Policing and Crime Bill

Debate between Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe and Lord Clement-Jones

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard - part two): House of Lords
Wednesday 9th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 214A, which I believe is in the same group. I had rather assumed that the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, was going to speak to his amendment, and I am quite happy to wait and let him do so now, as he is in the Chamber.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, that is very kind of the noble Lord; I apologise for not being in my place. I shall speak to my Amendment 211. In doing so, I declare my interest as a patron of the British Liver Trust and several other charities related to health issues that arise from alcohol abuse. In particular, as I said earlier, I declare my membership of the House’s Select Committee on the Licensing Act 2003. One of the questions that we have posed in our call for evidence is:

“Are the existing four licensing objectives the right ones for licensing authorities to promote? Should the protection of health and wellbeing be an additional objective?”.

We have received a lot of evidence on this and continue to do so in the oral hearings that we are currently running, and I do not want to trespass much on the committee’s continuing review.

I know it could be argued in light of what happened in the debate relating to the previous amendments that maybe this should be left until the committee’s deliberations come out. Alternatively, the Government might argue that as Scotland already has a fifth objective relating to health and well-being, we might wait and see what develops with the Scottish position. However, given that I have seen the Government decide that they can put an amendment through and then stay their hand until such time as they receive the report from us, I think I am perfectly in order to move this amendment today and, I hope, persuade them that there is a case for it to be adopted. Maybe then we could wait until spring to see what comes out of the Select Committee’s review; and if the recommendation in its report is in accord with what I am putting before the House we could then implement it.

There are more pressing reasons why this needs addressing, even more than the earlier amendment about the conduct of affairs relating to alcohol at night. First, the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, enumerated this morning a range of the problems that we continue to have with alcohol. However, the second and more pressing issue is that the topic on which this amendment has been brought forward is not a new one; I brought forward a Private Member’s Bill on it about two years ago, supported by the Local Government Association. We can go back quite some time to 2010, when the then Government were looking at the difficulties that had arisen then. They had recognised a problem with the 2003 Act. They then consulted on the addition of a specific prevention of health harm objective in the 2010 Rebalancing the Licensing Act consultation. Some 38% of the respondents were supportive, 37%—primarily the drinks industry—were against, and 25% were neutral. The Government decided not to legislate at the time but did not really explain why. They simply stated that they saw,

“merit in the proposal to make the prevention of health harm a material consideration in the Licensing Act 2003. We … will consider the best way to do so in the future”.

So we have been at this now since around 2010.

The reason why this is now becoming more imperative is that as time has gone by, while I concede that in many respects we are getting evidence that the 2003 Act has worked quite well in certain areas—we have seen less alcohol being drunk than was the case in 2003, though whether that is related directly to the Act is questionable, and there are fewer violent incidents and less crime associated with alcohol than perhaps was the case originally—on the other side of the coin we have seen a dramatic increase in the deleterious effects of alcohol on the health of the nation. We saw about 400,000 people being admitted to hospital in 2003 with health difficulties related to alcohol but the figure is now in the order of 1.2 million and is getting worse. The charity I am associated with, the British Liver Trust, is seeing an increasing number of people dying from liver disease, mostly associated with alcohol consumption and abuse, with increasingly a number of younger people being affected in that way. We now have 9 million adults drinking at levels that increase the risk of harm to their health, while 1.6 million adults show signs of full alcohol dependency. Alcohol is now the third biggest risk factor for illness and death.

I am speaking entirely personally here, not representing anything of the Select Committee’s view, but I believe that in many respects the 2003 Act is now out of date. It was designed in 2003 primarily to deal with the on trade, relating to pubs, clubs and fixed premises, where people in the 1990s and at the turn of the century drank. However, we have seen a complete shift over the last 10 or 12 years in the growth of the number of licences being granted—almost like confetti, in my view—to supermarkets, mini markets, small shops and even petrol stations. Almost everywhere you go now, you will find alcohol on sale. In a sense, alcohol has become an ordinary commodity. In supermarkets it is being sold no differently from soap powder or a tin of beans. It has become normalised in our community and has changed the culture. This needs to be examined to see whether it is moving in the right direction, in the same way as I argued earlier when noble Lords proceeded to pass the legislation regarding “will do” on introducing powdered alcohol into the community. Anything goes, we move towards liberalisation, and it gets worse in health terms.

In my opinion, the 2003 Act does not adequately deal with what is happening on the off side of the licensing trade. We now see big developments taking place online that were never envisaged when this legislation was laid before us. Amazon has a most amazing array of products. Noble Lords who like drinking a lot and cheaply should go on Amazon and see just what is on offer to them. It can be delivered in hours on any day of the week, any week of the year. It is available very cheaply right through the year. Before long, no doubt, we will have Uber doing similar deliveries as quickly as possible. In no way is that touched by the Licensing Act; it is a different world entirely.

People will argue that you cannot do anything with the existing Licensing Act because it relates solely to premises—“What does that have to do with health?”, “How do you prove it is damaging health?”, and so on. In my view, there are changes ahead. Most of the major supermarkets, apart I think from Morrisons, have plans to increase the number of convenience or metro mini markets around the country, moving away from big premises to smaller ones. They have plans to extend these around the country and I am certain, sure as night follows day, that they will all have a licence to sell alcohol. If we go in there and queue to pay at the till, we will find that alcohol is piled up to the ceiling all around us, not just in our full view but in the view of children. This is changing an attitude generally so that the commodity of alcohol is normalised and just becomes part of our way of life, but it is damaging health and we are doing nothing about it.

There is an opportunity, I believe, if we are prepared to consider what I am putting before us, to explore ways in which we could at least start to pull it back a little bit. That does not mean to say that we stop issuing licences, but we should attach conditions to those licences that would stop alcohol being sold at the front of the supermarket in everybody’s face. Asda managers have tried to do it voluntarily, but when they saw that their competitors were not doing it, they said, “Well, why the hell should we bother?”, and they went back to putting it at the front. The voluntary approach is not working.

We now have demands from the police, from the police commissioners, from the health authorities, from the BMA and from almost anybody you can mention who has an interest in the health side that a change is needed. It should not be attached solely to the way in which we have run the Act up to now based on the premise that we should look to do something on a cumulative basis. If there are far too many people selling alcohol in a particular area, there should not be further licences; or if further licences are given, there should be more stringent conditions that would be related to the changes in the health of the area affected. They are doing it in Scotland and they are making progress; it is high time that the UK should do the same.

Sarah Wollaston, the chair of the Health Select Committee in the Commons, is in full agreement on this, and wanted to table amendments herself for this change, so there is some good support in the Commons for it. If the wording is wrong, I offer the Minister my willingness to talk about a change in the wording to a form that would be more acceptable. If the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, is responding, I make a further suggestion, particularly because she comes from Manchester. That city will be the first test-bed area, where it will not only be responsible for health and care and well-being but have total control over its funding. I suggest we consider whether, in conjunction with Manchester, we might run an experiment in the north-west to see what we can do. Manchester would be up for it, and all the responsible bodies would welcome it. Accordingly, I would be happy to consider drafting an amendment to the Bill. We could then review the provision after, perhaps, two years.

I am open to a conversation on this, but we must do something. We cannot just leave it as it is, making all the excuses under the sun, saying that it is too difficult, and listening to the drinks industry—which, understandably, says, “We can’t do it; we shouldn’t do it; we don’t want to go near it”. For the sake of the health of the nation, and for the sake of the harmed, cash-strapped National Health Service, which has great problems ahead of it, alcohol is one of the major problems that we have to tackle. We should do it forthwith, without delay.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, when I was speaking, the Minister was nodding so much that I thought she was agreeing with everything. I now realise she was trying to fend off her cold, but I was pleased to hear that the Government are not unsympathetic to the health objective in Amendment 211, and I am aware of the difficulties of putting this in place; it is not easy. I am also aware of the work being done by Public Health England and others in association with the Home Office. I look forward to that materialising and hope it will be presented to the Select Committee.

I did not get an answer to my point about Manchester, to which I thought she was nodding. May I speak to her separately about that away from the Chamber, when we might try to explore using that new initiative for something quite different? I will look carefully at what she had to say on the children’s amendment and decide what further action, if any, I can take.

[Lord Clement-Jones]

My Lords, I may have blinked and missed the extended response I am sure the Minister gave. However, as I recall, it was simply that we do not need another licensing objective. Will she consider more carefully the question of whether other things could be done to encourage licensing authorities to take cultural matters into consideration in licensing, and in particular offer to meet those with an interest in this area, such as UK Music and the Music Venue Trust?

Deregulation Bill

Debate between Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe and Lord Clement-Jones

Thursday 6th November 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Clement-Jones]

My Lords, perhaps I should not use the expression “happy hour” in this context, but we have spent many happy hours over the past few years debating licensing provisions. I have a bit of a horror of this clause, I must confess. The idea of this gargantuan review of what is effectively the amended Licensing Act 2003 seems to be vastly overengineering what is needed in this context. The reason I say that is that I remember pressing the Government nonstop between 2005 and 2010 on entertainment licensing, asking them to take a view about the way in which the Act worked for live music. Finally, rather than wait for a review, I had to put a Private Member’s Bill in and get that through before we got any further sense—luckily from this Government—on the wider scope of deregulation of entertainment more generally.

The idea that we are going to start digging up the plant by the roots at this stage, whether entertainment licensing, alcohol licensing or whatever, fills me full of horror. We have had debate after debate. We had a very long debate on the late night levy. We have got to let that bed in. I was not a great fan of some of that legislation, and I would very much like to see whether it is working. I suggest a rather more piecemeal approach to review. I am not against reviewing bits of the legislation, but this kind of vast superstructure of review over the whole of licensing in this area seems undesirable.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Smith on Amendment 70A. I will not comment on Amendment 75A and the subsequent amendments as I will speak on those topics separately later. I am full of horror on hearing the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, express that view. What has been happening with licensing is an absolute shambles, an absolute mess, at local authority level. If the Minister responds that he would like to see a review of all of them, which is what was advocated in Rewiring Public Services: Rewiring Licensing, I would be very happy to support him. There are so many areas in which local government needs to come into the present century and to review the way it looks at issues, particularly using old-fashioned approaches when in fact it should be moving in a digital way in so many ways, that it is high time that there should be an overall review right across the board on what is happening there and to see how we can effect some greater efficiencies than we have at the moment. When this report came out earlier in the year, it was looked at in the context of the debates that took place on the Deregulation Bill. I recommend that those who are opposed to it go back and read the Hansard report and they will see that a fair wind was given by Ministers at the other end to this being a possibility in the future. The simple fact is that if work had been done on the LGA’s report, with more time spent on that and legislation produced on it, much of it would be a damn sight better than some of the stuff that we have in the Deregulation Bill.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Debate between Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe and Lord Clement-Jones

Thursday 16th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clement-Jones]

My Lords, I can be brief in speaking to Amendment 241C. I very much commend Clause 125, which sets in place a review of the effect of the amendments to the licensing scheme. It is common ground between us, whatever side we may be on, that the proposed amendments are highly significant. The Bill provides for a review to take place after five years. In view of the significance of these amendments, Amendment 241C is designed to make that review occur every two, not five, years. That would be much more appropriate, given the significance of the changes that will have been made by the Bill.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

I support the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville. There is a range of issues here that cannot wait five years to be reviewed. The amendment proposing a review after two years would be far more acceptable. I also want to draw the attention of Ministers to reports produced by this House way back in 2002, when the European Union Select Committee reviewed drinking and driving legislation and compared it with that of other European countries. The report pressed the case for the limit to be reduced to 50 milligrammes. The puritan Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe chaired that committee, so I recall it very well indeed. We must keep raising these issues, although time may pass by without speedy implementation.

It was interesting that when I was pulling out my papers on this issue, I came across a press cutting with the headline:

“MPs and peers cast eye on Lords reform”.

The article continued:

“A committee on Lords reform is today expected to seek to allay fears that the issue has been kicked into the long grass by agreeing a timetable to put forward proposals by October”.

That article was dated 9 July, 2002.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Debate between Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe and Lord Clement-Jones

Thursday 9th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clement-Jones]

My Lords, as a baby boomer myself I will not add to the confessionals this afternoon, but I would say to the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, that she was clearly a particularly well-behaved student. My recollections—though I think the expression is that if you remember the 1960s you weren’t there—were pretty similar. Despite not having known in advance that they were being grouped, I can see why Amendments 237A and 244 have been grouped. But the devil is in the detail and I prefer Amendment 244, with one rather large and glaring exception to which the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, referred. Notwithstanding the enthusiasm of my noble friend Lord Shipley, the drafting of a public health duty for a licensing authority is fraught with difficulties. It could cover a huge range of issues, not just issues relating to local A&E and so on but to pricing, siting and marketing of alcoholic products.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

Is the noble Lord aware that the Scottish Parliament has already drafted one?

[Lord Clement-Jones]

I am extremely aware of that, and for that reason I do not think that it is necessarily a practical way forward. People are drawing on that experience and also thinking that that is not the way forward. I much prefer Amendment 244, which is much more specific. Although I am not a lawyer who travels to south Wales and appears before licensing authorities—I may have been born there but I do not travel there for that purpose—you have to have something which is capable of proper interpretation and clarity. I do not believe that the broad public health duty implied in the first amendment is really the way forward. The second proposed new clause, however, is much clearer.

I want briefly to address the third part of this because I do not understand why subsection (3) is included in the new clause set out in Amendment 244. It is rather extraneous to the general message. I certainly sympathise with bodies like the Association of Convenience Stores, which says that there is no evidence that licensed forecourts are less responsible than any other type of premise. They say also that changes in the market mean that it is vital that a store has alcohol as part of its convenience offer. As the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, said, if they did not stock it, they would close. The association says that there is adequate provision in this area under Section 176 of the Licensing Act 2003, which already requires forecourts applying for licences to demonstrate that their primary use is not as a petrol forecourt. If petrol sales outweigh other sales, they will not be granted a licence. I do not see how subsection (3) can form a legitimate part of the clause. If something was brought back in a better form, it would definitely be more supportable.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, I am pleased to have the opportunity to support Amendment 237A and Amendment 244, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff. I will not repeat all the problems we face with regard to alcohol because we are all fully apprised of them. We know also that there is no simple solution, and in that context I look forward to the Government’s alcohol strategy, which I believe is due to be published later in the year. I hope sincerely that it is helpful and that it is not just warm words and little action, which can often happen with strategy papers. But the Government, like my noble friend Lord Soley, have recognised that two immediate and fundamental problems need to be addressed. The first, without any question whatever, is the price of alcohol, and the second is accessibility. We can all put on our rose-coloured spectacles and remember the days when pubs opened at 11 or 12 in the morning, closed at three o’clock, and reopened from five in the evening until 11 at night. Off-licences kept similar hours. In many places in Wales, pubs closed all day on Sunday. There was not the same degree of accessibility.

We are now in an entirely different world, one that since the adoption of the Licensing Act 2003 and subsequent amendments made by the former Government, has seen an escalation in the granting of licences on a wide scale right across the board. I am thinking particularly of off-licences, which have been transformed out of all recognition. We now have access to alcohol in many places, 24 hours a day, seven days a week and 52 weeks of the year. Very few countries in the world are as free as we are, and we have to reflect on whether we have done the right thing.

I commend the Government, as I did at Second Reading, on the steps they are taking to try to rebalance the rights of those who are seeking to get licences and the needs of the community. Over the past decade, problems have increasingly arisen through the use of alcohol. Even though I sit on these Benches, I have no hesitation in saying that the Government are moving the right way. On pricing, there must be a question mark over the extent to which the Government have been bold. I shall leave it at that, but personally, I do not think that they have gone far enough. As time passes, others may come to the same view. On accessibility, again the Government are tightening up the rules related to the granting of licences, but from what I have seen and heard so far, I do not think that they are likely to move fast enough and far enough to deal with the problem.

I shall be a little provocative and say that I am pleased that the Government have revised the fee structure, but I would like to know why they have limited the reimbursement of fees to local authorities simply to the administrative expenditure. Originally we had the use of a licence for a particular purpose, which was limiting. Why do local authorities now not have the freedom to set the licence at a level which is appropriate to the needs of their communities, particularly the health needs of a community when facing difficult problems related to alcohol? I would be grateful for a response. I know that the question is not proper to the amendment, but it is the only place in which I think I can pose it. If we believe in localism, and I have come across substantial support for it in many areas, local licensing authorities should have the freedom to set fees for licences at a level necessary to meet the needs of the community. We increasingly see that health needs are not being met within the context of the licensing regime. Although the new clause proposed in Amendment 237A is general, I strongly support the view that it should be added to the four existing objectives which were drawn up in 2003.

There has been saturation granting of licences in some places. I live in an area of Brighton—I have talked about it previously—where within 100 yards of each other you have two supermarkets and a post office which is no longer a post office for all intents and purposes because it is piled high with alcohol. I have taken photographs of it. Next to it, you have an off-licence as well. The post office has been granted permission to open from 6 o’clock in the morning to 11 at night. The area is immediately adjacent to the most underprivileged area in Brighton—more people are unemployed there and there is more illness there, much of it alcohol and drug-related, than in any other part of the city—yet the post office is selling alcohol from six in the morning to 11 at night.

We now have 11,000 post offices left which are guaranteed to stay in business. I return to the Minister’s point about our changing culture. We shall probably see 11,000 post offices converted over the coming two or three years so that they become nearer to off-licences than post offices. That will change the culture in those areas where they exist. It is happening not just in post offices. Greengrocers are now turning over to selling alcohol in some places. A halt needs to be called. Requests have been made to the chief medical officer in Brighton to do that. The only way, as far as I can see, to tackle this is by having a close look at what is proposed in the amendment. The idea has been adopted in Scotland; we wait with interest to see how they address it. They are looking particularly at saturation, where too many licences have been granted in certain locations, and are going to try to call a halt to that. We should do the same in the rest of the UK.

The one illness that was not mentioned when we talked about the consequences of too much alcohol was diabetes. We have an epidemic of diabetes, much of it related to alcohol. A bottle or can of alcohol may show the units, but what does that convey? It does not tell you how many calories you will consume in that can or bottle of beer, or indeed within a bottle of whisky—God only knows how many calories there are in that. If the Government are to look at this in the longer term, they will have to start addressing some of those issues, because they go much broader than the rather narrow issues that we have been talking about.

I share the view of the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, that the amendment is very challenging and interesting. It is a test for the Government. They gave quite a sympathetic hearing to it when it was dealt with in the Commons. I felt that my side, the Labour side, perhaps for historical reasons, was a little bit soft in its handling of it, so I was pleased to hear the way in which my noble friend on the Front Bench tackled it today. If we are not going to make great progress with it, I hope that we will stiffen up our views before we reach Report on where we want policy on alcohol to go in the future. There is a lot of pressure in this House for change and legislation on drugs. I wish that as much energy was devoted to addressing the really big problem that we have: alcohol. What chance is there of regulating drugs if we cannot effectively regulate alcohol in a way that is in the best interests of the health of our community?

I commend these amendments to the Government. I give notice that it is time for some of us in Parliament to stand up more forcefully than we have in the past in taking on the mighty drinks industry. Given all the wealth that it has behind it, it is David against Goliath in many respects. I hope that I can find a David on the Government’s side.