Policing and Crime Bill

My Lords, the Bill allows the Secretary of State to introduce such mandatory licensing conditions as he deems appropriate for the promotion of the licensing objectives. Amendment 116 would insert an explicit requirement that those mandatory conditions were necessary and proportionate rather than appropriate. The term "necessary" could be taken to mean that there must be no other way of preventing the type of problems, promotions and practices that we are trying to stop, and while I understand the intention behind the amendment, in practice this is not the correct test for introducing a limited number of conditions that are aimed at providing an effective national solution to the most irresponsible business practices. The Bill requires that the mandatory conditions be appropriate. I hope that noble Lords will be reassured that any decisions regarding what is appropriate will be taken following this wide and detailed consultation. We are going through the 7,000 responses received in great detail. They are being fully considered and we probably will not complete that consideration until the new year. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, there are no specific plans to hold a further consultation, but that will, to an extent, depend on where we are by the new year when we have gone through all possible aspects. There is no doubt that feedback to some elements of the code has raised practical difficulties with what we propose. We have listened to those, and the licensed trade and local authorities were particularly concerned about the locally applied portion of the code. In the light of our reconsideration of allowing licensing authorities to act as interested parties, clearly we will look at whether locally applied conditions are still necessary. We will return on Report with the change that we were talking about. Amendment 117 would prevent any of the mandatory licensing conditions requiring licensed premises to pay a specific fee. I believe that this amendment is unnecessary. I can assure noble Lords that we would certainly not introduce such a condition because that is not the aim of these new powers. The aim of the new code is to ensure that all alcohol retailers sell alcohol responsibly to prevent alcohol-related problems arising. I do not see how a mandatory fee would achieve this. There is also a need to strike the right balance between tackling irresponsible behaviour and not unduly penalising the responsible majority. A mandatory condition which imposed a financial payment on alcohol retailers would certainly not strike that balance. It would be unfair and disproportionate. However, I am concerned that putting such an exemption in the Bill could be interpreted as the only issue which Parliament felt should be outside the scope of the conditions, which I can assure noble Lords is not the case. Amendment 118 would place a statutory duty on the Secretary of State to consider, before introducing the mandatory conditions, whether the objectives could be achieved through existing legislation. This is of course an important issue but I do not believe that this amendment is necessary. The Bill limits the number of mandatory conditions that can be imposed to nine, which will require us to consider very carefully which irresponsible practices and promotions should not happen anywhere, as well as force us to consider whether these could be addressed by other means. However, I agree with the noble and learned Lord that nine, while being a balance between too many and too few, is hardly done very scientifically. After this debate, I will talk to my team about that in more detail. Let me reassure noble Lords that we share concerns about the enforcement of existing legislation and that a large programme of work is in place to address this. Over the past year, we have provided £6 million to fund enforcement and alcohol-related partnership activity campaigns, as well as training thousands of front-line practitioners. Effective enforcement should not be viewed as a substitute for ensuring that all alcohol retailers play their part. Both must happen if meaningful and lasting change is to occur, which is why I believe that these mandatory conditions are necessary. Amendment 119 would reduce the number of mandatory conditions which can be imposed from nine to six. I fully understand noble Lords’ wishes to keep the number of mandatory conditions to a minimum, which is why we have imposed a statutory limit. I can assure noble Lords we will not simply impose nine conditions because the Bill allows for nine. That will come out of the consultation and all the work that is being done. Over time the code will need to develop to reflect changes in the way alcohol is promoted and sold. Reducing that limit to six could severely limit that necessary flexibility and may significantly reduce the effectiveness of the code. Therefore, I do not believe that six conditions strikes the right balance between tackling those acting irresponsibly while not penalising the responsible majority. Keeping the limit at nine will allow that flexibility while still ensuring that responsible businesses are not unduly burdened. The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, talked about such things as free drinks for women; a Home Office document produced in May lays out some of the bans and issues that are to be addressed. I shall not go through them all, because it goes on at some length, but on page 19 of the Safe. Sensible. Social. Selling Alcohol Responsibly consultation document, various options are laid out. To go through those would take rather overlong. Amendment 120 seeks to require that the Secretary of State must have regard to any existing licensing conditions before mandatory conditions can be imposed. I do not believe that this would be workable in practice. For this condition to be met, the Secretary of State would need to consider all the licensing conditions imposed by the 350 licensing authorities across England and Wales in all 179,000 licensed premises. That would be an impossible task. I understand that there may be a concern about mandatory conditions conflicting with existing conditions, but we have provided in the schedule that the mandatory conditions override any existing conditions where they are identical to or tougher than the existing conditions. This will remove any potential conflicts between conditions. Amendments 121 to 123 relate to the locally applied conditions in the code. As I said earlier, I will reconsider, before Report, allowing licensing authorities to act as interested parties. Should it be right to proceed with new powers to that effect, there may be no need at all for the locally applied provisions in the code. On the basis of my earlier explanation on Amendments 116, 117 to 119 and 120, and in light of my intention to reconsider allowing licensing authorities to act as interested parties, I invite the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.