LICENSEES in East Lancashire are bidding for open-all-hours pubs - so that closing time is no longer determined by the law.

Instead, they want publicans themselves to be allowed to decide when their premises are open or shut - day or night.

Is that a good or a bad thing?

The control of drinking hours is, of course, one of those areas where the law crosses over the threshold of ordinary regulation into that of moralising over a personal activity - one that, in this case, it considers lawful at certain times but not at others.

In itself, that is a paradox.

But though the restrictions on pub opening may stem from the exigencies of the First World War - when the government deemed that munitions production was being impaired by workers' drinking habits - they also owe much to a puritanical streak in the national psyche. It is one perhaps characterised by the traditional frosted glass of the pub window which pays lip-service to the frown of the puritan outside by obscuring from his view an indulgence enjoyed by the vast majority .

The law, then, seems to have been made by those with the frown - out of patrician concern that, if pub hours were uncontrolled what would follow would be wholesale drunkenness.

Yet, as we see from the gradual easing of the restraints - which now permit virtual all-day drinking in numerous pubs - that just does not happen.

Perhaps the best example is that of Scotland, where restrictions on opening hours were once applied with dour Calvinistic zeal and where now, with the country having pioneered longer pub hours in the UK, the legendary brawling, boozy Scot is an historical figure.

As Blackburn's licensed victuallers point out in support of their open-all-hours call, unregulated pub hours would put an end to the "mass exodus" of drinkers onto the streets at current closing times - when many have been engaged in accelerated drinking simply because the law makes them rush and so provides the ingredients itself for trouble.

As we suggest, experience has disproved fears of more trouble. And if this bid by Blackburn's publicans was allowed, it would not follow that all controls on pub opening would be lifted.

For the hidden hand of market forces would dictate how many pubs were open and for how long.

But, generally, the effect would be that drinkers would be drinking at a relaxed and safer pace and would probably be drinking no more than they do at present.

Additionally, the police and magistrates courts would be spared much of the time and expense of overseeing the over-prescriptive and anachronistic rules on licensing hours.

It should not be the business of the law to determine when a person drinks, particularly not when it already has plenty of powers to deal with what the licensing hours are misguidedly targeted at - drunkenness - and not when the evidence is that it diminishes the longer the pubs are open.

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