Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville Excerpts

Thursday 16th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend—to the extent of New Year’s Eve, at any rate. I have Amendment 240V in this group, to which the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, has added his name. It would provide for permitted exemption categories and exempted days, and is part of a continued conversation about how far local variances should be reflected and the extent to which they should be centrally prescribed. Noble Lords will not be surprised that I always find myself at the local end of the spectrum.

This matter was brought to us by the Local Government Association. It seems that licensing authorities should be able to determine the categories of premises to be exempted from EMROs in their local area. This would not be novel, even in the context of the Bill, as it would mirror the late-night levy exemptions that licensing authorities can decide locally. There seems to be no logic for having different systems, particularly as I understand from the LGA that the Home Office has proposed to use the same definitions for categories of possible exempted premises for EMROs as for the late-night levy. The broader point, as I said, is local determination.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

My Lords, perhaps I may make a very brief gloss on the speech of my namesake, the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe. Reflecting back to the debates on the Licensing Bill in 2003, I think it would be fair to say—and I hope that those who were in the Chamber at that time would agree—that the arguments against the then Bill were led very much by those who had a lot of London experience. People who have a lot of London experience endeavour to mobilise opinion through the civic trust across the country, but it took quite a long time for that communication to take place during the passage of the Bill. It would be fair to say that those away from London were disagreeably surprised by some of the consequences of the Bill when they arrived in practice. I cannot sense totally from the speeches of my noble friends Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Astor how far they are centring on London experience in their observations but I think it is necessary to realise that we are dealing with a national issue.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, I confess at the start that I have a bit of sympathy with my noble friend Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe and his feeling that midnight is a good time to draw a curtain across many outside activities. I certainly always try to be in bed at 10 pm, although perhaps that is a baby-boomer problem. I like to sit in bed with a cup of cocoa looking at “News at Ten”, reflecting on the events of the day and preparing well for the events in this House and other places where one has to play one’s part.

However, on reflection, I think that we are hearing too much of a puritan strand here. The amendments raise a number of questions on which we need to think hard about what we should be saying to the country in terms of how we reflect on the relationship between the nanny state and those who have to live here. If there is a change of policy, I think it is probably wrongly focused, and the amendments expose that. It is clear that one has to deal with bad operators—a point made by those who have spoken before—but there is a danger here that, due to the way in which the Bill is currently phrased, it will catch everyone, and that will be bad.

Surely a blanket EMRO running from midnight is not going to be effective. It will severely damage those businesses unfairly caught by the legislation and the consequences could be severe for the night-time economy. I am particularly concerned about small live music venues that operate with a licence past midnight. Capturing them in an EMRO would do enormous harm and could damage the UK’s rich cultural diversity, of which we are so proud. At this time, many small venues are struggling to remain economically viable, and for venues that might get caught in such a blanket provision, this extension comes at a very bad time.

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[Lord Clement-Jones]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that very thoughtful and useful response, which helpfully went through the different amendments and added quite a lot to our interpretation of what is before us. I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Astor for his support on the amendments and on the clause stand part debate. I am also grateful to my noble friend Lady Hamwee for her support at least for the New Year's Eve exemption, and to the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, for his support on the stand part debate.

We have quite a lot of common ground, which revolves around flexibility. What worries me somewhat is that the flexibility is all one way. I will come to the issue of the consultation process, which will be extremely important. I do not think that there are any puritans in the House. Certainly, I would not regard the right reverend Prelate as a puritan in this regard. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, might just qualify on this ground. I do not see where the clamour is coming from—

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

As there are two Lord Brookes, will the noble Lord make clear about whom he is speaking?

[Lord Clement-Jones]

My Lords, we have had a useful debate about exemptions and I would certainly exempt my noble friend Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville from that description.

I regard this as a very important debate because of the potential impact if these provisions are not applied flexibly. I took quite a lot of comfort from the fact that this provides a range of tools, timings and geography that will be very beneficial. I certainly would not accuse the Minister of being a nanny. However, there is something of a difference in philosophy. The powers of the local authority will be pretty wide. She said that she was not favourably disposed to an amendment—

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[Viscount Astor]

Amendment 241, to which my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones referred, is in my name and concerns fees. Subsection (7) of the new clause to be inserted in the Licensing Act under Clause 122(2) states:

“In determining the amount of the fee, the licensing authority must seek to secure that the income from fees of that kind will equate, as nearly as possible, to the aggregate”.

Paragraph (a) of subsection (7) states that,

“the licensing authority’s costs referable to the discharge of the function to which the fee relates”.

I do not see any problem with that clause, which seems enormously sensible and would collect most of the costs. However, paragraph (b) of subsection (7) refers to,

“a reasonable share of the licensing authority’s general costs”.

That seems to be a recipe for confusion because there will be endless arguments about, first, what is a reasonable share and, secondly, what are the licensing authority’s general costs. I thought that when local government—there are many noble Lords here who are more expert than I am on it—determined fees and collected them, those fees related to the actual things that it was doing. The idea that this can cover general costs, as my noble friend says, would enable a local authority to say that general costs in many other areas—whether for collecting refuse or whatever—could somehow relate to this and then collect the fees. So there is a concern.

I hope that my noble friend can give me some comfort that this will not allow local authorities, which, as we know, are always short of money, to use this to collect fees, which would mean a greater burden on the industry than there should be. [Interruption.]

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

My rising is not normally greeted with that amount of drama and my observations will not in any way warrant that dramatic attention. As a footnote to what my noble friend Lord Astor said, it seems that a local authority in assessing its costs in terms of this process will have both fixed costs and marginal costs. Although I totally understand that he is arguing for marginal costs, there presumably has to be some way in which the fixed costs are recovered as well.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

I do not think that the Minister needs to apologise to the House for the line that she is taking. If I could catch her attention, I would congratulate her on being very bold. Perhaps I will be accused of being a Puritan today. I will come back to the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, in a moment and try to prove to him that I am not. In Committee, I was invited by the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, to raise questions I had raised previously about the Government’s philosophical approach to licensing and whether we are effecting a change of direction to what we have had during the past 15 years. I will not repeat them all. They are on the record and I do not suppose that at this time we have enough time to go into a philosophical discourse on it.

I hope that the Government are about a subtle change over time that will lead, one hopes, to a cultural change over time. It will not be easy, as the Minister rightly acknowledges. A good change that the Government have effected is that they are now prepared to allow local authorities at least to start recovering some of the costs that they have been incurring and have not been able to recover in recent years because of the failure on the part of government to allow them to update their recovery elements. There are some technical points and I support the amendments in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and my noble friend Lord Stevenson.

As he might have anticipated, I am opposed to Amendments 240XF, 240XH and 241 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, which would move us back to the status quo and not go down the route which the Government are endeavouring to traverse. I can tell the noble Lord that I would be quite happy to support Amendment 241ZZA, which seeks greater openness and transparency in the way in which local authorities are working out and charging their fees. I would hope that, in drawing up a list and in giving guidance to local authorities, we might be prepared to give them the freedom to recover the costs that they might incur in trying to retrain some of their licensing authorities on how they should deal with the thorny issue that the Minister endeavoured to tackle in our previous session on the differences between the words “appropriate” and “necessary”.

I have been in touch with the LGA and, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, has said, it is unhappy about this—not for political reasons but primarily for technical reasons. There would be a problem for the panels in dealing with the change in language without being given appropriate training in order to be able to handle it, but it fears it could not meet the costs. So I hope that the Minister will give favourable consideration to adopting Amendment 241ZZA and perhaps add to the list the training costs incurred by local authorities in seeking to implement fully the changes the Government are endeavouring to introduce in the legislation relating to fees.

I try to be balanced in my approach. Overall, the direction is correct but perhaps some changes need to be made here and there. I am therefore happy to support the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, in his Amendment 241ZZA.