Licensing Act 2003

I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for West Bromwich, West (Mr. Bailey). I am pleased that, in his considered opinion, he thinks that the measure is deregulatory. I invite him to spend some time with Mr. Rodney Tate, chairman of the Swineshead village hall management committee, to whom I shall refer again later, who spent at least a week of his life dealing with the complexities of the 2003 Act, so that he can discuss his view of its deregulatory nature. I am not sure whether that meeting should take place at the village hall or in the kebab shop, but perhaps they could come to an accommodation there. I shall do my best to be brief, as other hon. Members want to speak and an awful lot has been said already. I wish to tell the Minister that I revert to my usual position, which is that very few items of legislation are wholly bad or wholly good. I put the point to him that I put to the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (James Purnell): Conservative Members’ complaint is that all the evidence suggests that certain aspects of the legislation are defective and possibly highly damaging. What we seek on behalf of our constituents is a review of those items that are most damaging. I am not persuaded by what the Minister said, when he suggested that, because of his meeting with ACRE this afternoon, the concerns of village halls have been well taken into account during the consultation procedure. Hon. Members with village halls in their constituencies know that those representing village halls have been engaged in an active national campaign for months to draw the attention of the Minister and the Government to their concerns. An eleventh-hour meeting shortly before the Act is implemented is hardly evidence of consultation or good faith. I was not particularly taken in by that suggestion; nor was I particularly convinced by the fact that the matters in the Minister’s remit about which he could take quick and urgent decisions were being referred to Sir Les for adjudication. It is unfortunate, of course, that the very mention of Sir Les brings to all our minds the great Sir Les Patterson, as personified by Barry Humphries, who knew so much about the cultural delights of alcohol that he was made the cultural attaché to the Court of St. James’s. I know that this Sir Les is not the same one, but I think that he will live in our minds because of that very identification. I wish to refer briefly to the efforts made by my constituent, Rodney Tate, who has been engaged in long correspondence with both newspapers and others to set out the problems. I pay tribute to him. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford), I am picking out one example—I could pick out many more, as there are 54 parish councils, well over 70 villages and a lot of village halls in my constituency. Rodney’s criticisms are shared by a good number of others. I am grateful to Sue Norman of the Bedfordshire Rural Communities Charity, who has also been very active on behalf of village halls, which she loves and promotes. She shares with many others genuine concerns about the legislation’s impact. Rodney has been mentioned before in a previous speech as bringing the House up to date about these concerns. Swineshead is a village with 125 people in the northern part of North-East Bedfordshire. It has no pub—the pub closed about 10 years ago—and no shop. An active village hall committee is absolutely vital to the village’s well-being. Profits are modest and are used to benefit the village, so the taking away of any profits in extra bureaucracy makes a substantial difference. Notwithstanding the review that is sent to Sir Les, I ask the Minister to pay urgent and immediate attention to issues that relate to cost in the first instance. The village hall’s direct licensing costs this year will increase from £10 per annum to £240. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) mentioned, the annual renewal charge will be £70 for that village hall. Villagers can think of better uses for that hard-raised money than spending it on those extra costs. The excessive bureaucracy was somewhat dismissed by the hon. Member for West Bromwich, West, but Mr. Tate tells us that he has spent a total of a week on seminars, form filling and correspondence. He draws attention to the fact that thousands of on-licence premises now need to apply for a variation of their new premises licences so that they can retain the extended opening hours over bank holiday weekends that were previously granted by magistrates’ block extensions. As the hon. Member for Tyne Bridge (Mr. Clelland) said in his good and measured speech, that leads to extra fees, advertisements and notices to official bodies, so there is more bureaucracy to do something that is currently achieved with little fuss. When the Minister conducts his review, will he consider the different interpretations of the Act by local authorities that is leading to different levels of fees being charged in otherwise similar circumstances? The duties of designated premises supervisors has again been raised because their onerous nature is driving people away from volunteering to do that important social job in their villages. Additionally, individuals need to be trained to get a personal licence. Mr. Tate tells me that such training costs about £150, but the training needed for the licence holder at Swineshead village hall gives him the power to be the licence holder at much bigger premises, such as a town-centre pub. There is no correlation between the two roles, so the licence is being used inappropriately. It is ridiculous to train someone in a village hall in all the techniques required to run a big city-centre pub.