Clause 25
6:00 pm
Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham, Labour)
I, too, wish to speak to amendment 78. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge, I welcome clause 25, but I shall not open the champagne just yet, because considerable work remains to be done to improve it. As she said, we are seeking to delete the paragraph permitting lap dancing once a month in a club, pub or restaurant without going through what will be the new licensing procedure. That is really important. However, we need to go beyond removing the paragraph by inserting a proposed new section ensuring that temporary events notices cannot be applied to lap dancing.
I had already started to worry about the relationship between lap dancing and temporary events notices before I read clause 25. As the Minister will know, in Durham, the local authority approved a lap-dancing club—this is why I got involved in the issue—and residents had to go to enormous lengths to get it overturned in the magistrates court. We now risk judicial review in the High Court. Everybody wants local authorities to have the ability, under this legislation, to take into account residents’ opinions in a way that they do not under the 2003 Act. I and my residents were pretty hopeful that the legislation would help, so I was surprised to be contacted by some residents shortly after Christmas to say that the area, including the student union, had been leafleted with flyers saying that a lap-dancing night was taking place in the very pub that had lost its appeal for a lap-dancing licence. We could not understand why this had happened. When I contacted the police, they said, “They have applied for a temporary events notice, and the only way we could turn it down was if there were substantial public order issues. We do not think that substantial public order issues will arise until the temporary events notice will have been granted.”
The residents and I could not believe that, and so I looked into temporary events notices in more detail. I ask the Minister to talk to his colleagues in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, because this is a pernicious policy instrument when used to allow lap dancing to go ahead. It allows no objection from local people at all.
I did a similar calculation to my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge. People may say, “This would only be once a month—so what?” But residents do not want lap dancing in their area, and that was the basis on which we asked for a change of legislation. It was to give residents more say. They should not have to put up with such events once a month.
In the immediate vicinity of the club that lost the appeal for a lap-dancing licence, there are about seven clubs that could apply for a temporary events notice. We could, therefore, have one or two lap-dancing events each week, and that does not seem to be the intention of the change in legislation. I know it will be a hollow victory if we end up with the clause continuing as it is. We already know that, because a Durham councillor has told me that the clubs are quite keen on the legislation the way it is currently framed. If one or two events happen once or twice a month, they are more likely to maximise the audience up to the 500 people allowed. They will therefore make more money than if they occur on a regular basis.
It really is important that, if the policy objective is to give local communities more say over what happens in their area and a greater ability to turn down lap-dancing clubs, the provision of sex encounter venues is not rendered redundant by the ability to get lap dancing via temporary events notices. I ask the Minister to take another look to see whether there is any way in which not only can the proposed new subsection (3)(b) be reduced, but that the terms cannot be used to allow for lap dancing or similar activities.