Policing and Crime Bill

My Lords, Amendments 113A and 125L would allow local authority officers or members of the licensing authority to object to a temporary event notice on the grounds of any of the four licensing objectives. It is worth noting that last year some 120,000 temporary event notices were issued and that more than 300,000 have been issued since the Licensing Act came in—a remarkable number. To date, while we have heard of a few individual problems, there have been no reports of widespread issues. Thousands of voluntary and charitable organisations are able to benefit from holding these small infrequent events in village halls and community centres up and down the country. The nature of these events means that it is important to strike the right balance between reducing bureaucracy and public protection. The temporary event notice regime provides a deliberately light-touch system which allows these small infrequent events to happen easily and cheaply. They are specifically designed to avoid long and costly bureaucratic processes, and giving additional powers to regulate their use, by broadening both who can object and on what grounds, runs counter to that objective that we have been trying to meet. Such a light-touch approach is possible because of the controls that the Licensing Act places on their use. Premises are limited to holding 12 events per year under these notices, a personal licence-holder can issue no more than 50 notices in a year and a person without a personal licence can give no more than five notices a year. If these limits are exceeded the licensing authority can, quite rightly, intervene. If the event gets out of hand, under the Licensing Act, the police can close down an event instantly for up to 24 hours on the grounds of disorder, imminent disorder or as a result of noise nuisance. Broadening the scope of not only who can object but on what grounds, as this amendment suggests, would be likely to lead to a significant increase in the number of objections made. While some of these will be valid, many may not, and dealing with those additional objections will lengthen significantly the process and increase the bureaucracy in what is supposed to be a "light touch" system. This will increase the burden on both licensing authorities and applicants, and that will be most felt by those events that are very unlikely to contribute to alcohol-related crime and disorder, such as charities and village fêtes, which rely on this system being cheap and straightforward. These amendments would therefore not be consistent with a targeted or proportionate response. Of course, if there are concerns about how the temporary event system is operating generally, the Government are happy to look at any evidence. Indeed, Ministers have already agreed to consider adjustments to the period of notice given to the police, but so far, there does not appear to be evidence of widespread problems of the kind that would warrant more significant changes to the regime. I can understand the thrust of Amendment 113B, which we accept in principle. This new clause would mean that members of the licensing authority—the same people we talked about before—are added to the definition of "interested party". This would allow them to object to a licence application or to initiate a licensing review—powers that are currently exercisable only by "responsible authorities" and "interested parties" under the Licensing Act and not by the relevant licensing authority, which is neither of those. I can understand the intentions behind this amendment and I understand that the Local Government Association is very supportive of it. I agree that local authorities need more powers to be proactive to deal with premises that are causing problems. That is why the Bill contains new powers for licensing authorities to impose general licensing conditions on groups of problem premises. This should address many of their concerns by allowing licensing authorities to deal with a number of premises in an area at a time. That said, I recognise that allowing local councillors to act as interested parties or responsible authorities would give them more flexibility to decide what action to take and to act more proactively than is proposed in the Bill and in our recent consultation on the detail of the code. I have concerns that the amendment as drafted could lead to a perception of bias and we would need to ensure that appropriate arrangements are in place to dispel this concern, so I would like to consider the issue more fully and return to it on Report. If at that time we decide to proceed with the new powers proposed by the amendment, following a licensing review, the licensing authority would be able to impose any licensing conditions it deemed appropriate. There would therefore be no need for the locally applied portion of the code in Schedule 4, which would allow the licensing authority to impose conditions only from a permitted list. I am aware that noble Lords have tabled a number of amendments to this portion of the code, and I shall refer back to it if noble Lords still wish to debate the amendments. The mandatory aspects of the code would of course be unaffected. On that basis, I invite the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.