Mr Lock spoke to Express after a statement made during last week’s States meeting by Home Affairs President Mary Lowe.
During that speech, Deputy Lowe discussed the Law Enforcement Annual Report, which had revealed nearly half of all arrests made last year involved people under the influence of alcohol.
Deputy Lowe hinted at a couple of measures which could be introduced to combat the issue, including a minimum price for alcohol units, or a restriction to licensing hours for bars and restaurants. Mr Lock has said neither of those would work in the way that’s been suggested.
Pictured: Luna Bar is in the Pollet, in St Peter Port.
“I don’t know what the suggestion is,” said Mr Lock, “I don’t know if it’s just moving every back an hour, or two hours, if they’re going to do something like that, that’s just not going to work. Because people will just go out earlier and you’ll still have the same problems, just earlier in the night.
“If they decide to put club hours back on a par with pub hours, again you’ll just see a decline in the nightlife even more so than there already is. It won’t help the issue, people just won’t go to clubs, they’ll stay in the pubs. Everything loses out, but these people will still be out and there’s no saying that just because they’re in a pub there won’t be any problems.”
Pictured: Mr Lock owns Fusion nightclub as well as Luna Bar. The nightclub is currently allowed to serve alcohol for an hour longer than the bar.
Under current licencing laws, bars have to stop serving alcohol by 12.45, and nightclubs by 1.45
Mr Lock thinks extending those hours for nightclubs would help alleviate the problems Guernsey Police see.
“I’ve said it quite a few times, but giving clubs an extra hour would help combat anti social behaviour.
“The example I used the other day was if you’ve got 15 litres of water to drink in 15 minutes you’ll drink it as quickly as you can. But the longer you have to drink you can pace yourself.”
Mr Lock says it would also ease pressures on public transport including the often-busy taxi service at weekends.
“Giving the clubs an extra hour, people would stream out, it won’t have such an impact as people all leave.
“Being here, at this end of town (the Pollet), we see the taxi queue and all night from about nine o’clock until we’re finished clearing up after 3am, there’s still a taxi queue on a busy Saturday.
“You wouldn’t get that mass of people all leaving at the same time. If you look onto the North Plantation and the Pollet on a Saturday night as the clubs close it’s just carnage.”
Pictured: Deputy Heidi Soulsby, President of HSC and Nicola Brink, the Director of Public Health.
At the moment there are no firm proposals to change licensing hours, but any moves to make such a change would have to come from the Committee for Health and Social Care.
HSC is responsible for the management of the Drug and Alcohol Strategy, while Home Affairs would then be responsible for policing any changes to the law.