Mr Malcolm Moss (North East Cambridgeshire, Conservative)

I beg to move amendment No. 81, in

clause 7, page 4, line 29, leave out from 'of' to end of line 30 and insert

'such members of the authority as the authority shall determine'.

Mr Roger Gale (North Thanet, Conservative)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments:

No. 101, in

clause 7, page 4, line 30, leave out 'ten', and insert 'five'.

No. 102, in

clause 7, page 4, line 30, at end insert

'none of whom shall be members of the executive of that authority'.

Mr Malcolm Moss (North East Cambridgeshire, Conservative)

I now know where I am.

Amendment No. 81 deals with the size of the licensing committees and the lack of flexibility and discretion in the deployment of councillors who serve on them through a provision dictating the number of councillors. The Bill states that such a committee must consist

''of at least ten, but not more than fifteen, members''.

That provision is not flexible enough because it does not reflect the varying sizes of local authorities in terms of the population of their areas, the number of councillors who serve on a council and the number of establishments and premises in their local authority area, which is particularly pertinent to my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster. Westminster city council has a disproportionately huge number of premises to deal with compared with any other council in the country. If the number must be specified, what is the point of making the band so narrow in the first place? Furthermore, the clause limits a local council based in an urban area to the same number of committee members as a small council based in a rural area.

The provision is also unreasonable given the length of the transitional period. Many local authorities, particularly those in urban areas with many premises and establishments, will be inundated during the six-month period with applications for renewals and

variations of existing licences. By imposing the limit so early in the process, the Government could jeopardise the smooth implementation of the Bill and cause gridlock from the outset in some cases. To avoid that, local authorities will have to refuse some applications. Such decisions will go to appeal and that in turn will clog up the magistrates courts, which will have to take the appeals on board.

The Government are being prescriptive in not allowing councils the flexibility to determine the size of their licensing committee according not only to the size of the council area but, as in Westminster's case, to the number of premises and potential applications that they will have to deal with during the six-month transition period. We ask the Government to consider the amendment, which would leave the size of the licensing committee to the discretion of the local authority.

Mr Mark Field (Cities of London & Westminster, Conservative)

I entirely endorse the comments of my hon. Friend. He hit the nail on the head when he said that we would enter uncharted waters with the transitional arrangements. That applies not only to the city of Westminster, although it will be the most acute case, given the number of licensed premises. The Bill proposes a six-month transition period. There is a real risk of a chaotic effect on licensing if the period is too short.

In so far as there is permission for non-determination, there is an assumption for the conversion of a licence that a two-month gap between an application and non-determination will mean that the licensee will be given authority to proceed on the previous terms. However, for the variation of a licence, the two-month delay will result in an automatic rejection of the variation proposal.

Therefore, it is clear that if the transition period is to be short, there must be far more flexibility in clause 7 to ensure that licensing committees can be larger. Although everyone may have grand plans for the transition arrangements, the practical reality is that many applications will come through in the last few days—that is as inevitable as night following day. There will be a massive rush and the risk of a somewhat chaotic state of affairs.

Mr Bob Blizzard (Waveney, Labour)

Perhaps I am missing something. Would the hon. Gentleman explain how having more members would automatically lead to a speedier determination of the application? My personal experience of councils leads me to believe that the more members there are, the longer they take to discuss a matter.

Mr Mark Field (Cities of London & Westminster, Conservative)

It may be said that the quickest and easiest committees are committees of one. That is what I often felt when I was running a business. When I was an employee I took a somewhat different view, but that is life. My argument is that licensing committees will have sub-committees to deal with individual applications. We want to maximise the number of people on the full licensing committee so that there are more people on the sub-committees to deal with day-to-day applications during the transition period.

Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham, Labour)

Unfortunately, the Bill should be renamed the Westminster city

council Bill because everything seems to be being skewed towards Westminster. Is it not a fact that if there were more councillors, more officials would be needed to administer the paper work and to prepare for the committees? As my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Mr. Blizzard) said, increasing the number of councillors is irrelevant.

Mr Mark Field (Cities of London & Westminster, Conservative)

The fact is that we are taking it for granted in the transition arrangements that the overwhelming majority of applications will be for conversion rather than variation. The process will have to be gone through, so the more councillors who are available to sit on sub-committees, the better.

Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham, Labour)

But will not some cases be delegated rather than being subject to full hearings of the licensing authority?

Mr Mark Field (Cities of London & Westminster, Conservative)

That may apply to a certain extent and will depend on the policy of councils, but when there is even a small number of objectors, perhaps just a single objector, applications cannot be delegated and must go to a fully fledged licensing committee meeting. Given the obvious cynicism of the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones), he will never dare to live in the city of Westminster because I shall ensure that council officers, particularly those concerned with parking regulations, are made aware of his concern that all laws start in Westminster, as in fact they do in a literal sense.

My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Cambridgeshire has made some sensible suggestions. I understand why the Government want to introduce the legislation quickly, but if the transition arrangements are to be so short—we shall discuss whether six months is too short—and set in stone, it is inevitable that more councillors will be needed from which to choose when constituting a sub-committee to ensure that the process operates smoothly.

Mr Mark Hoban (Fareham, Conservative)

I approach the amendment in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster from a different angle. If the hon. Member for North Durham objects to the Bill and suggests that it should be called the Westminster Bill, let me put in a bid to add Fareham to its title. Fareham borough council, in line with Government recommendations for streamlining councils, has only 31 members in an urban constituency. There are nine members on the planning committee and I suspect that it will be argued that a member of the planning committee should not be a member of the licensing committee and that the two functions should be kept separate when considering licensing matters. There are six members on the executive and, given the burdens imposed on executive members under the Government's changes to local government functions and the exercise of powers, perhaps they should also be excluded from considering licensing matters. That means that 15 members of the 31-member council may be excluded from those deliberations.

Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham, Labour)

Can the hon. Gentleman explain why it would not be appropriate for councillors to sit on a planning committee as well as a licensing committee?

Mr Mark Hoban (Fareham, Conservative)

If someone has determined a planning application to build a new restaurant, how would it be perceived if that person, as a member of a licensing committee, also decided the terms and conditions of the licence to be granted?

Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight, Conservative)

I endorse what my hon. Friend says. Advice is being sent out from planning offices throughout the country that anyone who has ''expressed a view'' on the worthiness of a planning application should be debarred from sitting on the planning committee that considers the application. I can see exactly the same advice being issued in respect of a licence when it is obvious that somebody sitting on a planning committee has approved something in the expectation that the premises will be licensed and wants to sit on a licensing committee to consider the same issue.

Mr Mark Hoban (Fareham, Conservative)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for supporting me on that point. It is a matter of people's perceptions of the integrity and fairness of the planning and licensing process. If people exercise the same functions on two committees, applicants who feel unfairly treated by either of those committees in respect of an application for the same premises may well think that the committees are biased against them.

A relatively small, efficiently run council, such as Fareham, which has 31 members, will have to draw between 10 and 15 people from a pool of 16 councillors. There may be some authorities where it is right to increase the size of the licensing committee to deal with particular issues in the area, but we should be enabling smaller authorities to put together a licensing committee with fewer than 10 members.

Fareham council also happens to have a licensing and regulatory affairs committee. As well as considering the licensing of pet shops and sex shops and other issues, it considers public entertainment licences. That committee has seven members, who are not on the planning and development control committee. For a small authority, seven members may well be sufficient, particularly after the transitional period has expired. Why can we not give more discretion to local authorities to enable them to determine the appropriate size of committees, according to the burden of responsibility that they have and the number of councillors who are available to fulfil the roles?

Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight, Conservative)

It is noteworthy that, in objecting to the amendment supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster and his argument that 15 is too small a number to constitute a licensing committee, the hon. Member for North Durham argued that one does not need that many people and yet, in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Mr. Hoban), who speaks from the Front Bench and who argued that 10 was too large a minimum number, the hon. Gentleman argued that 10 was exactly right and seven was inappropriate. One could tell from the shrugs and remarks—such as ''rubbish''—that he was making during my hon. Friend's contribution that he feels that between 10 and 15 is exactly the right number. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his loyalty to his Minister, but

there must be some justification in the Minister's mind for setting the numbers.

I confess that I was looking beyond the transitional phase when I drafted amendment No. 101. I felt that, in due course, and particularly given the additional duration of the applications, the normal flow of licensing applications, in the case of an authority which did not receive a huge number of applications, would not place such a huge burden on councillors that it would be necessary to have 10 trained councillors—of course, training would be necessary—on the licensing committee to administer that flow. Five would probably be enough. I am sure that that argument is right for small authorities.

I did not attempt to consider whether 15 was too small a maximum number, but I endorse the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster that there will be a huge burden for a short time during the transitional period. I find it hard to see why the Minister cannot leave that discretion with local authorities. In my experience of education, there is not a single area in which the size of education committees is determined by the Secretary of State or legislation. That simply does not happen. As far as I know, nothing in any other legislation requires local authorities to set a committee of a particular size—say, of more than three—and I find it hard to see what is magical about between 10 and 15. Can the Minister demonstrate what is magical about that?

Dr Kim Howells (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Culture, Media & Sport; Pontypridd, Labour)

This has been an interesting debate. I am glad that the hon. Member for Isle of Wight did not this time point the finger at me for snorting and grunting my disagreement with him during his speech. I would point the finger at my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham, because he is a vigorous debater of such issues.

Similar arguments to those expressed by Opposition Members have been put directly to me by representatives of local government. However, as in so many matters, the Bill has to balance competing interests. In this case, it has to weigh the understandable concerns of local authorities on this score—they have been well articulated by hon. Members—against the industry's legitimate desire to see some consistency in the way in which licensing authorities will operate. The Bill therefore provides a framework that will give licensing authorities and by extension the industry the tools with which to process applications quickly and efficiently through the sub-committee system.

During the development of the Bill and the policy that underpins it, we have sought views from a wide range of stakeholders including representatives of local government at all levels. We have concluded that limits of not less than 10 and not more than 15 will ensure that licensing committees are not so small as to make decision making unacceptably slow because of a lack of members and not so large as to make the conduct of business unmanageable because of too many members. I want to endorse the comment made by my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham, who has had a lot of experience here. As we know, north-easterners

can talk a glass eye to sleep at the best of times and I am sure that he has had many painful committee hearings.

We are still of that view. Amendment No. 81 would allow a licensing authority absolute freedom to determine the size of its licensing committee. Key to an understanding of the Government's point of view is a grasp of the principle that in the majority of cases we expect applications to be processed administratively at official level without the need for a hearing. In those circumstances, there will be no need for any member of the licensing committee to become involved at all. The policy behind the Bill has been designed to promote co-operation and collaboration between licensees and the licensing authority. Most issues should be ironed out by the applicant through dialogue with the licensing authority and the responsible authorities and through reference to the statement of licensing policy, before an application is even submitted.

Where relevant representations are received and a hearing is needed, members of the licensing committee will have to become involved, but I should make one thing absolutely clear at this point. The whole licensing committee does not have to—and, indeed, should not—consider and determine every application. The Bill provides for functions of the licensing committee to be delegated to sub-committees of three that may sit in parallel. Doing the sums, a licensing committee comprising the maximum 15 members could have five sub-committees sitting at the same time to consider the small proportion of applications that cannot be determined effectively at official level.

I do not want to keep highlighting the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham above anyone else's, but he put his finger on it because we have spent a long time discussing such matters with central London authorities, which have voiced very special concerns. I should say at this point that when I met representatives of Westminster council recently, it transpired that the Bill as we have framed it reflects that council's arrangements for public entertainment licences. That system appears to work well in processing applications.

The licensing committee may delegate any of its functions under the Bill to a sub-committee established by it. The full licensing committee need meet only rarely. That said, to avoid large unwieldy committees, the Bill specifies a maximum size of 15. I recognise that local authorities vary in size greatly and that 10 members may constitute half the total for some authorities, as the hon. Member for Fareham made clear.

Mr Mark Hoban (Fareham, Conservative)

I have two questions for the Minister. First, will he enlighten the Committee as to the current rules of licensing committees? Does a provision in current legislation require licensing committees to be a certain size? It would be interesting to know whether such a provision exists or whether the proposal is another regulatory burden. Secondly, if there is a delegation to sub-committees of three, when is a sub-committee technically inquorate? What is the key number?

Dr Kim Howells (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Culture, Media & Sport; Pontypridd, Labour)

The sub-committee must have three members to be quorate. The hon. Member for Fareham talked about Fareham's committee having only seven members, which suggests—although I do not know for certain—that numbers can vary dramatically throughout the country. We are drafting new legislation on the basis of the consultation that we have undertaken with all of the stakeholders. The hon. Member for Isle of Wight is right: he referred to the size of the Committee as a ''magical figure''. There is no explanation for what makes a particular figure magical, but we think that we have chosen a sensible figure and a sensible range of members.

Everyone involved in the licensing regime will benefit from the ability to convene hearings, should they be required, in a timely fashion. The system set out in the Bill allows the licensing authority to respond quickly. By providing for a system of sub-committees to handle individual applications and an upper limit on the size of the full licensing committee, we can place the right emphasis on swift and efficient decision making. The Bill strikes the right balance.

Amendment No. 102 would prevent members of the local authority executive from sitting on the licensing committee. There have been suggestions of mistrust and the opportunity for ill feeling and so forth, but such arguments do local authorities an injustice. They have a difficult job to do.

The House strikes me as being like a medieval monastery—I am always finding hon. Friends and hon. Members ''cwched'' away, gossiping in little corners. There have always been cabals in this building and we are not above suspicion any more than local authorities, but we try to make things work, which is why we have rules and standing orders. We should be more generous towards local authorities about the way in which they deal with such difficult and sensitive matters.

Our arguments for limiting the size of licensing committees relate to the speed and efficiency with which applications are handled and nothing more. I do not see how the presence or absence of members of the executive affects that objective in any way. I hope that amendment No. 102 will be withdrawn on that basis.

Mr Malcolm Moss (North East Cambridgeshire, Conservative)

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 7 ordered to stand part of the Bill.