I do not take away from my comments because that is exactly how I was behaving in those elections.
The amendment cannot be supported as it stands, although it has good liberal tendencies. It is a very difficult area, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, said. It is difficult to get a balance here between defining by restriction what we can do and opening it up; the general tenor of the Bill is to try to open up the issue to encourage home businesses. The one thing that this amendment does not make absolutely clear is that the tenant or owner must occupy this property, so any tenant or somebody who owns it would have that overriding right, and the planning law does not accept that. Therefore in that sense the amendment cannot be accepted. This is the issue—whether we define the planning restrictions on home businesses in the legislation; the Minister has already told us about the danger.
With great respect to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, as regards some of the definitions she has used, she accused the definition of “home business” of
being vague, but the fact that you have to take account of the location of a property does not tell you whether you can allow a home business. That will be a matter of judgment, therefore quite vague, whereas the intention of the legislation is to open this up and to encourage home businesses, obviously within the planning restraints that are currently there: you have to occupy the property, you cannot fundamentally change the home for the business, you cannot have people coming to buy from the premises, and you cannot employ people. We know that there is already great flexibility in where we are and that people do those things, but obviously, if they overstep the mark, there is the danger that if their neighbours think that their community life in their residential area is disturbed, they will object and have the grounds for doing so. Therefore this is an area of great interest. I would be in favour of where we are in the Bill, where we do not define it in the legislation, although we may come back to it by regulation, Clearly we cannot accept the amendment because it does not make it absolutely clear, which it has to, that the premises have to be occupied by the owner or the tenant.