---

Canterbury City Council Bill

Does my hon. Friend agree that the benefit of going for a national route following the consultation document that the Government produced, as opposed to this piecemeal approach, is that pedlars by nature are not a very powerful lobbying group? They are not well organised and do not have expensive lobbyists at their disposal, so legislation such as this Bill could go through without the voice of the pedlars being heard. Had it not been for my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope), the other side of the argument would never have been heard in these debates.