Violent Crime Reduction Bill

We will introduce regulations, which will be subject to debate, but today we should debate the principle of alcohol disorder zones. I am happy to confirm to the hon. Member for East Antrim that different charges will be based on a risk assessment of extra enforcement activity in relation to individual premises, and the risk assessment for a 1,000 capacity nightclub may be very different from that for a small local pub. We will also examine discounts, which cannot be introduced until we have introduced the principles and standards code of practice to which the industry will sign up. Once that agreement is in place, people who abide by the provisions in the code of practice will be eligible for discounts, which, at least partially, addresses the point raised by the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green that people who comply with the action plan should be subject to a lower charge. When bar and pub owners do their best to be responsible, it should be acknowledged. I want to discuss the individual amendments, because we need a little time to discuss some of the other provisions in the Bill. I reject the amendments that seek to establish an audit trail and culpability, which is not the idea behind alcohol disorder zones. I reject the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Woking on decisions being made in Whitehall, which would be extremely bureaucratic. This is a local power and it should be used locally. When an area is defined, tension may arise, which is why I said in Committee that the police and the local authority must be careful when they draw the boundary and make sure that it is not either too wide or too narrow to catch the mischief that they are seeking to address. Opposition amendments Nos. 15 and 16 would prescribe the purposes to which funding may be put, but we do not need to include such a provision in the Bill. I made it clear in Committee that the range of additional interventions will be set out in regulations and guidance and I discussed police enforcement and trading standards test purchasing. For example, environmental health officers can deal with excessive noise, which causes a significant problem for many of our constituents, and areas such as street cleaning are important, too. Liberal Democrat amendments Nos. 33, 40 and 41 seek to widen the exemption. At the moment, the exemption has two limbs—whether the principal use of the premises is the sale and supply of alcohol and whether the principal reason why people visit a premises is to obtain alcohol. In order to obtain an exemption, people must meet both limbs of that test, and as I said in Committee, hotels and restaurants—I also mentioned gyms and theatres in my letter—would meet that exemption test. The Liberal Democrat amendments seek to narrow the exemption test in one way and to widen it in another. Under those amendments, an irresponsible hotel or restaurant would be responsible for the charges, despite having met the test. However, that returns us to the first issue, which is that one would have to be able to see that that individual premise was causing the problem. If an individual premise causes a problem, consideration should be given to using the powers in the Licensing Act 2003 to address that narrow point. Amendment No. 41 seeks to widen the limb, but it is not appropriate. It would allow people who comply with the action plan not to contribute to costs, but that might be difficult. If the action plan included making a financial contribution in order to facilitate the introduction of proper street-cleaning services, the viability of the alcohol disorder zone might be at risk if several premises did not have to contribute.