My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken. In particular, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, who really got into the detail of the local arts scene, which he knows so much about, and the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, who has done extremely interesting research into the Wolverhampton situation, which is replicated up and down the country. Taking an example in that way becomes very powerful. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, for his support and his interrogation of why we have this legislation despite the fact that, as he acknowledged, these provisions were passed under the previous Government but have had these unintended consequences.
I thank the Minister for his reply. He had a pretty miserable hand to play in this debate. It had some positive elements but was broadly disappointing. One of his phrases, I think, was that he would be concerned to hear that the powers were being used disproportionately. There is a thick booklet from the Manifesto Club, which details in extenso all the ways in which these powers are being used disproportionately. There are ways of playing a miserable hand but I can tell the Minister that he did not turn it into a silk purse.
I cannot help feeling that if a different department were involved—if the DCLG or the DCMS, praise the Lord, were to have responsibility for this legislation—the response would have been very different, as it was, of course, in such a positive way to my Live Music Bill last year. We really have to lift our eyes from the pavement and noble Lords speaking in the debate made that very clear. I am really disappointed that Defra seems to regard the faint risk of extra litter as more important than our cultural and community life.
The Minister raised a number of objections, including the claim that it will lead to increased street-cleansing costs and divert resources for local government. It is probable that the width of definition of live entertainment underlies what the noble Lord said, as well as in terms of opening the floodgates to all the commercial operators and McDonald’s going mad all over our streets. Other objections in discussions have been made, including that it is difficult to say in advance what size an audience will be. But that is absolutely standard in health and safety, licensing and so on. It is not an issue.
In the debate, the Minister set us the task of changing human behaviour. Let us start with small steps. I do not think that, in order to defend culture and community life at local level, I first have to change human behaviour to justify this very small but significant Private Member’s Bill. Then we all have to be beamed up in some way. I do not know whether we have any “Star Trek” enthusiasts around here, but let us all hang on a star and get digital. We can all use Twitter, e-mail and so on but physical bits of paper handed out to people who happen to be in the right place at the right time is extraordinarily important.
On the cost of litter collection, when the original leafleting restrictions were introduced, the Government’s impact assessment said that the leafleting licensing schemes might or might not save councils money because there would be costs to set it up. It is therefore highly moot whether in a particular case a licensing scheme is cost-effective and, therefore, whether its demise would cost anything in certain cases. The impact assessment said that,
“the total set-up cost to local authorities would be between £450,000 and £750,000; and taking account of the costs of enforcement and the cleaning costs saved, on an annual basis there would be somewhere between a net cost of £37,500 and a net cost saving of £525,000”.
We all know what impact assessments are like across government, which may sound particularly broad-brushed. I do not believe that those figures are any more reliable than the dire consequences the Minister has predicted in this case. It goes on to say:
“This illustrates that it is not certain whether there would be a net financial cost or benefit to this measure”.
If they were uncertain then, I am sure that they are uncertain now.
We then got into the nether regions of tattoo parlours, free magazines, night clubs, bars and so on. Let us throw the kitchen sink at this problem. I can assure the Minister that the Bill is not designed to deal with tattoo parlours. As the noble Viscount, Lord Colville, made plain, there are additional economic benefits which outweigh the disbenefits of a little bit of extra litter from a poetry club or a comedy store. The noble Viscount demonstrated exactly those points.
As a result of the Bill, local businesses and cultural activity would almost certainly thrive. As I have mentioned, Brighton audiences have plummeted. If the Brighton music scene, for instance, returned to its former size, more people would come to Brighton, spend more money, the council’s arts budget would go further and so on. Surely, in the light of the benefits of deregulation, is it not worth the candle?
As to the second objection—the question of the width of “live entertainment”—as I said, we can clearly work on the definition. Amendments could be agreed
in Committee if there was the political will. As regards the size of audience issue, this works for licensing so why not for leafleting. If that does not find favour in terms of audience, it could find favour in terms of capacity. The term capacity is used in other forms of legislation, such as that on health and safety.
However, I am heartened by part of the Minister’s response. He seems to accept that there is a problem. He may not think that there is enough of a problem—I am sure he has not read the Manifesto Club’s report and I urge him to do so—but he has undertaken to sit down and talk about it with the Manifesto Club. I hope he will also sit down with DCLG and DCMS. I have seen a ministerial letter from the Creative Industries Minister to that effect in the DCMS and I welcome it. I hope that revised guidance will be agreed for the application of these provisions in the way that he said.
We need to make the Minister’s assurances concrete. Is it an absolutely firm commitment that the guidance will be changed? When will meetings take place? Can we expect to agree new draft guidance? When can we do that? When will this be consulted on? When can we expect it to be implemented? There are a number of concrete issues and I hope the Minister will follow that up in writing after the debate.
I wish to end by returning to the time when the 2005 Act went through and the actions of the Labour Minister, Alun Michael, for whom I had great respect as a Minister. His original outline of the religious, charitable and political exemptions emphasised that they were necessary to protect human rights and political expression. He said:
“The purpose of the exception is to ensure that the human rights of individuals and their legitimate political and democratic activities are not affected by the provisions. By allowing the exemptions, we protect the rights of freedom of expression and freedom of thought, conscience and religion”.—[Official Report, Commons, Clean Neighbourhoods and Environmental Bill Committee, 20/1/05; col. 143.]
This shows that, contrary to the localism argument used by Defra, exemptions are necessary to protect the rights of different groups. It was not all left to council’s discretion.
Surely grass-roots cultural expression needs to be similarly protected. It makes cultural, social and economic sense and I look forward to further discussions with the Minister. I ask the House to give this small but significant Bill a Second Reading.