Talking of the Police. I asked my local force the following question.

I do not of course expect you to be drawn in to a political argument. But given your comment about not being able to say that there had been no complaints locally, and bearing in mind of course that this is a fairly recent introduction to the activities of licensed premises. Is it your view and can it be statistically demonstrated, that all live music making and only live music making, has presented instances of significant problems and incidents, that has not been presented by those attracted to, and associated with, the advertised showing of live TV sport in public houses?

Firstly it is my opinion that many times when officers are called to deal with 'incidents' at or around liquor licensed premises, those officers are concerned with ensuring that any breaches of public order or reports of other nuisance are containe, controlled and ultimately dissipated. This they may quite often not acutally determine the cause of any problem. However with noise nuisance complaints the cause is more obvious.

I cannot give any statistical information to indicate details in relation to the matter subject of your question as we do not keep such information.

But my second comment would be that I am not aware of any occasion when we have dealt with significant problems related to the ewatching of live TV spots programmes, whereas ther have been occasions when we have dealt with incidents relative to the playing of live music. I would add that for reasons of confidentiality I could not give you examples of premises in involved.

So there are no statistics and there is no evidence available from the police to the Government, even to establish if the 'incidents' the police refer to here were to LIVE music or noise from this or to noise outside the premises - but of course everybody knows that live music, and ONLY live music will cause wild public disorder.