Have I got news for you?

There is a natural tendency for people to keep potentially bad news away from their employers.

If it involves something that they have done wrong, and that could result in disciplinary action, there is even more incentive to stay dumb.

This is certainly coming into focus more as the recession bites and people are fearful of losing their jobs. Why bother your far-off employer with details of an unfortunate incident when you might risk the sack?

You often see warnings on these pages about how employees can land you in trouble, however, and never has this been more true than in the area of underage sales. If ever there was a time to take precautions, it is now, when the Government is about to tighten up the law specifically directed at the holders of premises licences.

You may remember I wrote about this last year. A new offence of "persistently selling alcohol to children", more commonly known as the "three strikes" rule, was inserted into the Licensing Act by the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006. While it is clear that this is not a violent crime, the Home Office used this Act as a vehicle for a number of other measures to strengthen the criminal law generally.

Now, in spite of protests, they are about to reduce this to two strikes. If alcohol is sold to an underage person on just two occasions, the holder of the premises licence can be hauled into court and faces a fine of up to £10,000. More importantly perhaps, the licence can be called in for review, in addition to this penalty, and either suspended or revoked.

The problem is that the Home Office carefully omitted the "due diligence" defence from this new measure. So even though you, as the premises licence holder, have given clear instructions to staff and have Challenge 21 in place, or something similar, it will avail you nothing.

This is true even if you had no knowledge of the two offences that led to this prosecution. For it applies when a member of staff receives an on-the-spot fine, or a formal caution, neither of which may be communicated to you at the time, or even afterwards.

Most at risk are operating companies or businesses that themselves hold the premises licence but employ a designated premises supervisor (DPS) and staff at the particular location. Test-purchase fines and cautions happen locally; there is no legal requirement to advise the licence holder and in fact there is precious little you can do about it when the summons appears.

In my view, this is unfair and unreasonable. The due diligence defence is an important safeguard for good operators who may have one or two inattentive or sub-standard staff, or even good staff who make a mistake. To jeopardise the licence in this way, and to face a criminal record, when they have taken as many steps as they can to prevent the offence, seems very harsh.

That opinion probably will not wash with the Home Office, which, as I have often commented, seems intent on demonising the licensed trade at every level. It will shed no tears for unfairly charged operating companies if it assists the Home Office in wiping out underage sales generally.

But will it? I have absolutely no doubt that some children will continue to attempt the purchase of alcohol wherever they can, unless there is a proper deterrent put in their way — and at the moment there is simply nothing. The policy is to target the seller and make them operate in such a tight fashion that only a few get through the net. It is a completely one-sided burden.