Canterbury City Council Bill

I welcome the opportunity to address the revival motion briefly. I shall talk mainly about Canterbury, and I believe that the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) will lead on the Nottingham Bill. Both Bills were first deposited in the House in 2007, and they were first debated in the House on 21 January 2008. Since then, we have been through two cycles and one previous revival motion. We have spent many hours debating the merits of the Bills on the Floor of the House, and you, Mr Deputy Speaker, would certainly bring me to order if I were to go into that in any detail. I was, however, extremely pleased to hear my hon. Friend the Minister say not only that he sees a long-term future for a national framework in this area, but, crucially, that he sees scope for local variation, because different cities have different issues. Canterbury's particular problem is that we are the third or fourth most visited city in the country but we have narrow mediaeval-width streets in parts of the centre, and we have a particular problem with large numbers of illegal street traders who operate alongside street traders who have paid £800 each for their licences, with the former frequently causing an obstruction to the public. The Bill's provisions will allow Canterbury city council to tackle the problem not of pedlars peddling but of pedlars acting illegally as street traders, and to do so in a way that is nowhere near as costly and burdensome in terms of officer time, prosecutions and so forth as the current arrangements. In fact, the current arrangements are effectively unenforceable. I was glad to hear the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods), suggest there was room for a national framework and, if I understood her correctly, for local variation. I was delighted, too, that my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) progressed with his Bill a few moments ago. I do not want to say any more about the Canterbury Bill, except that I welcome the fact that a number of my hon. Friends made constructive speeches on the earlier Bill and I hope that the same spirit will be exhibited in respect of the Canterbury Bill and, indeed, the Nottingham Bill. I commend this second revival motion to the House.