My Lords, we should all pay tribute to the amazingly long and trenchant campaign that has been waged by the noble Baroness. I have sat through most of her attempts during the past three or four years to get movement on this. Her arguments grow with every year and add new dimensions. Often, as she has done today, she offers a lifeline to the Government if they want to take it. It is always sad that they do not seem to be able to see the points that she is making or act on them. It occurred to me when she was speaking that it is a big pity that the Bill is
arranged as it is. She ought really to appear at Halloween as an eerie ghost rattling her chains and saying, “Remember the financial transactions blocking”. Ministers would all shake and shiver in their shoes and be unable to respond without fear and trembling. I realise that that might apply to us if we are so lucky as to win the next election; she may come back to harass my noble friend or even me if we are in a similar position, so perhaps I shall wipe that away.
This is serious stuff. I recall being given the hope by the Minister in charge of the gambling Bill, when we were pursuing similar lines, that such a measure would be the right approach. The noble Baroness is absolutely right to bring it back at this stage; that is entirely in line with what was said then and the advice that was given.
The gambling Bill was a small, modest measure which was not expected to take up much time in the House or to carry much weight. It was deliberately sold to us as a measure that would be of great advantage to all concerned if it could slip through quickly because it was dealing with the particular issue of bringing back onshore the gambling bodies that had moved offshore. They were offering offshore opportunities for people to gamble; if they were onshore, they would be subject to the regulatory process.
Of course, we were happy to support that, but we were also able to make it a bit better by adding a few things during the process. It was clear in that process that the Bill was largely doing an awful thing that occasionally occurs in government: willing the ends of policy but not the means. The end of the policy is that we do not want people who are not regulated and not operating according to the rules within this country still to reach out to gamblers in United Kingdom. To achieve that, obviously there must be some mechanism by which we can pursue them. That is either by blocking their internet activities—these people operate in small foreign territories without fear of being pursued, so that is completely fanciful—or by ensuring that the financial arrangements, which are the lifeblood of their operation, can be blocked.
It is a matter of some irony that only yesterday we were discussing—in this very Room but on a different Bill—those who have had their intellectual property traduced by other companies in the internet world, otherwise known as copyright theft. We were investigating the best way of ensuring that those who owned intellectual property and had it stolen could seek remedies through the courts to make sure that the abuse was stopped and damages paid. It turned out that there were two pieces of statute that were possible to use. One was brought in long before the internet was as widely used as it is now—the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 —and the other was the not yet fully implemented Digital Economy Act 2011, of great memory. This had specific clauses for regulations to be brought forward to allow the courts to block internet sites that were abusing copyright.
I would argue, on the basis of that experience, that this is something that is coming. Here we have a situation where, we are told, more than 40 blocks of this type were made last year. The Minister who
responded to the debate was very proud of the fact that the Government had a mechanism in place to deal with internet abuse of the type specified in relation to copyright. This could be read across to those engaged in illegal or unregulated activity relating to gambling in the UK. Why is it not possible to use the experience that has been gained through this process to answer the questions of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, about how to make sure that we are able to provide the means of delivery for the desirable policy aims included within the gambling Bill?