Schedule 1 - Provision of regulated entertainment
Licensing Bill [Lords]
10:15 am
Dr Kim Howells (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Culture, Media & Sport; Pontypridd, Labour)
I acknowledge that it is a difficult question. The key point is the intention to provide the facility for the purpose of providing entertainment. If the facility is not to be available for regulated entertainment, then no licence is required. If the Bill focused entirely on activity, many types of entertainment would be caught that should not be caught. For example, if the playing of music is the licensable activity, then playing in a music lesson would be licensable, but it is not.
When people go to a nightclub there may be dancing, but that dancing is not entertainment—the dancers are not entertaining an audience, they are there for their own pleasure, dancing with each other.