London Local Authorities Bill [Lords]

I am grateful for that intervention. I would be happy to be a car salesman, because that is an honourable and worthy profession. My reason for saying that is because trading cars is the way to starting in business. People can start off in a small way by putting the little Morris Minor that they bought 20 years ago outside their front door with a sticker on it saying, ““This car is for sale for £500, with MOT. It has not been clocked or had done to it any of those terrible things that rogues do.”” Somebody might then come along and give them £500, so they go out to buy a second-hand Mini Cooper, which they sell for £800. They then buy a second-hand Ford Cortina and sell it for £2,000. Eventually, they are buying Aston Martin DB5s and putting them outside their front door with a price of £150,000—cheap at twice the price, some might say. That is before they have even got on to thinking about Bentleys, great cars that they are, too—although some might say that they are not quite as good as Aston Martins in their style and sleek lines. We need to get an entrepreneurial spirit and get people starting in business. How are we going to revive this economy if we do not encourage the small business man and the tall business man, too? I always feel that this ““heightism”” on business men and business ladies, who should not be excluded, is a bit unfair. We want to help enterprise. We know that job creation comes from small enterprises, not from big business. Historically—very good figures from the United States are available on this—big business has reduced its labour force, year in, year out, and companies that are starting up develop into bigger businesses employing more and more people. A fascinating statistic in this week's edition of The Sunday Times suggested that an American business, in its first two years of operation, increases the number of its employees by 160%, whereas an Italian company does so by 20%. That is because America, the land of free enterprise, encourages people to set up their own businesses and to do things in a little way without this overburdening, this overwhelming and this overweening regulation that makes it so difficult for them to earn an honest crust. Clause 9 is where my objections are centred at the moment, but I can assure you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I have many more objections to certain aspects of this Bill to come. The clause states that ““fees and charges”” can be levelled on people selling their car, but offering it on the internet is illegal and keeping it on the street for the period that it is on the internet is illegal. That is very unfair, because someone can put something up on the internet one week and it can then be cached—it can be caught—and it remains there ad infinitum. Someone could have traded their car and completed the transaction—they could be the new buyer—but the car could still appear on the internet under an historical cache. They may then find that a council busybody—not one wearing a bowler hat, because the councils did not seem enthused by that idea when I gave them it at an earlier stage in the debate—or some odd-bod could come along and say, ““This car is now getting you a fine.”” That is why I object—