Betting, Gaming and Lotteries

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that I have quite a long speech to make. He can intervene, but if he will allow me to make progress, he may find that I will answer some of his questions. The right hon. Lady claims that the future of all 17 casinos is at risk if the order is defeated this afternoon. That is clearly not the case. Let me remind the House that we need not be considering one order this afternoon. We offered the Secretary of State the opportunity to put forward one order covering the 16 large and small casinos, which we would support. She rejected that offer. Her approach remains ““all or nothing””, and it is designed solely to put pressure on her Back Benchers and to steamroller the decision through without proper scrutiny. Let me make it clear to the House that no Member who votes against the order today need worry that those 16 large and small casinos are under threat, regardless of the scare stories that the right hon. Lady is putting around. If she re-tabled the order with just the 16 locations, we would support it. We are voting against the order, but it is not a vote against the casino advisory panel or a vote against Manchester. It is a vote for further parliamentary scrutiny. I turn to the substance of the matter before us—whether the Opposition are willing to accept the casino advisory panel’s recommendation to site the regional casino in Manchester. The right hon. Lady referred to the congratulations that my colleagues and I offered to Manchester and the 16 other locations in the hours after the advisory panel made its announcement. Those congratulations were genuine. We had no intrinsic opposition to Manchester or any other individual location, but given the surprise choice of Manchester—the right hon. Lady conceded that even for her, it was a surprise choice, not least, I suspect, as it had risen from the bottom of the casino advisory panel’s ranking table to the top—it is right for us to have used the time since then to look in greater detail at the report and to listen to the concerns that are now in the public domain. The right hon. Lady will also remember that in the same statement I said that we intended to"““hold the Government to account on the many promises they have given to protect the most vulnerable and those most at risk from their legislation.””" That is the right approach, and it is exactly what we seek to do today.