I seek to fulfil the same role in this debate as I did in the debate on the previous group of amendments, by speaking briefly and highlighting for my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) where I think he is on to a winner and also where he has not necessarily persuaded me of the merits of his case.
I am rather puzzled by the whole debate on amendment 10. My hon. Friend made a good case for saying that we should ask people to supply information about the owner of a builder’s skip only
“where that information is not clearly and indelibly marked under the provisions of section 9,”
as his amendment sets out. If I understood my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) correctly—I am sure he will correct me if I am wrong, which I may well be—he was saying that because skips change ownership quite often, having just a name, telephone number, address or whatever it might be on the skip would not necessarily be a good enough indicator of the actual owner, because the skip might have changed hands a couple of times since those markings were
applied. That might well be true, but the problem is that it flies in the face of clause 9, which states that the owner would have to ensure—I might add that anyone who did not do this would have to pay a fine—that
“the skip is clearly and indelibly marked with the owner’s name and with his telephone number or address”.
The promoters of the Bill cannot have it both ways. They cannot say that such information is required for the purposes of clause 9, but that it would be unfair to require it in clause 8. I would advise my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East to have another think, because my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch is simply proposing a modest, common-sense amendment that goes with the flow of the Bill, not against it.