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Column Number: 483
Standing Committee D
Tuesday 13 May 2003
(Morning)
[Mr. Roger Gale in the Chair]
8.55 am
The Chairman: I wish those members of the Committee who are awake a very good morning. Clause 101
Withdrawal of notice
Mr. Malcolm Moss (North-East Cambridgeshire): I beg to move amendment No. 372, in
Welcome back to the Committee, Mr. Gale. I shall be brief. The reason for the temporary event notice being withdrawn by the premises user, who has to give notice to that effect to the licensing authority
''no later than 24 hours before the beginning of the event period'',
would be to tell the licensing authority that the event was not going ahead, and that any arrangements, structures and communications that pertained to it no longer applied. If that notice were given on, say, a Saturday, the licensing authority would not be around and would not know that an event planned for the Sunday, for example, had been postponed or cancelled. Under the amendment, if the cancellation notice referred to an event that was to take place at a weekend or during a holiday period, the premises user who had the temporary event notice should tell the licensing authority by the end of the last working day prior to the weekend or holiday period.
The Minister for Tourism, Film and Broadcasting (Dr. Kim Howells): I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's brevity, and I, too, shall be brief. A temporary event notice will count against the permitted limits under clause 105 if it is not withdrawn at least 24 hours before the event is due to start. Anything beyond that counts towards those limits. There is nothing of consequence for the licensing authority to do except to note the receipt of the withdrawal, whether that happened within or outside the permitted time—and it would not matter if it carried out that administrative function several days later. Nothing whatever would be achieved by making the time limit begin or end within the working week, so I hope that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw the amendment.
Mr. Moss: I am happy with the Minister's explanation, and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 101 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
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Clause 102
Objection to notice by the police
Mr. Moss: I beg to move amendment No. 346, in
clause 102, page 57, line 24, leave out 'ten' and insert 'fifteen'.
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment No. 347, in
clause 102, page 57, line 32, leave out '48' and insert '72'.
Amendment No. 373, in
clause 103, page 58, line 21, leave out '24' and insert '48'.
Amendment No. 377, in
clause 105, page 60, line 1, leave out '24' and insert '48'.
Mr. Moss: The amendments relate to the time that the police will have to make objections to a notice. The clause gives the police 48 hours to raise an objection to an outdoor event. As we know, unless the Bill is amended according to our proposal, that could involve 500 people. Someone could submit an application at 10 o'clock on a Friday night and hold the event at 11 pm on the Sunday. Subsection (3) does not give the police anything like the time that they would need to look into the matter and make their views known.
It has been put to me that that could be a raver's charter; people who wanted to circumvent the law would use it to their advantage and put the police under pressure. If such a person were unknown to the police, how would the police find out who they were? Such people may, for example, live out of the area. The police are simply saying that they want a little more time. Amendment No. 347 is a probing amendment that would increase the time from 48 to 72 hours. We are not saying that 72 hours is spot on, but we do not think that 48 hours is sufficient. In fact, the police have said in some submissions to us that they would prefer seven days. The Minister has, no doubt, had similar representations. The argument is whether 48 hours is long enough.
Amendment No. 346 probes subsection (1), the current wording of which is:
''The premises user must give a copy of any temporary event notice to the relevant chief officer of police no later than ten working days before the day on which the event period specified in the notice begins.''
The amendment would change that period to 15 days, which would give the police a little more notice of what was likely to take place. Amendment No. 373 is related to that and deals with clause 103; it would change from 24 to 48 hours the time for a decision to be made on a counter notice.
The amendments relate to objections by the police concerning the counter notice that may or may not be given; they are based on submissions that we have received from the police, who say that if the legislation is to be meaningful, they need more time to make inquiries.
Mr. Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster): I agree with my hon. Friend. The time limits are very narrow. I accept that it is in everyone's interests for there to be some certainty, and I am sure
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that that is part of the Government's thinking. Subsection (3) says:
''The objection notice must be given no later than 48 hours after the chief officer of police is given a copy of the temporary event notice''.
There is, however, a question about when that 48-hour period is triggered, especially in the age of electronic media, when e-mails and faxes are being sent through. Much of the raison d'être for the Bill is to improve the rights and responsibilities of local people in relation to nearby events, but such interests may yet be undermined if there is a sense that things are rushed through without local folk having any say. I appreciate the fact that the clause deals specifically with police objections, and that the police will tend to be on top of things, but in my constituency the sheer number and weight of licensing applications is so extensive.
Westminster city council announced yesterday that it had, for the first time, appointed a cabinet member to take account of licensing matters; it envisages that, as the Bill is likely to be passed in the next few months, licensing will become an important activity for the local authority and the local licensing authority. Local authorities and the police have realised that they will, from time to time, need to ensure that there is an infrastructure in place. Our only concern is that by having such narrow time limits—10 days for one purpose and 48 hours for the other—there is a risk that the system may be open to potential judicial review, or that there may be fractiousness among the population. Perhaps the Minister could give some thought to ensuring that more sensible and practical time limits are put in place.
Dr. Howells: With great respect to the hon. Gentleman, I must tell him that I would not have promoted the Bill if I did not think that it was already sensible.
This is a light-touch system, designed to benefit those who do not generally engage in the business of carrying out licensable activities by allowing them, for example, to hold a fundraising event in a hall with no premises licence. It will allow the landlord of a village pub to run a bar on a village green during a fête, and informal events will be able to take place at short notice. The time limits that the Bill sets out for the giving of temporary event notices and objection notices are therefore relatively short. We live in an age when the police can and do use computer systems to establish whether records are held in respect of any individual. The police are not being asked to carry out an investigation; they need consider only the location, the potential for disorder, and whether the premises user is known on their records. Remember that the police will know their patch well.
This group of amendments appears to have attracted the hon. Gentleman's keen interest in numbers. On amendments Nos. 346 and 347, I do not accept that the chief officer of police should require any more than 10 days' notice of an event. Such notices will be simple documents, and it should take no longer than 10 days for police to come to a judgment. I appreciate the potential pressures on
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resources; indeed, we have recognised that in extending the notice period from the five days in the White Paper to the 10 days in the Bill. Ten days should be the limit, and any police authority that considered 15 days to be necessary would seem to have a lower opinion of itself than it deserved.
Mr. Moss: Will the Minister explain why the Government saw fit to change the period from five to 10days? What representations were made by the police, and what arguments were put forward?
Dr. Howells: They were the same as the arguments that the hon. Gentleman advanced earlier—which explains why he is arguing for 15 days. The police said to the Government that they thought that five days was too short, so we doubled the period. I have no doubt that the old adage of getting one's retaliation in first is applicable, and that the police might imagine that if they could stretch the period to 15 days, their job would be even easier. However, we must stick to timetables. The hon. Gentleman and I may not exactly have crossed swords about this, but we have disagreed slightly in the past about my belief that if a limit is set at, say, 10 days, the work will be done within 10 days, but if it is set at 15 days, the work will be done within 15 days. This is light-touch regulation. The situation is not as serious as the hon. Gentleman has painted it, and I am certain that the police forces can deal with it.
It must be remembered that 10 days is the minimum period of notice—the hon. Gentleman did not mention that. Many people will apply well in advance of that period, and there is nothing to prevent the licensing authorities from encouraging them to do so. Those who leave things to the last minute will leave themselves little room for manoeuvre with the police. The Government must decide what the minimum period of notice should be, regardless of whether most people will give significantly longer notice, as no doubt they will. With a 10-day notice period for the temporary event notice, it would not be realistic to extend the period within which the police can give an objection notice to 72 hours, because if such a notice is issued the licensing authority must hold a hearing and decide whether to issue a counter notice.
The time limits that we have set for notices are realistic, and properly reflect the temporary nature of the events to which they apply. The light-touch controls will prove of enormous benefit to many who do not wish to obtain premises licences.
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