Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 16th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clement-Jones]

My Lords, I can be brief in speaking to Amendment 241C. I very much commend Clause 125, which sets in place a review of the effect of the amendments to the licensing scheme. It is common ground between us, whatever side we may be on, that the proposed amendments are highly significant. The Bill provides for a review to take place after five years. In view of the significance of these amendments, Amendment 241C is designed to make that review occur every two, not five, years. That would be much more appropriate, given the significance of the changes that will have been made by the Bill.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

I support the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville. There is a range of issues here that cannot wait five years to be reviewed. The amendment proposing a review after two years would be far more acceptable. I also want to draw the attention of Ministers to reports produced by this House way back in 2002, when the European Union Select Committee reviewed drinking and driving legislation and compared it with that of other European countries. The report pressed the case for the limit to be reduced to 50 milligrammes. The puritan Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe chaired that committee, so I recall it very well indeed. We must keep raising these issues, although time may pass by without speedy implementation.

It was interesting that when I was pulling out my papers on this issue, I came across a press cutting with the headline:

“MPs and peers cast eye on Lords reform”.

The article continued:

“A committee on Lords reform is today expected to seek to allay fears that the issue has been kicked into the long grass by agreeing a timetable to put forward proposals by October”.

That article was dated 9 July, 2002.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

My Lords, given that Clause 125 is totally composed of reviews, I wanted to add a word on the review of ministerial guidance. I do that absolutely in the spirit of Amendment 241C, spoken to by my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones, in terms of acceleration.

Much of the way in which the Licensing Act 2003 has been interpreted has been by virtue of ministerial guidance required under Section 182 of that Act. While the currently proposed legislative changes to that Act have been widely welcomed, they will take time to bed down. If the ministerial guidance were immediately to be reviewed and rewritten—it was last reviewed in November 2010; it has been a running process since 2003—subject to public consultation, many of the concerns addressed in the coalition Government’s consultation could be dealt with by providing more balanced guidance to licensing authorities to support them in getting to grips as soon as possible with the adverse effects of licensing.

In terms of involving the community, there should be an explicit statement in the guidance that local people and their representatives have an important locus in formulating policies, and that the invitation to consult on local licensing policy should ideally be simple and jargon-free, backed up by something like a crystal mark. However, the best way to involve the community more is to improve public awareness of licence applications. The Government could help by revising the currently very prescriptive rules for advertising applications that often do not work. I give an example that was, I think, mentioned in our previous debates. There are fewer and fewer local newspapers, and the advertisements in them are usually in tiny print on inside pages. The responsibility for advertising the applications should be passed to licensing authorities that can decide the most effective way to advertise applications, including circulating notices by post, on the basis of full recovery from the applicant of their reasonable costs.

What I am about to say may go beyond the scope of this clause, but it would help greatly if local councils, in response to representations from the public and responsible authorities, were to be allowed to introduce policies controlling the cumulative impact of licensed premises—such a provision was precluded from the 2003 Act—whereby the licensing authority can prevent a build-up of problems, rather than waiting until they have occurred.