The government's licensing laws treat us all like children

Wednesday April 13, 2011

Tom Miers shows how barring children from pubs will undermine responsible drinking in the long run

A couple of weeks ago I popped into the pub to watch the football and enjoy a well earned beer. We’d been on a long walk – six miles along the river into the local town. It was the first time my son had done it all the way. Six years old, and he had bounded along the path for two hours like a gazelle.

We just had time for a quick drink and 20 minutes of the football before driving back home for Sunday lunch.

I asked for a beer and a blackcurrant juice.

The barmaid frowned and muttered to her colleague. Then she went up to a man sitting at the end of the bar. He nodded.

“It’s okay, but you can’t stand at the bar,” she said.

I sighed, guessing the problem. “It’s him, isn’t it?”

“I’m afraid so,” she said, looking at my boy.

The bar is pleasant and open, part of an old fashioned inn next to the old abbey and the cobbled square. It’s popular with tourists and fishermen, as well as the more grown up locals.

The man at the bar turned out to be the landlord.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he explained. “It’s the new licensing rules. We have a bit of leeway, because we’re a hotel and obviously have families staying. But usually you’d not be allowed here unless you’re having a full meal. Not just a plate of chips, mind, it would have to be substantial.”

I asked him a bit more about the rules, because they always seem to be changing. In Scotland, where we live, not only have pub licences gone up a lot in recent years, but the government is clamping down on children in pubs, and licence conditions generally.

“Just before eight o’clock, every evening, the police come round,” said the landlord. “That’s because we’re not allowed children under any circumstances in the bar after then.”

“You’d have thought they’d have better things to do.” He nodded.

In the end we sat at a table and quickly finished our drinks. The landlord and his staff could not have been more friendly and sympathetic, but still we felt hurried and unwelcome.

Clearly the government knows better than I do how to bring up my kids.

If they have their way my son will view pubs and drinking in company as a taboo, perhaps an exciting one to be broken, rather than a normal, pleasant and sociable activity.

The landlord will take less care over who is drinking in his house and when, because he knows the police will do his job for him.

His respect for the rule of law and how it is applied seemed somewhat diminished. Mine certainly was.

Our mood was lifted when we got home to a delicious roast and the rest of our family. Here we could enjoy ourselves without petty rules. I could drink as much as I liked in front of the kids! No-one will ever interfere in the privacy of our own home. Will they?

Tom Miers is editor of the Free Society and author of Democracy and the Fall of the West, co-authored with Craig Smith, available from Amazon