Gaming Machine (Miscellaneous Amendments and Revocation) Regulations 2018

Debate between Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown and Lord Deben

Tuesday 18th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, it is important that someone from this side of the House says very clearly to the Minister—and I am sorry that it is this Minister to whom I have to say it—that one is really ashamed of the Government over the time they have taken to do what was clearly necessary. One only has to think what would have happened if the Government had agreed to double the stake. The gambling companies would have changed those machines as rapidly as you could think—they would have done it just like that. Yet the Government were taken in by people who told them that they could not do it in time. The second thing that the Government did was to make it perfectly clear that they were happy to go on raising money from the poorest and most deprived sections of our community in order to safeguard the public finances; and that until they had got their new system into operation, they were prepared to go on taking that money, when they could have put it right so much more quickly.

Like so many others, I am very sad at the loss of Tracey Crouch as a Minister. I am even sadder that the Government, having understood the seriousness of this particular form of gambling, managed to pretend that they had to spend months putting it into operation. Even today, we are supposed to be supporting something that does not come into operation until April. So it has taken them a year to do something that could have been done in two months, and something that would have been done by the industry in two months if it had been to their advantage. Somebody from this side has got to say that this is not the Government’s finest hour. Indeed, it is, for me, one of the saddest moments to see a Government who recognise the problem but then spend this sort of time trying to put it right.

I support the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, who has rightly said that this is only the beginning of what we dealing with. We saw a couple of months ago the outrageous picture of the woman who runs one of our biggest online gambling organisations paying herself more than a quarter of a billion pounds as a year’s salary. That is a disgraceful situation. Here is somebody who has paid herself a quarter of a billion pounds, much of which has been earned on the backs of the most vulnerable people in our society. That leads me to be very concerned about the noble Viscount’s comments about getting a balance. I find this “balance” a pretty peculiar concept. I do not want to stop people gambling if that is what they want to do. What I want to do is to return to a situation in which you have positively to decide and go through a series of hoops to get yourself into a position to gamble and then to be restricted in the ability to gamble with money that you do not have.

This is a social evil which we should, as a Government, not be prepared to continue to condone. To use it as a means of shoring up the public finances, and to use that as an excuse, seems to me to be just as ridiculous as the people who answered my tweet when I dared to suggest that this good lady had behaved very badly. They said, “Ah, but she is the biggest employer in Stoke-on-Trent, and therefore that excuses the fact that she has paid herself this money and made that kind of profit”. I am sorry, but I have to say to my noble friend the Minister that it does not excuse it. It is about time that we really did say the following about the gambling industry. First, it cannot be trusted to look after and control itself. That is a point that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, rightly made. Secondly, it is very difficult to see that its contribution to the society in which we live is anything but evanescent. It is a pretty difficult contribution to capture. As the noble Lord, Lord Foster, suggested, money spent on gambling is not going to disappear if it is not spent on gambling: it is there and can be spent on other and much more useful things in society.

I am not a puritan at all, and the noble Lord who is going to answer for the Opposition knows perfectly well that I find the puritanism that still exists in this society not terribly attractive. I am, however, a practical person who looks at what gambling does to people, sees what the damage and the cost to society are and therefore laments the pathetic pace at which the Government have proceeded to deal with the things that need to be dealt with. I just hope that my noble friend will take back to his department the fact that people on his own side, as well as others, really feel that action is urgent. We have known about online gambling for years and we are still talking about it. We still have people taking money away from the poorest in the most despicable circumstances and we do nothing. I am glad that the Government have brought this forward, but it is about 10 months too late and it has been forced on the Government. It is not a happy moment for the Minister or for those of us who believe that we have to take stronger measures more rapidly. We will continue with this until the Government step up to the mark and recognise that improved public health and public good will result from proper, timely, urgent and widespread action on what has become one of the social evils of our time.

[Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (DUP)]

My Lords, like others who have already spoken in this debate, I very much welcome these regulations, which will bring new and welcome protections to people living in Great Britain. It is regrettable indeed that the Government have taken so long to introduce effective legislation to protect the poor and most vulnerable in our society. I simply note that when, in April 2019, the maximum stake on fixed-odds betting terminals falls to £2 in Great Britain, the new legislation will not impact Northern Ireland. Like every other region of the United Kingdom, families in Northern Ireland have been shattered and individual lives have been ruined by the blight of gambling.

I very much regret that the Northern Ireland Assembly is suspended at present. I know that Members of your Lordships’ House will rightly say, “Well then, why doesn’t the Assembly get up tomorrow?” I say on behalf of my colleagues in the Democratic Unionist Party that we would be delighted if the Assembly were to be up and functional tomorrow. However, we need to lay clearly before your Lordships’ House that the intransigence of one party alone in Northern Ireland—Sinn Féin—is the reason why the Assembly is not functioning. To members of that party, it seems that an Irish language Act is more important than providing a health service capable of looking after the health of people, education for our children or adequate services or protection for the most weak and vulnerable members of our society, which these regulations would provide. I know that if the Assembly were operating, it would be addressing the matter before your Lordships’ House. It is time that Sinn Féin moved away from its childish activity and allowed the Assembly to function again. Indeed, my noble friend Lord Morrow tabled the Long Title of a Bill in Stormont to address this very matter.