My Lords, I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, was able to get back from Brussels and apologise to him for our not yet having managed to fix up a meeting. If he would like to have a meeting, we will make sure that
it is pursued as soon as possible. I recognise his strong concerns in this area and the amount of work that he has put in and continues to put in on these broader issues.
On the implementing regulations, we are about to go out to consultation on what they should be. We are of course ready to discuss informally our current thinking, but it seems to us right that we should consult on where we might go from here.
I think we all recognise that the focus on alcohol-related problems is at its most acute in the centre of some of our cities on Saturday evenings. I have been in Leeds and Wakefield on a Saturday evening and it is very much a problem involving young persons in those areas. Sometimes, in the winter, I think that there is also a hypothermia problem, from the fact that they wear so little as they go out. What we are proposing here is absolutely separate from that. It is thinking about deregulating some of the issues which arise for local events and ancillary sellers.
As it happens, my wife and I went to rather a splendid party in a village hall just north of York in the summer. One of those who attended explained to us that they had had some difficulty about this, because they are allowed to have events that serve alcohol in the village hall only once a month. This was for all sorts of restrictive reasons, and that is the sort of area where we would like to loosen the constraints and the number of times a year that village halls can have events of that sort.
That is the “community events” to which the measure refers; the ancillary sellers are the bed-and-breakfasts, as the noble Lord knows. I am informed that the reason why 7 am is specified in the Bill is so that if, on a particularly special occasion, a bed-and-breakfast wants to provide a champagne breakfast it should be allowed so to do. I have been trying to think about having a champagne breakfast in any of the last three or four bed and breakfasts that I stayed in in the north of England. It is an interesting concept and I shall probably go to sleep tonight imagining what one might look like. However, that is the justification for 7 am starting point.
This is intended to be deregulatory, to exempt community groups and small providers of accommodation from needing premises licences on multiple temporary event notices, and to limit the costs to them of having to renew these licences so frequently. We are very much responding to community pressure, and again I think about how this affects my locality. This would cover events in the park in Saltaire but would not cover the wonderfully bucolic Bradford Beer Festival, complete with a large number of large stomachs, which is held once a year in Victoria Hall. That is a big event at which a lot of alcohol is served—beer—which therefore requires a different sort of licensing regulation. That is why I stress that this is a limited measure. The terms “ancillary” sellers and “community events” explain how limited this measure is.
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