain or reward".
On the face of it, that seems rather similar to the point about touting in clause 11 of the Canterbury City Council Bill as currently drafted. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) takes a particular interest in that issue because he serves on the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport-what I would still describe as "recreational activities"-which has being doing a study into touting, so I would be interested to hear any contribution that he would like to make on those provisions.
The main point that I would like to make about clause 4 of both Bills is that it extends the provisions not just to goods, but to services. Since the Bills were produced, however, a provision has been passed in the EU called the services directive. That directive is mentioned in the consultation document to which the Minister referred in his brief remarks. Page 29 of that document sets out a description of the services directive and a provisional conclusion, subject to consultation, drawn by the Government, which says:
"In order to ensure proper implementation of the Services Directive on 31 December 2009"-
in other words, the end of last month-
"the UK and Scottish Governments intend to amend the Pedlars Act by removing service providers from its scope."
However, it will not have escaped your notice, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that under the provisions of clause 4 of both Bills, service providers are to be added to the scope of the relevant legislation. It is therefore reasonable to ask the question, when we are considering whether the Bills should proceed, whether the provisions of clause 4 are redundant or, even worse, incompatible with the services directive, which
"requires member States to remove any authorisation schemes which might act as a deterrent or a barrier to service providers from other member States operating in the UK."
The consultation document produced by the Minister's Department also says:
"In the UK and Scottish Government's view the pedlar certification scheme amounts to an authorisation scheme which cannot easily be justified on the criteria set out in the Services Directive."
"To meet the deadline for implementation the Department has decided to remove pedlars who provide only services from the"
"implementing legislation is due to come into force on 28 December 2009. After that date, pedlars of services only will no longer need a pedlar's certificate."
As happens with any consultation paper, the Government have done a cost-benefit analysis into the extent to which the changes might impact upon pedlars, and have concluded:
"we understand that those local authorities who apply street trading licensing to service providers are required to justify that those regimes operate within the requirements of the services directive. If they are unable to do so those authorisation schemes will need to be removed insofar as they apply to service providers."
It would be helpful if the promoters of the Bills could explain how the changes proposed by clause 4 are compatible with the services directive, which I concede has come up over the horizon since the Bills were originally brought forward.
Mr. Brazier: My hon. Friend invites me to intervene on him, on this one occasion I shall do so. He knows perfectly well that, were this measure to be confirmed, clause 4 would become redundant. That does not in any way, shape or form prove that the provision is incompatible with anything or harmful to anything. It would simply become redundant. That is the first conclusion that he reached, and he knows it perfectly well.
Mr. Chope: If I did know that, I think that I would have been immodest enough to have said so. I do not know it. I shall put a further point to my hon. Friend-perhaps rhetorically, as he might not wish to intervene on me again. If his interpretation is correct-and according to my understanding of the consultation paper-this amendment to the law has already been made. So perhaps the clause is redundant even now. We seem to have a piece of legislation before the House, including a provision in clause 4, that, on the admission of the sponsor of the Bill, is already incompatible with European Union law. That is bizarre. Perhaps my hon. Friend would like to offer up an amendment for our consideration when the Bills reach the other place, if indeed that is their destination.
Mr. Brazier: Don't hold your breath.
Mr. Chope: Obviously, I am not going to hold my breath, Mr. Deputy Speaker; otherwise, I might be deemed to be out of order.
This short exchange on the application of the services directive has demonstrated that my hon. Friend actually has a lot more in-depth knowledge of these Bills than he has led us to believe. I hope that he will ensure that, before they reach the other place, they will be made compatible with the services directive, as it now seems to have been incorporated into United Kingdom law.
I hope that we will also hear why the Nottingham City Council Bill includes a provision relating to
"the purchasing of or offering to purchase any ticket for gain or reward",
while clause 4 of the Canterbury City Council Bill does not contain any such provision. My hon. Friend has now said that clause 11 goes too far and that he will allow the matter to be withdrawn from the Bill after it has had its Third Reading in this place.
Mr. Bone: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I seek your guidance. A private Bill needs to be advertised in the London Gazette on or before 11 December each year, and all persons likely to be affected by it need to be notified. My contention is that the notification of all pedlars has not taken place and that we are therefore not in a position to continue with this Third Reading debate.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: I am quite sure that the procedures of the House have been satisfied and that what we are doing today is perfectly well in order.
Mr. Chope: Before my hon. Friend raised that point of order, I was about to give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies).
Philip Davies: My hon. Friend has highlighted the point in clause 4 of the Nottingham City Council Bill that relates to ticket touting, which is the bit that has been dropped from the Canterbury City Council Bill, according to my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier). Is my hon. Friend aware that the Office of Fair Trading has made it perfectly clear that ticket touting operates in the best interests of the consumer? We should not therefore try to pass any Bill that tries to restrict the practice.
Mr. Chope: My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and I am sure that if these Bills had had a Report stage, an amendment along the lines he is suggesting-seeking to remove clause 2(b) from the Nottingham City Council Bill-would probably have received a good deal of support across the House. I know that the Select Committee of which my hon. Friend is a member commands great respect and his point is popular with people outside the House. Again, this problem is a consequence of the fact that we are having a Third Reading debate in which we may discuss only the contents of the Bill, and if we do not like those contents, our only effective option is to vote against the Bill as a whole. I hope that my hon. Friend will join me in doing so in due course.
Let me raise another issue. I shall come back to the issue of pedlars in clause 5 "in due course", as the Minister says. There is a lot of concern among pedlars about clause 6, which deals with seizure. Under the Canterbury City Council Bill as drafted,
"if an authorised officer or a constable has reasonable grounds for suspecting that a person has committed a relevant offence",
he or the constable "may seize" and so on. The pedlars in contact with me say that having to establish only a reasonable ground for "suspecting" is not as strong as it should be. What we should really have to establish before we start going around seizing people's goods is a reasonable ground for "believing". The use of the word "suspecting" rather than "believing" in clause 6 makes the provisions in this and the Nottingham City Council Bill much more draconian than they would otherwise be.
Philip Davies: I certainly agree with my hon. Friend on that point. Does he agree that, given that the consequences of seizure are dealt with in these Bills-there is a clause on the seizure of perishable items, for example-and that seized items have to be returned within 56 days, anybody who had had their goods taken off them unlawfully would have to go through the rigmarole and hassle of going to a county court to get some kind of compensation? Given the complications of people getting their goods back-if they get them back at all-and the processes they would have to go through to get any compensation, does my hon. Friend agree it is important that goods are not taken away from people willy-nilly at this stage?
Mr. Chope:
Absolutely. That is the concern. It would be fair to say that there has been a breakdown in trust between lawful pedlars, trading standards officers and licensed street traders in local authorities. There is a fear that the powers being taken in these private Bills will be used against street traders and pedlars in a way that will effectively force them out of business. If they have their goods seized, it will be impossible for them to carry on trading on that particular day. As my hon.
Friend says, the provisions in clause 6 and subsequent clauses of the two Bills will make it difficult for them to get their goods back to enable them to carry on trading in future.
Philip Davies: To my mind, it is even worse than that, as it may well be that the pedlars concerned need to sell the goods in the first place in order to raise the money to buy other goods to continue trading. If they have to go through all this rigmarole before they get their goods back, it is difficult to see how they could continue in business.
Mr. Chope: That is absolutely right, and in common language we would call that harassment. Pedlars would be in such a vulnerable position that unreasonable officers would be able to harass them out of town-which, after all, is the motive of many local authorities in promoting their prejudice against lawful pedlars.
There is another difference between the Nottingham and Canterbury Bills and some of the other Bills: the provisions relating to the seizure of perishable items. It has already been said that these two Bills are the most restrictive of any of the so-called pedlars' Bills. Clause 7 highlights the extent of those restrictions. Food cannot be sold under the auspices of a pedlar's licence, but other perishable items such as fresh flowers can be. If flowers were seized, they would be worthless and unsellable shortly afterwards. Although I am no expert on the length of survival of florists' flowers, I believe it is only a matter of a few days, and even then only if they are kept in the right conditions. Although the clause states:
"The council or the police shall store any perishable item...at an appropriate temperature",
it will not be as simple as that.
Mr. Bone: Subsection (5) states that "any perishable item" will be
"disposed of by the council"
for "the best possible price". If the council were to secure the best possible price, I assume it would have to peddle such items again on the streets. Does that make any sense?
Mr. Chope: This is part of the problem with these two Bills. If a council seizes flowers and keeps them for 48 hours, after which there is an obligation on it to secure the best possible price, I doubt whether the price obtainable would be particularly high because of the condition the flowers would then be in. Pedlars have expressed such concerns to me.
There is, perhaps, one good consequence of these Bills, however. At least pedlars-of whom, according to the latest Government information, there may be 4,000 in the country-are a lot better organised than they used to be. Indeed, the Government refer readers of their latest consultation paper to the pedlars' website for information. That resource is increasingly used by pedlars across the country. Some pedlars are concerned that the impact on them of clause 7 will be disproportionate.
I shall not go through all the concerns that have been expressed, because some would be better dealt with in the form of amendments or the petitions that I understand a number of pedlars will bring against these Bills when they reach the other place. However, one issue raised on
Second Reading with my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) was why the Canterbury Bill makes provision to allow police community support officers to have powers that are not available to them in other Bills that seek to control illegal street trading and pedlary.
I receive a lot of representations from people saying that they are worried about the extent to which PCSOs seem to be able to go around acting as though they are policemen, but they are not policemen. The essence of the setting up of a system of PCSOs was that they should play a supportive role, rather than be substitute police officers. Many people would think that the powers for PCSOs set out in clause 18 go too far. It is regrettable that when this matter was raised on Second Reading we heard no answer from the promoters to the questions asked and that no reference was made to this in the Unopposed Bill Committee.
My concerns are not limited to clause 5 of the two Bills, although it would be fair to say that that is where my main concerns are centred. Clause 5 in effect restricts the right of pedlars within the Canterbury city council area and the Nottingham city council area to carry on as lawful pedlars trading in the street and selling their wares to passers-by. That is a major restriction on the long-established freedoms and liberties of pedlars in this country.
I was pleased to hear the Minister and the hon. Member for Manchester, Central (Tony Lloyd) conceding points that had not always been apparent in earlier stages of these debates in respect of lawful pedlars playing a legitimate role in this country. One of the important messages that emerged from the research that the Government commissioned, which was carried out by Durham university, is that pedlars in general command a lot of popular support. My hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose), who spoke from our Front Bench, described how pedlars add colour to the street scene during the fairs in Weston-super-Mare and are regarded as an asset by people engaging in the festivities. That is a common experience up and down the country and was, in a sense, a finding of fact by Durham university.
Mr. Bone: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way; he is being extremely generous. In both Bills, clause 5 is identical and the last sentence includes the phrase
"if the trading is carried out only by means of visits from house to house".
In the other Bills, house-to-house trading is being allowed, but in these Bills it is not. Have I got that wrong? Will my hon. Friend clarify that point?
Mr. Chope: My understanding is that the effect of clause 5 in the Canterbury and Nottingham Bills is that pedlars would be able to operate only from house to house and not on the street.
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