Fixed Odds Betting Terminals
Debate between Philip Davies and Gerry Sutcliffe(10 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Gerry Sutcliffe (Bradford South) (Lab)
I refer the House to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am also a non-paid, independent trustee of the Responsible Gambling Trust.
The trust was set up under the previous Labour Government, who wanted the gambling industry to contribute to a voluntary levy towards research, education and treatment. As the hon. Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Dame Angela Watkinson) said, nearly £6 million has been raised towards that end. There are five independent and five industry trustees under the chairmanship of Neil Goulden. I wanted to intervene earlier on my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson), who is no longer in his place—perhaps that is not unusual—to point out that Neil Goulden is not the chairman of the Association of British Bookmakers. The trust commissions work to look at the core issues affecting problem gambling and, indeed, the treatment of problem gamblers. It has an excellent chief executive in Marc Etches, who has considerable experience across the piece.
I raise the trust’s work because the argument that this industry is unaware of its responsibilities on problem gambling is unjustified. The trust has commissioned detailed, independent research into fixed odds betting terminals and related matters. The important sub-committee that deals with the research and findings is chaired by a senior independent trustee, Liz Barclay, who is a respected broadcast journalist and producer. It has been made clear to the industry that whatever recommendations the research throws up, the trust will stand by them. An interim report is expected in March, with a full report to follow.
Today’s debate is important because there are continuing concerns about FOBTs, especially among the Local Government Association and its members, as well as parliamentary colleagues. Those concerns are usually connected with the perceived proliferation of betting shops. The betting industry employs 40,000 people directly and there are 8,773 betting shops in Britain, which is far fewer than the 16,500 betting shops that existed in the 1970s.
Philip Davies
The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech, as usual. Will he confirm that about a third of those betting shops make about £15,000 or less in profit each year, and that half of them are independent, family-run businesses—I was brought up in a family-run betting shop—and not big corporate companies, as the Labour party likes to portray them?
Mr Sutcliffe
I accept that there are many independent betting shops, but the problem, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out in his speech, is the perceived proliferation of the main bookmakers on the high street. As he said, the reason is that they used to be on side streets, but they have now moved to the high streets. The problem for the gambling companies is that they are associated with payday loan companies and others on the high street that are causing great concern, especially among our local government colleagues.
That is why I have no problem with the motion with regard to local government and its powers. Powers already exist alongside the licensing objectives in the Gambling Act, and many local authorities may use those powers if they think betting shops are acting outside those objectives. It is understandable that local authorities want more powers. As we have heard, FOBTs have always been on probation, and we should reflect on the fact that the deal done on the Gambling Act restricted betting premises to four machines.
We must have evidence, however, and I think that it will be forthcoming through the Responsible Gambling Trust, which has asked bookmakers to provide it with a whole range of information. To counter the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East, the independent directors will look at the report and recommendations, and will report to the full trustees. As was said by the Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), that Committee looked at the issue and determined that the number of machines and betting shops should be decided locally by local authorities.
My problem is with the antics of the Campaign for Fairer Gambling. It is right and proper for the campaign to set out its view, but it is not right for it to try to vilify those who oppose its views. It sets out to rubbish any analysis that is not its own and, in particular, to try to rubbish the work of the Responsible Gambling Trust, which was set up to look at issues of problem gambling. If it is a real campaign for fairer gambling, why is its only focus on FOBTs? There are many other areas of problem gambling, as the gambling prevalence survey has shown. For instance, there are issues due to the price of national lottery tickets being increased from £1 to £2 and because people are able to buy them at 16, although they cannot go into betting shops until they are 18. There are many other issues to consider, including online gambling, which has already been talked about.
I believe that the debate did not need to be emotive and that we could have got to the core of the issues. The point about local authorities having more powers was well made by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman). I believe that we need to look at the subject sensibly and wait for the research to come out, and then make decisions based on that evidence.
Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Bill
Debate between Philip Davies and Gerry Sutcliffe
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is right and if the Minister felt it necessary, she would be able to do that. The other point that has been well made is that we are not likely to have another suitable Bill in the foreseeable future to deal with this issue. To be honest, it would be unacceptable for the Minister simply to give the House some warm words and agree to look into it at some future date, as that would, in effect, be kicking it into the long grass for an indeterminate time. If we are going to implement this measure, as seems sensible, there seems to be no reason why we cannot just crack on and do it now. I support new clause 1, and if the Minister will not accept it, I encourage my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend East to push it to a vote. I think he will see that the new clause finds a great deal of favour in the House, although I hope it does not come to that.
The next group of new clauses are tabled by the hon. Member for Eltham and I consider them a combination of the unnecessary and the undesirable. I will attempt a quick canter round the course for each of them. I do not intend to delay proceedings for long, but it is worth setting out why I would not agree to any of the new clauses, and why I hope that the Minister will follow suit.
New clause 2 on licence, compliance, stipulations and control of spread betting seems completely unnecessary, and I hope the Minister will reject it on those grounds. New clause 3 has an interesting idea about ensuring there is a kitemark on all licensed and legitimate websites. I understand why some might think that idea superficially attractive, but my view is that the new clause is completely pointless. A kitemark does not attract people to a particular gambling website or company—it tends to be the odds being offered that attract people to those websites or companies. I admire the naivety, I suppose, of the shadow Minister who thinks that if we put a kitemark on the bottom of every licensed website, every punter in the country will ignore all better odds available and just bet blindly because of the kitemark. It would be nice if the world worked that way, but that is cloud cuckoo land. It is completely naive and unnecessary.
New clause 4 concerns remote gambling licensees, customer protection and making sure licensees participate in a programme of research into and treatment of problem gambling. I do not have a problem with that; it is quite desirable that all of those companies participate in providing finance to research problem gambling and to provide treatment. The issue with the new clause putting that into statute is that it is already happening on a voluntary basis by the gambling industry. The hon. Member for Bradford South knows all about this because he was involved in it.
Mr Sutcliffe
The hon. Gentleman is quite right that this would provide statutory underpinning. One of the difficulties is that it is a voluntary arrangement. A large percentage of the companies contribute, but there are a few notable exceptions. One thing that might flow from the clause is that the Minister might be able to support the Responsible Gambling Trust in getting those companies that do not contribute to do so.
Philip Davies
I take his point and, as Minister, he basically got the gambling companies to agree to the voluntary levy, which raises around £5 million or £6 million a year. It was he who said that if they did not do it voluntarily, he would legislate to ensure that they did it. How voluntary that would have made it is a different matter; we can debate the definition of “voluntary”. The upshot is that the companies are doing this and are doing so on a voluntary basis. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right; not every single gambling company contributes and it relies on some of the larger ones—such as Ladbrokes and William Hill—to make what might be considered a disproportionate contribution to raise the required amount. But the money that is being requested is being raised each year. We do not really need new clause 4; the money that people are seeking, properly, for the treatment of problem gamblers and research into problem gambling is already being raised. New clause 4 is unnecessary. If the money were not being raised, I could see the point.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The proportion of gamblers who are problem gamblers is 0.9 per cent, according to the latest research. Obviously it is right that anyone who has an addiction to or a problem with gambling has treatment made available to them to try to help them. That is what we should be focusing on and the gambling industry is contributing to ensure that that is the case. It is a small number, but that does not detract from the problems it causes for those individuals and their families. That is why it is right that that finance is provided.
The gambling industry provides finance to people who have a problem with gambling in a way that other industries do not; for example, for alcoholics or for people with an addition to tobacco. I do not notice the cream cake industry producing a voluntary levy to deal with the problem of obesity. The gambling industry, to its credit, does make this contribution and we should recognise that it does, even if it is for a small number of people.
New clause 5 is about the reporting of suspicious activities and the power to obtain financial information by the Gambling Commission. I do not think that this is necessary. As far as I am aware from all the evidence that we have had from the Gambling Commission, it gets the information that it requests from gambling companies, so I do not see that there is a problem. It seems to be a solution looking for a problem. I have not heard evidence from the Gambling Commission that it has not been able to access the relevant information from the people that it regulates and licences.
On the issue of match fixing and sports betting there are two points that make the new clause undesirable as well. The first thing, which never comes out, is that bookmakers are the victims of match fixing, not the cause of it. It is usually people involved in a particular sport, or referees or umpires, who conspire in effect to defraud bookmakers. On the principle that the polluter should pay, it seems bizarre to say that the bookmakers are being ripped off by people involved in sport and that we should therefore penalise bookmakers for being the victims of the crime. The people who should be paying to clean up their sports are the sports. It is the participants, umpires or referees who are causing the problem and causing a cost to the bookmaker.
Mr Sutcliffe
I am with the hon. Gentleman most of the way, but part of the problem is that the sports are not in control of the types of bet that can be put on their sport. That is how players—particularly young players—can be corrupted. There is an issue in terms of the relationship between betting and sports and it would be better if the sports had control over what could be bet upon.
Philip Davies
I never like disagreeing with the hon. Gentleman, not least because he is a constituent of mine and it might jeopardise my chances of him voting for me at the next election. But to say that bookmakers offer products that therefore encourage sportsmen to fix matches is like blaming retailers for shoplifting by putting products on display. It is a bizarre way of looking at things and it is certainly not the way I look at it.
The other point on match fixing—for example, all the issues recently in cricket, with no-balls being bowled and issues related to the Pakistan team—is that much of the money gambled was not with legitimate bookmakers in the UK but with illegal bookmakers in the far east. All the proposals in new clause 5 will not make a blind bit of difference because much of the activity is not taking place with legitimate bookmakers. It is completely pointless and I hope for that reason the Minister will reject it.
New clauses 6, 7 and 9 in effect ask the Government to legislate to be able to consult on something. It seems bizarre that we would put into law a requirement on the Government to consult. The Government can consult on all these issues without legislating to do so. I suspect that, as all these issues are important, the Minister will be consulting the industry and others on an ongoing basis. It is rather bizarre that these new clauses should seek to put into a Bill a statutory obligation for the Minister to consult. If we started going down that line and placing in Acts of Parliament requirements on Ministers to consult, legislation would look very bizarre in this place. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will reject all those new clauses, too.
It is sad that the Labour party is once again resorting to its nanny state instincts on the advertising watershed. This ludicrous idea of a watershed for advertising is a complete nonsense particularly when children are not even allowed to gamble. If the issue is that children are gambling, the best way to deal with it is to enforce the existing law that prevents children from gambling. I am wholly opposed to children gambling. I am one of the few Members who believe that it is wrong for 16-year-olds to play the national lottery; I think it should not be played until people are 18, which is the right age for people to be allowed to gamble. If the issue that the hon. Member for Eltham is trying to address is one of children gambling, we should make sure that the law as it stands is enforced.
I have heard the argument that we need to deal with “marketing grooming”—the idea that people are subjected to adverts when they are very young, so that when they become adults, they are addicted to the product before they have even started. I used to work in marketing for Asda, and the idea that any company would spend its marketing budget to try to get a new customer eight years down the line is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard in my entire life. I would like to meet anyone working for any marketing department that has that as its strategy, as I have never encountered any such person. Most business organisations cannot see beyond the end of their nose; they certainly cannot see beyond the end of the financial year in which they are operating. The idea that they would use marketing on TV to boost their sales in five or eight years’ time is absolutely ridiculous. New clause 9, therefore, is not only unnecessary; it is completely ridiculous.
New clauses 10 and 11 relate to a horse racing levy. I spoke on that on Second Reading, but given that most of my speeches—or probably all of them—are not memorable, I will briefly repeat for the benefit of Members why I think these provisions are unnecessary. First, I think the Minister will confirm that extending the Bill to include a levy would introduce a legal problem, or certainly a complication, that might scupper the Bill in its entirety. It is not worth risking the Bill as a whole to introduce the levy.
As I mentioned on Second Reading, it seems to me as an onlooker that what tends to happen if any Government have to determine the levy—let us hope that we keep the current position of an agreement being reached between bookmakers and the racing industry without the intervention of Ministers—is that they look to produce a certain figure that they think should be raised by the gambling industry to pay towards the levy. Most Ministers would think £75 million was a roughly appropriate sum. The formula for the levy is then worked out to generate the £75 that the Government think should go to the industry.
All that will happen by forcing through these new clauses is that the Government will still come to the conclusion that the gambling industry should pay about £75 million, and will adjust the formula accordingly to make sure that that amount is raised in this way rather than in another way. The new clauses are completely unnecessary and I do not think they will generate an extra penny piece for racing and the racing industry. To risk legally scuppering the whole Bill to put in a provision that will not make any difference is pointless.
Mr Sutcliffe
Will the hon. Gentleman go through what he believes the legal impediments are? If he is referring to the European Union, it appears that the French have overcome any problems emanating from that. Is he arguing that the advice of the DCMS lawyers is inappropriate?
Philip Davies
As the hon. Gentleman knows, I am no lawyer and no legal expert. I am regurgitating the Government’s position when they said that this might cause a legal problem. We have seen in the past how legal decisions taken by the European Court of Justice on gambling issues related to the levy came as a great surprise to all concerned at the time. We are not in a position to be clear about what the result of any legal challenge would be. All we could be clear about is that there would be a legal challenge, at which point the result would become uncertain. I do not see any great gain—to be honest, I do not see any gain—in precipitating such a legal challenge. For that reason, I hope that new clauses 10 and 11 will be rejected.
New clause 12 is about financial blocking for illegal sites. Superficially, it seems attractive that measures should be taken to try to stop people gambling through sites that are not properly licensed or illegal. The problem with new clause 12, however, is that other countries have shown that financial blocking does not work. Other countries have tried to restrict online gambling and tried to make licences available only to a few operators, but this has failed in every single country that has tried it. It fails because there are ways around financial blocking—by using PayPal and other methods, for example, which cannot be blocked by the banks. It does not work. New clause 12 is well meaning, and I understand why the shadow Minister wishes to pursue it, but it is pointless because it simply will not work.
New clause 13—the last of the new clauses proposed by the hon. Member for Eltham—is also unnecessary, so I hope that the Minister will reject all the shadow Minister’s new clauses. Although I do not doubt his motives in bringing them forward—the motives are good—I think that they are either unnecessary or undesirable.
New clause 14 was tabled by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who represents the Democratic Unionist party. Again, I think it has much to commend it on a superficial level and I understand exactly what he is trying to do and why he is trying to do it. Again, too, the motives are very good. I doubt whether many people would disagree with the principle of what is suggested. The hon. Gentleman wants to make sure that there is a register of people who should be self-excluded. The self-exclusion is done through the Gambling Commission and would then apply to every operator who had a licence with it. If someone is self-excluded once, they are self-excluded with everybody. We would like to get to that scenario.
The problem with putting this provision into statute is that it will put many gambling operators in a very difficult position. Once someone who has self-excluded goes on to gamble, the gambling operator would be breaking the law, but the new clause does not provide for a sufficient “due diligence defence”. If someone self-excludes and tries to use different names, different addresses, different bank accounts and slips through the net in that way, my worry would be that, through no fault of their own, they will be in breach of the law.
If we are to go down the line of the new clause—as I say, I have no problem with the principle and view it as a desirable outcome for someone self-excluded from one operator to be self-excluded across the industry—without some kind of due diligence defence, it could put gambling operators in an impossible position. We would be asking them to do something that would be impossible to achieve if someone were determined to get round it. Perhaps the other place could consider the problem and I would be happy for the Minister to look further at it. As the new clause stands, however, I cannot support it.
I would like to think that, unusually for me, my amendment 1 is non-controversial and could easily be accepted by the whole House. It simply requests:
“The Secretary of State shall publish a report to Parliament one year after the commencement of this Act, and annually thereafter, on the enforcement activity of the Gambling Commission in respect of unlicensed operators attempting to provide facilities for gambling in the UK.”
One of my concerns about the Bill—certainly one I expressed on Second Reading—is that it might lead to an increase in the number of people gambling with unlicensed operators, with the tax bill encouraging some companies to go outside of the licensing regime. The Treasury forecast of how much tax will be collected—about 20%—seems to confirm the danger that 20% of gambling will take place with unlicensed operators. If we are to go down the route suggested by the Bill, we need to focus the Gambling Commission’s attention on stopping gambling with unlicensed operators.
Horse Racing Levy
Debate between Philip Davies and Gerry Sutcliffe(13 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Sutcliffe
I thank the hon. Lady for raising that issue. Everything has to be considered. As a Minister, I tried to bring the sectors together to hammer out a possible solution. There was a lot of good will on all sides among the bodies represented, but we could not decide on the best way forward, so we had to rely on the levy. That cannot and should not continue, and I would be supportive if the Government decided that this is the last time they should have to determine the outcome of the levy.
I am moving towards the idea of a sports betting right. That is now the way forward. The European Union now has competency for sport, and at the meeting of Sports Ministers I attended last year, the idea of a sports betting right started to develop. If a sport offers its services—with all the costs that go with it—it is only fair that a sports right should be considered in legislation. I think that Ministers will move towards a sports betting right, and I would support that campaign.
Philip Davies
May I say to the hon. Gentleman, for whom I have a lot of time, that this is a novel concept for a Labour politician? Most sports betting is on premiership football, so presumably the money raised would go there. It is novel that a Labour politician would want to take money out of poor punters’ pockets in betting shops in order to add it to the wages of John Terry and Carlos Tevez in the premier league. Does that not seem a bizarre redistribution of wealth?
Mr Sutcliffe
The hon. Gentleman knows that I am not going to get involved in John Terry’s wages any more—they are not my problem. However, there are issues about where money from sports rights should go, and about the grass roots and how we fund grass-roots sports. However, the money would go not just to the premier league, but to grass-roots sport as well.