London Local Authorities Bill [Lords]

Indeed, that is what he was trying to do. He wanted him for his dinner. It seems to me that sometimes local councils wish to take their dinner off our plates through the fines they want to levy. Odysseus would have been caught out by that and prevented from escaping with his men, so there are circumstances in which one must be able not to give one's name and address because doing so might not be in one's best interests. Of course, Odysseus, in his hubris, called out his real name as he left. The Cyclops, who was blinded by then, screamed out, and his father, Poseidon, heard it and made Odysseus's trip home that much harder. When a person's name gets out into the public presses, things can become very difficult for them. I maintain the ancient right of Greeks, among others, not to give their name and address when asked. I will appeal to another source of history: P.G. Wodehouse. Many Members will remember that Bertie Wooster, when arrested for pinching a policeman's helmet on boat race night—I think wines had been taken—gave a false name when arrested. I cannot remember what name he gave, but I think he said that he lived in Acacia avenue. It might be a good address to give if you are ever caught doing things you should not do. There was no additional fine for giving a false name and Bertie Wooster paid the fine handed down at the magistrates court in London—five guineas, which was a lot of money in those days—but got away with giving a false name. There is a great tradition, from Odysseus to Bertie Wooster, of being allowed to hide one's name from people who do not necessarily have the full authority to request it. There are serious points within this as well. One may think that it is all frivolity and ancient history, but it is not. It is all about our ancient civil liberties. Until an individual has been shown to have done something that is wrong enough to be arrested, the state has no right to know who they are. As I go about my lawful business, the state does not have the right to stop me and ask me to prove my identity or address. Only if I have committed a crime can the state intervene. We come to the question of why this should be done by people other than police officers. The argument is always one of necessity or triviality, meaning that the crime is so unimportant that the police will not want to be bothered with it. It seems to me that if the police do not want to be bothered with it, and if it is not worth the time of the magistrates court to deal with it, is it really worth punishing someone for it in the first place. That is where the clause that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch proposes removing is so fundamentally wrong. It takes something that is trivial, gives a power to someone who is not an officer of the Crown and then promotes it to a high offence for which one can be fined £1,000. It is entirely disproportional to the initial activity that has led to the official being involved with the otherwise law-abiding subject. I think that the point my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) made is profoundly important, although I was a little worried about the impression he gave that everyone who came down from Shipley was likely to commit an offence when they arrived in central London—perhaps the excitement of the bright lights gets to them. I can assure the House that when people from North East Somerset come to London they are as law abiding here as they are in North East Somerset, which I am glad to say has one of the lowest rates of crime in the whole United Kingdom. It is unfair, unreasonable and unjust to have different rules governing what one is supposed to say to unnamed, unknown, unspecified and unclear public officials here, in Shipley, in North East Somerset, in Scotland or in Northern Ireland. We need a clear law so that people understand whether they are in danger of committing a crime and know what their rights, liberties and entitlements are. Some can argue, ““Well, London's busy””, but we all know that. If it is busy, it has more police. Rather shockingly, there are more police in London than there are in Avon and Somerset. One would have thought that we should have more police to keep crime even lower, but there is a general adjustment for the reality that London has serious problems that are different from those across the rest of the country. It has the level of expenditure that ensures that it can deal with these issues without having special laws and situations. At this point I will diverge from my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, because I think that, other than his amendment that proposes to get rid of clause 4 altogether, his other consequential amendments are unsatisfactory. They still leave the right of a police community support officer to ask for a name and address, which I would not be in favour of. If this consideration comes to a vote, I will certainly vote against any amendment other than the complete removal of the clause. Let me move on to the Royal Mail and the Postage Act. This is a rather embarrassing bit of the Bill, because it refers to sex establishments, and we do not like talking about those in polite society, but on this occasion it is necessary to do so. It seems to me that there is a wonderful naivety in the Bill and a suggestion that the Royal Mail is as good as it was in the days of Trollope, when a letter could be posted before lunch, would arrive in the early afternoon and that one could then reply and correspondence goes backwards and forwards perfectly. Sadly, that is not how it is anymore. I happen to live on a street in London that has a relatively frequent name and so receive quite a lot of post for a branch of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, which is on a street of the same name south of the river. Occasionally I receive coins in the mail which people wish to deposit in their bank accounts. As I am sure you realise, Mr Deputy Speaker, I hastily pass these on to a branch of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation so that they can be credited to the right person's account. I use the example to remind hon. Members of the difficulties of relying on the ordinary post. The first-class post might or might not get there the next day, and the second-class post will get there before Christmas, so long as it is posted in the new year. The Bill does not ever establish that it should be the fist-class post. That means that the people running these dodgy establishments—I must confess that I have little sympathy for them—will be deprived of a right of justice, which I think is a mistake. The important thing about our ancient liberties and about justice is that we should apply it to people we slightly disapprove of and think are a little beneath the salt just as much as we do to those we think are good, honest fellows. I think that that should apply to those who run sex clubs. They are just as entitled to receive a summons, notification or a missive from the council in way that means we can be certain it has arrived by registered post as someone involved in more salubrious activities. I must confess that it is a shame that the Post Office is not in the state it was in the days of her late Majesty Queen Victoria, but there we are—O tempora, o mores, as I am sure I have said in the House before and will no doubt at some future date say again, possibly on a Friday morning. I was glad to hear that there was a thought that clause 18 might be withdrawn, but it seems to have been put back again, so I think that I am still entitled to speak in favour of the amendment that would abolish the clause that has been taken out and put back in again—it sounds a little like a soft-shoe shuffle or some such dance.