Alcohol Licensing Advertising

Diana Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 18th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I am pleased, Mr Streeter, to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon. I am speaking slightly sooner than I anticipated, but that is to the good.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Gordon Henderson) on securing this important debate. He made a compelling case for the continuation of statutory notices in local newspapers to inform local communities about applications for and variations to alcohol licences. I was particularly struck by his comments that came from his own experience. I think he said that he ran an off-licence and a restaurant and had experience of making applications for alcohol licences and paying for advertisements in local newspapers.

I was also pleased that the hon. Member for Lincoln (Karl MᶜCartney) was able to get in a mention for his local paper, and that the hon. Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) managed a mention in his second intervention. It is all to the good that we mention our local papers, and I will certainly be doing that in a moment.

On the current requirements, any premises looking to be granted an initial licence or to make a major variation needs to display a notice prominently on the premises and publish a notice in a local newspaper or, where a newspaper does not exist, newsletter. As we have heard, the cost of an advert is borne by the applicant, and such adverts are estimated to bring in between £6.2 million and £7.9 million for local newspapers each year.

As has already been said clearly and compellingly, the purpose of the requirements is to inform a community about licence applications to enable local people to have a say. It is important to remember that the Licensing Act 2003 gives the local community extensive grounds to object to a licence. There are four explicit grounds for objection: the prevention of crime and disorder, issues of public safety, the prevention of nuisance and the protection of children from harm. The right to object is fundamental to our licensing system, and anything that undermines that right is a regressive step.

The requirement to advertise is a significant cost to the licensed trade, but it is a cost only when a venue is looking to open up or make a major variation, which would normally be a licence extension. It is not a charge that is levied on long-standing community pubs unless they are looking to vary their licence. It is much more likely to be a fee encountered by a new venue in city centres, nightclubs, off-licences and supermarkets. That is important because a number of Members are, quite rightly, concerned to protect their local community pubs and not to impose further burdens on them. It is also important to note that the effect of ending that requirement is not a net benefit to industry. Rather it is a switch in resources from the local newspaper industry to the alcohol sector.

The Government propose to scrap the requirement to advertise in local newspapers. In future, people will have either to view the proposal on the premises or to actively seek out the information online, although unless they had seen the notice on the premises they would have no idea that they needed to check out the council website, as the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey pointed out so effectively.

Research by GfK conducted on behalf of the Newspaper Society showed that the weekly reach of local newspapers was 67% of the population, compared with just 8% for local council websites, and, as has already been pointed out, many parts of communities do not have access to the internet. I was struck by the hon. Gentleman’s comment that for some people the digital divide means only the space between their fingers: they do not have access to the internet and would not know where to start to look on a council website. Could the Minister comment on that issue and say how the public will be informed about what is going on in their local area? Do the Government genuinely think that this change can be introduced without reducing the number of people who are made aware of new licences or variations to licences?

It is important that the Government recognise the unique role that local newspapers play in keeping a local community informed. In my own city of Hull, our local newspaper, the Hull Daily Mail, forms the basis of the local political discourse and is a well trusted source of news. The Hull Daily Mail is also very well read. It has lots of important local information, including licence applications.

I want to draw the Minister’s attention to two recent applications for lap dancing clubs in Hull. Although they were applications for clubs in the city centre, because of the nature of the establishments, people across the city may well have wished to object for a range of valid reasons. One was the proximity of the clubs to a boys school that is due to open in September. Because the school has a city-wide catchment area, those licences were of interest to many more people than would walk past the venue. Because the notification had to be advertised in the local paper, the whole community in the city could know about the application and so were in a position to object. Indeed, many people chose to object. What is more, the local paper followed up the story with an article after the hearing, to keep the community updated about what had happened. That was a proper dialogue, which informed local people and demonstrated the value of local papers.

I will now consider the measure that we are discussing today in the context of the Government’s alcohol strategy. I am delighted that the Minister is in Westminster Hall today, because he and I have debated the strategy over many months. In recent Public Bill Committees, we have spent a long time looking at the Government’s approach to dealing with alcohol.

The aims of the Government’s alcohol strategy are to reduce the social and individual harms caused by alcohol consumption, particularly health issues and anti-social behaviour. One of the features of the strategy is a general promise to rebalance the Licensing Act 2003 in favour of local communities. It does not appear obvious how preventing local communities from knowing about a proposed new licence will help to empower them. Perhaps the Minister can explain to me how it will do so, because it seems to fly in the face of that stated aim. It appears that the measure is much more about the “red tape challenge”—the Government’s desire to boast about reducing bureaucracy. In this case, they want to boast about reducing bureaucracy on the alcohol industry.

As I understand it, the measure has already been the subject of two consultations. The first consultation, which was launched in 2010, asked for suggestions as to how the Licensing Act could be deregulated. That consultation led to an impact assessment, which revealed the Government’s preference to end the requirement to advertise in local newspapers. However, nothing seemed to happen afterwards. In the second consultation, which was launched in November 2012, it was set out that one of the consultation’s four aims was to

“introduce stronger powers for local areas to control the density of licensed premises”.

However, the proposal that we are discussing today seems to limit the access of communities to information about new licence applications. Again, perhaps the Minister could comment on that issue.

One of the Government’s recent changes to the licensing system removed the vicinity requirement. That change, which was introduced in the Police and Social Responsibility Act 2011, means that someone can object to a licence application without having to prove a connection to a particular area. However, that measure is undermined by the removal of the requirement to advertise in a local newspaper, which prevents the wider community from finding out about a proposal.

Of course, it is important to look at the particular measure that we are discussing in the context of the wider alcohol strategy. We have to consider the change not only in the context of other changes to licensing but in the context of the local media market. I am unclear as to exactly what the Government are trying to achieve with this particular proposal. They have introduced a raft of changes to licensing. They have introduced both the late night levy and the early morning restriction order to try to increase the contribution of licensed premises to their local communities. The problem is that they expected local authorities to impose the levy and then give the money to the police. However, there is no guarantee that the money that has been raised will benefit the local community. Hence, as I understand it, no area has introduced a late night levy or an EMRO, and the £17 million that the Government promised would be made available for local communities has not yet materialised. Perhaps the Minister can update us on that issue.

The Government have also made a commitment to introduce full recovery of the costs of licence applications. An independent review conducted by Lord Elton found that the current shortfall in licensing revenue was approximately £17 million a year. So the Government have again committed to raising extra revenue from the licensed trade for the benefit of the wider community. Again, however, we are unclear as to what has happened to those plans.

Finally, there is the central plank of the Government’s alcohol strategy—minimum alcohol pricing. The Home Secretary came to the House to announce that policy; I think that she did so on a Friday, because it was so important. She then launched a consultation on the level of minimum unit pricing. Then she briefed the press that she had actually blocked the policy, which was her own policy. I am sure that the Minister will be able to tell us where the Government are in terms of introducing minimum alcohol pricing.

As we understand them, the Government’s stated aims are twofold: first, to empower the community to have a greater say in licence applications; and, secondly, to increase the contribution of the licensed trade to the wider community. However, the measures designed to achieve those aims have all collapsed, and today we are discussing the Government’s plans to do something that limits a community’s access to information about licensing and restricts the contribution of the licensed trade to the wider community.

It is important to consider the effect that this measure will have on local newspapers. The Government’s own impact assessment estimates that it will cost the industry up to £8 million in lost revenue. That is a big blow for an industry that is already struggling. A number of regional newspapers have had to close and many more are seeing their circulation fall to the point where they are on the verge of being unsustainable.

That situation creates several problems. The closure of local newspapers has resulted in significant news gaps, leaving areas without an adequate source of local news. The decline of regional newspapers is bad for communities, because it erodes the important role that newspapers have at the heart of local areas. The decline of regional newspapers is also bad for local democracy, as papers are no longer willing to challenge vested interests and hold people to account for financial reasons.

The decline of local newspapers is not because there is no appetite for local news or for the particular role that local newspapers play in their communities. Despite the decrease in circulation for paid-for regional newspapers, free local titles have seen significant increases. The latest circulation figures, for July to December 2011, show that 18% of free local newspapers increased their circulation. There is also huge growth in the number of online visitors to local newspaper websites. Those developments show us two things: first, local newspapers are under threat and need to find new sources of funding; and secondly, there remains a huge demand for local newspapers and the unique role that they play in serving our communities. Given those facts, the Minister should rethink implementing a policy that will seriously damage an already struggling industry and that appears to go against everything else that the Government’s alcohol strategy is meant to achieve.