Clause 3 - Licensing authorities
Licensing Bill [Lords]
8:55 am
Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight, Conservative)
I am grateful to you, Mr. Benton, for reminding the Committee of where we had reached at the end of our sitting on Thursday. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Mr. Hoban) had alerted me to that fact a moment ago. We were discussing whether the licensing authorities should be those bodies and people listed under subsection (1). My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Moss) suggested that we should at least consider whether there was justification in moving from licensing justices being the licensing authority for liquor licensing to being the authority for all licensing purposes as set out under amendment No. 59. If I have misinterpreted the amendment, perhaps my hon. Friend will correct me.
I want to concentrate on the other amendments in the group. They could be considered to be contradictory in spirit. Amendments Nos. 60 and 61 would remove paragraphs (f) and (g) of subsection 1, which refer to the sub-treasurer of the Inner Temple and the under-treasurer of the Middle Temple. Amendment No. 64 would make the university of Cambridge a licensing authority. My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Cambridgeshire did not table them for their intrinsic merit. He was looking for a philosophy from the Government about which bodies they want to be liquor-licensing authorities.
There has been no great difficulty, certainly not in my constituency, with liquor licensing resting with licensing magistrates. Will the Minister explain why those responsibilities are to be transferred to local authorities, which are elected by the local residents, yet the Government are proposing the inclusion of two people who are not elected by local residents? Indeed, so individual are they that further on in the Bill it becomes impossible for them to appoint a sub-committee. A sub-committee cannot be appointed from a committee of one. That is my interpretation of amendment No. 62.