Clause 11
Fraud Bill [Lords]
4:45 pm
David Heath (Shadow Leader of the House of Commons & Shadow Cabinet Office Minister, Cabinet Office; Somerton and Frome, Liberal Democrat)
I do not think that it does. Subsection (2) lists a number of circumstances in which a person has obtained services, and I do not think that the two necessarily relate.
The amendment is narrow and I do not want to labour the point. However, simply using the adverb improves the clause and makes it say exactly what the Minister would want it to say. He may feel that the clause will be interpreted in that way in any case, in which case the amendment becomes unnecessary.
The second amendment in the group, No. 13, is a probing amendment to enable the Minister to say what I understood him to have said on Second Reading. It relates to a particular circumstance in which the service obtained is watching or taking in an event—a sports match or a performance perhaps—without paying. There are circumstances in which that would clearly be a fraudulent and dishonest act. A person who goes under a fence, knowing perfectly well that he has avoided going through the turnstile, is trying to obtain a service without paying. That is not in dispute.
However, there is a further and greyer area: when a person is watching a match because he has secured a vantage point from which he can see it, clearly with the intent of not paying, but nevertheless without potential detriment to the person who has put on the event. I can give an example of that from Bath.
I regularly watch Bath play rugby; the experience used to be good, although it is often unhappy nowadays. People can pay for seats at the Rec, the recreation ground in Bath. I received my season tickets just today and am now much less well off than I would otherwise have been. If a person happens to live in one of the houses on Great Pulteney street that overlook the ground, he can see the match for free. I do not think that in any circumstances a person could be deprived of the right to look out of his window or stand on his balcony and watch the match for free. He is as entitled to look out of his property in that direction as any other. That is not the problem.
However, if one is clever, one can also go down one of the side turnings off Great Pulteney street, hoick oneself up to look over a wall and see the match equally free from a public thoroughfare. I do not believe that that should be a criminal offence. It is merely a happenstance. The simple fact that one can see the match from there does not mean that Bath rugby football club—or Bath Rugby plc—would be entitled to commence proceedings against someone who happened to be able to see the match from that vantage point outside the ground’s perimeter.
I hope that the Minister will make it absolutely clear in his response, so that I do not need to press the amendment, that in such circumstances an offence would not be committed, despite the fact that the person was not on their own property and was partaking of the event—the spectacle or match—without paying and with the intent of not paying, as they had no intention of going through a turnstile. Will he reassure me that just because they have not tried to secure entry to the ground, arena, theatre or whatever, they are not securing that service dishonestly and would not be liable to prosecution under the provision? If he can do so, it is not my intention to press the amendment.