Canterbury City Council Bill

For reasons that have been made clear on a number of occasions, I am not yet convinced of the merits of either Bill. I should like to cover a number of aspects of their contents, but first I wish to consider the European convention on human rights. In the explanatory memorandums to both the Canterbury and Nottingham Bills, there is a statement that in the view of the respective councils the provision of the Bills are""compatible with the Convention rights."" You will know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that that issue was referred to in the deliberations of the Unopposed Bill Committee that took place to examine these Bills and the Leeds City Council and Reading Borough Council Bills. There was one Committee for all those Bills. A representative of the solicitors Sharpe Pritchard, Mr. Alastair Lewis, appeared as agent for all four councils. Quite rightly and properly, he went into whether the Bills were compatible with the convention. He drew attention to the view taken by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which was that it should be for the Unopposed Bill Committee to ensure that the Bills were compatible, as the councils had asserted on the front of them. He reported that the Minister had said that he was""satisfied that the Promoters have undertaken a full assessment of ECHR compatibility"" and saw no reason to dispute their conclusions. However, he continued that the Minister had not seen the evidence that the promoters relied on to justify a restriction as being in the general interest. It was for that reason that he went into detail about how he felt the evidence justified the conclusion that it was in the general interest to introduce the restrictions in the Bills. As confirmed and conceded by the agent from Sharpe Pritchard, article 1 of protocol 1 to the European convention is relevant because the economic benefit deriving from the licence, which in this case would include a pedlar's certificate,""has been held to be capable of constituting a possession within the meaning"" of that article. He spelled out the three rules contained in the article: first, that the control of the use of property must be in accordance with the law; secondly, that it must be in accordance with the general interest; and thirdly—this is the issue that should cause us to pay careful attention—that it must be proportionate to the aim. We are talking about restrictions upon a person holding a pedlar's licence exercising their right throughout the length and breadth of the country. In setting out his view to the Unopposed Bill Committee members, Mr. Lewis said that—