Horserace Betting Levy Regulations 2017

Lord Howard of Lympne Excerpts

Wednesday 29th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Mallalieu (Lab)]

I appreciate that time is very short, so I shall be very short. I strongly support these regulations, and I pay tribute to the Minister in the other place, Miss Tracey Crouch, who has made enormous efforts to try to bring both sides together and produce a workable set of regulations. As my noble friend Lord Donoghue said, the betting and racing industries are pretty well joined at the hip, but they are also a minefield of conflicting interests. How to craft a fair and mutually acceptable system for funding a £3.5 billion industry has been the subject of a number of earlier failed—or, at best, imperfect—attempts. Indeed, the turf is scattered like confetti with, to use my noble friend Lord Lipsey’s phrase, “authoritative legal opinions”, usually conflicting, on how it should be done. I well remember one of them. Some years ago, when I was an independent member of the British Horseracing Board, we relied on such an opinion and fell foul of it later when challenged in the European court.

Every effort has been made by the Government to produce an agreement on which both sides can meet. That has proved difficult, if not impossible. We cannot leave things as they are. The levy is dwindling. The levy makes essential investments not solely in rich owners but in the sort of people who work in racing who were spoken about by the noble Lord, Lord Addington: 6,500 of them. I know them, and I declare my interest as a trustee of Racing Welfare, the charity that looks after them, and their union, the National Association of Stable Staff. There is also the money that goes straight to research which benefits not just the racing industry but the whole of the equine population. We cannot afford to see that continue to dwindle, and with it the small grants that go to keep the gene pool of our native species. That all comes from racing. Without the changes that are being proposed today, the levy is going to shrink. The needs are the same or greater, and we cannot meet them. As a lawyer, I know that there is no such thing as legal certainty—but there are times when, as in racing, you must simply do your best and go for the gap. I think this is one of them.

[Lord Howard of Lympne (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, and I agree with everything she said. I declare my interest as a member of three horseracing syndicates and as a former chairman of a racecourse group. The issues before your Lordships this evening have bedevilled racing for decades. They were a matter of great contention when, more than 20 years ago, as Home Secretary I had responsibility for the racing industry and betting. Like the noble Baroness, I congratulate Tracey Crouch, the Sports Minister, on having had the courage to grapple with this issue, which has eluded the attention of Ministers for far too long.

I, too, listened attentively to the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey. As far as I could make out, apart from his principled opposition to the levy as a whole, his main objection to these regulations related to the possibility that they might fall foul of the courts, either in this country or in Europe. It grieves me to say that, given the growing assertiveness of the courts, that could be said of very many measures of legislation, both primary and secondary, which come before your Lordships’ House. If that were a sensible and satisfactory basis for opposing legislation, the legislative burden on your Lordships’ time would very light—much lighter than it is today. As the noble Baroness rightly said, we have to do the right thing—and if in due course the courts take a different view, I fear that that is something we all have to live with in these days of growing judicial intervention. I strongly support these regulations.

[Lord Mancroft (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak just for two minutes, and start by declaring my interest, first as the chairman of one of the three regulatory bodies of point-to-point racing, which is the smallest area of racing. I should also say that I too have received entertainment from bookmakers from time to time, although by the time I have finished this evening I probably shall not receive any more.

I listened very carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey. The noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, said he did too, as it was important to do so, because the noble Lord knows what he is talking about in these matters and deserves our careful attention. I have some sympathy with the comments that he made and understand the whole principle that he is opposed to. The idea that the Government should impose a levy to support one particular industry and not another is a ridiculous one, in theory. But the reality is, as my noble friend the Minister said in starting and as I think other noble Lords have said, that the relationship between racing and betting is symbiotic. They are, as the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, said, joined at the hip, and we should not do anything to break that join if either is to continue successfully. One comes to the conclusion that this is indeed a bit of a fudge, but the relationship between racing, government and betting has been a bit of a fudge since long before my noble friend Lord Howard was Home Secretary—indeed since the 1960s—and it has been a fudge that has sort of worked. Occasionally, it has to be given a bit of a nudge to continue the relationship and make it go further. It is unsatisfactory that, every year over the last few years, the Secretary of State has had to reset a levy because the two industries have not been able to find a way forward.

What we have before us today is a fudge but, as several noble Lords have said, the Minister in another place, Tracey Crouch, has worked very hard to come up with a very nice a sweet piece of fudge, which certainly the racing side of the industry approves of, although I suspect that some of the bookmaking side of the equation will not be quite so happy. But it is reasonable that the online betting operators should contribute as they have not before, and I conclude that this is a fudge worth going for. As my noble friend Lord Howard said, if we rejected every single statutory instrument that we thought might end up in the courts, we would have nothing to do in dinner hour after dinner hour from now on—that may be a very splendid idea, but the reality is that we must not be put off with that. Yes, this is not without problems going forward, and it may not work for ever, but on balance I think we should support the Government and let this statutory instrument go forward.