Examination of Witnesses (Questions 177
- 179)
TUESDAY 11 NOVEMBER 2008
MR ROB
HAYWARD, DR
MARTIN RAWLINGS,
MR JOHN
MCNAMARA
AND MR
NICK BISH
Q177 Chairman: Good morning everybody.
This is a further session of the Committee's inquiry into the
implementation of the Licensing Act and I am pleased to welcome
for our first part Rob Hayward, Chief Executive of the British
Beer and Pub Association and Dr Martin Rawlings, Director of Pub
and Leisure, alongside John McNamara, the Chief Executive of British
Institute of Innkeeping and Nick Bish, Chief Executive, Association
of Licensed Multiple Retailers. Just before we start I should
inform witnesses and the Committee that at 11 o'clock we will
be pausing in order to observe the two minute silence, for which
I think we should stand. Perhaps I could begin. The Government
in bringing forward the Licensing Act said that it intended to
bring about a streamlined procedure, clearer objectives and greater
democracy in decisions; do you think that they have succeeded
in that aim?
Dr Rawlings: Yes, very broadly,
it has achieved all those things, I think. We would certainly
say that the Licensing Act, applied properly, is a good piece
of legislation.
Mr Bish: We would go further to
say that it should be the only piece of legislation to deal with
licensing. It had the virtue of bringing together multifarious
acts that have been built over the years to deal with the specific
circumstances and all those were assembled in one piece of legislation,
and we would strongly urge that that is where licensing stays
and that future amendments, future rules that relate to the new
circumstances as they arise should not be hijacked or certainly
diverted into health or police type legislation because we understand
licensing—most of the stakeholders have come to adopt it
and they work with it and we believe that it works on that basis.
It is evolving; it is not perfect but it is good—fit for
purpose I think is the expression.
Mr McNamara: I think I would agree
with those comments. The other element is the fact that there
was a considerable debate about whether licensing should move
from magistrates to the local authorities; I think the fact that
it has moved to local authorities has brought licensees, local
authorities and the police closer together and that is demonstrated
in a number of areas in terms of joint ventures and corporate
ventures to improve night time economies.
Chairman: As they say on the X-Factor
that sounds like three yeses to me! Adrian Sanders.
Q178 Mr Sanders: The Government also
wanted to encourage more diversity in the type of licensed premises
on the high street. Do you believe that the regulatory changes
contained within the Act have actually facilitated a shift to
more venues that can be enjoyed by all the family, mixing both
casual eating as well as the sale of alcohol?
Mr Hayward: If I take that first.
I am not sure that it is specifically the Licensing Act or the
regulatory changes associated with it that have seen that. What
you have tended to see over the last decade or so is a progression
whereby you blur the difference between pubs, nightclubs, restaurants
so that you have loads of restaurants in pubs, etcetera. It is
not because of the Licensing Act, I think it has come as a result
of general changes within the whole hospitality economy. One thing
I think we all regret that we have not seen yet is that we were
hoping—and I think that is true of local government and
also the police—that we would see a demographic shift, particularly
in the city centres, the high energy areas of the cities and the
towns, wherever they may happen to be. So that, for example, people
would leave the theatres in the West End and stay on and therefore
you would have older people mixing in with the younger people
in the different venues. We have not seen that shift and I think
that is one that we would still like to see. That cannot only
be achieved by ourselves, of course, it has to be achieved with—particularly
in London, for example, and also in places like Manchester and
Leeds—a change in terms of transport facilities because
there is no encouragement for people coming out of theatres to
stay if they are then not going to be able to get on a tube to
get home. Therefore, there need to be other shifts within the
economy as well that will actually achieve that; but it is not
because of the Licensing Act, it is because of the general changes.
Q179 Mr Sanders: What you are really
saying is that it is more about market forces than the Act that
is behind that changed market within licensed establishments.
But surely there are decent public transport facilities quite
late into the evening here in London, and yet it is not happening
where you do have that transport. Is transport the only reason
that it is not happening?
Mr Hayward: No, it is not the
only one, but it is a factor. People feel that they are not certain
what time the last tube is going to go—you ask the vast
majority of people, tourists in particular and people who come
in from the outer parts of London. But it is also true in other
cities as well. People are not sure what time they can catch reasonably
a bus from the centre of Manchester going out or wherever they
happen to be, having been to a major concert venue or whatever
it may happen to be in the town centre. It is a social and market
force change, but it is not by any stretch of the imagination
the sole reason.
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