Powers of Entry etc. Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to your Lordships for having given the Bill such a good reception. My father spent his life motor-racing and died at a young age. He always said, "You must never run out of petrol and you mustn’t ever get stuck in the mud or snow". So in view of the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, I thought I might take another five and a half hours of your Lordships’ time. She asked whether there has been consultation. The work of the Home Office and other ministries has been pretty good. I would not normally, but I propose just to read the headings. Under each of the columns of the investigation which has already taken place before we have a wider consultation—and with me it is only a 35-year consultation period—the document states: "Statute, Purpose, Purpose of entry"; next, "Warrant: yes or no?"; next, "Category of person who many enter: PC or official, and level of authority"; "Other person permitted to enter"; "Threshold: To enter without warrant or make application for warrant"; "Type of premises"—and there are four different types of premises; "Times for entry: Any time", and other various times as well; "Other conditions", with a range of other conditions; "Notification to occupier required: Before entry, On entry, On leaving or None?"; "Other powers—e.g. Question persons present, examine records etc"; "Specific offence: to obstruct entry". That is just to start, and this document weighs quite a lot. I would like to complain about the historic meanness of Her Majesty’s Government. I was offered three copies of this great document—this magnum opus. I was then told that unfortunately, because it is in colour, I would have to pay 20p for each sheet other than the original copy. But never mind, it is on the website. The consultation period should be ongoing, but the most important thing now is to inform, and to inform ministries and the officials within those ministries what their powers are, because many of them do not know; and then, in the consultative period, to inform every local authority and every body—every quango, ango and NDPB which is involved—that there is a consultative period and that one should ask for it. I go back to the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam. He had a great influence on me when, one day, he had his idea of promoting this House—because I had been told that you had to do everything through the House of Commons—and then we had the idea of Project Outreach. So I wondered whether we were allowed to communicate with people without going through the House of Commons. Previously I was told that if anyone wrote to you, you should pass it to the relevant Member in the House of Commons—because we did not have any writing paper and we had quill pens and ink, and it is impossible to get any ink in your Lordships’ House now. So I thought that we should start our own consultative process from the House of Lords, which I shall be doing myself under Project Outreach with some bogus name; in fact I think I shall call myself the Undertaker. We will have a website and communicate with all people. I thought it would be reasonable that we should offer and declare that hereinafter in your Lordships’ House we will offer to represent—as we are non-elected, with certain exceptions such as some of my colleagues and myself; the election process may be slightly doubtful but we have a certain legitimate claim—all elected people in the United Kingdom: Members of the House of Commons, local authority members and councillors, parish councillors and others. That is a total of 109,360 persons or personages. So the consultation period will be as wide as possible and we will have a website—and also we should enjoy it. We want to make sure that the person has quiet enjoyment of his dwelling place, which I believe is one of the legal terms, and remove the fear and let it be known that everyone is on top of this. Finally, I should just like to advise your Lordships that it is very important to have a starting handle. If you do get stuck in mud or snow you should always have a starting handle. The reverse gear in a car is the slowest gear. So you take the plugs out of your car, you put in the starting handle and you turn it in reverse gear, and you will get yourself out of any snow or any other mess. But on this particular project I do not have a reverse gear, so we will go on going forward. Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.