It was Tony Blair (remember him?) who suddenly and unexpectedly moved licensing and gaming out of the Home Office and into the Ministry of Fun — or the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, as we are forced to call it.
Even the civil servants were surprised: they had no offices to go to and no chairs to sit on when the move came.
Well, now the wheel has turned full circle. Last week Home Secretary Jacqui Smith made it abundantly clear — as if we didn't know already — that the lead ministry on licensing was, is, and will remain, the Home Office. Gordon Brown will, as usual, be slow to react, but the shift has happened.
Ms Smith issued a document that was ostensibly about a new code of practice for alcohol retailers. What it contains are policy statements, provisions and legal changes to licensing law and administration. Hardly a reference is made to the DCMS, which itself was busy down the road answering questions from its own Select Committee (see opposite).
The mixed messages this licensed trade is getting are quite unacceptable. The consultation document lists (towards the end) no less than 13 examples of good practice within the industry — but mainly as an afterthought. The Select Committee also praised and supported partnership working. But the Home Secretary is determined to pile one forced regime on top of another, aimed at disciplining and controlling alcohol outlets.
A new system of mandatory
conditions, which are to be included on all licences (although there
may be different ones for different sectors is accompanied by a
further 16 discretionary conditions available for local authorities to use on specified premises.
The problem is that this is now a consultation on what will be included, rather than whether this system should be introduced at all. Even though the Policing and Crime Bill itself is still before the Commons and has yet to go to the Lords, Ms Smith is pre-empting the discussion, introducing this just before Third Reading and presenting it as a done deal — presumably in the hope that the Lords will not baulk at the whole idea. But the licensed trade has condemned it — quite rightly, in my view — as piling yet another unnecessary burden on the whole trade.
It also places a burden on local authorities, for which they will receive no extra cash. The new mandatory conditions will presumably have to be added to every single licence, which means calling them all in and printing out new premises licences. The conditions run to several hundred words each, because they are all-embracing — so that presents another headache for the licensing team.
All this is before they start to struggle with the discretionary condition scheme. The Bill gives the Home Secretary the right to set out a pool of potential conditions, of which these are the preferred 16. No-one is suggesting that they will all go on a single licence, or all be used anyway. But there will be a great deal of head-scratching in council offices as officials try to work out whether the circumstances justify the imposition, and which of them is more onerous than the conditions already on the licence. Yes, you've guessed it: this scheme was thought up by the same person who brought you alcohol disorder zones — so complex and lacking in benefits that not a single local authority has gone near using the power, some 15 months after they became law.
What concerns me is the fact that the consultation also has other goodies waiting in the wings, which I shall reveal on a later occasion. The chance for objections and representations lasts until 5 August, which allows us all time to give the whole idea a good kicking!