Manchester City Council Bill [Lords](By Order)

Let us take that as an example. Somebody has to approach the person and find out whether they have a pedlars certificate. They may say that it is not on them. They can be warned that they must produce it. One such person gave the address of a local women's refuge as the address from which he was operating. Let us suppose that the person has a legitimate pedlars licence, which has cost him only about 12 quid, and he produces that; none the less, he is static. How is that to be proved? Answer: an official must watch him for a period. Some of those people are organised with runners, often youngsters, who will warn if a council official approaches. A relatively limited number of council officials in Canterbury are involved in such matters. Let us suppose that the official is not noticed and that the trader has not been tipped off. The official notices that the trader remains in the same place for a long time—as we heard earlier, this is all an expensive official's time ticking by—and is then required to give the person a verbal warning. That has to be followed on the next occasion with a written warning. Only then can proceedings be adopted. However, the penalties are terribly small—much, much lower than what it costs to be a legitimate street trader. They are seen as a modest overhead, but to achieve that, an official will have been deployed on at least three separate occasions and sent to court, and a lawyer will have been employed. My constituency is a relatively poor one. Our unemployment rate, each time I look, is roughly the national average, but within Canterbury city, which is the poorest part of the Canterbury city council area, we have one ward—next to the cathedral—that has a national designation for deprivation. The council is a busy council, and council officers have a great deal to do. In our broken society, many of those tasks, sadly, relate to antisocial behaviour. The last thing I want as the Member of Parliament is to see council officials wasting their time going through all the mechanics involved in enforcing the provisions of a Victorian Act that was never designed with that in mind. I suspect that, as was hinted at earlier, we could fix most of the problem by putting in clause 5, I think—the clause which effectively states that the exemption from the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982 for pedlars should apply only if they conduct their business house to house. Many of the other clauses, which are common across all the Bills that we are discussing, relate to snapping up the enforcement. I end with three or four examples of the types of problem we have had. In one case, legitimate street traders complained that when the illegal traders set their stalls up, they often send somebody, usually a young girl, round to check the prices being charged by the legitimate traders selling the same kind of goods. Because they do not have the same overheads, they then underprice those traders and undercut the market. It might be said that that gives the consumer a better chance, but the problem is—we heard a harrowing example relating to a shopkeeper earlier—that operating without the licence that a real shop has to provide and without the annual check-up to which a legitimate street trader is subject makes it so easy to undercut in that way. Counterfeit goods are commonly sold and people often complain that when they bring poor goods back, the person has gone. I understand from the police that stolen goods are often marketed in this way and that some of these people have even got into drugs. Let me provide some examples of court cases to illustrate how the system simply does not work. One man was prosecuted three times. Let us remember what prosecuting someone entails: first, we have to find and monitor these people; then we have to warn them; then we must warn them in writing; and finally we get to prosecution. Then there was a second prosecution and then a third. This man received a £50 fine, £300 costs on the last offence and a conditional discharge. In other words, he got off at a much lower total cost than if he had paid for a proper street licence. No organisation funded by the taxpayer should be expected to go through that kind of nonsense. One man caught selling items, as I mentioned earlier, gave a woman's refuge as his address to the relevant official. Some people have been prosecuted up to four times. We have also experienced problems as a result of people being physically and verbally aggressive when they are checked up on. That can be difficult for officials to deal with.