Manchester City Council Bill [Lords](By Order)

Again, the hon. Gentleman moves me on to my next point. That is what is unfair about the pedlar who abuses the system. Stall holders who pay business rates, operate in a proper framework of regulation and demonstrate a proper desire to work with the local authority and the wider community face competition, which they accept goes with the street trader licence, albeit that the licence carries fewer overheads and all the rest. Street traders and shopkeepers find themselves disadvantaged when they are in competition with the pedlar, who has no regulation and can effectively sell what he wants because of the almost total lack of control that we have discussed. The problem in all that is that the ability to control the pedlar is minimal. Although the concept of peddling is, in common-sense terms, one of constant movement—the door-to-door trader, or even the person who walks the streets with helium-filled balloons or miniature kites, whom my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) is concerned about—the person with the fixed stand on wheels has to move only every 20 minutes, as case law has demonstrated. As long as the stall is effectively mobile enough to move a matter of yards down the street, the person can avoid the street trader legislation and, as a pedlar, producing a peddling licence, can say, ““I am operating within the technical limits of the law.”” The technical limits of the law are not fair to the proper street trader or stall holder.