Clause 11 - Rates of duty for recovery vehicles
Private Security Industry Bill [Lords]
10:45 am
Mr Bruce George (Walsall South, Labour)
I noticed a look of dismay when I rose. It is 28 minutes since the proceedings began, and I have restrained myself so far. I hope that the dam has now been breached and water will flow more freely.
I am not convinced that the appeals mechanism, straight from a refusal by the SIA to a magistrates court or the High Court, is appropriate. There could be 100,000, 200,000 or even more applications subject to a licensing process. I hope that companies eventually will be subject to compulsory licensing. There will then be a lot of people heading to magistrates courts all over the realm and SIA officials will be run ragged from Manchester to Walsall to Newcastle.
I do not understand why we could not have an appeals committee within the SIA, separate from the personnel department, perhaps headed by a senior judge, and involving those not taking part in the normal process of the regulatory authority. Does the Human Rights Act make such a process impossible? If an application were turned down, for whatever reason, within the time constraints, the applicant would write off to the authority or to an independent body within the SIA. Perhaps the Minister might say that only then would the applicant turn to a magistrates court. If members of the Committee are struggling with the complexities of the Bill, and we have not even seen the hundreds of pages of regulations that will ensue, how can a group of magistrates make a decision on whether a licence shall be approved, especially if some of the information is exceedingly confidential and may be based on intelligence sources?
Unless there is an overriding argument under the Human Rights Act, deep consideration should be given to a simple procedure by which the whole process could be expedited. It could be very fair. The Minister is not only taking no prisoners, he is not taking any amendments. I hope that, even at this late stage, it might be possible to have a more efficient and fairer system and to keep it away from magistrates, who are neither interested nor competent to make a judgment in this case.