---

Manchester City Council Bill [HL]

My Lords, the two Bills that are before us today—the Manchester City Council Bill, followed by the Bournemouth Borough Council Bill—were deposited before Parliament as long ago as November 2006. While I will speak to the first Bill, I put on record that I do not intend to do the same on the second Bill, which I am dealing with on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Eden, who sends his apologies that he is unable to be in the House this afternoon. Since these Bills were deposited, they have taken up an enormous amount of parliamentary time and have been scrutinised in great detail by Select Committees in both Houses. There was a good debate in your Lordships’ House on Third Reading back in November 2007. Since then, there have been five separate occasions when the Bills have together exercised Members in the Chamber of the Commons. Commanding majorities in favour of the Bills were obtained on the numerous Divisions that were required in the other place. In both Houses, individual pedlars presented detailed evidence in support of their petitions. Both Houses have listened to the petitioners. The House of Lords Select Committee, chaired by my noble friend Lord Harrison, in allowing the Bill to pass, requested and obtained undertakings from the councils that their officers would be properly trained to enforce the Bills. The Commons Select Committee went a stage further and made a significant amendment. That is Amendment 1 in the Marshalled List, which is the only amendment in this first group of amendments. Before turning to the amendments, I give a brief reminder of the purposes of these two Bills. They both deal exclusively with street trading and they are both well precedented. The most contentious elements of the Bills have been the alteration of the pedlars’ exemption, which I shall come to shortly. The Bills also extend the street-trading regime to the provision of services, which, I am informed, includes henna tattooing in Bournemouth and teeth whitening in Manchester. The Bills would also enhance the enforcement powers of council officers and the police by allowing them to seize articles in cases where they believe that unlicensed street trading is being carried out, and they would allow the court to forfeit those items. Amendment 1 is the only amendment that was made in the other place by the Select Committee, after it had heard detailed representations from the promoters and the petitioners. Amendment 1 rewrites the key provision of the Bills—namely, Clause 5. As introduced, the Bills followed a fairly long line of precedents promoted by other local authorities. The provision would have placed a restriction on the exemptions that pedlars enjoy from the street-trading licence regime under the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982. The exemption allows pedlars to trade under the authority of a pedlar’s certificate, even in streets where the council has prohibited street trading. The Bill, as originally introduced and as passed from this House, would have restricted the pedlar’s exemption so that it applied only where the pedlar was trading from house to house. In other words, unless he was trading from house to house, he would need to obtain a street trading licence in controlled streets and would be prohibited from trading in prohibited streets. In addition to allowing house-to-house trading, the amendment allows pedlars to trade in licensed and prohibited streets so long as they comply with a number of detailed restrictions. To some extent, that seems to put in statutory form the common-law rules that generally require a pedlar to travel as he trades. The councils accept that, with the amendments, there is now clear guidance for pedlars in Manchester and Bournemouth about many of the issues with which the councils were concerned, particularly those about pedlars who did not move on at all and would stay in the same street or use large barrows to display their goods. Noble Lords may wish to know the councils’ views about the recent government consultation on pedlars and street traders in the context of this discussion. The councils welcome the fact that the Government have taken the matter up at a national level and wait to hear what proposals emerge. Of course, there is no certainty about what will emerge and, more importantly, when. If the Government take the view that the Bournemouth and Manchester Acts need amending as a result of their proposals, of course that can be achieved through government legislation.