Policing and Crime Bill

The trouble is that the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, is absolutely right that this onerous renewal—the Minister did not disabuse me of the idea that it is onerous—is more about a moral crusade than a practical approach to the problem. The first time the club applies for a licence, the issue of the locality, which we shall discuss shortly, and whether it was near a school, and so on, would be very important. As those issues would have been dealt with already, annual renewal sounds too often. The Minister is ignoring some of the evidence given to the DCMS Committee of the other place by Chief Inspector Studd of ACPO who was talking about the low risk of these venues from a public order perspective. He said: ""There is no evidence that they"—" lap-dancing clubs— ""cause any crime and disorder. Very rarely. They tend to be fairly well run. They tend to have a fairly high staff ratio to customers. The people who tend to go there tend to be a bit older so they do not drink excessively and cause the crime and disorder problems outside"." Of all the things that local authorities have to license, on that evidence given by a representative of ACPO, these sound to be pretty mild. It is quite surprising that the Government want to put that level of burden on local authorities and on the clubs themselves. I suspect that we shall come back to this on Report, but in the mean time I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 91 withdrawn. Amendment 92 not moved.