Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

My Lords, while other amendments have tried to reduce administrative processes, these two amendments attempt to add a publishing requirement on the police and the licensing authorities. I hope that noble Lords will agree that transparency already exists in the late night levy design. I believe that the levy will achieve an appropriate level of transparency and no further reports are required. We will require licensing authorities to consult on proposals and publish the expenses they incur in administering the levy. The police are being reformed to make them more accountable. Let me deal first with the police. The money given to the police from the late night levy will go into the police fund for the force area and be subject to the relevant scrutiny processes. We believe that it will be a waste of police resources and unnecessary bureaucracy to require the police to provide a report for the levy spend in particular. Further checks and balances will exist under police and crime commissioners. The PCC will be publicly scrutinised by the police and crime panel. Any data used in that scrutiny will be made public unless they are operationally sensitive, and PCCs will also be subject to freedom of information provisions. With regard to the licensing authority, transparency is provided in the pre-levy consultation process. This consultation will consider, among other things, the services which the licensing authority intends to provide from its levy revenue. The authority will then write to all affected premises to inform them of its final decision. The public will not need yet another publication setting out how the licensing authority spends the levy funds. Further, the Bill will require licensing authorities to publish a statement of the administration expenses which they have deducted from the levy revenue. The licensing authority, as an integral part of the council, is of course accountable to the public. The late night levy is light on administration and process. It has been designed as a contribution towards policing costs from those who profit from the sale of alcohol in the late night. To require an assessment of the impact of the levy on crime and disorder, as these amendments seek, would confuse the objective of the late night levy with tools such as early morning restriction orders which, as I have already mentioned in response to previous amendments, are specifically designed to tackle particular pockets of alcohol-related crime and disorder. I believe that necessary transparency is adequately provided for to ensure that levy receipts are spent in an appropriate way.