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Mr. Hoban: I have two questions for the Minister. First, will he enlighten the Committee as to the current rules of licensing committees? Does a provision in current legislation require licensing committees to be a certain size? It would be interesting to know whether such a provision exists or whether the proposal is another regulatory burden. Secondly, if there is a delegation to sub-committees of three, when is a sub-committee technically inquorate? What is the key number?
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Dr. Howells: The sub-committee must have three members to be quorate. The hon. Member for Fareham talked about Fareham's committee having only seven members, which suggests—although I do not know for certain—that numbers can vary dramatically throughout the country. We are drafting new legislation on the basis of the consultation that we have undertaken with all of the stakeholders. The hon. Member for Isle of Wight is right: he referred to the size of the Committee as a ''magical figure''. There is no explanation for what makes a particular figure magical, but we think that we have chosen a sensible figure and a sensible range of members.
Everyone involved in the licensing regime will benefit from the ability to convene hearings, should they be required, in a timely fashion. The system set out in the Bill allows the licensing authority to respond quickly. By providing for a system of sub-committees to handle individual applications and an upper limit on the size of the full licensing committee, we can place the right emphasis on swift and efficient decision making. The Bill strikes the right balance.
Amendment No. 102 would prevent members of the local authority executive from sitting on the licensing committee. There have been suggestions of mistrust and the opportunity for ill feeling and so forth, but such arguments do local authorities an injustice. They have a difficult job to do.
The House strikes me as being like a medieval monastery—I am always finding hon. Friends and hon. Members ''cwched'' away, gossiping in little corners. There have always been cabals in this building and we are not above suspicion any more than local authorities, but we try to make things work, which is why we have rules and standing orders. We should be more generous towards local authorities about the way in which they deal with such difficult and sensitive matters.
Our arguments for limiting the size of licensing committees relate to the speed and efficiency with which applications are handled and nothing more. I do not see how the presence or absence of members of the executive affects that objective in any way. I hope that amendment No. 102 will be withdrawn on that basis.
Mr. Moss: I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 7 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 8
Exercise and delegation of functions
3.30 pm
Mr. Turner: I beg to move amendment No. 100, in
clause 8, page 5, leave out lines 13 and 14.
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment No. 94, in
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Amendment No. 93, in
clause 8, page 5, line 22, leave out '5(b)' and insert '5(a)'.
Amendment No. 95, in
Mr. Turner: I shall deal with the amendments in that order, Mr. Gale. Amendment No. 100 would remove from the authority the power to arrange for a committee that is not the licensing committee to discharge the licensing function, because there would be a potential conflict of interest on such a committee. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for North Devon, ever ready to ask the difficult question, says, ''How?'' I would have thought that the answer was quite simple: if a recreation committee is determined to put on a pop festival and the licensing authority delegates to that committee the power to determine whether to grant the licence for that entertainment, there is an immediate conflict of interest for the members of that committee, who are about to commit themselves to the pop festival enterprise—not financially, but as members of the local authority. They may be the executive members of that authority. An authority might delegate the licensing function to the executive of the authority, which had committed itself in principle to putting on a pop festival. Then, the executive could be asked to operate wearing its quasi-judicial hat, and might be asked to determine the licensing application that it had submitted for the running of that pop festival. I would consider that to be a profound conflict of interest.
Mr. Jones: Why?
Mr. Turner: I must cease to be taken in by every mouthed intervention that the hon. Gentleman makes; otherwise the Committee will last forever. There is a conflict of interest because someone who has set themselves a political purpose tends not to be in a judicial frame of mind when considering the law relating, not to that purpose, but to whether a planning application or a licence of that kind should be issued. It is important that the committee be in a judicial frame of mind.
A second argument is that members of licensing—and planning—committees will need to be trained to ensure that they approach issues in a suitably judicial manner. I have been advised on the subject by my local authority's head of paid service. If the licensing committee is to be trained, but people who can exercise the power but are not on the licensing committee are not, there may be defects in the decisions that the latter take. It is inappropriate to delegate a licensing decision to a non-licensing committee, first because of the lack of training—unless, of course, the Minister intends to write a requirement for training into the Bill—and secondly because of the danger of a conflict of interest.
Amendment No. 94 would allow certain things to be done in urgent cases. I recognise that things may sometimes be urgent, but it is easy for local authorities to leave the preparation and presentation of reports until they become urgent, and then they are not bound by the same rules as they would be if they had not left them. That is a loophole that needs to be plugged, not
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only in this case but in a range of local authority business. Indeed, Ministers in the Department for Education and Skills have plugged similar loopholes with regard to governing bodies; there is now a definition of ''urgent''.
Amendment No. 93 would require a licensing authority to ask the licensing committee before handing its power to another committee. Of course, I understand why subsection (5)(b) is included, but I would have thought that subsection (5)(a) was rather more important, and that the licensing authority should consult the licensing committee before the committee gave up a power, or had a power taken away from it by the executive or by the recreation committee.
Finally, amendment No. 95 sets out the conditions in which it may be inappropriate for the licensing committee to discharge its functions. If it cannot discharge a function because many of its members have a conflict of interest, it is not unreasonable that the matter should be discharged elsewhere. Otherwise, however, it is not appropriate for something to be referred willy-nilly to other committees of the authority.
Dr. Howells: The hon. Gentleman is making a serious attempt to rewrite the way in which local authorities work, but it is beyond the scope of the Bill to do so. He is trying to create a model of excellence that could be replicated elsewhere. The trouble is that I am unsure whether many of us agree with his model.
Lying behind the amendments is a fear that local authorities cannot be fully trusted to discharge their licensing and other statutory functions properly. As I have made clear, I do not share those concerns and I am worried that the amendments would limit the ability of local authorities to carry out those functions in an efficient and timely manner, and in the best interests of the community that they serve.
As drafted, the Bill allows licensing authorities in respect of a matter to refer the discharge of licensing functions to other local authority committees where that matter relates to the discharge of another local authority function as well as to the licensing function. In addition, it allows licensing committees to consider matters that cut across other local authority functions. Furthermore, unless the urgency of a particular case precludes it, where matters that touch on licensing are referred to another committee, that committee must consider a report from the licensing committee before reaching a decision.
Those arrangements will ensure that the licensing committee will have the necessary input, while allowing authorities the freedom to decide how best to discharge their functions. Amendments Nos. 100, 94 and 93 would undermine that position, and could lead to unnecessary delays in the exercising of licensing and in other functions of an authority.
Amendment No. 95 would require that where there is a conflict of interest preventing a number of members of the licensing committee from discharging a function, it must be referred back to the licensing
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authority. I acknowledge that our position has changed since the publication of the White Paper—I was waiting for the hon. Member for Isle of Wight to say that, but he did not.
Mr. Turner: I did not notice.
Dr. Howells: I do not blame the hon. Gentleman for that.
In the White Paper, we suggested that any councillor representing the ward in which premises that are the subject of proceedings are situated should not participate in the licensing decision. The intention was to avoid the possibility of elected individuals coming under undue pressure. However, I assure the Committee that we have looked into the matter and we are confident that existing provisions under local authority legislation governing the way in which local authorities discharge the functions vested in them already ensure that where it is improper for an individual to be involved in a licensing decision, self-disqualification would take place. There is no need to amend the Bill to reflect the fact that where councillors have, for example, a financial interest in the outcome of a decision, they should not be part of any decision. Existing provisions would apply.
I have every confidence that local authorities will be able to discharge their many functions effectively and impartially and that existing standing orders governing issues of propriety offer effective safeguards. The system set out in the Bill will ensure that licensing decisions benefit from the participation of councillors with knowledge of the local area and from a joined-up approach that allows licensing to be seen in the wider context of other local authority responsibilities.
I hope that as a result of those reassurances, the hon. Member for Isle of Wight will withdraw his amendment.
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