Yes to late licences, no to Theresa May’s battle against booze!
She might be a Tory, but on assuming office Theresa may took a few positive steps in rolling back some of the most illiberal actions of the previous government. She put on hold the vetting and barring scheme, and scrapped ID cards. So I was a little disappointed when it was announced today that she is planning a raft of measures that will hit drinkers – and the poorer ones in particular.
First of all, she plas to change the system for licensing premises that serve alcohol. According to the home office website this will involve “making it easier for communities to have their say on local licensing by allowing local authorities to consider the views of the wider community, not just those living close to premises”. Now, I have no problem with people who would be directly affected by a pub having a say over whether it should open. Excessive noise can really affect people’s lives, and the law in general exists to protect people from harm. The licensing system should not, however, empower “communities” (ie the local majority) to impose their tastes and sensibilities on individuals. I really don’t like eggs, and am even a little disgusted at people who like them. But I don’t expect to have a say on what a somebody on the other side of the borough has for breakfast.
Equally, May plans to start charging fees for late night licences. Getting a drink in central london past midnight can already be a pain in the arse. You often end up having to go to a club (and at 24 im already to old for that) or to some expensive cocktail bar. Charging for late licences is likely to make late night london even more like this. Those bars that sell at relatively smaller margins will go back to shutting their doors at the ridiculous time of 11pm, leaving those with the cash (and the poor taste) to sip their margaritas in peace.
The fee is being justified as a means of allowing councils to recoup the cost of policing. The home office press release tells us that “Last year there were almost one million violent crimes that were alcohol related, with a fifth of all violent incidents taking place in or around a pub or club, and almost two-thirds of these happen at night.”
First of all it should be said that alcohol-related crime is a very specious category. It tends to include any crime that happens after somebody has drunk alcohol. As any social scientist knows, correlation does not necessarily indicate causation, and as I have explained before their is good reason to be skeptical about a causal link between drink and violence:
The Office of National statistics tells us that in a single year 900,000 acts of violence were committed by people ‘believed to be drunk.’ That sounds pretty high. Yet we also that in a single week 6 million men and women will drink more than twice the reccomended daily allowance on at least one occassion. Thus in a single year we are looking 312 million incidents of serious drunkenness. Put another way we have one act of drunken violence for every 350 incidents of drunkenness. Any straightforward causal relationship then appears somehwat dubious. If some people are encouraged by every drinking to go out and hit people then they really are a very atypical minority of degenerates.
In other words, May’s plans will force every late night drinker to pay for the actions of an atypical minority – on top of the booze tax that already exists. This principle is applied to virtually no other social activity.
