Clause 66 - Miners' welfare institutes
Licensing Bill [Lords]
3:45 pm
Dr Kim Howells (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Culture, Media & Sport; Pontypridd, Labour)
Clause 66 applies the arrangements for qualifying clubs to a relevant miners' welfare institute. While recognising certain differences, it allows the institute's premises and its enrolled membership to be treated as if it were a club like other working men's clubs. Furthermore, anything done by the institute's trustees or management is treated as if done on behalf of the club. That is in many ways a crucial difference.
The Bill adopts the position of the Licensing Act 1964 in order to preserve the valuable tradition whereby miners' welfare institutes are treated like other clubs operating under club committees. Such institutes are enormously well regarded in their communities and are organised for the social well-being and recreation of persons employed, or formerly employed, in or about coal mines. As the hon. Member for Fareham knows, very few miners' institutes had bars until relatively recently. They were often forced, mainly in the late 1960s and 1970s, to incorporate bars or to begin to run bars. The coal mine closures during that time meant that the subscriptions to the institutes that had come directly from miners' wages were no longer being paid. As a consequence, the institutes had to find a way to generate alternative revenue.
The Bill sets down unique qualifying conditions for institutes because of their special nature. Two thirds of the institute's board or committee must include persons appointed or nominated, or appointed or elected from among persons nominated by one or more licensed operators within the meaning of the Coal Industry Act 1994, and persons appointed or nominated, or appointed or elected from among persons nominated by one or more organisations representing persons employed in or about coal mines.
If special circumstances apply to a particular institute and that is not possible, an alternative
condition applies. The hon. Gentleman is right to raise the matter. The huge number of mine closures in the 1980s resulted in coal miners who were still quite young moving away from the villages during that shake-out and looking for jobs in other parts of the country. Under the alternative condition, at least two thirds of the committee or board must consist of persons employed or formerly employed in or about coal mines and persons appointed by the Coal Industry Social Welfare Organisation or a body or person to whom the functions of the organisation have been transferred. The range of people is not limited to those who may have worked in the mine or even around the mine. I hope that that deals with some of the hon. Gentleman's questions.
A final condition is that the premises of the institute are held in trusts to which section 2 of the Recreational Charities Act 1958 applies. Those technical provisions are important. As the hon. Gentleman implied, they have been taken from the previous legislation so that those important institutions are not excluded from the privileges afforded to similar working men's clubs and their premises certificates.
I make it clear that many miners' welfare institutes function very well as clubs, have a healthy turnover and are active in their communities. I do not want to suggest—I am sure that the hon. Gentleman does not want to—that the decline of the coal industry has resulted in all those clubs being on their knees, because that is not so. Indeed, the committees and trustees of clubs have shown tremendous imagination and managerial expertise, often in association with progressive breweries, in turning those institutions into properties with excellent amenities for their communities. We should pay tribute to that.