Felly, rydw i ddim yn gweithio gyda'r 33rth gydych yn 14 yn gymunedau Ffwrdd. Beth gennym ni, wrth gyflawni o'r gwrsau sredadolaeth, i ffwrdd yr ychydigol yn gwybodaeth ymgyrchol, oedd mae'n ffordd i ddim yn cystafol i'rvatio. Rydw i ddim yn gwybodaeth hwnnw i ddigital fformat. Gendat item 1 is Public Petition PE01538. On 25 November 2014, the Public Petitions Committee referred petition PE01538 by Dr Richard Burton and Peter Stuart Blacker on behalf of Accountability Scotland to this committee. This petition calls on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to amend the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman Act 2002 to ensure that complainants are shown all correspondence between SPSO and the bodies complained about before the investigation is concluded. That includes emails and that they are also made aware of the content of any verbal communications. Members have the clerks note and links to the petition and the official report of the petition's committee. Do members have any views? The committee has invited, whether to consider in the first instance, this petition is part of its scrutiny of the 2013-14 SPSO annual report. It is meeting on 7 January 2014 and in preparation for that meeting to invite the SPSO to submit to the committee written comment on the petition. Are we agreed that that is a way forward? Thank you very much. Agenda item 2 is oral evidence session, our third oral evidence session, on the Air Weapons and Licensing Scotland Bill. We have one panel of witnesses this morning discussing the alcohol licensing provisions in the bill. Before I introduce today's witnesses, I would like to clarify the committee's approach to who we asked to appear before us and the general criteria that we adopt. That is directed towards those from the public sector, including local authorities in particular, although for others our approach is similar. When deciding who to invite, we look to achieve a balance from across the country, covering both rural and urban. We also have in mind coverage from affluent and less affluent areas. We aim to spread the coverage across the whole country while recognising those in the larger urban areas who might have more experience and knowledge of particular issues to share with us. We also recognise that staff in the larger urban areas can be more specialised and potentially handle a wider variety of issues, but we are always looking to what the impact is on smaller areas, too. We consider written submissions and other pertinent information before selecting witnesses, and we are always interested to hear from those who provide an opinion that may differ from the status quo. Where we receive submissions providing similar opinions, we will try to avoid duplication in our panels, and we will also strive to have contrary views available to test what we are being told. We expect when we issue an invitation for witnesses to attend. Only in exceptional circumstances will we cancel an invitation. Those invitations are not like invites to attend Government working groups or other such working groups, and we do not consider acceptance to be discretionary. We do have powers to compel. We do not want to use them as we appreciate that it is far better all-round that people attend willingly. If witnesses feel that they are not the appropriate person to attend, they should contact the clerk immediately, which will allow an opportunity to discuss and see if there might be a better alternative. If witnesses leave it to the last minutes to contact the clerks, they will not be allowed to withdraw and we will expect them to attend. I welcome today's panel, who have accepted our invitation to appear in front of us. They are John Lee, Public Affairs Manager of the Scottish Grocers Federation, Stephen McGowan, Head of Licensing at the Institute of Licensing and Paul Watterson, Chief Executive of the Scottish License Trade Association. Welcome gentlemen and good morning. Do you have any opening remarks that you would like to make to the committee? Who is going to go first? Mr Lee? Just like to say, SGF is the national trade association for the convenience store industry in Scotland. There are about five and a half thousand convenience stores in Scotland. SGF wouldn't claim to represent all of them, but nevertheless there are a high density of convenience stores in Scotland relative to the rest of the UK. Convenience stores are embedded in every community in Scotland, every city town in rural and urban communities. Alcohol is an important category for our members. In addition to that, SGF is an active member of the Scottish Government Alcohol Industry Partnership. SGF sits on the Glasgow Licensing Forum and the Edinburgh Licensing Forum. We are also active participants in something called the East Edinburgh Community Alcohol Partnership. Alcohol is an important issue for our members. Our response to the committee's written evidence focused mainly on the issue of over provision. I would be very happy to answer any questions on that this morning. I will finish by thanking the committee very much for the invitation today. Thank you, Mr Lee. Mr Waterson, please. Scottish License Trade Association was formed in 1880. We represent the independent trade in Scotland. Our members run our nations pubs, bars and hotels. We also have some members in the off-sales sector. We have late opening premises as well. We are delighted to be here today to give you our views. I am here today to represent the Institute of Licensing. Committee members, the Institute of Licensing is an umbrella organisation that represents licensing practitioners across the United Kingdom. Licensing practitioners are drawn from private practice, local authorities and police authorities. It is an organisation that is representative of many stakeholders involved in the day-to-day administration of licensing systems across the UK and in Scotland. Individually, I am a solicitor in private practice and I appear on behalf of the licensed trade at licensing boards across Scotland. In respect of the Institute's submission to this committee, there are three particular points that we had sought to raise for your attention, all of which are technical issues, as opposed to some of the larger issues, but none the less issues that we, as practitioners, feel are incredibly important. One of those is the existing provisions for transfer of licences under the alcohol licensing regime. I think that every single licensing practitioner in Scotland with a degree requires updating, and I will hopefully address you in that later. The second key point that we hope to get across today is the position in relation to provisional alcohol licences under the system. That is a licence that would be sought where there is no building or where the building is under construction and there are difficulties on the ground if I can use that phrase with the existing system. Finally, there is an issue over the status of licences where they have been surrendered. The act does not treat or deal with the surrender of licences particularly well in our submission, and we would like to address you on that particular point. The final point that I wish to make in opening submission is that I would like to address you in relation to the fit and proper test and the reintroduction of that and some issues that the institute sees surrounding the use of police intelligence and surrounding the reference to the reintroduction of the consideration of spent convictions. Thank you very much. If I could first of all start on the subject of over provision, which Mr Lee and Mr Watterson have mentioned. I was quite surprised in terms of previous discussions that I have had with members of the bodies that you represent, that there are real concerns in some quarters about over provision. Mr Lee, first of all, what your current experience and your members' current experience is of how licensing authorities deal with their duty to assess over provision? Thanks, convener. Under the 2005 act, all licensing boards have to have some kind of regard to over provision within the statement of licensing policy. In terms of the proposals under the new act, it seemed to us that licensing boards were being at least encouraged to look at the entire board's geographical area as a potential area for over provision. We felt that that was something that could potentially inhibit trade and potentially be anti-competitive, particularly for our more independent members, to the extent that, even if you were trying to weaf at your store and increase the size of your alcohol sales area, that it could be an inhibitor for those types of expansion and investment plans. There are different views on boards on the idea of over provision. I think that there has been a lot of focus recently on arguments that it is the number of outlets, the number of alcohol outlets that are responsible for alcohol-related harm. We feel that that is a very misguided approach. I genuinely feel that there is not sufficient evidence to say that it is the number of outlets that causes harm. There are a number of issues that are written about over provision that causes some concern at the moment. Overall, I think that boards have to judge every case on its merits and look at a licence application and consider whether or not the grounds for the licence have been made and then either grant it or refuse it on that basis. We do not think that a blanket approach to over provision would be particularly helpful. You mentioned in your answer there if a retailer was going to expand the area that they sell alcohol from. It was suggested during one of the initial panels that we held that you could have a wee shelf with some alcohol on it and continue to replenish that shelf from a huge store room out the back. How do we judge in terms of the retail space compared to the storage space in terms of defining over provision? That is certainly in my experience of the Edinburgh licence board, convener. At the moment, they ask for applicants to have to stay in their operating plan and in their layout plan the size of their alcohol sales area in linear metres. Our concern was that if we really start to drill down into the issue of over provision and what will make an area of over provision, then the overall metering of alcohol sales area could come into play. You could almost put a cap on the sales area in a particular area and say that you cannot increase it at all. If for some reason, because of a short refit or changing customer needs, a retailer wanted to expand their alcohol sales area, it may be prevented from doing that because of a particularly strict over provision policy. However, the licence board should take into account the storage area, because in some regards it does not matter what the shelf area is, it is how you manage to keep that shelf stocked. Indeed, but it is only that shelf area that will only be open to the public, that is the only amount of alcohol that is on display on sale at any given time. Do you think that logically the storage area should also be taken into account then? I do not see why that would be helpful particularly. There have also been discussions within Edinburgh about whether or not the volume of alcohol that an applicant expects to sell should be included in their application. Again, I really do not see what utility that would bring. That would be quite difficult to define when we would imagine particularly for a new premise. Mr Waterson, I had the pleasure a number of years back of talking to your members at their AGM and Aberdeenham was surprised that a lot of the offline chat was about over provision and concerns from your members about what do you feel about the current set of circumstances with licensing boards? That is an argument that has been raging since before the 1976 act back to the days of Clayson report. Our position has not changed since then. Over provision is included in the act, which means that it is a grounds for refusal. It is recognised and principle, so how do we make it work? We have heard the detail this morning of should you take that into consideration and all those controversial items come up from time to time. We have had some boards in 2010, for instance, when Westin-Bartonshire came up with an approach that we thought was novel and took into account a whole range of factors and decided that their whole area was over-provided. Then, due to board changes, that fell apart. All the work that we all did in the Westin-Bartonshire situation with others fell apart. We have seen controversy in Edinburgh where board changes or political attitudes or whatever after Edinburgh deciding that all licences would be refused. How do we, without going into all those details and all the arguments that rage about it, our position has always been that there should be a freeze on the numbers? Numbers would be frozen. It would not stop development because licences would be transferred in the system. There is plenty room for development of new premises. If you wanted to open the premises, you would have to have licences to value, same and similar kind, so square footage, you would have to have that amount of licences and so on. It does not stop development, it actually helps development and gives confidence into development, remembering that over-provision is in the act, so it is up to us to try and make it work. That is the only way we can see it working. It happens in Northern Ireland with some success. What can be worse for development of our trade than the whole liquor licence and sales in Scotland being controlled by five or six operators? If that does not stop development, I do not know what it does. How do we try and get some balance back into the market in Scotland? The ultimate situation with over-provision is that you get over-competition, and it is over-competition that is responsible for the downward pressure on price, which creates the problems that we have had to try and implement minimum unit pricing, which our Governments decided to have. If minimum unit pricing is a short-term answer to this cut pricing and a general race to the bottom and a deterioration in standards, then over-provision is a long-term answer to that. We want a trade that is based on quality of premises, not on quantity. The committee has received a petition, which we are looking at as part of our scrutiny of the community empowerment bill, about the major supermarket chains taking over smaller premises and high streets that they express in stores without naming the actual supermarket. Are those the kind of businesses' bodies that you think are taking over the market? It is the blitzkrieg that is going through the supermarket. I certainly do not speak for convenience stores, but through time we have seen the sites happening in Edinburgh. The best sites will be snapped up by the big operators, and we will lose independent operators. It is the same in the on-trade, and I certainly do not want to lose independent operators, because that gives people choice. Independent operators will be left with the scraps. They will be forced further and further out and will end up, as we have already, with five or six operators dominating the alcohol market in Scotland. The figures are there to prove it, and I do not think that that is good for competition. I do not think that it is good in any sense. We have got to try, and I think that legislation is there in licensing, to redress that balance. If we want to make over-provision work, there are a host of arguments for and against the implementation of it. It is a numbers game, and it should be a numbers game. I stress that, within those numbers, licenses can be transferred, and development can still take place. People do not understand that. When they see the numbers frozen, they think that they can never get a new opening, or that they can never transfer licenses within the system. That is not right, and that will help development not to stop it. Before I bring in Mr McGill and Mr Lee, would you like to comment on those operators coming into the High Street? I am aware of the petition that you mentioned. The fact is that our members are under severe pressure from the organisation that is named in the petition and from other big operators like them. I am not here to defend them or speak up on their behalf. I do not even want to do them a favour. However, we think that each application has to be judged on its merits, regardless of who it comes from. We do not think that we can be anti-competitive or anti-trade, so the focus for any licence board has to be to judge an individual application on its merits, regardless of who it comes from. I certainly would endorse the point that each application should be on its own merits, and that is long been the case and should continue to be so. The institute's response in relation to over-provision focuses on the aspect of introducing licenced hours in terms of over-provision, which is in clause 54 of the proposed bill. Our comment to the committee on that would be that there is an on-going issue over a concept known as the duty to trade. The duty to trade in short compass says that a licence premises must be open throughout its licenced hours—a duty to remain open during the hours that are granted. That concept is one that very few licencing practitioners agree with. The vast majority—if not a full majority—of licencing practitioners, both in private and from local authority practice, believe that there is no duty to trade. Therefore, my comment to the committee on over-provision would be to note that if licenced hours are to be a factor of over-provision, it would be helpful if the law confirmed that there was no duty for a licency to have to open through all of the hours in his or her licence. The wording that refers to this used to exist in the 76 act. There was a specific section in that act, which said that a licency does not have to trade the hours in his licence. That wording was not carried through to the 2005 act, and the institute would very much like to see that wording be reintroduced if clause 54 is to be enacted in relation to licenced hours. That is my submission on over-provision. On the licencing hours issue and the proposal within the bill to include licenced hours as part of the over-provision assessment, do you have any comments on that, Mr Waterson? That is just another point of detail that has to be taken into account. The argument will rage about that too. Part-time people are opening all the hours that they say they are opening. It just goes into the detail even more and makes boards' job far more difficult. Mr Lee? I have no real desire to see the hours extended or anything like that, convener. Thank you very much. Cameron Buchanan, please. Good morning, panel. I just wanted to take up the point about occasional licences and members' clubs. How do you regulate those occasional licences and private clubs? Do you think that they should be regulated in the same way? The position under the 2005 act is that a voluntary organisation can apply for an occasional licence for its premises. The effect of that is to allow the public in. In normal circumstances, a licenced club premises would have members, and members of the public could be signed in as guests of those members. The occasional licence route circumvents that and allows members of the public access to those premises. We are aware of issues across various licensing authorities in Scotland who have concerns over the regulation of club premises. The 2005 act is existing and provides various exemptions to certain aspects of the Licensing Act for Club Premises, one of which is that they do not have to name a premises manager in the same way that bars and off-sales do. There have been concerns raised by some licensing authorities in Scotland that clubs are not as well regulated as public access premises such as pubs, bars and off-sales. It would be a matter of policy for the Scottish Parliament to decide whether or not further regulation was merited for clubs. Mr Waterson, do you have a view on that? I mean another problem that we thought would be attended to in the 2005 act was not. Clubs were registered in the old act. Clubs were registered under the sheriff. There was no police entry to clubs, which we thought was not a good situation. We knew there were some problems. Some clubs are very well run, but some definitely aren't. Under the 2005 act being licensed, we thought that would be the beginning of the end of badly run clubs. We would get police entry into them, but they did not take into account the constitutions of the clubs. Many clubs simply run as pubs with all the advantages that they have as registered clubs. It is a ridiculous situation where they are competing now as pubs. In some cases, part of them are licensed and part of them are still the club. The club people cannot get in because the public are in. The original reason that they were formed is that those people cannot even get into them. It is a very difficult situation for us to take the public being allowed into these clubs on numerous occasions throughout the year. We would like to see those loopholes in the law filled in some registered clubs continuing to be what they were meant to be for the members of the clubs and not the general public. They are making money from that. Mr Lee, it is a bit out of your sphere, but do you have any comment? I have no knowledge of clubs. Do you think that it is giving them an unfair business advantage then? It is an unfair business advantage to start with because they do not pay rates the way normal premises. There are other advantages that they have. The whole basis is that it is unfair to start with. If you then say to them that you can have these occasional licenses throughout the year and the public are allowed in, they become big businesses. Some clubs are very well run. There is no doubt about that, but some definitely bend the rules and it is an unfair situation.  We should certainly be going back to when the constitution was taken into account and members had to sign people in and the other rules and regulations allied to the fact that they are now licensed. I think that it would close a lot of that, but the constitution must be part of the licence. The constitution must get taken into account and they should not just be allowed to trade with these occasional licenses consistently until it becomes their main business. The main reason that they are there is to make money. It is just a point of clarification that might be useful. Under the current act, there is a limit on the number of occasional licenses that can be sought by a club premises, which is up to a maximum of 56 days in a calendar year. There is a bit more to it than that, but that is the clear club. For the pubs of today, 56 days in a calendar year is the maximum, but the other point that I think would be useful for committee members to note is that there has been a number of club premises that have varied their licence to make them effectively a full public access premises, albeit that they might still have a constitution and still in the face of it might appear to be a member's club because they have changed the conditions of their licence. They are allowed full public access. There are a number of premises in Edinburgh and across the whole country, where club premises have historically been based on members and bona fide guests, but because they have had their licence varied, they are now allowed public access without any of those rules of playing. John Wilson, please. Just to go back to some of the questioning that the convener started with this morning, that is the issue about licensing boards being able to define the whole local authority area in relation to overprovision. Do you think that that is adequate or do you think that it goes too far? Because when you think of, say, the Highlands, and if Highlands make a decision based on overprovision and overmess, how that impacts on other towns and villages around the Highlands may stop anyone opening up a small retail outlet in Wick or Thursill. What would be the panel's view on that issue about the whole local authority area being defined for overprovision? Mr Lee, first, please. Thank you, Mr Wilson. That is a very good question. I think that your point about a very large local authority area, such as Highlands, is a very opposite one. We feel that it is going too far. We think that a locality approach should always be taken down to local data zone level. Again, looking at the application on its merits, taking into consideration any points, any comments, any objections from the police, health agencies and so on. We really think that a blanket approach to overprovision, taking the whole geographical area, really is a step too far. We wouldn't encourage boards to be encouraged to do so under the new licensing act. However, it would have a knock-on effect in an area such as Highlands. If the main target was a busy urban area such as Inverness, it could have a knock-on effect on local independent convenience stores in rural areas, which are very important to those areas. To put simply, we think that it is a step too far. Mr Waters, please. Of course, we want the area to be the whole of Scotland, so you know our answers to that. I think that licensing boards are in a very difficult position in this. If a licensing board was to say their whole area, which we believe they could have done that anyway, if, for instance, a development was to try to get a licence in that area, we decided to move into the next area, it could cause a problem for them with their constituents and so on. Simply moving the licensing around because one area has a less lax over provision policy is not a good situation for boards to be in. They worry about that. They are also under great pressure from the bigger operators. There is certainly a two-tier decision-making system going on with licensing boards and over provision. What I mean by that is that they are very worried about the financial problems if they are appealed. They know that the bigger companies will appeal, perhaps the independent trade does not have the finance to appeal, so they will look upon the bigger developments more favourably than others. Again, this whole question about what the area should be becomes part of the argument. We have heard the other side of the argument here, so there is only one way to sort that out is to make the whole country with no boundaries, again stressing that within the system licences can be transferred to different areas within the system. Just to expand on that, Mr Waterson, you are basically saying as far as you are concerned that you would like the whole of Scotland to be categorised in terms of over provision. In a situation where, for example, Glasgow or Edinburgh, two major cities have a lot of bars and a lot of licences within the city centres, how does that work out? As an example, I used in terms of Thursday or Wick, when somebody applies for a licence and based on your analogy, then because of the over provision in Edinburgh or Glasgow, somebody may be denied an off-sales licence in Wick? It is interesting in rural areas because we have had so many closures in many villages in Scotland that have now lost their pub. If licences were transferred within the system, then it would give confidence to people to go into those areas in open places because licences are transferred within the system. Just because you have got one or two good pubs in a village does not mean that you are of three. You can have three bad ones then because the market is split up and we have seen the three close. It can be managed so that places that have lost their pubs could actually get them back. I think that we all know that when a village or somewhere a community loses their pub, they can lose their meeting place, their heart. I think that with having the numbers, that can be managed a lot better. If you go into Glasgow or Edinburgh, the circuits of pubs that are bigger and bigger and bigger, it is not just the numbers now, it is the capacity of them. There are enough. I do not think that anybody could. Over provision is agreed, it is how we do it, and that is why we think to take all the controversy away. The number system works. It works in Northern Ireland. I do not see any problem with development of pubs in Northern Ireland. There is a good spread of pubs in the north. It seems to work okay. I do not see the problem. Again, there is this over competition consistently. Although we are seeing a rate of closures, which probably proves the point anyway, the market can change. It can overheat again. That has happened. It has happened in the 1980s and the 1990s. It has been down again. There was closures and it has grown again. The constant opening, more and more people opening, can create problems. First, I would say that the institute's position is that the existing law does allow licensing boards to set their whole jurisdiction as an area of over provision, notwithstanding that the bill seeks to allow that. There was, perhaps, from one or two quarters a concern that the existing terms of the act did not allow it, but the institute's position is that the act currently does allow it. Indeed, there are examples. The Highland Board, for example, has an over provision area of the whole of the Highland Board area, but only for off-sales premises where the display of alcohol is 40 metres squared or greater. That is a very good example of a local licensing board taking a very specific approach to over provision. I can give you another example of how the licensing boards are defining areas rather than going for the whole area, how they pick or choose areas within their locality. Glasgow is a good example to use Mr Wilson's comment about cities. The Glasgow licensing board policy on over provision is not based on where there are the most number of premises. It is based on where there is the most harm as a result of irresponsible sale or consumption of alcohol, so there are, from memory, eight or nine small areas within the city of Glasgow that are deemed to be over provided, but they are based on evidence that was presented to the Glasgow board in relation to health harms and crime of disorder. For example, Sucky Hall Street is not an over provision area, albeit that it is a very busy part of Glasgow, so that is another local approach. There are various other examples that I could give you from across Scotland. Mr Lee, you wanted to come back in. Sorry, John. It was just to say to follow up on Mr Wilson's question, convener. I think that another problem with a blanket approach to over provision is that it would not necessarily take account of the different types of premises that we are applying for a licence. For example, the figures that we quoted in our written submission for Edinburgh, which apologies, may be out of date now. Edinburgh has roughly 449 restaurants, 428 bars and pubs, but only 243 are licensed convenience stores, so I really don't think that the city is over provided for in terms of the convenience store it has, so a blanket policy on over provision I think would not take into account the differences between different premises and what they are actually offering and the role that alcohol plays in their business model. Just in relation to Mr McGowan's response, the issue is that in quite rightly the identified Sucky Hall Street is not included in over provision in Glasgow, but there are five or seven localities where there seem to be health issues with alcohol. Has there been any work done by the trade or by the licensing boards in terms of the type of alcohol being sold by off licences? The problem looking at is the issue that we constantly get bombarded with is the cheap spirits and the tonic wine sales in particular areas, whereas traditionally the convenience store having an off licence was on the basis of, if somebody wanted a bottle of wine with their meal, the traditional attitude that an off licence in a convenience store would be granted. Has there been any work done in terms of monitoring the types of sales that are taking place in the off licence trade in those particular areas that seem to be suffering most from alcohol abuse? I think that each board has dealt with this differently. Mr Wilson, in some boards have dealt with it with greater evidence than others. To come back to the Highland example, if you look at the Highland licensing policy in over provision, you will see that they took considerable evidence from various parties, including the NHS, Alcohol Focus Scotland and others, about the health-related issues in the area. From memory, I think that the Highland board took the view that the issues that they experienced and were seeing in the area were more about off sales than on sales, and that is why they formed the view of setting an over provision policy based on off sales of large premises with large displays and did not set an over provision policy in relation to on sales. There are other examples in other areas, East and Bartonshire, West and Bartonshire, where evidence has been led by various stakeholders and licensing boards have responded to that. Some licensing boards have taken up on themselves to go and investigate these matters, but I suspect that the vast majority are responding to the consultation responses that have been put before them in terms of their policy formulation. Mr Waterson? The best example, I think, is the West and Bartonshire example, where they took all these factors into account in 2010 and came up with one of the worst areas for alcohol abuse in the country. It fell apart due to board changes, so it is not sustainable. All that work that was done and it was done for the right reasons, and I thought that the approach was novel. It was a fair approach, it seemed a workable approach, and it fell apart. And that was down to personnel change on the board itself that made that? Yeah, I think that's right. You know, they have allowed a couple of licences to open. It's big operators that opened there. I think that they were under pressure because one of the big operators said they would move to another licensing board area, and they believed that they would lose those jobs. I would argue with that, but they believed that it would create jobs and the electorate believed that, and I think that they were under pressure. That's what happens in all these situations. People come along, it happened in Edinburgh where they come to a decision and it's not sustainable. I think that it's very difficult for us as a committee to look at individual areas that we're not aware of or the circumstances within those areas. Do you think that there is any licensing board out there who have had a long-term strategic plan in regards to some of those issues and have stuck to that plan, no matter what the personnel changes on the board may be, and is that the way that it should be done to have that strategic plan, but of course some flexibility if required? My experience is no. Some have had over-provisioned policies, but for one reason or another they fall apart. Just to mention, convener, and I'm sure the committee may be aware of this, my understanding is that licensing boards' statements of licensing policy last for three years, so that's roughly the time frame for their overall approach. I'm not sure there will be any utility in extending that to four or five years, or whatever. That's probably time enough, I would say. Alec, is it at this point? Yeah, just at this point. I had intended to come back in on Mr Waterson in terms of when you mentioned the two-tier licensing system, and asked the committee to clarify that a bit more, but I think you perhaps have done when you talked about Weston Barton and the idea of supermarket and jobs. Is that the problem, and how realistic is it therefore to have this policy over provision if it's not going to be implemented? What can a pressure as licensing boards on, or how useful would it be to have such a policy? We're not saying don't open supermarkets or saying they shouldn't be licensed. We can open what they want, but we're talking about licensing here. The argument about jobs will rage about supermarkets and the amount of jobs that they take off other places, but it puts boards under pressure when they have all the resources behind these big companies and they can play the system for three years. If you're building a massive operation, three years isn't too long to wait. Two, A, exhaust the objections. For instance, in some areas where new licences are on and off trade, people have objected to them, they play the system and one by one the objections fall apart as time takes over. You can't blame people for that because simply the applicant withdraws the application in weights. If you've got 50 objections, the second time it's lodged, there might only be 20, the third time it's lodged is 10, you keep withdrawing it and eventually people are exhausted because they've got to go to the boards and community councils are thwarted in that. They lose the objection process, but the reasons haven't changed why they're objecting and usually now the objections are very valid, so the system's wrong in that respect. Should there be some kind of co-operation between licensing boards in these regards then? In what sense? In the fact that if Weston Bartonshire and one of the neighbouring authorities say Glasgow, should there not be some kind of agreement around about certain of the licence provision in the areas of the boundary, if you like? I'll always remember going to a licensing board many years ago when I asked them if they could copy another licensing board and they said to me, no, we always do the opposite of what they do, so there's not a lot of communication between boards and in some cases they could be in conflict with each other in terms of these jobs, so might suit one area to say, well, we want that if they think there's more jobs in it, so there's conflict between boards, between some boards. It's because of that that you've got to make the area wider. I'm going back into history now, but you have a situation certainly in the city of Aberdeen where there are licence premises and what one would have thought would have been quite strange places, but they were built there basically because at that point they were right with the city boundary and the traveller's rule applied on Sundays in particular and obviously there was not a huge amount of co-operation at that point between boards and your argument would be that there should be a Scotland-wide scenario so that those conflicts don't exist. I might be argued that there's too many anyway. I know that Nicholson that was when we gave this to Nicholson committee, which I didn't think was a very good argument. There's too many anyway, so what difference will it make? Well, it would make a difference. Mr McGirran, you were about to come back in. Yeah, it's just a couple of minor observations on the point about policy periods and the three-year licensing policy. It is, of course, proposed in this bill that that would be increased to five years, which my understanding is because local members of licensing boards sometimes felt hamstrung coming in following a local council election with the policy of their predecessors and that perhaps the policy should be linked to council terms rather than trianally, so I think that perhaps is helpful. The other minor observation that I wanted to make was, in relation to Mr Rowley's comment about jobs and employment and licensing boards taking that into account. The Western Bartshire policy on this is quite clear that Western Bartshire takes into account the health benefits of employment, that they looked at evidential studies that demonstrated that there were health benefits as a result of employment and their policy was amended in relation to overprovision to allow the board to take into account jobs and the employment and the health benefits that could be brought through the creation of jobs. The Western Bartshire licensing board has been quite specific on that particular point and is probably more advanced than a number of the other licensing boards because they were one of the first to introduce that large overprovision policy that they did back in 2010. Thank you very much. Willie Coffey, please. Thank you very much, convener, and good morning to you. First, could you just clarify what you were saying there, Mr McGowan, about lining up the licence term to the same period of term as the council terms? I suppose that you were in the last year of the council, would you be suggesting that it's only granted for a year until the council? Mr McGowan, please. The current position, Mr Coffey, is that the licensing policies are for three years and because of the way the act came into force, it was from 2010 to 2013, 2013 to 2016. My understanding is that the bill as proposed seeks to change that to a five-year term based on council term so that when a new council comes in and a new board is established, that they effectively can rewrite their own policy at that point rather than perhaps having a one or two-year overhang of the policy of their predecessors. That, I believe, is something that has been requested by the boards themselves through this process. It was to give you, Mr McGowan, in particular an opportunity to tell us a wee bit about some of the issues that you raised at the beginning. You talked about transfers and Mr Waterson talked about transfers, maybe the pros and cons associated with that, issues relating to provisional licences where there isn't a building, and you also mentioned about the status of surrendered licences. Could you maybe tell us a wee bit more about what your concerns are here? I'm very grateful for that opportunity, can I say, first of all, and I will endeavour to be as brief as possible. I think, unanimously, transfers would be the number one on the hit list of requests for licensing solicitors and practitioners for the Parliament to look at, and we have asked the licensing solicitors across the country, I've asked the Parliament on a number of occasions to look at this, so I will ask for it again. The position with transfers under the act, that is someone coming in to take over an existing licence premises happens all the time. Normally it would be because the premises has been bought or sold or leased to a new tenant, but it can also happen through the death of a licence, the licence perhaps being declared mentally incapable or becoming insolvent. So there are a number of different ways in which a licence might have to be transferred, but the act doesn't deal with it in a correct manner. First of all, it completely ignores dissolution of companies, so there is no provision in the act for what happens to a licence, which is held where a company has been dissolved, and we're left scrabbling around trying to come up with some sort of fix with the goodwill of licensing clerks to try and keep premises trading where these issues have come around. Property transactions convencing, the licensing act doesn't take account of the reality of property transactions in Scotland and how they're done. There are issues with that in terms of the on-going operation of a premises and the licensing act reacting to a simple case of a pub being bought and sold. That happens almost every day, one could say, and yet the act doesn't adequately deal with it. The other point is that the act doesn't allow for what I'm going to call a deemed grant of a transfer, so in other words it doesn't allow someone to go in to trade straight away whilst there is a transfer pending in the background. That's the case in England and Wales. The 2003 licensing act allows the incoming owner of the premises to go in and trade having bought the premises or taken a lease prior to the full grant of the transfer. I hope that I'm correcting saying just about every other licensing solicitor that there is in Scotland that would very much endorse the Parliament to look south of the border and look at the provisions under the 2003 act for transfers. I should say on this point that I know that the Law Society Licensing Subcommittee of which I should say I am also a member has offered to assist the Parliament with drafting in relation to this point, so I would certainly wish you to take them up on their offer. For that point, provisional licences, licences where there is not yet a building constructed or where it's under construction. Under the old 1976 act there was a process called a site-only provisional which would allow you to lodge a new licence application for a premises which had not yet been built or constructed but without having to put in full detailed plans. Now the current system that we have in the 2005 act doesn't allow that and the institute and other practitioners would like to see us go back to the 1976 position where an applicant would be able to put in what was known as a site-only application. Now the difficulties with this and why it's being asked for is that it's very hard to produce an architect's drawing for a premises which might be three years off being built. It's very hard to present a full application Can I stop you there? Is there a conflict here with planning legislation? Obviously a licensing board might find it difficult to grant a licence for a building that had not yet been given planning approval and it may be seen by the general public as being a fate, a complete of planning for a licence premises being given the go ahead if a licence has already been granted. Planning would always be the predecessor and what I'm proposing to you this morning is not to move away from that. The act currently requires before you can even lodge an application for a liquor licence that planning is in place. This proposal for a site-only application would not negate that. Planning permission would still have to be in place. It's just that the full level of where the bar will be, where the seating will be would not need to be demonstrated at that very early point and why that is needed is because it puts off investment. A number of developments are based on capital ventures, loans from banks etc and that funding very often can't be secured unless the parties know that there's going to be a licence in place. At these early stages and developments where planning is in place but the full details of the premises layout is not yet known, it's very difficult for those developments to proceed because they don't have the certainty of knowing that a licence will be in place so that commercial certainty would be greatly useful and if the Parliament could consider reintroducing that site only style application that would be very useful. Happy to give any ancillary points on that by written submission if that would help the committee and then finally and thank you for indulging us on surrenders of licences. The issue here is that the act in the institute's view doesn't deal with surrenders of licences particularly well, it allows a licence to be surrendered but the problem is it doesn't say what the status of that licence is thereafter, does the licence exist, does it not exist, is it in the ether somewhere. So there's a problem with that and the problem is where a licence is surrendered. Sometimes that's for very legitimate reasons and it's because a premise is no longer wishes to trade and that's accepted but there are also examples of licences being surrendered out of spite. If you consider a situation where you have a landlord and a tenant and the landlord, the owner of the premises, has allowed his tenant to hold the licence, they fall out, rent hasn't been paid, whatever the case might be, the tenant out of spite surrenders the licence and the landlord is left with a pub with no licence which is not the best situation for that landlord to be in. So the institute and other licencing petitioners would like the Parliament to redress this in some way by dealing one way or the other with what happens to a licence after it's been surrendered. Either say it's gone for good and that's it, in which case we know that that's the case, or allow the licence to be restarted in some way, perhaps by transferring it back to the landlord or to another party. Under the 1976 act, there was no specific provision for surrender albeit that some parties did write to the licencing board and say, I've surrendered this licence, but those licences could be retrieved by way of a transfer. We can't do that under the 2005 act because there is that specific surrender provision which didn't exist before. So one way or the other we would like to have that cleared up. Either the licence is gone and that's it, or allow the affected landlord or whoever to reactivate the licence perhaps by way of a transfer application. Thank you for your time on that. Can I take John in just a second? Just for clarification Mr McGowan, because included in the legislation is the issue about the fit and proper person. I'm not saying there are landlords out there who aren't fit and proper persons, but if the licence holder is carrying out the trade then decides to surrender then it does raise concern for me anyway that if you're saying the licence should be held or transferred to the landlord and there's also other issues that you mentioned about the application of licences and determination of whether or not a transfer can take place on sale or surrender of the licence premises to someone who may not be deemed as being a fit and proper person by the board. So what safeguards would you want to see put in the legislation to ensure that on the scenario you gave where a licence holder decides through spite to give up that licence and surrender that licence to ensure that the landlord that the board may decide or be asked to transfer that licence to is a fit and proper person to actually hold that licence or retain that licence? Because there is a conflict I think in terms of trying to make sure that we have a fit and proper person test in amongst that and as I said we might have a scenario where the landlord may not be deemed fit and proper and that's why they don't hold the licence to those premises. The institute certainly supports the proposal to reintroduce the fit and proper test and I think most people in this system do support the fit and proper test being reintroduced. I've got some separate comments about that in relation to police intelligence but I'll perhaps leave that for the moment and if there's a chance later I can speak about that. So the reintroduction to the fit and proper test we support and that would certainly go some way to address the concern that you raised but there are existing safeguards in the system Mr Wilson that any transfer application that's lodged is capable of being refused first of all by a licensing board and it's also capable of being objected to by Police Scotland. Every single transfer that's lodged is reported on by the police. The police always send a report every single time a transfer is lodged and the police will say, this person has no convictions and we don't object although we say this person does have convictions and therefore we do object but they can also say even where there are no convictions the police can still object to the transfer of the licence. This is in the existing law where they believe the licensing objectives would be prejudiced by the grant of that transfer so there are existing safeguards in the system already. The fit and proper test will supplement that. Okay Willi, please. Sorry. Just to briefly come back in on the issue about surrender, were you saying there that it's possible, circumstances are possible, where licenses can be lost permanently because of that process or do they get recycled within the system and transferred? Is it possible that they're lost? Yes, the act has this phrase ceases to have effect and this is part of the issue here is that the act doesn't define what that actually means and there is a debate amongst licensing practitioners about whether this phrase ceases to have effect means it's gone forever or whether it means it's somewhere in the ether and can be reactivated. And the solution to that would be what? Well it would be one or the other, it's probably a matter for the Parliament in terms of policy but you either decide it's gone or you decide it can be reactivated but let's have a decision one way or the other. I think that the practitioner's preference would be to allow a licence to be reactivated by a transfer rather than having it be lost forever but I would put it to the Parliament that it would be of a matter for the Parliament to decide on which of those two options would be preferable as a matter of policy but let's have one or the other. Presumably Mr Waterson, you would prefer to see them recycled and transferred if that was the case. I mean we need clarification on it. Thank you very much. Could I go back to the issue of the proposal for a provisional site only licence? He said that that would be to give a degree of confidence to investors that there would be a licence on the premises should it go ahead with the proposed bill but in my understanding the licence in board would have to make their decision on whether or not it was appropriate to give the licence on the final layout of that premises and that it met all the requirements in terms of licensing. In terms of it, it isn't really a guarantee that the licence in board will offer a licence because they have to make their decision better in the final build. I'm kind of like having difficulty seeing what kind of confidence or help that that would offer going forward. It is a two-stage process. The provisional licence process, as existing as a two-stage process, so you have the provisional licence granted but then there is a second process which is called confirmation and at that point the licensing board effectively revisit the application based on the work having been done and based on environmental health inspecting the premises to make sure that it is compliant in terms of foot hygiene. So when a provisional licence is granted it cannot be traded from until such times as that second process has been going through. To get the second process confirmed you have to show the licensing board that you've met all the building regulations and that the premises has been built safely. You have to show the licensing board that you've passed kitchen checks and that your sinks have clean. You also have to tell the licensing board who's going to be the named day-to-day manager of the premises and then you also if there have been any changes in terms of the layout or so and you have to in some cases vary the provisional licence to show the board what the layout would be. So there wouldn't be a case that a licensing board would confirm a provisional licence without knowing what the final layout was. That would always, as part of the existing process but the difficulty at the moment is that you can't lodge your application as early as some developers and prospective applicants would like because they don't have that final layout but the final layout will always be known by the licensing board when it gets to confirmation stage. I'm having difficulty in seeing how a licensing board could even do a provisional licence if they were not able to see what you're describing as maybe an empty box. How a provisional licence could be granted on that basis when none of those provisions have been demonstrated to a licensing board? With the 1976 act you have 30 years of experience of licensing boards granting site-only provisional licences without that system falling into disrepute. Under the new system licensing plans, the layout of the premises are always a fiction with a provisional licence and this is part of the reason why we're asking for this. It's slightly odd that you have to invent a layout simply to get the application lodged when you don't know that that will actually be the final layout. Can I also go back to the club issue that was raised by my colleague Mr Buchanan? He said that they don't have to say that they have a registered manager for a club when they're getting the licence approved. Do all the other provisions about certificated people selling alcohol, do those all still apply to a club? Yes, the staff training regulations do apply which require anyone involved in the sale or supply of alcohol to have a minimum two-hour training on various different topics. I think there's 16 in total. Staff members still have to do the training. It's just that they don't have to have a named day-to-day manager or personal licence holder. Certainly, many clubs do have personal licence holders on the books, as it were, but they might not be named on the licence as a day-to-day manager of that premises. I'll ask you on the bill, on the creation of the offence of supplying alcohol to someone who's under 18. That's obviously changed from what it used to be. Can you inform the committee what difficulties you see may well arise from that, particularly the retailers and the staff? It's a good question. It relates to a big issue for us, which is proxy purchase. Unfortunately, there are adults over the age of 18 who are willing to buy alcohol on behalf of young people. Generally, we are supportive of the idea of the supply of alcohol to young people of being in offence. However, as you imply, there will always be issues about the enforcement of that. It's not an easy one to crack. I think that the way to address it is through a multi-agency approach. We are, as I mentioned at the beginning, involved in a project called the East Edinburgh Community Alcohol Partnership. It's based in Portobello in Pierce Hill in Edinburgh. The idea of that is to look at underage drinking specifically and the issue of proxy purchases. We feel that because retailers have been very successful in implementing the Challenge 25 regime in store, the kind of problem has sort of been shifted out with the store. There is very little now that responsible retailers can do on this problem. We think that we have to bring in police, social services, education, the local community generally to look at cracking this problem. The only way we can do that is by establishing things like community alcohol partnerships. This new offence might be part of that. There will be problems of enforcement, but I think that the only way that we can really crack that problem is by broadening it, looking at what happens in store, looking at what happens within the wider community and within the home. That's the only way that we're really going to address that issue of proxy purchase and really make this new offence workable. Of course, we don't have the same problems with proxy purchase, so I have some sympathy with convenience stores on that. We certainly support the additional new offence regarding supply of alcohol to children. The history of our involvement with trying to stop underage drinking and all the agencies that were involved in it shows that we're determined to try and sort that out, but not just simply moving it on to someone else to worry about it. Can I say, Mr Waterson, that you're saying that you have no problem with proxy purchasing? I realise that most of the folk that you're representing are pubs and hotels, etc. There are situations that I've seen in the past, particularly with licensed premises without door areas, where folk have gone in to the pub to buy drink for underage folk who are drinking outside of that pub, so I wouldn't go as far as saying that that would be an impossibility. Before I bring you back in, I think that Clare Youde had a point here. It was just really to clarify how that would affect premises selling food, if at all, in terms of a child who was out with their parents for a meal, and what the effect would be on a family home for a parent who offered alcohol to a young person in the family home as part of a meal in that sort of social setting. Who wants to pick up on that, gentlemen? Mr McGillan? The bill's proposed creates a definition of where this offence would apply, which is public place, so it wouldn't apply to domestic residences, and I think that church premises religious establishments are mentioned there as well. Generally, the institute welcomes this as a tightening up of the offences. I think that the issue was here historically that the offence was tied to being on licensed premises as opposed to outside of licensed premises, and of course the police have had an issue with that for a number of years, so the institute certainly welcomes this being tightened up. That's me, I'm finished. Okay, thanks. I'm dying for me to ask this question, Mr McGillan, and that's whether it's appropriate for a licensing board to consider police intelligence, which is not necessarily being corroborated in any way, and of course spent convictions as part of their investigations into whether an applicant is a fit and proper person. Thank you for that opportunity, convener. I should say, as I have done already, that the institute firmly supports the reintroduction of a fit and proper test. We very much see it as a good thing for the trade. At the end of the day, I think that all of the stakeholders involved in the licensing system want to see alcohol sailed and consumed responsibly, and the fit and proper person test would certainly assist that. The concern is that there has been reference to in assessing whether someone is fit and proper and that that would open the door to the use of police intelligence, in other words, unknown and unseen evidence as to whether or not a person was unfit. If I can deal with that point, the institute's position is that there are human rights implications, where you have a police letter suggesting that someone should not hold a licence, but they will not tell you why. The institute's submission on that should not be founded upon by a licensing board right to a fair trial. Human rights implications certainly apply in those circumstances. The police have very good reasons why they might not be able to introduce certain intelligence, perhaps there is on-going investigations, perhaps there is undercover work going on, and that is the reason why they cannot produce that level of detail. However, the institute's position would be that it is not correct to point a finger at someone and say, we do not want you to get a licence, but we are not telling you why. Licensing boards cannot really deal with that type of situation. It is perfectly open at the moment to the police to endeavour to introduce police intelligence. I have certainly, in my other capacity as a private practice solicitor, appeared in hearings where intelligence of that sort has been led, but I have to say that licensing boards find it very difficult to respond to deal to that level of detail, because there is no detail. I would imagine that licensing boards would be wary of finding unfitness in those circumstances because they will be aware that applicants who have had licences refused on those grounds would probably run off to the sheriff with an appeal. My perception would be that a sheriff would not take the police intelligence or should say that the licensing board should not have taken that police intelligence into account. Perception there, would it? Perception?  Yes, indeed. Very often the police will have very legitimate concerns about an applicant, and it may well be that that applicant is perhaps, for example, someone who is involved in serious and organised crime, but even in those circumstances, if the evidence is not before the person and the person is not aware of what the charges against him are, how legitimately can a licensing board find that he is unfit without knowing what that evidence is? If a person within a licensing board was deemed to be able to get more information around about intelligence, as certain members of police boards have been able to in the past, would you say that that would maybe be a way around that? Well, not if the applicant is not made aware of it. Certainly it should not be appropriate for licensing board members to be given evidence that no one else has sight of and certainly not the applicant. I think that we have accepted that licensing decisions should be made by licensing authorities and not by the police. There is a concern that, in one of the proposals that has been mentioned, not in this bill by other parties, that you should have a police intelligence commissioner sat on licensing boards. Pointing the finger is necessary, but without giving any further information, it would be something that the institute would firmly be opposed to. Can I ask you then, because we have concentrated on the intelligence aspect of it, do you differentiate between intelligence and spent convictions? Yes, there is a separate point to be made about spent convictions. First of all, spent convictions are not currently allowed to be considered by licensing boards at all. I would think that the Parliament would have to take evidence from Police Scotland that the licence trade has fallen into disrepute as a result of not being able to consider spent convictions before proceeding to enact the allowance of licensing boards to consider spent convictions. The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act is there to allow people to move on with their lives. That is something that has to be borne in mind. There is a difference between certain categories of employment that are not covered by the rehabilitation of offenders, such as other licences, i.e. taxi drivers, private hire drivers, are not entitled to not disclose their spent convictions. In my mind, there is a difference between a taxi driver who is in an enclosed space with an individual and someone working behind a bar in a public place. I think that there are different considerations in relation to public protection on that basis. That is not a particularly busy bar and there is only the bar person and maybe one or the other person at a particular point in time. What I would say to that point is that if there is evidence that the inability to refer to spent convictions has brought the system into disrepute, I am not aware of it. Gentlemen, do you have anything else to add to this before I bring in Mr Wilson? We take a middle view there. We believe that, depending on the severity of the crime, the rehabilitation of offenders act should not apply, so the police and licensing boards would decide depending on the severity of the crime whether it should. We have the opinion that to hold a licence is a privilege. The premises manager and personal licence holders are the most important people involved in the whole process. They are the ones standing there selling alcohol in whichever outlet it is in. We welcome the reintroduction of fit and proper. I think that we should learn from 1976 when there was endless debates about what fit and proper meant and it should be defined clearly what we actually mean by that. If that takes into account training, age, rehabilitation of offenders act and some other elements, that will help us, but fit and proper discretion of everybody caused real problems after 1976. We have no real problems with the reintroduction of the test, but we feel that applicants should be able to see any evidence that is presented against them. I want to tease out the issue about the police information that is provided to licensing boards. At the end of the day, it is up to the board to decide whether or not to grant a licence. It is not up to the police, so any information that is provided by the police to a board in relation to an applicant, the board at the present time and, as I understand it in the future, would be able to note the information, whether that would be in relation to hard evidence and whether that would be spent convictions or other issues, and it would really be down to the discretion of the board whether or not they granted the licence. Is that not the case? Mr MacGavin is certainly down to the licensing board to make the decision and they have the ultimate discretion as to whether to grant the licence or not. In a practical situation, if you're before a licensing board and the police say, we don't like this guy, is that going to prejudice the licensing board without knowing what the full details of that information is? I think that that impinges upon the right to a fair trial. I'm equated to other issues such as planning where a number of organisations go along to planning committees and say, well, we don't like this application, therefore we are asking you to reject the planning application. I'll just equate that to the licensing board where the police and others can go along to a licensing board and say, well, we're not happy with this applicant. The intelligence of whatever it may be, the spent convictions, and I think that there are issues about what you term as a spent conviction for somebody applying for a licence, but ultimately the board has, as you've said yourself, final discretion on whether or not to grant a licence to whoever makes an application for a licence. That's certainly the case. The licensing board has the ultimate discretion, but I reiterate that the institute's position is that there is a human right dimension to the reference to police intelligence. The position would be that we do not believe that it's correct for an applicant to be faced with an allegation that is not substantiated or evidenced and has to have their prospective livelihood in balance at one of those hearings without knowing what that evidence is. I'll just tease this further. What happens if police intelligence goes to the licensing board and says, we suspect this person is involved in seriously organised crime, the licence that goes back to the point I raised earlier, about the licence application being made by someone on behalf of someone who owns the premises is the landlord, and the police do have the real evidence to say that the individual is involved in seriously organised crime, and the person that's making the application for the licence could be accused of being a front person, a front person for someone who is involved in seriously organised crime, and is effectively using criminal activities to fund the premises that somebody else applies for a licence for. Licensing boards will hear any evidence in place such way as they deem appropriate on evidence that's presented to them, but the evidence has to be sufficient and it has to be probative, and if it's neither of those things, then the decision could be overturned on appeal. This happened recently in Aberdeen with a case called Ask Entertainment's Limited versus Aberdeen Licensing Board, where a licensee had his licence revoked because of police information that was presented to the Aberdeen Board that a director of the licence holding company was connected to or involved with serious and organised crime, and the licence was revoked. The Aberdeen Sheriff Court overturned that decision on appeal because of the lack of sufficiency and probativity of the evidence that the police had presented, and that's the current state of play in terms of the case law under the act. You've offered supplementary submission covering transfer provisions, provisional licences, and surrender of licences. The committee would be grateful for that, and would it be possible to get that before Christmas? Absolutely. Thank you very much. Consider that present. Merry Christmas, Mr McGowan. Alex Rowley, please. Just truly to follow up on that, convener. Mr McGowan has set out these three areas where he believes that we should be looking further. I just ask the panel, is there any other areas within alcohol licensing where there is an opportunity to bring forward improvements that would make licensing more business friendly and support business more? Is there any other areas to those that you've set out there? Let's go with Mr Lee first, if you have anything. Consistency from boards would be very helpful. That's one of the main issues that our members face. I know that this is unlikely to happen, but the Scottish Government is looking at extending something called primary authority partnerships whereby businesses that operate across more than one local authority area can actually form a partnership with a single local authority in terms of compliance, enforcement, inspection and so on. I know that this is unlikely, but if in the future we were able to do that with alcohol licensing, that would be hugely beneficial to our members. So I think that an overall lack of consistency from boards is an on-going issue for our members. I would agree with that. It's this problem that we've always had since the formation of licensing boards and inconsistency sometimes at one board has raised its head on numerous occasions. So some form of consistency amongst local licensing boards I think would be really helpful to us. Thank you. Mr McGowan, please. I'm going to restrict myself to one request committee personal licenses. Some of the committee members may have seen that in the last week, somewhere in the region of approaching 10,000 personal licenses have been revoked as a result of failures in connection with training and notification of training to licensing boards. When you find yourself in a position that approaching 10,000 people have their license revoked, there must be something wrong somewhere. Now, this bill seeks to address this. Clause 57 of the bill seeks to address this issue by removing what I'm going to refer to as the five-year ban on personal licenses who have had their licenses revoked in these circumstances. But the bill may not come into play and into effect, I should say, for some time. I think that it's incumbent upon me to ask the Parliament to consider emergency legislation in relation to this particular point, to allow those 10,000 people to reapply for a personal license rather than having to wait for the act to come into force in perhaps a year's time or so. Again, I'm happy to supplement that by way of written submission to the committee. But 10,000 people, a very large section of the license trade community, and it would be great if the Parliament could look at that to see if that amendment could be brought back in. Perhaps not to restore those licenses, because they have been lost by the licence holder's own lack of notifying the board, but the five-year ban does seem pretty draconian. Mr McGillan, emergency legislation is not on the gift of this committee. It's a matter for government alone. Only they can introduce it. I'm sorry, but I'm very new to this committee on our first meeting last week, so I'm trying to get up to speed with it. Can you tell me how many personal licenses there are in Scotland at the moment, just to understand the scale of the 10,000? I would only be able to give you an estimate, because there's no national database, but estimates are between 35,000 and 40,000 personal licence holders across the whole of Scotland. The figures that we know about revocations at the moment at the last count were 7,600, but there are a number of licensing boards that have not given out the figures yet, and we anticipate that it could rise to 10 or perhaps even more, 10,000 or more. Obviously, there's a lot of people who will do bar work at a temporary time with their students at their younger to supplement initial jobs and things. Is there any indication of how much that is just that people have lapsed in that role? There will certainly be a percentage of the 10,000 that I've mentioned who have left the trade in some circumstances the licensee will have died. There will always be some of those factors involved, but even if you take into account people who have left the trade are not interested in having their licence for a bit of reason, there is still a very, very large number of people out there who, effectively, as a result of an administrative oversight, have lost their licence. Was that administrative oversight on their part or the part of the board? Yes, it is an administrative oversight on their part. The duty to undertake a fresher course within a set period and then notify that they've done that to the licensing board. I'm going to put a stop to this because at the end of the day, this is a bit out with the scope of what we're scrutinising here because this is a call for an emergency legislation and I think you're right to point out about whose responsibility this actually is. Alec, had you finished? I've finished. Okay, thank you. Finally, in terms of the many notes that we have on this particular subject, there's one point that sticks out for me in terms of the briefings that we've had and I've never served in a licensing board, I have to say. That point is that licensing boards must hold their meetings in public except that they are allowed to conduct deliberations in a point in private before making a decision in public. Now, over the years, I've had a lot of allegations about what goes on in the backroom from my own neck of the woods and also from elsewhere. Do you have any comment on the behaviours, the perceptions there are about certain aspects of these bits and pieces that are held in private? Mr McGowan? I've appeared before a great number of licensing boards in Scotland and some of them do retire to consider applications before giving a decision and yet others will do all of their discussions out in public. As a personal preference, I think that all of the debates and discussions should be held in public and that's my personal view, not the view of the institute because I've not canvassed the member's views on that particular point. As a personal view only, I would say that it is preferable that applicants can see what the issues are and what the issues that the board members feel are rather than have them retire to consider in private. Well, yes, I would agree with that. However, I think that sometimes I have seen boards with very controversial applications before them, not retire, and immediately vote on them without any discussion at all, you know, maybe look at each other and hands go up, which means that probably it might have been discussed before the meeting. I certainly agree that that works the opposite way round, that they're having no discussions afterwards. You talked about discussions beforehand. What about pre-meetings? Because, again, there's been allegations of pre-meetings in certain areas. Absolutely. I think that what Stephen Steele is saying is right, that any discussion should be held in public. Okay. Mr Lee, do you have a view on that? We would just always ask for the maximum amount of openness and transparency, convener. I think that the Edinburgh licensing forum is trying to move the board in the direction of podcasting and webcasting all of the discussions, so that may be a way forward. With that, I'd like to thank you, gentlemen, very much for your evidence today, and I suspend this meeting and we move on to private session.