My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Smith on Amendment 70A. I will not comment on Amendment 75A and the subsequent amendments as I will speak on those topics separately later. I am full of horror on hearing the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, express that view. What has been happening with licensing is an absolute shambles, an absolute mess, at local authority level. If the Minister responds that he would like to see a review of all of them, which is what was advocated in Rewiring Public Services: Rewiring Licensing, I would be very happy to support him. There are so many areas in which local government needs to come into the present century and to review the way it looks at issues, particularly using old-fashioned approaches when in fact it should be moving in a digital way in so many ways, that it is high time that there should be an overall review right across the board on what is happening there and to see how we can effect some greater efficiencies than we have at the moment. When this report came out earlier in the year, it was looked at in the context of the debates that took place on the Deregulation Bill. I recommend that those who are opposed to it go back and read the Hansard report and they will see that a fair wind was given by Ministers at the other end to this being a possibility in the future. The simple fact is that if work had been done on the LGA’s report, with more time spent on that and legislation produced on it, much of it would be a damn sight better than some of the stuff that we have in the Deregulation Bill.
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