House of Commons Hansard Debates for 8 Feb 1991

Mr. Forth : I thought that I might tempt my hon. Friend.

Mr. Bottomley : The Minister has indeed tempted me. In my experience, many private Members' Bills leave Committee with much less in them than they they go in as a result of the careful ministrations of the Ministers and Whips surrounding the hon. Member bringing in the Bill.

Secondly, next time a Government Bill returns from Committee dramatically altered from its shape on Second Reading, I shall assume that I can go home at 7.30 pm and not wait around, whipped, to get through 400 amendments in an hour and a half at midnight.

Mr. Forth : I must leave that to my hon. Friend and the Whips Office. I am not sure whether he was talking about a private Member's Bill or a Government Bill in that case

Mr. Bottomley : It does not matter.

Mr. Forth : The two are not the same. The key difference between Government Bills and private Members' Bills is that Government Bills--let us give them the benefit of the doubt--have been carefully thought through and have perhaps been the subject of commitments in a manifesto or in the Gracious Speech or of examination by officials and

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civil servants in one or more Departments. They are subject to the scrutiny of committees that I am not allowed to mention, the existence of which we normally deny. All those things happen to a Government Bill. Unfortunately, private Members' Bills do not go through this process. Some people might say that they are the better for it, but in many cases private Members' Bills suffer from not going through it. This Bill has suffered in that way.

The Bill has a number of defects, some of which are due to the fact that it has not gone through the process for Government Bills. That is my cue, lest people think that I am speaking over-long, to deal with the substance of the Bill. First, we have a number of objections to and difficulties with the Bill and they extend over broad areas. Current arrangements about public safety and access to safety information are adequate in most areas. Some provisions have been brought about as a result of the disasters about which many hon. Members have spoken. I shall return to that, because in a number of cases we have legislated or changed the law in response to the tragedies that have been mentioned.

Secondly, the procedures envisaged by the Bill are overly long and bureaucratic and I shall go through them in some detail. Although my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea has said that he is prepared to consider changes, going through the Bill's provisions will illustrate some of the dangers that still exist. The Bill will place burdens, which many hon. Members have underestimated, mainly on statutory authorities, certainly on local authorities, and even on the private sector. Those have been somewhat glossed over, although my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Thorne) rightly dealt with them in his speech.

Finally, there are some small technical difficulties in the Bill of the kind that would certainly need to be examined in Committee. As my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea has said, London is omitted from the Bill and he, as a London Member, will want to correct that and has said so. We would have to look at certain Northern Ireland dimensions to the Bill. Some other relatively detailed matters would have to be examined if the Bill reaches Committee.

I shall outline the current arrangements to see whether I can satisfy the House that what the Bill seeks to do would in most senses be superfluous. First, the Government and all the Departments that have looked at the Bill's provisions think that there is already adequate provision for public access to information about safety hazards.

The Government are committed to the principle of openness about health and safety, which several hon. Members have mentioned. In that context many of the criticisms in the debate have been levelled at bodies that are not Government bodies but either independent public bodies or nationalised industries, over which the Government do not have day-to-day operational and management control. There must be a limit to the extent to which the Government, even by legislation, can guarantee that in day-to-day operational matters, things are made as public as many people should like to see.

Therefore, it is apparent that the primary responsibility in this area lies with managers, owners or employers to ensure the safety of the public in and around the premises in which they work or which they visit. If they fail in that responsibility, they may be prosecuted. However, I do not share the apparent desire of the Opposition for prosecutions in as many cases as possible. There was

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reference to a recent question in the House about a particular case. Although there is a role for prosecution in these matters, I am not sure that it is the overriding role, as is sometimes suggested ; nor do I think that in some sense prosecution should be seen as persecution. We want to get this in context, so while there should always be the mechanism for bringing prosecutions, it should be not the first call but the last resort, after all the other techniques have been brought to bear.

The Health and Safety Executive has always made it clear, and I support it, that before deciding on prosecution, it goes through a number of different procedures, mainly to do with the provision of advice, guidance, help and support. In its judgment, all these are much more effective in making sure that the myriad undertakings for which it is responsible in both public and private sectors make progress in health and safety. There is a difference of emphasis, if nothing else, between the approach taken by Opposition Members and by the Government.

Mr. Butterfill : There was considerable sympathy from both sides of the House and from the general public for the plight of the train driver in the Purley crash. Many thought that he should not have been sent to prison. Surely we should not seek retribution but merely address what has gone wrong.

Mr. Forth : That is an important point. We should make a distinction between, for example, the case mentioned by the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Lloyd), in which the people involved were employers and had an employer's responsibility under the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974, and the hon. Gentleman was not satisfied that they had been sufficiently pursued by the authorities, and that mentioned by my hon. Friend. I see that the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) takes this point. The individual involved in the latter case was an employee, albeit one in a responsible position, and I am aware that many doubts were expressed about whether he should have been pursued in the way he was. That case illustrates the difficulties. Under the existing provisions, which in most cases are adequate, what action should be taken is always a matter of judgment for the authorities involved. No matter what they do, they are open to criticism. The hon. Member for Stretford criticised them for not taking enough action and my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, West (Mr. Butterfill) criticised them for taking too much action. That usefully emphasises a point inherent in the Bill ; that no matter what provisions we make--I argue that the present provisions are adequate and my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea has argued that the Bill will improve them--it will be up to the statutory authority to make a judgment about the appropriate action to take.

We have heard two different suggestions today. One is that the Bill will deter people from taking the action for which many hon. Members have asked. In other words, confronted with the responsibilities that the Bill will give them, statutory authorities might draw back from giving the public the warning required by the Bill, and thereby notifying the public. It has also been suggested that the effect will be quite the opposite and that, to cover themselves, the authorities will issue a large number of notices and go out of their way to find as many threats to

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the public as possible and issue notices about them to ensure that they cannot, in any conceivable circumstances, be accused with hindsight of being less than diligent.

Mr. Bowis : It sounds to me as though the balance that my hon. Friend is striking, with those two pressures on the safety authorities, will ensure that they get their judgment about right.

Mr. Forth : My argument is that they do that now. I have yet to be convinced that the Bill would materially change that position.

Mr. Bowis : Hon. Members have repeatedly said that one of the benefits of the procedure in the Bill is that in practice it will never be used because the additional weapon that the safety authorities will have will ensure that occupiers will remedy the threat to the public before the authorities have to go through the procedure.

Mr. Forth : If my hon. Friend will allow me, I will address that point when I compare the existing position with that which would obtain under the Bill.

The statutory authorities covered by the Bill--it relates only to statutory authorities--already have extensive powers to protect the public where there is a perceived danger or where, in the words of the Bill, they identify

"a substantial threat or danger to the health or safety of a member of the public."

In the case of a serious or imminent threat, the authorities may, under the existing provisions, issue a prohibition notice or order to close down parts or all of a building, or stop a particular type of work or activity, until the hazard has been removed. In such cases, the public will be banned or removed from the area or activity that is the source of the hazard until such time as the situation is remedied. The actual requirements imposed will vary across different areas of responsibility--depending whether one is dealing with sports stadiums, transport undertakings, buildings, or whatever--but they must be observed by the occupier, owner or operator of the premises and the public will not be allowed to re-enter until the area is safe.

Under that type of notice or order, the manager or owner of the business affected is likely to be losing money while work is slowed down, or stopped, or parts of the building are shut or made inoperative. In the case of a fairground, a ride would be out of action until made safe, and the owner would be losing money until that was done. In such instances, business people are likely to act quickly, so that their business can resume as normal and to ensure that the circumstances that led to the enforcement action do not recur. Pressure is built into the existing system of prohibition notices and orders because statutory authorities can already close premises or cause activities to cease and are thus empowered to exercise the same kind of coercion that is embodied in the Bill.

Mr. Peter Bottomley : My hon. Friend's remarks are helpful, but they rather go outside the scope of the Bill. I thought that the exchange involving my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Thorne) covered the prohibition power, so perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister will leave that aspect and the other de minimis issues to one side and stick to the ones in between. I refer, for example, to the situation in which the statutory authority warns the operator that action must be taken

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because of a significant or substantial risk of danger to the public of which the public themselves are unaware. That may be a more fruitful area for my hon. Friend the Minister to explore.

Mr. Forth : I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his guidance, as always. However, in view of some of the speeches that have been made--my hon. Friend has been present for the whole debate--it occurred to me that some hon. Members do not understand the purpose of the Bill, and are under the impression that it would materially affect some of the matters that have been mentioned this morning. My contention is that, even in its amended form, the Bill would not do so.

Perhaps I may press on with the point that I was making because it relates to arguments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea and I do not want to short-change him.

Another option is provided by the improvement notices issued by the Health and Safety Executive, fire authorities, or local authorities, which can insist that improvements are undertaken by a certain date. It is unclear whether the Bill covers them.

Mr. Bowis : It is clear that it will not be covered. As my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Mr. Bottomley) rightly pointed out, if there is a prohibition or a detention notice, the public are not admitted, and therefore the Bill cannot operate. Equally, if there is an improvement notice--as helpful officials in the Minister's Department who deal with marine safety have informed me--it means that there is such a low level of risk that it would not in any circumstances be deemed to be substantial. We need to concentrate on times when there is substantial risk. It would be helpful if the Minister would take the Bradford fire as an example, show his concern in that case and say how the Bill would not help.

Mr. Forth : In that case, as my hon. Friends the Members for Battersea and for Eltham have requested me to do so, I shall immediately come to the analysis of the Bradford fire case, which I had intended to mention later in my speech.

My hon. Friend the Member for Eltham said that the Bill would have saved lives at Bradford, but that is not the advice that I have been given. I shall read carefully the advice that I have been given about Bradford, because it is important that we all understand where we are.

Mr. Justice Popplewell's interim report on the Bradfod event, which was published in 1985, said that on 18 July 1984, as a result of a visit by an engineer from West Yorkshire county council, a letter was written to the secretary of Bradford City football club about the state of the ground. Two fire risks were mentioned, and they were as follows. As regards the main grandstand,

"The timber construction is a fire hazard and in particular there is a build-up of combustible materials in the voids beneath the seats. A carelessly discarded cigarette could give rise to a fire risk Egress from the grandstand should be achievable in 2.5 minutes."

The Popplewell report explains that the Bradford City football ground was not a designated football ground, for which a safety certificate was required, and West Yorkshire county council had no statutory authority to restrict or prohibit the use of the ground. Therefore, the county council sent a copy of their letter to the fire service. The fire service took the view, which is crucial to the whole

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case, that it was a matter of good housekeeping for the occupiers of the football ground to deal with and saw no reason to take the matter any further.

My conclusion is that the position that existed in 1984 was that the first authority had no power to take any action and the second authority--the fire service--decided not to do so. Had the fire authority decided to take action, it would not have been able to issue a prohibition restriction order without first going to the courts. The key to this part of the argument is that, as a result of the Bradford tragedy, the law was changed in 1987 and a local authority with responsibility for safety at a sports ground can now issue a prohibition or restriction notice, whether or not the ground is required to have a safety certificate and without first applying to the courts. I therefore make two points. First, it is our analysis of the Bradford case that the Bill would not have made a substantial difference. Secondly--and equally important--changes to the law resulting from Bradford, and since, mean that much greater powers are now available to authorities than those contained in my hon. Friend's Bill. For those two important reasons, it is not correct to tie Bradford into this argument.

Mr. Peter Bottomley : The story that my hon. Friend the Minister has rehearsed, which was familiar to me at the time of the incident, is accurate but omits the suggestion that the statutory authority inspectors could, if the Bill had been law, have required a notice to be put up. I am sure that the fire service would have supported that, because it was a matter of good housekeeping to clear the rubbish away and thus prevent a fire. We all accept that one could not predict the number of casualties in the tragedy.

Secondly, if my hon. Friend the Minister is saying that there is no circumstance in which putting up a notice, as provided for in the Bill, could help, it would require a speech lasting about one and a half minutes. However, if he is saying that a notice could help but might not be right, or that other factors must be taken into account, that is fine and we can continue listening in good cheer. One ought to recognise that that provision could have been appropriate at Bradford. Instead of prohibition, there would have been warnings so that the local authority, the fire service and the owners of the ground would know.

Mr. Forth : It is a matter of judgment whether that would have been the case. Perhaps our judgments must be different on this matter. Interestingly, what my hon. Friend has outlined could have been interpreted as an improvement-type warning which, according to what my hon. Friend said a few moments ago, might not have been covered by the Bill if one looks at it from that point of view.

On the second point from my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham, of course I would not say that if we could wave a wand and have the Bill nothing would be improved. I should be ill-advised to say anything like that. Nevertheless, we believe on balance that whatever benefits may accrue from the Bill--they are fewer because of the improvements that have been made since Bradford and the like--the cost that will be incurred or will be likely to be incurred by undertakings, by statutory authorities and by local authorities will probably far outweigh the likely benefits of the Bill. Again, that is inevitably a matter for judgment.

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I want to demonstrate that the costs of tragedies are greater than many hon. Members have suggested. I have listened to the argument that the costs of tragedies are so monumentally great in terms of human life and material loss that they would surely outweigh the on-going cost of such a Bill, and it is a tempting argument, but it is very difficult to sustain, as my hon. Friend and others are probably aware. In that broad sense, cost-benefit is something with which we are not familiar, not very good at, and have not yet brought into the way in which we determine such matters. That is an argument for another time and another place. I do not think that the House would agree that we should get involved in it and I am not sure whether it would be very fruitful so to do.

Mr. Bowis : Of course measures have been taken after disasters. It is because the public have become aware of the causes of disasters. They have become aware of secret reports hidden in drawers and filing cabinets and have demanded action. This measure will enable that demand to take place before a disaster. There was clearly a substantial fire risk at Bradford, but there was no improvement order. This measure would have prevented the fire. We are talking not about the cost of putting right unacceptable risks--that should be in the budget anyway--but about the costs of this small measure compared with the enormous costs post-disaster to the people involved, the premises and the local community.

Mr. Forth : I must disagree with the first part of what my hon. Friend said. The House should not get the impression that we are talking about a large number of cases in which problems have been identified by statutory authorities of the kind that the Bill is addressing--substantial threats or danger to the public--and have been hidden in drawers and nothing has been done about them. I am not qualified to say that that has never happened and I should not want to suggest that, but I do not think that it is right to leave unchallenged the suggestion that, time and again, statutory authorities or responsible authorities have identified a substantial threat or danger to the public but have simply hidden the information away in a drawer and done nothing about it. In many of the cases in which it is alleged that that has happened, it was not the statutory authority which identified the problem, so it would not have been covered by the Bill.

My hon. Friend the Member for Battersea suggested that as a result of the Bill, it is much more likely that the kind of information that is out there somewhere--or, more properly, in there somewhere--will be brought to the public's attention. I am not sure whether that would be so either.

On costs, the difficulty is that if we embarked on cost measurement we should have to measure the continuing cost of the procedures in the Bill, day by day, up and down the length and breadth of the land, cumulatively, as against the highly identifiable cost of occasional large tragedies and disasters. I have not made that cost calculation and I am not in a position to do so, but the balance of cost would be more even and would probably tip in a direction other than that which my hon. Friend is suggesting. That is as far as I can go without doing the arithmetic, but when I deal with the burdens that the Bill would place on local authorities, and related weaknesses in it, hon. Members will see that the dangers and difficulties are greater than we thought.

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The Environment and Safety Information Act 1988 has been mentioned. That established

"registers of certain notices served concerning health, safety and environmental protection"

to be easily accessed by interested members of the public. Under that Act, all statutory authorities, including local authorities, must keep a register of all enforcement notices issued that concern the safety of the public. That register must be indexed and readily available to the public on request and those provisions are considered more than adequate to ensure public access to safety information. That is a major part of my hon. Friend's Bill. Experience so far, albeit in the short period during which that Act has been on the statute book, suggests that those registers are rarely consulted and that there is little demand for the information on them. That is somewhat at odds with the vision of eager-beaver journalists consulting registers regularly and writing stories on the basis of them. Significantly, no hon. Member has offered the House examples of journalists using the procedures already on the statute book, which are rather similar to those envisaged by my hon. Friend, to bring to the attention of a concerned, eager and anxious public the information that the Bill seeks to offer. Therefore, the limited example of how these mechanisms might work shows that there is not much evidence--nobody, including my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, has offered very much evidence--that such information not only would be sought but, more importantly, would be used were we to pass the Bill.

Mr. Bowis : That is the point of displaying notices where the public and the press will see them. People are not aware of the registers and do not go to the public library on the off-chance of seeing something interesting. If a sports journalist saw a notice at a football ground he would immediately spot a story with a public safety angle, which he would then pursue.

Mr. Forth : The new provisions on sports grounds contain powers to close them, or parts of them, if a substantial threat of danger to the public is perceived. Those considerable, if not draconian, powers are already available to the authorities. I am not yet convinced that the addition of a notice or the provision of a register would add materially or substantially to public safety, health or well-being. We shall return to that when I consider the argument for registers. As part of its drive to make the public more aware of possible dangers, the Health and Safety Executive keeps its own register of possible hazards to the public. Many firms and undertakings are required to notify it, because their activities are subject to certain legislative provisions, such as the Explosives Act 1975 or the Asbestos (Licensing) Regulations 1983. Each executive area office has a publicly available register of local undertakings which have been notified under such legislation.

I will say before anybody else does--I concede this immediately to my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea--that the Health and Safety Executive has a relatively limited number of area offices--20, if my memory serves me right --whereas my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea is suggesting that more than 300 district councils would hold the registers.

I have conceded to my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea that one important element of the Bill is to try to

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find a way of making available to the public through the registers at the local town hall the information that would flow from the procedures in the Bill. That is obviously one of the Bill's most important provisions and it is one of the main differences apart from the warning notices, between the existing provisions and the Bill. I want to ensure that the House understands that under provisions in the Environment and Safety Information Act 1988 and the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1984 there is some degree of warning for the public and the possibility of notices for the public.

One of my main arguments about the Bill involves the bureaucracy of the procedure. I want to tie into that argument the delays that exist, even under the streamlined procedure that my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea and I have discussed.

In his opening remarks, my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea said that he believes that the Bill is a simple solution to the problems of threats to public safety. I want to explain in detail-- Mr. Joseph Ashton (Bassetlaw) : Oh, no.

Mr. Forth : If the hon. Gentleman does not want to listen to the details, he does not have to sit there. I am going to give the details to the House anyway because they are relevant to the consideration of the Bill and the way in which it would work. Several hon. Members have said that they do not believe that the burdens on local authorities would be substantial. I do not agree. All of us who have at heart the desire to keep the burdens on local authorities and the cost burdens on authorities and community charge payers as low as possible will be interested in my arguments. Under the Bill, a statutory authority that has discovered "a substantial threat or danger to the health or safety of the public"

to such an extent that an enforcement notice will usually have been issued has 14 days in which to notify the district council. The local authority then has a further 14 days in which to issue a public safety notice to the offending occupier and place the warning issued under the enforcement notice on a register available to the public. The notice as specified in clause 2(5) and 2(7) must contain certain detailed information, some of which the public may not fully understand, for example, if the fault was fairly technical. We may want to simplify that in Committee.

Let us consider the way in which the mechanism would work. If the danger to the public is serious enough to warrant a prohibition notice and the occupier of the premises is not able to run his or her business as usual, the cause of the problem would be remedied as quickly as possible to prevent further damage to the business. I suggest that that would often happen in a matter of days or even hours so that, in the occupier or operator's interests, normal business could be resumed.

However, the procedure envisaged by the Bill paints a different picture. The statutory authority observes a potential danger to the public. Let us assume that the officer concerned is extremely efficient, as he would be, and he deals with the paperwork that evening and posts the notification to the local authority the next day. Let us also assume that the postal system is as efficient as ever and it delivers the notification the next day. The very efficient

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local authority immediately sends the occupier the public safety notice which is received one day later, and enters the details on the public register immediately.

I concede, in fairness to my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, that were the Committee to make the changes that I believe he has in mind, at least part of that process would be short-circuited. However, it leaves the possibility of a delay being built in between the initial identification of the problem and the communication by the statutory authority of that problem to the local authority.

Mr. Bowis : My hon. Friend the Minister began this point by saying that he intended to show how the Bill would be an additional burden of cost to local authorities. As we know that the procedure in the Bill as drafted will not be the eventual procedure but will be the subject of an amendment in Committee with, as far as I am aware, the support of the whole House, will my hon. Friend remember that this is a Second Reading debate on the principle, not the detail, of the Bill and keep his remarks for Committee?

Mr. Forth : I am sure that you, Madam Deputy Speaker, would pull me up if you thought that I was not addressing the Bill directly. I took care at the beginning of my speech to say that I wanted to refer to the Bill. I have even read out parts of it. I hope that I am being careful to stay in order. I believe that I am right to draw the attention of the House to the provisions of the Bill. In a moment I shall strengthen my argument about the burden to local authorities. The burden will increase in ways which my hon. Friend may not have foreseen. I may yet have a surprise for my hon. Friend. It may not be a great surprise, but it will be a surprise none the less.

Mr. Peter Bottomley : My hon. Friend may not be aware that he is illustrating the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis) in introducing his Bill. My hon. Friend the Minister responded to the previous intervention by saying that he was in order. That seems similar to the legal approach which is taken at present to safety in public places. My hon. Friend the Member for Battersea seeks to share useful information with members of the public who have an interest in it. That seems roughly what my hon. Friend the Minister is turning his attention to, after a speech of three quarters of an hour in which he has given way several times to those who sought to make him focus on the purpose and the short title of the Bill.

Mr. Forth : As ever, I am grateful for the guidance that I am receiving from behind me. It is almost like being under the tutelage of a back-seat driver, to use a recent analogy. I shall do my best to please my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham, but I hope that he will allow me to approach the matter in my own way. I wish to make several points. I will speed up my delivery, if that will help him. I have a great deal of ground to cover and--good Lord!--time is getting on. Even assuming that the procedure to which I have just referred--I shall not repeat it because that would be regarded as--

Mr. Spearing : Tedious repetition.

Mr. Forth : I thank the hon. Gentleman.

We have established that when the hazard was discovered, two days would pass before the information

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was put on the register. Three days would pass before the public safety notice was displayed, but in the meantime the conscientious occupier or operator might have remedied the problem. So the register might say that there was a hazard when the premises had been put right.

The Bill says that the occupier could not remove the notice until the authority had given permission in writing. That implies that there would be a mechanism to make sure that the entry had been corrected. Already we can see the problems that would arise, even from the streamlined procedure which my hon. Friend suggested. There must be a process whereby a serious threat would be identified and notified to the local authority directly or indirectly. The local authority would then put it on the register. A monitoring procedure would be necessary and the statutory authority would have to satisfy itself that the threat had been lifted. I suggest that in many cases the threat might be removed quickly--perhaps the same day or a day or two later.

A procedure would have to be in place to make sure that the register was maintained up to date. Once it was established that the threat had been removed and the notice could be lifted, the register would have to be purged of that entry. It is possible that there would be problems of discontinuity between the threat to the public arising, and being identified, notified and corrected. In the meantime the local authority would be struggling to maintain the register sufficiently up to date so that it was not positively misleading to the public, not to say damaging or dangerous to the business affected.

Mr. Bowis rose --

Mr. Forth : Does my hon. Friend wish to guide me?

Mr. Bowis : If I may. The safety authority, as it already does every day of the week, would perceive risks, draw them to the attention of the occupier and make sure that action was taken. The only difference that the Bill would introduce is that the public would be alerted to the risk. No great bureaucratic machine would be added to the health or safety authority. The Bill is simply a request that the authority informs the public and the council.

Mr. Forth : That part of my hon. Friend's argument is correct. I am concentrating more on what would happen at the local authority end. A number of hon. Members have said today that they dispute whether the additional burden on local authorities would be significant. I am trying to make suggestions about the phasing of the operation. I have already conceded his streamlined procedure to my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea. I broke my own rule because I said at the beginning that I would talk about the Bill as printed. If I were to dwell on my hon. Friend's point, that would be an even lengthier and rather tedious procedure. However, in the generous mood in which I now find myself, we can leave that to one side.

I do not wish to let slip a point about the maintenance of the register if it is to be of any use to the public or to have any effect on them. We should need to ensure that information was recorded accurately. More importantly, we should need to ensure that when the information was no longer appropriate, it was removed from the register. That part of the burden on local government would be substantial and there is no getting away from that.

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In the privacy of the Chamber, I must say that, although my admiration for officials is second to none, I suspect that with the ingenuity of officials in local government, they would find a way to make this a pretty heavy-handed and bureaucratic procedure one way or the other and that we should end up with something quite elaborate and rather Rolls-Royce when maintaining the register, if it is to have the importance that my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea suggests.

There is another important matter about which the House should know. No hon. Member has mentioned the subject of appeals this morning. Under similar legislation covering similar areas, there is an appeals procedure. The Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974 is an example. Under that Act, where a notice is served because of a serious risk of personal injury, appeals can be lodged within a set time span of the notice being served, although that appeal has no effect on a notice that remains valid during that period. The question that arises is whether we envisage an appeals mechanism under the Bill. Such a procedure is not contained in the Bill at present. I think that I am right in saying that in his introductory speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea conceded that there should be such a procedure. I welcome that, but I must say that if we now build into the Bill an appeals mechanism, it raises other questions of delays and resources--or it may do. That is properly a matter for the Committee to consider.

However, it is right on Second Reading that the House pauses and considers whether we envisage that an appeals procedure would be appropriate, with all the effects that it might have on the public and on business undertakings. No hon. Member has picked up that point. I do not know whether they accept what my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea suggested and we have no means of knowing. However, it is important for us at least to acknowledge that the Committee might decide to build an appeals procedure into the Bill, so we should have to identify the way in which it worked, which body would hear the appeals and the time scale involved. My hon. Friend the Member for Battersea is about to help us.

Mr. Bowis : My hon. Friend may not have heard me earlier. I said, and I based my remarks on the helpful advice of his officials, that we would use the appeals procedure in relevant Acts that relate to the statutory authorities that would be listed in the Bill. The procedures are all there. If there were unreasonable delays, it would be because there are unreasonable delays now.

Mr. Forth : I am grateful to my hon. Friend for clarifying the matter to the House. He has also helped us because he has said that he wants to look positively at the suggestion that the Bill should include a schedule of authorities to be covered. He and I discussed that and we felt that it was an area of doubt in the Bill. My hon. Friend's remarks will give the Committee some guidance.

I do not want to dwell on the appeals procedure. The enforcement of the procedure is also important. There would have to be enforcement of the terms of the public warning notices either by the statutory authorities--I presume that they would take on most of that role--or, in some cases, by the local authorities. There would have to be a procedure, although I am not sure that it would be

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very different from those that exist at present. As the existing procedures cover most of what we want to do, I should have thought that that point would be covered fairly adequately.

We must not forget to mention the burdens on the private sector--the business and wealth-creating sector. I have responsibility for small businesses as well as responsibility for health and safety and other matters at the Department of Employment and I have a passing interest in the effects that some of the Bill's provisions might have on small businesses. I do not want to over-emphasise that, because many of the existing provisions and procedures already in force probably have similar effects, but I thought that the House would want to be aware of that issue before deciding whether to give the Bill a Second Reading.

I have already mentioned briefly that we should have to return to other matters when considering the Bill further. Those issues include the definition of the enforcing authorities, coverage of the local authorities, whether or not the security provision in clause 1(4) would need to be redrafted, which it probably would, and the difficulties that arise in the detailed provisions of the notices' dimensions and other matters. Those are all matters of detail that would have to be considered subsequently.

There are also some difficulties surrounding the applicability of the Bill to Northern Ireland. I am advised that, as the Bill is a transferred matter, under the Northern Ireland Constitution Act 1973 the Bill should not extend to Northern Ireland--as is the case with so many Bills. Therefore, if the Bill were to become law, consideration would have to be given to a separate Northern Ireland Order in Council. I said that almost in passing, although we must never forget the different and unique requirements of Northern Ireland when legislating. The House should be aware that we would have to address that issue.

Mr. Spearing : The Minister has been giving the House considerable detail of the matters that we would need to look at if the principle of the Bill was agreed by the House. Will he help the House by stating whether he will give it the opportunity to make a decision on Second Reading?

Mr. Forth : As the hon. Gentleman knows, that is not a matter for me. It is for the House of Commons to decide whether to give a measure its Second Reading.

Mr. Spearing : Will the Minister give us the opportunity?

Mr. Forth : The hon. Gentleman knows that the House may vote on the substance of a measure on Second Reading, as it did last Friday, or it may be required to show its support for a measure by the requisite number of people being present in the House at 2.30 pm. The hon. Gentleman has been in the House longer than I and knows that.

Mr. Ashton : The Minister has spoken for an hour on a two-page Bill, covering points that could easily have been made and tabled as amendments in Committee. He must be in a position to say whether he will allow a Second Reading or talk out the Bill.

Mr. Forth : I find these questions strange-- [Interruption.] Opposition Members are beginning to get

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slightly agitated. I am delighted to see them coming in to hear my closing sentences. All that they are doing is prolonging my time at the Dispatch Box.

Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours (Workington) : On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I understand that a telephone call has been received from someone in a village called Dodder Hill in Mid-Worcestershire. A man has rung in to say that his Member of Parliament is called Mr. Eric Forth. The man wanted another hon. Member to get up in the House of Commons and object to the fact that his Member of Parliament was trying to block a Bill that was important to the people of Worcestershire. I wonder whether the Member for that constituency might be prepared to grant this gentleman's wish and give the House a chance to vote on the Bill--

Madam Deputy Speaker (Miss Betty Boothroyd) : Order. We have not obtained high technology yet at the Chair ; I have no mobile telephone. That is not a point of order for the Chair.

Mr. Campbell-Savours : Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. If a man makes the effort to ring the House from a little village in the Minister's constituency, he is clearly very upset. The Minister can respond to his request that he give the Bill the chance of going into Committee. I appeal to the Minister--

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