Schedule 1 - Provision of regulated entertainment
Licensing Bill [Lords]
8:55 am
Dr Kim Howells (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Culture, Media & Sport; Pontypridd, Labour)
I will in a moment. Such activities are private and the public are not admitted to them. They are not undertaken for a charge or with a view to profit and therefore do not qualify as regular entertainment on several fronts.
School concerts or plays for teachers, pupils, parents, guests and invited friends are not licensable activities unless a charge is made that is intended to generate profit. If the charge were meant to do no more than cover the school's costs for the provision of the entertainment, no profit would be intended and, again, the qualifying conditions would not be met. If a school concert or a play of that kind is staged for those that I have just mentioned and they are invited to make a donation to the school, but are not obliged to do so, the event will not be licensable. No charge will be made if only voluntary donations are sought, so many school activities of the type that we have been
debating are already outside the scope of regulated entertainment.
Under the Bill, the key point is whether the entertainment is intended to be provided for the public—in other words, whether anybody, whether connected to the school or not, can attend—and whether a charge is made and profit is the aim of the performance. We license commercial activity because the profit motive may override concerns for public safety and public nuisance. We license places open to the public because every citizen should know that his or her interests will be safeguarded, whether the building concerned is a school, a community hall or major commercial concert hall.
If a school wants to stage public concerts or activities that generate income, the licensing system is not over-burdensome. We must make sure that that continues to be so. Temporary event notices should not cost the organiser more than £20. That would cover events lasting up to three days, for less than 500 people. Five such events could be staged each year. If a school were more ambitious than that and plans larger events, it would need to obtain a premises licence that should cost no more than £100 initially and £50 each year.
I give an undertaking that we will look at developing the guidance for licensing authorities to ensure that over-burdensome and disproportionate conditions are not imposed on schools beyond those that are absolutely necessary to ensure the safety of performers and audiences alike, and to address the other licensing objectives.