Clause 85 - Application for review of club premises certificate
Licensing Bill [Lords]
6:15 pm
Dr Kim Howells (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Culture, Media & Sport; Pontypridd, Labour)
The hon. Member for North-East Cambridgeshire was right to point out that there are frequently feuds between clubs and internal wars. I know from the two-year attempt to reorganise Welsh rugby that there has been open warfare and guerrilla activity within clubs and that that can become very serious.
I understand that the limit in the amendment is probing and I do not intend to comment on the merits of one twentieth, one tenth or whatever. However, I want to make it clear that the Government have no intention of limiting the rights of club members to call for a review in the way that amendment No. 333 suggests and we cannot, therefore, accept it.
Subject to the protections that we have provided at subsection (4) that a ground may be excluded if it is frivolous, vexatious or a repetition, club members
should be free to use the review process to raise relevant concerns. Such concerns are rendered no more or less important by the fact that one member or 10, 20 or 100 members wish to raise them, provided that they are relevant to one or more of the licensing objectives and that they are not frivolous, vexatious or a repetition. The Bill does not say that a local resident must have the support of a certain number of his or her neighbours to be able to call for a review. Indeed, the Government would be fiercely criticised if we had argued for that. There is no reason why different considerations should apply to club members.
If we accepted this amendment, we would risk exposing the fair, open and transparent review system that is contained in the Bill to undue political influence. Requiring the applicant to gather a certain amount of support is akin to the nomination procedure for an election, which the Government consider is entirely inappropriate in this case.
Having heard that argument, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will see that, although I do not want to give any strength to the elbow of vexatious or feuding individuals, there must be a right in this regard, and that to curtail it would create an inconsistency in the way in which we regard the right of individual residents to put forward an objection to those licensable activities.