I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
I am delighted to have got the Bill to this stage. I put on record my thanks to colleagues who have been supportive at previous hurdles it has jumped, including in Committee.
The Bill is necessary. It is an important albeit simple piece of legislation. It will make local authorities accountable for the health and safety decisions they make. It will engage them with the communities and charitable
champions in our communities who put on fundraising and local community events to raise money for local charities. The Bill will ensure that health and safety is adhered to, but not applied with too much enthusiasm and an over-zealous hand. If by chance that happens, there is a redress process so that those affected can go back to the local authority and say, “Think again. Please look at this. You are being over-enthusiastic.” Even if the process breaks down at that point, there is recourse through the local government ombudsman, which is allowed to treat such cases with great speed and rapidly, and turn them around so that the event can still take place.
It is a common-sense Bill. Mr Nigel Cosway, a constituent, congratulated me on the Bill and said, “At last, we are getting common sense into politics.” I think he was a little disingenuous—many colleagues would argue that there is a lot of common sense in this building, although perhaps members of the media would disagree. The Bill is a step in the right direction. It will help members of the public to do what they want to do, and to do good things for their community.
I do not intend to delay the House unduly—I am aware that many colleagues want to discuss other Bills—but it is worthy of note that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) is in the Chamber. He started the Bill process a long time ago. It was one of his ideas and he introduced the same Bill on another occasion. I hope he is as delighted as I am that we can make progress.
I do not intend to bring to the House the many stories of where health and safety has gone wrong. I am sure all hon. Members have examples of people being over-enthusiastic—schoolchildren have been encouraged to wear goggles to play conkers, and there are other bizarre occurrences.
We are there, Mr Speaker. We have made good progress and the Bill is a good one. It is worthy of support. I wish it speedy progress and hope it does not get delayed in another place.
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