Orders of the Day — Licensing (Abolition of State Management) Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 20 April 1971.

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Photo of Mr Henry Brewis Mr Henry Brewis , Galloway 12:00, 20 April 1971

The hon. Gentleman replied to a debate in the House on 29th April to which I shall refer. I certainly understood that ending the State monopoly meant exactly what we are debating.

I want to say a few words about the Gretna district. Although it is not in my constituency and is represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Mr. Monro) who I am glad to see in his place, it has a certain amount of interest for the people who come to Galloway. They come up the A74, which has recently been greatly improved, and often they would like to stop in Gretna because it is a place of considerable renown and a great tourist attraction. They can look round the numerous blacksmiths' shops and try to decide which is the authentic one.

Hon. Gentlemen may be interested to know that, until recently, there was not a single hotel in Gretna with a full licence. There was, for example, the Gretna Hall Hotel which had more bedrooms than all the other hotels in the Gretna district put together. It did not have a full licence, nor did another hotel—the Hunter's Lodge Hotel. The Gretna Hall Hotel has numerous historical connections and is a very good hostelry.

I understand that licences have frequently been applied for in Gretna, have been agreed to by the local licensing court under the Licensing Act and then vetoed by successive Secretaries of State for Scotland in the interests of the State Management District. To protect a Government monopoly by turning down the decision of a licensing court is disagreeable. It shows the Secretary of State acting as both judge and jury in his own case. Overruling local representatives on the licensing court is equally distasteful because it is redolent of the Socialist remark that the man in St. Andrew's House knows best. Certainly the lack of facilities in the State Management District of Gretna has militated against the tourist trade.

I am glad that my right hon. Friend has, as I understand it, granted full licences to the two hotels I have mentioned. Not only is it unfair to people who want to stay at hotels in the management district, but it is also unfair to the local grocers because many of them had off-licences in the old days and now such licences are not granted to grocers in State Management Districts. It is easy for a grocer outside the district, say in Dumfries, to supply bottles of liquor to people in the State Management District when his van is going round. To that extent, he is pinching the trade which belongs to the grocers in the district.

It is interesting to note that the three schemes we are discussing were more extensive. There used to be four State-owned public houses in the Enfield Lock area in London. They were taken over at much the same time and sold back in 1922. I suppose the reason for that was that four public houses in a highly populated area did not give a sufficient monopoly. People, if they were dissatisfied, could go round the corner. This is certainly not true in the extensive districts now covered by the State Management Scheme.

Facilities for the tourist trade are undoubtedly best improved by competition. It must be competition reasonably supervised by the licensing courts and the police. At the moment there are a number of social clubs which have sprung up in recent years within the State Management Districts. There is nothing wrong with social clubs as such, except when they are an effort to avoid the licensing laws. They are not nearly so strictly supervised by the police as are licensed premises.

Another point is that considerable sums of capital must be injected into licensed premises to keep them up with modern trends. For example, it cannot be imagined that the Aviemore Centre could ever have been built by a State Management District because the funds simply would not have been released by the Government. It is the same in the Cromarty district, where little interest has been shown by State management in the tourist centre developing at Ben Wyvis.

In Annan, for a number of years, there was no hotel with a room large enough for big functions. Once again, a private enterprise hotelier came into the area and proposed that he should provide this. I believe that he was vetoed for a long time and eventually the Queensberry Hotel, one of the State management hotels, was greatly improved and now provides the necessary facility. Here we see the effect of outside competition.

The Government are notoriously closefisted when it comes to capital expenditure. The hon. Member for Carlisle, in his remarks about his State Management District, mentioned many figures. One that struck me forcibly was the value of the assets, which he said was about £6 million.