Deregulation Bill

Debate between Lord Mancroft and Lord Gardiner of Kimble

Thursday 5th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for tabling these amendments. He is certainly tenacious in these matters.

The amendments seek to remove or relax regulations governing the amounts that society lotteries can raise and the level of prizes they can offer. The effect of the amendments together would be to allow society lotteries to offer jackpots of up to £5 million per draw and to hold as many draws as they wish. Our concern is that this could put society lotteries in direct competition with the National Lottery, and this might present a serious risk to the good causes funded by the National Lottery. The best way of raising funds is through encouraging people to play by offering them the life-changing prizes that are possible only through mass participation in a single national lottery. Indeed, the lottery was set up in 1994 to do just that.

As the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, rightly suggested, the National Lottery has been an enormous success, raising more than £32 billion for good causes in its 20 years of existence. It has funded everything from very large-scale national projects to thousands upon thousands of small-scale local groups, and this has had a truly transformative effect across the United Kingdom.

Society lotteries have also been very successful at raising funds for good causes and they have grown significantly in recent years. We welcome that success and are clear that they are part of a wider good-cause landscape. However, we cannot let their success be at the expense of the National Lottery.

Even if all the amendments are not taken together, it is unclear what effect making changes to individual limits will have. The limits taken as a package have so far allowed society lotteries to flourish while maintaining the success of the National Lottery. If we wish to change these limits, either singly or as a package, it must surely be done on the basis of evidence and with a clear understanding of how any changes will impact on society lotteries, both large and small, as well as on the National Lottery.

The Government agree with my noble friend that it is now time to consider these limits. That is why we are currently consulting through a call for evidence, asking for views on how we can ensure that society lotteries continue to flourish alongside the National Lottery. In addition, as has been mentioned, the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee is currently investigating society lotteries and will be considering whether their current limits are appropriate.

We are currently gathering the evidence that will highlight whether any reforms are needed, and I believe that it would be unwise to make any changes now without waiting for that evidence. The Government expect to have it after the call for evidence closes on 4 March. Once we have this evidence, any reforms to monetary amounts or percentages can be made through secondary legislation. Therefore, I am confident that the Government could move to make changes if, indeed, it was decided that this was the right and sensible course of action. For those reasons, I ask my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Mancroft]

My Lords, I am not in a position of having to thank many noble Lords for taking part in this enormous debate; nevertheless, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Collins, and my noble friend for replying.

It was clear from the debate in Grand Committee that your Lordships did not appreciate the importance of the issue, and it is clear that your Lordships have not appreciated its importance today. It is, however, clear that over the past few years, while the voice of the BBC in your Lordships’ House has increased significantly, the volume of sound that comes from the charity sector has, sadly, reduced.

Society lottery regulations were designed 40 years ago, when society had rather a different view of gambling. The gambling industry has changed beyond recognition —in particular, the Government themselves are now the largest player in that industry through their ownership and promotion of the National Lottery. In his answer, my noble friend made it clear that protecting the National Lottery is rather more important than any of the other issues on the table.

The noble Lord, Lord Collins, made some useful comments in taking this debate forward. However, I say to him that the information on ticket sales—the number of sales, which charity the money goes to and what percentage of the money goes to the charity—is in the public domain. Every charity files a return to the Gambling Commission, which is put on its website. Any member of the public can see exactly where the money has gone, how much was raised and how much went out in prizes. It is a requirement of regulations that societies do that and there is no question that that should not be changed. There is no reason why that should not continue. I am sure that the noble Lord knows that every charity lottery ticket has the name of the charity written on it. It is not difficult to tell where the money is going.

Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Bill

Debate between Lord Mancroft and Lord Gardiner of Kimble

Tuesday 4th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mancroft]

My Lords, I, too, put my name to the amendment in Grand Committee. Amazing though it may sound to your Lordships, the Prime Minister manages to travel the world without my company so, unlike my noble friend Lord Astor, I cannot claim that I was in China. I cannot actually remember where I was, but it was not in China.

There is no need to explain the background: my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones has done that adequately. Reading the Hansard of Committee stage to prepare for this evening, I noticed that my noble friend Lord Flight—who, sadly, is not in his place this evening—described the anomaly that my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones talked about and which the amendment is intended to address as a silly anomaly. Nonsense, he called it. He said that the amendment in its previous incarnation was straightforward and common sense. That was quite right. He also described the Government’s position at the time as pretty silly, and he was quite right about that too.

In Committee, the Minister talked about basing remote gaming around existing machine rules—I think I have quoted him correctly on that. It was that which really drew my attention to this, because I have history on legislation in gambling regulation. That is the sort of thing that leads to ineffective and bad regulation. That is exactly what the previous Government tried to do when a new class of gaming machine came out. That is the problem that we now have with what are called fixed-odds betting terminals, which are not betting terminals at all: they are gaming machines. It is really important when new machines and new forms of gambling appear that we regulate them correctly and do not try to fit them into boxes that are not really there. That is what I would call the DCMS’s attempt at the King Canute style of regulation, holding back the waves of new technology. That is what we did before and we must be very careful not to do it again in this case. My noble friend Lord Clement-Jones’s amendment is an attempt to address that.

In truth, I think that the Government have now accepted the principle of what my noble friend’s amendment is intended to do; I hope that they have. The debate before us this evening is really about whether it is better to put it in primary or secondary legislation. I know that, originally, the Government’s view was that this was not the right legislative vehicle. I have heard that before so many times. I am not quite sure what the right legislative vehicle is, but I am absolutely certain that the general public do not care; they just want it done. As my noble friend Lord Astor said, the right legislative vehicle—any legislative vehicle—does not come along very often, so when one comes along, you want to grab it.

If the amendment is to be withdrawn and the Government are to move forward in a different direction, the Minister should give your Lordships a commitment on a timetable, so that this does not just drag on and on, as issues have before. The problem with secondary legislation is that it is impossible to amend. If that is the route that the Government are determined to go down, my understanding is that the industry is not happy with it and would much prefer primary legislation but, obviously, like any industry, it will take what it can get. It seems to the industry, and it certainly seems to me, that primary legislation is the right vehicle for this. Unless the Minister can give us a very good reason why it is not, that is what we should do. There is quite enough flexibility in the provision. I think that your Lordships deserve the Government’s commitment to a timetable and to flexibility for the industry to make sure that we get this right. Unless we have those commitments, I see no reason not to take the view of my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones and pass the amendment. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, first, I thank my noble friend for his amendment and all my noble friends who have spoken to it. It is intended to allow the casino sector to introduce its specific remote gambling product into casino premises. As I said in Grand Committee, the Government are not opposed in principle to that, provided that appropriate player protections are put in place. We remain concerned that any changes should be effected within existing machine regulations so that appropriate controls can be put in place, rather than outside them in primary legislation, which this amendment would cause.

I have looked into this issue carefully and particularly because, on the face of it, this seems like a simple change to current arrangements by allowing casinos merely to promote their own online games within their premises. On further reflection and in reality, however, this is a more complex change that would introduce credit card play into the casino environment for the first time and permit far broader sports betting. It could also allow casinos to develop even more sophisticated remote gaming machines without the proper controls afforded by machine regulations.

Casinos are already able to offer remote gaming devices in their premises within existing machine controls. Those regulations create a carefully crafted hierarchy to ensure that machine-based play can be offered only with appropriate player protections in place. Player protections are a key part of this; they include restrictions on the number of machines, their location and the circumstances under which they can be used. I acknowledge that my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones is absolutely right to say that casinos are at the top of the regulatory pyramid. However, I also hope that noble Lords will agree that it is incumbent on the Government—indeed, that the Government have a responsibility—to consider carefully the impact of any new gambling arrangements, to ensure the avoidance of unintended consequences and an increase in problem gambling. My noble friend Lord Mancroft mentioned the way in which developments can take us and given the pace with which gaming technology develops, this is not merely a theoretical risk.

The casino industry recognises that any changes need to be made subject to appropriate player protections. We welcome this, as it reflects the very constructive dialogue that officials have had with the industry to date on this issue. This is also acknowledged in my noble friends’ amendment, which gives the Secretary of State power to make regulations for the nature and circumstances in which remote gaming machines can be used in casinos. This brings us much closer to the current regulatory structure and, in our view, it is difficult to see the need for primary legislation. Indeed, there would be a real risk of introducing regulatory anomalies in the existing primary legislation route.

For these reasons, the Government do not think that taking remote devices outside existing regulation is the right route to tackling this issue. The Government consider that this issue is best progressed instead through the ongoing and very constructive discussions with industry, and that any changes implemented can be done through secondary legislation. I emphasise that the Government are actively engaged in constructive discussion with the casino industry and the Gambling Commission to consider the appropriate legislative and regulatory tools that would need to be put in place. I understand entirely that the industry would like to have primary legislation as its first objective but it has acknowledged that secondary legislation is a viable option to pursue these proposals.

My noble friends Lord Astor, Lord Mancroft and Lord Clement-Jones quite rightly asked for some assurances. The discussions are scheduled to conclude at the end of this month and Ministers will then consider the outcomes. This is very much a live discussion and I give those reassurances to my noble friends. I also emphasise to your Lordships that the Government are not ruling out change but that we think we need to approach this in the right manner and ensure that such changes are made through an existing regulatory framework that applies to gaming machines while bringing proper scrutiny, assessment, consultation and—this is paramount—consumer protections. It is for these reasons and because I think that there is another route for this that, while I understand what my noble friend would prefer, I ask him whether he might withdraw this amendment.