Deregulation Bill

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Wednesday 14th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Norman Baker]

The effect of the new clause is to create a new light-touch form of authorisation for community groups or certain businesses, such as bed-and-breakfast accommodation providers, to sell small amounts of alcohol under the Licensing Act 2003—the new part 5A notice.

It may be helpful to the House if I first give some background and explain the problem that we are trying to solve with the new measure. Last year the Government carried out an extensive public consultation on various proposals in its alcohol strategy. This of course included our efforts to tackle alcohol harms. On that front we have already achieved much. For example, we have reformed the Licensing Act 2003 and introduced new tools and powers to make it easier for local police and licensing authorities to close down problem premises and crack down on alcohol-fuelled crime and disorder.

At the same time, the Government’s public consultation last year recognised that sometimes regulation can be excessive, even needless. No one wants to stop a responsible drinker enjoying a drink responsibly. The Government’s approach is all about balance. We want to free up the police and local enforcement agencies to tackle alcohol harms while giving them greater discretion to manage low-risk alcohol sales. The Government has also made it clear that it wants to cut red tape and pointless regulations, but I stress that that must not be at the expense of necessary safeguards against alcohol harms. This new measure is about striking that balance.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

The Minister talks about alcohol harms, about which we are all concerned, but would not the new clause increase the consumption of alcohol rather than reduce it?

[Norman Baker]

I do not think that it will increase the consumption of alcohol; rather it will reduce unnecessary bureaucracy, and do so in a way that means that alcohol is consumed in low quantities and safely, as I will set out.

Our public consultation last year recognised that the existing alcohol licensing regime is a touch bureaucratic in some respects. For some small voluntary groups and bed-and-breakfast establishments, for example, the existing premises licences and temporary event notices regimes are pointlessly costly and burdensome. The restrictions and scrutiny are disproportionate for their low-level, low-risk needs. The first of these are the community groups with local membership, including charities and not-for-profit organisations, which carry out activities in local areas and wish to sell small amounts of alcohol at small-scale events throughout the year. I should confirm that alcohol provided as part of a ticket price or in return for a donation is usually defined in law as a sale.

We are thinking here of local groups, such as the women’s institutes or local residents’ groups, or the church choir that wants to offer a glass of wine to audience members in the interval, and other groups who hold occasional events, for example, lunches and plays at which they wish to provide very small amounts of alcohol to attendees. Such groups often operate from different venues in their local communities. Groups such as the women’s institutes, thriving church organisations and other local charities are not just about “Jam and Jerusalem”; sometimes they might also be about a glass of warm beer or chilled chardonnay. But refreshments aside, their wider activities are part of the fabric and lifeblood of thriving local communities, which I hope all in this House support. No one wants to tie them down with unnecessary bureaucracy if we can help it.

The existing options for an alcohol licence are often unsuitable in such cases. The cost of obtaining a single premises licence is between £100 and £1,900 a year, with an additional associated cost of obtaining a personal licence of approximately £75. Temporary event notices must be given each time and only a limited number—12 at the moment—can be allowed each year for the same premises to ensure appropriate safeguards against crime and disorder and public nuisance because they provide for larger scale, higher risk events.

The other group we looked at was small businesses that want to sell small amounts of alcohol in a similar low-risk environment as part of a wider service. We specifically have in mind providers of bed and breakfast or other similar overnight accommodation who may wish to offer a glass of wine or a beer to welcome their guests at the end of a long day’s travel or with an evening meal. Even if not charged for directly, this alcohol is in law a sale. The burden of a premises licence in such cases seems to many, including me, to be excessive.

We did consider options such as directly exempting such activity from the licensing process and consulted on other ideas such as greater local discretion on temporary event notices. However, the coalition Government is committed to tackling the harms that alcohol can cause, as I mentioned a moment ago, and recognises the need for important safeguards to guard against those harms and the risk of loopholes. We believed that creating a new tailor-made authorisation was the best option.

In the response to the public consultation on alcohol, we announced our intention to create a new authorisation called the community and ancillary sellers notice. This will be a cheaper, simpler and easier alternative to other types of authorisation, such as a premises licence or using multiple temporary event notices. Since that announcement, we have been working with colleagues across Government to develop the proposal. It has been designed to remove unnecessary licensing burdens and costs for community groups, and for some small businesses in the licensing process, so it is right that it should be part of the Deregulation Bill.

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[Norman Baker]

That is a bit off my beat, if I may say so. Obviously, the Government believes in regulation where it is appropriate, but it also believes in removing regulation where it is not appropriate, and that is a balance that it tries to strike in what it does.

Getting an authorisation under the new community and ancillary sellers notice will be simple and straightforward for eligible users and for the local licensing authorities. Users will fill out a simple form and send it to the council to notify it of their intentions to provide alcohol under the new notice. The fee, which we want to keep as low as possible, will accompany the notice. Under the provisions, business users or ancillary sellers will need to specify a single premises from which they will be making alcohol sales, and community groups will be able to name up to three premises at which they will be holding events under the notice.

Licensing authorities will be able to reject a notice where it is appropriate on grounds of preventing crime and disorder, preventing public nuisance, promoting public safety, or protecting children from harm.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I am interested in what the Minister has to say. Did the drinks industry contribute to the consultation, and was it enthusiastic about or resistant to the new clause?

[Norman Baker]

The drinks industry responded to the alcohol strategy. It would be astonishing if it had not done so. Obviously, its comments were taken into account, but so were the comments of others who were concerned, for example, about alcohol harms. As I mentioned a moment ago, we tried to strike the correct balance, ensuring that we do not encourage alcohol harm, while removing unnecessary bureaucracy where its removal has no adverse impact.

With regard to the notices, it is also worth pointing out that the local police and environmental health authority will also have a say. If they have concerns, they can say so before such a notice is given, and once an authorisation has been agreed, the notice may be revoked by a similar light-touch process.

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[Norman Baker]

Let me be clear that this is not an attempt to change the law relating to under-age alcohol sales. The requirements for alcohol sales that apply at present will apply in future. As I mentioned a moment ago, if we find that local police object and that individuals are taking advantage of the process in order to sell alcohol to those who are not entitled to it, obviously that will lead to the licence being revoked, and possibly to criminal action if the police and Crown Prosecution Service so determine.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Was there consultation with representatives of those who work in accident and emergency departments on Fridays and Saturdays and who have to put up with people who are seriously inebriated, and often injured, causing terrible problems for the staff?

[Norman Baker]

There was certainly an open consultation on the alcohol strategy generally. I am well aware of the link between alcohol and violence, as both matters are within my portfolio at the Home Office, but I must stress that this proposal is about very low levels of alcohol being consumed in controlled events and in certain circumstances involving, for example, church choirs and bed-and-breakfast establishments. That is a far cry from the problems we sometimes see on our streets on a Friday or Saturday night. I want to stress that alcohol harm and disorder would in no way be accelerated by this process; quite the reverse. We are simply taking a non-threatening, problem-free alcohol environment and simplifying the bureaucracy that surrounds it. I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s concerns about these matters, but let me assure him that we take alcohol harm very seriously indeed.

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I see no evidence of any kind of strategy on alcohol whatsoever. This is just another random licensing measure thrown into this Bill at the last minute without proper consultation, as we have heard from the interested parties. I urge the Minister and his colleagues to work with licensing authorities on the secondary regulations and to reassure the House that councils will not be harmed or hammered by the fees involved. In expectation of those assurances, we will not oppose these measures.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I do not doubt the Minister’s sincerity when he says that he is concerned about alcohol harm, but I cannot see that as being consistent with this clause, which liberalises alcohol sales and use. It is a deregulatory measure, not a regulatory measure. I am a regulator rather than a deregulator. I believe profoundly in the nanny state where it is going to protect lives, particularly the lives of young people and vulnerable people, as in the case of alcohol.

Britain has a very serious alcohol problem, with appallingly high levels of binge drinking reported only this week, when we were compared very unfavourably with many other countries. We are simply not taking the alcohol problem seriously. It is all very well to say, “Have a drink when you arrive at your bed and breakfast—a little tincture to warm you up for the evening and get you started before you have your bottle of wine with dinner later on”, but it encourages a more relaxed culture of alcohol consumption when we should instead be raising concerns about it. Alcohol liver damage has increased massively in recent years. We have seen rising numbers of deaths from cirrhosis of the liver. There is an enormous burden on the national health service, especially in A and E departments at weekends. I wonder what the British Medical Association and the unions representing the staff in those departments feel about this.

Oceans of cheap alcohol are still being sold in supermarkets and bought and consumed illegally by young people, often with the collaboration of older people. These things are still not being addressed seriously. Vast numbers of people are drinking under age. They are being hooked on alcohol young so that they will spend their lives drinking and making more profits for the drinks industry. I am not a spoilsport. I enjoy alcohol myself, Mr Deputy Speaker, as you may have observed, though not, I hope, to excess. Nevertheless, I am aware of its dangers. Making the culture more liberal and relaxed reduces rather than increases concerns about alcohol and makes us less likely rather than more likely to be self-controlled.

My most serious concern is about the thousands of babies born severely and permanently damaged by alcohol consumed in their mothers’ pregnancy. A more relaxed attitude towards alcohol consumption as regards Women’s Institute functions, going to bed and breakfasts and so on will do nothing to dissuade women who are seeking to become pregnant, or who are pregnant, from consuming alcohol.

The scientific research that I have mentioned in this House on a number of occasions shows that even small amounts of alcohol cause damage to babies. If one is drinking oneself, one is causing damage to oneself. Even an alcoholic has a choice about whether to drink, but an unborn baby does not have a choice as to whether its mother does so. This is very unfair on mothers, and on women, but we have to think about the children and what happens to them. We do not even have notices in every maternity clinic giving advice to women not to drink at all if they are seeking to conceive or if they are pregnant, yet apparently—I have not visited one recently—they all have warnings about smoking, which is less dangerous to foetuses than alcohol.

The alcohol culture is being fed into our general culture surreptitiously by the drinks industry. It is ever so nice and cuddly when it talks about these things, but it is actually talking about an addictive drug that causes terrible problems. Providing advice to all women from the age of puberty onwards about the dangers of alcohol to unborn children is absolutely crucial. Until the Government put on every drink canister a warning to women that they should not drink at all during pregnancy—accompanied by a symbol of a pregnant woman, as happens in the United States—I will not be satisfied and will continue to pursue the issue.

We need minimum unit pricing. It is possible, even now, to buy vast quantities of alcohol very cheaply, including 3-litre bottles of cider, in supermarkets. A simple unit price of 50 p per unit would be reasonable. It would have no effect on beer drinkers in pubs or on the average wine drinker, but it would stop oceans of very cheap alcohol being handed to children and others who abuse alcohol.

The Government have to wake up and take alcohol seriously. Although this liberalising measure is cuddly, nice and warm and we all like the idea of women’s institutes having a little wine in the evening—that is fine—what we are actually doing is encouraging more alcohol consumption rather than less, and creating a more relaxed environment and culture for the consumption of alcohol. That is a mistake, given Britain’s serious problem with alcohol.

[Norman Baker]

Let me respond first to the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins). If he is going to judge the Government’s alcohol strategy, it is important that he does so in the round, rather than simply assuming that what we are discussing today represents its totality. The reality is that the Government has taken a number of steps to deal with alcohol harms and continues to do so.

The Home Office works in close conjunction with the Department of Health on these matters. We have made it easier for local police to close down problem premises. We have banned sales of alcohol below cost price. We are challenging the industry very firmly to make progress on the sorts of issues referred to by the hon. Gentleman, including the availability of high-strength, cheap 3-litre bottles of cider. I am also pushing the industry on how alcohol is promoted, particularly in supermarkets. We are taking a whole range of actions to try to deal with alcohol harms.

It is important, as part of a sensible strategy, to identify what the problems are and deal with them firmly, but we should not apply the same sledgehammer approach—if one may call it that—to an area where there is no problem, and there is no problem with a women’s institute offering someone a glass of wine. That is what today’s debate is about. The hon. Gentleman needs to judge the strategy in the round rather than assume that this represents its totality, as he appeared to do in his contribution.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

In all kinds of ways, Britain seems to resist imposing rules that seem restrictive, but in the end we are forced into them. I remember people opposing the wearing of crash helmets on motorcycles, while seat belts were not made compulsory here until years after other countries had done so. I also remember resistance to the breathalyser—it is only Barbara Castle who had a bit more courage and gumption to push it through—but now we recognise that drinking and driving is wrong. Is not the Minister just part of a long tradition of resisting change that will ultimately come about?

[Norman Baker]

I am in a long tradition of providing pragmatic answers to the problems that present themselves and of responding to them in a measured, rather than over-zealous, way. We have to remember that we have to take people with us—we need to win hearts and minds. I also think that Britain is less authoritarian than many other countries. Some countries appear to be happy for their Governments to direct their way of life more than we do, but people in this country do not like being directed by the Government of the day and it is right that we respect that healthy response.

Let me turn to the comments of the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), who, unless I am mistaken, does not appear to know that we actually did consult on the alcohol strategy, including a question on the ancillary sellers’ notice, which matured into the provision under discussion. It is not true to say that there has been no consultation on the strategy or the measure, because there has been a consultation.

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The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North usually complains about late-night levies, but she does not mention the alcohol disorder zones her Government brought in, none of which was taken up. The Opposition need to be a little more careful in their accusations.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

In my defence, I was opposed to what the previous Government did and I raised these matters with the then Secretary of State.

[Norman Baker]

I am almost tempted to say that that is a compliment, but that goes without saying and the hon. Gentleman has put it on the record for the benefit of the House.

The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central does not think that much is happening in terms of an alcohol strategy. Perhaps she has not noticed that her own local authority in Newcastle has introduced a late-night levy, which appears to be working rather well. I was very pleased to go there and join local councillors in launching it.