Canterbury City Council Bill

My hon. Friend is right. Indeed, clause 7 says that perishable items that are seized may be disposed of within 48 hours. His interpretation of "disposed of" might be different from mine—we could argue the toss about that and about whether it involves returning the goods, which is a different matter—but I will let people make up their own minds about that. My point is that returning non-perishable goods after 56 days is equally of no use to the people concerned, in many cases because of the nature of the goods being sold. However, if things are taken unfairly and then returned, or not as the case may be, or if they have been disposed of in some other way, and the pedlar, quite legitimately, wants compensation, clause 10 of the Nottingham City Council Bill—a similar provision applies in the Canterbury City Council Bill—provides for compensation to be paid to anyone who had a legal interest in them at the time of their seizure, where that seizure was unlawful. That is all very well, but there are two sides to that. First, any compensation paid would presumably be based on the cost price of the goods concerned—that is, the cost at which the pedlar bought them, not the price at which they intended to sell them. In real terms, therefore, the pedlar will be at a loss, because he would have realised more money for those goods than the amount by which he will be compensated. However, in order to gain such compensation under the Bills, the pedlar is also expected to go to the county court. Given that we are talking about somebody who has had their assets taken from them—often assets that they need to make a living—and given that they perhaps could not afford to reinvest in any replacement goods, because the income that they had expected to derive from selling the original goods has not come in, that person might have been without an income for 56 days. Expecting them then to pay the costs of going to court to try to recover any compensation seems wholly unrealistic and, to use a term that has been used many times in this debate, disproportionate.