Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Some of the Minister’s explanation of individual clauses was very clear but I found her introduction about the philosophy of what was being done extremely convoluted. I will have to read Hansard at least twice to understand the philosophy behind this. Let me declare an interest. I live very close to Clapham Common. We have lots of temporary events on the common which work very well. The police make objections if they have them, but by and large they are well behaved occasions. Little bureaucracy is involved, but these are quite big events, in many cases involving thousands of people. I am sure that it is true up and down the country that many of these events take place without any problems. However, we seem to be building up a mountain of regulation to deal with a few problems. There is no pandemic of problems associated with temporary event notices. On the other hand, I can see within the new regime, as a resident near Clapham Common, that these TENs will mushroom into week-long music festivals. I love music and I think it is great, but residents need to be given some consideration when activities take place on what is normally a common, where people walk their dogs and do whatever they do on Clapham Common and other open spaces; historically, I can think of a few other things as well. That said, it is extraordinary that in the end we will probably add to some of the problems rather than making it easier. We are adding a parallel form of licensing.