Categories of Casino Regulations 2008

My Lords, perhaps I may be allowed to chew—for the last time, I hope—on what the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, called ““this old bone””? Those of us on the Joint Scrutiny Committee have been chewing away on this bone and there is not much meat left. If I may take a subjective view, I was on the Front Bench, now ably replaced by my noble friend, who has spoken so well today, I was on the Joint Committee, and I have done a bit of gambling in my life. I have rather grown out of it now. It is more a young person’s affair. I think that you can grow out of it, as long as you do not go completely bankrupt. On a sad note, two days ago I went to the funeral of a friend who had committed suicide. Gambling was a large component of his despair. It was compounded by drink and matrimonial problems, but gambling was definitely an important part of that tragedy. Gambling has always been with me. When I was a boy at school, I had a penchant for gambling. That continued to my boarding school days, where I enjoyed the only profitable time in my gambling career, as the school bookmaker. In those days, it was a risky path, because public policy—this is very much relevant to what is before us today—came from the Victorian period and probably before, and decreed that gambling was a fact of life, but one that had to be watched carefully and indeed discouraged. That was public policy and it has now completely changed without anybody realising. One piece of evidence for that is that gambling is now controlled by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, rather than by the Home Office. When the department took on the weighty role of deciding what to do with gambling, it had to get some ideas. One idea was that gambling should be looked at in a modern way, because new Labour has always told us how modern it is—we have a somewhat jaundiced view of that now. We were told that gambling was a pleasant recreational activity; that a few people got damaged, but not very many; and that a committee under Sir Alan Budd would be given the task of guiding us forward. Sir Alan Budd, without knowing a great deal about gambling, I gather, had the very good idea that what we should do, if we were going to encourage gambling, was at least get some regeneration out of it. One problem of the Government’s abject failure on this gambling legislation is that they have not managed to get precision on any idea. I could go through a list of aspects of the legislation where there is no precision, but I will take just two that struck me, and which have been mentioned today in the House. One concerns harm to the vulnerable and the young. The young are particularly vulnerable. I have mentioned this outside the Chamber to the Minister and he listened very attentively. It has always been the Government’s contention that statistics show that the incidence of gambling harm in this country is one of the lowest in Europe. I asked him how they knew that. They know that because they have looked at some statistics. However, my friend who committed suicide was not a statistic—he had a gambling problem. By ““problem””, I mean that you conceal things from your family, you spend money that you do not have and you lie to people—all aspects of addiction. Most people’s gambling problems are not recorded. I reckon that in this country we have a serious problem with the young and gambling. This can be seen in betting shops with what are actually gaming machines. They are called ““fixed odds betting terminals””. What a British thing that is—to disguise a gaming machine with a completely unintelligible term. They are gaming machines. There is so much to tempt young people. As was mentioned by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool, we are now reaching the stage where people—particularly those on low incomes—will have to budget very carefully for their normal costs. They will not have a surplus with which to gamble. The problem is that once you gamble and lose, you get caught up in a terrible vortex—I know; I have been through it. The Government have not been precise about that. I would not go so far as to say that they have tried to deceive anyone; I just think that they have been gullible. The worst legislation is that which goes on to the statute book as a result of the Government being gullible and uninformed, and I am afraid that that is the case with this measure. The other aspect of the legislation that I want to mention is the lack of precision in relation to regeneration. Sir Alan Budd thought that regeneration would come about in seaside resorts as a result of them having casinos. However, with plenty of flexibility and so on, the change was made from seaside resort casinos to regional casinos. The idea of going for a weekend with a limited amount of money to a casino in a resort was swept aside, and the principle of not having gambling where people would come upon it accidentally on the street seems to have been forgotten. That was a major principle when we started our work in the scrutiny committee, and at the time it was agreed by the committee and the Government. I agree with the noble Lord who said that the list of casinos is now very strange, although I shall limit my remarks to Torbay. I was brought up around Torbay. People used to call it the English Riviera. Torquay was built, like Rome, on seven hills. It was covered with trees and developed in the Napoleonic period as a naval station, but it is now one of the most depressed resorts in England. I do not know any resort that has deteriorated so much. Because of the seasonal aspect of life there, many people who run boarding houses and hotels are very short of money during the winter, and a lot of people who do occasional work for them lead a very low quality of life. What are they going to do in a casino in Torbay? I agree with the comment of the noble Lord, Lord Steinberg, a point to which my noble friend Lord McNally referred. I would not be at all surprised if that was one of the casinos that the noble Lord said he would not bother to operate—at least, I hope that he does not. There is no regeneration to be had from gambling. Can anyone tell me where there has been any such regeneration, other than from an Indian casino in the United States? There is a special tax regime in the US, for reasons that I shall not go into now. The benefits do not filter down. In any case, the Government were unable to define regeneration. Even the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister did not seem to have any idea when it gave evidence to the committee, and local authorities did not know either. American companies, which know a thing or two about this subject, said that we would not get any regeneration out of gambling. They said, ““Forget about gambling. Go for entertainment and put a bit of gambling in if you like. That might add to the mix but it’s entertainment that will regenerate if anything does””. I have had my chew on the bone and, as usual, have enjoyed it. I think that this is a deplorable piece of legislation. The lists are ludicrous and the Government’s arguments are ill-informed, but the Minister who is to respond will, as always, be good-natured and pleasant to hear, and I look forward to his comments.