Policing and Crime Bill

My Lords, my Amendment 64 is in this group. I wish to raise concerns that have been expressed by the Central Council of Physical Recreation and by community amateur sports clubs about the likely impact on sports clubs of the schedule on general licensing conditions relating to alcohol and the associated draft code on alcohol sales. It appears that the impact will be to put further pressure on the finances of voluntary sports clubs and the goodwill of the volunteers who run them, on whom such clubs are dependant. The primary purpose of sports clubs is the promotion of sport, and all hospitality and catering income is reinvested in this purpose. The vast majority of voluntary sports clubs sell alcohol to members and guests only, primarily after sporting events. I suggest that there is no evidence of poor practice in the sale of alcohol through, for example, promotions to encourage heavy or speedy drinking, nor of alcohol-related disorder at sports clubs. It appears that the mandatory code will place a disproportionate burden on sports clubs, which do not retail significant amounts of alcohol or contribute to social disorder. In some instances, sports clubs employ part-time bar staff, but in many instances, the operation is run entirely by volunteers. These new measures will place an additional responsibility on them, which will divert them from their primary purpose of providing sporting opportunities, and could reduce the club’s capacity to provide positive physical activity in a social environment that contributes to well-being and community cohesion. The key points of the additional workload are identifying a representative selection of beverages, researching unit values, which are not currently provided on all alcoholic beverages and therefore would need calculation, and preparing price and unit value information. Clubs will also be required to incur the cost of producing price and unit value lists. While the additional workload may not in itself seem overly onerous, it needs to be borne in mind that this is in the context of a range of other regulatory requirements facing voluntary clubs from child protection through to the purchase of a music licence. In totality, these time and monetary costs can present a real challenge to the viability of clubs, as volunteers can be deterred by the range of tasks that often have no direct bearing on sport, and slender margins—the average surplus of a sports club is £1,300 per annum—are eaten into. Will the Minister indicate the Government’s assessment of the additional work that will arise for secretaries of voluntary sports clubs as a result of the impact of the terms of this schedule? I appreciate that there is a need to minimise alcohol-related disorder, and that this could be an issue in high-volume drinking establishments in which it might be helpful to offer customers advice about the alcoholic strength of different drinks, but there is no evidence of a problem in sports clubs requiring this action. It would be better for club volunteers to spend the time and resources that they have to develop further the work of such clubs in the community. Bearing in mind that there are also sanctions for failing to comply, there is a real risk of deterring volunteers from operating sports clubs’ bars for fear of a significant fine—or even, at the top end, of imprisonment—rather than reducing alcohol-related disorder by applying the code to sports clubs. Once again, it would be helpful if the Minister could say what the evidence is that leads him to believe that there is a problem with alcohol-related disorder in community sports clubs that necessitates extending all the provisions of the schedule and the code to such clubs. Are there not already measures in place for tackling alcohol-related disorder through alcohol disorder zones that are not always utilised as extensively as they might? Amendment 64 would remove some 5,000 registered community amateur sports clubs from the requirements of the part of the schedule to which it refers and of the associated draft mandatory code of practice, in particular condition 6, as the schedule’s provisions on the supply of alcohol do not seem to be justified for community amateur sports clubs, would create further workload pressure on hard-pressed club secretaries and other voluntary officers, and would ultimately adversely affect the finances and the running of such clubs that provide a service to the community.