Clause 18 - Applications for registration.
Vehicles (Crime) Bill
4:30 pm
Mr John Bercow (Buckingham, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 19, in page 10, line 18, leave out `may be set with a view to recovering'
and insert
`shall be set only in order to recover'.
The purport of the amendment will be readily evident to you, Mr. Sayeed, the Minister and other members of the Committee. Before I develop my argument, I want to say what a pleasure it is to welcome to the Committee the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr. Hill), who is one of the more august Members of Parliament, and certainly one of the more enthusiastic debaters on the Floor of the House, and, invariably, in Committee. I am conscious that he had a sad reason for his absence this morning, for which we have respect and sympathy. I was especially grateful to him for his courtesy in telephoning to notify me yesterday. I said then that I looked forward to jousting with him in Committee, and I meant it. It is a pleasure to see him here this afternoon.
The thrust and kernel of our anxiety about the clause and amendment relate to the scope for over-burdensome charges. I imagine that all Labour Members on the Committee are spending each and every sitting doing nothing other than studying intently the Bill's proceedings. It should not be suggested that any hon. Member is indulging in other activity—reading letters, books or anything of that sort—because that would be out of order and not acceptable to you, Mr. Sayeed, and we must be wary of your strictures. Hon. Members will therefore be aware that subsection (2) states:
The level of fees so prescribed may be set with a view to recovering the reasonable costs incurred by the Secretary of State in connection with the administration of this Part.
That leads immediately to two thoughts. First, there is the old objection and query in relation to the term ``reasonable''. What is reasonable? One person's reasonable conduct is another person's utterly unreasonable conduct. We know, because we are always peppered with that point—which I say while looking askance at my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh), who is a member of the profession—by lawyers. They are wont to patronise us—although I am sure that my hon. Friend would not do so—by saying, in a slightly imperious, and, occasionally, even sanctimonious tone, ``The term `reasonable' is well understood in the legal profession. The hon. Gentleman really ought to understand that this is known in law. There is potential for it to be justiciable. It can be adjudicated in a court, everybody understands what we are talking about, and therefore nobody would exceed what is reasonable.'' Of course, that does not remove the potential for disagreement about what constitutes reasonable conduct.
However, to illustrate precisely how reasonable my hon. Friends and I are being, which will not come as a surprise to you, Mr. Sayeed, but might cause eyebrows to be raised on the Government Benches, I say at the outset—as will be clear from the wording of the amendment—that cavilling at the use of the term ``reasonable'' is not our principal purpose in tabling it. We could argue the toss about what constituted reasonable conduct, and I would be interested to hear thoughts from Ministers about what they have in mind.
Those listening to our proceedings now who were not listening this morning would not have heard a nugget from the Minister, which they should therefore veritably treasure. If they had heard the Minister saying this morning that the Government were already thinking in terms of a sliding scale of charges, depending on whether the business was large or small, it is not unreasonable to consider that, when pontificating about the merits of such a scale, he may have given some thought to the various elements on it. It almost beggars belief that a keen, intelligent, forward-thinking and, indeed, mightily ambitious Minister like the hon. Gentleman would fail to have given any thought—