Parental approval for pub law changes: Home Secretary's plan to allow children into pubs finds favour with drinkers. Adam Sage reports

CLAIRE and Nigel Shilton enjoyed a typical English childhood, with Sunday afternoons spent in the pub near their home in Hampshire.

Or at least their parents spent Sunday afternoon in the pub. Claire and her brother whiled away the time in the car-park, sometimes locked inside their Renault 12. 'I got to know the dashboard very well,' Nigel said. Meanwhile, their parents drank in peace - accompanied by the family dog which, unlike the children, was allowed into the pub. So did they approve of the Home Secretary's plans to change the licensing laws? The question was met initially with outrage. 'Children and pubs don't go together,' Claire said. Nigel recalled a drinking session on the Continent that had been ruined by the boisterous presence of a toddler.

But they agreed that children might be tolerable if confined to a 'family room'. 'In the end, everyone would find their niche,' Nigel said.

Standing on a table outside the Flask pub in Highgate, north London, three-year-old Isabelle Myers had clearly found hers. She said she 'liked pubs', even if the ice floating in her orange juice resembled broken glass.

Her mother, Mary Jane Stevens, approved of Kenneth Clarke's announcement. Too often, Ms Stevens had been told that she could not enter a pub because she had a child with her. 'This is not a child- friendly environment,' she said.

Her mother-in-law, Lil Myers, said pubs were so much part of the English social scene that it was abnormal to ban children. Isabelle brought the conversation to a halt, announcing that she didn't 'eat glass' and dropping her orange juice on the ground. 'That's why they don't take children into pubs,' her mother said. At the next table, two- week-old Daniel Friedman was visiting a pub for the first time, 'but not the last', according to his father, Doug.

As Daniel slept soundly in his pram, his mother, Jenny, expressed support for a relaxation of the licensing laws. 'The only thing that would be nice would be if pubs had more non-smoking areas,' she said. 'Often they are so smoky you would not want to take kids in there.'

Her mother-in-law, Betty Friedman, said: 'There would be less drinking problems if kids went to pubs with their parents. Anything that is forbidden is exactly what someone who is young would want to do.'

(Photograph omitted)