Bournemouth Borough Council Bill [Lords]

It would certainly be unfair, if that were the position. I am not sure that my hon. Friend's interpretation is quite correct, however. The pedlar would have to be offering services, rather than trading, within the terms of the legislation relating to pedlars. If he were offering services, and came under the category of service provider, that would be exactly the sort of jeopardy in which he would be placed. Paragraph 114 of the consultation report from the Minister's Department states:""It may be possible to institute a national system of authorisation for service providers within the requirements of the Services Directive although we are conscious that our justification for imposing such a scheme may be challenged in respect of the qualifying criteria. However, we are of the view that attempting to introduce such a system in respect of a small number of pedlars of services only, would not be a proportionate response to any perceived detriment which may result from the situation where no certification or authorisation scheme exists."" That paragraph seems slightly self-contradictory. Paragraph 115 states that""the Services Directive applies stricter tests in relation to authorisation schemes in respect of temporary providers of services in the UK to the extent that any scheme which might be capable of applying to established pedlars of services could not apply to temporary pedlars of services visiting the UK."" That relates to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh) has just made. The paragraph continues:""This inconsistency of application would be unfair to established pedlars and would introduce significant enforcement difficulties."" So, there is a real issue here. I know that my good hon. Friends the Members for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) and for Bournemouth, West (Sir John Butterfill) are sceptical about some of the arguments that I deploy on this legislation—both of them have intervened on me on this point—but I hope that we will be able to get an answer from the Minister on this question. It will be relevant not only to the two Bills that we are discussing today, but to the two that we discussed last week, which are now on their way to the other place, as well as to the other two Bills on the Order Paper, which we are not discussing at the moment.