UK Parliament / Open data

Licensing Act 2003 (Mandatory Licensing Conditions) (Amendment) Order 2014

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, who raised a number of issues. The cost of alcohol-fuelled crime in England and Wales is £11 billion, and this is unacceptable. In reality, that figure is what the noble Lord cited: £21 billion—through loss of work, sickness and the burden on the National Health Service. We want the alcoholic drinks industry to raise its game and to do more to promote responsible drinking.

We have already introduced a radical package of measures to overhaul the Licensing Act, including giving local areas more powers to deal with problem premises. We see such premises in our major cities such as Sheffield and Leeds and they are a major problem, especially late at night. Local licensing authorities are quite capable of addressing the problems that they have in their own area.

Alcohol-related crime also entails a huge cost to the police. They will be reviewing what they charge for licences to make sure that charges cover the cost of policing areas which have a lot of crime.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
755 c281GC 
Session
2014-15
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords Grand Committee
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