Firstly let me agree that the minister most obviously did not know what he was talking about. The inevitable consequence is that he was delivering a civil service brief, which he only partially understands. A common occurrence for any politician. On the other hand the civil service would not give such a briefing without having a reason for doing so. By november the legal profession will need to have figured out that reason to have a chance of successfully defending anyone who a local council charges with a breach of the act. I suspect that the obvious defence is contained in paragraph 7 of the 1st schedule to the act. This is

"The provision of entertainment consisting of the performance of live music or the playing of recorded music is not to be regarded as the provision of regulated entertainment for the purposes of this Act to the extent that it is incidental to some other activity which is not itself a description of entertainment falling within paragraph 2, or the provision of entertainment facilities."   

One thing is certain. The courts will not accept that that paragraph can possibly have no meaning so some live music must be exempt as a result of it. It was argued in parliament that buying and selling alcohol was the primary activity in a pub bar and hence that there are at least some circumstances where music is incidental to that purpose and so exempt. That would seem to cover most pub bar sessions where the musicians mainly pay for the pleasure of being there by consuming large quatities of the landlirds ale, at their own expense.

The important issues at the moment are not whether that interpretation is true. They are, whether people will put themselves into a position where they may have to employ thath defence and whether local authorities will take action in such circumstances in the knowledge that the defence will be employed. In fact knowing how the legal profession appears to work, there may be a more fundamental question. It appears that the law as referred to in courts is as interpreted in legal books. The UK lawyers on the forum might do us a service by telling us whether the legal press have written authoritative interpretations of that exemption and if so how they have interpreted it.

Richard