Clause 88 - Club ceasing to be a qualifying club
Licensing Bill [Lords]
6:45 pm
Mr Malcolm Moss (North East Cambridgeshire, Conservative)
That does not mean that we have to write that into legislation to accommodate it, does it?
If we are giving people 21 days anyway, we should say 21 days and make that the limit.
Amendments Nos. 270 to 274 deal with clause 176 and are, if not consequential amendments, related to those to which I have been speaking. Their thrust is to ensure that when a constable or an authorised person from the licensing authority turns up at a premises as part of an investigation they do so properly and reasonably. Clause 176 (1) seems to give them drop-in rights—if I may call them that—by which they can literally drop in at any time to check on things. If that is the case, they should, as stated in amendment No. 271, produce evidence of their authority as often as is reasonably required. Amendments Nos. 272 and 273 would then make it an offence for any person in a club not to accept the bona fide evidence of those people and to obstruct their work.