Live Music Bill [HL]

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Friday 4th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Erroll]

My Lords, I rise in the gap to support this Bill strongly and to give the Government a warning from history. Cromwell banned music and frivolity and closed a lot of inns and theatres, but look what happened. After five years of his military dictatorship, everyone was so fed up that they welcomed a king back with open arms and they had fun—look at the Restoration comedies. People do not like too much puritanism and Cromwell was a strong puritan. The frightening thing about the Act is that the fact that the regulations would stifle innovation was foreseen in the debates and therefore, I assume, must have been intended. In other words, we have a lot of puritans somewhere behind the Government. We have to remember the definition of “puritan”. A puritan is someone who has a haunting fear that someone, somewhere, might be enjoying themselves. Do we really want to be run by those sort of people? That is the warning that I want to give. I finish by saying that I was highly amused by the juxtaposition of the two Bills today. Perhaps we should think of the words of Florence and the Machine and hope that the “Dog Days are Over”.