Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witness (Questions 280-299)

FEDERATION OF THE RETAIL LICENSED TRADE, NORTHERN IRELAND

8 MARCH 2006

  Q280  Mr Fraser: Can I go on from that point and ask you a question more generally about confidence? Is it your opinion that the increased sentencing for issues like extortion has brought a lot of confidence to your members in terms of thinking, "when people are found out for doing things, something will happen to them"? Has that improved the confidence of your members?

  Mrs Carruthers: I think when people see stories in the news about various seizures that have been made and what is happening, that generally raises confidence across the board. Whether it would make an individual be more likely to report a case of extortion, I do not know. I think we are still a long way off that.

  Q281  Mr Fraser: To keep it on the more general point, has the recent paramilitary organisation's decision to follow a peaceful means had a positive effect on members of your organisation in this respect?

  Mrs Carruthers: It certainly had positive implications across the board because it has increased their business. The ghetto-isation that we had during the troubles does not happen as much. People are much happier to go into the town and city centres than they were before, and there is certainly a much better feeling across Northern Ireland since that. That has had a very positive effect on business.

  Q282  Chairman: You have very kindly said you would do this little survey, but how do you normally consult your members? Do you have a series of meetings in the course of a year?

  Mrs Carruthers: We are set up on a county structure. We have seven county associations, which is six counties plus Belfast. They send representatives to our board, and so we have the opportunity to speak to them on a county level. At least once a year we would try to get the whole membership together, but, like every membership organisation, we suffer from a great difficulty in getting people to come to things.

  Q283  Chairman: We know about that!

  Mrs Carruthers: We have done surveys to members in the past, which have been done either by phone or post or on the website.

  Q284  Mr Hepburn: What changes do you think should be made to the licensing law to deter criminal activity?

  Mrs Carruthers: None! As I mentioned previously, the proposed changes to Northern Ireland's licensing legislation will increase criminal activity. We certainly do not have a perfect system by any stretch of the imagination but we do not have a bad one. There is a genuine fear that the proposals that are there will increase criminal activity, or there is certainly the potential for criminal activity to be increased.

  Q285  Mr Hepburn: Surely an organisation like yours supports something like the closure of businesses if they have been found to be involved in criminal activity.

  Mrs Carruthers: Absolutely. We would not support criminal activity in any shape or form. Indeed, we changed our constitution a number of years ago to make it easier for us to expel any members that were found guilty of passing on or selling dodgy spirits or whatever. We want to represent legitimate interests.

  Q286  Chairman: Have you expelled anybody?

  Mrs Carruthers: Since we changed the rules we have not had to; it has been excellent.

  Q287  Chairman: Did you before have to expel someone?

  Mrs Carruthers: We did not have the power to expel.

  Q288  Chairman: I see, so you did not have the power and when you had the power you—

  Mrs Carruthers: No, since we have had the bar, there have not been any convictions of our members.

  Q289  Chairman: Did some leave?

  Mrs Carruthers: One did. We then changed the constitution, but since then there have not been any convictions, so we have not had to.

  Q290  Sammy Wilson: This might give me some idea of the extent within the trade: before you changed your rules would you have had many of your members convicted during that period of passing on counterfeit or stolen—

  Mrs Carruthers: It has never been a big issue amongst the membership, to be honest. Since I have been there, in five years, there has been one case. That was when we realised we had to change the constitution so that if this arose again in the future we would be able to cope with it. It just has not been an issue in five years that I have been there, and I am not aware it was a big issue before. There is a perception that it is an issue, but there really are an awful lot of checks that re done. I know that a number of licensees do have a difficulty with the manner in which checks are done by Trading Standards and Environmental Health officers. They tend to walk into premises that are busy at lunchtime and say, "I am from the Trading Standards; I am here to check your product". That is absolutely fine, but the word quickly gets round the town that somebody has been shopped, even though they are not.

  Q291  Chairman: "I am from the Government; I have come to help you"!

  Mrs Carruthers: Exactly. People think they must have been doing something wrong if they have come calling, rather than if being part of a series of calls. Anybody in the trade who is selling anything they should not be is exceptionally silly because they are going to be found out and they are only cheating the customer at the end of the day.

  Q292  Rosie Cooper: Some organisations have given evidence to this Committee and have said that the police have not engaged and made enough attempts to engage with the business community, and that when they do they do not have enough resources. Sir Hugh Orde said he thought the situation was winnable, and that they could get there. You have touched on it briefly, but do you believe that the level of engagement in terms of resources and connections between the business community and the police is where it should be?

  Mrs Carruthers: I do not think so. I am talking about when our members—for example, I spoke to one of our members who is a smallish chain of off-licences and I spoke to them just to get a feeling from them of the level of crime that they were facing on a day-to-day basis, and also how they felt the police response was, because they are a pretty well-known operation, so you would think the level of support would be pretty good. They told me that in the last year in Belfast in about 15 stores they have had 50 incidents of robberies and thefts. In one of those, the culprit was apprehended and that was because they stole a whole Securicor van. The comment that was made to me was that the police were not interested. I said, "can I quote you on that?" They said, "Absolutely". Again, the levels of criminal damage—windows being put in during the night, and doors being damaged—many people just would not bother to report it because the culprits are never going to get caught and it takes up their business time in waiting for scenes of crime officers to come, and they are probably not going to claim on the insurance and they do not need the crime number, so it just goes unreported. At the business crime meeting I attended last week, that was the pretty unanimous view around the table, and that the figures we were given by police about levels of business crime were woefully under-reported.

  Chairman: Again, if you could do your own survey, that would be jolly interesting[3].


  Q293 Rosie Cooper: Would the Federation have any ideas of how that relationship could improve?

  Mrs Carruthers: It is slightly difficult. As a federation, we have good working relationships with police on a range of issues. Funnily enough, issues about crime we never talk to the police about, which seems odd; but there is just this general feeling that there is not a lot of point. When we did the last member survey 20% of people said they would not report or that they would not call for assistance—there was this view, "what's the point?" There seems to be an acceptance that there is a level of crime, and that it needs to be accepted. I would also say that certainly from work the Federation does with various community groups, again the pubs and off-licences would feel they are getting hammered a lot and blamed for under-age drinking, antisocial behaviour, et cetera. Therefore the work we do with the police is focused on that. We would also do the district police partnerships and police board, et cetera, doing their surveys, and quite rightly asking the population what they feel the police resources should be focused on. Again, you are getting under-age drinking, alcohol-related crime, social disorder, because the perception is that this is a huge problem; but the business community is not as good as it should be at sticking its head up and saying, "hold on; business crime is also a big problem that you should be focusing resources on". I do think that the business community has to take its blame in this as well, because it has not been as good as it should have been at sticking its hand up and saying "this is a problem for us as well".

  Q294  Sammy Wilson: But, Nicola, is it fair to criticise the police if you are saying that of your members are under-reporting?

  Mrs Carruthers: No, absolutely; that is what I am saying. The business community has to play its part in that, because it is not reporting things because it thinks there is no point. I also have to say that the vast majority of our members would agree that from their perspective the police are under-resourced. They know that they are not going to be top of the list in calling somebody out at two o'clock in the morning because there may only be two policemen on duty for a very large area. The police can only do so much.

  Q295  Rosie Cooper: The Organised Crime Task Force is an agency that depends on referrals. Do you know of any occasion—and I am not asking you to nail it—where licensees have reported something to the police, which has then been referred on?

  Mrs Carruthers: No, absolutely not. I do not believe that the Organised Crime Task Force has a very high public view in Northern Ireland. We have never had any dealings with them until I was called to the Committee. I certainly had not even looked at their website and I was even unaware of the organisations that made it up. The Asset Recovery Agency would have a pretty good—

  Q296  Chairman: We have done you a great service then!

  Mrs Carruthers: But the Organised Crime Task Force has a pretty low profile.

  Mr Grogan: I must confess, Chairman, that I met Ms Carruthers at lunchtime, in my role as the Chair of the Beer Group, and amongst other things I secured an invitation to the committee to have a tour of historic pubs in Belfast one summer's evening!

  Chairman: You would certainly have a charming chaperone!

  Q297  Mr Grogan: In relation to the proposed licensing changes, it has been reflected in the Committee that there is no political party that is supporting these changes. Can you put on the Committee's record what is proposed and where these changes have come from? They are not designed to cut crime; they came from very different motivations. The kernel of your argument is that they would have all sorts of unintended consequences on a whole range of issues. Is that right?

  Mrs Carruthers: Yes. The Liquor Licensing Review was launched in Northern Ireland at the beginning of November and closed at the end of January, so it was held over the licensed trade's busiest time, which was difficult, to say the least.

  Q298  Chairman: Governments are good at doing that!

  Mrs Carruthers: Largely, the proposals would put the English licensing system into Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland's licensing system has always been very, very different from that of Great Britain, and the proposals would bring Northern Ireland completely into line with the licensing agreement, with one exception, and that is the whole issue around 24 hours; whereas Great Britain has 24 hours, or the potential for it, we are being given a shift from one o'clock in the morning to two o'clock in the morning. It is our belief that it will just shift one o'clock problems to two o'clock. The two main difficulties in the proposals for the licensed trade are the proposal to remove the surrender requirement, and that is the requirement whereby before opening a pub or off-licence you first have to purchase an existing licence. The surrender requirement has meant therefore that there is a cap on the number of liquor licences in Northern Ireland. We do not suffer the same level of over provision as in other areas. Our colleagues in Scotland would tell us that they have a very big problem of over-provision, and the number of licences in Scotland is four times per head of population what we have in Northern Ireland. The Government, as part of its Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency's Omnibus Survey, asked the population whether or not they thought that we had too many pubs and off-licences. There was a lovely comment in the consultation paper which said, "the majority of the population do not believe we are over provided with pubs or off-licences". Reading that, you would think we need some more, but what the survey actually said was 50% thought it was exactly the right number; 46% think we have got too many and only 3% thought there were too few; so only 3% of the population want more. As I said, none of the political parties want to get rid of this very tightly regulated system that we have, and what is being proposed is basically complete deregulation, getting rid of the surrender requirement and moving responsibility for granting licences to local councils, as is the case in Scotland and in England.

  Q299  Chairman: This should clearly be a matter left to the Northern Ireland Assembly, when it finally meets—

  Mrs Carruthers: Absolutely. There is overwhelming opposition to this in Northern Ireland, so we are very much hoping the Minister will listen to that as he is bringing his response.


3   See note page Ev 128. Back


 
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