Q
70Ms
Keeble: Is it right that some 14 per cent. of your
members’ income is from alcohol-related
sales? Shane
Brennan: On average, but there is a lot of variety in
our sector—from grocers to more off-licence based
businesses. Don
Shenker: From our perspective, community groups must
be consulted properly. A concern that we have picked up from our
stakeholders is that community groups do not feel empowered to complain
about, or do not know how to complain about, a local pub or nightclub.
Obviously, as residents, they have the power to do so, but people
frequently do not know what the process is. We need to ensure that
consultation goes to various communities and young people so that
people who are affected by rowdy and disorderly behaviour resulting
from premises that are not acting responsibly can have a say on the
sort of measures that they would like to see in local, or even
national,
conditions.
Q
71Ms
Keeble: Finally, what do you say to those who say that
this is stigmatising young people still
further? Don
Shenker: On the persistent public possession of
alcohol by young people, it is not clear to me whether the offence is
being found in possession three times within three months as well as
failing an acceptable behaviour contract, or whether that is no longer
one of the measures. The youth alcohol action plan said that we were
trying to drive down youth drinking through the use of acceptable
behaviour contracts, and that the Government would seek to introduce a
new offence of failing an acceptable behaviour contract. Our concern is
that if there is no carrot alongside the stick, you might find a lot
more young people being criminalised not for behaving in a disorderly
or irresponsible manner, but simply for drinking in a public place. I
accept what Mike says about people who consistently upset their
communities, but I would like some reassurance that this is not too
much of a broad brush, and that we are looking at a mixture of carrot
and stick. Having some
sort of acceptable behaviour contract would be a better approach,
meaning that we could provide some support for young people who are
persistently causing trouble in relation to their drinking, as opposed
to just drinking. We know that
more young people are drinking in public—that has been
evidenced—and young people who drink are drinking more. However,
we have to be careful that we do not stigmatise young people who, on a
summer’s day, want to do exactly the same as any 25-year-old
wants to and drink in a public park, for
example. Chris
White: A couple of brief points. There is a clearly a
risk of stigmatising young people generally in our society. They get a
bad press and we do not give them a great deal to do of an evening,
particularly at those times when they want to socialise with each other
and not with their parents, and between 16 and 17. Although I am not
proposing any solutions to that, we have to be wary of the press that
they get and the feeling that they have, which is that the police are
agin them in respect of some of these rules, albeit for reasons that we
fully understand. Nevertheless, that is how they
feel. I should also
like to emphasise that the complaints that I get in my community are
about not the behaviour of young people, except on the margins, but the
behaviour of people who should know better, including the criminal
activity of people in their 20s who have too much to drink and make
noise and commit disorder offences. That is the key issue in many of
our communities. Although that is not particularly addressed by these
clauses, it is the major
problem.
Q
72Dr.
Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab): I have a
question on the same issue, which I shall address to Mike in the first
instance. You are saying really that clause 29 will make operational
and practical the powers that you already have. That suggests that more
young people are going to be brought into the criminal justice system.
You have talked twice about mechanisms that exist to divert young
people from the sort of behaviour that might result from their drinking
in public places, but how confident are you that those sort of
multi-agency programmes exist in our communities? I have seen little
evidence of such programmes, particularly ones directed at 16 and
17-year-olds. Mike
Craik: Yes, the one that I alluded to—the one
in south Tyneside—was separately funded, but there are
opportunities for
that. Although there is
anxiety about the criminalisation of young people, I think that the
young people whom we are talking about are few in number. We know who
they are; they are already known to us in terms of being criminalised.
It is not that often that completely new people come into this arena.
If I go out with my night shift and late turn in any of my basic
command units, I see that my officers are dealing with the same kids
over and over again. They are not meeting new people. In some
communities, hardly any new people come in, although there are those
who may grow into such behaviour. One of the more positive things that
I would like to do is to take the notion of partnership intervention
beyond dealing with an individual who comes to notice three times and
ask who are the younger brothers and sisters who are going to be the
next generation and can we direct some partnership intervention at them
as well. Some work in
Newcastle is going on to try to identify the number of people who cause
the most harm and cost to the health service, the police service,
social
services and the youth service. Who are they? Who is in their network?
Can we target them positively, and not for criminal justice
intervention, but for preventive intervention, because I do not want to
be arresting their younger brothers and sisters in five years? Our
capability to do that is dependent on finding out who they are, what
the problem is and where the place is. With such an opportunity, our
limited resources can then be focused on the people who need our
attention the most, not on places, premises, property and
parks. Q
73Dr.
Blackman-Woods: Nevertheless, would not we conclude that,
even if it is a small group—I am not sure that it is always a
small group in some of our cities, but let us assume that it
is—without resources being directed at preventive strategies, we
are going to bring more young people into the criminal justice system,
and everything should be done to avoid
that? Mike
Craik: Yes, and if all we do is to shotgun our
resources at an area without focusing on the people who are the
misusers and mis-sellers, there is a possibility of that happening. I
think that we should restrict the possibility of that and focus on the
people who need the preventive intervention as well as those who do not
respond to it and ultimately need
enforcement. Shane
Brennan: There is no desire from the industry to see
lots of young people being put through the criminal justice system with
courts and custodial sentences, but we think that there need to be
consequences for young people’s actions. The case in point, our
members will say, is that we are very aware of the consequences of
doing wrong and selling to under-age people. If we sell to one person,
we may face significant penalties. There are six different ways in
which you can be prosecuted for under-age sales. However, the young
person whom we refuse—and we refuse millions every
month—can go to the next shop down the road and try it on again.
That feeling of lack of consequence—a fear factor—is
absolutely critical. That is why we welcome the powers, although not
necessarily the ones about taking them to court. This is about making
sure the police can go up to them and say, “Do not do that.
I’m taking that alcohol off you. Move away from here because
this is not good for the
community.”
Q
74Dr.
Blackman-Woods: May I move on briefly to consultation
about the code? The view of my local community is that it is very hard
for communities to make their voice heard in the operation of the
Licensing Act 2003. When there are consultations about reviews of
licensing, for example, they seem to get drowned out by the voice of
the industry or police or some other institution. I wonder, Don,
whether you have any advice about what we can do to make sure that
community voices are better
heard? Don
Shenker: That is a very good question. There are
things you can do. You can work at a local level, disseminate
information through local community groups, for example. The internet
is another method. You have to try to work locally through local
champions and use community approaches to try to engage with people. If
you simply put up a consultation document on the Home Office website
you are going to
get the usual suspects responding to it. It needs to be disseminated
through local organisations and local public health
groups. Chris
White: There are two distinct issues about involving
the community. There is the issue about involving them in this
consultation and in consultations on local licensing policies. That can
be done more easily through use of the internet and so forth, provided
that we are confident when receiving the replies that they are not from
an unrepresentative minority. I am concerned that you get those who are
gung ho about licensing legislation and those who are very restrictive.
I have come across pressure groups that have said, “No, we do
not think you should be allowed to put tables outside a pub.” I
think that if we could move to non-vertical drinking outside pubs, it
would probably be an improvement in our social fabric. The group that
advocates that in my area is deeply unrepresentative. You have to
screen that out and behave intelligently.
There is also the specific issue
about the degree to which local people can influence a particular
licence application or variation or initiate a review. Local
councillors do not have the right to represent their community at
hearings. They have to be asked specifically by a resident so to do,
which is a cumbersome process. While all of us in this room are
confident about talking in a public place in a quasi-judicial setting,
many others are not so confident, particularly the neighbours of the
applicant premises, not because there would be threats but because you
do not like going to a public place and saying, “My next door
neighbour—as is or will be—is a nuisance to me and I do
not like what they propose.” That is a very big thing to say.
Likewise, there is no consistent guidance as to whether a local
authority can advertise the fact that a licence application is in or is
to be varied, in the way, for instance, that a planning application is.
Some authorities take the view that they should do that, others take
the view that the legislation tends to imply that they should not.
Local people would feel more confident if they knew that, were such a
proposal to be made, they would not have to notice a notification stuck
to a lamp post or outside the premises concerned. That would give them
a lot more confidence that they were part of the
process.
The
Chairman: I do not want to squeeze the Minister out of the
questioning, so I will call him to
speak.
Q
75The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department
(Mr. Alan Campbell): My first question is to
Chief Constable Craik and follows on from the previous question. If it
comes to a choice between a mix of mandatory powers and local
conditions or local permissive or voluntary conditions available to
existing licensing committees, what do you think ACPO’s choice
would be?
Mike
Craik: We would support mandatory powers,
particularly in relation to the issues I mentioned earlier, to set
those initial starting conditions and to ensure that there is
consistency and that people understand it. There should also be local
flexibility to deal with different issues and environments wherever
they may be. The obvious example is that dealing with
under- age drinkers in a park presents a different set of
problem-solving tasks to dealing with grown-ups who should know better
misbehaving in a town centre on a Friday or Saturday night. On behalf
of ACPO, I support some mandatory powers, but I think that they should
be consulted upon, discussed and agreed, and I should not be the one
making them
up.
Q
76Mr.
Campbell: Mr. Hayward, we need to take
seriously your concerns about pub closures, not only at this time, but
at any time. Are not many pubs closing because there are simply too
many of them, given the changing lifestyle of the British public? Is
that a fair
comment? Rob
Hayward: It is. There are a multitude of reasons why
pubs are closing. We could have a lengthy discussion about that if the
Chairman would allow us, but I am sure that he would not. There is no
doubt that there are a range of issues, but if you were to ask the
companies and individual landlords what the factors are that burden
them, as Mr. Holmes mentioned earlier, the answer would be
duty and regulation. That comes through not only from my sector, but
from the whole tourism and hospitality sector. One has to remember, as
I said earlier, that that impacts on all licensed premises because it
is mandatory policy, so there will be a regulatory burden on them all,
whether it is a historic castle that happens to have a licence, which
many of them do, or a restaurant.
Q
77Mr.
Campbell: Mr. Brennan, campaigns have suggested
that around 40 per cent. of premises sell alcohol to children on at
least one occasion and that two thirds of children claim that they have
been able to purchase alcohol illegally. Does that not suggest that the
Government and retailers need to do more and that clause 27, which
deals with the two-strikes approach, is proportionate and
necessary? Shane
Brennan: That 40 per cent. comes from a campaign that
targeted problem premises, although the figure is still way too high
and no one is trying to justify it. Certainly, there is much more to be
done to tackle the sale of alcohol to those under age. It is not a
problem that will go away and there is no solution to it. It is
something that retailers have to think about every day. There are
enforcement campaigns that end after a period of time, but the
retailers have to think about it every day because they are facing
young people coming into their shops everyday, and they do refuse the
majority of them. On
the point about two strikes, the concern here is that there are
different people and different reasons why people sell, and those need
to be properly understood. A three-strikes policy in this sense has not
actually been used as it stands, and we know that reviews of licences
have been brought forward in several cases against retail premises that
have failed twice. In that sense, it is a general concern about
possible distortions, but none the less, we know that, as it stands,
many retailers face that after that period of time
anyway.
Q
78Mr.
Campbell: You said that there are different reasons why
retailers might sell and get to the three strikes, and I think that we
have discussed that before. Are you referring to the intimidation that
might take place, for example, in a shop away from everywhere else,
where the retailer feels under pressure to sell?
Shane
Brennan: Retailer is the wrong word to use, as I mean
the people working behind the counter, not the premises
itself.
Q
79Mr.
Campbell: So what would be a reason for breaking the
law? Shane
Brennan: There is no reason for breaking the law. I
am not trying to justify that. However, people make mistakes in their
businesses. The reasons for that must be taken into account as well as
the effects. I am not justifying such sales, but saying that there must
be some thought about what the reasons are and how we can ensure that
such premises and people stop doing those things in the
future.
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