Canterbury City Council Bill

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and I am sure that if these Bills had had a Report stage, an amendment along the lines he is suggesting—seeking to remove clause 2(b) from the Nottingham City Council Bill—would probably have received a good deal of support across the House. I know that the Select Committee of which my hon. Friend is a member commands great respect and his point is popular with people outside the House. Again, this problem is a consequence of the fact that we are having a Third Reading debate in which we may discuss only the contents of the Bill, and if we do not like those contents, our only effective option is to vote against the Bill as a whole. I hope that my hon. Friend will join me in doing so in due course. Let me raise another issue. I shall come back to the issue of pedlars in clause 5 "in due course", as the Minister says. There is a lot of concern among pedlars about clause 6, which deals with seizure. Under the Canterbury City Council Bill as drafted,""if an authorised officer or a constable has reasonable grounds for suspecting that a person has committed a relevant offence"," he or the constable "may seize" and so on. The pedlars in contact with me say that having to establish only a reasonable ground for "suspecting" is not as strong as it should be. What we should really have to establish before we start going around seizing people's goods is a reasonable ground for "believing". The use of the word "suspecting" rather than "believing" in clause 6 makes the provisions in this and the Nottingham City Council Bill much more draconian than they would otherwise be.