Culture, Media and Sport committee

Debate between John Whittingdale and Baroness Bray of Coln

Thursday 26th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Whittingdale]

The household levy, which would be a short-term measure to deal with the problem of evasion, is just a small change to the way of collecting the licence fee. The licence fee is essentially a household levy, but there is quite a high evasion rate which could increase following decriminalisation. The one area where the hon. Gentleman is correct is that there are some people who say that they never watch the BBC, never listen to BBC radio and never go online to access BBC services, so they do not pay the licence fee. Since 96% of the population have BBC television and a lot more have BBC radio, the number we are talking about is very, very small. There is arguably a case for saying that the public service content that the BBC provides is good for society and for the nation and it is right that everybody should contribute towards that.

[Angie Bray (Ealing Central and Acton) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his chairmanship of our Committee and the publication of the report. I am delighted to see that it recognises the inexorable move towards subscription television. I believe that people should pay for what they want to watch, rather than for what they do not watch, but may I express my reservations about some kind of household levy? I am uneasy about creating new taxes, which are easier to create than to abolish. Does my hon. Friend concede that there is some danger that that in itself could endanger the independence of the BBC and make it more dependent on politicians?

[Mr Whittingdale]

I do not want to overstate the household levy because it is essentially the licence fee by a different name. The reason that it is attached to a household is in order to make it easier to collect than the existing rather draconian process, which suffers from an evasion rate that could increase with decriminalisation. On the setting of the level, the report makes it clear that we see a role for the new public service broadcasting commission in assessing the amount needed to provide the services that the BBC is there to produce, and I do not think there is a greater danger of political interference or Government involvement than there is already under the process of setting the licence fee.

Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Bill

Debate between John Whittingdale and Baroness Bray of Coln

Tuesday 5th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Whittingdale]

I am delighted to hear of the success of the company based in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, but he will remember that when witnesses from bet365 gave evidence to the Committee they said that it was becoming increasingly difficult for them to remain in the UK, and unless something was done soon, they might very reluctantly have to follow the exodus. Happily, I hope the Bill will address that, but as I said earlier, it all comes back to the rate of tax that is levied. We want a rate of tax that is attractive to online operators, so that they license themselves in the UK, and does not drive people into the black market.

However, other measures are also required, and one or two of those who have made representations on the Bill have said that the Government must consider taking other measures to prevent illegal gambling online. There are several ways in which that could be done. They are not dissimilar to the measures that we have been looking at in order to tackle online piracy.

There are three potential ways forward. The first is to work with payment companies to ensure that unlicensed sites cannot use the payment facilities offered by credit card companies. The second is IP blocking—actually, URL blocking—preventing access via the internet to certain websites. That has technical difficulties but is certainly worth exploring. In the third, search engines have a role. I expect that my hon. Friend the Minister will be aware of the vigorous debates that have taken place with Google about the extent to which it is willing to take responsibility to ensure that illegal websites, or websites offering illegal products, do not appear at the top of their search engine results. That too is an area where more work could be done to make it harder for consumers to be tempted by illegal online operators once the new regime is in place. Those are genuine concerns, which I hope the Government will address in the course of debate.

I shall flag up one more issue. An anomaly was identified to the Select Committee, about which we had considerable sympathy. Casinos are among the safest places to gamble. They have strong measures in place to prevent money laundering, to identify those at risk of problem gambling and, if necessary, to exclude individuals and so on. They also have experienced, well trained staff on the premises. For all those reasons, a casino is one of the safer places to gamble—certainly considerably safer than in a bedroom alone, where people are able to gamble for lengthy periods without any controls and to lose a huge amount of money.

[Angie Bray (Ealing Central and Acton) (Con)]

I am delighted that my hon. Friend has raised this issue. Does he agree that we could usefully employ British bricks-and-mortar casinos, which have an excellent reputation for responsible gambling, to operate some of the online gambling on their premises, to allow them to monitor how it is working and, indeed, then help to frame any regulations that we might need in future?

[Mr Whittingdale]

That is an interesting idea, but my hon. Friend’s suggestion runs straight into the problem—the anomaly that the Select Committee received evidence about—that it still will not be possible for casinos to offer their own remote gambling facilities within their buildings. I could go into a casino and place a bet using my own iPad or iPhone or other online device, but when the Bill is passed, the casino will not be able to offer that facility through remote terminals, or by giving out their own devices. That seems an extraordinary anomaly, so the Select Committee suggested that the Bill should be amended to remove it, and to allow casinos to offer a remote gambling facility as well. I was disappointed that the Government appeared not to accept our argument, and I hope they will still think about that and perhaps allow an amendment to the Bill in the course of debate.

However, having said that, I have no doubt that the Bill is desirable because it strengthens the protection available to UK consumers who indulge in online gambling, and may have the additional benefit of resulting in some additional revenue, in due course, to the UK Exchequer. On that basis, I and the Select Committee support the Bill.