Horseracing and Bloodstock Industries

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 14th September 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, when it comes to declarations of interest, mine is the most second-hand that I can think of. I live in the village of Lambourn, Lambourn valley being the valley of the racehorse. I married into equestrianism—I should be able to say that word properly on a day like today—and I have a wife and daughter who both ride and love horses. Indeed, I remember through my courting days being woken up in the mornings by my wife going out to ride three lots over the downs. That will mean nothing to anybody who does not know anything about racing; it means getting on a half-tonne animal, with its fight and flight responses geared up, to charge up a hill at about 30 miles per hour with, in this case, a woman perched on top of it.

If you look at the industry from the point of view of the people who take part, I do not disagree with much of what has been said today. That is what I would like us to look at now. Racing supports an entire industry of people who work with their hands and are engaged in something quite dangerous.

If you want to see a good selection of braces, limps and crutches, go down the streets of Lambourn. You will find people who get thrown by horses and kicked by them but who want to get back on. If you want to discuss the intricacies of how a collarbone is repaired, go to any of the pubs in Lambourn. There will be a small person who will tell you about how they sailed across the horse’s shoulder to land splatting on the ground—and, indeed, you can go down to the rehabilitation centres in Lambourn and Moulton.

The noble Baroness, Lady Harding, gave us the best insight into this: all sports like to talk about themselves to themselves in darkened rooms and tell everybody else that they do not understand. To an extent, they do not—but all sports do this. They do not understand, because that sport does not get out there and say “Enough!” to the rest of the world in language that it may understand.

What I would also say about racing is that it supports the other equine sports. In the Lambourn Valley, you have world-class event riding and show jumping. It is a centre of veterinary medicine and of farriering—that is, shoeing horses, for anyone who is reading this who does not understand and, believe you me, there are plenty of people who do. All these things come together and interact. The people at the bottom of it are generally people who love it, who get back in and have bought into a culture. When arguments come up about the levy, racing has led the field and has supported people who actually take part at the bottom. If nothing else, it deserves support for that. Of course, it could have done it better and sooner, but it was first. I cannot see anybody else who has done it that well.

If you are supporting racing, provided that you make sure that that support goes down and helps throughout, that is doing a social good. And just as it supports the other equine activities, it is also supporting things like pony clubs. A pony club is an amateur sports club, which means that you have involvement—people coming together, voluntary activity and fundraising. We are so lucky in this country: we have a tradition of supporting our own sports. All these things are taking place. The Government should look very hard at what we can do to facilitate this connection, in this sport as in many others. That is an important thing.

The levy has been spoken about and I cannot really add very much. Yes, if you are betting anywhere in the world, why should we not get a cut here? We provide a base and a structure, and in fact the rest of world racing probably wants us to, because we have the structure here and the tradition to help them to improve their games. When something becomes an international sport, there will be interaction and changes. Look at football—look outside your bubble—and at how that has changed and that structure has shifted. You cannot change the world; you can merely operate better in it.

Are the Government going to look at this ongoing process to make sure that this entire industry and amateur support system works properly? The noble Baroness, Lady Harding, has given the best example of where state intervention should come from under a Conservative Government in the long term. But there has there has to be some action here. People complain that it is difficult to place a bet, but the difference with racing is that it is the only sport that I can think of that is so incredibly tightly linked to gambling, and always has been. Ancient texts about bets on horse races go back to everywhere. There was a different type of activity—there was chariot racing—but you name it, it was all there. But there is going to be that interaction.

If we are worried about problem gambling because it is at the end of a phone, there will have to be some checks and changes. Whether it is done properly and well is a good question, and one that probably only government has the resources to check properly. But it has to happen; otherwise, the damage done outweighs the social benefit. Other countries have faced this—Kenya, for example, with betting on football. The gambling is the problem, not the football. How do you interact with that? If we can hear something from the Government today about their thinking, I would be very glad to take that back, as would many of my colleagues who look at this. What is that connection, what is that thought, and how does it come backwards and forwards here?

There is also the fact that you can overdo these complaints—when someone says, “It took my daughter several minutes to open dozens of accounts so she could check what was the best price, at the age of 18”. Grow up. If it takes a couple of days to get them online, that is fine—and it does not have to be at the age of 18. There are limits and realistic chances that you have to take here: certain people will be vulnerable, and you will have to intervene. If we are overdoing it at the moment, and it is clumsy, fair enough; let us look again. I do not blame the racing industry. We do not blame brewers because a few people become alcoholics, or most of us do not anyway.

How are we going to work this out? Are we taking into account the fact it supports an entire industry of people who are fairly low paid and in low-status jobs? It is an industry that has looked after them reasonably well; it could always do better, but it has. It set a precedent. It looks after the welfare of people who are injured doing these jobs. So it has good things about it, but its relationship with gambling has always been problematic and always will be. Keeping the benefits of it will require government action and for everybody to become grown-ups. Saying, “Oh dear, it’s difficult”, will not work for anybody.

Are the Government looking at this in the round, as a sports and leisure interactive sector? The fact is that football stadiums might host the odd concert, and I know for a fact that Newbury Racecourse hosts dozens. They act as part of that social link. How does that fit into this sector? It is more than just racing: it is a social structure and an industry that comes together. Can we please hear what the Government are doing about that? Gambling started with racing as a constructive activity—it was actually outdone by cricket at one point; that is odd, isn’t it? That was the way spot betting went in the 18th century. What are we doing to ensure that gambling’s symbiotic relationship with the racing industry functions correctly so that we get the best while at least mitigating the worst?

I hope the Minister will give us a coherent answer. If he cannot, he should go back to his department and say, “Please, we need to know what is happening here”. That is what the question is.