Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)

I thank the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, for lending his support, and his considerable knowledge and expertise, to Amendment 71. In moving Amendment 71, I will also speak to Amendment 82. Amendment 82 is a consequential amendment, which would follow on from Amendment 71 if that amendment finds favour with the Government and your Lordships. I draw particular attention to the part of my amendment that says that a “local authority must have special regard to the desirability of preventing unreasonable restrictions” for a “business or facility resulting from the implementation of the development”. This goes to the argument set out in Amendment 71 as to why the agent of change principle needs to be adopted on a statutory basis. When I brought forward this issue in the Committee debate, the Minister replied that she felt it was already in the planning framework and that we did not need a statutory footing. I thank her for having a meeting with me in which we briefly touched on the agent of change principle. I draw her attention to the excellent letter from the Music Venue Trust, in which it expressed its concern about the agent of change principle not being on a statutory basis. As many noble Lords will be aware—I spent so longer preparing for my professional qualifications that I never experienced being a raver, but perhaps it is not too late—of the 366 small music venues in which Ed Sheeran played while learning his trade, over 150 have now closed. Of the 34 venues in which Oasis played to launch its members’ careers, only 11 remain. The figures speak for themselves. One concern at the moment is that the right noises are being made by the various departments, but they are not joined up. The Home Office, which is responsible for licensing, issued updated Section 182 guidance in February, which it went on to say should not be too onerous. I repeat that that guidance is not statutory. The Department of Business and Trade’s licensing task force, “made up of representatives from government, industry, police and local government”, published its policy paper report to government for consideration on 31 July 2025, updated on 14 August 2025, calling for reform and wide-ranging proposals, titled, Licensing Policy Sprint: Joint Industry and HM Government Taskforce Report—“sprint” is an odd word to use but is apparently the expression being used—recommendation 10 of which was to “Make the agent of change principle a factor that must be considered when making licensing decisions”. Then, of course, we have the Treasury which we understand is important in moving this Bill at pace through both Houses in order that it can be on the statute book as soon as possible. We also have the Department for Business and Trade policy paper. If the Minister is responsible for planning law; if the Government are hoping to have growth, and if we are trying to protect as many of the remaining live music venues as we are, what is the status of the policy? We were very fortunate to have a licensing practitioner advise the ad hoc committee of this House on the review of the Licensing Act 2003. She was firmly of the view, as are all those like-minded practitioners, that where the agent of change is already embedded in the Section 182 guidance, following the 2003 Act, this needs to be put on a strong, statutory basis. I beg to move.