LICENSING ACT (AMENDMENT) (Hansard, 12 November 1975)

§ Mr. Robin Corbett (Hemel Hempstead)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend section 76(5) of the Licensing Act 1964. This has more to do with dancers than with doubles and with the palais than with pints. The Bill is designed to assist 6 million people who go dancing each week. It is aimed at safeguarding the employment of 100,000 people employed in ballrooms and dance halls and 150,000 people who help in the running of cabaret clubs. It would also help to protect the already difficult employment prospects of musicians and artistes.

My Bill seeks to alter the damaging effects of a recent Law Lords ruling in the case of Carter v. Bradbeer. This means that a bar in an establishment with a music and dance licence and holding a special hours licence must not serve drinks 1551 after normal licensing hours, except by waiter service. More simply put, the Law Lords ruled that what millions of people have been doing for 14 years since 1961—buying drinks over a bar in a dance hall or club after normal licensing hours—is illegal.

That decision was reinforced this week when the Lord Chief Justice and two other judges upheld in the High Court the decision of the Cardiff magistrates to ban over-the-bar sales at nine late night dinner dances in that city. Therefore in dance halls, cabaret clubs, entertainment centres, hotels and social and sports clubs people who like to mix and to buy drinks at a bar are now told that it is illegal.

It is worse than that. Not only is waiter service decreed, but, for example, the Chief Constable of Essex had laid down that even waiter-served drinkers must be dispensed from somewhere other than the normal bar.

My proposed Bill in no way seeks to extend the time legally allowed for drinking on licensed premises. Nor does it seek to increase the space allocated for drinking or to alter the minimum age of people permitted to drink. What it does seek is to enable millions of people who like a night out—often a late one, because of changed social habits and shift working—to continue to enjoy their entertainment in the same way as they have done for 14 years.

Unless the present position is corrected and restored to what I believe was the true intention of the House, millions of pounds of investment in leisure services—much of it out of public money by local authorities—is at risk. The private sector too, especially in major cities and seaside resorts, faces cost increases which would threaten closures and redundancies.

It has been estimated that to meet the full cost of a full waiter service after normal licensing hours in every dance hall and cabaret club could raise admission charges by half. It could mean 60p for a pint of beer and upwards of £1 for a gin and tonic or a whisky and soda. It is surely too ludicrous for words to contemplate such increases at a time like this.

Hotels and other places of entertainment, some of which have been developed 1552 with grants from the English Tourist Board or the area tourist boards to provide cheap leisure facilities for tourists, will face crippling cost increases or will find businesses already on low profit margins becoming uneconomic. Making money out of our quaintness, as it is seen by some tourists, is one thing. Losing money by being quaint is ridiculous. It is the same with every palais and cabaret club in this land.

The law requires that each drink after normal licensing hours must pass through two pairs of hands on its way to the hopefully patient customer—those of the dispenser and those of the waiter or waitress. Taking the drink to the table is bound to cost more and is socially undesirable, in my view, as well as being for many people uneconomic and impracticable.

Six out of 10 marriages in this country still today are made in dance halls. People go there to mix, not to be pinned to a table.

The state of the law at the moment means that jobs are threatened. The very existence of much-needed leisure facilities could be at risk with less provision at a time when people are being asked to work harder and need to play harder to compensate. The end of this road for many dance halls and clubs is to become bingo halls and so increase the scope for this form of gambling.

To the man in the smart club, maybe this is of little concern. A snap of two well-groomed fingers summons an alert waiter. But for 1,500 or 2,000 dancers-wives and husbands, boy friends and girl friends—in a palais on a Friday or Saturday night that is not possible. Even if it were, is it desirable to employ vast numbers of extra staff at these unsocial hours?

The hard-working factory, office or shop worker does not understand why a pint of beer can be bought across a bar in these places at 10.29 p.m. or 10.59 p.m. but not at 10.31 p.m. or 11.1 p.m., and to seek to impose this will bring the law into disrepute.

It is for these reasons—reasons of both jobs and pleasure—that I ask the House for leave to introduce this Bill.