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
| 
