Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2011 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

66A: Schedule 2, page 18, leave out lines 9 to 11

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

My Lords, I, too, will be brief. In moving Amendment 66A, I do not oppose the Government’s decision to merge the Gambling Commission and the National Lottery Commission. Indeed, I strongly support that for reasons I will explain. I believe that it would be helpful for the Committee to hear more about the Government’s plans for the regulation of gambling. The suggestion that the National Lottery should be regulated by the Gambling Commission first surfaced in the report of the Joint Scrutiny Committee on the draft Gambling Bill published in April 2004. I had the privilege of serving on that committee, along with seven other Members of your Lordships’ House, two of whom I am delighted to see in the Chamber—the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, and my noble friend Lady Golding.

I recall that the committee spent a considerable amount of time considering whether there should be a single regulator. The Joint Committee heard evidence in favour of the proposition from a variety of witnesses, including the Royal College of Psychiatrists, which stated that,

“it is … vital that the Gambling Commission should regulate all types of gambling, including spread betting and the National Lottery”.

The then Government, in the form of the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, said to the draft scrutiny committee that,

“there are benefits in plural regulation rather than having a single regulator”.

My much-missed friend, the late Lord McIntosh of Haringey, added that,

“the principal reason why we did not have the National Lottery coming under the Gambling Commission was that the National Lottery Commission has an additional objective of maximising the return to good causes, whereas the Gambling Commission has the three objectives of excluding crime, [promoting] fairness, and protecting the vulnerable”.

I think that I speak for most members of the Joint Scrutiny Committee if I say that we found this last argument a little hard to follow. Ever since the National Lottery was introduced in the mid-1990s it has enjoyed a protected and somewhat contradictory regulatory environment where its regulator is supposed to reconcile the two conflicting aims of protecting players and at the same time encouraging them to spend as much as possible on lottery products so as to fulfil their remit of maximising the return to good causes. In the end, we came to the conclusion expressed in paragraph 126 of our report, which states:

“The Committee is attracted to the idea of a single regulator, and takes the view that there would be distinct advantages for the National Lottery if it were to be included within the remit of the Gambling Commission rather than excluded from it as proposed in Clause 222 of the draft Bill. We are not convinced that the proposed structure will ensure consistency of approach across the gambling sector, particularly on key issues such as problem gambling and player protection”.

How very interesting that this Government have come to the same view.

However, I am bound to ask the Minister whether the Government have thought through all the issues. Have they, for example, decided that there is no longer the need for a statutory body which has within its remit the encouragement of people to spend more on lottery products so as to maximise the return to good causes? If that is what they are saying, I would have no problem with that as I have always taken the view that it is the job of a lottery operator rather than the state to promote lottery gambling. But that is a significant change of policy to which we will need to return to debate it at greater length. Where they would get into real difficulty is if they gave the Gambling Commission the job of promoting the lottery as well as regulating it. I should like to be reassured that that is not what they are planning.

I should make clear again that I am not opposed to the merging of the National Lottery Commission and the Gambling Commission. I just want to be assured that Ministers have thought through the consequences, as I believe we did on the Joint Scrutiny Committee seven years ago, and that they have a clear idea of how these potentially conflicting interests can be reconciled. I beg to move.

[Baroness Thornton]

My Lords, 72 per cent of the population gambled in the past year, so it is important that we get the regulation of gambling, whether it is through the National Lottery or at a casino, right. I took part as a Back-Bencher in the passage of the Gambling Act through your Lordships’ House with particular reference to the consequences for children and young people, which is why I am here today.

The Gambling Commission has been a great success as our regulatory body for most, if not all, gambling. As my noble friend said, it regulates betting, bingo, casinos, slot machines and lotteries, but not spread betting or the National Lottery. Its aims are to keep crime out of gambling, to ensure that gambling is conducted fairly and openly and to protect children and young people. Like my noble friend, I have some questions to ask.

The first question is to do with reconciling the contradictions in the proposal in relation to a body such as the National Lottery Commission, which promotes the success of the National Lottery in order to ensure that it makes a great deal of money for good causes but is also there to safeguard people from the dangers of gambling.

The Gambling Commission does three things extremely well and I should like to know what will happen to them in any new organisation. The commission is responsible for the Responsible Gambling Fund and the Gambling Research, Education and Treatment Foundation, both of which are relatively new bodies. The bulk of the money from the Responsible Gambling Fund goes to the work of GamCare, which does a very important job in helping people and families with gambling problems. I should like to know whether the work of GamCare will be jeopardised. The GREaT Foundation raises the required funding to support the work of the Responsible Gambling Fund. What will happen to these bodies under the new regime?

My third question concerns what will happen to the British Gambling Prevalence Survey, which has been an important spotlight that the Gambling Commission has shone on the gambling habits of the nation. It tells us who is gambling, how they are gambling and what the dangers are. I would be interested to know what is going to happen to that survey.

I started by being concerned, as I was while the Gambling Bill was going through this House, about the protection of the young. One of the great successes of the Gambling Act 2005 has been the introduction of age verification technology, which is part of the protection making online gambling that much safer for children and young people. I know that the National Lottery has the same sort of age verification safeguards, so I am reassured by that, but I would like to think that any new body would take heed of the need to protect children and young people from new technology as it advances in terms of gambling.

[Baroness Rawlings]

My Lords, Amendment 66A moved by the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, would remove the Gambling Commission and the National Lottery Commission from Schedule 2 and therefore retain the existing arrangements of two separate bodies. As the previous Administration had announced their intention to merge the two commissions in its last Budget on 24 March 2010, I am surprised that there should be a challenge to the proposal now. The Government are committed to increasing the accountability and reducing the number and cost of public bodies. We believe that merging the Gambling Commission and the National Lottery Commission will help to achieve this aim while preserving the appropriate and effective regulation of both sectors.

The National Lottery Commission is a non-departmental public body responsible for licensing and regulating the National Lottery, including protecting the interests of its participants and maximising the amount of money available for good causes. The Gambling Commission is an NDPB responsible for regulating commercial gambling, along with providing advice to central and local government on gambling and its regulation.

The new body, to answer the question put by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, will retain the existing functions of both commissions and will be well placed to advise on gambling and National Lottery matters. It will make co-ordination of regulation easier and will facilitate greater understanding of gaming and technological developments. Both bodies worked with the department to develop the business case for the merger. The chairmen and chief executives of both bodies discussed it with the Minister for Tourism and Heritage before it was agreed. The department has set up a project board to take forward work in relation to the merger, and the chief executives of both bodies sit on it. We estimate that the merged body will be in place from summer 2012, with some co-location of the bodies in advance of that.

The Government believe that, over time, the merger will generate cost savings and more efficiencies, which should help to reduce pressures on existing sources of funding, including fees. For example, we anticipate that by far the greater part of the NLC’s annual budget for accommodation will be saved. Specifically, the Government expect the new merged body to manage on the same administrative budget as the existing Gambling Commission. On whether GamCare will be protected and on the future of the British Gambling Prevalence Survey, I will write to the noble Baroness. In light of my explanation, I should like the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

My Lords, I made it clear in my opening sentence that the purpose of tabling the amendment was not to challenge the decision to merge the two bodies; the point of a probing amendment is to give us the opportunity to ask some questions. The main question that I asked was whether the new body would have the function of promoting the National Lottery in the way that the National Lottery Commission has had till now—in other words, encouraging people to spend money on it at the same time as regulating it and attempting to protect the public. I say with great respect to the Minister that she has not answered that question. If she is writing to my noble friend in response to her question about GamCare, perhaps she will be kind enough to write to me as well. Certainly at this time of night, and on an issue that I agree is not absolutely central to the Bill, although it is still important, I do not intend to press the amendment.

[Baroness Rawlings]

I will of course write to the noble Lord. I apologise for not giving him the information earlier.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

I beg leave to withdraw the amendment, but look forward to hearing from the Minister in due course.

Amendment 66A withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

My Lords, I support Amendment 70A, to which I have added my name. The Committee should be greatly indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, for tabling it. As far as I can establish, this is the first time for many years that your Lordships have had the opportunity to debate the activities of the Church Commissioners. My trawl of this House’s Hansard for the past five years has not produced a single example. That is in contrast to the other place, where the Second Church Estates Commissioner answers Questions for up to 15 minutes every month. He represents the Church of England in the House of Commons. Curiously, seven Members of this House—two most reverend Primates, four right reverend Prelates and the Lord Speaker—are all currently Church Commissioners, yet none of them speaks officially for them. I understand that, until 1977, it was possible for Members of your Lordships’ House to address questions to the Archbishop of Canterbury, but that was done away with on the advice of the Procedure Committee. Given what the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, said about the de facto public body nature of the Church Commissioners and the fact that they appear to be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, there appears to me to be an accountability deficit relating to their activities to which we should perhaps return on another occasion.

Perhaps I may use this opportunity briefly to express my concern over how the commissioners are managing and attempting to sell one of the finest see houses in the country, Hartlebury Castle—referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood—which was the home of the Bishops of Worcester from the 13th century up to 2007. It is a grade 1 listed building. It contains the magnificent Hurd Library, which was created in 1782 by Bishop Hurd, an ancestor of the noble Lord, Lord Hurd of Westwell, and is the last example in Britain of an integrated library containing the books for which it was originally created. There is also a great hall and a marvellous chapel, which reminded me when I went round it of the one depicted in the original television production of Brideshead Revisited.

Since 1966, the north wing of Hartlebury Castle has housed the Worcestershire County Museum, which also occupies a number of outbuildings on the site. In 2007, on the retirement of Bishop Selby, the commissioners decided that his successor, John Inge, should have his residence in the city of Worcester in a house by the cathedral and announced their intention to sell Hartlebury. That decision has aroused great controversy for the very reason that noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, gave; that is, the commissioners claim that their charity obligations require them to sell it to the highest bidder.

There are numerous other areas of concern, such as inadequate consultation with local interests, the lack of any strategy for dealing with historic assets, of which the Hurd Library is the prime example, and lack of care for the building. I am told that, during the recent cold spell, Hartlebury was heated for only four hours a day and, unsurprisingly, there were numerous burst pipes over Christmas, followed by floods that were unchecked for several days.

On the question of the sale, the commissioners are determined to put the house on the market in April 2012. In my view and that of the members of the Hartlebury Castle Preservation Trust, who are desperately attempting to raise the money—I declare an interest as one of their patrons—it is quite wrong for them to be driven only by a requirement to make the most from a sale that they can, regardless of how inappropriate the use to which any new owners may put the house. Surely it must be possible for this house, and the other see houses to which the noble Lord referred, to remain in public ownership with the running costs met by a body such as a charitable trust or, possibly, the National Trust. Something needs to be done to allow genuine local interests, who have a real vision of what these houses can contribute to the local community, to have their chance to show what they can do. That is why I strongly support the moratorium proposed by the noble Lord on the sale of other assets by the Church Commissioners. I hope that the Minister will agree and maybe, if one of the right reverend Prelates is able to contribute on behalf of the Church Commissioners, they will agree as well.

[Lord Boswell of Aynho]

My Lords, I, too, have appended my name to the amendment. I commend my noble friend Lord Inglewood for the erudition and articulacy of the case that he has put, particularly in relation to the legal arguments, which I am not competent to follow, and on the need for accountability of the Church Commissioners. I do not need to rehearse the arguments at length, but the debate so far has revealed a lacuna in our accountability. I say to the right reverend Prelates who are in their places that, in my experience of dealing with the Church of England and as a loyal Anglican who has dealt with legislation in another place, there is a need to articulate the interests of what might be termed the Bishops’ Bench for shorthand and of the Church Commissioners, because it is not always clear that there is a united voice in these matters. So it has been right to expose the issue of accountability.

The second issue, about which many of us in the House feel strongly, is the need to preserve the heritage. I would not make this specific to the affairs of the Anglican Church but there are a number of people sitting on a number of trusts in different capacities who have heritage assets that may or may not have strayed into their ownership as a result of past arrangements. I am thinking, for example, of a certain involvement that I had with the Coram Foundation and the Foundling Hospital at one stage and the legally intense issues, some time ago, in terms of the disposition of their paintings; or, indeed, Royal Holloway College, at which one of my daughters was a student, and the Turners that it had to sell. There is a real tension and we should reflect on ways in which—rather along the lines of the work that my noble friend Lord Inglewood does in relation to the reviewing of the export of works of art—we can run some of these heritage issues past accountability before it is too late to do so.

I make those two points in the full knowledge—and, indeed, having discussed them with Mr Baldry, the Second Church Estates Commissioner, who used to be my constituency neighbour when I was in another place—that there are real issues for the resourcing of the Church of England. We fully understand that it must make the best use of its assets—it has an important pastoral task, to which I warm—but it must not do so at the expense of these other considerations. That it has a need for the money may be a necessary and appropriate argument, but it is not quite sufficient to justify everything that may have taken place, as described by my noble friends and others. This is an area in which we need to sharpen up and make sure that it is meeting its wider obligations as well as its specific and precise ones to resource the church.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

I beg to move the amendment standing in the name of my noble friend Lord Greaves, who for reasons of health is unable to move it himself and has asked me to do so. Amendment 72 and others related are concerned with the internal drainage boards, which operate principally under the Land Drainage Act 1991 and are independent operating authorities. They form a specialist but important part of the systems of local governance in their areas. There are 154 of these bodies in England and they have an important role in managing water level and flood risk. Their activities include action in emergencies, maintenance of pumping stations where necessary and providing planning advice to local authorities.

The Association of Drainage Authorities, which is the national body that represents the IDBs, is unhappy about the inclusion of these bodies in the Bill and has suggested that primary legislation would be more appropriate. There are at least two opportunities for considering this matter in this parliamentary Session. The first is through the Localism Bill, which it has been suggested by the association would be a better way in which to make specific modifications to the legislation, including amalgamation of the boards. The association has also drawn attention to the fact that the Government are proposing to produce a water White Paper in June and believes that that would be likely to be followed by a water Bill, which would provide another appropriate route through primary legislation, allowing full scrutiny to take place and extensive parliamentary debate if necessary. I rise simply to ask the Government why they feel it appropriate to include the IDBs in this Bill and why they have not preferred to wait for the primary legislation intended to be produced relatively soon.

Some concern has been expressed by these bodies—particularly by the chief executive of the ADA—that local people, including volunteers, with considerable local knowledge, freely offer advice to help to reduce the risk of flooding to people, property and land. These concerns are worthy of being addressed in the debate. I have no doubt that the Minister will be able to explain the Government’s position. I beg to move.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester)]

I must advise the Committee that if this amendment is agreed to, I shall not be able to call Amendment 72A for reasons of pre-emption.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington]

My Lords, I support these amendments. When I spoke at various stages of the Flood and Water Management Bill, it was mainly about the importance of the integrity of catchment management plans and of the local knowledge and understanding of water management in each and every catchment. A crucial part of that knowledge and understanding can be found in the IDBs. There are more than 130 IDBs, covering nearly 1.3 million hectares of England and Wales, and I happen to know that whenever they were looked at by MAFF—and, I dare say, by Defra, although I am unaware of any analysis or report in the past 10 years—they have been shown to be exceptional value for money, because the work they do would cost the state millions of pounds more if they were not there.

The IDBs are managed largely by volunteers with professional, historical and local knowledge and expertise that is unequalled on their patch. They are really good examples of how the big society should work and remain a major delivery partner in flood management. While they continue to protect agricultural, commercial and domestic property, they are also reinventing themselves to protect habitats, SSSIs, and environmental issues such as lichen, insects, wildflowers and barn owls, to name but a few.

I accept that their purposes and procedures, organisation and membership should always be reviewed in the light of modern practice but the value, knowledge and local expertise they represent should not be undermined or wasted—at least, not on our watch. I also accept that their membership may need broadening in the light of new financial arrangements. I understand that that is beginning to happen and that there are already broader interests in the environment and the like, which should be represented in their membership. However, I worry a little about the Environment Agency being responsible for their amalgamations and boundary changes in “non-contentious cases”. Does that mean that the IDBs involved have to agree with the proposed changes? I would worry if the Environment Agency had the power to take over any IDB responsibilities without their consent because that would be a waste of local expertise and, probably, of money. It would be unlikely to lead to any greater efficiency. Can the Minister address the definition of “non-contentious cases”?

Finally—I repeat this every time I stand up on this Bill—while this Government may have indicated their immediate intention is not necessarily to undermine or dramatically alter the functions of IDBs, I always worry about the long-term issue of leaving them in Schedules 3 and 5 in case some future Government threaten those highly important bodies. Once again, it seems that the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, is moving slightly closer to sunset clauses in the Bill. I heartily endorse that he moves even closer.