Gaming Machines and Bingo Venues: Licensing Consultation
(1 day, 12 hours ago)
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The Minister for Creative Industries, Media and Arts (Ian Murray)
I am repeating the following written ministerial statement made today in the other place by my noble Friend, the Minister for Museums, Heritage and Gambling and DCMS Lords Minister, Baroness Twycross:
The family entertainment sector makes an important contribution to local communities, particularly in seaside towns, and bingo venues are a traditional cornerstone of the leisure sector enjoyed across the country. However, commercial pressures mean we have seen a number of closures of licensed family entertainment centres and bingo clubs in recent years. The Government are keen to explore ways to support both sectors, preserving the heritage of family-run amusement piers and bingo halls while supporting innovative and vibrant new offerings, and to ensure that the regulatory regime that applies to them is fit for purpose. Doing so will help to support our wider growth mission, and help to ensure a sustainable and socially responsible land-based gambling sector.
I therefore wish to inform the House that we have today published a consultation on category D gaming machines and licensing for bingo venues.
Stake and prize limits for category D gaming machines
Family entertainment centres predominantly site category D gaming machines. These are low-stakes machines, categorised by the Gambling Commission as suitable for under-18s to play, and include seaside staples such as crane grabs and penny pushers. Stakes and prizes for category D machines have not changed since 2014, while inflation has limited the ability of operators to offer appealing prizes. As this category encompasses a wide variety of machines, we are seeking views on maintaining or increasing current stake and prize limits, in order to support commercial sustainability and operator investment in venues housing category D machines. In line with this, we are also seeking feedback on proposals to adjust the sub-categories for certain category D machines, to reflect new game mechanics and distinguish machines that more closely resemble adult gambling activities from lower-risk games. This will ensure that any changes to stakes and prizes to support growth in the sector are underpinned by an appropriate and proportionate framework.
Age limit for “cash-out” slot-style category D machines
The Government are also consulting on an age limit for certain category D gaming machines. The Gambling Act review concluded that machines which mirror adult slot machines and pay out in cash—also known as cash-out slot-style category D machines—should not be available to children. Therefore, we are proposing to make it a criminal offence to invite, cause or permit anyone under the age of 18 to play these particular types of machines. This builds on the existing voluntary commitment implemented in 2021 by Bacta, the amusement and gaming machine industry trade body, banning under-18s from playing this type of machine in their members’ venues, by introducing the same protections across the whole sector.
Licensing for bingo venues
Recent years have seen change and innovation in the bingo sector: this includes new concepts combining bingo with nightlife, electronic terminals allowing customers to play on a tablet, and smaller premises emerging alongside traditional bingo clubs. While we are keen to support innovation and the continued popularity of bingo, there are a growing number of licensed bingo premises which predominantly site gaming machines and are difficult to distinguish from adult gaming centres.
To support the sector and provide clarity for customers in the changing landscape of land-based gambling, the Government are seeking views on measures to create a clearer distinction between adult gaming centres and bingo premises. This will ensure that all premises have a licence type that is appropriate to their offering. The key proposal we are consulting on is requiring a “bingo area”. This would occupy a minimum proportion of venue floor space, in all licensed bingo venues, where customers can enjoy a bingo game, whether they play on paper or a tablet, in a linked or a local game. This will make bingo the primary option within such venues, protecting the offering to customers and supporting the industry. It will also close the loophole that permits the consumption of alcohol in machine-led venues, when this is prohibited in adult gaming centres. We are also consulting on rules for the bingo area, including prohibiting larger gaming machines and requiring a minimum number of positions for bingo.
I would encourage those in this House who care strongly about gambling policy, as well as relevant stakeholders, to share their views through this consultation. I will deposit a copy of the consultation in the Libraries of both Houses.
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Countryside Stewardship Mid-tier Agreements
(1 day, 12 hours ago)
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The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Dame Angela Eagle)
Today, I announce that this Government will offer one-year extensions to more than 5,000 farmers with Countryside Stewardship mid-tier agreements expiring this year.
Countryside Stewardship pays farmers and land managers for environmental work alongside sustainable food production. This targeted, time-limited extension ensures they will continue to be rewarded for their vital role in sustainable food production and nature’s recovery.
With agreements set to expire on 31 December this year, one-year extensions are being offered while the Government develop the reformed sustainable farming incentive for 2026, refreshes the environmental improvement plan and rolls out the new Countryside Stewardship higher-tier scheme. This is part of our plan to give farmers long-term strategic certainty.
The Rural Payments Agency (RPA) will write to eligible farmers with details about their extension offer. The letter will contain details of how they accept their extension and the deadline they need to meet for it to be processed.
The one-off investment of up to £70 million from within existing budgets ensures more than 5,000 farmers, foresters and landowners have the support they need to continue their vital role in sustainable food production and nature’s recovery. It reflects our commitment to working with the sector to build a stronger, more profitable farming future.
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Emma Reynolds) and I will now review plans for the sustainable farming incentive to ensure the available funding is distributed more efficiently and more fairly. The Government will publish information on the next iteration of the scheme in due course.
Funding for farmers through the environmental land management schemes, which include the Countryside Stewardship mid-tier scheme, will increase by 150% to £2 billion by 2029, helping to boost rural economies, strengthen domestic food production and enhance the UK’s natural environment for future generations. This underpins the Government’s cast iron commitment to food security and creating more resilient farm businesses.
Through the Countryside Stewardship mid-tier scheme, farmers are planting wildflower margins to boost pollinators and managing hedgerows to create vital habitats for birds and small mammals—alongside sustainable food production.
Investing in nature through the Government’s plan for change is central to securing Britain’s future economic growth, developing a sustainable, resilient and profitable farming sector, and ensuring long-term food security.
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National Institute for Health and Care Research: Applied Research Collaborations
(1 day, 12 hours ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Dr Zubir Ahmed)
Today I am pleased to announce an ambitious programme of applied health, public health and social care research through 10 National Institute for Health and Care Research applied research collaborations—ARCs. This will help power transformations in the health and social care systems that we have identified in our plan for change, for the benefit of the health and wealth of our nation.
ARCs will receive funding to both develop and deliver research, and support the implementation of research in practice, responding directly to the needs of the health and social care systems. Research is vital to supporting the required change to keep people healthier for longer through prevention, fixing the NHS and supporting the sustainability of the social care sector. There will be strong patient and public involvement to ensure what matters to our population is at the heart of everything they do. The new ARCs have a strengthened remit to respond nationally to tackle the biggest challenges in the system, as set out in our 10-year plan for health.
An NIHR ARC network will also be commissioned to provide strategic and operational co-ordination to optimise synergies, increase alignment and facilitate national working with key partners, including other NIHR infrastructure. Fast-track research and collaboration will be further supported over the lifetime of the programme, to respond to Department of Health and Social Care priorities.
ARCs will also work with industry to embed new treatments into care pathways, making it easy for the NHS workforce to deliver seamlessly in their busy working days. Enhanced health economic expertise will ensure the economic impact of evidence is better understood to support decisions on efficiency, productivity and growth. The plans we set out for growth and for health provide the solutions people want to see to the difficulties of their daily lives. Research is a vital part of ensuring we deliver on these. This investment supports the scale of transformation that is needed to have a health and care system fit for the future and there for everyone when they need it.
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Committee on Mutagenicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment: Reclassification
(1 day, 12 hours ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Ashley Dalton)
The Committee on Mutagenicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment is an advisory non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department of Health and Social Care.
COM’s members serve on a voluntary basis and are not remunerated. Their highly valuable independent expert advice informs policy decisions across Government on appropriate safeguards on health risks from mutagenic compounds in consumer products, for example restrictions or regulations on contaminants in food packaging.
Earlier this year, the Cabinet Office undertook a review of arm’s length bodies in line with the aims of the plan for change as set out by the Government. As part of the outputs of this review, COM will be reclassified as a departmental expert committee.
COM will continue to maintain the current remit, secretariat and membership to allow the continuity of its work and secure its critical functions with no disruption to its operations or expert advice.
[HCWS963]
Pride in Place
(1 day, 12 hours ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Miatta Fahnbulleh)
On 25 September, the Government announced our plan to restore pride in place.
We are a nation of a thousand neighbourhoods, where our identity, our sense of patriotism and feelings of belonging all depend on what we can see from our doorstep. A decade and a half of under-investment and neglect under the Conservatives has held back too many of our communities and bred a sense of decline. The impact of this has been corrosive. It has divided communities, deprived public institutions of trust and emboldened extremists to attack the foundations of our country.
The causes are not straightforward—austerity, deindustrialisation, an uncritical embrace of globalisation are all a part of it—but what connects it all is a style of government that deprived people of control of their own lives and their surroundings. Pride in place is a new way of governing, and it surpasses anything that has come before.
We will invest up to £5 billion through a new flagship pride in place programme to the 244 places that need it most. In hyper-local communities across England, Scotland and Wales, we will deliver up to £20 million of funding and support to be spent by a local neighbourhood board over the next decade to drive local renewal. A separate pride in place impact fund will deliver a cash injection of £150 million to an additional 95 places, to be spent by the local authority to improve high streets and community spaces.
Investment is being targeted in neighbourhoods with both the highest deprivation levels and weakest social infrastructure, but we are also taking steps to ensure every community has the powers to renew their local area. Our pride in place strategy introduces an action plan of new policies focused on three themes: building stronger communities, creating thriving places and helping communities to take back control of their own lives and areas. As part of this, we have given councils the power to take over the lease of boarded-up shops, creating opportunities for community businesses, and we will go further to establish a new network for neighbourhoods, refresh guidance on using clean-up powers and open a new co-operative development unit within the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
When the decline in pride in place so often stems from a “we know best” attitude from those at the top, the answer can only be found in communities themselves. The cure for our problems today is in the pit villages, where hands that once took coal from the ground also built welfare halls for their families to make memories. The cure is in the classrooms, where under crumbling roofs, parents put on after-school clubs and summer fêtes. The cure is Sunday league football grounds, where the next generation support their town with the same passion as they would support their nation in the world cup. This is our alternative to the forces trying to pull us apart. This is our answer to those who feel silenced, ignored and forgotten.
[HCWS967]
National Infrastructure Planning: Data Centres
(1 day, 12 hours ago)
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The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)
The Government are committed to ensuring that the planning system effectively facilitates development to meet the needs of a modern economy, including supporting essential digital infrastructure such as data centres.
In December last year, following consultation on how the national planning policy framework could better support economic growth in key sectors, we announced plans to enable certain large-scale projects within knowledge, creative, high technology and data-driven industries to be directed into the nationally significant infrastructure projects consenting regime process.
The Government are now taking an important step towards ensuring that they can do so. I can confirm that applicants wishing to request that projects to develop large laboratories or gigafactories be directed into the NSIP consenting regime process may make a request to the Secretary of State under section 35 of the Planning Act 2008 under the existing industrial process or processes and research and development of products or processes descriptors prescribed in the Infrastructure Planning (Business or Commercial Projects) Regulations 2013.
Furthermore, I have today laid the draft Infrastructure Planning (Business or Commercial Projects) (Amendment) Regulations in Parliament. This draft statutory instrument amends the 2013 regulations to provide that data centres are prescribed projects capable of being directed into the NSIP consenting regime under section 35 of the 2008 Act.
The draft regulations are subject to the affirmative parliamentary procedure. Subject to parliamentary time and approval, we hope to make these regulations and for them to come into force later this year or early next. This will then enable developers of certain proposed data centres on request to opt into the NSIP consenting process, provided the Secretary of State thinks that the project or proposed project is one of national significance and the development meets the other requirements set out in section 35 of the 2008 Act.
To support this change, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology will prepare a new national policy statement for data centres. This will set out the national policy for this sector and the policy framework for decision making for data centres. It will also include the parameters, thresholds and other relevant factors which may indicate whether such a development is of national significance and capable of meeting the requirements of section 35 of the 2008 Act in order to be directed to proceed through the NSIP consenting regime.
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