Labour’s red tape turns running a small business into a pantomime

It’s pantomime season here in Helmsley — Jack and the Beanstalk, seats available at all prices — but this year I’m not the dame. The ladies in charge said they wanted a wholesome family show, so that ruled out a re-appearance of the Les-Dawson-does-Dame-Edna persona I developed last year — to some acclaim from rowdier elements of the audience — as Cinderella’s ugliest sister.

The consolation for being a resting actor, however, is that I am free to devote more attention to my other role as director of the arts centre in which these extravaganzas take place. I have held this voluntary part-time job for the past 12 years, in which the centre has grown into a thriving hub of creativity. Though it runs as a charity it is also a business, turning over several thousand pounds in a good week. That gives me a very direct view of the impact of all the new regulations for which the government is castigated by the Federation of Small Businesses and the CBI.

Take, for example, the Licensing Act 2003, which has allegedly opened the floodgates to 24-hour drinking across the land. It was actually designed as an anti-red-tape measure, replacing with a single system all the paperwork and inspections previously required for separate theatre, cinema, public entertainment, alcohol and late-night café licences. But so far its effect has been to impose huge burdens of time and cost on licensees like us who have been obliged to reapply.

In the old system, we sold alcohol under a theatre licence, which was conveniently flexible without provoking any drunkenness at all — a second cup of coffee would be considered binge-drinking in our well-behaved interval crowd, and I believe I am the only person in 12 years ever to order a double scotch.