The circumstances in which local authorities should he liable to pay compensation have been much debated, both on the present Bill in Another place and on its predecessor, the Consumer Safety (Amendment) Act 1986, for which we are indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Gregory). The present Bill does nothing more than consolidate the provisions of that earlier Act. In the light of their history, it is useful to recall why the provisions are in their present form, since they represent the outcome of considerable earlier debate and a change in the provisions in favour of enforcement authorities.

The new powers of suspension and forfeiture were suggested in the white paper, "The Safety of Goods", published in 1984. That suggested that, because of the sweeping nature of these powers, compensation should be payable to traders wherever there was no conviction under the safety legislation. Compensation would not be paid when there was a conviction.

During the passage of the Consumer Safety (Amendment) Act 1986, it was suggested that such a compensation provision did not sufficiently reflect the practical difficulties that trading standards officers might face. We listened to those representations, with the result that the circumstances in which compensation would not be paid were substantially widened. Those new circumstances were enacted in the earlier Act and they have been consolidated in the present Bill.

It would be wrong to suggest that compensation will almost always be paid; that is simply not the case. Two conditions must be satisfied. They are that the goods have not contravened any safety provision—that is, that the goods are safe—and that the exercise of the relevant power of seizure is not attributable to any neglect or default by the person seeking compensation. The second condition is very important. It includes not just specific failures to meet obligations under safety legislation, but any act or omission which, in the circumstances, is blameworthy. It could include, for example, an unreasonable unwillingness to provide an enforcement officer with information about or access to the goods. In the light of this, I suggest that the circumstances in which compensation will be paid are relatively narrow.

The amendments put forward by the right hon. Gentleman, although expressed differently from the amendments to clauses 14 and 34, in practice would have a similar effect. The important question is what should happen in those unfortunate circumstances where goods are seized and nobody is to blame—the goods are safe; the trader has acted reasonably; and so has the enforcement officer. Such circumstances could arise where the enforcement officer relied quite reasonably on information supplied by a third party.

The effect of both amendments is that, in those circumstances, the trader should bear the loss. The Bill, as it stands, provides that the enforcement authority should bear the loss, and that is quite right. It is surely wrong that in providing powers for enforcement authorities to halt the supply of unsafe goods, we should do so at the expense of the innocent trader. We are simply not prepared to create a new burden of this kind on business.

Similar provisions concerning suspension of the supply of goods were enacted in the Consumer Safety (Amendment) Act 1986, which has been in force for eight months. It would appear that not one practical example is available to the right hon. Gentleman of a case where a local authority has been inhibited from taking action because of its concern over compensation. Yet, as is well known, the powers of suspension have been used.

We have moved from the position in the White Paper, but we do not believe that it could ever be right not to compensate the innocent trader. There does not seem to be any evidence of a practical problem here. I hope that, in the light of that explanation, the right hon. Gentleman will withdraw his amendment.