The following from Hamish Birchall

The Joint Committee on Human Rights has today published a report on the Licensing Bill which concludes:

'... there is a significant risk that the blanket licensing regime proposed in the Bill would give rise to an incompatibility with people's right to freedom of expression under ECHR Article 10, even in the light of the Government's announcement on 3 February...'
[p11, Scrutiny of Bills: Further Progress Report, Fourth Report of Session 2002-03, HL Paper 50, HC 397, published Monday 10 February 2003. For further info contact the office of the Committee: 020 7219 2797. [NB: ECHR means European Convention on Human Rights; the announcement on 3 February was the Government's u-turn on the licensing of secular entertainment in churches]

The Committee considered Culture Minister Kim Howell's justification for the increase in licensing controls (provided in a letter to the Committee on 10 January). The Committee further commented:

'... we consider that the proposed blanket requirement for all premises to be licensed before any live performance takes place in them, regardless of whether there is a real risk of noise or nuisance, the nature of the performance, the nature of the premises, or the number of performers and spectators, is somewhat heavy-handed. We note that the licensing regime under the Bill would not cover the use of amplification for recorded music, which would seem to present health and safety risks similar to those caused by electronic amplification of live performers.' [the exemptions in Schedule 1, paragraphs 7 and 8, apply respectively to 1) the playing of recorded music that is incidental to other activities that are not licensable entertainments or facilities, and 2) to broadcast entertainment]

Significantly, the Committee also commented in relation to the recently announced churches exemption:

'This apparently random exemption for places of religious worship might tend to undermine the argument for the rationality of the blanket licensing regime as a whole, and could engage other human rights issues by appearing to discriminate against occupiers and users of non-religious premises.'

As you know, the government's argument for abolition of the two-performer PEL exemption in pubs/bars etc, has relied almost exclusively on the need to regulate the potential for noise nuisance caused even by unamplified live music ('we do not accept that acoustic music is never noisy'). But no evidence of any significant problem arising from live music has been put forward by the government to justify its position. In its recent 24-point rebuttal of MU and others' claims about the Bill, distributed to MPs and the public, one unreferenced quote from the Institute of Acoustics is cited:

'The Institute of Acoustics lists "amplified and non-amplified music, singing and speech sourced from inside the premises" as a principle source of noise disturbance from pubs, clubs and other similar premises.' [para 3.5, Regulation of Entertainment Under the Licensing Bill, DCMS January 2003]

However, the use of this quote is beginning to look unwise:

The IoA was unaware that that the government was relying on the IoA in this way, or indeed quoting them.

The IoA could not readily identify the document referred to, but think it might be from an as yet unpublished report.

The IoA has confirmed that their source of noise complaint data is the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH).

The CIEH has confirmed that their noise complaint data cannot discriminate between pubs and any other commercial premises, let alone between noise complaints arising from live music, recorded music, or noisy people.

If the IoA has a view about noisy live music it could only be based on the subjective opinion of environmental health officers, and not on any specific data.