Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 16th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Astor]

My Lords, I added my name to the amendments moved by my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones and also to the clause stand part. I do not intend to go through the basket of amendments that the noble Lord has moved but will confine my remarks to clause stand part and to one amendment in particular, Amendment 240Q, which relates to proposed new Section 172A(3)(a) in Clause 120(3), where it says “begin no earlier than midnight”.

This amendment and this clause are so important because it seems to me that the Government are attempting to change the policy of late-night bars and how they operate. They are in effect saying, “We are going to make it very easy for anybody to close everything at midnight”. For operators who have a 3 am licence, it is an incredibly important part of their business, for a number of reasons. In fact, that is often the bit of the business that makes the whole operation profitable. In my experience there has been no great push from the police to bring everything forward to midnight. Indeed, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said, in many areas the police would prefer it to be 3 am because people start leaving from midnight onwards and there is a gradual trickle of people going home, as opposed to the ugly rush there would be at midnight, leading to all kinds of problems of disorder. At 3 am most people have gone, with a few stragglers remaining. Equally, there does not seem to be any evidence that local authorities have been pushing to bring everything back to midnight.

I ask my noble friend the Minister to explain whether this really is a change of government policy by the back door, because that is what it looks like to the industry—if so, the Government should be honest and open and say what it is—or an attempt merely to give more powers to close down operators who are seen to be operating either out of their licence hours or breaking their licence conditions. There is no evidence so far in the industry that local authorities have any problems with operators who should be closed down. It is quite easy for local authorities to close down an operator, although there is concern about the legal costs of doing so. But most operators regard their licence as so important to their business that the last thing they want to do is jeopardise it. We need some explanation from my noble friend of what really is meant by Clause 120, as well as a satisfactory reply to deal with the concerns felt by many operators in the industry—and indeed not forgetting the poor customers.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

My Lords, if the analysis of the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, regarding a change in government policy is correct, I welcome it. It is what the public want and, although some in the business sector will be unhappy about it, I think that overall this set of amendments would undermine the Government’s attempt to respond to the clamour which has increasingly grown up among the public at large and has been reflected in some of the work done in the consultation. Therefore, I hope that the Government will not backtrack and that they will dig in firmly and hold to their course on this. The public will certainly support them in that.

[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.

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[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.