Schedule 1 - Provision of regulated entertainment
Licensing Bill [Lords]
10:00 am
Mr Malcolm Moss (North East Cambridgeshire, Conservative)
I am grateful for that guidance.
Amendments Nos. 48 to 50 and 111 are linked with the parts of the Bill that deal with entertainment facilities. Amendment No. 50 would delete paragraph 1(3), which deals with entertainment facilities, and the others are consequential on that. The other purpose of the amendments is to elicit the Government's reasons for including ''entertainment facilities'' per se. We would like a clear and unambiguous definition of what that term entails.
The Bill seems to be directed towards licensable activities. If it goes too far in that direction, and an attempt is made to license the mere provision of facilities, the Bill will cease to focus on the potential mischief—that is, the activity—and will create a whole new tier of unnecessary and onerous regulation. Surely it is the entertainment activity alone, not the premises, that gives rise to problems, and raises the question whether to regulate it for reasons of health and safety, noise, pollution or crime and disorder. After all, those facilities could have been dormant for a period, or could lie unused for long periods.
We have tabled the amendments in order to probe the Government on why they have included the catch-all definition of ''entertainment facilities''. In our opinion, it is entertainment activities that are critical for regulation, not the facilities—which may not, after all, be used. There is no need to define entertainment facilities in the schedule. All that is needed is simple permission to allow music, dancing, and similar forms of entertainment to take place within the regulatory framework, subject of course to the conditions deemed necessary and appropriate. That is what we have tried to achieve with amendment No. 111. Permission for the public to participate should be included in paragraph 2(1), as, indeed, is proposed in the Bill.
These are probing amendments tabled to discover why, if the Government's intention is to have light-touch regulation and to avoid it wherever possible, they have deemed it necessary to include entertainment facilities in the catch-all way that I have outlined.