Clause 7 - Licensing committees
Licensing Bill [Lords]
3:00 pm
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.