HC Deb 05 June 1961 vol 641 cc776-93

Amendment made: In page 1, line 11, leave out from "description" to end of line 12 and insert: and in this part of this Act any reference to a renewal of such a licence shall apply also to a transfer, except where the context otherwise requires".—[Mr. Vosper.]

9.45 p.m.

Mr. Rees-Davies

I beg to move, in page 1, line 18, to leave out "customary".

This is a very short point which caused a little anxious consideration in Committee. The description of "a restaurant licence" is as follows: a licence…granted for premises structurally adapted and bona fide used, or intended to be used, for the purpose of habitually providing the customary main meal at mid-day or in the evening. The word "customary" adds nothing to the definition and would merely lead to troubles, difficulties and definitions by lawyers and others in other places. This would be undesirable.

What the Committee and the House wants is to ensure that a restaurant provides a main meal at mid-day or in mid-evening. To add the word "customary" may lead to all sorts of arguments which I do not think would be desirable. It does not carry the matter further. I should hate to think of us having to decide whether "customary" involves having Yorkshire pudding with roast beef. Many of us have very light meals in the middle of the day. They may, none the less, be the main meal at the middle of the day, but one should not necessarily have to have a customary three course main meal. I have given the matter careful thought and I think that "customary" adds nothing. I hope that in the circumstances the Government will look at it again.

The Solicitor-General

This is a very short point of drafting. The test here is not what the customer consumes. It is quite irrelevant whether my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies) has a small or heavy meal at mid-day. The test is what the restaurant habitually provides.

After considering the matter, we feel that the word "customary" gives some indication to the courts which will be of value. What we intend is that the customary evening meal should cover such things as dinner, supper, high tea, whatever it is called, and that the restaurant should set out to give more mere snacks. We have carefully considered the words in the Clause and feel that the words "customary main meal" is the phrase which best expresses the desire, which was obvious on both sides of the Committee, that in order for a restaurant to qualify for a restaurant licence it should be a real restaurant and not a mere snack-bar.

Amendment negatived.

The Solicitor-General

I beg to move, in page 2, line 5, to leave out from "providing" to "and" in line 7 and to insert: for reward board and lodging, including breakfast and one other at least of the customary main meals". As the Bill stands, the qualification for a residential licence is that the premises must be bona fide used, or intended to be used, for the purpose of habitually providing persons with board and lodging for reward, whether full board or not". When we discussed this matter in Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Mr. Hirst) moved an Amendment to omit the words whether full board or not and to insert instead such board to include at least breakfast and an evening meal". The purpose of that Amendment was to exclude from the residential licence places which provide merely bed and breakfast, and my hon. Friend thought—I think he had a good deal of support in all parts of the Committee—that to fail so to provide might lead to abuse.

My right hon. Friend the Minister of State accepted that there was great force in my hon. Friend's general approach, but he pointed out that the Amendment as put down would not do because it would be wrong to limit it to the evening meal. The important thing was that the residential accommodation should be coupled with the facility of a customary main meal being provided, and this, in the circumstances of the place, might be a mid-day meal provided with bed and breakfast. In addition, the Committee had, after my hon. Friend put his Amendment down, amended the Clause so that, as a matter of drafting, the Amendment would not fit in.

My right hon. Friend undertook, if my hon. Friend withdrew his Amendment, to put down an Amendment at this stage to meet the point. This is that Amendment. Its effect is to cut out the establishment providing merely bed and breakfast by requiring the provision of at least breakfast and either lunch or evening dinner. It would not have the effect that the resident must take any of these meals in order to obtain a drink. He might, of course, have a meal out. He might have a picnic or go to visit friends. As on the last Amendment, what we are concerned with is the premises. The premises must be capable of providing, and the proprietors willing to provide, such a meal in order to qualify for such a licence.

This Amendment strengthens the Bill. Part I contains liberalising provisions, but we are anxious that it should not leave a loophole for abuse. I commend the Amendment to the House as a useful safeguard.

Mr. Geoffrey Hirst (Shipley)

The words proposed admirably meet the point which I made in Committee. I am much obliged to the Solicitor-General for giving it such close attention.

Mr. G. Thomas

I, too, shall be brief, but I have to tell the Solicitor-General that I have such a deep anxiety about guest houses being allowed to sell drink to their patrons at all, knowing as I do what can happen to guest houses when that becomes a feature, that I welcome any tightening of the provisions which can be made. Since the Solicitor-General assures us that this Amendment will make it a little more difficult for guest houses to become disreputable places where liquor can be served at bed-and-breakfast establishments, I welcome it as far as it goes.

I wish that we had left out guest houses altogether. I do not believe that they are the sort of establishments in which liquor ought to be served. To serve liquor in guest houses is to change the character of our national life, to change the character of our seaside resorts, to change the character of boarding houses in our big cities. It will increase the temptation for many things to develop which nobody in the House wishes to encourage. Everyone knows the sort of thing which can be encouraged at bed-and-breakfast establishments having drink for sale. I hope that there will be some guarantee of inspection and, as the Solicitor-General assured us there would be, facilities for a main cooked meal throughout the day.

Mr. Cole

Did I understand my right hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General to say that these establishments do not have to provide a meal? How far will that be taken? Does that mean that a bed and breakfast establishment can turn into a residential club for a night? I know that we cannot force people to eat meals and we would not wish to do so, but this point can be covered in other ways. If these words are put into the Bill, does it mean that no one will worry whether they are observed or not? I think that that is the import of what my right hon. and learned Friend said.

The Solicitor-General

I assure my hon. Friend that was not the import of what I said—at least, it was not intended to be. The position will be exactly the same as in an ordinary licensed private hotel which provides, ordinarily speaking, facilities for drinking. It also provides breakfast, lunch and dinner in the evening, but, in order to get a drink, one does not have to have breakfast, lunch or dinner. A person may be one of those who forgoes breakfast, has lunch out and does not feel like having dinner in the evening. In spite of that, under those rigours, he may still require a restorative, and he can have one. The position will be exactly the same as in the case of the residential licence.

Mr. Ede

Can a person who has no other connection with the place go in casually during the day and obtain intoxicating liquor?

The Solicitor-General

No.

Amendment agreed to.

The Solicitor-General

I beg to move, in page 2, line 8, to leave out "conditions" and insert "condition".

Mr. Speaker

It would be convenient to discuss with this Amendment those in page 2, line 16, to leave out from "premises" to the end of line 22, in line 29, to leave out "conditions" and insert "condition", in line 33, to leave out from "licence" to the end of line 36, in page 3, line 27, at the end to insert: (8) Where licensing justices grant a new residential licence or residential and restaurant licence, they shall, unless it appears to them that in the particular circumstances of the case there is good reason not to do so, attach to the licence a condition that there shall be afforded in the premises, for persons provided with board and lodging for reward, adequate sitting accommodation in a room not used or to be used for sleeping accommodation, for the service of substantial refreshment or for the supply or consumption of intoxicating liquor; and where such a licence is granted without the condition required by this subsection, licensing justices shall, on the renewal of the licence, attach the condition if by reason of any change of circumstances it appears to them that the requirement ought no longer to be dispensed with. in page 4, line 1, to leave out "conditions as are" and insert "condition as is", and in line 9, to leave out "conditions as are "and insert "condition as is".

They all go together, I think.

The Solicitor-General

Yes, Mr. Speaker. The important Amendment is that in page 3, line 27. The others are consequential on it.

This proposal arises out of an Amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies) in Committee. As the Bill stands, there must be in premises which qualify for a residential licence or a combined residential and restaurant licence a sitting-room in which drink is not supplied or consumed. We called it rather erroneously in Committee the third room. It may not be a third room in certain circumstances, and it is therefore better to refer to it as the dry sitting room. My hon. Friend moved an Amendment to provide that that condition, the condition for the dry room, should be inserted in a residential licence only where the licensing justices consider it expedient. His argument ran on the lines that there are in many cases, in seaside resorts particularly, establishments with only two rooms apart from—

It being Ten o'clock, further consideration of the Bill, as amended, stood adjourned.

Proceedings on the Licensing Bill exempted, at this day's Sitting, from the Provisions of Standing Order No. 1 (Sittings of the House).—[Mr. Redmayne.]

Bill, as amended (in the Standing Committee), further considered.

The Solicitor-General

I was recapitulating my hon. Friends' argument, which is relevant to this Amendment, that there may be small establishments with only two rooms apart from the bedrooms. My hon. Friend said that this condition would prevent the service of drink except in the dining room, and if the dining room were in use only for meals it would also prevent the service of drink to all people in the house except at meals.

My very strong impression of the course of that debate is that the Committee were divided on the merits of the proposal. My right hon. Friend the Minister of State, when he intervened, said that he was influenced by the fact that the Hotel and Restaurants Association believed that there was a case for this Amendment and that the Bill as it stood would operate harshly in the case of small establishments. He went on to say that if he were satisfied that it would operate harshly as reported by my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Thanet, nevertheless he thought that my hon. Friend's Amendment put the onus of proof in the wrong place. In other words, my right hon. Friend felt that it would be wrong to say that the condition is only to be inserted if the justices thought that it was expedient. His view was that it should be inserted unless the justices thought that it was inexpedient.

My right hon. Friend then undertook to consider the matter in the light of what had been said and undertook in particular to obtain the views of the Association. The British Hotels and Restaurants Association have since written in support of the proposal and make the case that this would operate to the disadvantage of the small establishment and they do not wish to see any hotel placed at such a disadvantage merely because it was small. My right hon. Friend feels that the case has therefore been made but we propose that the licensing justices should attach the dry room condition unless it appears to them that in the particular circumstances of the case there is good reason not to do so. In other words, in order to obviate the dry room condition an affirmative case must be made out for it.

Sir F. Soskice

I do not think that I was responsible for much in the way of an intervention in the Committee stage on the question of the dry room. I appreciate what the learned Solicitor-General has in mind and I confess that I was rather puzzled when I first tried to discern the reasons why he sought to change the word, "conditions" into "condition" and to remove paragraph (b, ii) at the end to form the new subsection (8).

I see why he has done it and, speaking for myself and particularly in view of the representations he has received, I would have thought that he had placed the onus now in the right place. In other words, there will be dry rooms in establishments which spacially can afford the space for dry rooms and not in establishments that cannot. That is, I gather, what the Solicitor-General has in mind.

I would merely bring to the right hon. and learned Gentleman's notice a defect in the original drafting of paragraph (ii), which still persists in his new subsection. Again, I do not want to be pedantic or to usurp the function of the Parliamentary draftsman, who, no doubt, would do all this much more skilfully than I. I wish, however, that the right hon. and learned Gentleman would look again at the framing of lines 20 and 21 on page 2 of the Bill which have now found their way into the new subsection (8) in a similar form, subject, of course, to the words which provide for the assessing of the onus.

It could be made much more clear what is meant by sitting accommodation in a room not used or to be used for sleeping accommodation when one finds that phrase followed by the words for the service of substantial refreshment… and there is little as a matter of drafting to indicate with which part of the preceding subsection the words are to be taken.

That is very obscure, probably nearly as obscure as the argument that I have just advanced. If it is as obscure as that, I feel that my argument must be sound. I hope that the Solicitor-General will look at it and try to remove the obscurity from the drafting, which, I am sure, could not be removed from the obscurity of my argument.

The Solicitor-General

I think that the drafting is all right. There is a comma after "sleeping accommodation". It reads: in a room not used or to be used for sleeping accommodation, for the service of substantial refreshment or for the supply or consumption of intoxicating liquor"— in other words, not in a bedroom, a dining room or a drinking room. I will, however, look again at the drafting, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman has asked me to do.

Mr. G. Roberts

I should not like the Amendment to go through or the discussion to end without making my personal reservation as to its utility. It seems to me that the Solicitor-General has laid down a clear principle which is at variance with the views of a great many hon. Members and of a big section of opinion in the country. He seems to me to be laying down the principle in respect of all boarding houses that the onus to prove the need to obtain a sitting room which he calls a dry room is placed upon the people who want such a room. That is what I understood, but if I am wrong I beg the right hon. and learned Gentleman's pardon. Perhaps he will reply at the end of what I have to say and put me right.

Perhaps I may express my view and that of a good many of my hon. Friends in this way. In the matter of these new licences for boarding houses, we should proceed on the basis of the status quo, which is the fair and sensible thing to do. That is to say, they are primarily establishments which cater, first, for people who do not wish to stay at hotels, which in the vast majority of cases are licensed. Surely, that is accepted, particularly at holiday times, when families go for their holidays and—this is true of working-and middle-class families, at least—they select a non-licensed boarding house.

We ought to start on that assumption and proceed to the conclusion that unless such a boarding house has enough rooms to provide a dry room, particularly for families of that sort to sit in, it cannot qualify for a licence. It seems to me that the Solicitor-General was assuming that the first thing to provide for in all these boarding houses, as well as in the hotels, is that they shall be licensed so that the section of the population which wants to drink is catered for and it is just bad luck if there is no room set aside for the type of people, particularly the families, of whom I speak.

I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will not under-estimate the number of families who deliberately seek to take their children to boarding houses, residential establishments or temperance hotels where on a rainy day when they have to remain indoors they will not be subjected to what they regard, rightly or wrongly, and I think rightly, as dangerous and undesirable surroundings. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will deal with the argument that if he proceeds on the basis of the Amendment and what he said in support of it, boarding houses will be deemed in the first place to be licensed premises and only when they are big enough to be able to afford the room for the class of people whom I have described will they be able to cater for them.

Mr. G. Thomas

My hon. Friend the Member for Caernarvon (Mr. G. Roberts) played a distinguished part in Standing Committee on the Bill. His contributions have been noted with great satisfaction in the Principality, in particular, and I believe that he has touched upon an important point in the Amendment. Anyone with experience of boarding houses along the sea coast, be it at Blackpool, Brighton or Margate or any of the main seaside towns, will have found that many of them have one big lounge, the rest of the available space being used for bedrooms.

Clearly, the Solicitor-General is advancing an argument which will leave families which go into these boarding houses in the position that they will be going into a big lounge in an ordinary boarding house where drink will be flowing for people on holiday who want it. This can ruin holidays for families. This is not a light point that I am making. It will affect hundreds of thousands of families.

We ought to make it compulsory that in any circumstances any boarding house keeper who applies for a licence must prove that he has accommodation to provide—and I here use the Solicitor-General's language—foe a wet room and a dry room. If these boarding house keepers want the licence they should prove that they have the facilities. We should not push all those who want to use boarding houses in future into a situation where both the smell of liquor and the company of people under the influence of liquor are there when children are in the house on holiday.

Mr. Eden

Surely the hon. Member will agree on reflection that the boarding house keeper whom he has described, who is principally in business to provide for family holidays, would be the very last to apply for a licence—if he applied for it at all—because it would completely destroy the trade on which his prosperity depends.

10.15 p.m.

Mr. Thomas

I do not accept for a moment what the hon. Member says. I do not know how many boarding houses there are in Bournemouth and what his knowledge of them is. I know boarding houses very well. I often stay in them.

Mr. Rees-Davies

And have a drink in them?

Mr. Thomas

No, I leave that to the hon. Gentleman. We ought not lightly to allow this to go through, because the Government are now in this Measure touching something very near the life of working families. Despite the general idea in some quarters that everybody wants to drink, that just is not true. There are hundreds of thousands of families who are keen to see their children grow up without a taste for strong drink, who are anxious beyond anything that their young people shall not during their holiday times have this sort of thing put before them as though it were natural to drink at any time.

Sir Douglas Glover (Ormskirk)

I have nothing to do with the boarding house business at all, but if I were running a boarding house in Bournemouth, Cardiff, Barry or anywhere else and all my trade was based on the sort of families about which the hon. Member is talking, I should hesitate for years before applying for a licence because by doing so I should jeopardise the very sound business I had built up by sound management over a period of years. I agree with the hon. Member that there are hundreds of thousands of families who want this sort of holiday, and because there are hundreds of thousands of such families I am certain that there are tens of thousands of boarding house keepers who will not even think of applying for a licence.

Mr. Thomas

The hon. Gentleman has a point as far as it goes, but is it not reasonable to say that those who run boarding houses should at least, before they are granted a licence, prove that they have alternative rooms and facilities for people Who do not want to be bothered by this sort of thing? Surely that is not an unreasonable request. I am not asking for the impossible. I am merely asking why persons should be allowed to invite families to their boarding houses—very often families do not know what the boarding house is like until they get there; we have all been to bad boarding houses as well as good ones—when there are no facilities available for a dry room, such as the Solicitor-General has mentioned?

I believe that the Amendment is inadequate in that it does not go far enough. I hope that the Solicitor-General will promise to have another look at the requirement to which I am now making reference, that boarding houses which seek this facility should have to fulfil very rigorous conditions before it is granted.

Mr. Rees-Davies

I thank the Solicitor-General for having arrived at a very effective compromise. This is a very important Amendment to the trade and industry as a whole. There is no doubt that if we sterilise accommodation in our hotels—they are all too small—and have rooms which are not put to effective use, it does not serve any purpose or benefit anyone.

I believe that giving a discretion to magistrates, with, on the whole, the burden of proof against them, is a fair compromise having regard to the arguments adduced to the contrary. Frankly, I should have liked to see no provision in respect of such a room at all. That leads to the real nub of the matter, which was correctly stated by the hon. Member for Caernarvon (Mr. G. Roberts) to be the nub.

Since this matter arose. I have found out in my constituency, which has more boarding houses that any other, in three of four different towns, roughly what percentage of boarding house keepers would apply for a licence. It came as a great surprise to me to find out how few, and not how many, would apply. I entirely share the view expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Ormskirk (Sir D. Glover) and there is no doubt that there will be abundant numbers of boarding houses, of the highest as well as the lowest income brackets, which will remain dry—that is to say, people will be able to go out and buy a bottle of beer and bring it to their table, but there will be no provision for its sale on the premises.

It was because I was satisfied with that that I pressed my right hon. Friend to go further than he has gone. However, the associations which are much concerned in this matter feel that in appropriate cases they will be able to persuade the bench of their case, and I am happy to accept a compromise that can be accepted. The minority view of those who do not drink and who want to be travellers ought to be considered, for they are entitled to have their views considered as much as those which I am putting forward, which, as is well known, are the views of the tourist industry as a whole, for they are just as much tourists as anyone else. I am sure that there will be complete and adequate protection for their interests in plenty of establishments where drink will not be sold, and at the same time, magistrates will have the discretion which they ought to be given.

Mr. J. Griffiths

We discussed this matter at length in Committee and what the hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Rees-Davies) has just said he said in Committee—that there were many boarding house keepers who would not seek a licence. The difficulty is that if some boarding houses start it, the others will feel that they will have to follow in order to compete.

Discretion now lies firmly with the licensing justices. Will the Solicitor-General consider, as the Bill leaves the House for another place, whether one of the considerations which the justices should bear in mind in granting a licence of this kind should be whether there would be any boarding houses remaining in which drink was not supplied, or in which there was a dry room, as it has been called? In that way it would be part of the duty of the justices to see that there was reasonable provision of boarding houses in which there was a dry room.

We are now living in the days of family holidays and numbers of parents take their children with them while they are on holiday. While the parents might want to have a drink, they would like to know that there was a place in which they could go with their children and in which no drink was supplied. That does not seem to be too much to ask for and I wonder whether some kind of provision could be made which the justices would have to bear in mind when deciding whether to grant these licences.

The Solicitor-General

I am always reluctant to give an opinion off the cuff, but it seems to me that these would be among the circumstances which the justices would be entitled to consider under the existing wording in exercising their discretion. That is only my first impression of the point which the right hon. Gentleman raises.

Mr. Chapman

Only some three years ago I owned a hotel myself and I should like to answer my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas). It is the sheerest nonsense to say that anybody in the hotel or boarding house trade will go out of his way to frighten away custom in the way suggested. I owned a small hotel in which we did not have a licence and I catered for people who wished to come to exactly that kind of hotel. I would never have dreamed of asking for a licence, because the price would have been to frighten away my business.

To erect an ogre, to use these magic words "liquor" and "rooms in which people will imbibe", to see people under the influence and to draw horrible pictures of boarding houses with everybody lying about drunk or drinking themselves to death, is a fantastic statement of an illiberal point of view. We must keep a proper balance in discussion on matters of personal choice and on whether people will be influenced by business considerations.

My hon. Friend is raising ogres and all sorts of silly pictures of things that are never likely to happen so long as the business community keeps its head, which it will do because it wants to earn its money, and so long as people have the right to say, "I am not going to that place again because of what happened last time".

As soon as word like that gets round—that somebody has been once bitten—the whole community from which that person comes will be warned and no one will be twice bitten. With all respect to my hon. Friend, the business community has more sense than he ascribes to it.

Mr. Cole

I agree that there will be a considerable number of boarding houses which will deliberately refrain from applying for licences because some of their colleagues in the neighbourhood will apply. The debate has established the claims of families to go to unlicensed places as well as to others. I believe that the number of boarding houses and hotels which will take up this opportunity to apply for a licence will be far less than many people imagine.

As we are guiding the licensing justices for the future, I should like to put round the other way the suggestion made by the right hon. Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths). My right hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General suggested that the magistrates might take notice that a certain number of premises might be permitted two kinds of room. I suggest that the magistrates should also have in mind limiting the number of places which are likely to have only one kind of room. This would have some effect in securing two kinds of room for premises.

I have read Clause 1 (3, (i)), several times without light—probably it is my own fault—but I believe that my right hon. Friend should introduce a simple Amendment, to make it clear beyond peradventure, by replacing the comma in line 6 with the word "and". This would make it clear that such a room would not be provided. The comma only complicates the issue.

Amendment agreed to.

Mr. Rees-Davies

I beg to move, in page 2, line 11, to leave out "private."

This seems a moderate request after the serious matters which we have been dealing with. This is because nobody in the House knows what is a "private friend." I have heard of a personal friend. I have friends and I have acquaintances. I have heard of my gallant friends, of my honourable friends, and of my learned friends, but I am hanged if I have ever heard of "private friends." Almost every nuance and adjective and a great many nouns can be applied to the word "friend" but I doubt the word "private."

There is a more serious point involved than that merry opening implies, in that one might ask the whole of the rugger club, the tennis club or the visiting team to attend a function, or might arrange funeral dinners or wedding feasts or similar occasions. Of course, one might also, if one were in the modern range of tycoons, have a little bit of tycoonery by having all one's director friends. Therefore, one might in one of the residential licensed places set about entertaining them contrary to the intention of this limiting condition.

10.30 p.m.

All I can say is that I thought of the phrase "personal friends" at one time, but that might seem too limiting. In the end I came to the conclusion that we might leave out "private" and rely upon the magistrates to determine, if ever they have to, whether someone is really a friend or one who is merely a friend who passes in the night.

Mr. Glenvil Hall

I hope the House will not waste time on this Amendment. We spent a pleasant twenty minutes in Committee on it, having great fun. It came to nothing. I do not think that the words mean anything one way or the other. As we want to make progress we might as well leave them there. It is quite obvious that the Solicitor-General is going to tell us that they have some use. I, for my part, am willing to accept his word for it. The words occur in the Licensing Act, 1953, to differentiate between the friend of a licensee who comes into his bar, and the licensee's private friends whom he entertains privately and does not charge for their drink. Obviously, the word has been lifted, and brought into this Bill. Quite why, nobody knows, but there are quite a lot of things in this Bill and I have not the faintest idea why they are there. This is one of them. I do not mind if it stays.

The Solicitor-General

I rise only to thank the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Glenvil Hall) for that intervention, and for the kindness which is so much a characteristic of his, but which does not really extend very far when he is contemplating the provisions of this Bill; therefore, we welcome very much what he has just said.

I undertook in Committee to look again at this drafting, while we were discussing the matter in Committee. I have done so. I confess that for the reasons I gave when we were discussing this matter in Standing Committee I cannot see any better phrase than "private friends". It has got quite a different significance from "friends". As I indicated there, it is the sort of phrase which I do not think the courts will split up but will look at as a whole.

On the one hand, it will exclude mere drinking acquaintances the resident has just met. It will exclude entertainment of guests at a reception or a ticket dance for charity and that sort of thing. So it is restrictive. But it is also partly broadening in that I think it would include the type of entertainment which the Committee and, I believe, the House, would wish to include, and that is, for example, where the traveller goes to meet a director of a company with whom he is going to do business. He goes to a residential hotel; he may never have met that man before; it would be impossible to call him his friend; but I think that he would, in the context of this, be a private friend.

Therefore, it seems to me, after all our search for a better alternative, that for the reasons given by the right hon. Gentleman, we cannot do very much better.

Amendment negatived.

Amendments made: In page 2, line 16, leave out from "premises" to end of line 22.

In line 29, leave out "conditions" and insert "condition".

In line 33, leave out from "licence" to end of line 36.—[The Solicitor-General.]

Amendment proposed: In page 3, line 14, after "grant", insert "or review".—[The Solicitor-General.]

Mr. G. Thomas

May we take it that this and the following group of Amendments are consequential?

The Solicitor-General

Yes.

Amendment agreed to.

Further Amendments made: in page 3, line 15, leave out "(whether a new licence or not)".

In line 23, leave out "or transfer".

In line 24, leave out "or transfer".

In line 25, leave out "made at any licensing sessions".

In line 27, at end insert: (8) Where licensing justices grant a new residential licence or residential and restaurant licence, they shall, unless it appears to them that in the particular circumstances of the case there is good reason not to do so, attach to the licence a condition that there shall be afforded in the premises, for persons provided with board and lodging for reward, adequate sitting accommodation in a room not used or to be used for sleeping accommodation, for the service of substantial refreshment or for the supply or consumption of intoxicating liquor; and where such a licence is granted without the condition required by this subsection, licensing justices shall, on the renewal of the licence, attach the condition if by reason of any change of circumstances it appears to them that the requirement ought no longer to be dispensed with.

In page 4, line 1, leave out "conditions as are" and insert "condition as is".

In line 9, leave out "conditions as are" and insert condition as is."—[The Solicitor-General.]