Schedule 1 - Provision of regulated amendments
Licensing Bill [Lords]
4:00 pm
Dr Kim Howells (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Culture, Media & Sport; Pontypridd, Labour)
Hon. Members will no doubt be aware that the Government suffered a number of defeats on the Bill in the other place. Some of those defeats we will seek to overturn in Committee, but as hon. Members will know, we are prepared to compromise on some, as we already have during today's sittings. We have accepted some wholeheartedly, subject to necessary technical modification. The defeat on incidental live music—the subject of this group of Government amendments—falls into the latter category, as I am sure the hon. Member for North-East Cambridgeshire will be pleased to know.
I hope that the Committee will allow me to make one matter clear. Regardless of the myths and misinformation surrounding the Bill in respect of regulated entertainment, the Government are firmly committed to improving the range and diversity of cultural provision available to the public, and preserving important musical traditions that help define the character of the country. That is why the Bill was designed to make it much easier and cheaper for venues to get a licence to put on entertainment, and why it removes the perverse disincentive of the two-in-a-bar rule.
I made a mistake earlier when I said that the Musicians Union did not say back in 1998 that all music should be exempt. In fact it said that all music should be licensed, with no exemptions, and argued that licences should then be set at a moderate and affordable price. That is precisely what we are doing
and I would be very interested to hear its reaction to that when the next avalanche of letters arrives.
We accept that more could have been done in the Bill to further that aim, which is why we have made a range of concessions since the Bill was introduced. For example, we have exempted places of public religious worship. We have amended the Bill to make it clear that entertainers who simply perform at unlicensed venues, and do no more, will not be committing an offence. We have announced that we will exempt church halls, village halls and other community buildings from entertainment fees. We shall use the accompanying guidance to ensure that only necessary and proportionate conditions are attached to licences.
As part of that package of concessions, Government amendment No. 2 provides a modification to Opposition amendments made in another place which would exempt incidental live music and recorded music to ensure that the effect of the amendment is perfected. The spirit of the amendments is retained in its entirety. Government amendment No. 3 removes an anomaly that arose as the result of the defeat in another place. Paragraph 11 of schedule 1 provides an exemption for unamplified incidental live music. As the Government have accepted the principle that all incidental live music, whether amplified or not, should be exempt from the requirement to obtain a licence, that further exemption is unnecessary and will be removed.