Wales Bill

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Wednesday 14th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I will intervene for a short moment, with real apologies for not having been here at earlier stages in these discussions—I fear that I have duties that do not make it possible to be here all that often. I take the definition of the £10 bank very seriously to heart, but that is not the issue for me. I congratulate the Government and the Minister on recognising that there is a problem and bringing forward a government amendment that reflects that. The curious paradox for me is that having recognised there is a problem, on the basis of fixed-odds betting machines as they currently exist, the one area that devolved responsibility does not address is the very part of the problem that creates the discussion in the first place. To have an amendment that provides powers for the Welsh Assembly to look after what happens in the future, when the problem that has generated the debate cannot yield a similar level of control, seems to me a curious paradox. So while thanking the noble and genial Lord the Minister, who has handled things so magnificently in these debates, I just urge him to think about something that is paradoxical but could be tidied up. If retrospective responsibility could be introduced, that would make it a much better amendment from the Government.

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Griffiths of Burry Port is rather charitable, indeed flattering, to the Government in referring to their creation of a paradox. I would say that this is simply confused and bad policy-making and endorse what my noble friend Lady Morgan of Ely said at the outset. First, it is not a good way to treat the House for the Government to insist on mixing up, in one group, amendments on this variety of topics—energy, the Crown Estate and gambling. This is not a basis for rational scrutiny of legislation and it should not have happened.

I want to dwell on the gambling issue for only a moment, as much more important is the confusion in the handling of it. To make this distinction between different sizes of bank or stake—I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord James, for his elucidation of the issue—and to attempt to make a distinction between responsibility for supervision of machines that are already in Wales and for machines that may in future be in Wales is to fragment responsibility. If the Government are going to devolve responsibility for a very important social issue, they should devolve it properly and produce a coherent solution. Fragmenting responsibility can only make for confused and ineffective policy-making. This issue matters far too much to Welsh society, and in particular to the prospects for significant numbers of young people in Wales, and we need a coherent and proper policy for it.