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24 Mar 2003 : Column 70—continued
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I must remind the House that the 12-minute limit on Back-Benchers' speeches begins now.
6.26 pm
Claire Ward (Watford): I am grateful for the opportunity to speak early in the debate, which has been very interesting so far.
I welcome the Bill as an opportunity to revise and update some of our most outdated legislation, which goes back many centuries. This is a chance for us to put into a modern perspective the licensing of alcohol and entertainment and to ensure that there is flexibility to reflect the changing lifestyles that many of us now lead.
For many Members and their constituents, the opportunity to travel abroad and enjoy the entertainment and licensing hours in many other countries has made them realise how outdated we in this country are. That has had a significant effect on tourism in this country, and the Bill offers us an opportunity to ensure that tourists who visit this country can enjoy our entertainment, our late-night cafes and all our licensed premises in the same way as they enjoy such facilities in their own countries.
Mr. Mark Field: Does the hon. Lady accept that the concern of many Conservative Members is that the way in which alcohol is consumed in our society is fundamentally different from that on much of the continent? That factor underlines many of the problems that residents have highlighted, such as the prospect of 24-hour or much-extended licensing.
Claire Ward: I accept that there is a very different culture in this country, and I believe that the Bill will help to change that by removing the opportunities for binge drinking. When the pubs of Watford close at 11, 12 or 12.30 at night, many young people move, all at once, to the nightclubs, which will then turn them out at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. It would be far more sensible to have a staged throwing-out time, making it easier for residents and communities to cope with problems such as antisocial behaviour and helping the police to deal more effectively with such problems. So I welcome the Bill for that reason, but there are a few issues on which I seek some clarification.
In general, I welcome the proposal to change the decision-making process by allowing local authorities to make licensing decisions, but I do have some concerns. Will my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State confirm that additional funding will be provided to local authorities to enable them to deal with their new responsibilities when the Bill becomes law? As she is undoubtedly aware, local authorities are already concerned about funding, and I would not want Watford, which already has a significant number of
entertainment and licensed establishments, to have to bear the burden of additional costs taken over from the magistrates courts committee.
Mr. Swire: The hon. Lady says that most people welcome the idea that licensing arrangements should be changed. However, I wonder whether, like me, she has received forms from licensees stating categorically that 94 per cent. of licensees want licensing to be controlled by magistrates. In doing so, they cited the reasons given by my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale) in his opening remarks.
Claire Ward: I should point out that I have discussed this issue with Tim Martin of J.D. Wetherspoon, which is based in my constituency, and I fundamentally disagree with him. Residents in my area would greatly appreciate the opportunity for their views to be heard. Residents in the upper part of Watford town centre, near the nightclubs and the highly populated music establishments and drinking areas, constantly have to put up with antisocial behaviour and problems associated with young people leaving the town centre and going to the train station. Those residents feel that magistrates courts committees do not listen to their views; however, they will be able to hold accountable their locally elected councillors when they make such decisions.
In addition to funding, I am concerned about the timing of the decision-making process. We know that under planning legislation local authorities are required to determine an application within eight weeks. However, very few of them manage to achieve that, and in some cases it takes months for local planning committees to make a decision. I hope that my right hon. Friend will ensure, under the guidelines that she will issue to local authorities, that, in taking on these powers, committees must determine a licence application within a reasonable time; that she will establish what that time is; and that there will be a proper appeals process. Residents should have the opportunity to appeal to their locally elected council representatives, and, should the decision not go in their favour, they should also have the right to appeal to a magistrates courts committee.
I am also concerned about the requirement for churches and village halls to have a licence, although I accept that the Government have decided, through the other place, that a fee should not be payable. I hope that my right hon. Friend will clarify whether a person who privately hires a village hall that may not provide a permanent bar service will have to have a licence. At the moment, many village and community halls are hired out to members of the community who wish to hold a birthday party or some other function. They bring in an off-licence in order to provide bar services, which are paid for by the people attending that function. Will such an individual be required to have a licence, and will the terms and conditions be changed? Will the number of times that such a hall can be used for those purposes be restricted if it is not paying a fee? Will she also clarify whether it will it make a difference if such a hall is hired by a charitable group or a not-for-profit organisation,
so that we can ensure that there are no problems for community groups that organise events for local charities or good causes?My right hon. Friend has already dealt with the question of children entering such premises. Young children regarding licensed establishments as appropriate places to hang out and have a drink, even a non-alcoholic one, is a matter of concern. It is not just a question of such places being adult environments in which people are drinking, in which they are therefore likely to be less aware that children are around, and in which behaviour occurs that is perhaps not suitable for children; I am also concerned that in licensed establishments, particularly pubs and clubs, it is more likely that the environment will be smokey. My great worry is that this legislation will encourage licensees to allow children into smoking environments, and I wonder whether my right hon. Friend has considered placing a condition on a licence whereby a no-smoking area must be provided within a pub or a club if the licensee determines that a child will be allowed into the premises.
People these days are genuinely concerned that children might enter a pub or club in which adults are smoking around them, and that that might encourage more young people to smoke. [Interruption.] I hope that my right hon. Friend has given some consideration to that issue. [Interruption.] My poor hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Pound) is choking purely at the prospect that he might be banned from smoking in such environments, but I suspect that the Government have not quite reached that stage yet.
In general, I welcome the provisions of the Bill, and I hope that my right hon. Friend will be able to clarify some of the issues that I have raised. I hope, too, that she can give some comfort to those who have raised the abolition of the two-in-a-bar rule by pointing out that new opportunities for entertainment will be opened up, and that she will enable more entertainment in pubs, clubs and licensed venues, not less.
6.37 pm
Nick Harvey (North Devon): I welcome the Government's decision to introduce the Licensing Bill. There is no doubt that a comprehensive overhaul of the legislation in this area is long overdue, and that the current regime is archaic and complex. It is often said—correctly or apocryphally—that the current laws were designed to keep munitions factory workers sober in wartime, and that they have remained in place ever since. Certainly, examining what schedule 7 will repeal shows the age of some of the existing laws. Such legislation includes the Universities (Wine Licences) Act 1743, the Sunday Observance Act 1780, the Inebriates Act 1898, and—for a reason that is not entirely clear—the Hypnotism Act 1952.
As the hon. Member for Watford (Claire Ward) has said, our laws have been badly out of kilter not only with the rest of Europe, but with the rest of the world. When foreign visitors come to the UK and run up against our licensing laws, some of them scratch their heads in complete bemusement and wonder, and cannot for the life of them make out what they are about. It is certainly time that we reviewed them.
The Minister for Tourism, Film and Broadcasting (Dr. Kim Howells): In case the hon. Gentleman is going to develop the argument about hypnotism, I should tell him that I am reliably informed that we are not doing away with the Hypnotism Act 1952.
Nick Harvey: I apologise to the Minister—it is section 1(2) of the 1952 Act that is being done away with, rather than the Act in its entirety.
There are clear reasons for reform. We need a new regime for social reasons, to control antisocial and binge drinking. We need to give the police the opportunity to tackle the issue of chucking-out times more satisfactorily. I accept the point that the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale) made that research from different countries is contradictory on that issue, but it is certainly the case that the balance of all lobbying by the police that I have experienced, in the 11 years that I have been a Member of Parliament, has been in favour of abolishing a common chucking-out time and enabling them to tackle problems in town centres more flexibly.
We also need a new regime for reasons of better government. It cannot be right for the Government to sustain arbitrarily imposed limits on when people can enter, and must leave, premises established to serve alcohol. In this day and age, it is not right to take a one-size-fits-all approach that allows exceptions only in the most unusual circumstances. It is right, therefore, that local communities should have a say in the licensing regime in their area.
Having said that I welcome legislation on licensing, I see significant problems in this Bill. I welcomed the honest assessment from the Secretary of State that, with the benefit of hindsight, she wished that the Bill had been subjected to pre-legislative scrutiny. If it had, some of the problems would have been smoked out earlier and Ministers and officials would have had a chance to address them. I invite the Secretary of State to go further and acknowledge that it was also a mistake to introduce legislation that will have many of its key characteristics defined in guidelines without publishing the draft of the guidelines at the same time. It was that mistake that gave rise to much of the campaigning outside Parliament that she mentioned. Many of the groups involved started their campaigns because when they read the Bill without the benefit of any draft guidelines they were left to make worst-case assumptions. When the rough draft of the guidelines was eventually published, it allayed some of the fears that had been raised. In conjunction with some useful amendments made in the House of Lords, that took some of the momentum out of the campaigns. It is all very well to accuse people of scaremongering, but if they did not know what the guidelines would say—and how the seemingly limitless powers in the Bill would be curtailed through the application of common sense—it was understandable that they would jump to conclusions.
It makes sense to combine liquor and entertainment licensing, if we feel that entertainment licensing is necessary. Factors that affect both have much in common, and it makes sense to address them at the same time. However, as the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford said, the existing system—for all its frailties—is well understood and reasonably well accepted. Magistrates have done their important and
potentially controversial job well, and I subscribe to the adage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." However, as the Government have decided to put on the agenda the issue of moving the task from magistrates to local authorities, one is compelled to reach a judgment in principle about whether that is the right thing to do. If the question is whether the function of licensing is an executive or judicial task, the Government are right to say that it is an executive task. If changing the present system is the Government's wish, that is fair enough. Magistrates will hear appeals against local authorities' decisions, which will provide a sensible balance between the two.
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