Clause 67 - Associate members and their guests
Licensing Bill [Lords]
4:00 pm
Mr Malcolm Moss (North East Cambridgeshire, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 205, in
clause 67, page 39, line 21, leave out from 'club' to end of line 22 and insert—
'(b) he has been a member of that other club for at least two days, and
(c) the club's committee or subcommittee responsible for the supply of alcohol is satisfied, on reasonable grounds, that the primary purpose of that other club is not the supply or purchase of alcohol.'.
To prove that a visiting member is a member of a recognised club is pretty difficult. By the Department's own admission, it would rely on the secretary of the other club, probably more than anyone else, confirming that the club was indeed recognised. That in turn would require the certification that the relevant wording in clause 62 was included in its constitution. Furthermore, as we have discussed, the requirement that the club is conducted in good faith as a club can be determined only by the licensing authority, having regard to the terms of arrangements for the purchase of alcohol, the use of club money, property or profits to the benefit of anyone except the club
''for charitable, benevolent or political purposes'',
the proper keeping of accounts and the provision of financial information to members, and, of course, the nature of the club premises. All those things will already have been taken into account when the licensing authority deems that the club is being conducted in good faith.
Surely it would be much simpler to invoke the standard safeguard of the two-day interval between application and membership, which our revised paragraph (b) provides?