Bournemouth Borough Council Bill [HL]

My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill do now pass. Both this and the Manchester City Council Bill were deemed to have been read a second time. However, petitions were lodged against them, as a result of which they were referred to a Select Committee of this House chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Harrison. He and his colleagues on the Select Committee did a really thorough job in examining both the terms of the Bill and the views of the petitioners. We all owe them a debt of gratitude for that. As noble Lords will know, their conclusions have been published in a special report. I have an interest to declare in that, for nearly 30 years, I was MP for the constituency of Bournemouth West. It is 24 years since I ceased to be a Member of Parliament for it, and I am proud of the fact that I am an honorary freeman of the borough of Bournemouth. The Bill deals with street trading, which has generally been subject to statutory control by local authorities. Schedule 4 to the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982 enables local authorities to control street trading by designating streets in their area as prohibited streets, where it is not permitted, or as consent or licensed streets, where it is permitted subject to the grant of the licence. The 1982 Act enabled councils to control the sale of goods, but not the sale of services. Clause 4 of the Bill proposes to give powers to the council to enable it to control services. Examples of services are, as I have been given them, hair braiding, tooth whitening and henna tattooing. Bournemouth is a premier holiday destination. In the last year, more than 5 million visitors came either as day visitors or to stay one night or more, so noble Lords will understand that tourism is of key significance to the borough’s economy. The council must be constantly vigilant in a highly competitive environment to ensure that the appeal, attractions and overall image of Bournemouth remain to the fore, both nationally and internationally. Illegal traders are beginning to tarnish that image. They descend on Bournemouth from Easter to Christmas and focus on the main favoured locations where there is the greatest concentration of visitors and holidaymakers. It requires a very considerable effort on the part of the authorities to try to control those activities. In fact, the present control regime is totally inadequate. Illegal street trading covers not only services but the sale of goods. Examples are the vendors of sunglasses, kites and items such as rattlesnake eggs, which are a combination of two magnets which, if moved around or thrown up in the air, rattle together resembling the sound of a rattlesnake. Because they contain magnets, noble Lords will readily appreciate that if they are used by or in the vicinity of someone who has a pacemaker it could cause serious mischief. Many of the goods are of dubious quality and are certainly below the minimum standards for health and safety purposes. They are often sold by people who describe themselves as pedlars. Trading by a person acting as an authorised pedlar is exempt from the street trading regime under the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982. To be a legitimate pedlar, the person must have a certificate issued by the police and must keep on the move in the pursuit of the trade. A pedlar’s licence costs only £12.50 per annum. Once issued, the activity can be carried on anywhere in England, Wales or Northern Ireland, except where an Act in terms similar to this Bill exists. The right to be a licensed pedlar is derived from the Pedlars Act 1871. The Act defines, in words delightfully resonant of an age long gone, what a pedlar is: "““The term pedlar means any hawker, pedlar, petty chapman, tinker, castor of metals, mender of chairs, or other person who, without any horse or other beast bearing or drawing burden, travels and trades on foot and goes from town to town or to other men’s houses carrying to sell or exposing for sale any goods, wares or merchandise or procuring orders for goods, wares or merchandise immediately to be delivered, or selling or offering for sale his skill in handicraft””." I am sure noble Lords can imagine the great difficulties of bringing before a court a case where an attempt was being made to prosecute a so-called pedlar for not being an authorised pedlar. What happens in practice is that the pedlars sometimes wait to be challenged, and they can stay at the end of a street for something like 20 minutes. As like as not, they will move to the other end of the street, where they will stay for another 20 minutes, and so it goes on. If a prosecution is successful, the fine is extremely limited, probably less than £100, but the legal fees for the council could be in excess of £1,000, so it hardly recoups even its basic costs from the exercise on which it has embarked. The production of evidence is extremely difficult to secure and involves time-consuming work by officials and police. Last year in the borough of Bournemouth it is estimated that it cost the council about £12,000 in enforcement and prosecution of illegal traders. All of this is extremely unfair for legitimate market traders and shopkeepers. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, will give some expression to that view, because he is knowledgeable on the subject and has wide experience of the marketplace. Pedlars should not be street traders. They are required to move from place to place. Clause 5 amends the appropriate schedule in the 1982 Act to make it clear that a pedlar will not be able to trade in a prohibited street unless trading from place to place, and will not be able to trade in a consent street unless he has first obtained consent from the council, which involves both parties in thorough research and investigation. However, in any street that is neither a consent street nor a prohibited street, the pedlar will be able to carry on trading as before. Clauses 6 to 9 set out a regime by which council officers and police are able to seize items which they believe are being used in the course of unlawful street trading, and the courts are given power to forfeit such items if a successful prosecution is secured. Clauses 10 to 14 set out a fixed penalty regime for street trading offences. The provisions enable the recipient of a fixed penalty notice to discharge any criminal liability by the payment of a fixed penalty. The Select Committee made a strong recommendation that the time is surely long since past when individual councils should be put to the heavy cost of bringing forward private legislation to deal with this nuisance. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, will speak to that point and I may safely leave it to the Minister to answer it, but there is a great deal of strength in the case that the committee put forward in the recommendation in its special report. There is no doubt that this Bill is urgently needed. Many improvements are under way further to enhance the reputation and prestige of Bournemouth. It would be a grave error if these were allowed to be damaged by illicit street trading. To underpin the planned work to ensure that Bournemouth remains a first-class destination resort, I hope that this Bill will find its way quickly to the statute book. Moved, That the Bill do now pass.—(Lord Eden of Winton.)