Live Music Bill [HL]

My Lords, I speak yet again on this issue. I welcome the Private Member’s Bill of my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones. I first declare an interest. I am chairman of Best Bar None, which gives awards to pubs that meet the highest standards. I also own a pub: the Redesdale Arms on the A68—on the Jedburgh Road. It is a particularly fine pub that does food and wine and is well worth a visit; it has rooms as well, if anybody wants to stay there. I thought I had better ensure that everybody understood my interest. My declared interest in Best Bar None is because I come across a very large number of publicans. The real issue for them is the enormous amount of red tape that they face. Of course, the Licensing Act has increased that regulation. I have talked to a number of people who have put on live music in the past but do not believe that it is worth the regulation and the hassle that you have to put up with from the council to meet them. That is a real issue. It is an issue of human rights. It is easy to say that this is about music, but it is actually about a Government who have become extremely repressive in how they put forward their views. They might turn around and say, "That’s rubbish", but let us look at the issue. During the passage of the Licensing Act 2003, we had four government defeats in an attempt to stop the Government limiting unamplified music because it is a human right. The noble Lord, Lord Colwyn, said that I, leading that charge, "gave up". I do not think another Bill has had four government defeats. At that point I had used every possible method. I was rather surprised when, on the last day of the attempted push, the Musicians’ Union wrote to me saying "We must start a great fight". They seemed rather slow on that. Going further back, I say that the Government are incredibly repressive because, in the build-up to the 2003 Act, we were assured that it would cut back on bureaucracy and red tape and increase the number of musicians playing in pubs. Indeed, one aspect was to remove the "two in a bar" rule that everybody then saw as repressive. This Bill is about reintroducing that rule. We have moved so far back from the position that we were in before the Act that we are now actually trying to do something that we were trying to lobby against at the time. I should take the noble Lord, Lord Colwyn, back to 2002, when he and I were in the Red Lion, where we had a large number of the press turning up. The purpose of that was to have two people playing music, and then for the noble Lord, Lord Colwyn, to blow his own trumpet and be thrown out because he would have been a third musician. Unfortunately, we did not get the press coverage that we thought we would receive, because the verdict on the noble Lord, Lord Archer of Weston-Super-Mare, happened, and the press seemed to be extremely interested in that event. However, the real issue is that there was interest in that. We have now come to a position where we are actually trying to reintroduce something that we were campaigning against. I do not believe that the Government will do anything on this issue this side of the election. I am absolutely certain that the Minister will stand up and say that live music is in a wonderful position and that, anyway, it is the residents that we have to be concerned about. There is a large amount of legislation to deal with this and this was not an issue that we did not discuss in great detail during the passage of the Licensing Act. It was discussed at great length. We asked for evidence that could show that the legislation would increase the amount of live music performed, and that was categorically given. We suggested that that might not be the case and that the bureaucracy might hinder the playing of live music. That argument was rejected. We were assured that licensing was needed because there would be great danger if large numbers of people turned up out of the blue to listen to music—even though that was not the case before the Licensing Act and probably would be afterwards. Our voice was not as strong as those who wanted to put large-screen televisions showing sport in pubs, which has—I should like to know the figures—caused problems there; live music has not. This has been a rather unfortunate situation for the Government. A lot of the issues that they said would never take place have done so. They include the example given by my noble friend of a young lady singing from her album, without amplification, in a branch of HMV because she was asked to. The shop was taken to court for that. We were expressly told that common sense would prevail, but there have been a hundred examples where common sense has not allowed such events to take place. I very much hope that the Government take this seriously and that the Conservatives, if they win the next election, move quickly to change this position. While we quite understand the rights of local residents not to be disturbed—I agree that that is an important consideration—and that law and order is a prime consideration, enforcing this legislation without evidence, at the expense of some of the cultural lifeblood of our country, seems to be utterly ridiculous.