Mail on Sunday - Why The Police Are Right To Call Last Orders On This 24-Hour Drinking Fiasco.
7 August 2005
RIGHT from the start, the Government has had it wrong about changing the licensing laws. In fact, it has served up a treble and disgruntled the public, the police and the drinks trade.
People all over the country are confronted by booze-based crime, disorder and nuisance. The priority should be to get a grip on problems caused by binge drinking and drunkenness. Instead, the Government's answer is 'liberalisation', making drink available at any time of the day or night.
The new Licensing Act which comes into effect in November is, we are told, designed to 'streamline' the licensing system. That means the abolition of fixed opening hours and one-size-fits-all legislation that will apply to any business selling alcohol, from corner shops to pub chains. It's a licence for 24-hour drinking.
You might think that would have suited the drinks trade, but it hasn't largely because of the complicated 20-page application that everybody, from a guesthouse selling one bottle of wine to a wine bar selling hundreds, must complete.
The deadline came and went at midnight last night, unmet by an estimated 50 per cent of businesses. Guidelines for councils to operate the system were slow in coming, the forms are long and complicated, publicity was poor and deadlines too short. And it's not the big pub chains that are in trouble.
It's small businesses, local restaurants, community centres and sports clubs.
Councils the new licensing authorities have difficulty coping with the extra work on such a short timescale.
There is no guarantee all their extra costs will be met, so council tax payers could subsidise the trade. And when people want to check up on what hours local bars want to open, they find application forms as complicated as the trade has found them.
HOW did the Government get into this mess? I believe it was mesmerised by lobby groups who talked about the '24-hour city' and 'importance of the night-time economy'. And these groups were abetted by civil servants who promoted trade interests at the expense of the rest of us.
They backed up assertions that longer hours like those in Europe would help combat crime. But they argued against the tough regulation of the trade that helps keep order in cities such as Paris.
Ministers still prefer to listen to lobby groups and ignore the experience of local people and police. Last week my colleague, Licensing Minister James Purnell, claimed that police supported the reformed Licensing Act and the longer hours it would permit.
They don't. Police know from venues staying open until the early hours that when customers leave there is trouble on the streets that has to be policed.
Embarrassingly for James, Andy Trotter, the deputy chief constable of British Transport Police, made this clear yesterday on Radio 4's Today programme when he outlined grave misgivings within the police at the highest level. He knows what he is talking about first hand. I got to know and admire him when he was a senior Metropolitan Police officer responsible for keeping order in the West End.
So longer hours mean longer demands on police time, with more police required to keep order on the streets until well after the new closing times.
It's not as if they don't have enough on their plate at the moment.
The Government claims that not closing at 11pm would mean no rush to drink up before closing time, no mass exit at turningout time. Rubbish. These times will just be later, and there will be more of them. People will face a series of disturbances as the Rose and Crown turns out at 11pm, the Dog and Duck at midnight and the Ferret and Firkin at 1am, not to mention drunks staggering from one to the other.
Late-night opening of most premises leads to a rise in noise nuisance, loutish behaviour, criminal damage, drug pushing, if only because it increases the number of young people on the streets. Most may have no involvement in trouble but their presence gives a certain legitimacy to the presence of louts and criminals who would otherwise stick out like a sore thumb.
It's no good the booze trade pretending alcohol isn't at the heart of the problem. It is the cause of most of the vomiting and urinating on the streets.
Statistics show drink causes 90 per cent of criminal damage and 80 per cent of assaults, and 40 per cent of hospital casualty cases and most of the assaults on staff.
It's hard to see where liberalisation of drinking laws fits into the Prime Minister's 'respect agenda'. Quite the reverse. Booze barons got away with introducing alcopops to induce underage children into drinking, which has contributed to teenage pregnancies. The industry is also profiting from getting people in their 30s and 40s to behave as badly as many in their teens and 20s.
Ministers claim communities can decide when pubs close, but they must know that guidelines laid down for councils give a presumption in favour of longer hours and people have to prove their lives will be made a misery.
DEADLINES for objections are short and if people miss them councils can't turn down an application. The system is rigged in favour of longer hours, whatever communities want.
Giving local councils responsibility for licensing is basically a good idea and so are some powers in the new law. The trouble is the law is slanted in favour of more drinking and longer hours.
Ministers now claim they never meant to have places open for 24 hours. But it was they and their supporters who talked about 24-hour drinking and the 24-hour city. And the law does permit 24-hour opening and three supermarket chains have applied for 900 licences to sell alcohol 24 hours a day.
Ministers claimed that would enable someone finishing work in the middle of the night to buy a bottle of wine. I'm surprised they didn't suggest sending the butler out for a bottle of Mouton Rothschild instead.
This law was badly thought out and is working badly. It began as straight liberalisation and never got back on track despite incorporating improvements suggested by myself and other MPs who had looked at the reality.
Perhaps the Government should have begun by enforcing existing laws. After all, it is an offence to sell alcohol to anyone who is drunk. I can think of some bars in London that wouldn't want to extend their hours to 3am if that law was enforced.
They would have to close at 9pm for lack of sober customers.
