Licensing Act

There are concerns, which I shall move on to. I recognise my hon. Friend's position, as he represents an area that presents unique challenges for licensing authorities. I was shadow Secretary of State when the Bill was going through Parliament and recall going out with representatives of Westminster city council one night to visit what I believe are called vertical drinking establishments, which pack in many people whose sole purpose there is to drink as much as possible. I also met local residents who, night after night, had to put up with drunken yobs vomiting on their door steps, and all sorts of other unpleasant behaviour. The challenges in Westminster are probably far greater than those anywhere else, so I fully recognise the concerns raised by my hon. Friend, who has done a good job in speaking up on behalf of his constituents who have to live with that kind of behaviour. I will return to that point shortly. Still in the spirit of trying to be positive, we found that the Act had in the main achieved many of its objectives, but we identified several areas where we felt it was not working as the Government had intended, or where it could be improved. The Government's response to our report was full of warm words, which were welcome. They told us how helpful the report had been, that it contained practical and helpful recommendations and that they were pleased to be able to accept, or partially accept, the majority of the 26 recommendations. Upon examination, we found that those were the recommendations in which we had, in essence, agreed with the Government, so perhaps it was not wholly surprising that they agreed with us. However, there were one or two areas where we had significant differences, and I think that it is true to say that the Government did not accept our recommendations on any of them. Those are the areas on which I wish to concentrate today, because they continue to cause concern. The biggest area of concern relates to live performance.