Horse Racing Levy

Debate between Andrew Griffiths and Gerry Sutcliffe

Thursday 20th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Sutcliffe]

The hon. Gentleman makes his point, but the gambling industry would say that it already makes a contribution. My Member of Parliament, the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), is an advocate of what the gambling industry has said about the rights it pays already—television rights, sponsorship and so on.

There has to be an adult relationship and a commercial coming-together. The Tote can help with the way forward. The previous Government made the decision to sell the Tote, and gave a manifesto commitment to give 50% of the money raised from its sale back to racing. I know that defining racing makes that difficult, but it could be a starting point.

[Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con)]

The Tote was enacted by a piece of legislation introduced by Winston Churchill. It is true that in their 2001 manifesto the Labour Government made a commitment to giving racing 50% of the proceeds from the sale of the Tote. Does the hon. Gentleman think that waiting nine years and failing to do that had a detrimental effect on the racing industry?