Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

My Lords, what a spurious suggestion. Amendments 240C, 240D, 240F, 240G, 240H and 240J would allow licensing authorities to apply existing licence conditions to temporary events if they considered it appropriate. They would also give them powers to prescribe a set of standard conditions that they could apply to a temporary event if appropriate for the promotion of the licensing objectives, as long as they were not inconsistent with the purpose of the event. This is far too onerous a requirement for what is intended to be a light-touch process for events of short duration. Temporary event notices are not supposed to be the norm, although licensing authorities and the police tell us that a few unscrupulous licensed premises have tried to use the TEN process to evade their licensing conditions. Licensed conditions can be costly—for example, the requirement to have trained door staff where alcohol is sold. Although these costs may be justified and necessary for permanent activities, I believe that they could impose unreasonable costs on those holding temporary events. We are proposing that licensing authorities should be able to apply some or all existing licence conditions to attend but only if the police or, in future, the environmental health authority object to the TEN on the grounds of any of the licensing objectives. Currently, the licensing authority has only two options; that is, to allow a TEN to go ahead or to issue a counternotice to prevent it. This provides a third option that, in relation to events at premises for which there is already a licence, will allow these events to go ahead but with relevant licence conditions applied to ensure adequate protection for patrons, residents and local businesses. I believe that this is a proportionate response to the problems caused by a small number of temporary events and will not unfairly penalise responsible businesses. Clause 113 will allow the environmental health authority to object to a temporary event notice. Local residents have told us that temporary events can cause problems in relation to other licensing objectives; that is, public safety, the protection of children from harm and public nuisance. The most common problem is noise, and residents and others have asked us to give local authorities the power to prevent temporary events that cause noise nuisance from going ahead. For that reason, we propose to extend the right to object to a temporary event notice to the environmental health authority and to allow it and the police to object to a TEN on the grounds of any of the licensing objectives. Clause 114, which relates to the proposal to prescribe a set of standard conditions, would also undermine one of the fundamental principles of the Licensing Act 2003; namely, that conditions should be appropriate and tailored to specific events. Proposals include measures to ensure that events that might lead to crime and disorder or nuisance do not go ahead. We are also putting in place other controls to ensure that temporary events are adequately controlled. We are extending the right to object from the police to environmental health officers as well and by extending the grounds for objections to cover not only the prevention of crime and disorder but also public safety, the prevention of public nuisance and protection of children from harm. I think that that is a repeat of what I have just said in relation to another clause. Under Clause 116, currently a temporary event notice can be used only for events of up to 96 hours or 4 days and there must be a break of 24 hours between each temporary event. Therefore, we propose to increase TENs from 96 hours, 4 days, to 168 hours, 7 days. Temporary event notices are used by organisations such as travelling theatre companies and festivals, which typically run productions and events over a week. At the moment, their only option is to break for 24 hours in the middle of a run with consequent loss of earnings and inconvenience. This is an artificial constraint on activities which are extremely unlikely to compromise the licensing objectives. There may be concerns that this proposal will allow week-long events that might undermine the licensing objectives. I can assure the House that this will not be the case. We are relaxing these limits, but we have tightened up other aspects of the temporary event notice process. For those reasons, I ask that the noble Lord does not oppose that the clause should stand part of the Bill.