Clause 97 - The relevant licensing authority
Licensing Bill [Lords]
9:15 am
Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight, Conservative)
I am interested in the amendments that my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Moss) introduced. My approach to the amendments will depend on the definition of the word ''premises''. I am aware that the Minister told me during the last sitting that ''premises'' means the premises that are the subject of the application and only that part of the premises that is the subject of an application, if I can now use a broader definition of the word. Clause 190 defines ''premises'' not as that part that is subject to the application but as ''any place'' and goes on to say that it includes
''a vehicle, vessel or moveable structure''.
I am not going to trespass on the part of the definition that includes a vehicle, vessel or moveable structure at the moment, but it is clear from that definition that premises include not only an area that is a building or even a field, but could include an area that has no visible definition on the ground. It could include a part of an airfield, for example and in those circumstances I think that it is likely that premises could stretch over a boundary.
I am asking the Minister to consider whether the definition he gave me of premises last time is the right one. I do not want someone to come along and say, ''I am Mr. Wetherspoon. I own a pub in Westminster and another in the Isle of Wight, and I am going to make one application because they are one set of premises.'' [Interruption.] There may well be a lot of water between them.
Let us consider another eventuality. The Red Funnel company is a ferry company—it is actually the Southampton, Isle of Wight and South of England Royal Mail Steam Packet Company—that owns premises at both ends of its operation. Could someone say that those premises are one set of premises because they are connected by a ferry? In such a case, part would be subject to the authority of Southampton city council and part subject to that of the Isle of Wight council. Is it so clear to be not worth discussing that such premises would be two sets of premises for the purposes of the legislation?
I do not want the cities of Westminster or Southampton to be determining applications for
premises that lie in my constituency and I am sure that the Isle of Wight council would not want that to happen either. It is less likely to happen in my constituency because we do not have contiguous authorities as other constituencies do. However, others may enter into an argument about the desirability or otherwise of having decisions about their authority made by a different licensing authority.