§ MR. LEIF JONES (Westmoreland, Appleby)To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been drawn to the granting of a new licence at this year's brewster sessions to the Sussex Public-House Trust Company for premises to be erected at Hampden Park, near Eastbourne; whether he is aware that the grant of this licence had previously been refused for three years in succession after opposition by the public, and that the magistrates, in granting the licence this year, omitted to demand any monopoly value from the applicants, as provided in The Licensing Act, 1904; whether he is aware that local objectors opposed this grant unsuccessfully both at brewster sessions and before the confirmation authority, and that they were thereupon mulcted by the new county licensing committee, acting as the confirmation authority, in the payment of the taxed costs of the 931 other side, amounting to £65 1s. 8d., in addition to the costs of their own opposition; and whether he will take steps, by legislation or otherwise, to prevent the new authorities under the Licensing Act, 1904, from penalising local residents who oppose the grant or confirmation of a new licence.
(Answered by Mr. Secretary Akers-Douglas.) I have no control over the licensing authorities in the exercise of their discretion as to granting and confirming new licences; but in regard to the question of costs I may point out that the county licensing committee, in their capacity as confirming authority, are not essentially a new authority under the Act of 1904, but derive their main powers from the Act by which the confirming authority was first created, viz., the Act of 1872, by Section 43 of which they are empowered to "award such costs as they shall deem just to the party who shall succeed in the proceedings before them," and rules are to be made as to the person by whom such costs are to be paid. As at present advised, I see no reason for proposing any alteration of the law in this respect.