The follwing from Hamish Birchall, to the Noble Lord Macintosh of Haringay.

Sir

I refer to your comments during last Tuesday's draft Licensing Guidance debate in response to questions raised about live music by Baroness Buscombe, Lord Colwyn, and Lord Redesdale. It would be nice if, for once, flashes of honesty emerged from the clouds of patronising guff you have produced about live music and this legislation.

Lord Colwyn rightly drew attention to the greatly increased reach of entertainment licensing under the Licensing Act 2003, and inconsistencies in the rationale for licensing control. But you airily dismissed this, implying that such matters were largely irrelevant to the Guidance being debated.

But of course such matters are relevant to the Guidance. The Guidance explicitly includes a reference to it being 'for the benefit of ... the general public' (para 1.4). They need to know whether or not an entertainment which they may be planning would be illegal unless licensed. In addition, they are entitled to know the reasons for increased regulation. Where better to seek explanations but in the Licensing Guidance, and where better for this to be explained but right at the start?

You talked with apparent regret, with reference to the volume of music, about improvements that might have been made to the incidental music exemption. But you talked as if ignorant of the fact that the Act allows the DCMS Secretary of State to add, vary or remove descriptions of entertainment within the entertainment Schedule (Sch. 1, para 4). If you are really so concerned to improve the Act, why don't you press the Secretary of State to take steps now to include a reference to the volume of music?

In fact, interpreting the incidental exemption has been further confused by licensing minister Richard Caborn. In recent correspondence with my MP he introduced a new criterion that may disapply the exemption, namely the 'regularity' of a performance. Regularity is not discussed in para 5.18 of the Guidance. Caborn's position also leads to a contradiction: while jukeboxes will not, apparently, count as 'entertainment facilities', a piano will. Thus regular performances on a piano in a restaurant at moderate volume would disapply the incidental exemption, but regular playing of the jukebox at moderate volume would be exempt. So much for the equal treatment of live and recorded music.

If you really understood music you would understand that decibels are not a reliable measure of volume since they do not discriminate effectively between the energy of bass and treble frequencies. Low notes that may not register significantly on a decibel meter can travel far further into neighbouring premises than high notes exceeding a decibel limit.

Lastly, imagine what would happen if a pub floor collapsed under the weight of enthusiastic customers watching a big match.