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Dr. Howells: This is an important group of amendments, but I know that hon. Members want to get on to a later group, so I shall be brief. With the Committee's leave, I shall address amendments Nos. 123 and 129 first, because they concern nudity and sexual activity in licensed premises. Under the law, in most of the country, including London, public entertainment is simply licensed. If there are lap dancers, strippers or some form of simulated sexual display on a premises, it is the performance of dance that is licensed, not the nudity. However, in London boroughs—we return to Westminster again—other legislation has been adopted, as the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster started to explain. There, a sex encounter establishment licence is needed if the services or entertainment on those premises involves people exposing certain parts of their anatomy—I shall leave the details to hon. Members' imagination—or performing in a way that involves sexually stimulating the people admitted to the premises. That allows those boroughs to capture premises that are not putting on performances of music or dancing, but doing nothing more than providing sexual services. A sex encounter establishment licence cannot be required of premises that are licensed for public entertainment, or as a theatre or cinema. Such premises are already controlled, so it means the problems of such unusual premises solely relate to London ''dives'', which otherwise operate outside the law. The rest of the country does not have that additional law, so, as in London, stripping and lap dancing are controlled by public entertainment licences. All premises in the country rely on the existing laws relating to indecent exposure to deal with performances that go too far. We are not repealing the law relating to sex encounter establishments in certain London boroughs. Westminster and others will still be able Column Number: 274 to require such licences for premises with no premises licence. Amendment No. 123 would go beyond the current arrangements, and require details of any nudity or sexual activity on the premises to be disclosed in the operating schedule. Why? Nudity per se is not a licensable activity. If someone wants to take his or her clothes off in public, the issue is whether they commit a criminal offence by indecently exposing themselves in public; if they do, the police can arrest them. We licence dancing, and through the premises licence it remains the case that lap dancing can be controlled to the extent necessary for the promotion of the licensing objectives.Mr. Hoban: I would not say that this debate is fascinating, because that might be an overstatement. However, it raises a concern in my mind that if a pub in Fareham got a licence for entertainment on the basis of dancing, and then decided to go in for lap dancing, would it have to apply for a variation to its operating schedule? In other words, can we be certain that people will not introduce covert lap dancing—if there is such a concept? Dr. Howells: People certainly could not put dancing on their operating schedule under the guise of it being some kind of traditional English folk dancing, and then suddenly start operating as a lap dancing establishment. The hon. Gentleman is right: there would have to be that degree of specificity. Under the Bill, if a club has lap dancing, which it would need to describe in its operating schedule because of the rules governing the performance of dance—as I have tried to explain—the objective of the protection of children from harm would arise. A condition that there should be no lap dancing or stripping during any period when children under the age of 18 are allowed on the premises could be imposed. I hope that that will satisfy hon. Members. The clause does not address every form of entertainment that we can think of that might be in questionable taste, objectionable in some way to local councillors or residents, or just downright awful. I can see that there might be a concern that a fastidious licensing authority could seek to impose conditions on adult entertainments if it was not explicitly prevented from doing so. That is not a real fear: that could happen now, but I have not read any reports of its taking place. I hope that we have made it clear that it is not our intention for licensing authorities to be free to use the powers in this Bill to interfere or intervene in all manner of activities that are better left either to other regimes of regulation or unregulated altogether. We do not want licensing authorities to use their powers to censor plays, or to prevent premises from being used to put on plays that the authorities find unacceptable. I assure the Committee that we will make it clear in the statutory guidance, under the provisions that we have already debated, that extraneous conditions will not be permitted. Conditions may be attached to licences only where they are necessary for the promotion of one or more of the four licensing objectives. The conditions may therefore be appropriate in relation to the exclusion or restricted Column Number: 275 access of children where adult entertainments are on offer. That would happen under the fourth licensing objective—that of protecting children from harm—but it would not be appropriate to impose conditions simply to spare the blushes of local residents, because that would not be one of the licensing objectives.I am sure that if we had not preserved the provisions of the Theatres Act 1968, we would have been accused of bringing censorship into the Bill, and we would have had to debate the Government's decisions on theatres. Therefore, I ask the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster to think again about whether it is not sufficient to continue this provision into the new arrangements without pressing to a vote the idea of new and special provisions for the sort of adult entertainments that are put forward here. I hope that after those reassurances, he will withdraw his amendment. Mr. Field: I am reassured in part, but there is a concern that we might return to on Report. One of the chief objectives is to protect children from harm, and in our view it is not desirable in any way to allow local licensing authorities to have a regime of censorship. We hoped that the amendment would highlight striptease and other sexual entertainment, and indeed lap dancing bars, which are far more common and have caused great concern to residents groups in London and beyond, and that there would at least be some opportunity for a licensing authority to give serious consideration to the siting of such establishments. I appreciate the fact that, particularly outside London, there is a level of protection under current law. On the basis of our discussions, and as the Minister has satisfied us on at least some of our concerns, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Mr. Moss: I beg to move amendment No. 186, in
'( ) where the relevant licensable activities include the supply of alcohol for consumption on the premises, the maximum permitted occupancy of the premises,'.
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to take new clause 4—Maximum permitted occupancy figure—
(2) The maximum permitted occupancy figure must be determined by the licensing authority in consultation with the police and the fire authority.'.
Mr. Moss: The amendment and new clause 4 are designed to probe the Government. They deal with maximum occupancy levels for various establishments. I think that we would all agree that that is an important issue, particularly with regard to fire safety. It is important that appropriate measures are put in place, and that establishments have some clear understanding of what the maximum number of people in each establishment should be, whether those people are just drinking, dancing or being entertained. Column Number: 276 I understand that existing health and safety legislation obliges operators to calculate, and comply with, a maximum number of people that can be present. However, for licensed premises we understand that the requirement is rarely if ever enforced, whereas the use of capacity condition on the public entertainment licence is regularly checked. There seems to be an imbalance. The pub that has entertainment—albeit small-scale entertainment—needs a public entertainment licence under existing law, and an entertainment licence under the new law. Its conditions will probably be set in terms of occupancy levels. On the other hand, if the pub does not have entertainment, even if it is incredibly popular it will not have the same restrictions on the number of people that might be present. The Minister referred earlier to what I think he called ''vertical drinking''. Dr. Howells: Vertical drinking establishments. Mr. Moss: I do not think that I have any of those in my constituency; no doubt they will arrive in due course. Dr. Howells: I bet you do. Mr. Moss: I presume that the vertical bit refers to the early part of the evening, and things become more horizontal later in the evening. It seems that there is a discrepancy in the provisions. Mr. Hoban: May I illuminate my hon. Friend about what vertical drinking establishments are, having just been illuminated myself? I assumed—naively, perhaps—that they were multi-storey pubs, but it turns out that they are pubs with very few chairs, so everyone has to stand up—rather like working men's clubs. Mr. Moss: My initial concept was of some vertically integrated facility where one could move from bar to bar on a sort of escalating—
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