Clause 6Defences
Homes Bill
4:45 pm
Mr Nigel Waterson (Eastbourne, Conservative)
I am grateful for the Minister's explanation of amendment No. 55, which caused us some puzzlement. As he said, if it shortens the Bill, who are we to complain.
I do not intend to invite my hon. Friends to force this to a Division because, unless those Labour Members who are only here to discuss part II have disappeared, the odds are that we would probably lose. Despite the examples quoted by the Minister—and there may be many others—the defences in subsection (3)(a), (b) and (c) are in ascending order of silliness, reaching the pinnacle of:
was not a person to whom the seller was likely to be prepared to sell the property.
The Minister's first example was about a long-running feud with a neighbour. We might all think that it is perfectly reasonably for the seller to refuse them a pack because he would rather die than sell the property to the neighbour, but that is precisely the sort of person who would be apt to report the matter to the trading standards officers. It is not open to the Minister to say that trading standards officers would make a decision that it came within that defence. It is not their job. They may have a decision about whether to initiate a prosecution, but that is a wholly different matter to making a decision on whether a defence will fly. There are some other strange examples being cast around, but we are simply trying to remove these defences because we are concerned that ordinary folk who are simply doing what they are entitled to do—