and at the bar of the House

The government is planning a complete overhaul of the licensing laws and one of the most likely changes will be the disappearance of the old restrictions on opening hours. The familiar cry of "Time, gentlemen, please" will be heard, if at all, when it suits the landlord rather when statute demands.

Anticipating and encouraging the government is an all-party group of MPs and peers which recently added its voice to the call for root and branch reform of "outdated" pub licensing laws in England and Wales. The industry itself, of course, has long campaigned for liberalisation. The group which has not yet been asked its views is the general public.

The parliamentarians involved form the Parliamentary Beer Club, an influential back bench committee which counts 275 MPs and 30 peers among its members and boasts the Speaker of the House of Commons, Betty Boothroyd, as its President. Constituting the biggest single industry group at the Palace of Westminster, it has as secretary, Robert Humphreys, a brewing industry journalist and the director of a public relations firm. Like Mark Anthony offering Caesar a crown, it urges the Home Office to introduce a single, unified, and independent licensing authority to be established to simplify licensing law and procedure. At the moment the complex licensing arrangements, based on the Liquor Licensing Act 1964, are split between local authorities and magistrates.

If the Government follows the urgings of the Beer Club, which it has already all but promised to do, the changes will mean longer and more flexible opening hours for pubs operating in town centres but stricter measures to deal with operators of noisy premises which disturb residential areas.

A further proposal suggests various measures to clamp down on noisy and troublesome licensed premises. The MPs also want to see licences granted to individuals who can transfer them from one pub or bar to another. The individual licences would indicate whether someone was a fit and proper person to run a pub. The licence could be revoked and individual landlords disqualified should they no longer be found to be fit and proper.

Pub premises themselves would have a separate licence, proving the buildings were suitable for the sale of alcohol. The group also demanded more flexible rules relating to children in pubs. The proposals are likely to be incorporated in a Home Office White Paper on licensing reform to be published in the New Year.

The many bars in the Palace of Westminster have always been exempted from opening times set out in the licensing laws.