Select Committee on Environmental Audit Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 240-259)

11 NOVEMBER 2004

MR RICHARD HOLMAN AND MR GARY SMART

  Q240 Mr Challen: I can speak from my own experience of putting up posters during election periods and by-elections are notorious for the amount of posters that go up, but in our case they all have by law to bear an imprint. That could act as a deterrent to people who want to put up posters without saying on whose behalf it is published. It is difficult to conceal on whose behalf your posters will be published but the printer's name has to be on it and the publisher's name has to be on it. Is that something that you think ought to be more widely employed, the idea of putting that information on the bottom of posters so that people can see exactly who is responsible for each stage of that poster's production and distribution?

  Mr Holman: If there was a penalty regime that was being implemented quite strongly it would be a bigger incentive not to fly-post. As Mr Smart has said, in our case, and no doubt in other such cases, we are used as a venue by other people and it comes back to the point you were making about allowance of the use of our brand and our logo in the area that you are talking about.

  Q241 Mr Challen: I do not know if you are familiar with the lifestyle provisions in the Proceeds of Crime Act which means that assets of directors of companies, for example, could be seized as well as fines being levied. Do you favour that kind of approach? Do you agree with me that more of a deterrent would be available there? Would you agree that that is an appropriate deterrent for addressing the problem?

  Mr Holman: As a director of the company I would have to say it is rather a heavy reaction and would only be appropriate in cases of a continuous failure to observe a more measured response. I see it as a fairly extreme penalty that might be necessary to back up anything else.

  Q242 Chairman: Is not one of the problems that, in your business with your brand, getting into trouble with the law is quite a positive thing?

  Mr Smart: No.

  Q243 Chairman: Is it not quite cool to be bad?

  Mr Holman: No, I do not think that is the image at all. That is certainly not why we fly-post. There may be a slightly fine line between being seen to be slightly underground and cutting edge, but—

  Q244 Chairman: You have a subsidiary called Decadence.

  Mr Holman: Decadance.

  Q245 Chairman: Oh, I beg your pardon.

  Mr Holman: It is not a brand name that we use much. It was somebody's bright idea of a name for a company. No, it is certainly not breaking the law. As a club we have always been very strong in the drugs area, which has been one of the biggest concerns in clubbing, and we helped the Home Office write the new rules for that. It is not part of the Ministry's brief to try to be seen to be sneaky law-breakers.

  Q246 Paul Flynn: Mr Smart, do you think that the Ministry of Sound fly-posters enhance the beauty of the urban landscape?

  Mr Smart: Probably not, no.

  Q247 Paul Flynn: You seem to be suggesting that you are a tasteful law-breaker in that you only allow your fly-posters to go up in a nice orderly way and they are of high aesthetic quality. That is not what you are saying?

  Mr Smart: I am saying they are in as much as hundreds of banks on the high street are or car showrooms are. They are part of the fabric of society. If they are up and they are not on stupid locations then they add something to society.

  Q248 Paul Flynn: You are a cheerful, happy law-breaker, you have just told us. You are happy to be a law-breaker?

  Mr Smart: No. I am under the impression that where we are putting them is allowable by the fact that we are not going to be pulled up or fined.

  Q249 Paul Flynn: That is not true. You have been fined under the byelaw—

  Mr Smart: Recently?

  Q250 Paul Flynn: Yes, recently.

  Mr Smart: We have reacted to those situations.

  Q251 Paul Flynn: When you were called by Westminster Council to see them to try and ameliorate your behaviour, which people do with law-breakers rather than taking them to court, you failed to attend the meeting.

  Mr Smart: Who, me?

  Q252 Paul Flynn: Your organisation did. Ministry of Sound failed to attend when they were called by Westminster Council on 9 December 2002. You were subsequently fined with costs of £352.

  Mr Smart: I am sorry; I was not aware that we were supposed to attend any meeting. We have always supported the police and the council in things like this if we are asked.

  Q253 Paul Flynn: But you cheerfully break the law. Mr Holman, I find it fascinating listening to your evidence. I do not want to be unpleasant to you but it is refreshing to hear what Edward Heath described as "the unacceptable face of capitalism". You describe your customers and their lifestyles in sub-moronic terms, you have clear disdain for your own customers and you make it clear that you will happily go on breaking the law and littering the urban landscape as long as it does not hit you in your most erogenous zone, which is your wallet, and nothing else seems to matter. It is all about your profit. If the fines are not big enough you continue to do exactly what you want to do. Is that a fair description of what you said just now?

  Mr Holman: No, I do not think it is at all.

  Q254 Paul Flynn: What about on the point that you say you have no environmental policy?

  Mr Holman: I did not say that.

  Q255 Paul Flynn: The environment does not matter at all? It does not appear on your landscape at all?

  Mr Holman: I do not think that was what I was saying. I said we do have an environmental policy. We do not have a written environmental policy but we are very clear that—

  Q256 Paul Flynn: It is a gleam in someone's eye, is it, the environmental policy? You say that no-one is employed doing it.

  Mr Holman: I have already said that in terms of cleaning up the area round the club, which is one of the most sensitive points of London so the council will be concerned about it, we have made big efforts to ensure that that is dealt with.

  Mr Smart: We have been doing that for some years.

  Q257 Paul Flynn: I am another member of this committee who has seen your posters or only knows about you because of your posters. They have suddenly disappeared very recently. The result when they disappeared was not that there was nothing left. The walls that were decorated with these are still a mess. Although it will clear away in time there will still be remnants of them and the place will still look like a slum. What is your view on that? We cannot identify that your posters used to be there. Many of us have passed them on a daily basis coming in to Westminster. Are you happy about that? Your clean-up is just to eliminate your name so you are not blamed for it.

  Mr Smart: The areas where we are pulled up we do not advertise again and the areas where we want to continue and will continue until such time as we cannot are the areas that we are led to believe are sites that are owned by the poster companies.

  Q258 Paul Flynn: But the only thing that is going to get across to you or has got across to you is this recent bad publicity about fly-posting. You were not worried about breaking the law. Because it is not an indictable offence you cannot be got at and there it is. Eventually pressure from the public stating what you were doing has got through to you. The other thing that would get through to you would be if the law hit you in your pocket. That is the message that you are giving us with your evidence this morning, is it not?

  Mr Holman: You used the term "happy law-breakers".

  Q259 Paul Flynn: You seem very cheerful to me. I do not see any sign of guilt about it.

  Mr Holman: We have made it clear wherever we have perhaps not focused sufficiently on the full terms of the law but we have tried to a certain extent to work within the law. I doubt if anybody in this room sticks rigidly to every line of every law. Fly-posting, as Mr Smart says, has been going for a long time. We know that it is illegal. There are many other things that happen in the area that are illegal. We have cut back very substantially. The council can come to us at any time; any council can.


 
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