Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
JAMES PURNELL,
MR STUART
ROBERTS AND
MR PHIL
WOOLAS
31 OCTOBER 2005
Q80 Sir Paul Beresford: You touched
on the village halls. Village halls complain about the fees, they
complain about the need for plans, they complain about the fact
that trying to manage it when they are volunteers made it very
nearly impossible—many of them are looking forward to instant
rigor mortis—and the fact that 12 TENs were not enough.
What are you going to do about all of these? Anything? You indicated
that you would.
James Purnell: We responded to
those concerns by commissioning ACRE to do some research on the
actual effect on village halls and we will look at that research.
Q81 Sir Paul Beresford: So after
they are dead you are going to revive them.
James Purnell: Well the evidence
that we have from ACRE, whom we have met on a number of occasions,
is that village halls have applied successfully for their licences
and they made it clear to us that they did not want the Act to
be delayed for that very reason, because people had put in a large
amount of effort and paid fees to be able to get those licences.
We commissioned ACRE to do some evidence and research and we will
act on the basis of that evidence. We have consulted during the
summer about whether to extend the number of temporary events
notices and we will—
Q82 Sir Paul Beresford: To what?
Thirty-six, 40, 50?
James Purnell: We did not put
forward a precise suggestion. We asked people for their views,
which is right, and we have had a range of views. We will make
a decision based on that as well as a number of different issues,
the make-up of the forms, things like that and we have responded
to those concerns.
Q83 Sir Paul Beresford: What about
the suggestion of having a de minimis level for village
halls?
James Purnell: The difficulty
about having different temporary events notices—
Q84 Sir Paul Beresford: No, no. I
mean why not have a de minimis level where some of legislation
need not apply to village halls?
James Purnell: Well you should
let me answer the question. I was about to say that that would
require us having different limits for different types of premises
and that would require primary legislation. We have not ruled
anything in, we have not ruled anything out, we are currently
in the process of analysing the responses to our consultation
and we will make an announcement.
Q85 Sir Paul Beresford: So you would
welcome a deputation.
James Purnell: From whom?
Q86 Sir Paul Beresford: Me and my
village hall representatives.
James Purnell: I should be happy
to meet colleagues.
Q87 Chair: May I broaden out the
point that Sir Paul was making about the de minimis rule?
One of the points made by the Federation of Small Businesses was
that the businesses which had had the most trouble really were
businesses where the sale of alcohol was not really the primary
purpose, but was additional; they cited florists who deliver flowers
and champagne. Are you saying that a de minimis rule needs
a change in the primary legislation and that if you did it, it
could also consider those sorts of businesses as well?
James Purnell: There are two ways
to address that. One would be to change the level of the fees,
and I will come onto that in a second, but if you were to treat
different categories of premises in a different way, that would
require primary legislation. Sir Paul was asking about what we
have done to listen to people's concerns and representations.
Something else which we did was look to people's concerns about
the level and type of fees that we were setting. We brought in
a multiplier for the big pubs, the kind of vertical drinking establishments,
so that they are charged more and we also revised the fees in
the light of concerns from local government and agreed to this
review which Les Elton is conducting which no doubt has been mentioned
to you already today. That will report in November and have some
sort of intermediate responses and we will then have a full report
in November. As part of that they are already looking at the effect
on small shops, village halls, guesthouses and sports clubs. The
dilemma here, it is worth stating just very briefly, is that you
can either have a very simple system which does not have its own
requirement to collect lots and lots of information, which is
what we have gone for, we have used the proxy of rateable value
and the advantage of that is that it is easy to collect and does
not create a lot of extra cost for local authorities. Or you could
go for something much more precise and targeted which involves
collecting lots of information, but that cost would then have
to be recouped from the premises and the licensees and in effect
they might be no better off. If the average cost goes up, they
actually have not won anything by having a more targeted system.
Q88 Chair: But there might be a shift
from small businesses to big businesses.
James Purnell: You could make
changes within the rateable value; you could charge people at
the lower end less. However, we have made a very clear commitment
that the system will be self-financing, so if you did that you
would then have to increase the cost paid by other people within
the system.
Q89 Martin Horwood: After the rush
to licence application, there is now the rush to issue the licences.
What is the legal status of currently licensed premises which
applied in time but have not received approval by 24 November?
James Purnell: If they have not
received it because the licensing committee failed to process
it within two months, then it is deemed automatically granted.
If it has been processed by the licensing authority, then I think
it is right to say that they are operating legally but they would
obviously also want to have their licences in their hands. We
have had representations that some local authorities are currently
facing trouble doing that. However, our advice is that the majority
are coping with that well. We are therefore in discussions with
LACORS, which is the body which does this within local government,
about whether any extra help needs to be provided to any authority
that may be having difficulties and, if there is, whether any
contingency plans need to be put in place. This has been raised
with us at the last High Level Group and the view from stakeholders
was that at the moment they did not think there was going to be
a significant problem.
Q90 Martin Horwood: Your view may
be that in general authorities are coping quite well. We have
clearly heard evidence today that some are coping by trying to
shoe-horn the process through somewhat and having to turn down
people on quite technical grounds sometimes and there does not
seem to be the latitude in the process to allow simple slip-ups
to be reconsidered in time. Do you know on what kind of scale
that is happening?
James Purnell: My impression is
that the opposite is the case. With 190,000-odd premises going
through, being administered by lots of different local authorities,
you will obviously have examples of where that is not the case
and by the very fact of devolving this power to local authorities,
you will have different interpretations in different places. My
view, from talking to both the industry and to LACORS themselves,
is that people have really tried to be as flexible as they possibly
can and actually I think I would pay tribute to licensing officers
and to councillors for the constructive way in which they have
approached this. Of course there will be exceptions to that, but
if you ask me what my view is about the generality, my view is
that people are trying to be flexible where they are able to be.
Q91 Martin Horwood: We have at least
one council, Westminster City Council, which told us that they
have had to refuse applications because they did not have time
to process them before 6 August. Were you aware of that happening?
James Purnell: If it is an application
for a conversion and they did not have time to treat it within
the two months, then that would be automatically granted; a contingency
plan was built into the legislation. If it was a separate point,
then I should be happy to look into it, but that contingency is
built into the legislation if people do not have the time to deal
with a conversion.
Martin Horwood: There seems to be a contradiction
there actually.
Q92 Chair: May I pick you up on the
reply you made to Mr Horwood about flexibility? We have been told
repeatedly, both by applicants and by councils, that the system
is too prescriptive, the prescriptions about the advertisement
for example, and also about the timing of the hearings which has
then not left enough room for mediation; sometimes mediation has
been going on, but has had to be stopped for the hearing. Almost
everybody who has put in evidence to us has asked for a slip rule,
that is for authorities to be given the power to vary the conditions
if it is essentially a technicality. Is the Department looking
at that?
James Purnell: On the first point,
we are happy to look at all of these points through the review
of the guidance and we will also look at your conclusions as a
select committee as part of that review of the guidance. That
is a genuine attempt to look at areas where things could have
been done better and we are already starting to think about what
that could be in a whole range of areas. It may be that more flexibility
is possible around the kinds of plans which people may be able
to submit. It may be that more flexibility is needed around vicinities,
the definition of vicinity. It may be that there are other more
cost-effective ways of advertising to local residents the fact
that people are applying for variations. We are very happy about
this and we are not in any way precious about saying we got it
all absolutely right. It was an extremely complicated process
involving 190,000 applications and bringing together six pieces
of legislation, so we are happy to look at that. In terms of the
slip rule, we were specifically requested to do that earlier on
before the summer and we did not, because we were worried that
it would actually make the system less flexible. If we were to
have passed a slip rule saying you can be flexible about A, B,
C, we were advised that there was a risk then that local authority
legal departments might say "Ah, well, they have not said
that you can be flexible about D, E, F" and therefore it
would have reduced people's flexibility. Instead, what we did
was to write to people and say that we were encouraging them to
be flexible about this and please exercise that flexibility as
far as they can.
Q93 Mr Lancaster: You are saying
that at the moment you cannot be flexible on A, B, C, D, E or
F, but by allowing people to be flexible on A, B, C, that would
mean less flexibility.
James Purnell: No, I am not saying
that. We wrote to people saying they could be flexible on all
of those things, it was for them to interpret their legal responsibilities
and we hoped that they would interpret them flexibly. We were
giving people licence to be flexible on all of those things.
Q94 Mr Lancaster: You must forgive
me, but I do not understand how the implementation of that would
lead to less flexibility. How can it be less flexible than it
is now?
James Purnell: If a council writes
to say they are worried about these six things and we pass a slip
rule saying here are three things that they can be flexible about,
the implication could be taken by legal departments that we are
saying that they cannot be flexible about everything else.
Q95 Mr Lancaster: But they cannot
be flexible.
James Purnell: A good example
was the plans, where people asked whether they had flexibility
to decide the kinds of plans which they were allowed to submit.
We said yes, absolutely, they were. People, for example, are treating
a local corner shop differently from a city centre nightclub and
we would encourage that kind of thing. We felt it was much better
to give people a general encouragement to be flexible than to
specify the things on which they could be flexible, because the
danger was, and we had to follow the advice that we were given,
that in doing so people would take by implication that they could
not be flexible on the other things about which they were concerned.
Q96 Mr Betts: Are you prepared to
be very flexible where you are looking at the guidance and prepared
to make some really quite fundamental changes. One of the pieces
of evidence we had verbally a few minutes ago from the Institute
of Licensing was that it was not just the odd issue that was the
problem with the regulations; it was the whole way in which they
were written. They were written on the presumption that here are
the rules and this is what you will implement as a local authority.
You do not really have the scope to go away and exercise common
sense, because we are laying down how you will do it. That was
the fundamental problem: the whole format in which the regulations
are written despite the request not to do it like that when the
initial consultation was done on the matter.
James Purnell: This is a point
about the guidance which we issued to people.
Q97 Mr Betts: Yes.
James Purnell: We have to strike
a balance. We have been criticised for not giving people enough
guidance and leaving it all up to them.
Q98 Mr Betts: All the regulations;
the regulations and the guidance.
James Purnell: We tried to strike
a balance between giving people guidance and giving them enough
clarity so you could then have consistency between different local
authorities. That was something which was said very clearly to
us by stakeholders when the Department was putting the Act and
then the guidance and regulations together, versus other people
saying they wanted flexibility. We had concern, when we were preparing
that guidance, from magistrates and the police, from people in
live music for example, that if we gave too much discretion to
local authorities, that discretion might be something which would
go against the things which those stakeholders were worried about.
We disagreed with that; we did want to give people discretion,
but we had to strike a balance between giving them clear guidance
and allowing people to make decisions within that overall scope.
We are happy to look at whether we got that balance right and
we made it quite clear that we think the emphasis should be for
councils to be able to take decisions on licensing based on their
local circumstances.
Q99 Sir Paul Beresford: One of the
witnesses mentioned that one set of guidance notes was 200 pages
long. If that is correct, did you read them before they went out?
James Purnell: I was not the Minister
when they went out. To be fair, it is worth remembering that we
were bringing together six different regimes which had incredibly
detailed rules in each of them and we were asked by the industry
in particular to preserve what are called their grandfather rights.
They had all sorts of conditions which they had obtained under
previous regimes which they wanted to carry over. It would have
been much simpler to say they could not do any of that and then
we would have had a much thinner guidance document, but in responding
to their concern to have the ability to preserve their grandfather
rights, we therefore had to invent a system which was flexible
enough to reflect all of those previous conditions and it therefore
ended up being a longer form and a longer set of guidance notes
because it had to cope with everything from a public entertainment
licence for a village hall to selling by an online wine retailer.
You can imagine that it had to be fairly comprehensive in scope
to cope with all those 194,000 different licences.
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