London Local Authorities Bill [Lords]

This Bill has been before the House for four years. Earlier this year, it went through an opposed Bill Committee and as a result of the diligent work of its Chairman, my hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis) and its members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) and the hon. Members for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) and for Gateshead (Ian Mearns), some of the clauses that were a cause of concern on Second Reading were removed. Many of those clauses were the subject of petitions. Sadly, however—this is no criticism of the opposed Bill Committee—sufficient consideration was not given to the clauses that were unopposed in the sense that they were not the subject of petitions. It is incumbent on us as legislators to assure ourselves that we are satisfied with the contents of these private Bills and that those contents are consistent with the principles that we apply to our law in general. What the Bill tries to do—this is why it is a private Bill—is to create a separate legal regime among the 33 London authorities or in certain circumstances just within the City of Westminster. As I say, it is incumbent on us to pay careful attention to the detail. That applies particularly to the powers relating to penalty charges, enforcement and recovery of costs—the powers that are dealt with in this group of amendments. Amendment 5 to clause 3 would insert after ““payable”” in line 14 of page 3"““by the person being served””." The fact that that phrase is omitted from the Bill exemplifies what I would describe as the sloppy, haphazard drafting, which often happens with private Bills. I think that when a private Bill has been before Parliament for four years, it should have been tidied up. Clause 3(1) reads at the moment:"““Where a designation order under section 38 of the Police Reform Act 2002 applies paragraph 1 of Schedule 4 to that Act…to any person, that person shall have the power of a borough council to serve a penalty charge notice…where he has reason to believe that a penalty charge is payable to the borough council””." It does not say that he has to believe that the penalty charge notice is payable by the person on whom the notice is being served. It seems to me that that is pretty basic material, and that we should not have people going around serving penalty charge notices on people they do not believe to be the persons to whom the penalty charge applies.