3 December 2012 – HMG prohibition

 

How HMG intends to prohibit British pedlars and go against British people as criminals while Britain lays itself open to all others in the EEA…

…OMG!

 

HMG has published what it calls a “consultation” on Street Trading and Pedlary Laws but in fact the government isn’t asking all people in Britain – it’s simply using “Europe” to bring in a criminal law against the population of Britain and calling it – Compliance with the European Services Directive.

 

The BIS “de-regulation team” abolishes the Pedlars Act that provides the civil allowance for any pedestrian person above 17 the right to trade in any goods, any place, any time throughout the UK and has decided to put in its place a complicated, difficult to administer, expensive, and completely badly written and described law that the government spins as:

a new, more up to date definition of what behaviour constitutes acting as a pedlar be inserted into the pedlar exemption from the relevant street trading regimes. The effect would be to continue to protect the rights of “genuine” pedlars to operate (including other European nationals providing services in the UK)[1].

 

HMG will do this – not by “consulting” with the people of Britain, not by going out to all media for people’s good advice, not by having big debates in Parliament but by slapping in something known as a Statutory Instrument (SI) which doesn’t need people’s agreement only the approval by a very few unelected Lords to de-regulate pedlary with the pretence of “deregulation” and to satisfy Europe – but then to bring in actually extremely oppressive regulation.

With this the population of Britain lose a safe and secure future and everybody faces inevitable prosecution and prohibition of their public trading rights.

 

Here’s how the government is going to achieve this massively repressive measure – by amendment to the text of the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982, the LGMPA, the control and licensing of Street Trading Regulation, but pedlars at the moment are EXEMPT from this regulation because the pedlars’ trade is free of all regulatory restrictions  and no other “authority” is required. People and pedlars enter into contracts by their own agreement – “authorities” are not part of it.

The LGMPA paragraph 2 provides:

a district council may by resolution designate any street in their district as (a) a prohibited street, (b) a licence street, (c) a consent street

to which HMG intends to add:

A resolution designating a street as a licence street or as a consent street may provide that the designation is to take effect in relation to (a) all persons, or (b) all persons other than service providers from another European state[2].

 

There is evidence that some councils have “by resolution“ extended the designation of some streets to the whole jurisdiction[3].

The LGMPA also provides that:

a person who engages in street trading in a prohibited street, licence street or consent street without authorisation shall be guilty of an offence[4].

Pedlars currently rely on a Pedlars Certificate as a self asserting form of bona fide authorisation but the d*aft legislation removes this protection of a certificate.

 

Under the proposed SI pedlars are automatically “potential victims” exposed to prosecution for an offence of not having a licence or consent.

 

At the same time that pedlars are effectively prohibited from designated streets, a council may by a simple resolution exempt from the effect of designation all other EEA nationals – granting them free and unfettered access to all UK streets.

 

How does this policy continue to protect the rights of “genuine”pedlars to operate?

Where in these absurd unworkable costly proposals is any attempt to describe or define what is the principle and meaning of the word “genuine”?

It certainly isn’t by a local government official getting out a tape measure – that was done in the Third Reich to measure people’s noses.

It’s against the Nuremburg Convention, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the European Convention, the Services Directive – and yet BIS / HMG thinks it fit for purpose for this New Millennium, in a New Age, a New World Order.

This word “genuine” is as much one of those airy-fairy terms that BIS has decided doesn’t comply with the European Services Directive – as airy-fairy as “harmony” or “fair” or “reasonable” or “proportionate”.

 

How will pedlars keep abreast of some 420 local authorities powers of resolution?

Why has BIS not consulted the 48 million ordinary persons affected by this SI?

The public is affected but HMG/BIS disregards their stakeholdership… Why?

 

HMG’s interest in Compliance with the European Services Directive means that BIS cannot do what it intends because Article 1.5[5] of the Services Directive states that “Member states may not restrict the freedom [of civil law pedlars] by applying criminal law provisions [modified LGMPA] which specifically regulate or affect access to or exercise of [pedlary] in circumvention of the rules laid down in this Directive”.

 

Who in Parliament will stand and defend… We the People?

 

END