Select Committee on Home Affairs Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 200-219)

21 DECEMBER 2004

MR PHILIP DOYLE, MR STEPHEN GREEN, PROFESSOR DICK HOBBS, MR JOHN HUTSON AND MS CLARE EAMES

  Q200 Chairman: There were big changes in the brewery and pub-owning industry in the late 1980s and early 1990s because of the competition policy. Has that contributed to the problem?

  Professor Hobbs: Yes, I think it has. I think we have seen the national chains come up and become more important than the brewers. You see players such as Wetherspoon, Yates etc replicating their practice around the country in city centres. I think the high street chains have become more important.

  Q201 Chairman: Professor Hobbs has just mentioned the under 25s, within that group who are the main perpetrators, Chief Constable?

  Mr Green: We have done some analysis on the year to date to look at that very thing and, without a doubt, the dominant group in there is where the offender is aged between 18-24 and the victim is aged between 18-24; the dominant offender group and the dominant victim group come from exactly the same age source. In addition to that the dominant social status, if that is the right expression, of those offenders and victims is students and unemployed people. They tend again to be around one-fifth each of the victim and offender groups.

  Q202 Chairman: It is mainly students and unemployed people; it is not young people who are in work?

  Mr Green: There are young people who are in work and, in fairness, there are some fragilities around our recording practices, so I would not say that is absolute gospel. Where we have recorded someone's employment status, around one-fifth of those people have said they are students, and around one-fifth have said they are unemployed. When you look at those people as a proportion of the population, they would appear to be over-represented in the victim and offender groups. In victim and offender terms, the dominant age is 18-24.

  Q203 Chairman: And the gender?

  Mr Green: Male. In fairness, Chairman, there is an increasing proportion of females and I think the split is about 60:40[1], something of that nature. It is not that it is exclusively male, but we still see the dominant group as being male.

  Q204 Chairman: A brief answer please because we will go into detail in each area of policy in just a moment. We have had a plethora of initiatives over the last three or four years around this problem—new policing powers, policing methods, the promotion of responsible drinking by the alcohol industry, health promotion messages and licensing changes. Taken altogether, in the light of all those new measures, is the situation getting worse or getting better?

  Professor Hobbs: I do not think we know. No proper evaluation has been carried out of those measures. For many years it was impossible to get local authorities, and indeed most police forces, to acknowledge that they had a problem, which is important because the police, in particular, were part of local regeneration partnerships. It was very difficult for them to formally acknowledge in most city centres we researched that they had a problem. For them to say there was a problem, in Nottingham, Newcastle, Sheffield or whatever, may impact upon inward investment, and it may create adverse publicity for that city centre. It was very difficult for them to say anything. In terms of the recent plethora of measures brought to bear on certain aspects of this problem, frankly, I do not think we know because it has not been properly evaluated. I look forward to it being properly evaluated.

  Mr Doyle: I think there is a greater awareness of the problem. It is very difficult to put some numbers on the extent of the problem. Speaking to colleagues and other licensing officers both in London and at our conference (which you kindly attended) in Blackpool, it is apparent there is a greater awareness of drink-related violence and disorder, particularly in city centres.

  Mr Green: I think it has not got better. I cannot objectively prove it has got worse. There is a Home Office research document from 1999 on the relationship of alcohol and crime, and everything in here—irresponsible drinks promotion, the predominance of young people involved, the risks of premises where there are no tables and chairs—is based on research which was done in the early to mid 1990s; so you would have to say that nothing has changed in that regard. Certainly we did a major initiative in 2001 where we did everything. We did enforcement; we did education; we did proactive work with licensees; and we achieved a reduction in violent crime over the year of about 11%; but then the money ran out, because it was a Home Office funded project, and the following year the violent crime went back up again. Whilst we were able to achieve some benefit it was extremely short-lived, and now the violent crime figures are as high as they were before it was done. I think it is possible to make an impact, but we have not made a long-term impact; and certainly I would not be willing to say that things had got better.

  Mr Hutson: I agree with Mr Doyle in principle. I think there has been a big change. In the last year or so there has been a greater awareness of the kind of issue we are talking about today. Although it is only anecdotal, I do believe that the licensed industry, and ourselves included, have made big improvements to their operating procedures to try and deal with a lot of these issues, often in partnership with local schemes with the police or town centre management schemes. Our own view is that in the last 12 months we have made great strides. For example, this year we have introduced a code of conduct. We think things like that are positive moves and do have a positive effect.

  Q205 Mr Prosser: Mr Green, what is your assessment of the effect if the new Licensing Act 2003 on these issues of alcohol-related crime and disorder in towns and city centres?

  Mr Green: I think in every sense of the word the jury is still out. There are a huge number of unknowns. If I could perhaps sketch through things I see as some of those great unknowns: I think how robust the actual regulatory regime is, in the face of what will undoubtedly be sustained and well-resourced assaults by legal representatives of different companies, does remain to be seen. The test for me will be, will the local authority have the power to be able to design the kind of town or city centre that it wants to create; or will it be at the mercy of the legal process where decisions have been overturned in the courts, and is unable to achieve what it sets out to achieve? That is a great unknown. We have been trying in Nottingham, working with the local authority, to establish a saturation zone and have done a huge amount of work. Indeed, if you put up the hot spot maps it is extremely impressive to see the concentration of violence in the city centre. Again, whether we can legally establish and sustain that zone, the jury is still out on whether or not it is capable of robustly standing up to challenges in law. I think there are some huge unknowns about how the regime will operate. I think as far as police powers are concerned, the additional powers we have are welcome; indeed, the one which was announced two weeks ago is even more welcome. What we await to see is whether those powers go far enough. There are powers to close premises in 24 hours. Will that go far enough? Certainly we would say that. We would say we do not feel that the industry particularly fears the criminal courts, but it certainly fears for profit. What we would like to ensure is that there are significant deterrents in there to be able to say to companies, "If you don't act responsibly in this town or this city then there will be significant impact on you for your business viability". We wait to see whether that will hold up or not. I guess the controversial issue is the extended drinking hours, or possibly 24-hour drinking. Again, it is hard to relate anything other than we need to see how it works out. I speak from my own local authority areas, I certainly think there is no appetite for 24-hour drinking. What they do know, because they are seeing it already in the existing licensing regime, is that many companies are pushing to extend their hours. Again, how the regime will work, where the hours are granted, is dependent upon the individual operated schedule of the premises and whether people will accept (if we did stagger opening hours), "That place can stay open longer than this place". None of us know how that is going to work and I think we need to watch that very closely in the coming months. In conclusion, my perception is that I do not think Nottinghamshire is going to be any different from anywhere else; and the police in local authorities have put a huge amount of effort into working out how to be compliant with the Act, and they have put the minimum of effort and are now having to put a growing amount of effort into actually using the Act to design their town and city centres. What we need to ensure is that every local authority gets the kind of hurry-up call to say, "If you can't aggressively pull together your vision of what your town centre or city centre is going to look like then somebody else will do it for you". I think that is the real challenge between now and next year.

  Q206 Mr Prosser: You are effectively saying that we will have to "suck it and see". With the knowledge we have got now would you have recommended to Government the general thrust of the Licensing Act?

  Mr Green: My personal take on it is if what we had in the past had been so good that it was worth defending—I would defend it—but it is not. Let us be quite clear, when you have to have this huge book called Patterson Licensing to try and work out one little element of the law, it is madness quite honestly. I am not defending what we have got now. What concerns me is the fundamental contradictions between different interests in the government, and I think they are not reconciled. The desire to promote prosperous town and city centres is perfectly valid. The need to protect public order is perfectly valid. They are not reconciled. The other one if I may is that there is the desire to promote fair competition between different businesses—I do not know if that has got a place in the selling of a drug called "alcohol". There are huge amounts of policy contradictions which have never really been reconciled, and expecting people like me and colleagues in local authorities to reconcile them on the ground is unfair.

  Q207 Mr Prosser: On the issue of licensing hours, some people argue that at least under the present regime the police and authorities can predict when the problems are going to be and can focus their attention and resources on a particular couple of hours. What is your view on that?

  Mr Green: If you look at the behaviour of drinkers, those who are committed drinkers as it were, even if you staggered opening hours people will move from premises to premises and will try and stay out as long as they can. This idea that staggering hours makes it easier to police I think has not been proven in practice, certainly not in this country. At the moment, as things stand, as you say we have a fairly concentrated range of hours so I know if I focus my resources on that time and probably an hour afterwards, by three o'clock in the provinces I can start scaling down and get people off to bed, preparing for the following day. The longer the hours then the greater the risk I have to police in the course of the night. I think what we are going to see is a pulling of resources out of day-time policing into night-time policing to cover those risks.

  Q208 Mr Prosser: Do any of the witnesses have a view of the number of outlets, pubs and clubs which will apply for longer hours and 24-hour drinking? Has any estimate been made?

  Mr Hutson: I do not think there is any industry consensus. Of course, a lot of operators have been waiting for a bit more clarity on the guidelines. From our own point of view, we do not envisage suddenly applying for 24-hour drinking; we do not think there is a demand for it from consumers. Without going through every case, our own general view is that we will apply for slightly extended hours depending on the location. Maybe a little bit longer in a major city centre; and in a suburban centre maybe no longer at all. I do not think there is an innate demand from consumers to want to drink more. I think the innate demand that is there which we have seen in the last ten or 15 years is that people do come out slightly later and do want to extend their night a little bit longer. For the vast majority of people that is the case, I believe, to extend their night a little bit longer but certainly not on a 24-hour basis. There will be demand from companies such as ours to extend hours moderately and in proportion to what they are now in the cities in which they trade; but suddenly going for 24 hours, I do not see it myself.

  Mr Doyle: I have spoken to a wide range of operators over the last two months, including the licensing director of Wetherspoon and I was a little surprised that intentions as regards operators in Westminster, which is where I happen to work, were not necessarily that they wanted to extend their hours. I think what they want to do most of all is have greater flexibility in their ability to operate. Some of them are saying they have not made their minds up yet exactly what it is that they want to do. I suppose one of the pleasing things, which I heard from operators including Wetherspoon, was that they want to extend the nature of their offering in their premises if they can to make it more varied, and that would be good, and not simply a drinking mono-culture. There will be some nights of the week when they will want to extend hours. I suppose it is not difficult to assume that this may be the very nights which are difficult at the moment—Friday and Saturday night. I think there is a mixed message.

  Q209 Mr Prosser: Under the new arrangements and the new Act there will be a necessity for local authorities to provide their own statement of licensing policy. How useful and practical will they be in allowing councils to prohibit licences in areas where they anticipate anti-social behaviour and criminal activity?

  Mr Doyle: Obviously that is welcomed. Because the requirement on local authorities is to have a policy. Acknowledgement that licensing is an important regulatory function in local authority areas in controlling, particularly, the night-time environment is good. What is of concern—and I think there is a certain amount of wait-and see on this, as Stephen Green has said—is that the policy does not actually take effect until somebody objects. It is really left to local residents to carefully scrutinise every licence application, or for responsible authorities, such as the police, planning service or environment health, to be properly resourced and have the expertise again to carefully scan every licence application to see whether there is something they think is important to object to regarding one of the four licensing objectives. It is seen as a little curious, I think, by licensing officers because we feel we are the very people who have advised members on that policy and have the experience, background and expertise to put the policy into place and make it effective—such things as having a stress area, an area of saturation which I notice the Cabinet Office Alcohol Harm Reduction Strategy identified as one of the most serious problems in city centres. If there is a policy of saturation, it will not be possible for a local authority to bring that into effect unless or until objection is made, and that seems curious to us.

  Q210 Mr Prosser: Are you saying the system needs to run and be experienced before you can test and enforce the new measures?

  Mr Doyle: You asked earlier, what do we see as good and bad? I have to say, we have great concerns about that particular provision. It is not something we see as a plus. There are good things in the Licensing Act 2003, without a doubt, but we have grave concerns about that.

  Q211 Mr Prosser: Are you saying that local authorities should have the powers to make a decision over an over-saturated area?

  Mr Doyle: It is the licensing authority. If you take a local council it has a number of functions within it, and one of those is as a licensing authority; another one is the planning authority; and another one is environmental health. A licensing authority will not be able to apply its policy and make recommendations to members unless or until an objection is received, either from somebody living near to this application or from one of the responsible authorities. We see that as a curious anomaly.

  Q212 Mr Prosser: There is a danger of conflict, of incompatibility between the planning issues and licensing issues within the same authority?

  Mr Doyle: In a sense the planning issues are important but, in another way, the very steep growth in late night drink-led entertainment which Dick Hobbs has referred to, which has brought us to the position we are in now, has not always involved a change of planning use. Its A3 use is food and drink, and so restaurants have been turned into bars. D2 use is music and dancing. They also have been turned into nightclubs and bars. Planning is important but I do not think it is necessarily central to the planning of the night-time environment. I think the Licensing Act in a way acknowledges that licensing is central to that.

  Q213 Mr Prosser: Finally, do you think it is possible for the licensing authorities within a particular council to make their decisions in isolation to what might be the council's objective, in that they want to stimulate and invigorate the night-time economy and vitality of their city centre, whereas a licensing authority will be concerned about law and order matters?

  Mr Doyle: Quite the opposite. I think licensing policies, the policies I have seen which already exist, are seeking not just to be negative but to be positive in encouraging and developing a more diverse offering during the night-time economy, something which goes beyond simply stand-up drinking. The kind of thing I mean is comedy clubs and places where one can eat, drink and be entertained. There are encouraging signs that the entertainment industry is responding to that.

  Professor Hobbs: I think this issue of diversity is absolutely crucial. Speaking to local authority officers and city centre managers over the last two years they see some of the changes in the licensing law as a possible opportunity to introduce diversity. At the moment it is for the under 25s. Most of the officers I speak to are middle aged, usually men, and they are looking for somewhere to drink themselves and they are getting rather disappointed because there is nowhere to go and use themselves as examples. The issue of diversity is crucial. It is going to be very difficult to introduce diversity. It is going to be very difficult to introduce a wine bar, a real ale bar or a comedy club once the licence is awarded and there are going to be some real battles over that. The issue of diversity is crucial. There is also the issue about individual premises. With the changes in licensing law there is a great hope that individual premises must be well run and if they are not we will close them down. Individual licensees—which is the personal licence awarded to those running the premises—will get their licence taken away from them if they serve under-age drinkers or if they run a disorderly house etc. This emphasis on individual premises is a red herring. The problem is in public space. The problem is the numbers who have been drinking in public space. A few years ago we had problems when people were coming out into public space at 11 o'clock and increasingly now it is 1.30 to 2.00, with extensions into three or maybe four o'clock. If we go to 24 hours it is going to get worse and worse, putting more people on the street; there will be no transport; there will be no urinals for young men who have been drinking gallons of beer; there will be no cabs; there will be no buses; so basically no facilities whatsoever. The problem we should be focussing on, I feel strongly, is on public space. If a local authority cannot sustain services for these citizens who happen to have been drinking and are coming out onto the street at night, no matter what time, then this night-time economy should not extend itself any further. The emphasis on individual licences for individuals and for individual premises is something of a red herring, I feel.

  Q214 David Winnick: Professor Hobbs and Mr Hutson have given us a sort of nightmare scenario which some of us would share about 24-hour opening. What I do not quite understand from the answer which you gave my colleague Mr Prosser is this: you say your company is opposed, as far as I understand it, to 24-hour opening yet you want the hours extended. This session has been dealing with the problem of excessive drinking and all the acute difficulties which arise. Why on earth should your company want to extend the hours, except for the obvious reason of just more profit?

  Mr Hutson: We are not opposed to the notion of 24-hour licensing if by that what is meant is flexibility of operating hours, because the vast majority of our pubs close at 11 pm because we do not have any section 77 permissions and PELs; which means because we do not play music and offer entertainment the law of the land says we have to close at 11 pm.

  Q215 David Winnick: What is wrong with that?

  Mr Hutson: There is nothing at all wrong with that, except in today's society consumers do not want that. I fully understand there is a lot of concentration on Friday and Saturday nights at the moment, that people seven days a week do not want that. Restaurants throughout the UK operate until midnight by virtue of a slightly different licensing regime from pubs. 25% of our sales derive from food; about 40% of our sales derive from food and non-alcoholic drinks; yet we could be next door to a restaurant, a Pizza Express or a Zizzi, and we have to close an hour before them because of the current licensing regime. In my answer I was really saying with the new licensing regime in those circumstances we would probably say, "We'd like to stay open as long as Pizza Express next door because probably pound for pound we serve as much food as that Pizza Express in our premises". I do not think companies such as ours really want extended hours just to chase yet more profit. I think one of the big things we are looking for is a level playing field whereby we can satisfy the consumers and their needs and end up making about the same profit in the longer term.

  Q216 David Winnick: Satisfying the consumer more than profits. Professor Hobbs—you have already given us a pretty good indication about your views on 24-hour opening—do you think there is any justification for extending the hours in which public houses are open?

  Professor Hobbs: If we accept that our city centres are going to be market-led then, yes, 24-hour drinking is going to be part of it. It is a part of that market economy, and also 24-hour shopping etc, etc. There are no facilities at night. We shut down. We still operate in the 19th century in terms of the way we operate. Certainly in terms of the way the night-time economy has developed, generally speaking most police forces have the same capacity (despite taking the most recent operation as something of a blip) to deal with problems at night which they had 15 or 20 years ago. What this means is that they are putting up a shift which may consist of 15 police officers to deal with 45,000, 50,000 maybe 75,000 drinkers. At the moment if you go into a police station at four or five in the evening you will find an inspector desperately trying to put together a shift of police officers. He will bring in special constables; he will bring in a coroner's officer; he will bring in people with overtime; he will bring in armed response units maybe from other areas. All of this will be an incredible scramble to put these numbers together. That is dealing with the licensing laws as they are at the moment. That is dealing with the numbers on the street as they are at the moment. You expand this further—will there be any more police officers? No, there will not be. Will there be any more resources put into A&E departments? If anyone wants to know about the real effects they should visit an A&E department at midnight on a Friday night. Will there be any more transport? No. Cabs? No. Nothing will happen other than more people are going to drink more alcohol. I see no justification if young people are being put at risk and if the city centres are being put at risk.

  Q217 Mr Clappison: I think you have been clear to us in what you have been saying: you feel that planning has a role to play; the provision of facilities is very important; the provision of facilities such as late night transport to get people home, rather than have them hanging around; public toilets, for example, so people who have drunk a very large quantity of drink have somewhere to go to the toilet rather than urinating in doorways. I think it follows from what you are saying that so far you think that these are things which are unsatisfactory in many town centres?

  Professor Hobbs: Yes.

  Q218 Mr Clappison: How big a difference do you think they could make if they were properly provided?

  Professor Hobbs: Transport is the big one to get people out of the city centre. We are very good at getting people in at seven o'clock in the evening but usually the last bus leaves about quarter past 11 just when people are moving on to the club or to late night licensed premises. Transport is important. Some of the results of Manchester getting the Commonwealth Games and an emphasis being put upon transport at night, both before and after the Commonwealth Games, has had an impact on the situation in Manchester. I think that is an example of good practice. That was carried out basically because a dedicated team of officers was tasked with improving the situation in the city centre beyond the immediate Fire Brigade, policing of incidents, and they liaised with transport authorities etc and they have had some success, so I think that transport is absolutely top of the list.

  Q219 Mr Clappison: And town centre managers, how useful do you think they are?

  Professor Hobbs: That is mixed. Many of the town centre managers that we have spoken to during our research since 1998 have been basically involved in part of city centre spin, in boosterism. They are very concerned with boosting their particular city centre. I think, however, that dedicated professionals, whether it is city centre managers or dedicated police officers who are involved in the night time economy, whose concern is dealing with the night time economy rather than working a shift system where they are dealing with football hooligans on a Saturday afternoon and on a Saturday night they are dealing with night time economy, I think is problematic. We do not have enough knowledge of this new economy and we do not have enough dedicated professionals working within it.


1   Note by Witness: During 2004 the predominant group for victims of City Centre violence in Nottingham remained males, with 69% of victims recorded as male and 17% female, the remaining number not having a recorded classification for gender. Back


 
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