Licensing Act 2003

The legislation seems to have been with us since the ark. It is now two years and rising, and the Under-Secretary of State is the third Minister who has been sold this hospital pass. The Minister of State should know better than to have delivered it into his hands in the condition in which it arrived. Flexible hours was never an issue. Twenty-four-hour drinking was never an issue, as the Minister himself continually asserts, most recently on the ““You and Yours”” programme only a few Fridays ago. There are real concerns, though, and there is considerable agreement on both sides of the House about what they are. They include binge drinking; the proliferation of drinking establishments in town and city centres; over-regulation; confusing, unintelligible bureaucracy; and loading unnecessary expense on sports clubs and community and village halls. Conservative Members are absolutely right to raise those matters in this debate. The motion is not an attack on the whole Act, only on those parts of it that are not working and unlikely to work in the time scale of implementation. We agree with the Government on the objectives—protection of children, flexible opening hours, and new powers for local authorities and the police to tackle nuisance and antisocial behaviour, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for West Bromwich, West (Mr. Bailey). However, five months into the application phase of the implementation of the Act, we are hearing alarming stories about the lack of applications, spiralling costs, widespread misunderstandings, and simple mistakes arising from the complexities of the system. In his parliamentary answer to me only a few days ago, the Minister estimated that approximately 47,500 applications for premises licenses and club premises certificates under the Act have been made—that represents approximately 25 per cent. of existing licensed premises and registered clubs—and said that he would expect 65 per cent. of those applications to involve variations. With variations, of course, come the possibility of objections, local hearings and appeals, and the rest of it. Surprisingly, the Minister went on to say that he had no estimate of the number of applications that will have included regulated entertainment as a licensable activity. The progress of the Act from July 2003 has been dogged by periods of delay and inactivity, accompanied by a refusal by all DCMS Ministers to revisit the timetable although it has been glaringly obvious that the necessary infrastructure has not been in place early enough to move forward to the next stage. It took a whole year for the Government to finalise the guidance to the Act. That guidance, which was acknowledged by both Houses of Parliament as being fundamental to an understanding of the Act, was published only on 7 July 2004, when councils were obliged to draft, consult and finalise their licensing policies. An Act of 201 clauses and guidance of 178 pages takes some understanding. Add to that the fact that at the time none of the secondary regulations had even been drafted, never mind approved, and if ever there was a recipe for confusion right from the start, that was it. The application in the transition phase runs to more than 245 pages, and copies of the 26-page form that my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) showed to the House have to be sent to eight ““responsible authorities”” plus the Licensing Authority—nine in total. The number of pages is the same whether or not one wants to change the licence in any way. Thanks to the Government’s refusal to grant grandfather rights for the provision of live music under the two-in-a-bar rule and the loss of bank holiday extensions, many businesses will have to fill in 18 pages of the 26-page form that relates to varying the licence. The form is complicated and the process itself is complicated. I have had letters from individuals running clubs—experienced retired business people—who say that it took them 200 hours to complete the form satisfactorily to the Licensing Authority’s requirements. In many cases, the lack of information meant that councils could not release draft policies until September or October, thereby truncating the consultation process and time for consideration. Regulations were finally laid on 13 January to come into force on 7 February, the first appointed day. Even at that stage, the forms on the DCMS website were incorrect and did not conform to the regulations. Corrections had to be made to the forms, which were reissued on 7 February. It proved difficult, without the forms, the regulations for the required plans, the advertising requirements and other similar details, for businesses and councils to plan ahead. In March, several interested parties, including the Local Government Association, the Local Authorities Coordinators of Local Services, the British Beer and Pub Association, the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers, the British Institute of Innkeeping, Business in Sport and Leisure and the Association of Chief Police Officers, wrote to the then Minister to express their concern about the lack of applications to licensing authorities. Several issues, which caused delays and obstructions in the system, were highlighted. They included a lack of awareness of the new law among existing licence holders, especially small independent businesses, and the late laying of regulations. Many of the problems could have been avoided by postponing the start of the application process—that is, the first appointed day. That would have given more time for everyone to get to grips with the intricacies of the process. The hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) mentioned the due date for annual fees, which are required to be paid on the anniversary of the granting of a licence. That provides no incentive for early applications. Other problems include: the absence of a slip rule in the regulations, which would allow the correction of minor errors rather than mean the rejection of applications; the implications of alterations to licences after the first appointed day, for example, the change of licensee, and the lack of clarity around aspects of the existing law, which the new Act perpetuates. I refer especially to embedded rights and restrictions about which the DCMS and the Local Government Association cannot agree even at this late hour. Several hon. Members mentioned village halls, including my hon. Friends the Members for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) and for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead. The Under-Secretary’s concession of an offer to revisit TENs is tantamount to accepting that the Act has got it wrong. Although it is reassuring to know that he spoke to representatives of ACRE only today, they must have told him what they told us back in spring 2003. ACRE was not offered meetings then, and the Government arrogantly rejected its sensible proposals for practical implementation of the new licensing regime. We tabled amendments to address the key issues of the number of temporary permissions, the special case for voluntary and non-profit-making organisations, increased costs for licensing and the added administrative burdens for volunteers in village communities. The relevant amendment in Committee was No. 213, which was moved at column 456 of the Official Report of Standing Committee D on Thursday 8 May 2003. The Under-Secretary need look no further because ACRE gave us that amendment, which deals exactly with the points raised in the debate. It defines a voluntary organisation and it requested the number of TENs to be increased from five to 24. The Government conceded 12. The Under-Secretary’s offer to reassess that is welcome but it is frustrating that that could have been sorted out more than a year ago. Many hon. Members raised the time scale for implementation, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead, the hon. Member for Bath and the hon. Member for West Bromwich, West. The cut-off date of 6 August for transitional applications is probably set in stone at this late hour. However, the second appointed day is not. We still await the statutory instrument to legitimise the date. Since there is no time, I suggest that, before the House goes into recess, the Under-Secretary must be reserving his option to monitor developments through the recess and well into October. I predict that, if a backlog remains, thereby choking up local authority licensing committees, the statutory instrument will not confirm 24 November but a date that is, as my right hon. Friend requested, well into the new year 2006. We can well understand the Minister’s reluctance to indicate any slippage at this juncture, but if the fears of many of those directly involved are realised, the sheer volume of applications sitting with local authorities and the cases queuing up for appeal hearings will force the Minister to do a major U-turn. As with so many sensible and practical suggestions relating to this legislation, ““You heard it here first!””