It is unfair of local MPs who support later drinking hours to criticise city magistrates for failing to allow pubs to open until midnight during the summer months.

The Licensing Act 1964 only allows permitted drinking hours to be extended if the occasion in question is "special" and nothing special is happening in local pubs on Fridays and Saturdays during the summer.

It is not the magistrates who are outdated but the 37-year-old law they are bound to apply. Neither are they "short-sighted". It is short-sighted of MPs who can be instrumental in changing the law to complain about people whose hands are tied by it.

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