Tom Brake
Main Page: Tom Brake (Liberal Democrat - Carshalton and Wallington)London Local Authorities Bill [Lords] (By Order)
Tom Brake Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
The Bill is deeply disagreeable and it is remarkable that the House of Commons should spend so much time considering something that would take freedoms from law-abiding people in London, particularly in the City of Westminster.
What is the purpose of the Bill’s opening part? It is to give to borough officials powers that are normally reserved for policemen. One might go out of this House and some person employed by Westminster city council, with or without a peaked cap, might come up and say that he does not like what one is doing because one is selling a car over the internet or doing some other desperately evil activity. That employee will then levy a fine and will levy a second fine if the person does not tell him their name and address. I thought it was no right of anybody’s to demand the names and addresses of people going about their lawful business, but, under the Bill, someone who refuses to give it to some official from Westminster city council will commit an offence. I do not want to tell officials from Westminster city council my address—they could look it up on the electoral register, which would not take them very long. That is an initial intrusion on freedoms that we ought to value and that ought to be at the forefront of what the House does.
Having dealt with clauses 4 and 5, let me address clause 8, which is one of the meanest-minded measures we have seen recently. A few years ago, Westminster city council was all for a café culture: “Let’s have people putting chairs out on the pavement and have people drinking in the street”, it said. “Let’s have them pretending they are in Venice or Florence; in spite of the weather, they can think that the sun is shining because they are out on the street.” Now, having persuaded a few restaurants and cafés to put out some tables and chairs, the self-same council wants to say, “You’ve done what we asked and we are very pleased with this charming and delightful café culture”—otherwise known as binge drinking—“and because of that we want to charge you for it.” Does that seem a reasonable way for a council to behave, and is it proper for us as a Parliament to give it a special bit of law to make itself obnoxious to a free people?
My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) has gone through the hygiene aspects, but I thought I was elected on a platform of deregulation. The Labour Government, for all their virtues, were great ones for regulating and for insisting that everything should be signed, sealed and delivered. Even in a church, there has to be a sign saying that people are not allowed to smoke to deter all those who used to go into a church just to roll a cigarette, light up and smoke away.
There are signs everywhere and the mass of bureaucracy is upon us. Now, the Conservative Government want to ensure that when someone wanders into a café for a small cup of coffee, tea or whatever his preference happens to be, there must be a sign saying the café is hygienic. Otherwise, he might be poisoned by whatever desperate thing it is that the café puts in its tea. Is this necessary? Is it proportionate? Is it a sensible use of the money of business to spend it on putting up signs when people who go into restaurants know that there are forms of regulation and whether the food is any good. If they do not like it, they can have an argument with the restaurateur, say that they are not paying and tell all their friends not to go there. The free market copes here much more adequately than increased regulation.
I am glad to say that the Minister is against all the stuff on housing. Those proposals concern me because they are broadly an attack on private property, which is one of the mainstays of our constitutional settlement. The rights of private property are that which underpins a free society—the right for people to own their own home or to let it out to somebody else—as opposed to what is in clause 21, whereby the self-same peaked-capped man who was fining me for refusing to tell him my name and address then barges into somebody’s house just to check that they are complying with regulations.
As I understood it, the aim of Her Majesty’s Government was to ensure that the right to enter houses applied only when a warrant had been issued—a warrant duly signed by a magistrate—so as to protect us from aggressive officialdom. On the one hand, there will be warrants; on the other, officials from particular and peculiar councils will barge in on people in their homes or in houses that have been let out, telling them what they may or may not do.
I shall finish by referring to the trading of cars on the internet. The absurdity here is palpable. Why can I not put a little sticker in my car, offering to sell it? If somebody wanders past and says, “That’s worth £100,” and I accept it, surely that is commerce at its most basic and simple level. Surely it is what gets people into the culture of trading and activity, and leads to the prosperity of a capitalist society.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is much bigger than I am, so I would not want to get into an argument with him.
I accept absolutely the points that my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset made about selling cars on the street and via the internet. I came into politics because I wanted to try to encourage people to be entrepreneurs, to believe in the free market, to sell their goods and to be buyers and sellers. I do not want the Government or local government sticking their noses into every aspect of people’s lives. If people want to sell a car and somebody wants to buy it, and they are both happy with the price, why not let them get on with it? Why do we need government, either local or central, interfering in every aspect of people’s lives? Surely we should try to encourage people to do things themselves, so that they do not have to go to big car dealerships. Why do we not just let them get on with it and stop interfering?
Philip Davies
If somebody is legally able to park their vehicle on a particular part of the street, it does not matter to me whether it is my next-door neighbour’s car, a car somebody is selling, or an ice cream van. My suggested solution to the hon. Gentleman, to which he may not have given any consideration, is that if he does not think that cars should be parked in a particular location, his local authority should put down double yellow lines so that people are not allowed to park there. If people are allowed to park at a particular point, what on earth does it matter whether it is my next-door neighbour’s car or somebody else’s car with a small sticker saying, “For sale: £500”. It seems to make a big difference to the hon. Gentleman, but I cannot see why. I ask him to reflect on why he decides that he is a Liberal when he has such an illiberal approach towards people selling their property.
I wish to concentrate on the licensing aspects of the Bill. My hon. Friend the Minister made a perfectly good point about clause 23, which is wholly unnecessary. A couple of years ago, the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, on which I serve, undertook a report on the Licensing Act 2003. We took evidence about certain clubs, including lap-dancing clubs, and we made recommendations about how best they might be licensed. As my hon. Friend made clear, the previous Government, in the last throes of the last Parliament, created new legislation enabling lap-dancing clubs to be licensed as sex encounter establishments—something that people may or may not agree with. As he said, the job has been done. The last thing anybody needs is a London Local Authorities Bill to start trampling all over the licensing regime dealt with by the previous Government and which does much of what the Bill seeks to do. I seek confirmation from him that he will strike out clause 23, which even the biggest supporters of the Bill would concede is completely and utterly unnecessary.
My main point concerns the seizure of goods. I cannot emphasise enough how absolutely outrageous the Bill’s provisions are in this regard. The only fair way to do this is to quote a small section of the explanatory notes. I would be astonished if people who read it were not completely outraged by what is proposed. It says:
“Westminster City Council officers already have power to seize items used in unlawful street trading where the items are required for evidential purposes, or where the items are subject to forfeiture by the courts. On a street trading prosecution, if there is a conviction, the magistrates’ court can order the forfeiture of any goods seized in relation to the offence.”
So the provision is already in statute. It continues:
“Authorised officers cannot exercise their powers of seizure unless they suspect that a street trading offence has been committed.”
The London local authorities are complaining that they cannot exercise their powers of seizure unless they suspect that a street trading offence has been committed. That is not good enough for them: they want to be able to seize these goods even when they do not suspect that an offence has been committed. They say that Westminster city council officers already
“use the powers regularly in the West End”
to deal with
“unlawful sales of hotdogs and other hot food from portable stands.”
But they complain:
“City council officers are unable to seize hotdog trolleys until the vending begins.”
That is not good enough for the poor local authorities—they cannot seize these things until an offence has been committed and somebody actually trades. So they want, through the Bill, to
“enable City Council officers”—
pettifogging bureaucrats in the local authority with, no doubt, as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset said, their peaked caps—
“to seize receptacles which are in a street and which the officers have reasonable cause to suspect are intended to be used in connection with a street trading offence.”
Can Members imagine where we would be if the police started arresting everybody who was walking down the street because they might go into the nearest shop and start shoplifting? We are giving such a power to council officers, which is totally unacceptable. Any hon. Member who supports a Bill that provides such powers should be ashamed of themselves if they believe that they support freedoms in this country.