Examination of Witnesses (Questions 194-199)
21 DECEMBER 2004
MR PHILIP
DOYLE, MR
STEPHEN GREEN,
PROFESSOR DICK
HOBBS, MR
JOHN HUTSON
AND MS
CLARE EAMES
Q194 Chairman: Good morning, everyone.
Thank you very much indeed for coming to give evidence to this
session, which is the third evidence session we have had as a
committee on the various aspects of anti-social behaviour, and
today's is focussing on binge drinking. Could I start with a general
question to the Chief Constable. There has been a lot of publicity
about binge drinking and associated disorder. In your experience,
how serious a social problem is this? Is it very much overblown
by the press, the media and sometimes the politicians or is there
a real problem?
Mr Green: I think we see it as
a significant problem, Chairman. I think I can give you a soft
feel but I can give you some statistics as well, if I may. Certainly
in terms of looking at the range of risks that my police divisions
are dealing with, then the threat of city centre violence on a
Friday-Saturday night is seen as a significant risk. I talk of
a city which deals with gun crime, drug-related crime and all
the range of different crimes; but we would still say that behind
guns and drugs, drink-related violence is probably our next biggest
threat, so it does influence operational deployment. If I could
put some figures on that: if you look at the Nottingham City Police
Division, which covers the whole of the Nottingham City local
authority area, one-fifth of all its violent crimes so far this
year have taken place within the square mile of the city centre;
and the majority of that has taken place between 10 pm and 3 am.
Whilst I cannot go and look at every crime and say, "Is that
alcohol-related, or not", if I look at those figures the
suggestion would be that a significant part of the violent crime
problem is directly related to city centre violence. I accept
that alcohol can touch violent crime in other areas, but I think
that particular figure gives a very clear indication of the size
and the scope of the problem.
Q195 Chairman: Mr Doyle, you work for
a local authority, I understand?
Mr Doyle: I do. I have experience
of the effects of crime and disorder related to alcohol, both
as a local authority employee but also from a 30-year police career.
I left the police service six years ago and worked exclusively
in London, and obviously had a great deal to do with alcohol-related
violence during my police career. I would say that, in addition
to the problems Stephen Green has outlined, the problems are threatening
the attractiveness of city centres as places to live in, work
in and visit. They threaten the tourist industry, to some extent,
because tourists do not want to be amongst drunken yobs; residents
do not want to wake up in the morning and find vomit, urine and
worse on their doorstep. I think it is those kinds of problems
which are attached to the violence. Many of the problems actually
are not recorded because they are not crimes as such—it
is low level disorder, if you like. Just to add one statistic
to Mr Green's, we know from the police in Westminster that almost
half of all violence and disorder related calls to the police
occur between just four hours of the day—and that is between
midnight and 4 am, particularly on a Friday and Saturday night.
Q196 Chairman: Mr Hutson, your company
operates both in town and city centres and some locations outside
those central areas, would you broadly share that description
of what is going on in town and city centres where binge drinking
is concentrated?
Mr Hutson: About a third of our
pubs probably are in the likes of central Nottingham or Westminster
and the majority of those pubs close at 11 o'clock in our own
case. In a way, when a lot of the incidents are taking place our
pubs are not trading at that time. We do not have the first-hand
experience that these two gentlemen have. The other thing I would
like to add is, we obviously trade through seven days a week,
and one of the things our own company tries to do is attract a
broad range of customers on each of the days we trade, and also
throughout the day as well, so we have less reliance upon the
Friday-Saturday night.
Q197 Chairman: In terms of your experience
of the disorder problem, are you saying your company, because
you shut at 11 o'clock, is not really aware of this problem taking
place?
Mr Hutson: I think we are aware
of the whole issue of binge drinking and, like any other company
at the moment in the licensing industry, are trying to do what
we can within our own means to curtail it. From our own point
of view we do not have a tremendous amount of incidents, certainly
in our own premises, which we could attribute to binge drinking.
Q198 Chairman: I will come back to some
of those issues later. Mr Hobbs, I wonder if I could bring you
in because I know this is something you have looked at. Some people
look at the history of this country and say that we have always
been binge drinkers, and the English in particular, going back
hundreds of years. Foreign visitors used to talk about how much
people drank. Is this just the same old problem we are experiencing
now and we have got more sensitive to it, or is this something
new?
Professor Hobbs: I think it is
something new. We started to research this area in 1998 and I
had never heard of a "binge drinker" at that particular
point. I think the use of the term can be somewhat problematic.
I prefer the term "drunk", and there are a lot of them!
The reason there is a lot of them is basically that we have developed
a new economy in this country, a night-time economy. We do not
manufacture in this country so much any more and city centres
were emptying out. I think the responsibility which was placed
upon local authorities, in particular, to develop the local economy
and attract the investor to create jobs became very, very important
during the 1980s and 1990s. One of the few areas where we can
develop jobs and where we can create wealth is in the alcohol
industry and in the night-time economy—bars, clubs and industries
such as fast food. What we now call the problem of binge drinking
is really a problem of a particular economy which is concentrated
on city centres, and has created problems of violence and disorder.
What we call "binge drinking" now is a new problem in
that respect; it is an economic issue.
Q199 Chairman: Is this one that comes
from the concentration of premises in town and city centres?
Professor Hobbs: Very much so.
The concentration is immense. It is something we were quite surprised
about when we started to carry out our research. Although pubs,
we are told, are closing down daily in rural areas, the concentration
of licensing in city centres is immense and that is really where
drinking takes place, and particularly drinking which is concentrated
at one particularly vulnerable group of the marketplace, which
is the under 25s. It is a youth orientated, alcohol-based industry
which is concentrated in city centres.
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