Examination of Witnesses (Questions 70-79)
JAMES PURNELL,
MR STUART
ROBERTS AND
MR PHIL
WOOLAS
31 OCTOBER 2005
Q70 Chair: Thank you very much, Ministers.
Could you each say who you are and identify yourselves.
Mr Woolas: Phil Woolas, Minister
for Local Government.
James Purnell: James Purnell,
Minister for Licensing.
Q71 Chair: Excellent. I will leave
it entirely up to you to decide which one of you answers which
questions, or both. May I start off? You introduced a system which
has required all the licence holders to apply for licences at
the same time, even if they already held licences which were not
due to expire. We have heard from the Federation of Small Businesses
that they would have preferred people to have been applying as
the licence expired. Why did you choose the route of everybody
having to apply at once and why did you do it in such a short
space of time?
James Purnell: I think the difficulty
of having two regimes operating at the same time would have meant
they would have caused confusion for the public, but in particular
for enforcement agencies. So if you had somebody operating under
an old licence, they would have been subject to one set of laws,
if you had people who had applied for their new licence, they
would then have been operating under the new laws with different
powers to the police. The idea of having a concurrent running
of the system would have been very, very difficult to operate
in practice. It would have been possible to have different groups
of people applying at different times or to have a longer period;
all of that would have been perfectly possible. I think in fact
that in Scotland they are having different sets of deadlines.
It was felt that having one clear deadline was the best way of
communicating that simply to people and I think that the fact
that, thanks to a lot of work from council officers and licensees,
we have now got to 97 per cent does suggest that the system did
not fail completely.
Q72 Chair: We have been hearing a
huge amount of criticism about the way in which local authorities
were sent the application forms extremely late and indeed also
about the way in which the guidance that was coming from the Department
changed over time and the order in which the guidance came out,
so that many authorities had to draw up their local licensing
policy before all the guidance was out. Can you explain why, given
the length of time the Department actually had, why there were
so many problems in providing local authorities with the forms
and the guidance?
James Purnell: I think it is worth
saying that this has been a huge exercise to change a piece of
legislation which dates back to World War I, which brought six
regimes into one and which has involved massive changes to the
system, going from something with lots of centrally set hours
executed by magistrates, to something with local flexibility operated
by local authorities. In terms of the guidance itself, we have
been trying to respond to people's concerns all the way through.
People have been coming to us and saying, for example, "We
want local authorities to be more flexible in this, that or the
other" and we have therefore issued extra bits of guidance
and extra bits of evidence. We could have issued one set of guidance
and then said "That's it, it's your problem, deal with it",
or we could have done what we have tried to do, which is to respond
to concerns as we have gone along and then you get accused of
having given different bits of advice at different times. We thought
it was better to respond to people's concerns.
Q73 Chair: But one very specific
allegation is that early on in the process, the guidance has been
given that longer licensing hours were preferable and then later
on, that the views of residents should be given more weight and
most residents generally speaking want shorter hours. Was there
a change in view? Is that a clarification or a change in policy?
James Purnell: No, that was a
re-statement of the fact that where there were objections from
local residents or indeed from other people, licensing committees
were not just within their rights, but had a duty to make a decision
based on the four licensing objectives. So that came out of the
LGA in particular coming to us and saying that they had some local
councils who had concerns that there was a presumption for longer
hours over people's objections and we made it absolutely clear
to them that there was no such presumption where people had objected.
Q74 Alison Seabeck: May I ask what
representations the ODPM made to the DCMS when it became apparent
that there was only going to be a three-week time slot between
the regulations being laid and the applications beginning?
Mr Woolas: Well, it is very fair
to say that throughout the whole process, there has been a very
close working relationship between the two departments, often
on a daily basis; we have tried to ensure that that organic link
has been there. We were able to track the figures for applicants
with DCMS to the point where, as has already been said, we estimate
around 97 per cent of the establishment have actually now applied.
There was never any sense of anything like a crisis which was
perhaps generated in others by some of the public comment.
Q75 Alison Seabeck: I take the point
you have just made about some local authorities managing the extra
capacity, but as this process was evolving, did ODPM do any work
or talk to the LGA in terms of trying to find out how local authorities
would manage this increased work? We heard evidence earlier that
some local authorities increased numbers of staff so their capacity
was built up, Westminster for example, whereas we know others
clearly did not and have not coped as well. Was any work done
by the ODPM?
Mr Woolas: I do not have not figures
in front of me, but there were significant, let me put it that
way, representations from individual local authorities and of
course, through Members of Parliament on their behalf and discussions
between the LGA and ODPM and of course LGA and DCMS and ODPM to
look at the administrative impact and the cost impact both in
the short, the medium and the long term to try to ensure that
the regime was self-financing and to try to ensure that local
authorities were in a position to administer the scheme properly;
indeed the latest representation I think was on Wednesday or Thursday
last week to update us with the LGA's viewpoint.
Q76 Anne Main: You said you were
taking references from those other authorities. How about the
police authority who have moved their position somewhat in terms
of being able to police. Have you looked at the greater resource
implications of that or how this could ameliorate the situation?
James Purnell: I am not quite
sure what you are referring to by the police authority changing
its position.
Q77 Anne Main: Different police authorities
have since come out saying they cannot police it, that the implications
are too huge for their resources. I just wondered whether you
had had any further meetings about this. I know that Hertfordshire
is saying this and I just wondered whether you had had any further
meetings to try to reassure the public or police that these things
can be dealt with.
James Purnell: We have regular
meetings both with the LGA and with the police themselves. The
police through ACPO and local government through the LGA and LACORS
are represented on the High Level Group which I chair, as in fact
are ODPM, so that has met on a regular basis all the way through.
That has also been supplemented by meetings of our Advisory Group
which operates at official level and also ad hoc meetings with
the police and the LGA as has been necessary. There have been
a number of those meetings. Police funding is obviously something
for the Home Office rather than ODPM or the DCMS, but clearly
there will be significant savings from this Act for the police
from the reduced burden of having to go to the magistrates' court
for example, as well as potentially different requirements from
having a different licensing regime. It is worth remembering of
course, that the Act came from concerns from the police that the
two spikes at 11 o'clock and two in the morning were causing flashpoints
which were leading to extra crime. These issues can be looked
at from different perspectives.
Q78 Anne Main: Do you believe the
Act will deliver that staggering that the police want?
James Purnell: Yes; the evidence
we have so far from our surveys is that staggering is happening.
Q79 Sir Paul Beresford: Have you
responded to any of this consultation? Have you made any shifts,
any change at all?
James Purnell: Yes, we have. We
have announced a review of the guidance, for example, which we
have bought forward to 24 November so that we could review it
immediately to learn from the experience of the 190,000 or so
licences which have been looked at. In the case of circuses, for
example, we changed a second appointed day to reflect their concerns.
People have made a number of requests to us in terms of being
flexible about the guidance, all of which we have responded to
whenever we have been able to do so. The village halls made some
requests to us, consulted on the limits on the numbers of temporary
events notices. To be fair, people would say that where we have
been able to flexible within the constraints of primary legislation,
we have sought to be so.
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