Canterbury City Council Bill

I do not want to do that, Mr. Deputy Speaker. My only question is whether the contents of the two Bills satisfy the European convention on human rights. Ultimately, however, that will be a matter for the courts, unless the House decides to prevent the Bills from reaching the statute book. Having said that, they have yet to go to the other place, and Members there might take an interest in them—after all, they took an interest in the Bournemouth Borough Council Bill and the Manchester City Council Bill and their compliance with the convention. I need not expand any further. I hope, however, that it is clear that that issue was one of the major matters debated in Committee. Clause 4 of the Canterbury Bill, which deals with the definition of street trading, is slightly different from that in the Nottingham Bill—if my memory serves me well. Clause 4(2) of the Canterbury Bill has only two paragraphs, whereas the same subsection in the Nottingham Bill has three. The extra paragraph refers to""the purchasing of or offering to purchase any ticket for gain or reward"." On the face of it, that seems rather similar to the point about touting in clause 11 of the Canterbury City Council Bill as currently drafted. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) takes a particular interest in that issue because he serves on the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport—what I would still describe as "recreational activities"—which has being doing a study into touting, so I would be interested to hear any contribution that he would like to make on those provisions. The main point that I would like to make about clause 4 of both Bills is that it extends the provisions not just to goods, but to services. Since the Bills were produced, however, a provision has been passed in the EU called the services directive. That directive is mentioned in the consultation document to which the Minister referred in his brief remarks. Page 29 of that document sets out a description of the services directive and a provisional conclusion, subject to consultation, drawn by the Government, which says:""In order to ensure proper implementation of the Services Directive on 31 December 2009"—" in other words, the end of last month—""the UK and Scottish Governments intend to amend the Pedlars Act by removing service providers from its scope."" However, it will not have escaped your notice, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that under the provisions of clause 4 of both Bills, service providers are to be added to the scope of the relevant legislation. It is therefore reasonable to ask the question, when we are considering whether the Bills should proceed, whether the provisions of clause 4 are redundant or, even worse, incompatible with the services directive, which""requires member States to remove any authorisation schemes which might act as a deterrent or a barrier to service providers from other member States operating in the UK."" The consultation document produced by the Minister's Department also says:""In the UK and Scottish Government's view the pedlar certification scheme amounts to an authorisation scheme which cannot easily be justified on the criteria set out in the Services Directive."" The document continues:""To meet the deadline for implementation the Department has decided to remove pedlars who provide only services from the"" pedlars regime, and says that""implementing legislation is due to come into force on 28 December 2009. After that date, pedlars of services only will no longer need a pedlar's certificate."" As happens with any consultation paper, the Government have done a cost-benefit analysis into the extent to which the changes might impact upon pedlars, and have concluded:""we understand that those local authorities who apply street trading licensing to service providers are required to justify that those regimes operate within the requirements of the services directive. If they are unable to do so those authorisation schemes will need to be removed insofar as they apply to service providers."" It would be helpful if the promoters of the Bills could explain how the changes proposed by clause 4 are compatible with the services directive, which I concede has come up over the horizon since the Bills were originally brought forward.