Local Government (Religious etc. Observances) Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Friday 16th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful for your indulgence, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Politicians, whether in the national Parliament or in local government, should always be mindful of these things when they start their proceedings. I am not aware that anybody, whether they have no faith, a Christian faith or some other faith, objects to our starting our proceedings in that way or finds it offensive. For people who do not want to participate in prayers, there is no obligation on them to do so; they can sit them out, as some do, and I fully respect them for that. It should not be compulsory for individuals to have to engage in prayer, but I do not see the objection to people in politics—people serving the public—starting with a reminder of their duty to the people they are elected to serve. That is why I tabled my amendment.

I would go slightly further than my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough. I think it is important that we start with Christian prayers. We are a Christian country and that is our heritage; we should never be ashamed of it. I do not think that people of other faiths are offended by the fact that we are a Christian country either. We still have an established Church of England, and I do not see the problem with that, whether or not we all support it personally. That is our heritage in this country; it is what our values are based on. We should not be ashamed of that; we should be proud of it. It should not cause any offence if everybody started their proceedings in this way.

This is a probing amendment and I do not intend to press it to a Division. I just wanted to stimulate a debate and make people think about why this is not such a bad thing.

[Mr Nuttall]

I have a couple of points to make on this group of amendments.

Amendment 7 deals with a requirement on a local authority to determine this question by holding a local referendum. I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Arbuthnot) said that he would not press the amendment to a Division, because in view of the financial position of the country and of local authorities, it would make complete nonsense of the Bill. One of the great beauties of this Bill is that it does not impose any financial obligation on local authorities. The amendment would impose a completely unnecessary burden and make a mockery of all the other decisions that local authorities take.

Consumer Rights Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Monday 12th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I am not saying that IT is part of the problem or part of the solution. IT is part of the real world. That is what we deal with and IT can benefit people. For example, people can put bids on things on eBay and then go to bed. This is what happens with technology: people make the best use of it.

Event promoters have many of the solutions in their own hands. Selling all their tickets in five minutes flat creates a secondary market. If promoters are so bothered about the secondary market and ticket touting for a popular event, it may be more sensible for them to start selling tickets in dribs and drabs. There would then still be tickets available to genuine people right up to the day of the event. They do not do that, of course. For cash-flow reasons, they want to get all the money in on day one. It is no good them saying that they want to get all the money in on day one—there is no doubt that the people buying up the tickets to sell on are helping them to get all the money in on day one and therefore helping their cash flow—and then complaining about the very same people they have sold the tickets to in the first place. They are creating the problem they are complaining about and I am afraid I have absolutely no sympathy with them. If they are serious about tackling this problem, the solutions are in their own hands: they should sell tickets in dribs and drabs so that people can go on the day and buy a ticket at face value. That would, at a stroke, make a massive difference to the secondary market.

There are lots of things that people sell that are at a premium. I have mentioned them in the past and I do not want to go through a long list again, but we have seen it with Christmas toys. People have a bun fight to try to get a particular toy at Christmas, buying up as many as they can. Five minutes later, the toys are on eBay at an inflated price. Are the Government going to start stopping people buying up any precious and valuable commodity that has a limited supply? Of course not; that would be nonsense. So why are tickets any different?

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is another problem, which is that there is nothing to stop a seller wanting to sell a ticket in combination with another item? It would be impossible to know which item was being inflated.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, which drives a coach and horses through the hon. Lady’s amendment. People could sell a ticket to an event along with a scarf or a hat and say that they are charging x amount for the hat and the face value for the price of the ticket. That would get around the hon. Lady’s amendment quite easily and make the whole thing complete nonsense.

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[Mr Nuttall]

rose—

[Philip Davies]

rose—

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[Mr Nuttall]

rose—

[Philip Davies]

rose—

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[Philip Davies]

indicated assent.

[Mr Nuttall]

indicated assent.

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[Mr Nuttall]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (John Robertson). He makes his points passionately, but I disagree with them all. I am unashamedly on the side of the free market on this one. The whole problem with the Lords amendment is that it simply strikes at the heart of the free market—no more, no less. This is not really an issue about consumer protection, although it is dressed up as that—it is about the free market. If this measure were passed, it is likely to have the consequence—I accept this might be unintended —of providing less protection for the consumer.

[Philip Davies]

The hon. Member for Glasgow North West seemed to suggest that my hon. Friend and I were arguing on the side of big business and that he was arguing in favour of the consumer, but does my hon. Friend agree that the hon. Gentleman is actually arguing in favour of the big music business? Does anyone think Harvey Goldsmith is not big business? I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman would take that as an insult or a compliment, but arguing on the side of those big music businesses is not arguing in favour of the small consumer, is it?

[Mr Nuttall]

No, it is not. Let us be clear that a lot of these organisations are quite capable of looking after themselves and, if they put their minds to it, of achieving the aims they say they want to achieve. That applies whether we are talking about the Harvey Goldsmiths of this world, the Rugby Football Union or the England and Wales Cricket Board. These organisations put forward their arguments about wanting to help the grass roots of sport and so on, but if they really wanted to do that, they could do so in many ways without going down the road of trying to interfere in the free market.

Let us be clear about how much personal information will have to be placed on the internet for everyone to see under the regulations that have been passed by the other place. The seller has to provide details of

“(a) the face value of the ticket;

(b) any age or other restrictions on the user of the ticket;

(c) the designated location of the ticket including the stand, the block, the row and the seat number of the ticket, where applicable; and

(d) the ticket booking identification or reference number.”

That information could easily be used by criminals and those who are less scrupulous in order to ring up the vendor of the ticket and arrange for the ticket to be sent to an alternative address. It could also be used to set up an alternative listing, as so much information is being provided.

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[Mr Nuttall]

The difference is the name of the vendor, the booking reference and all that, which are not there on the original sale. At the heart of the argument is the fact that, by placing all this extra regulation on the secondary market and making it more difficult to sell tickets, fewer people will choose to sell their ticket through what will eventually become a regulated market. That will result in people, or spivs as my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) called them, choosing to sell their tickets on the unregulated market—or the black market as it is known outside this place. That is likely to happen, and the result will be less, not more, consumer protection.

It was mentioned a moment or so ago in the context of the Paul Weller concert that someone was being asked to pay £101 for a ticket that had a face value of £38 and that somehow the “real” fans were being denied access to the concert. But no one has been able to explain why someone who is prepared to pay £100 for the right to attend and listen to a concert is any less of a real fan than someone who is prepared to pay £38. It just does not make any sense. Surely if a person is prepared to pay £100, they are equally likely to be a real fan as someone who is paying £38.

The hon. Member for Glasgow North West, who is leaving his place, talked about someone making false tickets in their bedroom or their office. That is already a criminal offence; it is fraud. We cannot make it any more of a criminal offence by passing more legislation. Those matters are already covered by criminal law, and the amendment before us will do nothing whatever to sort out criminal behaviour—those who set out deliberately to con and defraud members of the public. We have plenty of laws to deal with those people. The market is working well. To all those who say that they are standing up for the consumer, let me say that I am not inundated with lots of e-mails on this matter. I get hundreds of thousands of e-mails a year complaining about all sorts of things, but I do not get many from people saying, “Oh, I tried to get a ticket for this concert and I could not get it because they were all bought up.”

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, but he seems to be slightly behind the current argument. The proponents of the Lords amendment and the amendment to it are no longer arguing that this is in the best interests of the consumer; they appear to have abandoned that idea. They are now saying that the measure is absolutely crucial to pop groups such as One Direction as they can sell expensively priced merchandise to their supporters. They will not be able to do that under the status quo. Will my hon. Friend keep up with the argument? This is not about consumer rights but about big groups such as One Direction selling overpriced merchandise to their supporters. I am not sure why that is necessarily in the best interests of consumers.

[Mr Nuttall]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. When those arguments were put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Mike Weatherley) earlier, we were taken into a whole new area. We are now arguing that the tickets themselves may have been underpriced to allow people to pay over the odds for the merchandise. That seems to be the argument, does it not?

[Philip Davies]

That is absolutely right.

[Mr Nuttall]

So we have to sell the tickets cheap so that people can be conned into paying over the odds for the T-shirts and the CDs. That is the reality.

The other argument is that this is all about transparency; that a person needs to be able to see that they are in a certain row, seat and place in the stadium. Well, people are not stupid. They know that if they buy a ticket without that detailed information, there is a risk that they might end up sitting behind a pillar and have a restricted view. People do not need any further legislation to help them make up their minds about the risks involved in buying tickets. They know that if they buy on the secondary market, there might be risks, but there will be much greater risks if they go underground. Under the current market, we have operators who run professional businesses, which have been going for a number of years without any problems. Everybody uses them every day of the week. Okay, so a person might pay more than the face value of the ticket, but that is the operation of the free market. I come back to the central point: such operators would not even exist if the vendors sold the tickets at a higher price in the first place. They know when they sell those tickets on day one that they will be swept up and sold at a higher price. In most cases, they turn a blind eye to it because all they are interested in is selling the tickets, getting the money in the bank, and forgetting about the problem.

International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Friday 5th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Several newspapers have today reported that that would indeed be the effect of an after-the-event revision in gross national income. Some of the amendments that we will consider today attempt to deal with that problem.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Is it not worse than that, though? Given what the Chancellor said in the autumn statement, and given the OBR’s projections, Government spending as a proportion of GDP will have to come down. As the OBR has highlighted, even health spending will have to come down as a proportion of GDP. If the Bill goes through unamended, the percentage of Government spending that goes on overseas aid would have to keep rising, rather than remaining constant. Our amendments are designed to deal with that anomaly.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is one of the reasons why we are attempting to change the definitions in the Bill.

As I mentioned, there are several new clauses, two new schedules and 22 amendments. I propose to speak first to new clause 1 and new schedule 1 and then to contrast them with new clause 4 and new schedule 2, together with several amendments thereto that have been tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). I will then deal with the proposed changes to the definitions in the Bill and one or two stand-alone amendments that do not fit into the other categories. I will deal with the accounting period at the same time. I will then speak to a series of amendments that would reduce the figure from 0.7% to 0.35% and explain how that proposal arose.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend mentioned our hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). Perhaps I should point out that he has been detained as one of his children is performing in a Christmas event at school, but he will be dashing here as soon as he can to speak to his amendments. I thought that I ought to put that on the record.

[Mr Nuttall]

I am extremely grateful for that intervention, because I was looking towards where our hon. Friend normally sits in the Chamber and was somewhat concerned by his lack of presence. I am relieved that he will be able to deal with amendments 8, 9, 10, 11 and 37, which stand in his name. I will touch on those briefly at the end of my remarks. Before that, I will deal with the definitions of the accounting period, the 0.35% proposal, the issue of enforcement, which is dealt with in new clause 2, and amendments 1, 2 and 3, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope).

Concerns were raised on Second Reading about the original Bill’s provision for a new body that was to be known as the independent international development office. That had been provided for in clause 5. Although the clause was relatively short, the related detail in the schedule to the Bill was extensive. Subsection (1) simply stated that there should be established an independent body, known as the independent international development office—I shall refer to it from now on as the IIDO—and subsection (2) provided that the schedule should make provision for it. The schedule provided a lot of details about the membership of the IIDO, including who its employees were going to be, its duties, its annual report, its accountability and reporting requirements, its financial arrangements, and its internal financial accounting and audit requirements. It was a comprehensive statement of what was to be required of the new body.

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[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case for new clause 1. Given that the proponents of the Bill say that the proposals in new clause 4 received overwhelming support when they formed part of the Bill on Second Reading, does he not think that those people should have the opportunity to vote for the Bill that they voted for on Second Reading rather than for a Bill that a few individuals decided to change in Committee? Is new clause 4 not, therefore, helpful because it would allow people to vote for the Bill that they thought they were voting for the first time around?

[Mr Nuttall]

I certainly hope that the House will have the opportunity to choose between the options that are available. The will of the House may well be for a new body to be established, but I have concerns about that. A new quango will need staffing; it will need to find new premises, probably at great expense—perhaps in London, or perhaps in another part of the country; it will need to set up a new website; and it will need to set up its own accounting functions. It will need to start from scratch, whereas the ICAI is already up and running. In Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Mr O’Brien) said of the ICAI that

“we have been extremely pleased with the members who have served on it under an expert chairmanship.”

Of course, my right hon. Friend was a DFID Minister back in 2010 when this body was being established. He went on to say:

“They were able to make their own selection of the projects they wanted to examine, after looking at a menu of options. None of that was steered by or in any way discussed with Ministers or the Department. It was entirely an opportunity for ICAI to make its own judgment; indeed, that is precisely what it has done over the years. I think everyone would agree that that has had a good and beneficial effect, in terms of scrutiny and ensuring real accountability for the massive aspirations that are tied to this public money reaching the intended destinations and public goods. ICAI now has a track record.”––[Official Report, International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Public Bill Committee, 11 November 2014; c. 36.]

My right hon. Friend clearly thinks that there may be a role for the ICAI and I hope it will find favour with the House.

[Philip Davies]

Clause 5 states:

“The Secretary of State must make arrangements for the independent evaluation of the extent to which”

the aid

“provided by the United Kingdom represent value for money”.

The Bill does not say how that will be achieved, so without either new clause 4 or new clause 1 Members will potentially be voting for a pig in a poke.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I hope that when the Minister addresses this sub-group of amendments he will explain exactly how the provision in the version of clause 5 that was inserted in Committee—it is not the same version that the House agreed on Second Reading—will be achieved in practice. It is all very well to say that the Secretary of State

“must make arrangements for the independent evaluation of the extent to which ODA”

represents value for money, but it would be helpful to know exactly how that particular provision will be delivered.

[Philip Davies]

Is not the danger with the Bill as crafted that, in effect, the Government will be responsible for deciding what constitutes an independent evaluation and for marking their own homework? Surely it is the duty of this House to set up the basis on which we think the Government should be scrutinised, rather than leave it to them to decide for themselves what constitutes independent evaluation.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend is right. Indeed, more suspicious minds than mine may wonder why the Government are reluctant to include a provision to enable either the ICAI or my hon. Friend’s proposed body to carry out independent evaluation and oversee the Department’s work. There may be a good answer to that and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s explanation.

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[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend, as ever, is absolutely right. That is one reason why new clause 5 should be included in the Bill. As we all know, a substantial part, if not the largest part, of EU funds are disbursed in regional grants to the poorer parts of the EU.

[Philip Davies]

Just to give an illustration, the overseas aid Department gives aid to Moldova, which is the poorest country in Europe. If Moldova were to become a member of the EU, we would be expected to make higher contributions to the EU to pay for all the work that would need to be done to bring Moldova up to scratch. The money we currently give to Moldova in overseas aid would then have to go somewhere else. In effect, the money would be spent twice.

[Mr Nuttall]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that example, which is a perfect reason why it would make sense to accept new clause 5.

New clause 6, also tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley, concerns the calculation of gross national income for the purposes of section 1. As has already been touched on briefly in an intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, some difficulty has arisen this week concerning national statistics. As often happens, to be fair, they are subject to revision as more information comes in and more firms send their statistics to the Office for National Statistics.

New clause 6 therefore proposes:

“Adjustments to the figure provided to Parliament as the UK’s gross national income as at the end of the financial year shall not change or invalidate the UK’s performance against the target under section 1.”

Together with the other amendments that are being proposed, that would go some way towards dealing with the problem we have seen this week.

Amendment 16 proposes:

“Clause 1, page 1, line 4, leave out ‘gross national income’ and insert ‘final gross national income of the preceding year.’”

It would also deal with the problem of changes being made to the gross national income after the figures had been reported.

Amendment 5 is slightly different. It was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset, who has disappeared for the moment. It proposes:

“Clause 1, Page 1, line 5, at end insert “when the central government net cash requirement is in surplus.””

That is an important change, given the overall position of our nation’s finances, and I am sure that my hon. Friend will have more to say about this and his other amendments before the House today.

Amendment 20 would

“leave out “met” and insert “progressed toward”.”

That would cut down on the number of times the Secretary of State has to account for not having met the target.

Amendment 6, which would amend clause 1, page 1, line 7, deals with the inclusion of a role for the Office for Budget Responsibility. This is perhaps one of the most important amendments being proposed this morning, because rather than leaving matters as are currently provided for in the Bill it would be much better if the responsibility for determining whether the target had been met was decided by the independent OBR.

The OBR has been much in the news this week, as it has given its report on the nation’s finances. Again, rather than having the current provision in the Bill, it would be much more sensible if this task was given to the independent OBR. It would not be much of a further imposition on its resources. It is the organisation that has these figures, and each week, each month and each year it has to report to this House. It will be the first organisation to know whether the figure—0.7% or any other figure that the House may decide upon—has been met.

New clause 7, also in this sub-group, was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley and is entitled, “Applicability and expiry of the provisions of this Act”. Subsection (1) reads:

“This Act shall come into force on such a day appointed by the Secretary of State by an order contained in a statutory instrument.”

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[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It makes sense for those who want to see the United Kingdom making the maximum impact with the money available for international aid, including some who have tabled amendments, to make the reporting requirements—everyone accepts we need some means of evaluation so there must be reporting requirements—as simple as possible. I cannot understand why we make them so complicated by putting them on a different basis from all the other Government accounts. It seems to me logical and common sense to assess the accounting period on the same basis as for all other annual accounts.

Amendments 21 to 26 would reduce the figure of 0.7% to 0.35%. Before anyone jumps up to say that this will mean cutting our aid in half, let me say that that is not necessarily so. This issue reveals the problem with the Bill. At the end of the day, the Government could continue to spend more than 0.35% on international aid; they could continue to spend 0.7% or even 0.8% on it if they were so minded. It is worth while considering why this figure of 0.7% has achieved almost mythical proportions.

[Philip Davies]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we need some flexibility around what is affordable for the country? Simply having a very high target every year, irrespective of the country’s financial circumstances, is ludicrous. These amendments would thus allow some flexibility to take much more account of the nation’s finances.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I will not go into all the detail, but other countries have realised this point. If the suggestion of 0.35% were adopted and the Government decided on it—I do not think for one second that they will—it would put us in the pack rather than being second in the list, as we are at the moment. We would not be behind the rest of the world. It is worth looking at the detail of the figures. Anyone who does so will see that, rather bizarrely, for most of the last two or three decades we have spent around 0.35% and that it is only in the past three or four or probably five or six years—and incredibly since the financial crash—that there has been a huge increase at a time when the country can arguably least afford it.

I am conscious of the fact that there are many amendments, so I shall move on quickly to deal with the final two groups. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch has tabled three amendments, one of which is amendment 2. It sets out one of the criteria for evaluation of the policy and provides that it should be

“relevant, sustainable and capable of having a measurable impact.”

I look forward to hearing my hon. Friend’s explanation of the definition of “sustainable”. Perhaps he will convince me that that can be easily assessed. Amendments 8, 9, 10, 11 and 37 were tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset. I should mention in passing that any Member who looked at the Notices of Amendments in the Table Office yesterday should bear it in mind that at that stage amendment 37 appeared as amendment 10. The second “amendment 10” should have been “amendment 37”. I am sure that my hon. Friend will set out in convincing detail his reasons for believing that the amendments should be accepted.

It is right and proper for the Bill to be scrutinised this morning. Millions of people outside the House support this country’s aim and ambition to do all that it can to help those around the world who are starving and need help—no one denies that—but I do not think that giving special status to our aid programme has universal support in this country, and I think it important in a democracy for all sides of the argument to be put.

As I have attempted to say during the last few minutes, the amendments would not wreck the Bill. In fact, they would make it more understandable. If they were implemented, more rather than less money would be available for international development. They would make the Bill more straightforward and transparent, and would increase the funding available for international aid.

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[Philip Davies]

The hon. Gentleman says “absolute rubbish” from a sedentary position, but there is lots of evidence that that does happen. In fact, he makes my case for me. If he thinks it is rubbish, then let us set up a body to prove that it is a load of rubbish. What his party and the Government fear is a body that points out that these things are happening, and so they have done away with it, because it may be embarrassing for all these things to be out in the open. We should have a body, which this House voted for on Second Reading, to scrutinise objectively what the Government are doing to ensure that the money is being spent wisely. How on earth can anyone disagree with that? What is there to disagree with about ensuring that the money is spent wisely and for the purposes for which it was intended? Why does no one have the nerve to stand up and disagree with it? They would rather slouch in their seats and try to railroad this Bill through Parliament.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North mentioned the Independent Commission for Aid Impact. Chief Commissioner Graham Ward said:

“We saw very little evidence that the work DFID is doing to combat corruption is successfully addressing the impact of corruption as experienced by the poor.”

When the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) says “rubbish”, he is at odds with what the ICAI chief commissioner said about corruption. Indeed, the chief commissioner went on to say:

“Indeed, there is little indication that DFID has sought to address the forms of corruption that most directly affect the poor: so called ‘petty’ corruption. This is a gap in DFID’s programming that needs to be filled.”

When we have the ICAI making that point for us, it is perfectly obvious that signing up to a blank cheque of overseas spending needs to be properly monitored. The ICAI has made it clear that the Government are not doing that effectively at the moment. Now it seems that the Government do not want anybody to judge how well they are spending the money. It is completely unacceptable to taxpayers to expect them to hand over money without any proper scrutiny.

New clause 5 requires a calculation of overseas aid spending for the purposes of clause 1 and asks that the calculation of ODA includes the amount paid by the UK to the EU, welfare benefits paid to foreign nationals and welfare benefits paid to UK nationals living abroad. All those things should be included in the 0.7% target, as I do not see how they could not be described in one way or another as overseas aid.

Let me give an example to illustrate. We as a country hand over to the EU just short of £20 billion every year and I think that we receive back about £8 billion a year, although my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North is the expert in these matters. One purpose of the money that comes back to the UK is for it to be spent in the areas of greatest deprivation in the UK. That is what the European Union does and, fortunately I guess, the UK clearly does not have that many areas of mass deprivation in an EU context, which is why we get so little back compared with what we put in. The extra money that we have put in is then diverted around the rest of the EU, in effect to prop up the poorest countries and to try to bring their economies up to a level similar to that of the rest of the EU. That is the purpose of how the EU is funded: it is about taking money from the richest countries and handing it over to the poorest. If that does not constitute overseas aid, I do not know what does.

If the Minister had had the courtesy to speak for more than five seconds flat, we might have known his opinion on this, but I thought that the purpose of overseas aid was to take money from the richest countries in the world and transfer it to the poorest. That is exactly what our funding to the EU does on a European basis. That seems to me to be overseas aid, without any controversy. It therefore seems quite extraordinary that everybody now argues that that is not overseas aid, that it should not be counted as such and that it should be paid on top of it. That means that our overseas aid spending will be not 0.7% but considerably higher— probably 2% of GDP by the time we add in all these other factors.

There is a clear case that our money to the EU should be classed as overseas aid and therefore form part of this target. Then, of course, we have welfare payments paid to foreign nationals. In recent years, far too many people from other countries have come to this country and, to be honest, migration is at levels that we cannot cope with. We are regularly told by people who are in favour of all this immigration that all these people will not stay here but will go back so we should not worry about it at all. I do not believe that, but I am humouring those people. That is their argument, but if that is the case it is perfectly clear that people are coming over here to get some of our British money, as we might want to describe it, to take back to their much poorer country. That seems to me to qualify as overseas aid by anybody’s standards, because in some cases the money is passed back to the country of origin while the person is in the UK. We are basically handing our money out to benefit the economies of those much poorer countries and we give a considerable amount in that way.

The third part of the new clause involves welfare benefits paid to UK nationals living abroad. Again, this is a considerable amount. I cannot find the figures offhand, but from recollection I would say that in the region of £3.8 billion a year is given by the Department for Work and Pensions to UK nationals living in countries around the world. That money does not benefit the UK economy in any shape or form. It benefits the economy of the country where those people reside, so that is clearly UK taxpayers’ money going out to benefit the economy of the other countries around the world. It seems to me that that is also overseas aid according to anybody’s reasonable definition.

[Mr Nuttall]

Does my hon. Friend find it astonishing that jobseeker’s allowance is included in those benefits? It is difficult to understand why the country is paying people jobseeker’s allowance when they are not even in the country.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. You would not let me get sidetracked into discussing the definitions of benefits and how they should be paid, Mr Speaker, and I do not want to do so either, but it is worth mentioning in passing that £1 million a year of jobseeker’s allowance goes to people who live abroad. Like my hon. Friend, I am not entirely sure how they can qualify as a jobseeker, but that is a slightly incidental point.

I have the figures now for your benefit, Mr Speaker. In 2013-14, £3.6 billion of DWP money was given to people living abroad. That is a considerable amount of taxpayers’ money that benefits those countries and I do not really see why it should not count in the overseas aid budget. On all three counts, the Minister might want to explain why his Department does not think that that is the case, because he has given no indication of that at all.

New clause 5 also covers the administrative costs of the Department for International Development, its agencies and its associated public bodies. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North touched on this and I am grateful to him for his support for my new clause in that regard. I am not entirely clear where the administrative costs for DFID and its agencies stand, and if people did not rattle through their speeches so fast, we might all actually learn something. Are administrative costs counted as overseas aid or do we say that overseas aid is paid over and above them? I am not entirely clear. I am clear, however, that they should be included in the overseas aid budget because, as my hon. Friend said, that gives the best possible guarantee that the Department will cut its cloth to ensure that as much money as possible is handed over to the people who need it most rather than being spent on self-serving bureaucracy. We are none the wiser today, but perhaps that might be clarified at some point in the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right. Nobody could deny that if the recalculation means that we have underspent, everyone will be clamouring for the extra money to be found for a non-existent project somewhere in the world just to satisfy themselves, but if the GDP figure is downgraded, there will not be many in the House calling for some of the money to be clawed back. The Bill, in effect, sets a minimum target for spending, not an amount. That is not what most people have in mind. The public will be confused about why they have to spend an extra £550 million—I have no idea where the money would come from—to meet this arbitrary target because it did not happen to match the projection that was made. That is ridiculous.

My new clause 6 means that none of those adjustments would be made. If the calculation was wrong but the money was spent in good faith on a good-faith calculation, that should be that. There should be no end-of-year recalculation of the budget based on an upgrade or a downgrade—it could work either way and I cannot predict which way it would go. It strikes me as ridiculous that the Treasury should have to dig out money from nowhere just to hit a particular target. That is why the new clause is so important.

The way in which GNI is calculated is changing: 0.7% of the old GNI is quite different from 0.7% of the new GNI. For no reason other than statisticians deciding to calculate things differently, the taxpayer will have to find hundreds of millions of pounds extra in order to hit the 0.7% target.

[Mr Nuttall]

Will my hon. Friend make it clear that the Office for National Statistics has had to change the way national income is measured because the ONS was required to bring it into line with the rest of the EU? It is because we are members of the EU that we have to do this.

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that. I am sure everybody in the country will be pleased to know that the taxpayer has been stuffed because of the European Union—not for the first time and, no doubt, not for the last time.

The fact remains that we have a new calculation. This is not a pledge that was made in the 1970s or even when the proponents of the Bill first wanted to enshrine it in law. We are being asked to sign up to something entirely different from what we were originally told, and it will cost the British taxpayer more. If 0.7% of the old calculation was good enough, why can we not stick to that figure and that calculation? Why do we have to move to the new calculation? What evidence is there that that is necessary? What is the thinking behind it? We have had no explanation of that. Nobody has even touched on the issue. The taxpayer is expected to hand over a few extra hundreds of millions of pounds. Some in the House do not care that they are spending other people’s hard-earned money willy-nilly, but I care about people’s hard-earned money and the taxes that they pay, and I want to make sure that those are spent properly. It is just an accountancy figure to many Members, who do not care.

The GNI figure is essential. By passing the Bill unamended and without my new clause, we are at the whim of any future recalculation of GNI which requires the Government to hand over even more to hit the arbitrary 0.7% target. We should not allow that to happen. My new clause 6 would put in place safeguards for the taxpayer.

New clause 7 is also extremely important. It deals with one of the assertions from the Opposition. It provides that the Bill would take effect only after a referendum had taken place and had resulted in more than 50% of the people voting in favour of the target. I am constantly told that the target is extremely popular out in the country, that everybody wants to see it met, and that only a few reactionaries do not. I am prepared to take my case to the country and have it tested in a referendum. If more than 50% of people vote to spend all that money on overseas aid, I will be the first to accept that. I will try to make sure that the money is spent as well as possible, and I will accept the will of the people in a referendum.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

Is my hon. Friend aware that, in an August 2012 report specifically on the introduction of targets in legislation, the Institute for Government made it clear that having no teeth or penalties to back them up

“brings into question the point of putting a target into law in the first place”?

[Philip Davies]

I absolutely agree with that. Apparently this ridiculous Bill is very important, but there is no sanction if the Government do not deliver on it. Surely there must be some sanction available. If I understand the Bill correctly, the only sanction is that the Government would have to make a statement to the House—and that’s it! It does not even have to be an oral statement; it could be a written statement. What a complete joke! This is a piece of joke legislation and I am afraid that the Government are treating us with contempt by having no sanction in place if they do not deliver on it.

International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Friday 12th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

No, I will not.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden provided some of the history. I recommend the 6th report of the Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs for the Session 2010 to 2012, which was a marvellous report on the effectiveness of overseas aid. This all dates back to the UN General Assembly of 1970. The idea that this target is somehow well thought through and relevant to today’s needs and environment is complete and utter nonsense. The target was first plucked out of the air 44 years ago. The idea that it is likely to be the right one to use now is for the birds. It is completely nonsensical to think that the right target in 1970 automatically must be the right target in 2014, when the world is so different.

[Mr Nuttall]

Will my hon. Friend confirm that when that motion was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, the aim was for countries to exert their best efforts to achieve the 0.7% target by the middle of the 1970s, not by the middle of the 2010s?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The original target is completely out of date. Indeed, I note in passing that if this matter is so important for the Labour party and vital for the future of the world, it is interesting that the attendance on their Benches is a bit thin. I think I have seen about 20 Labour Members come in the Chamber to support the measure. Perhaps they might want to explain why that is.

Affordable Homes Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Friday 5th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I was just about to deal with that point.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend suggested earlier that the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) might have misjudged the mood of his constituents. The hon. Gentleman may also have misjudged the mood of the nation. He obviously had not read the Ipsos MORI opinion poll on this policy, which asked:

“In principle, do you support or oppose the reduction in the amount of Housing Benefit for those of working age and living in social housing…if they have more bedrooms than the Government thinks they need?”

Of the responses, “strongly support” and “tend to support” made up 49%, and “tend to oppose” and “strongly oppose” made up only 33%, so it appears that he has misjudged the mood of the nation as well as the mood of Cornwall.

[Mr Nuttall]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for that contribution, which reflects the messages that I was getting in my constituency, in Bury, Ramsbottom and Tottington, before the most recent general election.

To go back to the consultation that the hon. Member for St Ives carried out, we know that 65,000 people did not bother to comment at all, or give an opinion either way. In my view, those who did indicate their support for this Affordable Homes Bill will be very disappointed, to say the least, with its content. The Bill appears to be a mere shadow of the one that the hon. Gentleman put forward for consultation to his constituents. That Bill contained an extension of the Government’s Help to Buy scheme, a proposal to create an affordable homes investment bank—there is no mention of such an institution in the Bill before us—and a proposal to create a new planning use class for non-permanent residential use, in other words, for second homes. That would have given local planning authorities power to control the number of second homes in their area. There is no mention of that in this Bill.

The Bill that the hon. Gentleman asked his constituents to comment on was also scheduled to give local authorities immense powers of compulsory purchase where developers held back land for development, or where they failed to develop sites for which planning permission had been granted but on which no development had yet begun. Well, surprise, surprise: there is no mention of that measure either.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for trying to clarify matters. I am not sure whether I am any clearer about why, if he thinks it is a good idea to include other matters, they are not in the Bill this morning. It is not clear to me that there is any reason other than that he thinks that a slimmed-down Bill stands a better chance of getting a Second Reading. On that basis, it is fair for hon. Members, in reaching a decision this morning, to have in the back of our minds the fact that the Bill is a Trojan horse.

[Philip Davies]

Given that the Bill’s promoter is saying that this is not the Bill he would have wanted and that it should be a lot better, and given that Labour Members have said, “This Bill isn’t really much good, but it’ll do as a starter,” which means that no one is particularly keen on the Bill, does my hon. Friend not wonder why on earth the battalions have come here today to support it? Does he think that, rather than supporting the merit of the Bill, they are merely trying to get any old Bill into Committee so that they can achieve their real objective: to stop an EU referendum Bill going through the House?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

That is indeed what clause 2 proposes. I take the view that what one might call cases outside the normal set of exemptions, which I will come on to, are best dealt with through the current system of discretionary housing payments.

The present size criteria allow one bedroom for each person or couple living as part of a household, with children under 16 of the same gender expected to share and all children under 10 expected to share. Tenants’ housing benefit is reduced by 14% for those with one bedroom more than that formula allows, and by 25% for those with two or more spare bedrooms.

With estimates putting the total number of spare bedrooms at approaching 1 million, it is absolutely no wonder that Ministers should look at that matter. Considering that, according to the Office for National Statistics, 360,000 households live in crowded accommodation in the social rented sector in England, all of whom would I am sure dearly love to move into bigger accommodation, Ministers had to take action. With nearly 2 million families on social housing waiting lists in England, it makes absolute sense for the nation’s social housing stock to be utilised as efficiently as possible.

[Philip Davies]

Is not the nub of the issue that housing associations basically built houses that were far too big for what the population needed? They knew full well that they could build as many three-bedroom houses as they liked, because the Government would pay them for a three-bedroom house even if only one person was put in it, and they got £500 million a year in subsidy for unnecessary places. Labour Members go on about the cost of living, but they in effect made people heat a three-bedroom house when they only needed a one-bedroom property. If they really cared about the cost of living, they would want people to be in accommodation of an appropriate size to bring down their bills.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Lots of people openly admit that their property is larger than they need, and that they would benefit from living in smaller accommodation.

Deregulation Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Monday 23rd June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the choice as to whether someone attends church or goes shopping is the same choice regardless of the number of hours that larger shops can remain open?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I know that he is a church warden. Most church services on a Sunday are at 10 or 11 o’clock in the morning when the shops are open.

Benefit Entitlement (Restriction) Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Friday 17th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

I rise to support the Bill. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) on bringing it before the House. I am delighted to be one of its sponsors. As he said, it addresses a matter that is in the news a great deal at the moment—it could not be more topical. I think it demonstrates the real difficulty that the House sometimes has in connecting with people’s problems, because of the way our processes work. I will speak as briefly as I can, because I am anxious, as are my constituents, that the measures should become law as soon as possible.

I hope that the Minister will say that the Bill enjoys the full support of Her Majesty’s Government, but I fear that in reality he might find it difficult to offer that, no matter how much he might wish to, because of the situation we find ourselves in—[Interruption.] I see that he thinks that I am on the right lines. The problem is not with him—he is a very good chap—but with the position the House finds itself in as a result of our membership of European Union. It is really about that relationship.

There are two things to consider in the Bill. There is the meat of the Bill itself, although I will not go into the detail, because it is very straightforward. It can be summed up in one simple sentence: British benefits for British citizens. That is really what it boils down to. It is not rocket science.

We know this is a very popular measure. As my hon. Friend mentioned, Lord Ashcroft has scientifically tested the will of the nation on a number of the measures in Bills that several of us had proposed at the start of this Session. His polling company conducted a poll on 28 and 30 June 2013—bizarrely, it covered 2,013 adults; I think that is purely coincidence—in which a representative sample of the British people were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with certain propositions in those Bills. It asked specifically about the two proposals in this Bill: first, recording the nationality of a claimant; and secondly, restricting welfare benefits to UK citizens.

The respondents were not only asked whether they supported the proposals but split into two groups. The first group were told they that the measures had been suggested by some unspecified people and the second group were told that they were being proposed by Conservative politicians. Seventy-one per cent. of people in sample A—those who thought the measures had been proposed by unspecified people—agreed with the proposition that we should record the nationality of benefits claimants. The negative Tory effect, as it was called, was minus 3%, in that even if people were told that those nasty Conservatives were making the proposal, 68% still said, “I’m not bothered who puts it forward—it’s still a damn good idea and I want to support it.” Lord Ashcroft then took into account the people who said, “Frankly, I’m not that interested in politics and I can’t give a view—I neither agree nor disagree”; he called it the “Meh” effect. Twenty-one per cent. of respondents said they were not bothered either way, which, if one takes into account the 71% of those in sample A, leaves just 8% of the population disagreeing with the proposition that it is a good idea that we should record someone’s nationality when they wish to apply for a national insurance number.

The proposition on restricting welfare benefits to UK citizen, which is perhaps more important, was, I am pleased to say, even more popular, because 74% of people in sample A said they agreed with it, and 70% still thought it was a good idea even when they were told that it was being put forward by Conservative politicians. The figure for people who neither agreed nor disagreed—the “Meh” effect—was 13%.

These are enormously popular propositions, whichever way one looks at it. Our own anecdotal experience will tell us that if we go out into the street and discuss this with people they will say, “Of course British benefits should be paid to British citizens.” Nothing annoys people more than the thought of the taxes that they have paid as a result of hard work being paid to claimants who have not contributed to the system at all and have just come to this country saying that they are looking for work. Frankly, they are bound to say that; they are hardly likely to say, “I’ve come here because you’ve got a better benefits system.” I have no doubt, to be fair, that it may well be true that most people come here looking for work, but that does not negate the fact that the overwhelming majority of the British people think that British benefits should go only to British citizens.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch has said, this House is now, in essence, unable to deal with this matter, as is the case with so many other issues.

[Philip Davies]

We restrict access to benefits for people who come to this country from outside the European Union, so the idea that foreign nationals should not have access to our benefits does not appear to be controversial. Everybody seems to agree that we should restrict benefits for people from outside the EU, so is there any reason at all why the same principle should not apply to non-British citizens from within the EU?

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I think that this is one reason why there is so much antagonism towards our membership of the European Union. This House is impotent in these matters. As my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch has said—I fear the Minister will say the same thing—the most we can do is restrict for three months the benefits of people who come here from other EU countries. To be frank, that is neither here nor there. It is no wonder that people are not satisfied with that response. Of course, they agree with it—it is better than nothing and we agree entirely that we should do it—but it is nowhere near being a sufficiently robust response to the complaints we hear every day of the week, such as, “I know very well that there are people living down the road who have moved here and made no contribution to the system, and yet they are claiming benefits.” I do not think that making them wait for a few weeks before they can claim will be enough to assuage people’s concerns.

I do not want to go down another avenue, but, to be honest, our relationship with the EU goes to the very heart of the problem, and unless we deal with that relationship, we will not be able to solve the problem. When this country joined the EU, it was not, of course, the European Union, but the Common Market. People thought that they were joining a free trade area. It had nothing to do with lots of people coming here and claiming benefits. As my hon. Friend has said, over the years we have seen a general competence creep on the part of the EU. It has gradually taken over more and more competences: more and more things have become its responsibility rather than the responsibility of this Chamber. It is, therefore, no wonder that people feel that it is not worth voting in elections and say, “There’s no point, because you can’t change anything.”

We have yet to hear what the Government’s red lines are in renegotiating our EU terms of membership, but such matters should be brought back within the control of this Parliament. I venture to suggest that if any party put that in its manifesto, it would be extremely well received and very popular, as shown by the evidence that I have given. The popular nature of the measure would be demonstrated if we put it in a manifesto and voted on it in a general election, knowing that it could be brought into law and that its introduction could not be stopped by the European Union.

If the measure is prevented by our membership of the EU and that fact is not changed in any renegotiation, the British people would be absolutely right to vote to leave the EU so that we can get back control over such matters as deciding who we pay benefits to. That is the heart of the matter. The measure is popular and would receive widespread support right across this country. I will not detain the House with the details, but the poll shows that it is supported by all age groups, sections of the public and parts of the country. It is absolutely wrong that this House has no power to bring in the measure because of our membership of the European Union, which is really what this boils down to. There is no other reason why we cannot do it; we are stopped from doing it by being members of the European Union.

I hope that the Minister will say something different—that he entirely agrees that the measure is popular and that it will receive the Government’s full support—but I fear that will not be the case. Nevertheless, the Bill has my full support. It will receive if not universal, then very widespread support from my constituents, and I wish it well.

Women Offenders and Older Prisoners

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Thursday 16th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Philip Davies]

I am afraid we hear that time and again in the main Chamber. Questions focus on female offenders, female offenders, female offenders; there is never the same focus on either offenders overall or male offenders. All I am trying to do is introduce some balance to the debate. Actually, all of the things that people mention also apply to male offenders and, just because of the sheer numbers, in many more cases. I would like to see the same focus—arguably, a greater focus—on all of those issues in relation to male offenders.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend find it as surprising as I do that, whereas the female figure for self-harm incidents has been going down not just in total over an eight-year period but in every single one of those eight years, the male figure has been going up every single year? We might think that it is flying in the face of the facts to concentrate on females rather than males.

[Philip Davies]

One would have thought that, if the Select Committee was just considering the evidence, it would have wanted to focus on why the problem appears to be getting worse for male prisoners when it is getting better for female prisoners. Perhaps that would be a worthwhile thing to consider, but it appears that the Select Committee has glossed over that fact in its obsession with appealing to the politically correct lobby that wants to make out that women are treated far worse in prison than men.

One of the myths that I want to address is the idea that women are very likely to be sent to prison. The right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd gives the impression that many women should not be in prison, for reasons that apply only to women. He says there is a unique problem for women, and I want to nail that myth once and for all—I suspect that I will not, but I will give it my best shot.

Going back to my starting point, which is that I was appalled by what I was hearing about how women are treated so badly by the courts, I asked the House of Commons Library to provide the evidence that a higher proportion of women are being sent to prison. Not only could the Library not provide that evidence, but it confirmed that the exact opposite is true. I repeat that, for every single category of offence, a man up before the courts is more likely than a woman to be sent to prison. For violence against the person, for example, 35% of men and 16% of women are sent to prison; for burglary, 45% of men and just 26% of women are sent to prison; for robbery, 61% of men are sent to prison and 37% of women. It applies in every single category of offence: men are more likely than women to be sent to prison.

A Ministry of Justice publication called “Statistics on Women and the Criminal Justice System,” which is produced to ensure that there is no sex discrimination in the system, states:

“Of sentenced first-time offenders…a greater percentage of males were sentenced to immediate custody than females (29% compared with 17%), which has been the case in each year since 2005.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

I am sure that that is absolutely right: the first thought of any victims of crime would be that they do not want anyone else to suffer in the same way. That brings me to my next point.

[Philip Davies]

If we all agree with that point, presumably the best way to ensure that someone is not a victim of crime is to ensure that offenders are in prison, because while they are in prison they cannot go out and commit another crime.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend leads me nicely on to the point I want to make about a concept that is rarely heard of—we have hardly touched on it in the debate—which is punishment. We have hardly heard anything about punishment. Sentencing is also about imprisoning people as punishment for the crime that they chose to commit—whether a man or a woman, they chose to commit the crime. That goes to the heart of the matter.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I apologise that I was not here for the start of the debate. I was speaking in the debate on Bangladesh in the main Chamber. As a member of the Justice Committee, however, I have taken part in all the inquiries, and I invite the hon. Gentleman to consider for one moment that societies that obsess solely about punishment end up with large prison populations and a very high rate of reoffending. Countries that go in for a combination approach, including a rehabilitation process, often end up with smaller prison populations, less reoffending and less crime.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

I entirely accept the reason of the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) for not being present earlier in the debate. That matters not; it was appropriate for him to be speaking in the other debate in the main Chamber. I also accept that, as a member of the Committee, he has spent some time looking into the subject, but I was not suggesting that rehabilitation should play no part in the justice process. Clearly, rehabilitation will have a part to play in most cases, although some cases are so heinous that offenders will not let be out of prison. If I had my way, of course, we would see the introduction of capital punishment—that would go some way towards dealing with the number of older prisoners in our prison estate.

[Philip Davies]

And with reoffending.

[Mr Nuttall]

And with reoffending, for that matter.

I am conscious of your guidance on time, Mr Amess, so I will not digress too much, but does it really matter whether someone is young or old, or male or female? A victim of crime who has suffered wants to see someone punished for that crime. The facts show, however, that male offenders are more likely to be sentenced to immediate custody than a female offender. Taking robbery, for example, 61.7% of male offenders but only 37% of female offenders are sentenced to immediate custody. Furthermore, when they are sentenced, the average sentence length for men is much more—34.1 months on average, compared with 25.5 months for female offenders. That is the same across the board, whichever sector we look at, for all offenders: thus, for burglary, 44.9% of men receive immediate custodial sentences, but only 26.6% of women.

Whichever category we look at, therefore, we see the same result—that cannot be right and it cannot be excused. We should not be looking for all sorts of socio-economic reasons to explain why people have committed crime. The introduction to the report on women offenders mentioned categories that should be taken into account, including a variety of “personal circumstances” and

“socio-economic factors such as poverty”.

I grew up in straitened circumstances and I find it extremely insulting when people suggest that people living in poor circumstances should somehow be excused for committing crime. That is simply not right. I was brought up in difficult circumstances, but we were all taught the difference between right and wrong; that it is wrong to commit crime, to steal from a neighbour or to hit someone else. We need to get back to a society in which, from an early age, people are taught the difference between right and wrong and that offenders are punished, and punished severely, so that they do not want to commit more crime or go back to prison. That is how we will cut crime in this country.

Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Tuesday 26th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman; he is absolutely right and I am sure we all look forward to the Minister’s response. I hope we can look forward to hearing her accept new clause 1. It seems that Governments often refuse to accept amendments and new clauses simply because they have been tabled by a Back Bencher rather than the Government. It would be to the Government’s credit if they were to accept that the new clause is sensible and has cross-party support and support from the Select Committee that scrutinised it. The new clause does not add a great deal of complexity to the Bill; it is fairly straightforward and would be easy to implement. When the Minister responds, I hope she will say that she has listened to the argument and realised that we should pursue this sensible measure.

[Mr Nuttall]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way on that point. Clause 5 provides that

“Section 1(4) to (7)…come into force on the day on which this Act is passed…The other provisions of this Act come into force”

on whatever day the Secretary of State determines by way of statutory instrument. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is therefore no reason why the new clause could not be inserted in the Bill and the Secretary of State could trigger it at some point in the future?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right and if the Minister felt it necessary, she would be able to do that. The other point that has been well made is that we are not likely to have another suitable Bill in the foreseeable future to deal with this issue. To be honest, it would be unacceptable for the Minister simply to give the House some warm words and agree to look into it at some future date, as that would, in effect, be kicking it into the long grass for an indeterminate time. If we are going to implement this measure, as seems sensible, there seems to be no reason why we cannot just crack on and do it now. I support new clause 1, and if the Minister will not accept it, I encourage my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend East to push it to a vote. I think he will see that the new clause finds a great deal of favour in the House, although I hope it does not come to that.

The next group of new clauses are tabled by the hon. Member for Eltham and I consider them a combination of the unnecessary and the undesirable. I will attempt a quick canter round the course for each of them. I do not intend to delay proceedings for long, but it is worth setting out why I would not agree to any of the new clauses, and why I hope that the Minister will follow suit.

New clause 2 on licence, compliance, stipulations and control of spread betting seems completely unnecessary, and I hope the Minister will reject it on those grounds. New clause 3 has an interesting idea about ensuring there is a kitemark on all licensed and legitimate websites. I understand why some might think that idea superficially attractive, but my view is that the new clause is completely pointless. A kitemark does not attract people to a particular gambling website or company—it tends to be the odds being offered that attract people to those websites or companies. I admire the naivety, I suppose, of the shadow Minister who thinks that if we put a kitemark on the bottom of every licensed website, every punter in the country will ignore all better odds available and just bet blindly because of the kitemark. It would be nice if the world worked that way, but that is cloud cuckoo land. It is completely naive and unnecessary.

New clause 4 concerns remote gambling licensees, customer protection and making sure licensees participate in a programme of research into and treatment of problem gambling. I do not have a problem with that; it is quite desirable that all of those companies participate in providing finance to research problem gambling and to provide treatment. The issue with the new clause putting that into statute is that it is already happening on a voluntary basis by the gambling industry. The hon. Member for Bradford South knows all about this because he was involved in it.

Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Tuesday 5th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I welcome what the hon. Gentleman says. We should be very careful before going down any of these routes and should look for any unintended consequences.

I do not think that the proposal will deliver the revenue that the racing industry thinks it will. If the Government are concerned that this will entangle them in a huge legal minefield in the European Union, it seems to me to be a pointless battle to get into when it will generate no extra money for racing anyway. I therefore urge the Minister, whatever representations she receives, to resist going down that route, because I think she will be led down a blind alley, whatever the superficial attractions.

I speak as a rather modest owner of racehorses—an owner of rather modest racehorses is probably a better description, to be honest—so I am really arguing against my own interests, because in theory increasing the levy yield is supposed to benefit people like me.

[Mr Nuttall]

Only if you win.

[Philip Davies]

Yes, the levy would kick in only if my horse won some prize money, and given how rarely that happens I suppose it would not make much difference. It is a distant dream one way or the other.

I want to concentrate on taxation, because I thought that the question I asked at the start of the Minister’s speech was rather simple and got to the nub of the issue. If this is all about regulation and player protection, surely the first question the Government must have asked is how many people are currently playing on illegal betting sites. I cannot believe that nobody has looked into that, because it seems the obvious question to ask. I did not hear an answer, and I am not sure whether there is one, but I venture that it will be at least 95%. If anybody wishes to argue with that, they are welcome to intervene.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

The hon. Gentleman may have no faith in the Treasury. I am happy to go along with the Office for Budget Responsibility, which wants to look at this to see what revenue can be expected. In fact, I am happy to look at anybody’s genuine predictions.

This is a Government Bill that is supposed to be about increasing regulation and player protection. However, the Government themselves admit in their own Treasury forecast that it will result in our moving from a situation where probably fewer than 5% of people are betting with unlicensed and unregulated sites to one where about 20% of people are likely to be betting in that way. Does that sound like a sensible strategy for a Government who are introducing a Bill to improve player protection and the regulation of the gambling industry? It is complete nonsense and it is there for all to see. This has nothing to do with regulation or player protection; it is about taxation and tax rates, as the Treasury made abundantly clear in its forecast.

[Mr Nuttall]

Does my hon. Friend think that the reason why the Treasury is using the 20% figure is that it accepts what I and, I suspect, my hon. Friend believe to be the case, which is that punters will seek the best odds and that this Bill will increase the costs on the operators and result in their offering less good odds than those who are not so regulated?

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[Philip Davies]

For once, Mr Deputy Speaker, you are quite wrong. I have been racing through my comments, which I suppose is just like a Friday, when I do the same. I am trying to go through them as quickly as possible and I do not intend to speak for hours. I was just looking at the clock, actually, thinking that I should draw my speech to a close as soon as possible.

The final point on which I want to concentrate relates to taxation and what people may wrongly associate with this Bill. There is too much focus on the big gambling companies, such as William Hill, Ladbrokes and Coral. To be perfectly honest, I do not worry too much about the effect the Bill will have on them. They are big, successful and innovative companies and I am sure they have the wherewithal to cope with the Bill’s taxation regime. I am sure it will create some pain for them, but I do not have a problem with that. The reason why I support the Bill is that there is an awful lot to be said for companies offshore having to pay taxation in the same way as small, independent betting shops in this country. I do not worry about those big companies.

What I am worried about—I hope the Minister will consider this carefully—is the Bill’s likely impact on much smaller internet companies in the gambling industry, such as innovative start-up companies. If we look at the history of the gambling industry, we see that it is often the smaller companies that have driven much of the innovation and change that have been part of improving standards in a number of areas. My concern about the Bill’s new licensing system and the Treasury’s proposed taxation rates is that those companies will be priced out of the market before they can even reach a scale that would allow them to flourish. In effect, they will be strangled at birth and that would wipe out lots of innovation in the gambling sector.

That could easily be avoided, without altering the principles behind the Bill, through the introduction of thresholds or a tiered taxation system when the tax rates are announced. Both those alternatives would mirror the current income tax system, which has tiered rates depending on the size of a person’s income, a tax-exempt threshold at the lower end and graded percentage rates. The Government should look closely at introducing a tax regime that does not involve a simple, across-the-board 15% rate, but that takes into consideration the size of the companies concerned, their ability to pay and innovate, and the investment needed for that innovation, because lots of jobs—an underestimated number—are dependent on these small technology companies in the UK.

People might say, “They’re based offshore. It doesn’t matter.” The companies are based offshore for gambling purposes, but they also employ lots of people in the UK who do their marketing and advertising and who create their TV adverts. We would lose lots of jobs in the UK if we priced such businesses out of the market.

[Mr Nuttall]

Does my hon. Friend agree not only that those companies employ British workers in this country, but that often, the workers based offshore are also from the UK?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. People ought to bear in mind a number of very small companies, such as Probability, NetPlay TV, Gamesys, Adobo Games and tombola, which advertises a lot on TV and is growing. Those companies employ lots of people in the UK, but if the Bill’s regime of a 15% tax rate had been in place when they started, they would never have got off the ground because it would not have been worth their while. The British economy cannot afford to lose those companies and the jobs they create. This is not about Ladbrokes and William Hill. I suspect they will survive whatever the rate of taxation. It is the smaller companies we should be thinking about.

I want to address one or two points that I do not think have been cleared up. Will software suppliers such as Oracle and Microsoft need to apply for a Gambling Commission licence, given that they are key suppliers to software providers of the online gambling and gaming industry? The Bill does not make it clear whether they will need a licence. I am not sure whether the Minister will be receptive to redrafting the Bill in order to make clear the extent to which software providers need to go down their supply chain to require suppliers to apply for a Gambling Commission licence. Italy, Denmark and France do not need software suppliers to be licensed. My understanding is that only Spain does, and that that is currently under review. I urge the Minister to consider that point and ensure that it does not happen.

Another point is the extent to which the staff and ultimate beneficial owners of applicants are required to provide personal information. With the possible exception of banks, no other industry will be required to provide so much personal detail, not just of directors but of virtually anyone in a senior position in the organisation. Why is that needed?

I support the principle of the Bill, but not for the reasons given by the Government for introducing it. Frankly, the regulation argument is nonsense and does not stack up at all. This is about taxation and on that basis I support the Bill, but only if the Government set the taxation at a sensible and affordable rate. Before we get to Third Reading, I hope the Treasury will indicate the likely taxation rates and whether it will consider tiered rates or a much lower rate. If the tax rate is too high, I may no longer support the Bill, because it could have unintended and damaging consequences.

Whatever revenue is raised will be good for the Treasury—it will get more in the future than it is getting now—so why not try the rate at 5% and see what happens? If there is no big issue, it could then increase it to 10%, and to 15% at a future date. Why go straight in at 15% and perhaps have lots of unintended consequences? It should be done incrementally: start at 5%, see how it goes and review it from there. I hope the Minister will take that on board and urge her Treasury colleagues not to damage what otherwise could be sensible legislation.

Apprenticeships and Skills (Public Procurement Contracts) Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Friday 1st November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I hope to have the opportunity to come on to some of the detail in the Bill. Suffice to say at this point that I am not sure that the bit that the hon. Gentleman read out is particularly relevant to the bit that I read out. The bit that I read out is a requirement to provide apprenticeships and skills training generally, whereas the bit that he read out is about a higher level of apprenticeships, so we are talking rather at cross-purposes. I am not entirely sure that his point addresses my point or that my point addresses his. That is why I think we may be left with further confusion.

[Mr Nuttall]

Perhaps I can assist. I wonder whether the real problem is in clause 1(1)(a), which states that

“the authority must”—

it does not say “may”; it says “must”—

“give due consideration to the relevant guidelines issued by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) or by the Cabinet Office”.

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that those guidelines could easily be amended to make it a mandatory requirement?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. We heard what I thought was an excellent speech from the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish and it was difficult to disagree with much of what he said. We may have a slight disagreement about the respective merits of each party’s approach and what they did while in government, but it would be churlish to argue the toss on that. I am willing to look above the party political and look at the issue as a whole, and I agreed with virtually everything that the hon. Gentleman said. My concern—I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) for jumping in at this stage—is that the hon. Gentleman’s view that the Bill was all about people’s choices seemed to fly in the face of the language in the Bill, such as the words “require” and “must”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s confidence that my constituents listen carefully to the speeches that I make in Parliament. That has been a revelation this morning. To be perfectly honest, I was not aware that anyone listened to my speeches in Parliament, but if my constituents are listening, it is a great boost for me to know that they are hanging on to every word. It is certainly news to me. They are very good at hiding the fact that they are hanging on to my every word.

My fundamental problem with the Bill—which I reiterate in response to the various interventions, and then I hope that I will be able to make some progress, which I am sure we all want—is that it will create more confusion about whether these are requirements or just something that can be done. If this were required of people in the public sector, I would appreciate the sentiment, but it would be misguided and would lead to some unintended consequences. If it is not compulsory, it is completely unnecessary, because any public body can do these things anyway. The hon. Gentleman made an interesting point about EU procurement and the role that that plays in this, but I will come on to that later because I want to show why the Bill might be counter-productive and have some unfortunate unintended consequences.

The reason why the hon. Gentleman is right about the quality of apprenticeships is that that is how they started in the reign of Elizabeth I. They were very limited and they lasted between seven and 14 years, which was far in excess of the time needed to obtain skills in a particular sector, but it showed that the person who had passed their apprenticeship was an expert in their field. That is what I would like us to return to; not necessarily that they would take up to 14 years to complete, but that a completed apprenticeship would allow someone to be perceived as an expert in their field. The hon. Gentleman was right to say that that is what we want to achieve.

I do not want to go into the detail of apprenticeships in the time of Elizabeth I, but I can do so if anyone is interested.

[Mr Nuttall]

I am.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend is being generous with his time this morning. Does he share my concern that if a given number of apprentices were required under a public procurement contract, particularly at a local level, it could result in an increase in the tender prices? Despite what was said earlier, there would therefore be a cost to the public purse.

[Philip Davies]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend. Another danger is that if apprenticeships become an important focus for a public body in its procurement, it will become the focus of the bids. A company will increase the price that it is charging in order to take on x number of apprentices and will get the contract on that basis. The price that is charged to the taxpayer will therefore be higher than it otherwise would have been. The problem of overpaying for contracts in the public sector that has been identified would be made worse by this proposal.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend has hit on a crucial point. As he knows, contracts, especially in the construction sector, often revolve around many subcontracts. Is it clear to him—it is not clear to me—whether apprenticeships created by a subcontractor count towards the main contract?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right. It is not clear whether or not apprentices in subcontracts count. Is there a requirement on a subcontractor bidding for a proportion of a contract? If the subcontract is for more than £1 million—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

The hon. Gentleman refers to my hon. Friend’s speech. This debate is not about whether I agree with my hon. Friend; it is about the terms of the Bill. The arguments that my hon. Friend made may or may not be the same as the arguments that I will advance—and quite frankly, I do not think it matters whether they agree or not.

[Philip Davies]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the nub of the situation is that either this will require local authorities to do something that they do not want to do, in which case it will be undesirable, or it will allow them to do something that they can already do, in which case the Bill is unnecessary?

[Mr Nuttall]

I entirely agree. I think that intervention goes to the nux of the Bill—[Hon. Members: “Nux?”]—the crux of the Bill. Did I say nux? That is a new word. It is the difference between the nub and the crux. It goes to the core of the Bill—I will change track.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

I am pointing out some of the flaws in the Bill, which is what I was elected to do. If the Bill is such a good idea, why in 2009, when the OGC produced the original “Promoting skills through public procurement”, did not the Labour Government enact the Bill to go with it? There is a good question.

[Philip Davies]

Does my hon. Friend question the arrogance of people who think that they should be able to introduce a Bill and have it nodded through Parliament without any scrutiny whatever? Is that not the type of activity that does disservice to the House?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

The point remains the same: a jobseeker would look in the paper whether it is delivered to their home or whether they read it at a friend’s house, a jobcentre or a library. The point is that they would still look in a local paper.

[Philip Davies]

Is not the issue more complicated than that? Many people who may be interested in pursuing an apprenticeship might not go to the jobcentre to look for an advert. Someone who is doing their A-levels and considering the next stage of their education—they might be thinking about going to university to do a degree—might never go to the jobcentre, but if they saw a particular opportunity advertised, they might think, “That might be better for me than going to university.” Is it not the case that advertising at just the jobcentre would be of no use to many people?

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. The clause is restrictive. It suggests that all an employer would have to do is put an advert in just the jobcentre and they would then think that they had discharged their duty. They would not necessarily feel that they should advertise any wider than that, because that is all the clause requires them to do.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

I am not suggesting that small businesses should be forced to advertise in a local paper. I am suggesting that, given that the Bill requires them to advertise in a jobcentre, they might then not advertise in a local paper.

[Philip Davies]

Is this not the difference between our attitude and that of Opposition Members? Their nanny state approach is to say that employers cannot be trusted to advertise in a way that will help them find the right person for the job. Surely we can trust employers to advertise in a way that helps them find the right person for their business. We do not need the nanny state approach of the Labour party.

[Mr Nuttall]

Any employer seeking to take on new apprentices or, indeed, new employees will want to cast their net as widely as possible. When I was an employer, we routinely advertised in the paper and at the jobcentre, because we wanted as many people as possible to see the advertisement, which is what any form of advertising seeks to achieve. This is not the worst clause I have ever seen, but I do not think there is any need for it, because any employer looking for new staff would automatically seek to cast their net widely.

Clause 3 states:

“Skills training provided by the contractor must form part of a nationally accredited scheme.”

Anybody who knows anything about the current form of apprenticeships will be aware that they result, by definition, in a nationally recognised qualification, whether it is at level 2, level 3 or level 4. I am therefore not sure what is added by clause 3.

The Government have done a lot to develop apprenticeships since taking office. They asked Doug Richard, an England-based Californian entrepreneur, to look in great depth at how the apprenticeship system was working. Hon. Members may remember that he came to prominence as a dragon in the first two series of the BBC’s “Dragons’ Den” programme. In 2008, he founded the School for Startups, which is an enterprise that teaches entrepreneurship in partnership with UK universities, the Royal Institution and the British Library.

The Richard review, which was produced in November 2012, is a substantial piece of work. Doug Richard spent months speaking to apprentices, employers and Government organisations. He highlights the problems that have developed in the apprenticeship system. The Government carried out a substantial consultation process for several months over the summer, which involved seven workshops covering assessment, qualifications and—

[Mr Nuttall]

The reason the Richard review is enormously relevant is that in such a huge piece of work, nowhere did Doug Richard come up with the solution that is contained in the Bill. He spoke to hundreds of employers and Government organisations—I will not go through them all—but he did not come up with the solution in the Bill, and neither did any of people who responded to the Government’s consultation exercise over the summer. I hope that we hear more from the Minister about that, because he will have all the facts and figures at his fingertips. The Government’s work on the matter is therefore relevant.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley briefly mentioned, this week the Prime Minister himself announced the new trailblazer programme during his visit to the Mini plant in Oxford. That programme will move apprenticeships on to a new level and deal with the problem that the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish says he is concerned about, which is the quality of apprenticeships. The Government’s approach is to have employers, rather than the Government themselves, lead the development of apprenticeships, and that is what the trailblazer system will ensure. As the Prime Minister said:

“If you want an apprenticeship, we’re going to make sure you do the best apprenticeship in the world.”

That sums up the trailblazer approach.

[Philip Davies]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, whereas we all want to strive for what the Prime Minister set out, the Bill would be in danger of bringing apprenticeships back to being tokenistic? They would exist only to fulfil a contract requirement, not to help the wider apprenticeships agenda.

[Mr Nuttall]

That is the fear about making requirements mandatory, or even creating an impression that would make them quasi-mandatory, which could happen if we passed the Bill.

It has been suggested that the Bill’s definition of “relevant contract” as those being of more than £1 million means that it will not affect small and medium-sized enterprises. Actually, a £1 million contract may cover a period of not a month or six months but three or five years. A micro-company, which is defined as one with fewer than 10 employees, could easily bid for such a contract, so it is simply not the case that the £1 million threshold means that the Bill will cover only the largest companies.

We want to encourage more small and medium-sized companies to apply for contracts, and the Government’s website is an excellent resource. If there is one thing that we can get out of this morning’s debate, it is to encourage small and medium-sized enterprises that are thinking about bidding for Government work to look at that website, which is really user-friendly. A few days ago, the Government finished consulting on how to make it even more user-friendly, and I hope we will hear about that from the Minister. The website is excellent, and users can filter contracts by type and financial value. As a matter of interest, because of the £1 million threshold specified in the Bill, I typed in “construction” and filtered the results to contracts of more than £1 million, and 304 contracts were listed.

I am not sure what the point of clause 2 is. It looks unnecessary to me.

On clause 5, I am not sure why a 12-month delay before the Bill comes into force is specified. The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish did not say why, if it is so important, it should not come into force straight away. Perhaps he will explain in his closing remarks why he has not provided for it to come into force in the usual way, perhaps one month after Royal Assent.

I accept that there is a plethora of statistics on the number of apprenticeships but, by any measure, the Government have an excellent story to tell on the number that have been created in the past three years. The Bill will not do anything to increase the number of apprenticeships. On the other hand, it might create a tick-box atmosphere and culture among those who are interested in, or who apply for, Government contracts. For all those reasons, I oppose the Bill.

Private Landlords and Letting and Managing Agents (Regulation) Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Friday 25th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I understand that the bodies concerned have that view, and there may be a reason why they hold that view, but if Opposition Members think 100 pieces of statutory legislation and 400 regulations amount to a wild-west situation, I shudder to think what they have in mind for proper regulation of the sector, because it seems to me to be excessive as it is.

In a report for the Residential Landlords Association, Professor Ball noted:

“Housing in general and landlord-tenant relations specifically are subject to a wide-variety of housing, health and safety, planning, social policy, and environmental legislation. This has all developed in a haphazard, uncoordinated manner over many decades. Once in place, repeal is rare. Moreover, the cost-effectiveness of many requirements was never assessed when the measures were implemented nor have recent ones been reassessed after several years in place.”

That goes to the heart of the subject. The sector’s wide-ranging set of rules, regulations and legislation, which has developed in a piecemeal and haphazard fashion, is difficult for landlords to deal with, and a much more simplified set of regulations may well be better.

The Communities and Local Government Committee did a report on the private rented sector recently and its very first recommendation was entitled “Simplifying Regulation”. It said:

“We recommend that the Government conduct a wide-ranging review to consolidate legislation…with the aim of producing a much simpler and more straightforward set of regulations that landlords and tenants can easily understand.”

That seems to me to be a sensible suggestion. What it recommends flies in the face of what the hon. Member for Mansfield is seeking to do, which is make things more onerous, more complicated and add yet another layer of regulations on landlords.

[Mr Nuttall]

While I think the Government are generally on the right track in respect of regulating the private rented sector, in their response to that report they have indicated that they are not sympathetic to the idea of simplifying the regulations that govern the sector. Is my hon. Friend as disappointed as I am about that?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, and we look forward to hearing from the Minister where the Government stand on all this—which side of the fence they are on, and whether they merely wish to maintain the status quo.

I should say that I welcome the Minister to his position—it was a terrible oversight that I did not do so at the start of my speech. We congratulate him and we all have extremely high hopes for him. He might not be on my particular wing of the coalition but he is a good man and we have not given up hope in him yet. We hope he is going to prove his mettle today with a robust libertarian speech—we can but hope. [Interruption.] He says “liberal” but in my experience the Liberal Democrats is one of the most illiberal parties in Parliament. We have high hopes that he will prove us wrong today, however. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) is right, and I hope the Minister will be able to offer him some comfort.

Professor Ball also made the point that much simplification could be achieved without legislation through the encouragement of common and overlapping positive practices among local authorities and through the setting up of websites dedicated to simplifying the burden of compliance, and that improving the performance of regulatory agents in achieving commonly agreed goals is as important as less bureaucracy.

As Professor Ball makes clear, therefore, an awful lot can be done to improve what we have in place at the moment. When regulation that is in place fails, the conclusion that many draw, particularly on the other side of the House, is that more regulation is needed. Actually, when regulation has been introduced and it has failed, that is an argument against more regulation, and it offers up the possibility that we should be doing something different.

The Select Committee report also states:

“The first step towards promoting awareness and understanding”

of the rights and responsibilities of parties in the private rented sector

“must be to have in place a clear and easy-to-understand regulatory framework…Professor Martin Partington, a former Law Commissioner, stated that housing law was ‘but one example of many policies being developed over decades, being implemented through myriad legislative enactments, leaving a mass of often unnecessary, certainly over complex legislation that does not work efficiently’.

The complexity of the regulation led some of those providing evidence to call for a simplification of the law.”

That evidence from a variety of sources is pretty striking, yet this Bill seeks to go in exactly the opposite direction. It proposes more laws and regulation, which will only make the problems that the Select Committee identified even worse.

I do not know about the hon. Member for Mansfield—or you, Mr Speaker—but the people with housing concerns who come to my surgery rarely complain about the private rented sector. Almost everybody who comes to my advice surgery to complain about housing is complaining —time after time—about social housing providers. In terms of the experience of tenants, that is where the biggest problem lies.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I have the disadvantage in this debate of not being a lawyer. Some people might say that it was an advantage not to be a lawyer in this place, but on this narrow point it may well be a disadvantage. I certainly concede the hon. Gentleman’s expertise in this field, but as a layman, I am not aware that written agreements are always clear or that there is no need for solicitors or lawyers to be involved in anything covered by a written agreement. Virtually every written agreement at some point leads to some kind of confusion and dispute, and the lawyers are there, as ever, to pick up the pieces. I do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s assertion that just because we have a written agreement, we do not need any lawyers to be involved. It is quite the reverse, I often find.

[Mr Nuttall]

One of the objectives of the Bill is to try to create a regime that protects tenants. An unintended consequence of a requirement for every tenancy agreement to be in writing is that there is a danger of an increase in sham tenancy agreements, where unscrupulous landlords may require the tenant to sign a written agreement which sets out less onerous obligations on the landlord than would be required under law.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. People who are itching to get on with such regulation ought to bear it in mind that that may have unintended consequences which end up leaving those they are trying to help in a worse position than they would otherwise be in. We should all bear that in mind.

My hon. Friend also hits on a more general point. When regulations and legislation are imposed on landlords, it is the good ones who tend to be penalised. Good landlords seek to do everything that is expected of them and go out of their way to meet all their obligations, no matter how onerous. They are not the ones causing a problem, whereas landlords who do not have the same moral scruples are encouraged to operate outside the law. They have already shown that they are not keen on doing the right thing. Why would they all of a sudden be keen on doing something because the Labour party has insisted that they do it? The world does not work like that. We could end up with tenants being in a far worse position.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I am quite happy to be sidelined by the hon. Lady on that point. As it happens, I am very sceptical about that measure in the Immigration Bill. We are talking about what should and should not be the responsibility of landlords, and I have grave concerns that we are effectively making them the United Kingdom’s border police force. If the Government got their finger out and had proper border controls in this country, we would not have to put the onus on landlords, so I have a great deal of sympathy with what she says. I see that one of our distinguished Government Whips is in his place, so I will make it clear now, if I have not already—I probably have—that with regard to that particular provision my support cannot be guaranteed. That probably does not come as a great surprise, but I make that declaration now. I am grateful to the hon. Lady for allowing me to make the Whips Office aware of my reservations about that measure in the Immigration Bill, which is otherwise excellent.

Efforts were made during the course of the 20th century to stimulate the private rented sector by restricting rent control, for example through the Leasehold Reform Act 1967, which allowed previously controlled rents to be based on gross property values; through the Rent Act 1965, which introduced regulated tenancies; and through the Housing Act 1988, which deregulated rents on new lettings after 15 January 1989. Those measures were all designed to encourage investment in the private rented sector by increasing potential returns from rental income. That is because successive Governments—some of those Acts were passed by Labour Governments—realised that the best way to stimulate the private rented sector was by creating an environment in which landlords were likely to get a better return on their investment. It seems blindingly obvious to me.

The hon. Member for Mansfield said in his speech that he understood that the private rented sector was very important and that he supported it, but history shows that making terms and conditions too onerous leads to a reduction in the sector. It is only by making renting out properties more attractive to landlords that we can increase provision. There is a shortage of suitable housing in this country, so we ought to be making it easier to rent out properties to people who want them. That must be one of the solutions to our housing problems. The Bill would only make a bad situation even worse.

[Mr Nuttall]

We have heard a lot already this morning about the increase in the number of complaints arising from the private rented sector, which is one of the rationales behind the Bill, but given the enormous explosion in the number of people in the private rented sector over the past 15 years—from around 2 million in 1999 to 3.843 million in 2011-12—is it any wonder there has been an increase in the number of complaints?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is obvious that the larger the sector, the more complaints will be generated. I argue that the increase in the sector is a good thing. That might be one point on which we and Opposition Members have a difference of opinion; I see the increase in the private rented sector as a force for good, not bad.

A 2010 survey that looked at the number and type of people who are private landlords found that 89% were private individual landlords, 5% were company landlords and 6% were other organisation landlords. Those landlords were responsible for 71%, 15% and 14% respectively of all dwellings in the private rented sector. More than three quarters—78%—of all landlords owned only a single dwelling for rent, comprising 40% of the total private rented housing stock. It found that 22% of those landlords had let properties for three years or less, and two thirds—69%—had let properties for less than 10 years. Almost four fifths of all landlords in the sector earned less than a quarter of their income from letting properties in the private rented sector, and only 8% were full-time landlords.

Those statistics are important, because this kind of Bill seems to be of the opinion that the landlords we are talking about are all massive corporations that are effectively building massive profits by being bad landlords. That does not fit the facts. People in the sector may have ended up renting out property for accidental reasons; they are trying to do their best and do not expect to be bogged down with pages and pages of regulation. As we have heard, most—almost four fifths—have full-time jobs as well. A number of them may well not be making any money from renting out their property anyway.

There is a misconception behind the Bill and all the similar Bills that we have seen this year from Labour Members. It is that there are huge numbers of people making vast profits at the expense of their tenants. That does not fit the facts.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I am pleased with that clarification of how it would work. The hon. Gentleman clearly has far more trust in the Government than I do in believing they would come up with a scheme that would be acceptable. I would not wish to give them that kind of unlimited power and have no control over how they then used it.

There are already existing bodies in place, including the National Landlords Association and the Residential Landlords Association. The NLA advocates landlords accreditation as an alternative to licensing. It says:

“Accreditation is a practical solution to improving the private rented sector. Landlords provide a service to tenants and should be evaluated about what they know about the sector.”

The association requires all landlords to complete a certain level of development and to keep their knowledge of the sector up to date to remain accredited. Accreditation is backed up by a complaints process that tenants can use if they feel that their landlord is not abiding by the law. That offers a clear distinction whereby a landlord understands his or obligations. It already works with 32 local authorities as exclusive accreditation partners, and all bar three authorities in England and Wales recognise its scheme. In 2012, there were 28 complaints about members of the NLA, but no complaints about its accredited members. If the hon. Gentleman wants to go down this route, perhaps he could look at what is already in place and build on the existing work that is being done by the NLA, which seems to be working well.

[Mr Nuttall]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that if a national registration and regulation scheme were introduced, all the individual schemes that the various landlords associations have would wither on the vine and we would just have a nationalised system rather than a system of several very good schemes?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There would be no point in still being part of those schemes. Who is to say that the nationalised scheme, as he puts it, would be any better than them anyway? The numbers suggest that they seem to be working particularly well, and we should be encouraging them rather than discouraging them.

The hon. Gentleman may well say that accreditation is no substitute for proper enforcement against rogue operators, and I think the National Landlords Association would say the same, but we should reflect on the work that it does. We also have the Residential Landlords Association, which says:

“We remain unconvinced by calls for a national registration scheme since those landlords that genuinely cause the problems will not make themselves known under any system.”

We should bear that in mind. It continues:

“A policy is therefore needed which ensures that local authorities are freed up to search for and ban from the sector those operating under the radar whilst enabling the majority of good landlords to operate under an industry run accreditation scheme.”

That is the nub of where the hon. Gentleman and I disagree. He is trying to impose something on everybody to deal with a small number of people who are causing a problem; in my view, we should focus on the small number of people who are causing the problem and tackle them under all the existing laws and regulations. If he wants to enhance those powers, he can come back and put the case for that, but let us not target absolutely everybody with this scheme.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I can only suggest that the shadow Minister speaks to the association and clears up any misunderstanding. I can do no better than to quote its exact words, which I repeat so that there is no doubt:

“We remain unconvinced by calls for a national registration scheme since those landlords that genuinely cause the problems will not make themselves known under any system.”

That is a perfectly clear statement by the Residential Landlords Association. If he thinks that its view is different, then perhaps he should take that up with it to clarify its position. I do not speak for it and am not trying to do so; I am merely quoting what it has said.

The Select Committee’s recent report also dealt with the issue of alternatives to the current licensing regime. It referred to a case in Leeds, saying:

“Leeds City Council decided against further discretionary licensing and has introduced a neighbourhood approach which was ‘seen as more flexible than licensing’…This approach targeted ‘neighbourhoods on a street by street basis addressing the area as a whole and dealing with standards in the private rented sector’”.

That more flexible approach has a lot to commend it. You will know Leeds city council well, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is not my local authority, but I believe it is Labour-run, and that is what it believes works for it. The Committee’s report says that Blackpool council has developed a similar area-based approach.

When the previous Government consulted on this suggestion and reported back in early 2010, the main concerns were listed in the consultation document that contained all the responses. Those concerns were valid then and are still valid now. The first main concern was that a better understanding was needed of likely costs. In particular, it was thought that linking other services to the register would increase costs, and it was suggested that they should be deferred until the register was up and running smoothly. Given that the Bill makes no mention of what the costs would be, that uncertainty will still be a factor that people are concerned about.

The second main concern was the objective of the register; there was a lack of common understanding of its purpose. It was not clear whether it was a comprehensive list of private rented properties and landlords or an attempt to enforce better behaviour. The same doubts still apply today. What on earth is the point of the register and what use is it to anybody?

The other concern was enforcement. It was said that more detailed consideration was needed of how enforcement and policing of the register would work in practice, and linked to this there would need to be clear central guidance on the criteria and process for striking a landlord off the register.

The Bill does not seem to address the concern about how enforcement and policing of the register would work in practice. That takes us back to square one, without any progress having been made on the position under the previous Labour Government in early 2010.

Clause 1(3) does not make it clear whether private residential landlords are individuals or individuals representing a company. I am sure the hon. Member for Mansfield would not want his Bill to encourage people to set up a company, rather than be individual landlords, in order to get around any regulations. I do not know whether he has a view on landlords of commercial properties. Would this be a register for private landlords with residential properties, but not for those with commercial properties? That would be a strange state of affairs.

I am anxious that other Members may wish to contribute and I do not want to take up all the time myself. Even though so many parts of the Bill need to be queried, I feel I should leave some of the other concerns to other Members.

I think that foreign landlords who own properties in the UK are good for the UK. I like to see inward investment in the UK, which we should always encourage. I am not entirely sure how the Bill would affect foreign landlords or how they would be made accountable to it. Has the hon. Gentleman given any thought to the effect it would have on foreign landlords? The flat I rent in London has a foreign landlord, as far as I can recall from the tenancy agreement, and I am sure that such a situation is quite widespread in London.

Foreign landlords have capital that they can invest in any part of the world. They are not tied in any way to the United Kingdom. Many of them may not even live here and for all I know some may well never have visited the United Kingdom, but they have made an investment here. In such a scenario, more red tape, more regulation and less return for an investment may lead to foreign landlords going to other parts of the world where they feel they can get a better return on their investment. That is what capital does. It would be a shame if we were to turn investment from the UK as a result of Bills such as this. I do not see any upside to it and have lots of doubts about it.

[Mr Nuttall]

Is my hon. Friend as concerned as I am about the potential risk of a foreign landlord falling foul of the Bill and finding themselves with a criminal record if they fail to register, because they would then be liable to a fine?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a good point that I was hoping to come on to. How would somebody come off the register? How would a landlord pay? Does the hon. Member for Mansfield envisage a landlord paying his money out on a pro rata basis? Would it be based on the number of houses? Would it be the rental income that determined the fee? There are all sorts of different scenarios that would cause particular issues for people and that may be grotesquely unfair in individual cases.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North says, failure to register would be not just a civil offence, but a criminal offence: a person who is not on the register will have committed a criminal offence. Do we really want to use criminal law in that way? I would venture that it is not an appropriate use of the criminal law. There is much uncertainty about how the provision would be enforced and how people would know about it.

What about people who become landlords by accident when they inherit a property in which there is an existing tenant? Where would such a person stand? If their parent has died I am sure the hon. Member for Mansfield would accept that they would have an awful lot more on their mind than whether they were part of a registration scheme that they do not even know exists, because they have never been a landlord before. Is it really the hon. Gentleman’s intention that a person whose parent has just died and who is trying to deal with their affairs and organise a funeral should be found guilty of a criminal offence because they have not registered as a landlord on his register? I do not doubt the hon. Gentleman’s intentions or his sincerity, but I think the Bill is not only unworkable, but potentially unjust. To make such people criminals would be completely wrong.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to the Minister. I apologise if I do not get to hear his speech—as I said, I may have to leave early—but I will certainly read it in Hansard. The figures I quoted were from his Department in 2009—I am not casting aspersions on him or the current Administration—and showed a gap of 7,000. The Minister’s figures still show a gap of 5,000, and that makes this scheme unworkable. I am grateful to him for sharing the level of uncertainty concerning the number of firms that would be involved.

There are other bodies that offer schemes, not just the ones I have mentioned. The UK Association of Letting Agents’ scheme is, like others, wide ranging and covers market appraisal, instructions, terms of business fees, charges and termination of client agreements, marketing and advertising, viewing and access to premises, offers, letting tenancy agreements, rent collection, property management, all that is expected of the tenant and landlord, and termination of tenancies. All those things are in place. As my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset said, why reinvent the wheel when such schemes are working well? Let us try to get more competition into the marketplace to encourage more landlords to sign up to such schemes. That is bound to have more success than a state-imposed solution.

When the last Government consulted on regulating letting agents, many concerns were raised about how a letting and management agent would be defined. I am not sure what view other Members have on that. Some landlords manage properties for other landlords. Sometimes family members manage properties. Those people are not official letting agents, but they are, in effect, operating as letting and managing agents. Would they be covered by this regulation? Would the consequence of the Bill be to send some of that work underground? People might not employ a professional body or registered company, but get other people to do these things under the radar. They might get friends from around the corner—perhaps even unsavoury people from around the corner—to operate things on their behalf to get around the regulatory system.

Another concern that was raised when the last Government considered this matter was what property condition standards would be used to decide whether somewhere was a decent home. Category 1 and category 2 hazards are already enshrined in legislation. Does the hon. Member for Mansfield have something different in mind? Who will determine what is an acceptable standard of property to be let? Which regulatory body will offer its expertise on what definition should be used?

The former Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government, Baroness Hanham, stated in reply to a parliamentary question from Lord Browne of Ladyton:

“Letting and managing agents are already subject to consumer protection legislation. Consumer protection legislation covers issues such as giving false or misleading information, not acting with the standard of care and skill that is in accordance with honest market practice and claiming falsely to be a member of a professional body or approved redress scheme. For tenants or landlords who are charged unfair or unreasonable fees by an agent, this means that they are able to report this to their local trading standards officer or to the Office of Fair Trading which has both civil and criminal enforcement powers… Disproportionate regulation on the private rented sector would push up rents and reduce the choice and availability of accommodation on offer to tenants.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 15 October 2012; Vol. 739, c. WA444-45.]

That sums up the situation perfectly. The Bill would have a negative impact on the private rented sector and reduce the number of houses being let. It would bring no benefit because there is ample legislation in place to deal with the concerns.

The hon. Member for Mansfield mentioned Shelter. Even Shelter’s website provides plenty of advice on what people should do if they want to complain about a letting agent. I will not go through all that advice now, because that would take up time unnecessarily, which I do not want to do, but I urge people to look at the website. There is one section entitled “Complaining to the letting agent”, which gives detailed information on how to complain to a letting agent. It is an excellent document. There is also a section on “Complaining to the Property Ombudsman”, which explains how to do that.

We have not talked much about the property ombudsman, but I hope other Members will do so. The website states that that scheme

“provides a free, independent service for resolving disputes between letting agents and their customers. Many letting agents are members; those that are must display the ombudsman’s logo on windows, advertising and stationery.”

That brings us back to the point that was made by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset. We should encourage more letting agents to sign up to that scheme and encourage people to rent from letting agents that are part of it.

[Mr Nuttall]

The property ombudsman’s annual report for 2012 made it clear that the number of offices that were registered for lettings, as opposed to sales, was 9,748. Almost 10,000 offices across the country are covered by that scheme.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. That just goes to show that an awful lot of good work is being done in this sector. Perhaps a good starting point for us would be to encourage more of that good work and to make people more aware of the schemes that are in place. I confess that before I looked at the Bill, I was not aware of some of the schemes that are in place to help my constituents, should they have a problem. If nothing else, I am extremely grateful to the hon. Member for Mansfield for forcing me to look at this area to see what is in place. I hope that as a result I will be able to offer my constituents a better service and make them aware of the situation. On that basis alone, we should be grateful to him for drawing our attention to what is already happening, sometimes without any fanfare or advertisement.

As I said earlier, if I am wrong I hope the hon. Gentleman will correct me, but it seems that the Bill would not apply to landlords who sub-let a room in their property. That poses the question why they would be exempt when nobody else would be. What do he and the Labour party think about such landlords? Do they believe they tend to be good or bad landlords? Is there any evidence either way?

I will come to a conclusion, because I am anxious that I may be taking up time that other Members wish to use, and I am sure others have better points to make than me. As with so much proposed legislation, the Bill is full of more bureaucracy and more interference by politicians, and it provides more evidence of the need to be seen to be doing something, which is the prevailing culture in politics at the moment. I always say that if a politician is faced with a problem, their solution will always incorporate two ingredients, the first of which is being seen to be doing something. I long for the day when a Minister will stand up and say, “That’s got nothing to do with us, it’s for people to sort out for themselves”, but so far I have been disappointed.

London Local Authorities and Transport for London (No. 2) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Wednesday 11th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend puts a slightly different complexion on matters, if I understand him correctly; if I have not, he must pull me up. If he is suggesting that the onerous requirement on local authority car parks is to encourage authorities to sell off the car parks so that they do not have to fulfil that requirement, I do at last see what he is driving at. I start to see the merits of his plan. I was not aware of what his real agenda was; it is a “privatisation of car parks” amendment, rather than one about the privatisation of charging apparatus. I will have to rethink my views.

[Mr Nuttall]

Does my hon. Friend not agree that in view of the fact that subsection (2) is merely a permissive power—it says “may grant” rather than “will grant”—no harm will come from its being left in the Bill?

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. When I am on the opposite side of an argument from that of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, I wonder whether I am on the wrong side of the argument. Having the robust support of my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) will reinforce my confidence that I am on the right side.

The desire of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch to use the amendment to force the privatisation of car parks may have merit. If he were back in charge of a local authority, he might decide that that was the best way to go. I am not convinced that other local authorities would take that view, so the provision would end up being an unnecessary burden on the taxpayer. The amendment is therefore not worthy of support, despite his best efforts to rescue support for what might otherwise be thought of as a poor amendment.

I turn back to amendment 24. In effect, preventing local authorities from allowing the private sector to run charging apparatus on their behalf would be a retrograde step. If we are to embark on this project, the merits of the amendments are not necessarily relevant. We have to presume that we are going down this route. If we are, I would like the private sector to be involved; it would have an awful lot to offer and could probably show local authorities how to operate the points better, more efficiently and more cheaply. To prevent the private sector from being involved, as my hon. Friend envisages with amendment 24, is not sensible. I cannot support the amendment.

Amendment 25 is a consequential amendment to amendment 24 that also reinforces it, so if I cannot support amendment 24 I certainly cannot support amendment 25. On that basis—my hon. Friend will correct me if I am wrong—I do not think I can support amendment 26 either. I think that for the first time in my short time in the House I have found that I cannot support the first six amendments tabled by my hon. Friend. I hope that that will never be repeated in future.

On amendment 27, my hon. Friend is back on normal form again, because he is absolutely right about subsection (7). I am not a legal expert, as he is, but it seems to me that in the normal way of things people are responsible for their equipment. The subsection implies that everybody in the whole country, apart from London local authorities, is responsible for any accidents, damage or incidents that happen as a result of their equipment. I am sure that the Government’s view and Parliament’s view is that people should be responsible for their own stuff. It is utterly unacceptable to say that we are going to exempt London local authorities willy-nilly from the normal course of the law. Why on earth we should think that the state should be exempt from all the normal things that apply to everybody else is beyond me. I hope that the promoters of the Bill will reflect on this, because it drives a coach and horses through what we would expect in this country. I certainly encourage my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch to pursue amendment 27.

On amendment 28, my hon. Friend is again on to a very good point. In seeking to strike out subsection (8), he focuses on the part where it says that

“it shall be presumed that the person in charge of the relevant vehicle at the relevant time had responsibility for and control of the cable.”

The person in charge at the time may well have control of the cable—it is probably self-evident that if they are using it they have control of it—but to say that they have responsibility for that piece of equipment is a step too far. As my hon. Friend said, we would not expect somebody filling up at a petrol station to take full responsibility for the pumps they were filling up from. I cannot believe that anybody in this House would think that. If people should not take full responsibility for the pumps when they are filling up their car with petrol, why on earth should they take responsibility for the cables when they are charging their car? The same rules should apply. It might be a different form of fuel, but the same principles should apply across the board. Leaving aside control of the cable, it is unacceptable to impose responsibility for it. For that reason alone, I support my hon. Friend in wanting to strike out subsection (8). Of course, if it did not include the words “responsibility for”, I might take a different view, but as it stands it is unacceptable. Subsection (9) relates to the previous subsection, so we do not need to waste much time on that.

I was puzzled by the Bill’s sponsor, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East, saying that he was willing to accept amendment 30, because it seems to fly in the face of what my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch was trying to achieve with his previous amendments. I understand now, however, that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch is throwing in the towel—I certainly hope he is—with regard to amendments 21, 22 and 23. Amendment 30 seems to pre-empt that throwing in of the towel, because it suggests a much more sensible state of affairs whereby my hon. Friend accepts that the private sector could be involved and that the wires it provides should also be covered. For that reason, amendment 30 is sensible and I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East accepts it.

We do not need to waste time on amendment 31. Amendment 32 takes us back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch about the authorised person. As I said earlier, I am for having authorised people other than the local authority, so for that reason amendments 32, 33 and 34 should be discarded.

Deep Sea Mining Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Friday 6th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure, as always, to follow the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), who has raised the issue of environmental protection, which goes to the very heart of the Bill. I happen to take the view that resources were placed on this world for the exploitation of man, but we must ensure that they are exploited with great care and caution, whether they are on land, in the sea or on the sea bed.

[Philip Davies]

Has my hon. Friend identified the contradiction in what the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) said? He said that he supports the Bill, but believes in the precautionary principle. Of course if the precautionary principle had applied back in 1981, the 1981 Act would not have become law in the first place.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend is right. There is a contradiction in that position. It is interesting to ask at what point in the last 32 years the Labour party changed its position on this legislation. Did the conversion happen this morning, at the last general election or at some other point? I look forward to hearing from the shadow Minister on Labour’s conversion, because it voted against the Bill that became the 1981 Act on its Second and Third Readings.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) on retrieving this legislation from the dusty Foreign Office shelf where it had been languishing, perhaps for several years—although it may have been drafted this year. It was an orphan waiting to be adopted and I am grateful that she has adopted it and brought it before the House this morning.

[Philip Davies]

Does my hon. Friend endorse the words of our former colleague, Teddy Taylor, who said in the debate in 1981:

“The Bill appears to be a small and sensible measure, but anyone who has Britain’s interests at heart must view with suspicion any measure which has anything to do with our Foreign Office.”——[Official Report, 29 April 1981; Vol. 3, c. 867.]?

[Mr Nuttall]

I read those comments, although I am sure that with the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt)—a predecessor of mine in Bury North—at the Dispatch Box this morning we have no need to fear, as the Bill will be handled with the utmost care.

Some important economic issues are at stake. It would be easy for an individual or company wanting to exploit the resources of the seabed to relocate to the jurisdiction they thought most favourable to them. Like my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall, who so ably proposed the Bill this morning, I want our country to be the world leader in this industry. Despite the fact that it has been 32 years since the original Act was passed, we can still describe it as being in its infancy, and this nascent industry has great potential for the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend has far more expertise in this field than me, and I am grateful to her for that clarification. I do not necessarily agree with the Greenpeace stance, but I think there are certain points that are worth putting on the record. The concern is that problems we are not yet aware of may arise from deep-sea mining. It is always difficult to counter such arguments: if we are not aware of the problems, how can we give reassurance on them? I suspect we cannot. Sometimes we have to take a leap of faith, however; otherwise, we would never do anything. We would never do anything in this country if we were constantly concerned about things we are not yet aware of. Such an approach would not take us very far forward.

[Mr Nuttall]

In a similar vein, does my hon. Friend not think there will be some difficulty in establishing whether these cone-shaped nodules are living or dead, and who is going to monitor whether the correct sort of nodule has been mined?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, and I hope that such detailed questions, which go way beyond my sphere of expertise, will be covered by the Minister. He has much more expertise in these matters than me, and I have hopes that he will be able to cover much of this ground in more detail than I could.

Environmentalists are also concerned about pollution of the deep sea, which they say is likely to occur from deep-sea mining activities as the ocean currents may carry sediments and toxic pollution far from the area of mining activities to areas of fishing, which would potentially have a terrible impact on fishing levels. However, it is worth quoting from a magazine that I am sure is read by many Members called Mining Weekly—I am sure you are a regular reader of it, Mr Speaker, so you will be able to correct me if what I say is wrong. The environment principal and marine ecologist for De Beers, Dr Patti Wickens, said:

“An environmental-impact assessment was undertaken in the early 1990s to assess the impact of offshore diamond mining on the seabed in Namibia. It was found that while mining activities alter the nature of the seabed landscape or habitat, this effect is not permanent.”

We should bear that point in mind: there may be some changes, but they will not be permanent, and the habitat will return to its normal state after the mining ceases in an area. I hope that gives comfort to those with concerns.

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me more credit than I am due. I was not claiming anything; I was merely quoting what a principal marine ecologist said. I would not wish the hon. Gentleman to think that was my theory. I would not want to claim credit for what Dr Patti Wickens said in Mining Weekly. I can only refer him to her if he wants to argue the case. I suspect he will get much further if he argues the toss with her rather than me. I will leave on the record what she said, however, and people can make their own minds up as to whether the hon. Gentleman or Dr Patti Wickens knows more about this subject. That is a judgment we will all have to make at some point.

The deep-sea bed is defined in the schedule as an

“area of the sea bed situated beyond the limits of national jurisdiction of the United Kingdom or any other State”.

The main marine mineral content of interest is manganese nodules, manganese crusts and seafloor massive sulphides. Two metallic mineral resources of the deep-sea floor incorporate dissolved metals from both continental and deep ocean sources. One of these is what my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall—and, I think, my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall)—described as golf ball-sized polymetallic modules. I have heard them described as “golf-to-tennis” ball size, but I am not sure whether there is any mileage in arguing about the size, as we know what we are talking about here.

These nodules precipitate from sea water over millions of years on sediment that forms the surface of the deep ocean. It is understood that they require the undisturbed conditions which are found in areas of the deepest oceans. That serves to highlight again the environmental point that the undisturbed conditions are what is important. To clarify:

“Polymetallic massive sulphides are types of minerals discovered in the oceans in 1979 that were previously known only from deposits that have been mined on land since pre-classical times for copper, iron, zinc, silver and gold.”

Rather than get bogged down in all the science, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North covered in some detail, I will focus on some of the impacts of this proposed legislation and ask some questions, which I hope the Minister may be able to answer.

The history is important. The oceans had long been subject to a freedom of the seas doctrine, a principle dating back to the 17th century essentially limiting rights and jurisdiction over the oceans to a narrow belt of sea surrounding a nation’s coastline. The rest of the seas were proclaimed to be free to all. That seems to me to be a sensible doctrine. It has been challenged by some countries, however, which have tried to claim the rights to certain seas beyond what international agreement indicates.

[Mr Nuttall]

Does my hon. Friend think there is any merit in the international community, through the auspices of the United Nations, simply stating by way of further agreement that all these international seas should be dealt with only by the International Seabed Authority, and leaving the matter of national jurisdictions out of it altogether?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and it should be considered. Again, the Minister may be able to address it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I certainly agree with that. I am not sure that what my two hon. Friends are saying is necessarily incompatible, but I am sure they will be able to discuss that in the Tea Room at a later date. I am certainly one for upholding British sovereignty, however, as most people will appreciate.

Let me now deal with some of the points that I would like the Minister to cover. I am interested in the licences that the UK Government offer and give to people who apply for them. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North referred to the resources that the Government provide to ensure that the licences are dealt with properly and in a timely manner. I am not entirely sure what the fees are for these licences and how our fees compare with those in other countries. As he said, we want the UK to be an international leader in this field. If companies can, in effect, apply to any signatory country for a licence, in order to take that to the International Seabed Authority, we want a commitment from our Government that the fees they charge for these licences will be competitive—more competitive than those charged by other countries. I would be interested to hear whether or not they are.

This is not just about the fee; it is also about the timeliness of how a licence application is determined and a licence issued. I hope that the Government also make a commitment to ensure that licences are processed more quickly here than in competitor countries, because, again, that might be a factor in which country a company chooses to go through. I would be interested to know how many licences have been applied for and how many applications have been rejected. That would allow me to see whether the process was strenuous or whether licences were just given out on the nod.

[Mr Nuttall]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that perhaps one reason why so few licences have been applied for under the 1981 Act is that the regime it established was too onerous and companies have been going elsewhere in the world?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, and we certainly would not want what he describes to have been happening. As he said, we want the UK to be a world leader in this field and to be seen as such, so I hope that the Minister can give some assurances on those points.

I would also be interested to know how the licences are policed once they have been granted and who does the policing. The international authority, presumably, polices the contract that it has agreed can be carried out. However, given that the UK Government has also issued a licence, are they happy just to accept the policing carried out by the ISA? Do they have their own policing to ensure that the licence conditions they have applied are being adhered to? If that is the case, how many of the licences that have been granted have been subject to a revocation because the conditions were not being met? Alternatively, are the licences given and that is the end of the matter, everyone just cracks on with it and nobody will bother contacting the people involved again?

I would like clarification on a further point, which relates to the heart of why it is important that we have a competitive system, particularly when it comes to time scales. What happens when different companies in different countries all want to explore or exploit the same area at the same time? That must be a fairly common situation. It is a bit like supermarkets really: when one company decides it wants to open a store in a particular place and its competitors get wind of it, all of a sudden two or three applications are made for the same place, because all the companies think, “That’s a good area. We all want a slice of that action.” Presumably the same things must apply in this field, so if different companies in different countries are all looking to exploit the same area, is the company that can do so decided on a first-come, first-served basis? Is the company that gets its licence first and gets a contract agreed with the ISA the one that gets to do the exploring? Or are more rigorous criteria used? If this is done on a first-come, first-served basis, it is crucial that we process these licences as quickly as possible.

My hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall made a good job of dealing with my next point, but I just ask the Minister to say a little about whether we are unnecessarily introducing or increasing bureaucracy at the expense of UK companies. That point was also made by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset in intervention. Although we want the licences and legislation in place to allow UK companies to get involved in this field, we certainly would not want them to have to do it in an overly bureaucratic way or one that disadvantaged them in relation to what other countries would expect them to do. How has this country’s licensing regime stacked up against those of other countries?

I hope that the Minister can answer those issues satisfactorily. Many of those points are not really about the principle of the Bill but about the application of the regulations, the legislation and the licensing. I hope he will make sure that this country is at the forefront in this field, and that he will help UK companies rather than hinder them—I am sure that is the case.

Teddy Taylor is a great man and this House has a lot to be grateful to him for. I am sure that the point he made about the Foreign Office in the debate in 1981 is somewhat unfair, although probably only slightly; I am sure that the Foreign Office always has the British people and British companies as its priority and wants to do its best for them. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure us that, on the points I have raised, the British Government are at the forefront of making sure we are world leaders so that the Bill will what do what I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall intends, which is to ensure that this country becomes, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North said, a world leader in this field.

London Local Authorities and Transport for London (No. 2) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Wednesday 10th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

rose—

[Philip Davies]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. That is one of the problems with the clause: it will potentially make criminals out of people who seek to do good. That cannot be right. It also prompts the question of what signage would be in place. In the context of the other clauses, we were talking about trying to remove signs, but there now might need to be new signs to warn people that such activity is a criminal offence. I entirely support the amendment and I look forward to hearing from others.

[Philip Davies]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I seek to fulfil the same role in this debate as I did in the debate on the previous group of amendments, by speaking briefly and highlighting for my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) where I think he is on to a winner and also where he has not necessarily persuaded me of the merits of his case.

I am rather puzzled by the whole debate on amendment 10. My hon. Friend made a good case for saying that we should ask people to supply information about the owner of a builder’s skip only

“where that information is not clearly and indelibly marked under the provisions of section 9,”

as his amendment sets out. If I understood my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) correctly—I am sure he will correct me if I am wrong, which I may well be—he was saying that because skips change ownership quite often, having just a name, telephone number, address or whatever it might be on the skip would not necessarily be a good enough indicator of the actual owner, because the skip might have changed hands a couple of times since those markings were applied. That might well be true, but the problem is that it flies in the face of clause 9, which states that the owner would have to ensure—I might add that anyone who did not do this would have to pay a fine—that

“the skip is clearly and indelibly marked with the owner’s name and with his telephone number or address”.

The promoters of the Bill cannot have it both ways. They cannot say that such information is required for the purposes of clause 9, but that it would be unfair to require it in clause 8. I would advise my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East to have another think, because my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch is simply proposing a modest, common-sense amendment that goes with the flow of the Bill, not against it.

[Mr Nuttall]

Perhaps I can assist my hon. Friend. The difference might be that clause 8(1) refers to “the name and address”, whereas clause 9(3)(b)(iii) refers to “telephone number or address”, so perhaps the owner could give a telephone number, but not an address.

[Philip Davies]

I appreciate that point, but amendment 10, standing in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, simply says that if the information was already clearly marked, it would not have to be requested. To me that seems a sensible and modest amendment, and I certainly agree with it.

I am delighted that amendment 11 has been accepted—we do not need to waste any time on that. I do not intend to delay the House for long by discussing amendments 12 and 13. I do not have a strong opinion on the level of the fine, but I want to make a wider point on legislation generally. If we look at different pieces of legislation “in silo”, we might find individual fines appropriate or inappropriate, but we could end up in the ridiculous situation whereby some serious offences attract small penalties and some minor ones attract severe ones. Instead, we ought to look at the criminal justice system as a whole, to determine the appropriate level for different severities of crime. I wonder whether this particular offence could attract a much more severe penalty than other, more serious, crimes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. His amendment goes with the flow of the legislation rather than against it, and I think this is a genuine improvement.

On amendment 15, I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East. Making the provisions for London much more onerous than in other parts of the country would be unfair. The only thing I will say—and here I hope my hon. Friend will forgive me if I tease him somewhat—is that his point about not providing different rules for London than obtain in other parts of the country is the argument that we have been making in respect of virtually every other part of this particular Bill. He has refused to accept that particular logic with all the other provisions, so it seems to me ironic that he was prepared to pull that argument out of the hat when it suited him, when he has denied it in respect of lots of other amendments on this legislation. I hope he will forgive me for teasing him in that way.

On the final three amendments—amendments 17, 18 and 19—I thought my hon. Friend for Christchurch made a very good point in his usual engaging and amusing way in saying that if a skip is causing a particular problem in a local community, it is surely the wrong solution to immobilise it and keep it there unnecessarily for even longer. I am not entirely sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East answered that point to my satisfaction, because there is an unerring logic to what my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch was saying. It may well be that there are occasions when immobilisation is the best solution, although my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and I cannot think of them. I am prepared on that basis to give my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East a rather dubious benefit of the doubt.

I do not want to extend my remarks any further, but I reiterate my hope that if the opportunity allows it, my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch will seek to press his amendment 14, which is the strongest of his amendments and the one that would improve this legislation without doubt.

[Mr Nuttall]

If I may, I will start where my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) left off, and work in reverse order through this set of amendments, presented so ably a short while ago by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope). I am grateful, as ever, for the clarification of what might be termed the case for the defence, so ably made by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman).

Starting with amendments 17, 18 and 19, I entirely agree that it is somewhat bizarre that the solution to a problem skip is to immobilise it, but I was persuaded by what my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East had to say on the matter. To be perfectly honest, I have never seen one of these devices, and I can only imagine what they must look like. I understand that they both immobilise and light up the skip at the same time, which seems an eminently sensible idea for dealing with a problem skip. I have always thought that even empty skips are particularly difficult to move, so I would not think that they needed much help to be immobilised, although I am prepared to accept that that may well be a solution in some cases.

I turn to the other easy one—amendment 11, which has sensibly been accepted by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East and the promoters. That demonstrates the sense and worth of the work done by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch in going through the Bill in some detail and tabling the amendments. The promoters have accepted that the correct period is 14 rather than three working days.

I turn to the slightly more contentious amendments. I looked at amendment 10 and thought it was merely a clarification. There would be no point in criminalising someone or causing them to commit an offence if the information was patently obvious from looking at the side of the skip, in accordance with clause 9. Apparently, the promoters think otherwise. Personally, I would support amendment 10.

We now move neatly into the debate about decriminalisation. We are not really decriminalising these things, just moving the responsibility for taking action from one authority, the police, to another authority, the local authority. The net result is the same. Anyone reading language such as “commits an offence” would think, “Crikey! They mean a criminal offence.” Apparently, however, the measure represents decriminalisation. I humbly suggest that if clause 8 had read, “A person on whom a requirement is imposed under this section shall be liable to a civil penalty,” that would have been more appropriate if the intention was to decriminalise.

I entirely agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley said about amendment 14. It is entirely right that when it comes to the liability of someone who has committed a skip offence, to use some shorthand—[Interruption.] Not a skipping offence, but a builder’s skip offence. When it comes to such a person’s liability, the inclusion of the words

“take any reasonable steps to”

is entirely sensible. Although it might look as though one of those specific offences was being committed, there could be a whole host of reasons why a person ought not to be held liable.

The issue of criminalisation is important when considering the question of proof. If the offences are to remain criminal, the burden of proof is “beyond all reasonable doubt”. However, if they are to be dealt with according to a civil burden of proof, “the balance of probabilities” applies—it could be 51:49. There is a whole host of difference between liability in criminal and civil cases. The matter needs to be nailed down. We need to be absolutely clear about whether we are decriminalising this. Is it going to be a criminal offence, or is it going to be a civil offence and is it going to be dealt with under the civil law? That will affect the burden of proof required of those who seek to enforce these requirements.

City of London (Various Powers) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Tuesday 26th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I do not think that that is the case. That is one of the things I worry about.

I am delighted by the arrival of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) in the Chamber, particularly as we are talking about the laws on seizure and about giving council officers the authority to seize people’s goods, because he has shown time and again that he, too, is nervous about such provisions.

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch was right to highlight that all the issues flow from proposed new section 16A on seizure, which is contained in clause 7. It states that there must be

“reasonable grounds for suspecting that a person has committed an offence”.

It would be difficult for any officer to fall foul of such a loose definition. This is not a trifling matter. We are talking about somebody seizing somebody else’s goods. That is a big power. I think that a higher test should have to be met before council officers are authorised to go around seizing people’s goods.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch said, it is not just any article that is being

“offered for sale, displayed or exposed for sale”

that can be seized. Proposed new section 16A(1)(b) states that

“any other article or thing of a similar nature to that being offered or exposed for sale which is in the possession”

of the person may be seized. Even if something is not being offered for sale, the officer is still authorised to take it away from the individual. Paragraph (c) also includes

“any receptacle or equipment being used by that person.”

These are wide-ranging powers of seizure that we are in danger of giving to any employee of the corporation, notwithstanding the reassurance that my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster gave about the level of training that will be given, just on the basis of “reasonable grounds” for suspicion. There is a great danger that, on occasion, that authority and power will be misused by people, perhaps out of frustration or for another reason, if appropriate safeguards are not put in place.

The Bill says—I made this point in a brief intervention earlier, but I want to expand upon it—that something may be seized only

“if it may be required to be used in evidence”.

Reading the Bill for the first time, that sounds like quite a good safeguard, because people will not be able to seize things willy-nilly and they will be able to use them only in evidence. However, it states that it can be seized if it only may be required, which is essentially no safeguard at all. Anything can be seized on the basis that it may need to be used in evidence—who is to decide that?

The officers who seize goods will naturally take a precautionary position, and I would not blame them for that. They will want to seize as much as possible, because they will not want somebody further down the line to ask them, “Why did you leave them with that bit of stuff? That could have been crucial evidence to prosecute them.” I suspect that in the training that my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster mentioned, officers will be told, “Take as much as you can, because it may be crucial. The bit that you leave behind may have been the crucial bit.” I fear that the provision is written to look like a safeguard but is no safeguard whatever.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch said, the Bill mentions receptacles, and vans, cars or any other type of vehicle could be described as receptacles for the purpose of the Bill. There are serious concerns about the people who can seize products and the definition of when it is appropriate to do so.

Uncharacteristically, my hon. Friend did not really touch on the return of seized articles, but proposed new section 16B(4) sets out what will happen when

“after 28 days any costs awarded by the court to the Corporation have not been paid”.

There are some potentially contradictory points on the matter that do not really flow on from one another. On the one hand, if that point applies, the Bill allows the City of London to dispose of products

“in any way the Corporation thinks fit”.

However, it then states that

“any sum obtained by the Corporation in excess of the costs…shall be returned to the person”.

That is highly unlikely, given that the corporation can dispose of products in any way, shape or form. However, it also states that the corporation has

“a duty to secure the best possible price which can reasonably be obtained for that article or thing.”

I cannot reconcile the corporation being able to dispose of an article in any way it sees fit with the fact that it is being asked to obtain the best possible price for it. Those seem completely contradictory statements. If we are saying that the corporation has to get the best possible price, proposed subsection (4)(a), whereby it can dispose of an article in any way it thinks fit, seems redundant.

The best possible price that can reasonably be obtained for something depends on how the corporation gets rid of it. If it sells it in a similar way to the person who was trading it and from whom it was seized, it can get the full retail price. I am not entirely sure how it will fulfil its duty to secure the best possible price for something. What will it be expected to go through to fulfil that condition? It seems to me that in the real world, it will not make any effort whatever to go out and sell something at the best possible price. It will dispose of it.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. He is being generous with his time.

Is my hon. Friend not concerned, as I am, that the real tragedy will be that once goods are seized, the trader involved may well lose their livelihood? Is that not the danger?

[Philip Davies]

Absolutely, particularly if the products are just going to be disposed of.

European Union (Approvals) Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Monday 11th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. It is the second of the points that I want to make, which is about subsidiarity. We hear a lot about subsidiarity, yet in practice the European Union goes the other way, rather than saying, “Look, these are the matters which you will probably be concerned with. We’ve had a look at the UK and you’ve got plenty of organisations within the UK to deal with all these matters. There is no need for an EU body.” That applies across all 27, soon to be 28, member states.

[Philip Davies]

Has my hon. Friend thought about what situation we would be left in if the UK got a positive judgment from the European Court of Human Rights, but was then told that it was falling foul of the EU’s Agency for Fundamental Rights?

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, which gets to the heart of one of my major concerns about the organisation and why I support entirely the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch. It highlights the confusion in the minds of our constituents.

I wonder how many of our constituents even know that that body exists. I suspect that if I conducted a poll on the streets of Bury, I would have to wait a very long time and ask a large number of people before I found anyone who had even heard of the agency, never mind understood what it was intended to do. That is not surprising, because it was introduced in 2007 by the back door. It was introduced under the provisions of section 352 of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union, the Lisbon treaty, which allows for such new bodies to be established without any proper discussion. As I say, it was introduced through the back door.

The EU goes on about the principle of subsidiarity, but then we find that it is creating an EU-wide body to do things which, as we have heard in tonight’s debate, are not only being done elsewhere in Europe, but ought to be and can be done properly here in the UK. This is not a cheap body. We know that in 2013 the agency will get a subsidy of €21.3 million from the EU budget.

Canterbury City Council Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend asks a fair question. In effect, he stumbles—whether intentionally or not—on to quite an interesting point about this Bill. In many respects, this part of the Bill has nothing to do with pedlars, because it need not be a pedlar who is selling the tickets. The term “pedlar” has a legal definition—it refers to someone who needs a licence—whereas the Bill as it stands, if Lords amendment C15 was not accepted, would apply to anybody, whether a pedlar or not.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. In the past, we have concentrated on the definitions of “street trading” and “pedlars”. Is he now suggesting that there is a third category—neither a street trader nor pedlar, but someone who is simply operating in the secondary market for tickets?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Clause 11 stands out like a sore thumb from the rest of the Bill, whish is pretty consistent in being about pedlars and street traders, as he rightly says. I pay tribute to the scrutiny he has given the Bill during its passage through this House. Clause 11 stands alone in that it can apply to anybody. It should be an acceptable part of life—it would be acceptable to me, as well as the Office of Fair Trading and the Select Committee, which looked at this—for someone in Canterbury who happened to have purchased a ticket for an event they could no longer attend to sell their ticket on to somebody else. Once people have bought their ticket, it is their ticket. If they want to sell it on to someone else, that should be a matter for them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

Of course I accept your wise counsel, Mr Deputy Speaker. I will say, however, that their lordships do not appear to have focused too much on the niceties.

When we began our debate on the Bill, we were told that clause 11 was crucial. When my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and I tried to have it removed, our attempts were resisted, and it is because their lordships had to intervene that we are debating it now. The promoters, who were originally adamant about the inclusion of the clause, are now satisfied that it can be removed as their lordships wish. Earlier, I commended the way in which my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury had listened to the arguments. What I do not understand is why the amendment could not have been dealt with earlier.

I urge Members to reject any views on the principle of touting, and to consider the practicalities. My hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury will know much more about this than I do, but it seems to me that there is not a great deal of difference between a provision relating to streets and one that also includes parades and promenades.

[Mr Nuttall]

I think that I may have identified a crucial difference between the three Bills that contain a long description and the Reading Borough Council Bill, which uses the one word “street”. All the other Bills relate to city councils. The Canterbury Bill is one of the three city council Bills, and in that respect it differs from the Reading Bill.

[Philip Davies]

I am—I think—grateful to my hon. Friend. The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) may have been becoming confused, but I am beginning to think that I am becoming confused as well. I am not aware that the extra description in subsection (1)(b) has anything to with the fact that this is a city council Bill, as opposed to a borough council Bill. My understanding was that this particular difference related only to the different natures of the places concerned. I presumed that in Reading there was no promenade, parade or esplanade to which the Bill could apply. I could be wrong but my hon. Friend seemed to be arguing that, in effect, it is the same provision but there is a local difference based on the fact that one is a city council and the other is a borough council. My understanding, however, is that it is essentially the same, but it reflects the different nature of the towns and cities concerned. Clause 11 of the Canterbury Bill mentions “parade”, however, and I find it difficult to imagine that there is not a parade in Reading. That would lead me to ask why it is so important to ban selling on a parade in Canterbury, but not on a street in Reading.

Commercial Lobbyists (Registration and Code of Conduct) Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Friday 1st February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I agree with my hon. Friend. On a similar theme, he might like to comment on the civil service. We have all seen in “Yes Minister” how the civil service lobbies the Government in a surreptitious manner to try to protect its interests. Perhaps, on that basis, it might need to be placed on the register.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. It is probably common ground among Members on both sides of the House and from all parties that when one arrives in this place one soon begins to realise that the real power lies with the civil service. In fact, it is often the civil servants the lobbyists want to see, because they know that influencing the thinking of the civil service can be far more effective than, for example, influencing what a Back-Bench Member of this House may think.

I cannot see what would be the benefit to society of having a register of lobbyists. I can see lots of downsides, but I cannot see its purpose. Would it really be the case that every time somebody rang up to make an appointment with a Member, they, or their staff, would bother to consult it? It just would not happen, and even if it did, I cannot see what the purpose would be. Members of the lobbying profession are often, by definition, in the business of promoting themselves. Their websites often contain huge lists of their clients; it is not as though they are trying to hide on whose behalf they are acting. When somebody rings up, one knows straight away, or can quickly find out by asking one or two questions, on whose behalf they are calling. I am not confident that there would be any real use in having such a register.

That brings me on to the question of how the register would be arranged and organised and, more importantly, who would keep it. The Bill suggests that a new organisation, the lobbying registration council—not a new quango but a new industry-funded body—would be responsible for maintaining and supervising the register and keeping it up to date. However, we have no idea of what particulars would be entered on it. It is a blank canvas. Obviously, there would be the name and address of the company or individual and details of their clients, but how long would it be before someone said, “Well, frankly, that’s not much use”? It would be the thin end of the wedge. I suspect that those who thought that it was a good idea to have a register would soon be saying, “What we really want is to know who these lobbyists have met, and we want that recorded on the register. We want to know for how long they met a given individual, where they met, what was the purpose of the meeting, and what was its outcome.” Before long, what started off as a simple register of names, addresses and lists of clients would develop into an enormous database of facts and figures and lists of meetings. It would become a bureaucratic nightmare for those involved in the lobbying industry.

How will my constituents benefit from all that regulation and registration? When I look at things, I always ask, “How will my constituents benefit from this?” I can see that those who may want to engage in the lobbying industry will suffer as a result of the Bill, but I fail to see how my constituents would benefit in any meaningful way from a register of lobbyists.

We do not know what all this will cost. Again, it has been glossed over. We have heard about and debated lots of other things, but we have no idea about that crucial question. One of the first things that a lobbyist would ask is, “How much will this cost?” We have no idea.

[Mr Nuttall]

That is a useful contribution, but the cost of £200 to £300 is for an entirely different register from that which the Bill proposes, which is statutorily based. The lobbying registration council will be funded by those who will pay to be on the register, so in order to determine the cost of registration we have to look at the LRC itself, which, as I have said, is a blank canvas.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend might want also to consider the potential cost to other parts of the state, such as the police force. According to clause 3, a breach of the proposed code of conduct will be a criminal offence. I presume that the police would have to investigate complaints of any breaches and that the Crown Prosecution Service would have to consider whether to press charges, so the cost to the public purse would be much bigger than the figure of zero that we were led to believe earlier.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. If I have the chance later, I will address the fact that, before long, it will be argued that he who pays the piper calls the tune. This is meant to be a self-funded organisation, so it follows that, as soon as the first scandal arises—and, as sure as eggs is eggs, it will—everybody will say, “Ah! That’s happened because the organisation that’s meant to be supervising the register is paid for by the industry itself. It’s not an effective regulator after all. It’s not keeping an effective register. It’s not doing its job.” Before long, there will be calls for the organisation to be removed from “self-regulation” and for it to be paid for by the public purse. As my hon. Friend has said, however, even before we get to that stage there will be increased costs for the public purse, even if complaints are unproven and the police say there is no cause for prosecution. Given that we do not know what will be in the code, we do not know how likely that is to happen—it might be very likely.

[Philip Davies]

Given that two of the postcodes in my constituency are in the top 20 burglary hotspots in the country, I would prefer the police to concentrate on sorting out that issue than to dance around the issues in clause 3 of this Bill.

[Mr Nuttall]

I am sure that my constituents would agree with that. They would much rather that the police were on the streets fighting the crime that they are concerned about than wondering whether a lobbyist in London, Manchester, Liverpool, Nottingham or Glasgow has breached a provision of some code, the details of which we know not. I am extremely concerned about that.

The cost of the lobbying registration council will be dependent on its size and nature. There will be no obligation on it to scrimp or save, because no matter what the organisation costs, it will be passed on to those who by law—they have no choice in the matter—have to register. That is a licence to print money. The council can employ as many people as it likes. It can have as many expense accounts as it likes. It can have offices as lavish as it likes. It could have a whole office block in the centre of London and it would not matter. It could give all of its employees company cars and it would not matter.

[Philip Davies]

We might end up with the ridiculous situation in which the lobbying registration council has to register on its own register because it is lobbying to take further powers and increase the size of its bureaucracy.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. It probably will have to register on its own register, because I am sure that before long it will want greater powers and to extend its reach into new areas. We have already come across a possible new area this morning. As has been pointed out, one of the gaps in the Bill is that it does not provide for the registration of those who want to lobby the European Parliament. The council may well lobby the Government to amend the legislation to cover that area. My hon. Friend is right that, on that basis, it would have to be on its own register.

We do not know how many members will be on the council. Will it be two or three, or thirty or forty? How representative will it be? Will it have to have members from every region of the country? Will it have to have members from different lobbying organisations?

[Thomas Docherty]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way again, because I know that he is trying to move towards a conclusion. I remind him that all those matters will rightly be subject to parliamentary scrutiny. I am sure that he has even more confidence in his Ministers than I do.

[Philip Davies]

I wouldn’t be so sure.

[Mr Nuttall]

I have every confidence in our Ministers. I hope that, as a result of this debate, the Government will continue to worry about the path that they have sent themselves down with the consultation. It is clear from the consultation that it is easy to say, “Let’s have a register of lobbyists,” but that when one looks at the detail, the problems arise. The devil is in the detail.

As I have said, I fail to see how a register of lobbyists would help anybody. That is what we should be thinking about. How will a register help? How will it solve any of the so-called problems? I fail to see that there are problems. I am not bothered about them, but perhaps other people are. In a healthy democracy, everybody lobbies their MP. I am sure that every MP has the same experience at the weekend. I will be going down the street and somebody will tap me on the shoulder and say, “I know it’s the weekend, but I would like to have a quick word with you about blah-de-blah-de-blah.” They want to explain their point of view and to influence me. That is the nature of representative democracy in this country; it happens every day of the week. Some people do it because they are interested, and others do it for reward. I fail to see, however, how having a register will help to solve those problems in any way, shape or form.

Not only do we not know how many members will be on this lobbying registration council, it is not clear who will appoint them. How will they be appointed? Will they be appointed by the Government? Indeed, will they be appointed at all? Will they be elected? Will all members of the lobbying organisation, who have to pay for it, get to elect its members? Who will be eligible to serve on that august body? Will they need a qualification to be a member of the lobbying registration council?

This is the thin end of the wedge and I have seen no evidence this morning to convince me that a register is a good or sensible idea that will benefit my constituents in any way. A likely consequence of the Bill is that, just as we saw last week with the Offshore Gambling Bill, something that ostensibly starts out as a good idea will rapidly turn into the opposite of that. Given that the Act would apply only to England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, we may find that lobbying organisations faced with enormous regulation and fees will move offshore. They will say, “I’m not staying here and paying vast fees of thousands and thousands of pounds each year; I will move.” They will move offshore, either to Gibraltar or indeed outside the European Union altogether.

The promoter of the Bill mentioned that the fees might be £200 or £300, but it is not clear whether that will be standardised. Will the fee be the same for an individual as for a huge conglomerate or large multinational company with a huge client base? I suspect that the one-man band will pay one fee, and that the huge multinational will pay another—many thousands of pounds. For that reason, those multinationals might be inclined to think, “If we are faced with these fees and all that bureaucracy, we will move offshore.”

Offshore Gambling Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Friday 25th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

That is essentially the point that I am making. In the past, there has been a “racing versus bookmaker” attitude that has got neither side anywhere. There have been faults on both sides of that polarisation. Bookmakers need to accept that horse racing must thrive if they are to do well in their business, and, equally, the racing industry needs to understand that without betting, it has not much of a product to sell. Each side needs the other; a “them and us” approach gets us absolutely nowhere.

Rather than rehearsing those decades-old arguments, let us look at the facts in the cold light of day. Let us see where the money is, and how it can be filtered down. I think that there is an awful lot more money in the race courses now than there was before, but what we want is for the prize money to filter down. The amount of prize money could be increased if funds were passed down efficiently, and the smaller trainers, owners and breeders could benefit in the way that my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton wants if that increased prize money were passed on by the race courses.

Another problem is the fact that the Horsemen’s Group, which represents racehorse owners, trainers and so forth, placed a minimum tariff on different race classifications. The prize money for a class 5 race, for instance, will be at a certain minimum level, while for a class 4 race the level will be slightly higher. Although that was done for a good reason—to end what I am sure my hon. Friend would consider to be the worst excesses of paltry prize money and establish some minimums —it has encouraged race courses to put on lower-grade racing so that they can get away with providing the minimum maximum, as it were. A well-meant initiative has had an unintended consequence. Race courses have been given a perverse incentive to “dumb down” the quality of the racing that they offer so that the prize money can be as little as they can get away with, although it will still hit the minimum prescribed by the Horsemen’s Group. That, too, is not of much benefit to anyone.

There is money in the system. Money has been flowing from the betting industry. What we need to do is find mechanisms that will enable it to be conveyed to the people whom my hon. Friend has rightly identified.

[Mr Nuttall]

Does my hon. Friend agree with the comments of Rachel Hood, the president of the Racehorse Owners Association, to whom I referred earlier? She said that there was more cause for optimism than there had been “for some considerable time”.

[Philip Davies]

I do. Rachel Hood is the wife of John Gosden, one of the top trainers in the country. She is also, I believe, a lawyer by profession. She is an extremely talented person, and the Racehorse Owners Association is lucky to have her representing it. She is a formidable character, and we do not always see eye to eye, but my hon. Friend was right to quote her. She also said:

“British racing’s funding model has changed so much in recent years and while there remains a lack of total transparency around the issue of media rights, to its credit the Racecourse Association has recently confirmed that by 2013 racecourses will be receiving media rights of at least £84m, nearly £30m more than in 2010.”

She herself has identified the fact that the race courses are receiving a windfall from the media rights that the bookmakers are paying. She may also have cottoned on to the fact that there may well be more mileage for the owners in trying to pass some of it on in prize money.

I am well aware, Mr Deputy Speaker, that time is passing, and it is a shame when there is so much to say about such a big subject and so little time in which to say it—unfortunately, I seem to encounter that problem regularly, and on Fridays in particular. However, I want to talk about regulation because, as I said at the start of my remarks, this will help the Government to a certain extent; they want us to get on to discuss regulation because as far as they are concerned that is what they are all about. That is probably about as helpful as I am going to get for the Government, but I thought I would help in that respect.

The Minister is on the horns of a dilemma, because he has to say that this issue is about regulation. The problem is that I do not see, and neither did our Select Committee when we took evidence, a great deal of evidence of a massive problem with the regulation of the betting industry in this country. If anybody has any evidence of the failures of regulation, the Select Committee would love to see it because we genuinely did not see any. If we are to take the Government’s word on what this is all about, the Bill seems to be the perfect example of a solution looking for a problem. I am not aware of what the problem is, but it will be for the Government, either today or at a later date, to spell out what the particular issue is. I do not know whether the Minister sees the Bill as an irritant—perhaps he will be able to tell us. Some aspects of the Bill are superfluous, because the Treasury and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport have already indicated that they are going to carry out much of what is in it, and some of it may be illegal.

Let me discuss some of the particular regulation issues. At the moment, we have a white list, which is based on the view that the regulation in the other regimes involved is just as rigorous and onerous as it is in this country, and we are satisfied as a country that those regimes are just as good. So the principle goes: given that we are happy with the regulatory regime in those jurisdictions, we are happy to accept the licences that they issue. If we are simply looking at this in terms of regulation, the model of regulation seems to be sensible. So if we are happy with the overall standard of regulation, why do we need to get bogged down in issuing each individual operator a licence, given that they have already been given a licence in a regime that we think is good enough? That is the basis on which we have operated our regulation in this country and it has worked particularly well.

This country has a very small number of people who bet with illegal operators, although, again, I am happy to listen to evidence to the contrary on that and I will certainly accept it if it exists. In other countries, particularly those in the European Union, illegal betting is a massive problem. These countries give licences to a very small number of people on different bases. In Belgium, someone has to have shops—they have to have a physical presence in the country—in order to be given an online licence. There are all sorts of rules like that. The inevitable consequence is that a massive amount of illegal gambling goes on, in the sense that people bet with operators abroad who have no licence in their home jurisdiction.

All sorts of mechanisms are put in place to try to prevent such betting from happening, such as the site blocking that some countries put in place to try to stop people betting on illegal sites. That has not worked and we know why: modern technology means that as soon as one site is closed down, another one opens up within five minutes and by the time people get round to closing that one down, another one opens up within five minutes flat; you are for ever chasing your tail and you never deal with the problem.

Some jurisdictions therefore have a block on payments, whereby the Government come to an agreement with the banks and the credit card companies that they will not allow any transactions to take place with the unlicensed operators abroad. Of course, that can have more success than site blocking. I am a luddite, as you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, so I am probably not the best person to go through all the ways that people get around such restrictions. As I understand it—hon. Members who know more about it than I do will be able to correct me—operations such as PayPal enable people to get around those restrictions, so they are not totally successful.

The problem is that in every jurisdiction that has tried to restrict the licences it issues and whom it allows people to bet with, that approach has never worked. I do not see why we think we will solve a problem that no other country appears to have solved. It seems to me that the only possible consequence is that the levels of betting with illegal operators or operators without a licence will go up. Given that we have virtually none of that at the moment, which must be good for regulation and player protection, how can it improve regulation to set up a regime when the only possible consequence is that people will go into the grey market and will not get a licence but will still operate? How will we stop people betting with those operators? They will be able to offer better prices as they will have lower costs and lower tax liabilities, so in many respects we will be in danger of setting up a regime that actively encourages people to go to unlicensed operators abroad who do not contribute anything in this country.

We treat the online industry as if it contributes nothing to racing or to the Exchequer. Some of the big online companies are Ladbrokes and William Hill. They have thousands of shops in the UK and are massive employers. They do not contribute nothing to the British economy; they contribute an awful lot. The danger is that in the online world, fewer people will bet with the companies such as Ladbrokes and William Hill that make a contribution, if not on an online basis but though their shops, and instead will go to operators that contribute nothing to the UK economy.

We will set up a system that inadvertently pushes people to such operators and I do not see how that is a triumph for regulation or for player protection. We should be grateful that we do not have the problems that other counties do, but we would be in danger of creating them. If this is about regulation, as the Minister would like us to believe, he must explain where the big problem is and why regulation is necessary to solve it.

The white listing system means that the Gambling Commission can accept regulation from other jurisdictions and can trust it in the knowledge that those jurisdictions have as tough a regulatory system as we do—one in which we can have faith. That means the commission can accept such operators in the same way as it would one from the UK. The problem with the Bill and the Government’s draft Bill is that the Gambling Commission will have to issue individual licences to Lord knows how many gambling companies. On what basis will it do that? On what basis will it assess the abilities of betting companies in foreign lands? How will it decide whether they are legitimate, whether they can pay out to punters and whether they are ring-fencing the punters’ stake rather than putting it all in a pot? How will it do that when companies are in far-flung jurisdictions? Will all the Gambling Commission staff be off on permanent jollies, going around and looking at all those industries? Who will issue all the licences? How many more people will the commission need?

I bet the commission thinks that this is the best thing since sliced bread. Quangos love empire building; we have seen it time and time again. The commission must think all its Christmases have come at once. Instead of having to accept the licences issued by jurisdictions whose regulatory regimes we are perfectly happy with, it will have to consider every company individually. That seems to me to be what my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton and the Minister are proposing: great stuff if you work for the Gambling Commission, but probably not so great for anyone else. Will those companies, including UK companies, that employ many people in the UK have to get an individual licence in every jurisdiction in which they operate? That is unnecessary, as we could just recognise regulatory regimes elsewhere. It is bureaucracy gone mad, and I hope that the Government can make a good case for why that should happen.

I am sure that we are all anxious to hear what the Front-Bench spokesmen have to say about the matter, but I am sorry that we have been short of time for this debate, because there is a lot more stuff that I wanted to mention. The revenue raised by the measure is not all a net benefit to the Exchequer, as there is a negative side too. There are gambling companies such as tombola—Members might have seen it advertise its product before “Emmerdale” on television—and it is a fairly new company that has enjoyed massive growth. I apologise if this is not true, but I believe that it is based offshore, so it does not contribute the taxation that people would like, and that is the problem the Bill is designed to tackle. Tombola employs an awful lot of people in the UK to work on things such as its marketing and advertising strategies. If we imposed extra taxation on such companies, which is difficult to justify given their margins, they will reduce their marketing spend—we do not have to be great geniuses to work that out—because they will not be able to afford to spend as much on it. Ultimately, therefore, they will employ fewer people in the UK to work on marketing.

We should think through the consequences of what we are doing. The Government seem to have pound signs in their eyes, thinking that this is an easy way to make money: there is no downside, it is all upside. Life is never quite as simple as that. There are no painless panaceas, and there may well be some unintended consequences, including the fact that fewer people will be employed in these industries in the UK. I am sure that none of us, whatever our view of the Bill—again, I have no problem with it in principle—wants to see unintended consequences that result in people losing their jobs in this country and in the economy losing money. We want a regime that increases revenue for the Government and increases the number of jobs. The Government can do that, but they need to be rather more careful than they have been, and rather more careful than has been the case with this Bill. However, I commend my hon. Friends the Members for Thirsk and Malton and for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock) for introducing the Bill, because it has allowed us to have a very good debate and informed discussion. We should all be grateful for that.

Antarctic Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Friday 18th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

I am conscious this morning that families throughout the nation might be tuning into our proceedings expecting to hear us talk about the tragic developments in Algeria, but as Members will know, and as you will know, Mr Speaker, under the Standing Orders of the House, a statement is to be made at 11 o’clock. It is appropriate, then, that we deal now with the private Members’ Bills, the first of which is the Antarctic Bill, and my new clause.

I am grateful that new clause 1 has been selected for debate this morning, because it gives the House the opportunity to consider in more depth the likely consequences of the Bill. This straightforward new clause simply calls on the Secretary of State to lay a report before the House, within three years of the Bill’s coming into force, a cost-benefit analysis of the measures in it. Of course, it is in no way a wrecking amendment and will in no way undermine the basic purpose of this excellent Bill. The only purpose of the new clause is to try to improve the Bill and give the House the opportunity to revisit it in three years to check whether what was intended is actually happening. Assuming that the Bill becomes law later this year, I would anticipate that such a review would take place at the beginning of 2016.

We hear a lot in the House about pre-legislative scrutiny, but sometimes an equally important case can be made for post-legislative scrutiny. Some of the Bills we pass never see the light of day. I was amazed when I was elected to this place to find out that some Acts had lain on the statute book for years without ever being brought into force. I hope that that will not be the case with this Bill.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I do not disagree with my hon. Friend’s analysis that post-legislative scrutiny is a good thing, but on this amendment, which calls for a cost-benefit analysis—I have no problem with that in principle—will he make it clear whether the analysis would be for the Government alone or take into account the costs of other people as well?

[Mr Nuttall]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point, because I realise that it might be unclear. I anticipate that it would be both. It is right and proper that the Government review and explain to the House the costs of the Bill to them and, perhaps more importantly, its effects on private companies, research in the Antarctic and those who want to visit the Antarctic or have their livelihoods there. I anticipate that the cost-benefit analysis would apply to both the Government and private individuals and companies.

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that helpful clarification. I think that a more wide-ranging cost-benefit analysis would be more appropriate, given the nature of the Bill. Will he confirm that his cost-benefit analysis would not simply be financial, but would take into account other costs and benefits as well?

[Mr Nuttall]

I am grateful for that intervention, because it is important not to look at the Bill just in financial terms. We need to look at it more widely. The whole purpose of the Bill is to protect the environment of the Antarctic continent. We cannot assess the value of the Bill just in pounds, shillings and pence, as we used to say—I suppose we would say “pounds and pence” nowadays. We have to look at the overall impact of the Bill and ask whether it is achieving what it set out to achieve, which is to protect the environment of the Antarctic. The thrust of the Bill is to bring into UK law the environmental protection provided by the protocol on environmental protection to the Antarctic treaty, so the analysis should be wider than simply a financial analysis.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

I am grateful for that intervention. Let me immediately put my hon. Friend’s fears to bed. I do not envisage the report being a weighty tome, involving dozens of civil servants conducting a detailed analysis. Clearly there will be a cost involved—that is patently obvious—but in the long run it is better to have the wider benefits of a cost-benefit analysis than not to conduct one, because the important thing is that the Bill is effective in its purpose. As I said in response to an earlier intervention, we cannot really put a price on that. If the Bill turns out not to be effective, we need to know about it as legislators.

[Philip Davies]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

Yes, I did. Indeed, I am grateful for that intervention because it gives me a chance to say that I was tempted to have a longer period. If there are problems with the Bill putting people off visiting or carrying out scientific work in the region, we need to know about them sooner rather than later. There might be a case for conducting a further review, because—I will touch on this later—there may well not be an environmental emergency in that three-year period. I sincerely hope that there is not, but that would mean that we were unable to assess the effectiveness of some of the provisions in the Bill, because they are relevant only in the event of such an emergency.

My new clause 1 would give the House the opportunity to check whether the expected benefits of the Bill had become a reality. For example, has there been an increase in the effectiveness and appropriateness of the measures being taken to prevent damage from being caused to the precious Antarctic environment? On the other hand, as I said in response to an earlier intervention, have the measures in the Bill proved so onerous in practice that there has been a reduction in the level of interest in the region, in terms of either the number of tourists visiting or the amount of scientific investigations and study of the Antarctic region? I think we can all agree that we do not want the obligations on the scientists studying in the area to be so burdensome that they reduce the valuable work they do there.

Clause 6 requires organisers of activities in Antarctica to secure adequate insurance cover or provide other financial securities, such as bonds or guarantees from a bank or similar institution, to cover the cost of taking the response action set out in clause 1, together with any liability to another party to annex VI to the protocol on environmental protection to the Antarctic treaty who takes the response action to an environmental emergency in the event that the organising party does not take such action. It is worth noting that “environmental emergency” in this context means

“an accidental event that results in, or imminently threatens to result in, any significant harmful impact on the environment of Antarctica.”

Fortunately, the schedule to the Bill provides for financial limits to the amount of the liability, which varies depending on whether the environmental emergency arises from an event involving a ship. Unsurprisingly, given the international nature of the agreement, the amount of liability is fixed by reference not to pounds sterling, but to special drawing rights, which is the international currency fixed by the International Monetary Fund. Even allowing for those limits, however, given that the nature of such an environmental emergency is almost unlimited and given the understandable caution of the insurance companies, the cost of providing such insurance might be very high indeed. It could be so high that it prohibited visits from taking place and scientific study from being carried out. I appreciate that that is not the intention of the Bill, but new clause 1 would give the House the opportunity to revisit the matter and assess whether the costs involved in obtaining insurance or bonds were proving an insurmountable hurdle for those affected by the Bill.

As I said in response to an earlier intervention, I am sure we all fervently hope that no environmental emergency would arise during the initial three-year review period. Nevertheless, if such an emergency did arise, the cost-benefit analysis would enable the Secretary of State, and subsequently this House, to assess whether the duty-to-inform obligations contained in clause 7 are effective. Although they are backed up by criminal sanctions, the purpose of the Bill is to protect the Antarctic environment, not to give criminal records to scientists. While we need the criminal sanctions to be in place, more importantly we need the reporting obligations to be effective and to work in practice.

In the event of an emergency, the notification must be prompt. New clause 1 will enable the House to assess the effectiveness of a section 7 duty. I reiterate the point that we all hope that no emergency occurs, so that we will not be given the opportunity to test whether that provision is right.

The Bill is intended to prevent accidental environmental damage from occurring in the first place by imposing on individuals organising activities in Antarctica an obligation to take reasonable preventive measures designed to reduce the risk of an environmental emergency. These requirements are set out in clause 5. They are fairly onerous. They set out in some detail what is required of a party organising work in the Antarctic, and costs associated with the carrying out of these measures are inevitable.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend will be aware that I have tabled an amendment seeking to delete clause 5 from the Bill. If I were successful in persuading my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael)and the Minister that clause 5 should not be in the Bill, would that negate the need for the cost-benefit analysis?

[Mr Nuttall]

I appreciate that if the House decided to accept my hon. Friend’s amendment, clause 5 would be deleted. It is not often that I find cause to disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), but having considered whether it would be appropriate to delete clause 5, I am not at this stage minded to agree that it would. Having heard my hon. Friend’s persuasive arguments later, I might change my mind—

[Philip Davies]

I doubt it.

[Mr Nuttall]

The reality is that the duty in clause 5

“to take preventative measures and make contingency plan”

is at the heart of what the Bill is all about. It makes sense for someone visiting the Antarctic region to do some forward thinking and sit down with a pen and paper to produce a plan relating to what might happen if something goes wrong, bearing in mind that the general thrust of environmental protection legislation in this area is to leave the Antarctic environment completely pristine. Nothing should be left behind at all.

[Mr Nuttall]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention. I think I made it clear in response to an earlier intervention that although we will need to assess the financial costs stemming from the Bill, I anticipate that the review should go wider than the financial effects alone. As she rightly says, we cannot put a price on the Antarctic environment. We need to look at much wider matters; indeed, she touched on the historic sites on Antarctica. I shall return to this issue when we look at my amendment 1, which is designed to protect “Historic Sites and Monuments” that are indeed part of this nation’s heritage and need protecting.

[Philip Davies]

I want to press my hon. Friend. My last intervention encouraged him to say how much he disagreed with my amendment, but I was not asking him whether he agreed with it. I simply asked whether, if I were able to persuade the House of the merits of my amendment—notwithstanding the fact that my hon. Friend would be in the opposite Lobby on any Division—it negated the need for a cost-benefit analysis. Is clause 5 the reason why we need a cost-benefit analysis? That is the point of my probing question.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

That is a very good point. The House may well need to reconsider. Every visit to Antarctica carries a risk of environmental damage. Every time a sailing ship visits the Antarctic waters, for whatever purpose—tourism, carrying scientists into the area, or fishing—damage is likely to occur. Not many years ago, I think in 2007, a ship sank in Antarctic waters. I may say more about that later. It cannot be said that such things do not happen. Ships do sink in Antarctica, because although they have been specially strengthened, the ice is still powerful. It can still penetrate the defences of ships and cause them to sink. We may well have to look again at these provisions to establish whether they are strong enough.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend appears, whether deliberately or inadvertently, to be moving on to the issue of whether the cost-benefit analysis should focus only on UK nationals and the UK Government or cover anyone who visits the Antarctic, from whatever country, right across the globe. Has he had any thoughts about how wide its focus should be?

[Mr Nuttall]

My own view is that the cost-benefit analysis would be relevant only to the UK. I think that it would be beyond the scope of the review that I have in mind to deal with matters on a worldwide basis. It might be necessary to adopt a wider perspective, but I thought it appropriate for the analysis to be confined to the effect on British citizens, British-led expeditions and British scientists.

[Philip Davies]

I understand that, but surely my hon. Friend appreciates its relevance to the international treaties and international obligations that we expect other countries to implement. From a purely UK perspective, the costs might well outweigh the benefit, but if we take account of the obligations taken on by other countries, the benefit would outweigh the cost. Surely we should view this from as wide a perspective as possible.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend has made an important point. Given that the Bill’s origins lie in international treaty obligations, the answer may well be for all the contracting parties to the Antarctic treaty to conduct a cost-benefit analysis. The other contracting parties might use the UK’s review as a model or precedent for a cost-benefit analysis applying to the overall use of the Antarctic.

[Philip Davies]

Surely the danger of allowing each country to conduct its own cost-benefit analysis is that it would take only one country to feel that, for it, the cost was outweighing the benefit for all of them to start trying to wriggle out of their international obligations, and to be deterred from entering into any future such obligations. Might it not be better for the UK Government to conduct an analysis across the piece?

[Mr Nuttall]

I understand what my hon. Friend means. There is always the risk, with any international agreement, that at some point in the future one of the member states will decide that it wants to leave. I can think of a situation closer to home in which one of the parties to an international agreement wants to leave, but we will not go into that.

The Antarctic convention is, in many respects, a model of international co-operation. It is many decades since the signing of the original treaty, and over the ensuing decade the number of contracting parties, which I think was initially 12, has grown considerably. More countries are now interested in protecting the Antarctic environment. I would hope that the cost-benefit analysis would be conducted in the right spirit, and that it would be a question not just of cost, but of the benefit to the world of continuing to protect Antarctica as it is protected at present.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) on getting his Bill to this stage, as it is no mean achievement to get a private Member’s Bill through to Report. He should be commended for the customary skill he has deployed in ensuring it has got this far. I do not think anybody in the Chamber today wishes to bury or scupper the Bill; everyone’s motive is, if anything, to improve the Bill. We all wish the Bill well and we are grateful to my hon. Friend for introducing such an important piece of legislation, which is particularly appropriate for the private Member’s Bill route.

I also commend my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) for once again giving us his insightful views. I also commend the way he critically looks at pieces of legislation. The absolute role of people in Parliament is to scrutinise legislation and make sure that what we put on to the statute book is fit for purpose. To be perfectly honest, without my hon. Friend, many private Members’ Bills would fail the test of proper scrutiny, so he should be once again commended for the way he introduces amendments.

I have tabled only one amendment to the Bill, which, as the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) made clear, relates to clause 5. I intend it to be a probing amendment, and I am hoping that my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud and the Minister will be able to explain exactly why the clause is necessary. I should make it clear that the reason I propose leaving out clause 5 is not because I do not agree with what it contains; the necessity for the clause is the point of dispute.

I am certain that if the Bill were starting from scratch in terms of protecting the Antarctic, clause 5 would be an essential part of it; my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North said that clause 5 went to the heart of the Bill. But what we are doing in this piece of legislation is, as is stated at the back of the Bill, making

“provision consequential on Annex VI to the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty”

and amending the Antarctic Act 1994 in the process.

Clause 5 implements articles 3 and 4 of annex VI—the liability annex. Subsection (2) places a requirement on people who are organising activities to be carried out in Antarctica and which are connected with the United Kingdom to take

“reasonable preventative measures designed to reduce—

(a) the risk of environmental emergencies arising from those activities, and

(b) the potential…impact of such environmental emergencies.”

The requirement must be fulfilled before the person carrying out the activities enters Antarctica, as is set out in subsection (6). Subsection (7) makes it an offence not to comply with the requirement, while subsection (9) establishes that any offence under subsection (7) is punishable by a maximum of two years’ imprisonment or a fine, or both if the person is convicted on indictment. On summary conviction the person may be liable to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum, which is £5,000 at the moment but that could be amended. Subsection (3) gives examples of preventive measures that could be taken, including specialised equipment, procedures or training.

Subsection (4) places a further requirement on people organising these activities to make contingency plans for responding to environmental emergencies and other incidents with potential to have adverse impacts on the environment of Antarctica that might arise from their activities. Again, the requirement applies only to activities that are

“connected with the United Kingdom”,

as is made clear in subsection (1). That requirement must also be fulfilled before the person carrying out the activities enters Antarctica. Subsection (8) makes it an offence not to comply with that requirement and subsection (9) establishes that any offence under subsection (8) is punishable by a maximum of two years’ imprisonment, a fine or both if the person is convicted on indictment. The same statutory maximum £5,000 fine applies on summary conviction.

Subsection (5) provides examples of what a contingency plan may contain, including plans for taking response action to an environmental emergency or other incident and for informing the Secretary of State of its occurrence. Clause 13(9) defines activities connected with the UK as activities that are

“organised in the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man or a British overseas territory”

and are to be

“carried out on a British expedition, within the meaning of the Antarctic Act 1994”

or require a permit under that Act.

[Mr Nuttall]

All those matters to which my hon. Friend has just referred are taken almost word for word from annex VI. The whole purpose of the Bill is to enact in UK law what is said in articles 3 and 4 of the annex. If we removed clause 5, we would destroy a substantial part of the Bill and its whole purpose.

[Philip Davies]

I understand my hon. Friend’s point, but I ask him to allow me to make a little progress. He might well be right; he is absolutely right to say what he does about the Bill implementing annex VI. Nobody can doubt that. I hope that the Minister will be able to explain in some detail why the Bill is necessary, given the requirements that are already in place under the 1994 Act. The whole point of that Act was to implement the previous five annexes. We are not starting from scratch; we are building on what is already in place.

The 1994 Act already makes it an offence for a British expedition to enter Antarctica without the approval of the Secretary of State and a permit is required for any member of a British expedition unless they have one from another contracting party to the treaty. A British expedition can include non-UK nationals, but to be British it needs to be organised in the UK or to have the UK as its place of final departure. I believe that would include places such as the Falkland Islands, of course. Specific permits are issued for particular activities, such as the taking of flora and fauna and the introduction of non-native animals or plants. Permits are not needed for ships or aircraft travelling on to an immediate destination outside Antarctica or fishing vessels unless they are linked to an expedition. The permit requirements for British expeditions entering the Antarctic were introduced through the 1994 Act, which implemented the Antarctic treaty’s protocol on environmental protection and its various requirements, covering matters such as waste disposal and marine pollution.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office provides a comprehensive guide to the requirements for an expedition to Antarctica on its “Planning an expedition” page. What is more, it states:

“All permit applications must be accompanied by a completed Environmental Impact Assessment.”

That is already on the FCO website, which I have taken the liberty of looking at and printing off for the benefit of this debate. It makes it quite clear that:

“All permit applications must be accompanied by a completed Environmental Impact Assessment.”

It has a whole section on environmental impact assessments.

[Mr Nuttall]

Is it not the case that the FCO has included those provisions on its website and ensured that visitors abide by them because the UK signed annex VI and we have regarded ourselves as being bound by it since 2005?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend might well be right and I look forward with interest to what the Minister has to say on that point. I do not doubt that the Minister is a good man, and very sensible, and I am sure that there are particularly good reasons why the clause is necessary. I am not saying that the Minister has got this wrong and that we should delete clause 5 as a result. My amendment is a probing amendment, as I suggested at the start of my speech, to identify why we need the clause. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North is more of an expert on these matters than I am—I am a mere layman, but as a layman it was interesting to me that these provisions already seemed to be in place and it seemed that we were, in effect, double legislating and reinventing the wheel.

The advice on environmental impact assessments that is already on the Foreign Office website states:

“Please note we will not normally authorise activities for non-scientific purposes which are likely to have more than a minor or transitory impact on the Antarctic environment.”

The thrust of my argument is that the measures in clause 5 are perhaps already in place. Let us look at what is already in place. Annex I to the protocol is already in legislation as part of the 1994 Act. It is all about environmental impact assessments. When we talk about how important they are and say that that is why clause 5 is necessary, it seems to me that that argument is based on the fact that we are starting from scratch when we are not.

I do not intend to read out annex I—I am sure, Mr Speaker, that you would neither wish me nor allow me to do so—because it would take an awful lot of time, which I would not want to take. If anyone were to read annex I to the protocol on environmental protection, they would see that it is pretty comprehensive. It states that itself and I am not in a position to doubt it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

Absolutely, and Mr Speaker is very capable of making those decisions without the hon. Gentleman’s help.

Article 2 is about the objectives of annex V and states:

“For the purposes set out in this Annex, any area, including any marine area, may be designated as an Antarctic Specially Protected Area or an Antarctic Specially Managed Area.”

It goes on to state:

“Activities in those Areas shall be prohibited, restricted or managed in accordance with Management Plans adopted under the provisions of this Annex.”

Article 3 goes on to discuss Antarctic specially protected areas and article 4 is about Antarctic specially managed areas.

[Mr Nuttall]

My reading of annex V is that it refers to the protection of areas, rather than to the planning of visits to the area. That is the difference between annex V and annex VI.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right in that regard, but as I said, the 1994 Act already requires environmental impact assessments and people require the permission of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office before they are allowed to go to the Antarctic. My hon. Friend is right in the detail of what he is saying but, as a layman, I do not see how that affects the current arrangements because, I would contend, the FCO already has the relevant powers.

When annex V, which is covered by article 5, refers to management plans, it states in some detail what a proposed management plan should include. I certainly do not intend to take lots of time reading out what is covered, but I recommend that people look at annex V, as my hon. Friend clearly has, and read article 5 on management plans. I think everyone would agree that it is pretty comprehensive and detailed.

Seeing that my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) is in his customary place, I certainly would not want to argue for unnecessary legislation, and I am sure he would berate me if I did not try to point out that this clause may be unnecessary. That goes to the heart of my reason for tabling my amendment. It may well be that there are very good reasons that make it necessary; but equally, it may well be covered by the existing legislation.

Antarctic Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Friday 18th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

The Minister made some very good points about my amendment, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael). I am as satisfied with the explanations given on my amendment as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) appears to be with regard to his amendments.

[Mr Nuttall]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making his view clear to the House. I said that I might be persuaded by his arguments, but I am grateful that he was persuaded by the other arguments, and that clause 5 will remain in the Bill. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

Third Reading

Prisons (Property) Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Friday 30th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He might think it easy for me to say—now he has made the point—but I was specifically thinking of hospitals when I drew up the amendment. As he said, lots of prisoners have health problems and require medical treatment, entailing a trip either to a doctors’ surgery for an assessment or to hospital for treatment or a more detailed assessment. The last Government did an awful lot in that regard, taking forward telemedicine so that people could be seen while still in prison via video link. That was a perfectly good innovation, but it does not apply in every case. As my hon. Friend said, prisoners often have to visit hospital.

It is not just about hospitals, however; lots of prisoners go out to work on day release, if they are coming to the end of their sentence, as part of their rehabilitation. Many people in open prisons go out to work or out into other parts of society to do some rehabilitation work. As things stand, however, it seems that the Bill would not cover those people. People in custody also go to court, either to have their remand hearing considered or to have further charges put to them, and it would be bizarre if something was found while somebody was in court but was not covered by the Bill just because they happened to be in court rather than in prison.

I genuinely do not know—perhaps the Minister will tell us—how many trips are paid to hospital, how many people go out to work each day or how many court appearances are made, but I am sure there are people with better minds in this place who do know. It would help to have that information. It seems to me, however, that many people make such trips, so there might be a large loophole when prisoners are away from their prison and prisoner escort vehicle and therefore not covered by the Bill.

I am also slightly concerned about the use of the term “prisoner escort vehicle”. I wonder exactly what it covers. Again, I would not want people to get away on a technicality. We have lots of clever members of the legal profession in the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) being one of them, and I would not want any of those clever people—much cleverer than me—to be able to find a loophole by which it could be claimed that a vehicle was not strictly speaking a “prisoner escort vehicle”. I wonder, therefore, if we have a definition of exactly what it means.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point about the definition of “prisoner escort vehicle”, but I am concerned that the problem would not be dealt with by his amendment 2, on the grounds that a similarly silver-tongued lawyer might say that “location” does not include a moving vehicle.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

indicated dissent.

[Philip Davies]

I was misguided in thinking that my hon. Friend momentarily wanted to intervene, but he did not. He has obviously been so persuaded by my case that he could not think of anything in amendment 4 to disagree with, as he could with amendment 3.

Proposed new section 42A of the Prison Act 1952, in clause 1, deals with

“Disposal of unauthorised or unattributable property”.

Where an article is being used for any of the purposes set out in subsection (3), it is not authorised. Those purposes include

“concealing an article which a prisoner is not authorised to have in his or her possession…causing harm to the prisoner or others…prejudicing the security or operation of the prison.”

My amendment 4 would add another category, in proposed new subsection (3)(d), which reads:

“for any unauthorised or unlawful purpose.”

Again, the amendment is designed to strengthen the reasons in the Bill for which property may be confiscated and destroyed. Perhaps it is too restricting simply to use the criteria currently set out in subsection (3). There could be circumstances where property was being used for another unlawful or unauthorised purpose, which would not be covered without my amendment. Surely we are not talking just about things that cause harm to the prisoner or prejudice the security or operation of the prison. Subsection (3)(a) refers to

“concealing an article which a prisoner is not authorised to have”,

but what if someone is caught red handed with an article that they are not concealing, but brandishing openly in front of everybody? Would we then find ourselves in the ridiculous situation where if a prisoner was hiding the article, that would be covered, but if they were brandishing it openly, that would not?

Perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey is satisfied that everything is covered by the Bill. However, there is certainly no harm in the belt-and-braces approach adopted by my amendment. For example, what if an item was being used to facilitate the taking of drugs? That would not necessarily fall under either “concealing” an item or

“causing harm to the prisoner or others”,

nor would it be

“prejudicing the security or operation of the prison”,

yet I am sure we would all want to ensure that those things were covered. My amendment would introduce a catch-all element to ensure that any property associated with any unauthorised or unlawful use could be seized and disposed of.

Amendment 5 would insert

“recycling it or donating it to any charity”

at the end of proposed new section 42A(5)(c) of the 1952 Act, as set out in clause 1. Again, I guess—[Interruption.] I am pleased to see the return of my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North, because this might be another area where he can help out, with his undoubted expertise on legal matters. As the Bill stands, proposed new subsection (5) says:

“In this section…references to disposing of an article include selling it”,

but I do not know whether the Bill is trying to say, “You can do that if you want to,” or whether that is the preferred way of dealing with such articles. In any case, if references to the disposal of an item are to include selling it, it seems perfectly worth while to include other options, including recycling things or donating them to any charity. If items could only be either destroyed or sold, that would leave out some of the things that most people would consider to be the most appropriate ways of disposing of them. If we were talking about things of particular use to a charity or things that could be recycled, why would we not want to do that?

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. As ever, he is eagle-eyed on these matters. The point he makes about proposed new section 42A(1) is a good one, but like him, I would have thought that if “otherwise dispose of” included any other method, there would be no need for the words “selling it” in proposed new subsection 42A(5). Perhaps the Minister may like to explain that. My concern is that the Bill might encourage prisons to go down that line—it is as though that kind of behaviour is being encouraged. Personally, the behaviour I would most like to encourage is recycling or donating to charity. The things that are most likely to be caught include mobile phones, for instance, which mobile phone companies are trying to encourage us to recycle. It would be bizarre if we ended up destroying things that could otherwise be recycled.

[Mr Nuttall]

In drafting amendment 4, my hon. Friend has not referred specifically to a “registered charity”, but simply to a “charity”. I wonder whether he could clarify whether, in not using the word “registered”, he had in mind general good causes, which might not necessarily have formally registered as charities.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. It just goes to show the value I would have gained from speaking to him before I drew up my amendments. There is certainly a lesson in there for me. Indeed, given his nature and the fact that he is so expert at looking at such details, I am rather surprised that I did not discuss my amendments with him before tabling them. He makes a good point, although he seemed to imply that I went through a certain thought process—that I considered putting down “any registered charity”, but made a conscious decision not to and instead just put down “any charity”. He is doing me far too much credit by suggesting that I went through that thought process. The fact of the matter is—as I am sure you would have well known, Madam Deputy Speaker, knowing me as you do—that I did not go through any such thought process. I merely put down the sentiment, I guess, that such items should be given to any charity. I will certainly consult my hon. Friend in future, because as ever he spots things that I always miss. If he will bear with me, I will leave that detail to one side for the moment.

We should trust the prison officers, governors and directors to decide how best to deal with the items in question. I would not want us to push them down a particular route if there was a better one available. They might wish to support a local charity, for example, and the amendment would encourage them to use their discretion as widely as possible. My suggestion on Second Reading regarding the use of eBay was mentioned in Committee. Prisons might be able to make some money from the sale of the items. Times are tough, and I would not have a problem with a prison setting up its own eBay personality to sell those items in order to make money that could be reinvested in the prison. I want to give prisons the greatest possible flexibility.

Amendment 6 would remove the words after “force” and insert the words

“and which is held by the prison on that date”

into clause 1(6)(a). As the clause stands, the power to dispose of property

“may be exercised in relation to the relevant article found before the day on which this section comes into force if the article remains unclaimed at the end of six months beginning with that day.”

I think that that is too prescriptive. I would like to give the prisons the widest possible scope, and they should not have to wait six months to dispose of an item. If they think that the prisoner should not have an item, and that it ought to be disposed of, why should we insist that they wait six months to see whether it is claimed?

I want to speed through these matters a bit more now, and I will briefly mention amendments 7 and 8. Amendment 7 would remove clause 1(6)(b), which states that the power to dispose of items

“may not otherwise be exercised in relation to an article found before that day.”

Amendment 8 would remove parts of clause 1(7) and insert the words

“covered by this Act if it had been in force at the time the items were seized.”

All three amendments are trying to make the same point. As the Bill stands, it would cover only items seized after its introduction, or a limited type of item that had not been claimed six months after its introduction. That is very weak. It should be dealing with all confiscated items, not just those that have not been claimed. Whether or not they have been claimed is wholly irrelevant. It is beyond me to understand why on earth an unauthorised or illegal item should be given back to someone just because they claim it is theirs.

There are many examples of the appropriateness and correct application of this approach. A pertinent one relates to sentencing. Someone might commit a crime before a change to the sentencing guidelines, but if they fall to be sentenced after the change, they will be sentenced as per the new guideline. I am suggesting a similar approach in the Bill. It would be ironic if someone had an item confiscated after committing a crime and it was handed back because it had been confiscated before the change took place, and if that same person could go to court and be sentenced on the basis of the sentencing guidelines that pertained on the day of sentence, rather than on the day of the offence. That would be a topsy-turvy situation.

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[Mr Nuttall]

I should say at the outset that I know that the amendments presented so ably by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) are not in any sense wrecking amendments designed to destroy the central thrust of the Bill. Indeed, they are very much in the spirit of the Bill, and are intended to strengthen it so that it achieves the purpose that we all want it to achieve.

Let me begin with amendment 2. As we have heard, there are many reasons why a prisoner may be away from the confines of the prison. He may, for example, be visiting a hospital, or he may have been released to attend a funeral. The question has been raised of how many times a prisoner will leave the prison in the course of a year. Given that there are 85,000 people in prison, and given all the reasons why a prisoner might want to leave the prison, the number of such occasions must amount to many hundreds of thousands.

[Philip Davies]

As my hon. Friend knows, it is not just a question of 85,000 prisoners. Far more than 85,000 people go to prison over the course of a year. There are about 80,000 people in prison at any one time, but obviously many more thousands go to prison during the year, and all of them may at some point leave the prison for the day.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend is right. There are probably 85,000 prisoners at any given moment in time, but over the course of a calendar year the number will be vastly greater. When, back in 2007, my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) asked how drugs had got into Dorchester prison, the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), who was a Minister at the time, replied that in a single year there had been

“Under the current system, 405,259 releases on temporary licence”.—[Official Report, 19 June 2007; Vol. 461, c. 1253.]

There is, therefore, some evidence to support my estimate that there are some hundreds of thousands of such releases each year.

It now seems to me that the point about the definition of “prisoner escort vehicle”—I wondered whether my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) would mention this—is covered by clause 1(5), which defines it as

“a vehicle used for taking a prisoner to or from a prison or other place while in custody”.

I think, on reflection, that I am satisfied that the provision is drawn widely enough to defeat any silver-tongued lawyer who might suggest that a vehicle was not, in fact, a prisoner escort vehicle. I therefore intend to support amendment 2.

I think that there is some merit in amendment 3. Those who are closest to the prisoners and to what is going on in the prison environment should be allowed to determine whether something is used or may be used for unauthorised purposes, within the terms of the Bill, instead of having to refer the matter to the governor or director of the prison. I appreciate that some may not share that view, however.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a valuable point, and he has persuaded me on it. I would be interested to know, however, whether the Minister has had any feedback on amendment 3, perhaps from the Prison Officers Association.

Amendment 4 is a sensible proposal, and I have nothing further to say on it this morning.

Amendment 5 is of considerable interest. I asked in an intervention whether my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley had deliberately not put “registered” before “charity”. Whether or not that is the case, it is the right decision, as it overcomes any bureaucratic problems that might arise over whether a local charitable organisation had gone through the registration process. Such an organisation may be in the process of registration—indeed, that is often the case. The amendment would serve to avoid long-winded discussions as to whether individuals who are doing good work should be prevented from benefiting from confiscated property. Most of this property is mobile phones and there is a considerable market in recycling them, so they have a great value, especially as nowadays most of them are, in fact, small mobile computers.

Amendment 9 addresses the question of the data on these phones. The right solution is for the data to be routinely taken off the phones and stored on a central hard disc, logged with the prisoner’s name and number. Therefore, if at any point in the future it turns out that some of that information is pertinent to an alleged offence, it can be used in evidence.

[Philip Davies]

I agree with my hon. Friend, but does he agree that there would be a different perspective on this question if the Minister were unable to give the assurance that these data will be routinely checked and stored? Does my hon. Friend agree that that would give some merit to my amendment that the Minister currently does not see?

Marine Navigation (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Friday 30th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I understand my hon. Friend’s point, and I do not doubt her intention, but it seems to me that we currently have a clear basis for knowing about the competence of people who are dealing with these matters, and I am not entirely certain that, under clause 2 as it stands, that will necessarily be the proven case in the future. As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, the clause has the potential to increase the risk of a serious casualty within a UK port or its approach, threatening the safety of the various people to whom he referred.

There are plenty of good things in the Bill, and I do not want them to be undermined by our leaving open the possibility of things going wrong. Obviously that would not be good for the people concerned, but it would not be good for my hon. Friend and her Bill either. Clause 2 is, as it were, a bridge that does not need to be crossed, given that there does not seem to be a massive problem with the current position.

The clause also directly contradicts and contravenes policy and guidance in the shipping industry, such as the requirements of the port marine safety code and some of the requirements of the standards of training, certification and watchkeeping, all of which refer to the specific duties of and differences between officers with managerial roles on board a ship—namely the master and first mate—and those in an operational capacity—namely junior officers, the second mate, and others whose role is to support a bridge team led by a senior officer—in specialist circumstances, for instance in pilotage waters, in the context of the established principles of proper and effective bridge management practices prescribed by the International Chamber of Shipping. Cutting across all those requirements, as the clause does, is opening a can of worms, and such action should be taken only when it has been considered in legislation that allows more detailed consideration than a private Member’s Bill.

The clause is based on arguments in support of the Department for Transport’s impact assessment, which many people believe to be based on incorrect assumptions in the interpretation of available evidence. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the Maritime Pilots’ Association. As my hon. Friend will know, it is the body that is most concerned about her proposals. It does not necessarily accept that the assumptions in the impact assessment justify the clause.

I am all for the Government’s stated one in, one out policy on regulation. In fact, I think the Government’s one in, one out policy is a modest commitment. Throughout the last Parliament we Conservatives were saying that there was far too much red tape and regulation in this country. This policy will serve to add to the regulations, and I think a policy of one in, two out would be far better.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

I fear the situation is even worse than my hon. Friend suggests. Does he share my concern that because the one in, one out rule does not apply to EU regulations, the European Union can send as many of them over as it likes, so that body of law will continue to grow?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right, but I am sure, Mr Deputy Speaker, that you would not want me to get sidetracked into discussing the merits, or otherwise, of EU regulations, so I will not do so.

Sentencing (Female Offenders)

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Tuesday 16th October 2012 Westminster Hall

[Philip Davies]

Yes, they do. I will happily supply the Minister with the relevant information from the House of Commons Library, which goes to show, beyond all doubt—I am sure that she trusts the figures from her own Department—that for every single category of offence, for all ages and in all types of court, men are more likely to be sent to prison than women. There is not one blip anywhere. For every single offence, for every age and in every type of court, women are less likely to be sent to prison than men.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

The point raised by the Minister is important. Surely these other factors that have to be taken into account on sentencing would not affect the statistics, because they would be taken into account whether it was male or female. In fact, one assumes that they would be taken into account for both sexes, so they will not affect the statistics.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a good point and he is right. Not only are women less likely to be sent to prison than men, and more likely to be sentenced to a lesser term than their male counterparts, but they are also more likely to serve less of the sentence they are given in prison. In its offender management statistics, the Ministry of Justice says:

“Those discharged from determinate sentences in the quarter ending December 2011 had served 53 per cent of their sentence in custody (including time on remand). On average, males served a greater proportion of their sentence in custody – 53 per cent compared to 48 per cent for females in the quarter ending December 2011. This gender difference is consistent over time, and partly reflects the higher proportion of females who are released on Home Detention Curfew”.

Prisons (Property) Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Friday 14th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) for bringing forward the Bill. He is my parliamentary neighbour and does a fantastic job in his constituency, as I know all too well. That has been emphasised today not only by the quality of his speech, but by his introducing such an important measure, which many of my constituents will consider long overdue, as will many of his. In fact, I would go so far as to say that most of my constituents probably think that the measure is already in place and would not imagine that there is still a need to legislate for something that most people think common sense dictates should happen anyway. It is therefore my great pleasure to support my hon. Friend today. You, Mr Deputy Speaker, as a renowned parliamentarian, will know that for that reason I do not intend to speak for too long in supporting the Bill.

I do not want to cover the ground my hon. Friend has already covered, because I think he set out perfectly clearly not only the problem and its impact on victims of crime, but how wrong it is that people can be given property that they should not have had in the first place. I will move on to some of the other points that I am not entirely sure he has considered in the Bill, but which might be considered in Committee. I want to raise some of these issues because, before we talk about destroying property that gets into prison in a way that it should not, we really need to look at how it gets into prisons in the first place. If we want to tackle the problem of people having mobile phones, drugs, weapons—whatever it may be— in prison, it is important that, rather than focusing on what we do when they are caught with them, we look at what we might do to stop them having them in the first place. Surely that would be better all round.

Obviously, as I am sure we are all aware, there are a number of ways that contraband stuff can end up in the hands of a prisoner. It can often be brought in by people visiting the prisoners. It is sometimes secreted in deliveries sent to prisoners, for example in books and other kinds of merchandise. Unfortunately, it is sometimes brought in through the collusion of prison officers themselves, something we always need to be mindful of.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

My hon. Friend says it can come inside books. The search procedures must be seriously lacking if that can happen.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend might well be right. That is the point I want to get to, because although I absolutely support what the Bill would do, I contend— I hope that the Minister will pay some attention to this—that we absolutely need to do more to stop such material getting into prisons in the first place, and perhaps the Bill can be amended in Committee to reflect that. Some of the checks are not what they should be. For example, there are what are known as BOSS chairs in prisons—body orifice scanners—that are used to try to stop prisoners bringing stuff into prison with them at the time they are sentenced by secreting it in ever more ingenious and, it seems to me, painful ways. The prisons have these body orifice scanners to try and detect that, but occasionally they will not be working properly or have not been working for a few months and no one has bothered to have them repaired. Alternatively, the prison officers may not have confidence that the scanners can pick up everything that they should. We should do much more to stop the stuff getting through in the first place.

Things also get into prison by being thrown over the wall for prisoners to collect on exercise. Lots of prisons have nets to stop that happening, but the nets should be more extensive.

Social Care (Local Sufficiency) and Identification of Carers Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Friday 7th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

That would appear to be the case. If the survey used the wider definition, which I believe it might have, it would indeed indicate that the number of people affected by the Bill would be fewer as a result of its using the statutory definition.

After the Carers Trust’s definition of a carer as

“someone of any age who provides unpaid support to family or friends who could not manage without this help”,

it goes on to state:

“This could be caring for a relative, partner or friend”—

we should note that this definition includes friends as well—

“who is ill, frail, disabled or has mental health or substance misuse problems.”

At this point, we come to what I submit are some of the problems with the interpretation of the Bill. What exactly constitutes a “substantial” amount of care? Who is to be the judge of whether care is substantial or not? One man’s definition of what is “substantial” may not be the same as another’s. Therein lies the first of a number of uncertainties in the Bill.

[Philip Davies]

I am looking at the 1995 Act, too. As my hon. Friend makes clear, it defines a carer as someone who

“provides or intends to provide a substantial amount of care”,

but it also includes the phrase, “on a regular basis”. Does my hon. Friend agree that while there might be a lot of debate about what constitutes “substantial”, there might be quite some debate, too, about what constitutes a “regular” basis of support?

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend is quite right that there are two legs to the definition. It is not just a question of whether it is “substantial” but of whether it is “regular”. It could be once a year. If someone visits their elderly granny once a year, that is regular, but it is not the same as going around morning, noon and night to look after an elderly mother who needs care almost constantly. I therefore think there are difficulties with the definition, and I submit that it needs clarification. The Bill is silent on that and I fear that the explanatory notes, which are excellent in many ways, as I shall explain later, are silent on it, too.

[Philip Davies]

On that point, does my hon. Friend agree that the wider definition is more helpful than the one set in statute? There might well be cases—I am sure we have all come across them; I have certainly come across them in my constituency—where people need some kind of care and help, yet the local authority, probably for financial reasons above all else, has decided that it is not going to give them the support they need. Many people are looking after relatives or friends who need care, but who have not passed the test of being assessed as such by a local authority.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend touches on an important point. I fear—I am sure others will, too—that this Bill may unreasonably raise the expectations of that group of carers covered by the wider definition. They may think, “This is me; I’m a carer”, but would they be a carer under the much narrower definition in the Bill? As I say, there is a danger that many carers will feel that this debate is about them, when under the statutory definition in clause 8—it is clear, referring back to section 1 of the Carers (Recognition and Services) Act 1995—they may not be covered.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

Before my hon. Friend continues his speech, may I urge him not to be distracted by the tactics of the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson), who is trying to do something that might be described as rather despicable? She is trying to argue that the fact that someone does not support a particular Bill means that that person is against the whole concept of the aim of the Bill or the subject area. Anyone who knows my hon. Friend will be aware that he is passionate about helping carers and people who need this kind of support. He should not be distracted by those who try to characterise his opposition to certain elements of a piece of legislation as opposition to the welfare of carers as a whole. I urge him to continue in his current vein.

[Mr Nuttall]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I feel that there is a danger that some of the content of the Bill may cause scarce resources to be diverted from front-line services to carers for the purpose of the production of assessments, surveys and strategies, rather than providing real, genuine help for those who need it most.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

I have already made my support for carers absolutely clear. My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) has also secured a helpful undertaking from the Minister on ensuring that the Government engage with the Bill’s supporters about the subjects that it deals with in the context of the draft Care and Support Bill.

[Philip Davies]

Has my hon. Friend noted the irony that Labour Members who regularly troop through the Lobby to vote against Government programme motions, because they say that those motions allow insufficient time for debate and effective scrutiny, now take the view that this Bill should go through the House without any scrutiny whatsoever just because it happens to have their support? Our duty in this place is to scrutinise legislation, whether Labour Members like it or not.

[Mr Nuttall]

There is indeed such an irony. Legislation of all kinds should receive proper scrutiny.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

I am certainly not trying to destroy the Bill. I will stick to my point, because I think that we need to look at this—[Interruption.] [Hon. Members: “In Committee.”] It is an important part of the Bill. Existing legislation covers all members of the public, so I do not think that we need to single out a specific group.

[Philip Davies]

Opposition Members talk about these matters being considered in Committee. Given that the Government have published a draft Bill on this very subject, does my hon. Friend not agree that Opposition Members, if their overwhelming priority is to discuss these matters in Committee, will have an amazingly good opportunity to do so at length in relation to the draft Bill? That can be done without this Bill progressing any further.

[Mr Nuttall]

That is indeed the case. I am sure that it will be possible to consider all these matters in detail when we look at the draft Bill in Committee.

The NHS operating framework for 2012-13 already provides that carers must receive help and support from local NHS organisations. Primary care trusts are required to agree policies, plans and budgets to support carers with local authorities and carers’ organisations and make them available to local people. It states:

“Following a joint assessment of local needs, which should be published with plans, PCT clusters need to agree policies, plans and budgets with local authorities and voluntary groups to support carers, where possible using direct payments or personal budgets. For 2012/13 this means plans should be in line with the Carers Strategy and: be explicitly agreed and signed off by both local authorities and PCT clusters; identify the financial contribution made to support carers by both local authorities and PCT clusters and that any transfer of funds from the NHS to local authorities is through a section 256 agreement; identify how much of the total is being spent on carers’ breaks; identify an indicative number of breaks that should be available within that funding; and be published on the PCT or PCT cluster’s website by 30 September 2012 at the latest.”

So there is already a lot going on within the NHS. Let us not forget that the Department of Health is providing the NHS with £400 million over the four-year period from 2011-15 to support carers in taking breaks from their caring responsibilities. The Department has also funded the national carers strategy demonstrator sites programme, which is focused on three areas of support to improve carers’ health and well-being, carers’ breaks and health checks, with better NHS support. The new idea of national carers strategy demonstrator sites has been independently evaluated by the Centre for International Research on Care, Labour and Equalities at Leeds university, which has prepared an excellent report on how successful it has already been.

Clause 5 seeks to place a duty on a local authority to ensure that within 12 months of Royal Assent

“it takes all reasonable steps”—

again, we have no idea of what “reasonable” may amount to—

“to ensure that in relation to…any school within its area and under its control, and…any functions it discharges…there is in place a policy”

to identify and support young carers. However, the clause makes no mention of academy schools. Perhaps when the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South winds up she will be able to explain why academy schools would not be covered, because they are state schools that are independent of local authorities but still funded—

Scrap Metal Dealers Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Friday 13th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

That may well be the case. Of course, there is no compulsion on anybody to make cash transactions. If a business does not want to trade in cash, it is perfectly at liberty not to do so.

The Government may well have changed their tune slightly on the subject. Their views on reform were recorded in their written evidence to the Transport Committee in November last year, in which they said that

“Against that”—

that is, calls for action on the issue of scrap metal theft through regulation—

“it would be necessary to consider carefully the additional burden which new regulation might put on legitimate businesses, and the extent to which the disposal of stolen metal might still continue on an illegal basis. Given the Government’s general aim to reduce and simplify regulation, there would need to be a strong case made to justify any new regulation.”

The Government were wise to sound a note of caution, as regulation is not always the way forward, yet more regulation is proposed. I am not entirely sure that it is entirely justified. More importantly, I am not entirely convinced that it will stop metal theft. We may end up with a lose-lose situation: the regulation will punish not just the bad scrap metal dealers, but all of them.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes a compelling case. He may have seen the British Metals Recycling Association’s briefing on the Bill. Somewhat surprisingly, perhaps, it seems to be in favour of funding the Bill and its provisions through “a small licence fee”. Does he share my concern that, often, what starts off as a small licence fee soon becomes a very large licence fee?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to make that point. We have seen many examples where a local authority is given a small amount of power, and, before we know it, it is expanding and empire-building at every possible opportunity, and increasing costs on a salami-slice basis. Before we know it, an industry that thought it worth paying a small cost to deal with a problem finds that there is still a big problem, but its costs have gone up hugely and show no sign of abating.

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful for that clarification. Let us just hope that we always have sensible people in the Home Office. Clearly, we can have confidence at the moment: I see the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), is on the Front Bench. I do not want to alarm him unduly about his career prospects, but Ministers come and go, and although we may have confidence in this Minister, I am not sure that I share the faith of my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South that every future Home Office Minister, whatever their party, will show the same wisdom as this Minister in setting the regulations.

As I was saying, the Bill would affect legitimate businesses. It is worth showing the other side of the industry, because there are good operators in it, as some newspaper stories show; unlike my hon. Friend, I am a big fan of the media, so I am sure that these stories are true. Let me set out one case involving a scrap metal dealer. I am sure that this happens time and again; I am picking out just one example, as the House would not want me to go through every single newspaper report of this kind. I use this story as an illustration. A scrap metal dealer called the police when he was asked to purchase a war memorial from offenders. When Lana Jane Clitheroe and Paul David Kelly pleaded guilty to stealing from a war memorial in St Mary’s church on Lewisham High street, the district judge, Julia Newton from Bromley magistrates court, said in her sentencing remarks:

“A scrap metal dealer was approached by the Defendants; he very quickly realised what the item was and refused to accept it.”

He alerted the police to the problem, so that they were able to catch the offenders.

Many legitimate scrap metal dealers are part of the solution to the problem. They do not want to be involved in any illegal activity and to take things that have been stolen, and they play a crucial role in alerting the authorities to the problem. I feel nervous about saying to the scrap metal dealer who was involved in that case, “I will treat you as if you are potentially involved in criminal activity, and put on you a huge new burden and cost.” What has that person done wrong? What has he done to deserve that? He is part of the solution, not the problem.

Another scrap metal dealer

“donated £21,000 to replace metal plaques stolen from a war memorial in south London.

Fourteen bronze plaques bearing the names of 243 World War I servicemen were stolen from Carshalton war memorial in Sutton in September 2011.”

The scrap metal dealer

“said he was as ‘outraged as everyone else’ that it had been ‘plundered’.”

These are good people—people whom we should be trying to help, and whose side we should be on. The Bill would impose on those people huge burdens and extra costs. What have they done to deserve those extra burdens and costs? Nothing, as far as I can see. We are castigating a whole industry because of some people who are operating illegitimately in that industry. My solution is to go after the criminals. Let us pursue criminals, not a whole industry, which includes some very good people who are not criminals at all.

On bringing offenders to justice, we can use the Theft Act 1968 to charge unscrupulous scrap metal dealers with handling stolen goods. There is already a law with which to tackle the problem of people who handle stolen goods. In addition to using all the existing scrap metal legislation, we should use the Theft Act to prosecute those who accept stolen scrap metal and pass it on. It states:

“(1) A person handles stolen goods if (otherwise than in the course of the stealing) knowing or believing them to be stolen goods he dishonestly receives the goods, or dishonestly undertakes or assists in their retention, removal, disposal or realisation by or for the benefit of another person, or if he arranges to do so.

(2) A person guilty of handling stolen goods shall on conviction on indictment be liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years.”

That is already on the statute book. If a scrap metal dealer is found guilty of handling stolen goods—the definition in the Theft Act makes it perfectly clear that someone handling stolen metal is guilty of handling stolen goods—it is already in statute that they can be sent to prison for a term not exceeding 14 years.

If we actually gave proper sentences, and sentencing guidance was strengthened, so that the provisions in the Theft Act were invoked and a few 10-year-plus sentences were handed down by the courts to these people, we would find a vast drop in the number of scrap metal dealers handling stolen goods, without imposing any kind of extra licensing regime, bureaucracy, or cost, and without giving local authorities more police-like powers to interfere in every nook and cranny of people’s businesses. Let us just start handing down some proper sentences to these people; we will find that some people go legitimate very quickly indeed.

If someone walks off the street into a scrap metal dealer with a chunk of railway line in their hand, or a £500,000 statue or a huge great war memorial in a van, and the scrap metal dealer accepts it and pays them a few pounds for it without any questions asked, the scrap metal dealer should be prosecuted under the Theft Act. If the police and the Crown Prosecution Service cannot get a conviction for that, it says more about our criminal justice system than about anything else.

[Mr Nuttall]

Has my hon. Friend heard anything in the debate so far or read anything in the Bill that would give him any confidence that the new regime, once it came into force, would be any more capable of being enforced and securing convictions than the present one?

[Philip Davies]

No. That is part of the problem. My hon. Friend makes a good point. When politicians are faced with a problem, their solution always seems to incorporate two ingredients. The first is that they must be seen to be doing something. It is the bane of all politicians. The second ingredient is that what they propose must not offend anybody. As long as a politician has a solution that looks as though they are doing something and it does not offend anybody, whether it does any good or not, they will go down that road every time. Rather than looking as though we are doing something and being tough, I would like us to spend a little more time looking at whether the proposed course of action will work and whether it is absolutely necessary. I am not entirely sure that the Bill passes that test.

On offender profiles, according to the Transport Committee in its 14th report of January this year, which was on cable theft from railways,

“Perpetrators can be broadly split into two groups; small-scale, local offenders and organised crime groups. We heard from the BTP”—

the British Transport Police—

“that local criminals were responsible for the majority of thefts from the railway, these being ‘opportunist but nonetheless professional criminals’…and that up to 80% of those arrested for metal theft have previous convictions for similar crimes.”

Here we hit the problem: 80% of the people caught for metal theft have previous convictions for metal theft. The police have done their bit. Under the current regulatory regime, the police have got these people, and what happens? The perpetrators get a derisory sentence from the courts and they are back out on the streets stealing metal again in five minutes flat. So it is not the regulation, but the sentencing of these offenders that is the problem.

Metal theft has recently been included in the serious organised crime strategy. The British Transport Police welcomed this but noted that a maximum of only 30% of cable thefts involved organised criminal gangs. Chief Inspector Carl Burkey, of Airedale and North Bradford police, which is my local police division, said in March this year:

“We have been pleased to take part with partners and reinforce the message locally that officers are working hard to frustrate the sale of stolen metal in Airedale and North Bradford.

Metal theft is a crime which can be life threatening to thieves and seriously disrupt commuters when it affects rail services, and it is important that scrap dealers remain vigilant when offered stolen metal. We will…work closely with all partners and would urge anyone who has information about metal theft to contact ourselves or Crimestoppers.”

One of the main solutions to the problem is for members of the community to be the eyes and ears on the ground—that is what my police chief inspector said—and to report any suspicious activity that they see. When that happens, the police are quite successful in catching the perpetrators.

We come back to sentencing. Metal theft and handling should be seen as an aggravating part of the sentence, taking into account the disruption or the severe sentimental loss that such crimes cause, particularly in the case of my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell). I referred earlier to District Judge Julia Newton from Bromley magistrates court when she sentenced a pair who had stolen a war memorial in Lewisham. She also said:

“The war memorial is described by Father Scott Anderson, the Vicar of St Mary’s Church. He believes the memorial plaque had been in the church since approximately 1920-1925. The plaque displayed the names of some of those who had fallen in the First World War. It is described as being a large and heavy plaque, approximately 1.25 metres high and 1.75 metres tall. The impact of the loss of the plaque is described by Father Anderson. The stolen plaque is expressed to be invaluable to both the Church and the families whose relatives’ names appear on it. He cannot even estimate the value. He describes the feeling amongst the members of the Church and Local Community as being both ‘in shock and saddened.’

Those named on the memorial are remembered by family, relatives and fellow countrymen. The desecration of the memorial will be seen by many as an affront. The historic value of the plaque is incalculable.

The seriousness of this offence is determined not only by the culpability of the Defendants, but also the harm caused. This offence was committed without a thought for the impact that their actions would have on individuals or the wider community. In assessing the harm caused, it is not simply the monetary loss in replacing the memorial which is to be taken into consideration, but the public feeling of many as described by Father Anderson.”

The judge took all that into account and said that the risk of re-offending was assessed as high. She said that she took the view that the offence was so serious that only a custodial sentence was appropriate. Bearing all these factors in mind, the sentence of the court would have been 180 days in custody, but because the offenders had pleaded guilty, it would be reduced by one third. The sentence would be 120 days imprisonment. That seems to rank high in terms of the sentences handed down by the court for this type of crime. I therefore praise the judge for bearing all those circumstances in mind as aggravating factors when she came to sentence the offenders. I encourage judges to do more of that, so that sentences are more of a deterrent.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend’s expertise in these matters is well known. Perhaps he will be able to confirm that although a sentence of 120 days imprisonment was handed down, it is highly unlikely that the criminals would have served anywhere near 120 days in prison.

House of Lords Reform Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Monday 9th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

rose—

London Local Authorities and Transport for London (No. 2) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Tuesday 6th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. If it is in order, I will name the five noble lords in question. They were Lord Dahrendorf, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, who was the Chairman of the Committee, Baroness Fookes, Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall and Lord Methuen. I venture to submit that five was the full membership of the Committee, and all five attended the first, second and third sittings. I apologise for not referring to Lord Dahrendorf as the late Lord Dahrendorf, as he has passed away since those proceedings took place. Indeed, so has one of the contributors to the Third Reading debate, Lord St John of Fawsley. He passed away a few days ago. As I have said, very few lords took part in the discussions on the Bill in the other place, and the Third Reading debate lasted for only 48 minutes. For the avoidance of doubt, I should say that the Bill’s previous readings were purely formal and were simply recorded in Hansard. There was no debate on First Reading or when the Committee reported on 2 April.

It is perhaps worth noting the comments of Earl Attlee, who spoke for the Government in the Third Reading debate in the other place. The amendments that had been moved earlier by Lord Jenkin of Roding sought to remove clauses from the Bill. It is slightly confusing, because the Bill has been reprinted since it was originally introduced, and clauses 16 and 17 to which I am referring were those that were in the Bill at the time, and not those that appear in the Bill before us today. The provisions that were causing concern at the time related to the problems, as Lord Jenkin saw them, that had been put forward by the London Cycling Campaign. He went through a number of other petitions. As I say, I shall not go into them here today.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Why not?

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend says, “Why not?” from a sedentary position. I commend the Third Reading report to all interested Members, as it sets out the problems that their lordships saw with the Bill, to some of which they drew this House’s attention. Indeed, they invited this House to look at it again to deal with the problems they had identified in our further consideration.

Earl Attlee said on Third Reading:

“The Government are committed not to create new offences unless it is truly necessary to do so.”

One problem is that the Bill seeks to create new offences. I would accept that in one respect—responsibility and liability in respect of skips transferred from the police to local authorities—but the general thrust of the Bill is to create more rules and more regulation. Earl Attlee went on to say that the Government had not reached a final conclusion about the matter. He said:

“The Government’s position on increasing the burden on business is very clear and we will be considering”—

we should note the future tense—

“whether, in our view, the Bill would create an unacceptable burden on business in order to make our views known before the Bill reaches Committee stage in the other place.”

We may hear more about the Government’s view when we hear from the Minister later.

According to what Lord Attlee said, I understand that the Government had notified the Bill’s promoters that some clauses could be improved or altered by minor amendments, particularly regarding the affixing of street furniture to buildings. One specific suggestion was made—that the owner of the building should be served with a notice, giving the exact date on which the work would begin, and setting out the terms of the use of electric vehicle charging points installed and operated under the Bill’s powers. The noble Lord went on to say:

“We will be seeking to reach agreement on amendments with the promoters before Committee stage in the other place as it is then that the Bill can next be substantially amended.” —[Official Report, House of Lords, 28 March 2011; Vol. 726, c. 1034.]

I emphasise the words “substantially amended”. Clearly, on Third Reading in the other place, the Government had serious reservations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

Yes. I hope that, when the time comes to consider the clause in Committee, some explanation for that is given. Perhaps the code of practice will be available at that stage. It is perhaps a matter of some regret that that document is not available for consideration by the House today to enable us to see how effective that particular code is likely to be.

That deals with clause 4, very briefly. Clauses 6 and 7 deal with damage to the highway caused in consequence of works done on land adjacent to the highway. At first sight, I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East that it seems perfectly reasonable that the taxpayer should not be required to pay for damage caused to the public road by those carrying out works on land adjacent to the road, but I wonder whether there is not a better way to do that. I am particularly concerned about small builders, and perhaps people who are not builders at all, but who own land and are carrying out the works themselves. It might come as a surprise to them when they apply for planning permission to build a small extension on their property that they are asked to stump up before commencement of the works in case any damage might be caused to the highway, when the chances are that, although that is a possibility, it will not happen.

I am pleased that clause 7 now appears in the Bill.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend talks about the merits or otherwise of this part of the Bill, but is not that slightly superfluous? The point is that we all have places in our constituencies where we might be concerned about damage being caused by adjacent works. If that issue needs to be tackled, surely the point is that it should be tackled nationwide and not in a Bill that applies only to London.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a pertinent point. My constituency of Bury North—no doubt in common with his constituency of Shipley, and, indeed, I would be so bold as to venture to suggest, every constituency represented in the House—has at one time or another, and perhaps even at this moment, contained at least one property, although I suspect it could be many properties, with a skip outside it. Therefore, if skips are causing a particular problem in London, I would venture to suggest that similar problems are being caused in every constituency in the land. Indeed, not many days ago I had a skip outside my own property as we were having some small works done. So not only was there a skip in my constituency, but there was one outside my drive.

We have here part of a Bill with clauses 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 all on the issue of skips. I see my right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) in his place. On Third Reading in the other place, his Liberal Democrat colleague, Baroness Kramer, highlighted the faintly ridiculous nature of all this discussion about skips. She said:

“I find it astonishing that the time of this House has to be spent on issues such as the lighting and guarding of builders’ skips. If ever there was an illustration of the need for the Localism Bill, and a more general grant of powers to assemblies and local authorities, this Bill is it.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 28 March 2011; Vol. 726, c. 1031.]

Since the noble Baroness made that speech, her wish has been granted and the Localism Bill is now law. For that reason, perhaps there is no need for the clause.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is very knowledgeable on these matters and he will know that on page 11 the Bill deals with the problem of skips that are not properly lit during the hours of darkness. So that the Bill does not become a solution looking for a problem, does my hon. Friend know on how many occasions there has been a big problem around the country of skips not being properly lit, and how many accidents have been caused by skips not being properly lit during the hours of darkness? Is this a big issue, as far as my hon. Friend is aware?

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting intervention. Although it is not a widespread problem, I suspect that there are occasionally cases where a builder might forget to put the appropriate light on a skip. Therefore there is a danger that if a skip is not lit during the hours of darkness, it could result in an accident taking place and a motor vehicle driving into the skip. Indeed, I cannot remember the details and I dread to think how many years ago it was, but when I was in practice as a solicitor, I was once involved in a case where a car hit a skip, and we had to take civil proceedings because there was no light on the skip.

[Philip Davies]

I knew my hon. Friend was knowledgeable about these matters. I predicted that he would know more about the subject than I do. I have seen nothing on “Panorama” about a big blight around the country of skips not having sufficient lighting or builders forgetting to put lights on them. Does he know how widespread the problem is? It has never been raised with me before.

[Mr Nuttall]

I have to say that the issue has never been raised at one of my surgeries, and it has obviously not been raised at one of my hon. Friend’s surgeries, but by the sound of it, it is a problem all over London, and even as we speak, cars are colliding with skips. Of more interest is the fact that clause 13 relates to the immobilisation of builders’ skips. I am disappointed that we have not yet been able to hear how those skips are to be immobilised, but I look forward to a future debate when we will find out how that will take place.

I referred in an intervention to clause 16 in part 4. The clause relates to gated roads, and I shall not comment further on that. As we know, clause 17 relates to pedicabs, and it has been placed on the record that the clause is to be withdrawn. Part 5 relates to charging points for electric vehicles. If legislation is needed because of a surge in the number of electrical vehicles, surely it should be considered on a national basis. This is the one part of the Bill where a case could be made for that. The idea that owners of electric vehicles in London will stop when they get to the boundaries of London is faintly ridiculous. As my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) has suggested, the correct way to deal with that would be through the use of planning legislation.

The Bill’s final clause is another new clause that was not in the original Bill. It would repeal provision in, and make minor amendment to, the London Local Authorities and Transport for London Act 2008. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East might be able to confirm whether that Act had been a private Bill.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Wednesday 1st February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

Does my hon. Friend share my surprise that the Labour party, which now has this synthetic anger about the proposals for means-testing, was the party that when in government—the hon. Member for Walsall North himself said that he supported them more often than not—extended means-testing more than any other Government in history?

[Mr Nuttall]

Absolutely. We have heard a lot about this means-testing this afternoon. We have heard that the system is insurance-based, which it is, but with any insurance policy there are terms and conditions. In this case, the means test is just shorthand for the terms and conditions of the policy.

London Local Authorities Bill [Lords]

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Wednesday 25th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case, and I am sorry that I missed the opening part of it due to my commitments on the Committee corridor. Has he seen annex D to the DCLG report? It is about the community toilet scheme promoted by the London borough of Richmond upon Thames, which encourages businesses to allow members of the public to use their toilets while they are out and about.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right. Clearly, he has been diligent, as always, in reading that report. He may well be sorry that he missed the opening part of the debate; we missed him, too. We are pleased that he has made it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I absolutely agree. Plenty of legislation is available to local authorities if they feel so strongly about these matters. Surely it should be our principle that we use existing legislation first, before introducing any more.

[Mr Nuttall]

The answer lies in section 93 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, which relates to clause 5. I suspect that this formed part of my hon. Friend’s remarks before I arrived in the Chamber.

[Philip Davies]

Absolutely; I totally agree with my hon. Friend.

The proposals would also affect certain hard-pressed theatres, and the petitions from the Society of London Theatre and the Theatrical Management Association made it clear that their members were already making their own arrangements for the cleaning of pavements in their local areas, and that the basis for an additional charge had not been made clear. We seem to have the ridiculous situation in which businesses could potentially be charged three times for this work: once through the payment of their rates, for which they expect a service in return that they are not being given; a second time through paying to do it themselves, as the local authority is not doing it; and, now, for a third time, they could be faced with the proposed extra charge to deal with any ensuing problem. Businesses are in danger of being charged three times for the same service, which cannot be fair in any shape or form.

We must introduce some common sense into these rules. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green will make it clear which, if any, of the amendments he will accept.

Daylight Saving Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Friday 20th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. My view is that we should not be told what to do on any matter by the European Union. I have a very clear view on such matters. Many people in this country are not aware of the existence of the directive or of its effect. It is another example of the way in which the tentacles of the European Union extend into areas of life into which many people do not realise they extend.

There will be difficulty in ever achieving the aims of amendments 16 or 17, but in any event I think we should stick to the existing arrangement for changing the clocks in March and October, despite the fact that that it means that my birthday is fairly often affected by the change in the clocks in the springtime when, as I think is the case this year, we jump on one hour and I lose an hour of my birthday.

It has been suggested that amendment 38 would result in extra costs being incurred. I am not so sure that it would. I strongly support the amendment. All it calls for are reports from the First Ministers of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. They could simply write a brief letter saying, “Yes, we have considered the matter and everything is in order. There is no need to consult us any further.” Amendment 38 is sound and it would be sensible for it to receive the support of the House and be included in the Bill.

I oppose amendment 40. As I said about clause 5, in view of the importance of the matter, it makes sense to have a trial period of an appropriate length. If an increase in the length of the trial period is necessary, so be it. Let us have that increase.

[Philip Davies]

That is a perfectly respectable view for my hon. Friend to hold, although I might disagree. The question is about the basis on which we decide that we need a further period of trial. We seem to be leaving it to the Government and the Secretary of State to decide. We surely cannot have that, or the trial will be extended endlessly, which surreptitiously makes it a permanent fixture.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, but I notice that clause 8(4) states:

“An order under this section is subject to affirmative resolution procedure”,

so there would be some democratic oversight of the use of the power, which most people would find satisfactory.

Those are my thoughts and that is how I will be voting.

Taxation Freedom Day Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Friday 25th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

No!

[Philip Davies]

Surely not!

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. That would weigh even more, I am sure, and it is certainly weighing more on the efficiency and competitiveness of British business. As he will be aware, my view is that the sooner we can free ourselves from the acquis communautaire the better.

When one considers those facts, it is no wonder that adopting a simple way of demonstrating to people the size of their tax burden by calculating and publishing the number of days the average individual would have to work to discharge it is such an attractive idea. The result of all the complexity, of course, is that people do not understand how much tax they really pay, but putting it in terms of how many days the average person has to work solely to pay taxes would start to bring it home to people.

[Philip Davies]

May I float another idea past my hon. Friend? Not only should the day on which people have paid off their taxes be announced as tax freedom day, but there should also be an announcement of the day on which the Government’s spending programme has been matched fully by taxation. In America, tax freedom day is on 12 April, but if all the money to pay for all the Government spending had to be collected—$1.48 trillion more—the date would be 23 May. Perhaps we should also see what the gap is between taxation and the amount that the Government are incurring in expenditure.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. That could be dealt with in Committee; we could amend the Bill to include that date as well. That opens up a whole new area of complexity, because there is not only the difference between income, expenditure and the actual spending programme to consider but the effect of existing debt that needs to be paid off.

Let me deal with the Bill in a little more detail. Clause 1(1) requires the Chancellor of the Exchequer to specify one day each year that

“shall be observed as Taxation Freedom day.”

Unfortunately, the Bill is silent on how we as a nation are to observe this great day. I understand the reluctance of my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering to suggest having another bank holiday, but I submit that it might be appropriate to mark the day with an annual debate in the House on the ways in which the burden of taxation could be reduced in future years and hence the day brought forward.

National Referendum on the European Union

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Monday 24th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

The European Union Act 2011 deals with the future, but this motion deals with where we are today. People already feel that too many powers have been passed on. At a time when people pick up their phones and spend their own money voting week in, week out to keep their favourite contestants on programmes such as “Strictly Come Dancing” and “The X Factor”, many will be baffled as to why the Government and all those who oppose this motion seem keen to prevent them from having their chance to vote on Britain’s future relationship with the European Union.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend. Does he agree that people will be even more baffled to understand the position of the Liberal Democrats? They stood on an election manifesto to have an in/out referendum and actually marched out of this House in the previous Parliament because they were denied one, so does he not agree that people will be particularly baffled as to why none of those charlatans over there will be voting for this motion?

[Mr Nuttall]

I am sure that millions of Liberal Democrat voters would appreciate having the chance to have their say.

Equality and Diversity (Reform) Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Friday 21st October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I think that I was given the position on merit, and I certainly was not given the job because I am a man. I do not think that I was given it because I am white. I would like to think that I was given the position on merit. Most Members know my views on political correctness.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

As my hon. Friend will be aware, many new Members may not know those views, so perhaps he would like to enlighten them.

[Philip Davies]

It is unlike my hon. Friend to be so off the ball as not to know my views on political correctness, but for his benefit, I make it perfectly clear that I abhor all forms of political correctness, the restriction of free speech, and the way in which we try to rig jobs to get a particular outcome. I believe in merit, and that merit alone is the best form of action. Political correctness annoys the vast majority of the public, but it is not only the silly things. People concentrate on them, but it is the sinister side of political correctness that I do not like, including the erosion of free speech and people being made to feel that they are some kind of bigot or are xenophobic simply because they express opinions that other people do not hold. That is why it is time for the silent majority to stop being silent and stand up against the scourge of political correctness.

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[Philip Davies]

The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely good point. I will deal with it later. One of the things that my Bill tries to repeal is the legislation providing for all-women shortlists. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman might like to ask himself the same question when it comes to the number of women MPs—how many of those people put themselves forward to become MPs, against the number who are selected. He may find the answer to his own question in that conundrum.

Apart from those whom one would expect to oppose equality and diversity measures, there are many others whom those who push political correctness would rather sweep under the carpet, as their views are inconvenient to the argument.

[Mr Nuttall]

On a couple of occasions my hon. Friend has referred to political correctness. Will he provide the House with a definition of the term?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Political correctness is one of those things that is very difficult to define, but people know it when they see it. I will have a go for my hon. Friend. I would say that political correctness is the promotion of positive discrimination and the restriction of free speech carried out in the name of minorities, but usually initiated by white male middle-class lentil-eating sandal-wearing Guardian-reading do-gooders with too much time on their hands and a misguided guilt complex. My hon. Friend may have a better definition and I am happy for him to offer one. That is my initial stab at a definition of political correctness.

[Mr Nuttall]

Is it true to say, then, that the political correctness agenda is not set by those whom the white middle-class males seek to “protect”?

[Philip Davies]

That is my experience. Most of these measures are not perpetrated by the people whom they are supposed to help. On many occasions the people in whose name it is supposedly done are the ones who feel most patronised by it and find it most unhelpful. I encourage my hon. Friend to go to the website www.capc.co.uk which gives some examples. There is a section there called “Not In My Name” where many people say how unhelpful such measures are for those in their situation, whether they are people who are gay, women, disabled or from an ethnic minority. There are countless such examples.

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[Philip Davies]

That is a separate issue, but the hon. Gentleman has made his point.

The point my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) made about how the people political correctness is supposed to benefit do not actually feel the benefit has also been made by Anjana Ahuja. Writing in The Times, she explains how her opinion was once sought by the newspaper’s executives on how to attract non-white writers. The paper planned to offer internships to ethnic minority candidates who had graduated in media studies. She says:

“It was well intentioned but misguided, I ventured, because I knew of no colleague whose passport to these venerable corridors had been secured by such questionable means. There were historians, linguists, lawyers, classicists, philosophers, biologists, physicists, even an Egyptologist—but no media studies graduates. My view was this: if a brown writer sails in on an easier ticket than a white wordsmith, The Times would be construed as patronising rather than progressive and the intern would struggle against whispers of lowered standards…which is why, in the miserable tale of Ali Dizaei, the Scotland Yard commander convicted of corruption, the fact that sticks out most is the continued, seemingly pointless and possibly harmful existence of the National Black Police Association. Substitute ‘black’ with ‘white’ and an outdated collective becomes an illegal organisation that is morally impossible to defend. Why partition members of the same profession along the lines of skin colour? I would not join an organisation for black journalists (or female ones) because its identity lies wholly in the exclusion of white hacks (or male ones).”

Batook Pandya, director of Bristol-based charity Support Against Racist Incidents, has said of a positive action scheme that meant that fire service open days were limited to ethnic minority recruits only:

“None of these open days should have been closed to white communities. I couldn’t give two hoots if they are white, black, Asian, male or female—they should simply be the best person for the job.”

Roshan Doug, writing in the Birmingham Post, has stated:

“I don’t want people promoted purely on the basis of the colour of their skin—call it ‘positive discrimination’ or something else. To me that’s rather patronising—as if Asians and blacks are a little more than token staff to appease the CRE… I would like to see the best men and women for the job.”

I believe that people are appalled, and rightly so, when they hear that a white person has been turned down for a job because of the colour of their skin. The same people would be appalled if anyone, whatever their ethnicity, was turned down for a job simply because of the colour of their skin. When that happens, it inevitably leads some people wrongly to conclude that the benefiting group in question has asked for this special treatment. As I made clear earlier, that is not the case at all. Some politically correct do-gooder has tried to do the right thing or, as is increasingly the case and perhaps more worryingly, someone is trying to comply with equality law.

Speaking for the Liberal democrats on the Second Reading of the Equality Bill, the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone), now the Minister for Equalities, said:

“I turn to positive action. It seems completely illogical that we should be allowed to fast-track the training of ethnic minority and women police, but not be allowed to fast-track their employment. The rebalancing of the workplace is hugely important, and I do not disagree with the Leader of the House’s vision of the bank boardrooms of the future. When both the genders make a decision, it is likely to be more balanced.”—[Official Report, 11 May 2009; Vol. 492, c. 581.]

That is just the sort of thing that winds people up. If people want real equality, it must be just that, not some groups being more equal than others. What has a young, white male ever done to deserve being turned away from a dream career in the police force simply because he is the wrong colour and the wrong gender?

[Mr Nuttall]

That is a very important point, because it seems to me that, where positive discrimination is being exercised, young, white males are today paying a price for the fact that their forefathers were not subject to those measures in years gone by. Why should that be so?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. Perhaps we also ought to reflect on the fact that in many parts of the country the people who are finding it most difficult to get a job are young, white males from very poor and deprived backgrounds. They are among those who are finding it hardest to find employment. It must be a double kick in the teeth for them to find that they are denied the opportunity to attend a fire service open day simply because they happen to be white. I really do not know why on earth should have a Government who are prepared to sit and tolerate that kind of thing.

[Mr Nuttall]

Does my hon. Friend think that those feelings may have played a part in the riots that took place this summer?

[Philip Davies]

I am not sure about that, to be honest, because it is very difficult to know. As far as I am concerned, the riots were largely born out of opportunism and criminality. I would not like to provide any kind of excuse for the behaviour we saw, but I do not doubt that many people feel a resentment and frustration that would otherwise not exist. I do not know whether the riots had anything to do with it, but I certainly think that the worrying increase in support for the British National party in recent years was born out of such frustration. It is no good Members complaining about the rise of such wholly unacceptable parties and then pursuing policies that are meat and drink to those parties. If we are to stop people voting for the BNP, we must remove the frustrations that led them to do so in the first place.

The cost of all these equality and diversity plans, action points, schemes and training courses is immeasurable, but one thing we can be sure about is that they cost an awful lot of money. I would always oppose such needless expenditure, but at a time when people are losing their jobs, having to tighten their belts massively and fearing what the future holds, it is even more inconceivable that so much money is thrown down the drain each year in the public sector on the equality and diversity agenda. The Government Equalities Office spent a whopping £62 million in the year to March 2011, and other Government Departments have their own equality budgets on top of that. That is before we get on to local police forces, hospitals, fire brigades and schools, which all have to spend their money on equality and diversity measures, taking it away from front-line services.

To give one example, the North East Ambulance Service NHS Trust is looking for an equality and diversity manager, with a salary of between £30,460 and £40,157 pro rata. The job description is “to act as a lead within the trust on the implementation of our equality strategy and action plan. The successful applicant will have a key role in developing the trust’s approach to the new NHS equality and delivery system.” Who in their right mind could think that an equality and diversity manager in an NHS ambulance service is a priority at this time, compared with a nurse or another ambulance driver? When someone dials 999, they want an ambulance, not an equality and diversity officer. What on earth is there to consider for the ambulance service? Surely if someone is injured they are looked after irrespective of their gender and race. It is all a load of nonsense.

There is another such vacancy, at the University of Greenwich, which is selecting someone to be its Equality and Diversity Champion, salary approximately £40,000—well, at least students now know where their tuition fees are going. The job description states:

“You will be responsible for promoting an integrated approach to equality and diversity issues across the university, and provide Schools and Offices with a point of expert reference and guidance on equality and diversity issues. You will work with other university offices to continue to improve our performance as an employer and further develop disability access for staff. You will be an experienced equality professional with an ability to develop and implement policy.”

[Mr Nuttall]

Would my hon. Friend like to venture how anybody could become qualified as an “experienced equality professional”? It rather suggests that there must be a whole career path for equality officers.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right, and that is part of the problem we now face, because the equality and diversity industry—that is what it now is: an industry—is incredibly powerful. There is now a huge lobby, and so many people’s jobs depend on the industry, that it is difficult to tackle, because as soon as anybody tries to argue against the point of such things, those people descend on them. My hon. Friend may well find that, and I am sure I will at some point.

Those people descend on others like a ton of bricks, because, although they believe in equality and diversity, they do not believe in the equality or diversity of other people’s opinions; everyone has to agree with them on being against such things; otherwise, they are not entitled to that opinion at all. It always amazes me how such people, who always preach tolerance and diversity, are so intolerant of other people when they have an opinion that differs from theirs.

I prefer the person who drafted the advert for the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University NHS Trust, who at the end of it wrote:

“Usual rubbish about equality, equal opportunities employer etc.”

That just about sums it up perfectly.

[Mr Nuttall]

I appreciate that my hon. Friend, for reasons that I know not, opposed last week’s motion to allow electronic hand-held devices in the Chamber, but one great advantage of now being allowed such devices is that I was able immediately to follow his advice, go to www.capc.co.uk and access the website of the Campaign Against Political Correctness. On it, there can be found the “Not in my name” section, where Bolaji Alajija, a 42-year-old student nurse from north London, says:

“I don’t see why there is all the fuss. What’s the harm in having a black doll? It’s exactly the same as a white doll. People shouldn’t be so sensitive.”

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I remind Members that, although they are allowed to use iPads, they have to make a speech without continuously reading from them. I am sure Mr Nuttall will take that on board.

[Philip Davies]

I am very grateful for your guidance, Mr Deputy Speaker, particularly as someone who voted against allowing these wretched things to be used in debates. If anyone was ever going to convince me that I made the wrong decision in that vote, however, it is my hon. Friend, who has gone to an excellent website, and I certainly commend him for doing so.

The second part of my Bill tackles the Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Act 2002. I was not a Member when the Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Bill was debated, but it will come as no surprise to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, to know that had I been I would have definitely opposed it. I have a great deal of time for many of my female Conservative colleagues, we have some extremely able MPs and, for the record, I have excellent female staff. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the greatest Prime Minister this country has ever had was, indeed, a woman, but I do not particularly care if the House is made up of 10% women or 90%. For me, that will never be an issue, so the fundamental premise of the 2002 Act will always be totally flawed.

The most important thing for me is not how many men or women are in Parliament, but how many Conservatives there are in Parliament, and I challenge anybody who is obsessed with the idea that the most important end in itself is that we have more women in Parliament. If, for example, a Conservative male fought a marginal seat against a Labour female, would any of my hon. Friends campaign for her on the basis that it was so important to get more women into Parliament, or would they campaign for him? I venture that they would campaign for him, because I am sure that for all Government Members, apart from of course the Liberal Democrats, it is far more important to have more Conservatives in Parliament than to be worried about how many MPs there are of a particular gender.

During the Bill’s Second Reading on 24 October 2001, almost 10 years ago to the day, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), now the Home Secretary, said:

“I shall be honest with the House. There was a time when I never thought that I would stand up in the Chamber and support such a Bill.”—[Official Report, 24 October 2001; Vol. 373, c. 334.]

I wish she had stuck to her earlier opinion, as it would have been the more Conservative thing to do.

While my right hon. Friend supported the Bill, the former Member for Maidstone and the Weald, Ann Widdecombe, did not. In the debate, she said:

“The Bill is fundamentally wrong. I must ask this question; are all the men in this place sound asleep? Do they realise what the Bill means for them? Have they thought that positive discrimination for women can entail negative discrimination for men?”

The irony is that, as those in the House at the time were already Members, they did not need to worry about candidates, so the Bill was effectively about kicking away the ladder of opportunity from men who had not yet reached the House. I wonder how those Members would have felt if they had been told, “Sorry, I know you would make an excellent MP, but we’re going to stop you applying for the seat that you’ve lived in all your life, because you happen to be a man.” How would any men present today have felt if such a rule had applied to them?

Ann Widdecombe also hit the nail on the head, when during the debate she asked:

“What would that mean for a man in that constituency who had given to his local council the same lifelong service that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Helen Jackson)—

at the time—

gave to hers”?

[Mr Nuttall]

I had the honour of standing against the then Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough in 1997. Does my hon. Friend agree that she was able to succeed in a northern, working-class city without any positive discrimination whatever?

[Philip Davies]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend is entirely right. People such as Helen Jackson made their way to Parliament on merit alone, and they should be commended for that. I am sure that they would not have wanted it any other way.

Ann Widdecombe went on to say:

“Let us say that the man had worked there and escaped from there, and that he wanted to apply for the seat when it fell vacant. He would not be able to represent the constituency if all-women shortlists were in operation.

“That would be the reality for men under this pernicious Bill, yet hon. Gentlemen welcome it as a great step forward. It is a massive step towards inequality for men, and the poor souls just let the women walk all over them. They do not appear to care what will happen to them.”

And Miss Widdecombe also said:

“I can tell the hon. Gentleman that when I entered a constituency selection committee and saw that most of the people there were women, my heart used to sink. We should not get the idea that discrimination against women is performed solely by men. It is not… If I had been in a selection committee anteroom with two men who had got there by beating off all the competition yet I was only there because a place had been reserved for a woman on the shortlist, I would not feel helped. I would feel humiliated, insulted and patronised. I am glad to say that my party never did that to me. —[Official Report, 24 October 2001; Vol. 373, c. 352-53.]

The fact of fewer women MPs is always blamed on discrimination, but in reality—certainly in the Conservative party—at the time of the Bill’s discussion roughly the same proportion of women who applied for seats were selected. The lack of women MPs is, therefore, much more to do with the fact that they do not put themselves forward.

As India Knight put it so well:

“I’ll tell you what the issue is with women in business or women and work”—

and this deals with the point that the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr David) made earlier—

“It is extremely simple. It is not to do with sexist dinosaur male bosses or with male-dominated industries crushing our genius. It is not to do with glass ceilings. It is to do, very straightforwardly, with the number of hours we are prepared to put in. If you’re happy to work a 16-hour day and never see your children, you too can become a master of the universe…. Few women are prepared to make that kind of sacrifice. This is entirely their right and good on them. However, it is surely both dishonest and intensely stupid to apportion blame—in the form of so-called corporate discrimination—to what is essentially a completely personal choice: power versus being there at bath time, conferences versus the park, business trips versus getting home in time for homework, giving ‘110%’ versus sleeping more than five hours a night.”

The words of India Knight address the point made by the shadow Minister.

The 2002 Act was supposed to be temporary, and apparently was supported on that basis. I do not know many “temporary” things that have run for more than a decade. As things stand, the Act has a further two decades to go, it having been granted a massive “temporary” extension in the recent Equality Act.

Some people will say that we need more women MPs so that we can be more representative and so that women’s issues can be addressed better. That is utter rubbish. It is ridiculous to suggest that women are more likely to be better represented by women and that men are better represented by men. I am very proud of the fact that I represent all my constituents—men or women—equally and to the best of my ability. I suspect—although I do not know for sure—that just as many women voted for me at the general election in Shipley as did men.

[Mr Nuttall]

Can my hon. Friend confirm that he also represents constituents of all races equally, despite being a white man himself?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and that applies to all hon. Members. We treat all of our constituents equally and we represent all of them to the best of our ability, irrespective.

It is interesting that we keep hearing about “women’s issues” as this seems rather sexist and patronising. What are “women’s issues”? Many issues that are tagged as so-called women’s issues are also important to men. I have often heard that education is a women’s issue, but I would have thought that education was a family issue and was of just as much interest to men and fathers as to women and mothers.

I venture that the issues that a Conservative woman is concerned about are more closely aligned with the issues that a Conservative man is concerned about than they are with the issues that concern a Labour woman. The idea that certain issues are women’s issues is patronising and wrong.

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[Mr Nuttall]

Earlier in the debate the question was asked: can we take equality too far? Does it mean changing the nature of our society? Can we take free speech too far? In the same way, when I was young—

[Philip Davies]

You still are.

[Mr Nuttall]

Thank you. We always used to talk of lollipop ladies. Nobody ever suggested that there ought to be a recruitment drive for lollipop men and nobody thought it was demeaning in any way that there were lollipop ladies and not—as far as I was aware at that time—any lollipop men.

The Bill has only two main parts. The first two clauses relate to the prohibition of positive action by public authorities and the third clause repeals the legislation allowing for all-women shortlists, which I shall come to later. Clause 1 sets out the details of the prohibition of positive action and clause 2 contains the definition of the action that would be outlawed. Positive action, as it is often called, differs from positive discrimination in that it is actively intended to increase the representation in a work force where monitoring has shown a particular group to be under-represented in proportion to the profile of either the total work force or the local or national population.

Positive action permitted by the present anti-discrimination legislation allows a person to provide facilities to meet the special needs of people from particular groups in society in relation to their training, education or welfare and to target job training at people from certain groups that are under-represented in a particular area of work or to encourage such groups to apply for such work. That raises some interesting and difficult questions. What is the area in question that should be considered? If a business or a public authority is situated in the south of England in a predominantly ethnically white area, should they be exempt from the legislation? Well, of course they are not exempt, and it must be difficult for some public authorities in certain areas to meet the quota because it is impossible for them to decide what area they cover. Does one look at the town in question, or the county, or the country, and if so, which country? Does one look at the United Kingdom as a whole or just the make-up of England? Of course, many areas covered by the present legislation are not easy to determine.

An example is sex or gender, to which the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) referred. Very often, it might not be possible to know whether one has a certain number of gay or heterosexual people in one’s work force. Indeed, I would submit that the information is of absolutely no consequence or relevance whatever.

I should perhaps declare that before I entered this House, I was for many years an employer, so I know all about the rules and regulations that were imposed on my practice as a result of equality legislation. Before any of the legislation was in place, just off our own bat, I had a work force who were 95% female, so in fact, in my work force, men were not equally represented. No one suggested to me that when I came to employ another secretary, legal assistant or solicitor, I should start to select men; I always selected the best person for the job.

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[Mr Nuttall]

I am most grateful to the Minister for that intervention. The Opposition say that they support all-women shortlists, but as Members on both sides of the House will be aware, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) was selected as a candidate despite his gender. It is perhaps one of the biggest ironies that he was selected even though his wife, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), seems so keen to have all-women shortlists in all constituencies.

[Philip Davies]

Is it not also ironic that the Labour party has brought in all these massively talented women, apparently, through the use of all-women shortlists, but when it wanted to select a new leader it seemed to bypass all that talent that had been brought into the House and plumped for a man?

Anonymity (Arrested Persons) Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Friday 4th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

I think that that could be dealt with by the code of conduct for newspapers, which I understand already exists. There is no reason why that could not happen. In any event, the difficulty nowadays lies with the explosion of information on the internet. Therein lies the real problem. Everyone would agree that it is entirely laudable and sensible to ensure that the innocent accused should have their right to anonymity protected. The difficulty is whether we can achieve that in this day and age.

[Philip Davies]

The issue that my hon. Friend seems to be coming to is that people are not just innocent until they are charged, but innocent until they are convicted. Does he not think that what is being proposed could become a Trojan horse, and that the next move could be to say that nobody’s details should be released, not just until they are charged, but until they are convicted of something?

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. The Bill seeks to suggest that someone who was accused of a criminal offence and then arrested should be entitled to anonymity, but that that anonymity would be lost the moment that a charge was brought. Logically, if the reason for going down that road is the rule that someone is innocent until proven guilty, we ought to maintain the anonymity of the accused right up to the trial, although I can appreciate that there may be reasons why they may not want that.

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[Mr Nuttall]

The initial release of such information could well come from someone who had seen their neighbour being taken away by the police in the early hours of the morning, and who had used a social media platform such as Twitter to tweet the news to their followers. Would their friends think, “This information has come from Fred, and I don’t believe it”? I suspect that their friends would think, “Yes, I do believe that.” One of those friends could be a journalist at Sky, who might think, “This has come from Fred, so it must be true,” and, within minutes, the information could be on Sky News. I am not sure that my hon. Friend’s scenario works.

[Philip Davies]

I tend to agree. Does my hon. Friend accept that when certain websites about which we know very little are competing with the more respectable end of the media and the press to report a particular case, people might choose to say, “I believe the stuff that’s on the BBC and in the newspaper that I read, rather than the stuff on that website”? If, however, there were no information about the case on the BBC or in the respectable press, the public would not be able to differentiate in that way, and they would have to accept that what they were reading on the website was true.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. That raises the question of whether the BBC and the other outlets would then have to release a story denying what was on that website. These issues would all arise from the operation of the Bill. I referred to the case of someone who tweets that their next-door neighbour was taken away in the early hours by the police. Would that be caught by the Bill? I am not sure. The Bill has been released without explanatory notes, so I apologise if I refer to matters that might have been clarified in them.

How far must publication go before an offence is committed? Does one tweet count as publication, or is it only published when a neighbour passes it on or when the tweet is picked up by mainstream media? It is a minefield.

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[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend will agree that a fine of that nature would probably not deter most international media outlets, but the threat of prison might do so.

[Philip Davies]

Does my hon. Friend not see great irony in the fact that, while we appear to be moving in the direction of letting lots of people out of prison, and allowing people to commit multiple burglaries and violent crimes without being sent to prison, the Bill could send a newspaper editor to prison simply for stating a fact?

[Mr Nuttall]

There is a risk that someone convicted under the measure could be sent to prison, as the Bill provides for that, and it is possible that it could happen to an editor. Clause 6 helpfully sets out exactly who might be affected, and applies

“if an offence under this Act is committed by a body corporate”.

If

“the offence is proved to have been committed with the consent of connivance of—

(a) a senior officer of the body corporate, or

(b) a person purporting to act in such a capacity,

the senior officer or person (as well as the body corporate) is guilty of the offence and liable to be proceeded against and punished accordingly.”

Clause 3(3) provides the relevant definitions:

“In this section—

‘director’, in relation to a body corporate whose affairs are managed by its members, means a member of the body corporate,

‘senior officer’, in relation to a body corporate, means a director, manager, secretary or other similar officer of the body corporate.”

The term “manager” is rather vague, because there are lots of managers in an office, and we would not want all of them to be affected by the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley is right that, theoretically, the editor of a publication could be imprisoned if their publication was found to have contravened its provisions.

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[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right. There is the added complication that the law might be applied differently depending on the characters of the individuals who happen to hold the positions, so there is scope for tension.

[Mr Nuttall]

Regardless of the outcome of the debate on the extent of the Contempt of Court Act, one thing of which we can all be sure is that it does not apply to Australia, for example. The Australian, which is on sale in newsagents in London, could easily publish the kind of information under discussion.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One need only visit any newsstand in London to see a huge number of foreign newspapers being sold. Because they are being sold in this country, those editions might well be covered by the Bill—

Sale of Tickets (Sporting and Cultural Events) Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Friday 21st January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I agree with my hon. Friend on many things, but not on this. I believe that if I sell a product to somebody else who hands over the money that I have asked for to purchase it, I have ceded that product to that person. That is the whole point of the free market. If somebody goes into a supermarket, buys a product and sells it on, I do not believe that the supermarket should have a go at that customer for doing that; once it had sold it, it was that person’s to do what they wanted with it.

The issue comes up in all sorts of things outside sporting and cultural events. We did not have time to go into other matters during the speech made by the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West, but I would be interested to know how she feels about them.

To save any misunderstanding, I make it clear that I am not arguing from a personal interest perspective, but there is often a big hoo-ha in the press when a limited edition of designer handbags goes on sale in Selfridge’s or some other big department store, and there is a huge queue outside to buy the 25 available. Alternatively, Buzz Lightyears go on sale at Christmas—everybody wants one, but there are hardly any left. Massive queues form outside overnight. The lucky 20 dash in and buy the few available and within five minutes flat the product is on eBay being sold at 20 times the price because the person who bought it knows that there is a much bigger demand than the shop was able to accommodate.

I am not entirely sure whether the hon. Lady or the hon. Member for Dudley North are suggesting that, from their party’s perspective, it is the Government’s job to start regulating all these matters, so that if somebody buys somebody else’s intellectual property and then uses the free market to sell it at 25 times the price, the Government should stop that. If the hon. Lady or the hon. Gentleman are suggesting that, I should like them to stand up and say so; if they are not, perhaps they will explain what the difference is between somebody who buys a ticket to an event and somebody who buys a limited edition of a Buzz Lightyear, a handbag or anything else. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Hove could do the same. I see no difference at all. It seems to me that once the Government go down the road of controlling the market in tickets, they are opening up the floodgates, or a slippery slope, of intervening in every single nook and cranny of the commercial world.

[Mr Nuttall]

That raises the interesting question of what would happen in the stamp market. People often buy stamps, especially commemorative issues, for the purpose of holding on to them for a number of years in the hope of selling them on for a profit.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend’s question helps to illustrate the point: where would it end if the Government went down such a road? Where would it all end indeed?

It does not surprise me at all that the Labour party wants to interfere in every nook and cranny of everybody’s lives—what they buy, how much they can sell it on for and all that kind of business; that is its raison d’être as a political party. However, I hope that the one thing that the coalition Government will not do is adopt that kind of socialist agenda. That would be very worrying indeed.

The hon. Lady talked about how popular the issue was among the general public, if not among her own colleagues. However, I take issue with the notion that the reselling of tickets is unpopular; I am not entirely sure that there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that. ICM conducted some opinion polls on this matter. As I mentioned earlier, 86% agreed with the statement:

“If I had a ticket to a sporting event, concert or other event that I could no longer use then I should be allowed to resell it”.

Some 83% agreed with the premise:

“Once I’ve bought a ticket it is my property and I should be able to sell it just as I can any other private property”.

That point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall). Some 86% agreed:

“It shouldn’t be against the law for people to resell tickets that they no longer want or can’t use.”

The hon. Lady, or her cheerleader on the Front Bench, made the point that the Bill would not ban the resale of tickets, but simply restrict the price at which they could be resold, and that therefore the opinion polls were irrelevant. However, the same opinion poll also found that 56% agreed that the price of a ticket should be determined only by what they were willing to pay, which seems to fly in the face of the hon. Lady’s argument that everybody in the country is appalled by the current situation and that something needs to be done about it. Perhaps she has taken only a small or a biased sample of opinion; if she has a better mechanism for opinion polls than ICM, she should share it with the organisation. Furthermore, 61% agreed that the second-hand or secondary ticket market enables real fans to get hold of tickets that they would otherwise have missed out on. Contrary to the hon. Lady’s contention that most people think that the secondary market stops real fans getting their tickets, 61% of people think the exact opposite.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend has just mentioned the term “real fan”, while earlier we heard a number of references to “ordinary fan”, “average fan” and “biggest fan”. Is he aware of a definition for any of these terms?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a good point about what constitutes a “real fan” in these matters. If somebody is prepared to pay £2,000 or £5,000 for a ticket to a concert, I would argue that it provides the best example of a real fan. Nobody is going to pay that kind of money for a ticket to an event in which they are not really interested. It seems to me, then, that the free market and ticket touting help the real fans to find their way to the front of the queue rather than get clogged up by people who might be buying on a whim because the tickets are rather cheap.

The hon. Lady says that she is trying to help the organisers and others to sell the tickets for the benefit of real fans, but perhaps she should reflect a bit further. Some of the concert and sporting promoters should also reflect on the part of the ICM opinion poll showing that 71% of people agreed that too many tickets for major sporting and cultural events were allocated to corporate sponsors, hospitality packages and VIPs. On this particular matter, I tend to agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Hove, who would presumably say that these are their tickets and they are entitled to give them to whomever they want. I would not gainsay that in this particular case. It is a bit galling, however, for people to be lecturing everybody on how they want the real genuine fans to have the tickets at a price they can easily afford when they are some of the worst when it comes to real fans not getting their tickets, because of the “prawn sandwich brigade”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

As I made clear at the start of my speech—I hope that I am considered to be someone who sticks to their word—I will speak for less time than the hon. Lady, and I intend to keep that promise.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend may like to know that those who have spoken in favour of the Bill spoke for 85 minutes; even if he continues until 2.30 pm, those who oppose the Bill will have spoken for only 51 minutes.

Lawful Industrial Action (Minor Errors) Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Friday 22nd October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

I intend to take interventions, as is the normal custom in this House. I have no intention to speak at great length, but I look at it like this: the public out there expect the other side of the argument to be fairly put, and that is what I intend to do, because I am not persuaded that the Bill is merely a technical measure. Nobody would have gone to the time and trouble of bringing this matter before the House if it was such a trivial matter. It is not trivial; it proposes to change the law of the land. It deserves careful analysis and detailed examination, and that is what is going to happen on the Floor of the House this morning.

To return to the CTU, let us not forget that there are many members of trade unions who are not paid-up members of the Labour party. There are many who are members of the Conservative party, of the Liberal Democrats—I am sorry to see that they are not present in great number on the Government Benches this morning, although I hope that they will be here before too long—the Scottish National party or Plaid Cymru. There are also many—they may well be the majority—who are members of no party at all. I therefore do not regard this issue as a particularly party political matter; rather, it concerns good industrial relations.

For 16 years I was an employer. I ran a small solicitor’s practice, and in the end I was responsible, along with my partners, for employing 40-odd people, so I know quite a bit about employing people. I know a lot about keeping staff happy, and I know how important it is that there are good relations between an employer and an employee. Members of the CAW wanted to work with their trade unions to help their employers be successful. It is rarely the case that an employer can be successful if their employees are withdrawing their labour. The result is invariably that the company and the employees both lose out, and in the long run that is of no great benefit to either.

In the 16 years that I was running the firm, we never had any problems with the unions. To be fair, there was no unionisation, but they were free—[Interruption.] I always said that if any of the staff wanted to join a union, they were entirely free to do so. However, without being too immodest, I like to think that the fact that there was no unionisation was perhaps because we tried to be good employers and because the staff did not feel it necessary to join a union. They were quite free to do so, but as far as I can recall, none of them ever decided to withdraw their labour.

Let me declare a further interest, in that my brother is a merchant seaman. As will become apparent later, when I consider some of the detailed provisions in the Bill, that is particularly relevant, as the Bill seeks to amend subsections (2A), (2B) and (2C) of section 230 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend not think it strange that the Labour Government, who were in office for 13 years, made changes to the 1992 Act in 1999 and 2004, and yet on both occasions, when they were reviewing and amending the legislation, decided to leave those provisions intact? They thereby indicated that they thought that they were perfectly sensible. Now that Labour Members are in opposition, after 13 years of being in government, is it not bizarre that they seem to think that those provisions are no longer appropriate?

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend is quite right. I will have something to say on that later, although I should point out now that section 232B, entitled “Small accidental failures to be disregarded”, which the Bill seeks to amend, was actually introduced by the Labour Government, through the Employment Relations Act 1999. We can therefore safely assume that this measure, which was not originally in the 1992 Act, was one that the Labour Government wanted included in that Act.

Subsections (2A), (2B) and (2C) of section 230 of the 1992 Act contain special provisions relating to the requirements that are applicable to merchant seamen—who have special requirements owing to the nature of their work—who are also members of a trade union.

I genuinely congratulate the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington on his perseverance with this measure. On Thursday 23 November 2006, almost four years ago, he came 16th out of the 20 successful Members in the ballot in that Session. He then decided to introduce the Trade Union Rights and Freedoms Bill, which was part of a campaign being pursued by the unions following the Trades Union Congress of 2005, which had passed a motion calling for a trade union freedom Bill in the wake of the dispute between Gate Gourmet and its catering staff at Heathrow airport. Members will note a common thread involving Heathrow airport and airport matters. One of the principal provisions of the trade unions’ motion was the simplification of the complex regulations on notices and ballots, which restrict the ability of unions to organise industrial action when a clear majority of members have voted in support. I do not agree that the regulations are necessarily complex.

The hon. Gentleman introduced his Bill on 13 December 2006, and it was scheduled for Second Reading on 2 March 2007 but, unfortunately for him, there was insufficient time for it to be considered. It was not given a Second Reading and it subsequently fell. I should add that the introduction of that Bill was followed by early-day motion 532, which stated:

“That this House recognises that free and independent trade unions are a force for good in UK society around the world and are vital to democracy; welcomes the positive role modern unions play in providing protection for working people and winning fairness at work; notes the 1906 Trades Disputes Act granted unions the legal freedom to take industrial action; regrets that successive anti-union legislation has meant that trade union rights are now weaker than those introduced by the 1906 Trades Disputes Act”—

I do not know whether that was a critical attack on Labour’s own 1999 and 2004 legislation. The motion went on to say that it

“therefore welcomes and supports the TUC campaign for a Trade Union Freedom Bill whose principles include better protection for workers, such as those sacked by Gate Gourmet in 2005, the simplification of ballot procedures and to allow limited supportive action, following a ballot, in specific circumstances; and therefore urges the Government to bring forward legislation to address these proposals.”

The motion was moderately successful, unlike some that attract only—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is a real danger that the Bill could be a Trojan horse. It could easily take us into new territory. It could also take us back to a previous era that many people outside the House thought they had seen the last of.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend has a legal background, and I do not. The case being made by Labour Members seems to be that they do not think that judges should interpret the law, and that the law should be clear and straightforward. The Bill seems to be throwing us out of the frying pan into the fire, however, because it says that a judge has to accept a ballot if there has been “substantial compliance” with the provision in question. Can my hon. Friend tell me, in legal terms, whether there is a legal definition of “substantial compliance”? For example, would 51% compliance count as “substantial”, or would it need to be 60% or 80%? Or are we going to go straight back to having judges deciding what is substantial and what is not?

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend is broadly right. The Bill seeks to move the law from a situation in which the courts are asked to consider whether something is a small, accidental failure that should be disregarded to one in which they consider whether there has been “substantial compliance” with the law. I will come to that point in a moment.

I was just saying that I do not think that we should be lulled into a false sense of security simply because the title of the Bill refers to “minor errors”. The Bill is, I believe, worthy of comprehensive analysis and scrutiny if only because our constituents would rightly expect it. This Bill will not affect trade unionists alone; it will affect everybody and the lives of everybody affected will be blighted. One can only assume that the thrust of this proposed legislation is to make it easier for trade unions to organise strike action. That will affect—it will potentially affect; it could affect—every family in this country. That is why I believe the Bill deserves somewhat more detailed scrutiny. I appreciate that I am a new Member, so I might gloss over or miss things that others with longer service might not. They will be better placed than me to give it the examination that I think the Bill deserves.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend made a good point when he said that the Bill’s title refers to “minor errors”. I believe that the Network Rail v. RMT case was cited in support of this Bill, but does my hon. Friend agree that balloting people from 11 signal boxes that did not exist, some of which had been shut down 44 years ago and one of which, on the union’s own admission, had burned down hardly constitutes a “minor error”?

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend is right. My concern is that if this legislation were allowed to proceed in this form, that sort of slipshod behaviour might be allowed to continue in future. I submit that one reason why a line of cases has been brought before the courts is that employers have upheld the will of this House and have sought to secure full compliance with what was originally intended. I stress again the importance of what was intended not by the 1992 Act but by the Employment Relations Act 1999, which was introduced by the Labour Government.

In his opening remarks, the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington said—I agree with him—that we begin to understand the full effect of this proposal only by looking at the legal framework in which employees and employers operate. The starting point is the contract of employment itself. Under such a contract one individual, the employee, provides his or her services or labour for the benefit of another, the employer. In return, they are paid for the labour they provide. The work is manual labour in some cases or it could be “white collar” work, as we call it, or it could be providing expertise on a particular subject. It follows that withdrawal of that labour is a very serious matter and, unsurprisingly, the law attaches serious consequences if someone breaches that agreement, as it does with any other breach of contract,.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I want to drag my hon. Friend back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) about the Bill’s terminology of substantial compliance. Does he agree that it would be interesting if Labour Members accepted substantial compliance as the basis for legislation generally? For example, in the case of a major health and safety problem at work, would their presumption be that the employer should face no sanction if that employer had displayed substantial compliance throughout the rest of the year. Does my hon. Friend agree that the concept of substantial compliance might have merit after all?

[Mr Nuttall]

I am sure, Madam Deputy Speaker, that Mr Speaker is most upset that he has not been able to stay and listen to the rest of this interesting debate, but he will be able to read it later.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), who raises an interesting question. The point was made earlier that the provision might be a Trojan horse. If we go down the path of referring to matters as substantially complied with, or saying that, taken together, there has been substantial compliance, there is a danger that it leaves open a gaping hole. What is not substantially compliant? What should we do if someone complies with their health and safety policy for 51 weeks, but not in the other week? Such an approach does not make sense. During detailed examination of clause 1(3), I shall consider whether the Bill takes us any further forward.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend is right. I can well understand those who comply with the law for all of the time not being too happy about other groups being allowed to comply with the law for only part of the time. The rest of the time they can say, “Well, we have substantially complied with the law.” What should we do with a burglar who said, “Well, I’ve been substantially compliant with the law for 364 days of the year, but today I happen to have fallen foul of the law”? Should we let him off? What absolute nonsense.

Any employee who breaches their contract of employment leaves themselves open to the risk of being found liable, under the law of tort, to their employer, for breach of contract. That applies whether the contract is for unskilled manual labour, skilled manual labour, or what is often termed white collar services. The liability applies equally to those organising industrial action, such as—but not necessarily exclusively—trade unions, because those concerned will seek to procure a breach of contract, which is a tort under English law. Under those circumstances, both individuals and trade unions risk incurring liability to the employer. I add that there is also a potential liability to third parties. In individual terms, the employee is also, of course, liable to be dismissed.

Only through the protection afforded by statute can employees and trade unions escape the consequences of their actions in withdrawing their labour and breaching the terms of their contract of employment. That was first accepted, as the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington mentioned, as long ago as 1906 when the Trade Disputes Act was passed. Prior to that, the common law provided that trade unions were liable to claims for damages for inducing a breach of contract. The 1906 Act granted them immunities from those liabilities. As I mentioned in response to my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), 100 years earlier the Combination Acts of 1799 and 1800 made it illegal for workers to join together and press employers for shorter hours or increased pay. Those Acts remained on the statute book until 1824 when they were repealed, to be replaced by the Combination Act of 1825.

[Philip Davies]

Does my hon. Friend agree that when we consider what is fair and reasonable in such legislation, part of the equation that should be considered, and that appears to have been considered in cases such as British Airways v. Unite, is the impact of the strike action on the business and its customers? If, as in the case of Unite, there is an attempt to wreck Christmas holidays for over 12 days, which would have affected British Airways and its customers to a devastating extent, the highest possible standards must be expected of unions in such circumstances.

[Mr Nuttall]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point, which we will look at in more detail when I look at the next paragraph of the subsection. The problem with the Bill is that it not only introduces the novel concept of substantial compliance, but extends the scope of the 1992 Act to cover not just the ballot but the notice provision. Therefore, it is doing two things at the same time. Incidentally, the provision also extends the number of sections to which the exemption applies, which we will look at later.

May I move on to subsection (1)(b) of section 232B, which states that the failure will be disregarded if

“the failure is accidental and on a scale which is unlikely to affect the result of the ballot”.

It seems that, when the 1992 Act was amended, the then Labour Government knew exactly what they were doing. They were providing for minor errors to be discounted. In section 232B, they specifically allowed for a failure which is

“accidental and on a scale which is unlikely to affect the result of the ballot or, as the case may be, the failures are accidental and taken together are on a scale which is unlikely to affect the result of the ballot”.

That seems to be straightforward and simple to understand.

[Philip Davies]

It may be straightforward to someone as intelligent as my hon. Friend, but may I ask him to clarify the matter for those of us who do not have his intellectual capacity? Does the law as it stands say that the failure would be disregarded if it were, “accidental and does not affect the ballot” or does it say that it would be disregarded if it were “accidental or does not affect the ballot”? If the problem in the vote were not accidental, presumably it would not matter if it made any difference, because the union would have to meet both tests: the failure would have to be accidental and not make any difference. Can he clarify whether both tests have to be met at the moment?

[Mr Nuttall]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. The position is more complex perhaps than I originally intimated. Section 232B(2)(b) says that, in relation to a ballot, if there is a failure or there are failures in respect of a provision mentioned in subsection (2) or other provisions, and the failure or failures are accidental and on a scale that is unlikely to affect the result of the ballot, those can be disregarded. It is worthy of note that the section already makes provision not just for a single failure but for failures, so it already provides for more than one failure. There could be several failures and the law accepts that at the moment. It accepts that there could be multiple failures and the existing legislation would still potentially allow those to be disregarded by the courts, as happened in the case that has been so often referred to this morning—the case of British Airways plc v. Unite. There were a number of errors. The Court of Appeal, by a majority, decided to allow the appeal and discharged the injunction that had been obtained at first instance by the court.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

This appears to get down to the nitty-gritty of what is accidental. It seems to me from the judge's summing up that Unite got it wrong in its dispute with BA. The judge said that he thought that

“it therefore seems clear that the union was aware, or certainly ought to have been, that the figures provided to BA in the ballot notice included a substantial number of those who were shortly to leave on voluntary redundancy, and therefore included members who the union could not reasonably have believed would be entitled to vote in the ballot.”

In that case, the mistakes might have been minor, according to the interpretation of the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), but they certainly could not have been accidental if the union was balloting people whom the judge ruled it should have known, or did know, were not entitled to vote.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. One of the problems with the interpretation of the clause relates to what is accidental and what is not. I submit that we are going to have exactly the same problem if we change the law and introduce the concept of substantial compliance. We are not any further forward than we were.

[Mr Nuttall]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I certainly do not think that it is appropriate that the House should legislate for incompetence, and effectively that is what this Bill is leading towards. It is effectively saying that there could be 70%, 60% or 80% compliance with the law and that would be okay. I might be wrong, but I am of the opinion that members of the public outside this House rightly expect a trade union, or indeed, as my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire said, any other group, to comply with the law to a much higher degree.

I think the degree of compliance should be 98% or 99%, which was the intention in 1999 when the then Labour Government introduced section 232B providing for small accidental failure to be disregarded. The new provision refers to

“the failure…or the failures taken together”,

so it mirrors the current situation in that duplicate failures would be permitted. It also states that

“there has been substantial compliance with the provision or provisions in question”

and

“on a scale which is unlikely to affect (in the case of a ballot) the result of the ballot or…a reasonable recipient’s understanding of the effect of the notice”.

The problem is that that provision takes us no further forward. Employers are just as likely to say, “Well, has there been substantial compliance or not?” It is not clear, so we are no better off than if we were to ask whether there had been a minor or accidental failure. Therefore, this provision will prove to be a treasure trove for lawyers.

[Philip Davies]

Given that the purpose of the Bill is to try to avoid any misunderstandings, does my hon. Friend agree that it would have been more helpful if the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington had included a definition of substantial compliance? If he had, we might have avoided some of these problems.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend is right. Whether or not something may or not result in the ballot being affected is a very moot point indeed, and it could exercise the courts for a very long time.

I think there is a danger that the lawyers are sitting out there rubbing their hands with glee, because when they see the Bill they must think, “Marvellous! We’ve almost run our course in respect of the 1992 and 1999 legislation, which has been to the Court of Appeal, but we are now going to move back to square one and start again. We can spend hour after hour in the Queen’s bench division and then the Court of Appeal.” The issues will not be dealt with in, say, Uxbridge county court.

[Philip Davies]

Returning to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), is there not an irony here in that the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington has introduced the Bill to benefit his friends in the trade unions and they have got a Court of Appeal decision that is favourable to them that they could presumably use in further cases as case law, yet he wants to scrap that judgment, which eventually found in their favour, to introduce a new element to the law that is uncertain? If the hon. Gentleman wants to help his friends in the trade unions, should he not leave the law as it stands with this clear verdict from the Court of Appeal, rather than try to introduce a new Bill that introduces new uncertainty? He is not even helping the people his Bill is designed to help.

[Mr Nuttall]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend is right that there is a real danger that this Bill will not only move industrial relations back three decades, but will move the analysis of the case law back to square one—back to 1992 or 1999. We will be starting with a blank page, and the lawyers will be able to say, “Well, here we are. All past judgments are out of the window because there is now a new piece of legislation.” All the previous cases that have been cited this morning will, effectively, be made redundant because the measure that has been tested before the courts on several occasions will no longer be on the statute book, and we will be faced with a new measure that has never been tested before the courts. It will not be long before an employer is required to put the matter to the courts for a decision and, as I said, these are not matters that could be dealt with in a county court. They would inevitably have to be dealt with in the High Court. They would then be appealed to the Court of Appeal for civil cases, and who knows whether they would go on to the Supreme Court. They would be lengthy and expensive actions, and I submit that we would be no further forward in having clarity in the law—which, after all, is why we are here in Parliament. We thought we had nearly got there in the case of British Airways v. Unite earlier in the year. If we now go back to square one, we will be no further forward.

[Philip Davies]

I am pleased my hon. Friend agrees with me about that. However, has not the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington reasonably identified that the crux of the BA case is the definition of accidental? It was the judge’s view that in this case accidental did not mean unintentional—that there was not enough to satisfy the demands of the law. If the hon. Gentleman wants to deal with the BA problem, to which he referred at length in his speech, would he not be better off just amending the law to give a definition of accidental, rather than going back to the drawing board and introducing a completely new concept altogether?

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend is right, because rather than deal with the matters raised in the judgment, such as the definition of “accidental”, the Bill seeks to introduce a novel concept of whether there has been “substantial compliance” with something.

I shall now deal with the next subsection, if Madam Deputy Speaker will allow me. Subsection (5) deals with the burden of proof. The existing legislation under section 232B of the 1992 Act contains no subsection (5), so this would be a new insertion into the original provision. Subsection (5) states:

“In any proceedings in which reliance is placed on this section, any failure to comply with a provision mentioned in subsection (2) is to be treated as meeting the terms of subsection (1)(b) unless the contrary is proved.”

In simple terms, that means that the burden of proof is being placed completely on the employer, who will have to prove this novel concept of what constitutes “substantial compliance”. As has been said this morning, that arrangement is entirely the wrong way round. It is and has always been incumbent on the trade unions to show that they are complying with the requirements of the law, because it, unusually, exempts them from the liabilities that otherwise exist under British law.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

I will indeed. I was just dealing with the intervention.

[Philip Davies]

Although my hon. Friend the Member for Dover is right, the category of person that appears to be in danger of being ignored in this debate is not the trade unions or employers but the paying public—the customers. At the end of the day, it is they who are most inconvenienced by all the strike action. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) accept that if the Bill were to have a Second Reading today, it is not the impact on trade unions or employers that should be at the forefront of our mind, important though that is, but the impact on the customer and the paying public?

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend is quite right. He has perhaps anticipated my fourth point. I was about to say that fourthly, and perhaps most importantly, there is the question of the paying public, who would be the ones most affected by the changes. I am concerned that if the law is changed, we will see a return to the dark days of the 1970s. I am concerned for my constituents in Bury North—for the working mum who is forced to make last-minute arrangements for child care because teachers have gone on strike; for the small business man who is waiting for a customer’s cheque to arrive, and who faces the ruin of his business because the postmen have gone on strike; for the taxi driver who needs to renew his licence, and faces the loss of his livelihood because he is preventing from renewing it because the officials in the town hall are on strike. I could go on and on; there are so many categories affected. Earlier, we touched on the family who save for, and look forward all year to, the one holiday that they have, and who are then denied the opportunity to go because one small group of workers has withdrawn its labour and gone on strike.

The law as it stands cannot be that difficult to comply with. The 2009 “Annual Abstract of Statistics” issued by the Office for National Statistics has details of how many working days were lost through labour disputes by industry in 2009. It shows that in transport, storage and communications, 657,000 working days were lost. In public administration and defence, 325,000 working days were lost. The figure was 31,000 in education; 16,000 in manufacturing; 5,000 in health and social work; 4,000 in other community, social and personal services; 2,000 in construction; and 2,000 in other industries and services. So it is not impossible to comply with the law as it stands. All those industrial disputes were able to proceed, quite lawfully, under current legislation.

Let me conclude by saying that the Bill risks taking the trade union movement back to the 1970s and ’80s. I submit that it represents a huge missed opportunity to modernise the trade union movement. It tries to simplify existing legislation, but it runs the risk of creating new uncertainties. It introduces the concept of “substantial compliance”; and, as I say, lawyers must be rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of spending more time in court. Those words would have to be tested in the courts, because we know nothing of what they actually mean.

The Bill does nothing about the underlying problem that it seeks to solve. It does nothing to help the trade unions, or those engaged by them, to conduct the ballot in accordance with the letter of the law. After all, the issue is the will of Parliament and ultimately, therefore, the will of the people. The level of compliance is set where it is because that is where the public want it to be. For the sake of hard-working families who fear having their everyday lives disrupted by a return to the disastrous days of some three decades ago, we should not allow the Bill to proceed.

Having considered the merits and principles of the Bill, I am not persuaded that it is a sensible way forward. I am not convinced that the changes it seeks to make would, in any way, shape or form, improve on the existing law. Indeed, I would respectfully submit that the provisions would introduce a whole new area of uncertainty into trade union law, and that would be bad not just for the trade unions and employers, but for our economy. In short, it would be bad for Britain. For all those reasons, I propose voting against the Bill, and I urge the whole House to do likewise.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to participate in the debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) on getting off the blocks more quickly than anybody else and having his private Member’s Bill debated on the first available day. I am probably slightly more generous than my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) in that, even though I do not agree with the Bill, I think that the hon. Gentleman is perfectly entitled to introduce legislation that he feels is important to him and his constituents. However, I share my hon. Friend’s frustration that that means that more worthwhile private Members’ Bills could be sidelined today. That is extremely unfortunate.

I would say in passing, Madam Deputy Speaker, that although it is good to see you in the Chair, it was a great pleasure to see Mr Speaker in the Chair for the start of the debate. Recently, it had got to the stage when the Speaker was rarely seen on a Friday for private Members’ Bills, but his appearance today shows how important such Bills are to Parliament. I hope that you, Madam Deputy Speaker, will pass on my thanks to him for giving Fridays the respect they deserve by attending the start of the debate.

I was disappointed that the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington and his hon. Friend on the Front Bench, the hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith), decided to take a novel approach to debates in the House by not wanting to take interventions. The House of Commons is not a lecture theatre but a debating chamber, and often during debates and through interventions we can tease out the strengths and weaknesses of legislation. I hope, therefore, that that trend will not be repeated in future weeks and debates on private Members’ Bills. I found the opportunity to intervene, and the reply given was actually quite informative, so I say to the hon. Lady that taking interventions in a debate is to be commended, because it allows us to tease out the issues.

[Mr Nuttall]

Had interventions been taken, we might have got on a lot more quickly this morning, because we could have got answers to some of the questions I raised. Instead, we were left hanging in the air. Had the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) taken one or two interventions, we would not be in this position, because he would have been able to deal with those matters straight away.

[Philip Davies]

I tend to agree with my hon. Friend. As it happens, I am a fan of the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington, who is a great parliamentarian. However, it was rather uncharacteristic of him to make it abundantly clear at the start of his speech that he did not want to take any interventions. My hon. Friend pointed out that he had not provided a definition of substantial compliance in the Bill, which made it all the more unfortunate that the hon. Gentleman started by saying that he did not want to take any interventions, and woe betide anyone who tried to intervene—that was the gist of his starting point—because otherwise we might have been able to ask him what he thought substantial compliance meant. That might have shed some light on the matter.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. Anyone who knows him will know that he would never intend any discourtesy to anyone, and I had certainly taken that as read, but I am sure that the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington will be grateful to him for that clarification. My hon. Friend certainly did not need to explain that to me, however; knowing him as I do, I know that he would never be discourteous to anyone on either side of the House.

There are simpler ways for the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington to pursue his campaign, although I would not necessarily endorse them. Part of the hon. Gentleman’s frustration is not to do with the law as it stands. How could it be? As we have explored, the Court of Appeal agreed with his particular standpoint. He cannot therefore have any quibble with the law as it stands. I think the hon. Gentleman’s real quibble is with judges who grant injunctions and the basis on which they do so.

The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington certainly needs no advice from me—neither does anybody else for that matter—and I am sure that he will not take it, but I am certainly prepared to give it to him free of charge. My suggestion is that he start a campaign around the whole issue of judicial injunctions. What tends to happen when people seek an injunction from a judge—not just in this case, but in other cases, and we often see it in libel or privacy law—is that everything happens very quickly. That is why people seek an injunction—because something is about to happen very quickly. It might be a strike action within a day or two, or a story being printed in a newspaper that is going to have very damaging effects on somebody’s reputation. That is why an injunction is sought at very short notice.

On what basis should a judge be able to grant an injunction? That is the issue. Let me deal with what happens when people seek injunctions. I feel rather nervous about making these points when I am surrounded by so many esteemed people from the legal profession. As a non-lawyer, however, let me clarify my observation of what happens. Because something is going to happen that could have a devastating effect—on a business, on customers or on somebody’s reputation—judges are, in effect, risk-averse. If something is about to happen—an article to be published, a strike to take place—and there is some uncertainty over the law, a judge cannot go back and change the law to stop it happening. What judges quite understandably do is to take a risk-averse view. They feel that the law might need some clarification and it is not entirely clear whether something is legal or illegal, so they adopt the risk-averse option of granting an injunction on the basis that a court can overturn the injunction later. If an injunction is not granted, something cannot be stopped from happening after it has happened. That is why I think the hon. Gentleman might want to pursue the whole area of injunctions and the level of proof or certainty judges need before they can grant them. I believe that that would help his side of the argument; it would certainly be more helpful than promoting this Bill.

[Mr Nuttall]

Let me explain why my hon. Friend’s point is a good one. When asked to grant an interlocutory injunction, the courts will by definition have to act very quickly, as he says. They do not have the time to consider all the evidence in detail, so if there is a prima facie case to grant an injunction, they will grant it—without looking into the merits of the case. My hon. Friend is quite right about that. This is perhaps the root cause of the Bill and the real concern that it addresses.

[Philip Davies]

I am sure that my hon. Friend is right. He got rather technical during the course of that intervention, at which point it went beyond my capabilities. The bit that I understood, however, I certainly agreed with. Knowing my hon. Friend as I do, I am sure that I would have agreed with the bits that I did not understand. I therefore commend whatever my hon. Friend said to the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington who, having a greater intellectual capacity than me, will have understood everything that my hon. Friend said.

[Philip Davies]

I am being tempted by people who are more expert in the law than I am to comment on matters that they know far more about than I do. My hon. Friends can take it as read that I agree with them on any matter with regard to the law, because they are in a far better position to argue their case than I would be.

I am still warming to my theme of how the intentions of the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington can better be advanced. His supporters in the trade union movement also take exception to the definition in legislation of “accidental”. We can all probably accept the definition of making a difference to the result. If a certain number of ballot papers were affected, all of which voted one way, but the result would not have changed, the wording in the current law of,

“on a scale unlikely to affect the result of the ballot”

is perfectly clear. From that starts the frustration.

The issue is the “accidental” point. If the hon. Gentleman attacked that problem, as he sees it, by instilling some definition of “accidental” in the Bill, his supporters might find that a more fruitful way forward. In the case of BA, which he quoted most during his speech, the judge, summing up his ruling to grant an injunction, said:

“I do not consider that there is evidence capable either of establishing that UNITE held a reasonable belief in the entitlement to vote of all its members, or enabling it to rely on an ‘accidental failure’ within section 232B.”

The point that Unite was making was that any failings in its ballot were unintentional, and that that met the definition of “accidental”. The judge said in his conclusion:

“In my judgment, an unintentional failure, as it was categorised by”—

Unite—

“in the circumstances of this case, cannot be regarded as an accidental failure within the meaning of that section, even applying a purposive construction to its provisions.”

Therefore, the problem for Unite was that it did not get over the first hurdle of “accidental”. The problem was not, as the hon. Gentleman said, in relation to the test of

“on a scale unlikely to affect the result of the ballot”—

the judge did not even get to that—but that, as far as the judge was concerned, Unite had not got over the “accidental” hurdle. The hon. Gentleman’s unhappiness with the existing legislation can be only with the definition of “accidental”. If he wishes to move things forward, from his perspective, I suggest that he do so by instilling a definition of “accidental” that meets his requirements.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes the point, which was touched on earlier, that the way around the problem, with which the judge had to deal when considering the case, relates to the current provision’s use of the word “and”. If the Bill were to introduce the word “or”, one could easily understand the rationale for it.

[Philip Davies]

rose—

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[Philip Davies]

I am sure that my hon. Friend is right. As it happens, I am content with the law as it stands. I shall be interested to hear what the Minister has to say. I do not know what he will say and I do not want to pre-empt it, but I hope he will say that the Government have no intention of changing the current law, because, as the court has ruled, it is perfectly adequate. I am sure that the Government will always work closely with any Member if they feel that an injustice needs to be corrected, but I am not sure that that is the case in this instance.

[Mr Nuttall]

On 21 June 2010, the BBC carried a report headlined “Government shuns call to change strike laws”. The report said the Government had indicated that there were “no plans” for alterations in the law on industrial action. That might help my hon. Friend. It will be interesting to see whether the Minister has changed that position.

[Philip Davies]

That is helpful and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. Knowing the Minister as I do, I am sure that his position has not changed in the short time since then, because he is a very solid chap who would not change his mind so loosely and so quickly. Therefore, we need not worry about that, but we will listen with interest to what he says.

It is important to note that the original legislation that the Bill tries to change—the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992—gave protection to trade unions; it was not anti-trade union. Some of its provisions protect the rights of workers in a union that takes action, if necessary by striking, to defend and support their interests when reasonable notice is given and in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute. The Act protects the rights of workers to organise in or leave a union without suffering discrimination or detriment. It also defines trade unions and states that they are subject to legal rights and duties. It provides a framework for unions to engage in collective bargaining for better workplace or business standards with employers, so the thrust of the legislation already on the statute book should be welcomed by Opposition Members.

On the proposals of the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington, the Institute of Employment Rights states that the purpose and effect of the Bill is to ensure that small accidental failures in ballots will be disregarded. I am not entirely sure that that is entirely the case, because my understanding of the existing legislation is that it does just that—it provides that small accidental failures in ballots will be disregarded. That is the wording of the existing legislation. The hon. Gentleman is trying to change it so that, so long as unions have demonstrated substantial compliance, such failures will be disregarded.

In passing, I wonder about the titles of Bills, because they often seem to contradict completely their supposed purpose. For example, the Equality Bill was about all sorts of things but it certainly was not about equality. The Bill that the previous Government introduced to restrict jury trial should have been called the “We think the public are thick Bill”. We should have some honesty about what Bills are trying to do. This Bill is called the Lawful Industrial Action (Minor Errors) Bill, but it seems that it is not trying to stop minor errors being taken into account, as the law already does that; it is trying to allow unions to be able to make some major errors in the ballot and have those disregarded, too. If the hon. Gentleman ignores all my earlier advice, which I am certain he will do, and brings back the Bill at another date, if he does not manage to get it through on this occasion, I will ask him for the sake of clarity to change the title to the Lawful Industrial Action (Major Errors) Bill because then we might have a better idea of what we are dealing with.

The Institute of Employment Rights also claims that minor errors in the information about the result of the ballot will be disregarded and forensic examination of procedures will end. That will worry people. The institute says that the forensic examination of procedures of unions carrying out their ballots will end and be replaced just with the concept of substantial compliance. I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman is renowned for having a laissez-faire attitude to things, but he certainly has a laissez-faire attitude to the running of ballots if he does not think that forensic examination of the procedures involved in the running of a strike ballot should be taken into account.

As we have heard, the burden of proof in injunctions will shift in that evidence will be required that substantial compliance has not taken place. How on earth can we expect the employer to carry out that burden-of-proof task of saying whether or not a union ballot was substantially compliant? Others have made that point, but it has to be emphasised because, clearly, only the union itself can demonstrate whether the ballot was substantially compliant. How on earth can the employer make that decision when they have had no control over the running of it and do not have the necessary information? In the speech of the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington? I heard no explanation of how on earth an employer could be expected to do that. I suspect that that is because the hon. Gentleman knows that the employer could not possibly do it, and that therefore this is a tactic to ensure that the employer will never be able to stop any kind of strike action because they will never be in a position to do so. I hope that in his summing up the hon. Gentleman will give some examples of how he thinks employers would be able to demonstrate clearly that a ballot has not been substantially compliant.

Even though the original legislation was passed in 1992 by a Conservative Government—for the purposes that I have outlined—it was amended twice by the previous Labour Government, in 1999 and in 2004, and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) made clear, the provisions the hon. Gentleman does not like were supported by his party when it was in government. I have not researched this, and I would not want to embarrass anybody in particular, but I certainly hope the hon. Gentleman did not at that time vote for those proposals in a Bill that he must have thought was completely unacceptable. It would be interesting to discover how many of the Members who voted for it in 1999 are today up in arms and complaining that this is an unacceptable piece of legislation, because they seem to be complaining about their own legislation.

The Labour Government amended the legislation twice, therefore: in 1999 and again five years later. They had acquired five years of evidence of the workings of the legislation before they changed it for the second time, yet they did not take the opportunity to introduce the change the hon. Gentleman proposes. I can only presume that they did not do so because they thought the legislation was working perfectly well, and I venture to suggest that the situation is the same now.

The unions also argued in their earlier court cases that the current legislation was contrary to article 11 of the European convention on human rights. I am not a lawyer—and I am certainly not a human rights lawyer as I do not like the Human Rights Act and I would like it to be scrapped—so I do not know whether the unions are right. However, if the hon. Gentleman thinks the existing legislation is incompatible with that convention, his union members can take their case to the European Court of Human Rights. If he is right, they are therefore already protected in law. If he and the unions are absolutely certain that it contravenes the European convention on human rights they do not need to change the law through this Bill as they can be safe in the knowledge that the convention, which we are signed up to and which is enshrined in our legislation through the Human Rights Act, is in place.

It needs to be made clear at the outset that this Bill has some vehement opponents, ranging from think- tanks and the esteemed Mayor of London to the CBI. I believe that it was my hon. Friend the Member for Dover who said we are relying on business to get us out of the financial mess that we are in. We need the private sector to be flourishing, so we should take note of what it says with great interest. All those opponents argue that the balance of power between trade unions and employers has shifted too much towards the unions over the past 13 years. That touches on a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), who said that perhaps we ought to be looking not at giving further powers to the trade unions and shifting the balance even further towards them, but at whether or not there should be greater regulation of the industrial action that is causing so much damage to our economy. He asked whether we should be considering that, rather than making such action easier.

The points that the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington made seemed to suggest that his Bill was based on two cases. I could mention other cases, but I do not wish to detain the House unduly by going through all of them at length, as that would be unnecessary. The two cases that his remarks concentrated on were Network Rail v. RMT and British Airways v. Unite. I just want to touch on those cases and the reasons why they are not a good basis on which to introduce this Bill.

[Mr Nuttall]

I just want to clarify things so that we are talking about the right judgment. There are two cases with the same title and the only way of differentiating them is by the name of the judge involved, so is the British Airways case that my hon. Friend is referring to the one dealt with by Mrs Justice Cox, which I believe was the first one, or the second case, which came before Mr Justice McCombe? Will my hon. Friend be discussing both cases or just one?

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend. I know that he is a great advocate for rail commuters in his constituency—he has even had Westminster Hall debates on the problems that his commuters face. He is a great champion for his constituents and I agree with him. This is a very interesting point. If the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington wants to make it easier to have strike action, perhaps, as a quid pro quo, he might consider what my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois) says and introduce into his Bill a provision that some statutory consultation must take place with all affected parties before any strike action, so that people can understand the full consequences of that action. It might well be that when a union decides that it wants to go out on strike because of a grievance with a particular employer, it does not take into consideration the wider impact it will have on innocent third parties who are no part of the dispute at all. My hon. Friend makes a very good point—perhaps that is an anomaly that should be addressed in legislation. I hope that the Minister was listening carefully to his intervention, because he is in a far better position to do something about that than I am. It is certainly worth considering.

[Mr Nuttall]

I am not sure that my hon. Friend has picked up on exactly the right point. I thought that my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois) was making the point that if the novel concept of substantial compliance is introduced with regard to the balloting procedure for industrial action by trade unions, surely it would be right, fair and sensible to introduce a similar provision in the legislation relating to redundancies. Has my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) had any representations on what the unions would think if that were the case—if an employer needed only to comply substantially with the law when making people redundant?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. He turns the argument on its head: he says that rather than giving unions more arduous responsibilities so that they have to meet the same demands as employers, perhaps employers should be given the liberty to take the more flexible approach that the Labour party clearly wants to give to trade unions. Whichever way we consider it, it is perhaps unarguable that they should both be subject to the same treatment.

My hon. Friend is right to concentrate on substantial compliance, because it is, in many respects, a nonsensical concept to introduce into law. Virtually anybody could claim, when they flouted the law, that they were substantially compliant with it. If we extended the concept right across the criminal justice system, we would probably find that nobody could ever be found guilty of anything, because they could easily demonstrate that they were substantially compliant with the law—they had broken just one part of it. The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington should go back to the drawing board and think again about whether he wants to introduce the concept of substantial compliance in law.

Let me come back to the point that I was making about the impact that the strikes would have had if they had gone ahead. Three million passengers and freight users would have been affected, and the strike would have coincided with the first day back at work after the Easter holidays. That would have had a devastating impact. It is true to say that Network Rail had a robust contingency plan in place, but this comes back to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) made about the importance of giving notice to employers, so that they have an opportunity to mitigate the worst impacts of strike action.

Even with that robust contingency plan in place, Network Rail could have run only approximately 4,500 trains on the day of the strike action; the normal figure is 24,000. We are talking about 20% of the service running, and 80% not running. Some of the most important lines into the capital would have run at just 11%. That would have had a devastating effect on the economy of the country, and it is right that judges take that into consideration.

Turning to why the injunction was granted by the courts, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North said, minor errors are already covered by the existing legislation. I have already outlined the relatively narrow margin of victory in the vote for strike action. Most people would consider some of the errors to be not minor at all; I think that some people would consider them to be rather more major. Network Rail successfully argued that there were serious errors made in the balloting of members. For example, 11 signal boxes that no longer exist were balloted, including East Usk in Newport, Gwent. The RMT balloted it to gather the votes of six registered voters, although it had burnt down in a previous year. That is not a minor error—it is quite a serious error.

[Mr Nuttall]

I have to come back to this point: bearing in mind that the Bill also seeks to transfer the burden of proof to the employer, if the union does not know where its own members are employed, it is a bit rich to turn the law around and expect employers to do the job that we are talking about. In the case that my hon. Friend mentions, even the trade union could not get its notices sent to the right place.

Use of the Chamber (United Kingdom Youth Parliament)

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I look forward to hearing the hon. Gentleman outlining at length his measure of success for that particular debate. We can have a debate at length this evening about what the measure of success is for the Youth Parliament sitting here. It was clearly more successful than I thought it was and perhaps even more successful than he thought it was, because the Deputy Leader of the House told us that the turnout at the election was so much higher. That was something that I had never thought of as a measure of success, but clearly it was; it had nothing to do with any of this.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

Mention has been made of how much the young people enjoyed the experience and benefited from it. Does my hon. Friend agree that that was probably due in no small part to the fact that they had heeded the debate and thought that the occasion they were taking part in was unique? It now turns out that it was not as unique as they thought.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. A system of overkill may well be in operation here; these debates may become ten a penny to members of the Youth Parliament and they may not treat them as seriously as they did last time. That may or may not be the case—I guess time will tell.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

The problem with the hon. Lady’s intervention is that I have been able to speak for only a few seconds before people like her have tried to intervene. I have generously taken hon. Members’ interventions to allow them to have their say, but that has prevented me from setting out my argument. The solution to her dilemma is for her to allow me to continue my speech without intervening because she may then hear my arguments. It appears, however, that she is not interested in listening to anyone else’s point of view because she has already made up her mind. She might wish to pass on that lesson to members of the UK Youth Parliament, but I am not sure that it is particularly healthy.

I am all for the UK Youth Parliament and for encouraging young people to participate in politics, but is it not sad that the best way that the assembled brainpower of the House can think of to get more young people involved in politics, engaged in the political process and inspired to want to become MPs is to allow them to hold a debate once a year in the House of Commons Chamber? Is that the depth of our imagination?

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend touches on the crucial point that simply holding a debate—a one-off debate or annual debates—in the Chamber runs the risk of taking away these people’s lifelong interest. Does he agree that one’s interest in politics over a long time is driven by the desire to sit on these green Benches?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. May I remind Members of the procedure of the House? Interventions are supposed to be brief, not speeches in their own right. I know that everyone is really interested in the debate and that the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) has said that he would like to make progress on his main points, so if interventions were a little briefer, that would help.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

The point is that I am a Conservative—as is my hon. Friend—and the principle of Conservatism is embodied in the saying, “If it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.” As a Conservative, I believe that the onus is on those who propose change to make the case for that change. The case for no change does not need to be made. The point that I am making in my contribution—if I am allowed to get on with it—is that the case for change is a poor one. All of the arguments that have been given are spurious and do not stand up to much scrutiny. I urge my hon. Friend to ask other people to make the case for change, because they have not done so thus far.

We were told earlier that allowing members of the Youth Parliament to sit here will inspire them to get involved in politics. That is one of the arguments that was made last time. It was said that we must allow the UK Youth Parliament to sit here, because if we do so they will be inspired and become interested in politics. That is a curious argument because, by definition, those people who are members of the Youth Parliament are already interested in politics. That is why they are there. If our motivation is to try to inspire more young people to get involved in politics, we should be asking those young people who are not members of the Youth Parliament to come and have a debate here, because that might encourage them to get involved in the Youth Parliament. Why would we want to limit the opportunity to those members of the Youth Parliament who are already interested in politics?

[Mr Nuttall]

Does my hon. Friend agree that what is likely to inspire young people is not so much where their organisation meets, but the strong opinions of someone who is prepared to stand up and speak out for the things that they really believe in—as he is doing?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Unlike all the previous interventions that I have taken, he has pre-empted a point that I wished to make myself.

DNA and CCTV (Crime Prevention)

Debate between Philip Davies and David Nuttall

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Westminster Hall

[Philip Davies]

The hon. Lady makes a fantastic point. I certainly have never had anybody in my surgery making such a request—quite the opposite. If I am ever lobbied by any of my constituents regarding CCTV, it is because they want more of it—they would like some of it down their street, for tackling crime.

Of those surveyed for a 2005 Home Office report into public attitudes towards CCTV, 82% either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “Overall, the advantages of CCTV outweigh the disadvantages.” I do lots of surveys in my constituency, and fear of crime is always the top issue, whatever else is in the news. It seems, therefore, that the public, once again, are streets ahead of politicians in recognising the importance of these crime-fighting capabilities.

Many opponents of CCTV and ANPR use this “civil liberties” argument, but I fail to understand how footage taken by CCTV cameras on a public street invades anyone’s privacy. If someone chooses to walk down a street, or go shopping in a town centre, they have made a conscious decision to do so in the public domain and their actions are clearly not private. I could understand the concern if it were proposed that CCTV cameras were put into people’s bedrooms or bathrooms, because those are clearly private domains, but the only thing that a public CCTV camera can possibly do is prevent people from committing crime, or from doing something antisocial or something that they should not otherwise be doing. It does not impinge on their freedom to go about their daily, lawful business.

The same civil liberties argument seems to be used against the DNA database, with people claiming that innocents’ profiles should be removed. Again, I do not understand for the life of me why forensic laboratories holding somebody’s DNA infringes that person’s liberty; it does not prevent anybody from going about their daily, lawful business. We all have a national insurance number, which is used for identification purposes, and I am sure that hon. Members know the benefits of national insurance numbers in identifying constituents when corresponding with various parts of the state, for example the Child Support Agency and Revenue and Customs for tax credits. How is a DNA number different from a national insurance number? The use of DNA is heavily restricted by legislation that permits its retention only for purposes related to the prevention or detection of crime.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

My hon. Friend rightly mentions that at birth everyone is issued with a national insurance number. It seems that if a DNA sample was linked to a child’s national insurance number when they were registered in the national insurance system, the allegation that the retention of DNA profiles is unfair would be eradicated at a stroke.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. If he is arguing that we should take people’s DNA at birth, I certainly do not disagree with that. I am afraid, however, that we are in the position of trying to persuade the Government not to take people off the DNA system, rather than to add people to it. I would rather try to win the first battle before fighting for more ambitious targets, but I am sure that if anyone can persuade the Government it is my hon. Friend, and I will happily support him in any way that I can.

The use of DNA is highly regulated. During the application for a judicial review of the retention of DNA in the divisional court, the now Lord Justice Leveson stated:

“the material stored says nothing about the physical makeup, characteristics, or life of the person to whom they belong.”

The whole reason for introducing the legislation that allowed the retention of data was based on two very serious cases. One was the rape of an elderly woman and the other was a murder. In both cases, the DNA matches of the perpetrators had to be ignored, as prior to the rape and the murder the individuals concerned had been arrested for offences but not convicted. In the murder case, there was even a conviction based on the DNA evidence, but it was quashed by the Court of Appeal, which ruled that the evidence should not have been admitted in the first place. That means that somebody who was clearly a convicted murdered walked free. It was not the first time that had happened, and it will not be the last, if those calling for fewer people to be on the DNA database get their way. I would like to know how on earth that fits with the Government’s first duty to protect the public.

If we accept the Government’s suggestion of removing the unconvicted people from the DNA database, murderers such as Ronald Castree would be free to roam the streets and to kill again. Castree stabbed 11-year-old Lesley Molseed in 1975, when she was on the way to the shop to buy bread for her mother. Stefan Kiszcko was wrongfully convicted and jailed for 16 years for the murder, until 2005 when Castree’s DNA was taken after he had been arrested, but not charged, over another sexual attack. A cold case of Molseed’s murder provided a match with Castree’s DNA, which would not have been on the database if the Government and those other people had their way.

Figures from the National Policing Improvement Agency state that, in 2008-09, 32,209 crimes were connected in which a DNA match was available or played a part. The latest annual report on the national DNA database concluded that six in 10 crime-scene profiles loaded to the database were matched to a subject’s profile. Many violent criminals have only been jailed because their DNA was taken when they committed a minor offence.

Dennis Fitzgerald was sentenced to eight years in prison for the rape of a woman in November 1987. Nasser Mohammed was jailed in 2008 for raping a woman in 2002, after his DNA was taken when he was picked up for a minor offence. Often, a DNA match is the only thing that brings perpetrators to justice. Harry Musson raped a woman in her own bed while high on horse tranquillisers, and was jailed after 19 years when South Yorkshire police used DNA technology to match his profile to the crime scene. The case was reopened in March 2007, following advances in DNA science. Similarly, Neil Hague was jailed for six years in January 2010 for raping a woman on her way to church in 1987.

I could go on—I have case after case of people who have been convicted simply using DNA matches. I know that the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) has been prominent with her campaign about anonymity in rape cases, but that, I suggest gently, is to me a sideshow compared with what might happen to rape convictions if we start taking lots of people’s DNA off the database.

The statistics can also speak for themselves about the so-called innocent people on the DNA database. In 2008-09, a research project looked at 639 profile matches in murder, manslaughter and rape cases. The results show that 11% of those matches belonged to individuals who did not have a conviction at the time of the match, but whose DNA had been retained on the database. If the law was changed to stop those people being on there, they would not have been brought to justice—we are talking about 70 serious offenders who would still have been out on the streets.

I am interested to know what my ministerial colleague believes. Our right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), now the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, said in a question-and-answer session in 2007:

“We shouldn't forget that the DNA database has enabled the police to solve a huge number of crimes, including very serious ones. I myself would have no objection to my DNA being put on it.”

I endorse that—I tried to give my DNA to the local police force in my area, because I am such a keen supporter. However, I was told that I was not able to do so because I was not a suspect or involved in a previous crime. I have written to the Home Secretary to ask why people who volunteer their DNA are being refused the right to put it in the database. I await her reply.

The DNA database can also be used to acquit the innocent. The first murder conviction using DNA evidence, in 1988, proved the innocence of another suspect. Richard Buckland was suspected of separately assaulting and murdering two schoolgirls in 1983 and 1986, but subsequent comparison of his DNA sample with DNA found on the bodies of the two victims proved that he was not the killer. Colin Pitchfork was later arrested, having been one of the 5,000 local villagers who volunteered their DNA after which a match was found.

Another famous case is that of Sean Hodgson, who was wrongly imprisoned for 27 years for the rape and murder of Teresa de Simone in 1979. The police ignored a confession at the time by David Lace, and not until his body was exhumed in 2009 and his DNA cross-checked was he found to be the real killer.

Even if the Government disregard what I think about DNA and CCTV, and disregard what the public think, I hope that they will listen to what the professionals think—those professionals who have to deal with the repercussions of any change in policy.

Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, said:

“DNA sample analysis plays an important part in protecting the public, and in the detection and prosecution of serious crime, as well as enabling the proper exculpation of the innocent.”

Interestingly, he also stated that a prosecution would not be brought on the basis of DNA evidence alone, as there must be appropriate supporting evidence. However, he went on to say that

“a suspect's failure to account for the presence of his DNA at the scene of a crime may, in some circumstances, constitute appropriate supporting evidence.”

Paul McKeever, chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, has given his own DNA. He says:

“The larger the better from a policing perspective.”

Sir Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers said:

“DNA puts a person in a place and then they have to explain that.”

Lord Justice Selby, one of England's most experienced Appeal Court judges, told the BBC that he thinks—like my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) —that the entire UK population and every visitor to Britain should be put on a national DNA database. He thinks that the current system

“means that a great many people who are walking the streets, and whose DNA would show them guilty of crimes, go free.”

That seems to accord with the view of the United Arab Emirates, which announced in October 2009 that it will create a national DNA database covering the entire resident population.

We must also be careful making changes to the rules on DNA retention while looking to the Scottish model as the holy grail. First, we are not comparing like with like, as there is a distinctly different judicial system in Scotland. Secondly, the Scottish system for dealing with DNA is not fairer than the UK’s at all. The DNA of adults arrested or charged but not convicted of violent or sexual offences can be held for an initial three-year period—an important point, because if a sheriff believes that there are reasons for keeping such data beyond the three-year period, he can extend it for an additional two years, and so on.

In the cases of the most serious crimes, it could be many years before a further offence is committed by someone cleared or not charged with an earlier criminal act. That concerns me greatly—the proposals to destroy what could be potentially crucial information need to be carefully considered before people who have committed a crime are let off.