The Tote
Debate between Lisa Nandy and Laurence Robertson
Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)
I, too, am surprised that so many Members do not want to hear this timely and important debate. I am pleased to have secured it and grateful to the Minister for staying behind to reply to it. I am also grateful for his genial and informed approach to all the horse racing issues that the Government have to deal with.
I wish to declare two non-declarable interests. I have the honour of being joint chair of the all-party group on racing and bloodstock industries, which is one of the most active, well-attended and important all-party groups in Parliament. I have the honour of being joint chair alongside the hon. Member for Mansfield (Mr Meale), whom I am pleased to see in the Chamber this evening. I also have the honour of representing the great race course at Cheltenham, which by a quirk of the boundaries falls within my constituency of Tewkesbury. It is looking forward to one of the greatest national hunt racing festivals in the world in a couple of weeks’ time.
The debate is timely because the Government have announced their intention to finalise the status of the Tote. It was set up in 1928 to benefit horse racing, and benefit horse racing it has done. Last year, it provided almost £19 million to horse racing through the statutory levy and sponsorship. The Tote sponsors the Cheltenham gold cup, one of the greatest steeplechase races in the world, which will take place in a couple of weeks’ time. It also pays a lot of money in rent to around 60 race courses across Great Britain, and that money is absolutely crucial to racing. The Tote is more than that, however; it is an institution, and it provides the friendly face of bookmaking.
It is 10 years since the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), then Home Secretary, announced that the Government of the day would change the status of the Tote. At the time, it looked as though it would be transferred to a racing trust. Indeed, a shadow trust was set up with its own chairman, Lord Lipsey, but the transfer was never made. One of the big questions that we must ask before getting too far into the detail is this: who actually owns the Tote? That is not an easy question to answer. It was for that reason that in 2004 the then Government passed an Act of Parliament that nationalised the Tote, with a view to moving it on to the racing trust, but they never included that intention in the Bill, which was a problem. My submission is that, if the Government had to nationalise the Tote and obviously did not own it, they in some way had a responsibility to racing, so it would be wrong for them to do anything with the Tote that would deprive racing of its annual income from the Tote.
Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman will know that I have the privilege of representing Wigan, where the Tote has its headquarters, and the staff there have lived with uncertainty about their futures for a long time. Does he share my concerns about how their jobs and, in particular, their pensions will be protected, and would he welcome some clarity from the Minister on that?