Schedule 1 - Provision of regulated entertainment
Licensing Bill [Lords]
11:00 am
Dr Kim Howells (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Culture, Media & Sport; Pontypridd, Labour)
I beg to disagree. We have had long and fruitful discussions with the Local Government Association and others and they are aware that we will be watching carefully: the guidelines that we issue will have statutory powers so that they can be judicially reviewed if authorities try to prevent activities that are not licensable. The Bill introduces nothing new in terms of the licensing of pub sports: the situation will be the same as it is now.
The hon. Gentleman made an interesting comment. He said, ''Perhaps they have suddenly realised that there are powers that they should have been thinking about previously.'' I cannot answer for local authorities that have been sleepy in that respect, but I assure him that we will watch this carefully and that the guidelines will be strict. We want to encourage rather than discourage those types of activities.
I forgot to mention sliding roofs—probably because it is such a painful subject at the moment as the only sliding roof in any stadium of any size that I know of is the one on the Millennium stadium in Cardiff, which has been the venue of a series of recent disasters.