Categories of Casino Regulations 2008

My Lords, I owe an apology to your Lordships’ House, in the same way as has just been confessed, as a result of the railway system. I had an appointment at 3.15 pm today of a long-standing nature in relation to Northern Ireland which I was unable to break. Therefore, what I have learnt about the debate, I have learnt in the relatively short time that I have been in the House since I arrived, but because of history, I would be sorry not to make a small contribution to this debate. I see a number of former colleagues in the House from the pre-legislative scrutiny committee. When we assembled, I can recall feeling, in a spirit of all honesty, that I ought to declare an interest as the holder of a telephone account with Ladbrokes, and I do so again today. It is an account which I use only for the Grand National and the Derby and an occasional political bet. In the aftermath of our pre-legislative scrutiny committee report, the Daily Mail made me out, on the strength of this account, to be some form of gambling degenerate. All is fair in love and war and you take these things in your stride. My own involvement in the story goes back nearly 50 years, when my late noble kinsman was Home Secretary and felt that it would be desirable to have the opportunity to make a disguised visit to Soho. He was taken around for about a hour by an inspector from the Saville Row police station, seeing all aspects of Soho life. At the end, my late noble kinsman said to the inspector, ““It did not seem to me that we were recognised anywhere. The only place I thought that we were recognised was that shiny cellar, where it seemed a game—whatever was being played—had a strong resemblance to gambling””. The inspector said, ““I feared, Home Secretary, that you would notice that. We think it is probably gambling, too, but the game is so complicated that we are absolutely convinced that we would not be able to explain it to a metropolitan magistrate. Since money is only changing hands within the Chinese community, we think it is all right to turn a blind eye to it, particularly as it is below ground””. As I say, I have lived with the narrative of these dramas for a long time. I fast-forward to my 24 years as Member of Parliament of the two Cities, which obviously included Soho. In the constituency, 4,500 were then employed in the gambling industry. That would make it a major constituency employer in most constituencies; in the two Cities, it is 0.6 per cent of the total employed population and therefore very much a case of business as usual. Nevertheless, it has given me an insight, through my constituents, into the industry. After joining your Lordships’ House, I was conscious, both from the constituency and the continuance of the narrative, that government policy not only on gambling but also on alcohol licensing—obviously a related matter to come extent, which in the course of the narrative transferred from the Home Office to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport—seemed to be taking a long time to work out what it wanted to do. We were constantly being asked to respond to consultation papers; I include the Home Office in that. There was therefore a certain discontinuity in the narrative. We had a debate in your Lordships’ House where the proposition was put forward that there was a lack of philosophical principle behind the present Government, a Motion moved by my noble friend Lord Patten. I said in that debate that leaders of the Labour Party have historically and correctly said that there was much more in the history of the Labour Party from Methodism than from Marxism. That was at exactly the moment that the larger-scale ambitions of the Government for the gambling industry were emerging. It looked as though the Methodist elements of the Labour Party’s history were becoming a little diluted. The pre-legislative scrutiny committee was then set up. One of the immense pleasures of serving on it was the company of a number of people in this House, including the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, who we were able to cross-examine as a Minister within the procedure. The confusion and discontinuity to which I was referring were further compounded at that stage by the fact that the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister had clearly not got its planning policy together in conjunction with the work we were doing. That of course produced the unique precedent that we actually had to sit again once it had got its policy together, after we had initially reported. On the past 10 years—obviously not on the circumstances that led up to 1968 and the decisions taken then—all I can say is that the discontinuity and the fact that decisions have been reversed and there have been changes of policy may all have been for the good, but have actually imposed considerable strain on the gambling industry because of the uncertainty with which it has had to live. My one plea to the Government, in the decisions taken from now on, is to have sensitivity and, indeed, charity toward the industry given its experience. Obviously, I share the response to Blackpool; equally, I can understand the problems in Manchester but other places around the country have been the victims, too, of this uncertainty. May the Government bear that in mind, so that we can have a happy end to this story rather than one that has not been altogether tidy along the way?