Provision of Services Regulations 2009

My Lords, I start by declaring an interest. I run a business, publishing the Good Schools Guide, which is likely to be affected by this directive. I agree with my noble friend Lord De Mauley that it is important that businesses be told about this directive, and I note from the Explanatory Memorandum that some desultory contacts have been made with the major organisations. To get to the wide range of service providers, much more is needed. I suggest that it might go out with people’s VAT returns, for example. A VAT return is an official document to which you can fairly well guarantee people will pay attention. It is a common method of communication on taxation and other matters. Certainly, the efforts made to date have not reached me in any form, and I hope that in the coming months I shall hear something from the Government. My particular interest is in Regulation 45, which concerns street trading and its application to pedlars. Over the past few days there has been considerable correspondence between the secretary of the Merits Committee and the department, for which I am grateful. One part of that reads as follows: ""There are no organisations which represent the interest of pedlars, however, BIS is shortly to consult on the future of pedlar legislation"." That means both that this is the department responsible for pedlars and that it does not know what the pedlar organisations are. A moment’s consideration of all the legislation that has passed through this House and the other place over the past three years, started by a whole procession of local authorities, would have enabled the department to know exactly who the pedlar organisations were, who represented them and who worked for them. I have calmed down now but it made me astonishingly angry that the department either should have been so careless of the needs of those for whom it is legislating or was telling an out and out lie. I find it difficult to know which of those it was. It is astonishing: how can you say that you are in charge of pedlars and not know what has been happening in Parliament over the past three years and therefore know exactly who to approach? As I hope the department has found out over the past couple of days, the pedlars are well organised, they have a well established, representative system and they are quite capable of reacting to legislation. The latest communication that I have received from the pedlars’ side of business reads as follows: ""The Opinion of Counsel for BIS dictates an arbitrary removal of the protection of a Pedlars Certificate from some currently lawful pedlars. We are informed that under the Services Regulation they will not require a Certificate. Implementation of the Regulations will immediately criminalise them under the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982 for not having legal authority (Pedlars Certificate) to carry out their activities"." I do not know where this matter rests. I understand that I cannot press it to a Division today but, when we come to approve these regulations in the Chamber, I very much hope that the matter will have been settled between the department and its newly discovered friends, the pedlars’ representatives. I hope that we shall know that this section does not harm pedlars or, if it does, that the Government will say at that point what steps they intend to take to rectify the harm caused by their own omissions. If we do not get that assurance when we come to approve the regulations in the Chamber, I shall certainly press the matter to a Division.