Bang the drum for live music

20-Jan-2012 - Last updated on 20-Jan-2012 at 09:48 GMT

Today sees the Commons Report Stage of Lord Clement-Jones’ Live Music Bill, which has progressed more smoothly recently and had a very amiable time of it during the MPs’ committee in December, with much inter-party back-slapping and a general view that it was a good thing.

So far, so good. It will, at the very least, give a boost to small-scale live music in pubs if it encourages some licensees to put on more gigs than they might do otherwise if they had a whole host of conditions to contend with.

The main problem is that some of these pubs have quite a few conditions on their premises licences anyway and these may not go away quite so easily as some have imagined.

But it will at least act as some kind of musical John the Baptist to the forthcoming revolution in entertainment licensing that the Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) has promised.

There has been a considerable response to the consultation that closed last month, according to DCMS sources, and this can only be another good thing.

The difficulties and anomalies of schedule 1 to the Licensing Act have been documented on these pages several times and it was good to see a Government department for once taking a proper sword to the Gordian Knot.

But I think this has only been made possible because of the sense of success in the ‘senior’ department, the Home Office, that it got all its wish-list in terms of rebalancing the Licensing Act in favour of local authorities.

When eventually the Police Reform Act amendments to the licensing laws come into force, which may be in October, possibly before the entertainment revisions, local councils will hold the whip hand on condition-making anyway.

So it will be interesting to see how they react when more pubs begin to put on live entertainment and a few more neighbours complain, as they inevitably will.
Is it time for licensees to revert to the age-old weapon — local petitions — to drum up support for their musical endeavours?

It may have gone out of fashion, but the Home Office seems pretty adept at manipulating support statistics, as it did both for the mandatory conditions and the re-balancing exercise, which some people felt was rather a whitewash job.

Showing local enthusiasm for live entertainment might just persuade certain councillors that one moaner should not colour their views on the overall benefits of a good and lively pub music sector.