Alert Comment

A poor piece of work

The loophole highlighted by the tragic case in Pudsey needs urgently to be closed. In this case, the off licence that sold alcohol to a 15 year old boy, who later died, escaped the legal consequences because it could not be proved that the staff who served the boy were the `servants' of the licence holder in the sense required by the legislation.

The loophole should be closed by injecting an element of corporate responsibility into licensing law, preventing unscrupulous operators from avoiding liability when their staff break the law. This is one of the recommendations of the Better Regulation Task Force*. It is a very sensible recommendation. Unfortunately, this is about as sensible as the Task Force report gets.

The main thrust of the report is the alleged need for fundamental reform of English and Welsh licensing laws, which are `outdated and bureaucratic'. The most eye catching element of the package of reform is 24 hour opening of pubs and clubs.

The most obvious deficiency of the report is the inability or unwillingness of the authors to provide any argument or evidence to support their proposals. This may not be too surprising given that with one possible exception, no member of the Task Force has any recognised knowledge of the subject.

In regard to 24 hour opening, for example, Lord Haskins, the chairman of the Task Force, stated in the press release launching the report: "There is ample evidence to demonstrate that a single closing time creates rather than controls nuisance and disorder."

Readers would however be wasting their time looking for any of this ample evidence either in the press release or the report, as not a scrap of it is provided. Nor is there any indication of where it might be found. Moreover, Lord Haskins' assertion should be compared with (for example) the experience of Edinburgh, where "substantial reductions in drink-related crime and disorder appear to have resulted from the reimposition of restrictions on late night opening and the reintroduction of set closing times." Neither does the experience of New Zealand (reported in this issue) provide clear support for 24 hour opening, to put it mildly.

The Task Force assert that a broad consensus exists for licensing reform, including 24 hour opening. In reality, the consensus exists largely within the restricted circles of the alcohol and leisure industries and a minority of drinkers. Up to now, no Government has believed it to be in the public interest to introduce such reforms, and with good reason. One reason is that all the indications are that the majority of the public are opposed to change. The Task Force choose not to mention the fact that the previous Government was unable to extend drinking hours by a mere 1 hour on Friday and Saturday nights because of strong public opposition.

Another main purpose of the report is to attack the licensing magistrates for being `unduly restrictive' and `inconsistent' from one part of the country to another. The Task Force does not consider the possibility that conditions vary from one area to another, and therefore that what is appropriate in one may not be in another: it just demands that responsibility for liquor licensing being transferred to local authorities. No reason whatever is given for believing that local authorities would be less inconsistent: in fact, given that they, unlike licensing magistrates, have to be directly responsive to public opinion because they are elected, they are probably more likely to be inconsistent.

An example of the `undue restrictiveness' of licensing magistrates is, apparently, their outrageous insistence in relation to children's certificates that food and non-alcoholic drinks be available in bars which admit young children. Readers of Alert may judge for themselves whether it is magistrates or the Task Force who are out of touch with both the realities of things and - an element ignored completely in the report, - public opinion.

This report is likely to exert considerable influence over Government policy. It was, after all, produced at the Government's own request and it is distributed by no lesser body than the Cabinet Office. It is a matter of concern, therefore, that it is such a poor piece of work.

* Better Regulation Task Force. Review of Licensing Legislation. Cabinet Office. July 1998.