Psychoactive Substances Bill [HL]

I am grateful to the Minister. The story he has just told about Canterbury illustrates the difficulty and expense that local authorities are going to incur in seeking to implement the ban that the Bill would create. We know that the Local Government Association is very keen to see head shops closed down, and we understand why that is so. I am perplexed about how it can argue that it will save local authorities money. A lot of activity is enjoined upon them in this measure. I do not know whether the Minister has interrogated it about the basis on which it gives this assurance that it will save local authorities money during the enforcement period. I can see that if they were successful in closing down the head shops then they might have less to do in this regard; but in the transition, while they are actually engaged in these enforcement activities, surely it will cost more money. I would be grateful for the Minister’s further thoughts, perhaps not this evening but in due course, on how local authority trading standards departments are to perform the duties that the Government are laying upon them at a time when there has been such a decrease in the number of trading standards officers and in the budgets of local authorities, in particular, in the budgets for training TSOs.