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Written Answers
Friday, 24th January 1997.
Licensing Hours: Consultations
Lord Bowness asked Her Majesty's Government:
- What plans they have to extend licensing hours at weekends.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Blatch): We have been giving very careful consideration to the result of the public consultation about extending the normal permitted closing times on Friday and Saturday nights, from 11 p.m. to midnight. We received a very large number of responses to the consultation exercise--some 700 responses in all. The views expressed by respondents varied considerably, and there were significant amounts of support for, and opposition to, the Government's proposals.
The responses to this consultation exercise have also brought into sharper focus some concerns about overlapping aspects of the licensing system, as between licensing justices and local authorities, and their current effectiveness for an industry in which internal boundaries between different types of premises are increasingly blurred. Individual aspects of the licensing system are often presented as being self-contained, and proposals for change are commonly put forward on the basis that they can be tackled separately. But the licensing regime is a complex one, and invariably there are implications for other parts of the system.
We have therefore concluded that it would be right to take forward the consideration of extending normal licensing hours in the broader context of the particular issues which my honourable friend, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Mr. Kirkhope) has set out. He expects this consideration to be concluded during the Spring.
Police Bill: Northern Ireland
Lord Hylton asked Her Majesty's Government:
- Whether, in view of the different circumstances prevailing there, they will consider excluding Northern Ireland from certain sections of the Police Bill.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Northern Ireland Office (Baroness Denton of Wakefield): I can assure the noble Lord that the Government have considered most carefully which parts of the Police Bill should extend to Northern Ireland. Accordingly, provisions for a national crime squad extend only to England and Wales, while the National Criminal Intelligence Services (NCIS) and the Police Information and Technology Organisation (PITO) are specifically designed to be UK-wide bodies, and thus should include Northern Ireland.
The Government believe that regulations for the use of intrusive surveillance techniques should be applied on the same basis in Northern Ireland as in the rest of the UK.
As for the proposals for access to criminal records, the Government believe it would be wrong to provide vulnerable groups in Northern Ireland with less protection than those in the rest of the UK.
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