I want to press the Minister for clarification on clause 23, which makes it an offence to distribute, commission or pay for the distribution of free printed material in an area designated by a local authority without consent. It has been put to us that the existing powers available to Westminster City council under section 4 of the London Local Authorities Act 1994 have proved insufficient. It seeks the Minister's agreement to recommend that they be developed further to make them effective and to enable their successful extension beyond London. The council believes that the free literature distribution controls have proved to be ineffective, because operators can continue to distribute free literature from private forecourts, many of which are contiguous with and largely indistinguishable from the public footway. Does the Minister know about that problem, and will he look kindly on that suggestion for dealing with it?

I also run past the Minister the conclusion that he reached on page 39 in his Department's regulatory impact assessment, which sets out the quantification of costs and benefits. It states that

''the total set-up cost to local authorities would be between £450,000 and £750,000; and taking account of the costs of enforcement and the cleaning costs saved, on an annual basis there would be somewhere between a net cost of £37,500 and a net cost saving of £525,000.''

It concludes:

''This illustrates that it is not certain whether there would be a net financial cost or benefit to this measure. However, it is important to note that this is a power that Local Authorities would choose whether or not to use. They would only do so where  there is an overall net benefit to using it and this is likely to be in key areas where free literature litter is a particular problem and it is a priority of the authority to deal with it.''

That is quite a negative conclusion to draw, and points to the fact that the Bill is very unlikely to meet its major objectives. Will the Minister satisfy us on those two points?