Manchester City Council Bill [Lords](By Order)

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention and welcome his support. The case that I have just quoted prompted me to examine the issue in more detail. Although I cannot pretend in any way to be the peer of my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon), the detail that I discovered makes me an ardent supporter of the legislation under discussion. The situation is like a game of cat and mouse, but I am not sure who is the cat and who is the mouse. One would normally expect the enforcement authorities to be depicted as the cat, but in some respects the traders whom they try to pin down are the cats, and the police, the courts and the council turn out to be the mice. That is what gives rise to the frustration that has generated not only the enacted private Bills that now benefit other parts of the country, but the Bills before us and the 50 that we understand are in the pipeline. Councils have reached the end of their tether on the issue. They have lobbied us and found that, currently, as has already been said, the only possible way of proceeding is to go through this very convoluted and—let us face it—expensive process. My back-of-an-envelope calculation, for what it is worth, shows that private Bills already cover a sizeable chunk of the country—one tenth, perhaps more. The six authorities that are pursuing their Bills will add to that mass, and if there are 50 in the pipeline, a significant proportion of the population—even though it might still be a minority—must be covered by the various authorities concerned. Some defenders of the existing legislation have made great play of the current licensing arrangements, but in reality those people who have tried to get to grips with it and seen the arrangements in operation in our areas know that they are ineffective and that the police do not have the resources to enforce them—nor should we expect them to. We have twice heard the definition in section 3 of the 1871 Act—I do not intend to repeat it—but my perception is that the issuing of a pedlars certificate does not follow any national guidance or procedure. It is based on a police officer issuing the certificate, which, as we know, may then be used anywhere in the country. There may be exceptions, but many certificates are issued on the basis of nominal checks. There is no procedure to follow up on certificates that have expired, and the National Association of British Market Authorities has considerable evidence of forged and out-of-date certificates being used to support pedlars' activities. The police and trading standards officers have also told NABMA that many unlawful street traders using pedlars certificates are involved with crime syndicates, and that very large sums of money are involved—either directly, from the sale of counterfeit goods, or as a front for more sinister activities. I appreciate that we do not want to attack legitimate and reasonable pedlars, but it is often difficult to address those wider issues in the public interest without there being some fallout or innocent victims. The question for the House is always one of balance.