Categories of Casino Regulations 2008

My Lords, I reiterate what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, and thank the noble Lord, Lord Davies, for the manner in which he has brought forward these instruments. It is so nice to see him at the Dispatch Box with a proper brief. If noble Lords throw their minds back to the previous occasion when we threw out these instruments, they will remember that he had to work off a letter, most of which we had all seen before the House sat, and cobble together a deal to try to salvage the Government’s casino policy. It gives me great pleasure to be able to say that, for the first time in my parliamentary career, I completely agree with everything that the two speakers from the Liberal Democrat Benches said. That is an unusual comment from an old Tory dog like me. When I came into the House, I thought that the debate would take about five minutes as I had forgotten your Lordships’ capacity to dig up and chew an old bone. As the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, pointed out, this is a classic example of a policy of the Government being in complete tatters: this is the end of the Government’s casino policy. If noble Lords take the trouble to look at the instruments in detail, they will see that they are confirmed by Section 175(4) of the Gambling Act, which carefully lists the one regional and the eight-and-eight casinos. That one regional casino, which, as noble Lords have said, was originally the flagship of the Government’ policy, no longer exists. What is left is a rump which, as the noble Lord, Lord McNally, quite rightly told the House, has been immensely damaging to Blackpool. I hold no brief for Blackpool, but I remember visiting it as a member of the scrutiny committee, as did the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner. I hold no brief to condemn Manchester for its bid. But they have both been treated appallingly by this Government. They were encouraged to bid for the regional casinos. As the noble Lord, Lord McNally, pointed out, in being rejected for the one regional casino, they have had no ability to bid for either the eight or the eight. So they have been doubly damned for doing an extremely good job—which is what happens in practically every area of this Government’s policy. It is pretty unpleasant and unsatisfactory. As the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said, there has already been a significant growth in the number of casinos under 1968 Act. He gave quite a lot of figures; I am sure that they are very accurate and better than mine—I had worked out that it had been about a 30 per cent increase. One should put that in the context of what the Minister said in opening the debate. One of the primary purposes of the Act was to prevent the ““proliferation of small casinos””—the Minister used those words—but that is precisely what we are seeing. It is therefore a complete and utter failure of government policy. We passed the Gambling Act in 2005. Here we are implementing it three years later, or trying to implement it in a rather shambolic way. However, since 2005, the economy has turned significantly. Quite a few casinos have closed because the economic climate has changed. The smoking ban has led to a reduction in income of between 10 and 15 per cent. These are difficult times for any industry without it having a Government climbing all over it at the same time. I, too, draw your Lordships’ attention and the Minister’s attention to the debate in the House of Commons on 25 March. My honourable friend Mr Malcolm Moss and Mr Don Foster from the Liberal Democrats both pushed the Minister, Mr Gerry Sutcliffe, very hard. It is clear from reading the debate—and I commend it to the House—that the Minister appeared to give an undertaking to work with the British Casino Association on its proposals to correct this. I hope that in winding up the noble Lord, Lord Davies, will confirm to the House that the Minister is going to do that. We have heard from all sides of the House—from this side, from the Liberal Democrats, from the government Benches and from the spiritual Benches—that this is a muddle, and a muddle of the Government’s making. They have an obligation to go a bit further to sort it out, which means talking to the industry that they have damaged. The Gambling Act 2005 is now a fact—we have got it. The noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, to whose judgment I bow, talked about the quality of regulations. There is no doubt that we have quality in our regulations. But I ask your Lordships to think back to the rich origins of this policy, in Sir Alan Budd’s report. He made it perfectly clear that we had, at that time, an extremely well regulated industry in this country. We still have one—the quality is there, but, my God, the quantity is there too. The amount of regulation that we have! The old Gaming Board did a very good job with 46 employees; I wonder how good a job the current Gambling Commission is doing with 200 or 250 employees. And at what cost! Who is paying for it? The industry is getting the same quality of regulation but at what an increase in cost. The consultation is now out from the commission on those costs, which are considerable. The industry is hurting from that, and I hope that the Government will take that into account. While we are here, we may as well talk about the other primary purpose of this legislation, which was to regulate the most dangerous part of gambling, about which we knew little at that stage—internet gambling. The right reverend Prelate talked about the social damage that can be done when gambling gets out of hand. There is no more difficult area to regulate than internet gambling, and one of the singular purposes of this Act was to do that. However, thanks to old ““Prudence””, our current Prime Minister, racking the tax rate up, not one single company has come from offshore to onshore to be regulated. That is another complete area of failure in this Act—a policy failure almost without parallel. Again, we need to think about this in the context of what is going on at the moment. We have witnessed in the past 18 months a very significant collapse in the bingo industry, for a variety of reasons—one of which is smoking and one of which is the way in which the Government have treated slot machines. It is an important industry in lots of ways, especially social ways. A lot of old people spend their afternoons there, which they will not do any more because a lot of the clubs are closing. A lot of them have closed and more will close. Some of your Lordships may not like the slot machine industry in pubs, but slot machines paid the rent—and one reason why pubs are closing at the rate of 25 a week is because of the way in which the Government have handled slot machines. They need to look at that. So we should not look only at casinos in this debate. We should look at these instruments as part of an entire policy—and one that is in complete tatters. It is another example of poor old Britain with a third world regulation system. That is pretty embarrassing for all of us—a major industry so damaged by this Government’s policy. We cannot do anything about that today, but we can help casinos. The Minister has the opportunity in winding up the debate to put at rest some of the concerns raised on all sides of the House today. I hope that he will do that.