Clause 18 - Application for premises licence
Licensing Bill [Lords]
4:15 pm
Dr Kim Howells (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Culture, Media & Sport; Pontypridd, Labour)
This is an important group of amendments, but I know that hon. Members want to get on to a later group, so I shall be brief. With the Committee's leave, I shall address amendments Nos. 123 and 129 first, because they concern nudity and sexual activity in licensed premises. Under the law, in most of the country, including London, public entertainment is simply licensed. If there are lap dancers, strippers or some form of simulated sexual display on a premises, it is the performance of dance that is licensed, not the nudity.
However, in London boroughs—we return to Westminster again—other legislation has been adopted, as the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster started to explain. There, a sex encounter establishment licence is needed if the services or entertainment on those premises involves people exposing certain parts of their anatomy—I shall leave the details to hon. Members' imagination—or performing in a way that involves sexually stimulating the people admitted to the premises. That allows those boroughs to capture premises that are not putting on performances of music or dancing, but doing nothing more than providing sexual services. A sex encounter establishment licence cannot be required of premises that are licensed for public entertainment, or as a theatre or cinema. Such premises are already controlled, so it means the problems of such unusual premises solely relate to London ''dives'', which otherwise operate outside the law.
The rest of the country does not have that additional law, so, as in London, stripping and lap dancing are controlled by public entertainment licences. All premises in the country rely on the existing laws relating to indecent exposure to deal with performances that go too far.
We are not repealing the law relating to sex encounter establishments in certain London boroughs. Westminster and others will still be able
to require such licences for premises with no premises licence. Amendment No. 123 would go beyond the current arrangements, and require details of any nudity or sexual activity on the premises to be disclosed in the operating schedule. Why? Nudity per se is not a licensable activity. If someone wants to take his or her clothes off in public, the issue is whether they commit a criminal offence by indecently exposing themselves in public; if they do, the police can arrest them. We licence dancing, and through the premises licence it remains the case that lap dancing can be controlled to the extent necessary for the promotion of the licensing objectives.