Betting, Gaming and Lotteries

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is wrong on most counts and on this one as well. His intervention allows me to say that Professor Crow wrote to Lord Filkin, saying:"““The Panel is very concerned that your Committee””—" the Lords Merits Committee—"““…concludes that we did not give high priority to the minimisation of harmful effects to the community. This is just not so. At paragraph 12 of our Final Report we made it clear that social impact considerations, both positive and negative, were implicit in our…criteria…Not only did we accord much weight to this consideration, one Panel Member was appointed particularly for his expertise in matters of social impact””." Professor Crow goes on to talk about the evidence taken from the Salvation Army, the Quakers, the Christian Institute, NHS primary trusts, faith groups and so on. He concluded:"““It was as a result of hearing such evidence that we became very confident of the ability of agencies in Manchester, more than anywhere else””—" and I emphasise that ““more than anywhere else””—"““to manage the minimisation of harm from gambling effectively.””" I hope that the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Wallace) and others will accept that the allegation of the Merits Committee was simply wrong, that the casino advisory panel considered in detail the concept of harm minimisation and that it accorded Manchester very high marks in that regard.