Future of Horseracing

Debate between Philip Davies and Stewart Hosie

Wednesday 25th October 2023 Westminster Hall

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a fair point. How many people will go to the black market is a matter of dispute; it is impossible to know. However, people like a bet, and the chances are that they will keep betting. If they cannot bet on legitimate sites, they will go to illegitimate sites. There is a lot of truth in what my hon. Friend says.

I ask the Minister to ensure that the Government’s policy on this matter has a Conservative philosophy behind it. We believe that people should be free to spend their money as they wish, and we should not have bookmakers, the Gambling Commission and the Government deciding how much each individual can afford to bet on something. Let people make their own judgments and decisions; we have to have some individual responsibility. Any decisions must be proportionate to the problem, and we are very blessed to have low levels of problem gambling in this country. Those decisions have to focus on the wider impact on the horseracing industry, which cannot cope with the kind of reductions in betting that the right hon. Member for West Suffolk spoke about. That would be a disaster.

Many people in the racing industry think—I would be interested to know what the Minister thinks—that betting on horseracing is a game of skill; it is a matter of checking out the form, the draw, the ground and so on. When I back a horse, I do so scientifically. I can vouch for the fact that they do not always run scientifically, but I pick them scientifically. Does he think that games of skill should be treated differently from games of chance when it comes to betting? I would be interested to know his thoughts on that, because some people think that horseracing should be treated differently.

Many people make a living out of betting—professional gamblers. They go through good runs and bad runs. They will lose more than £2,000 over 90 days on many occasions, but they have won far more than that in the past. We cannot have blanket rules that are not sensible and that do not look at people’s overall patterns of behaviour. On the back of the consultation, I urge the Minister to think again. I urge him to think about making affordability checks proportionate and about Conservative principles, and ask him to have at the forefront of his mind the future of the horseracing industry, which I know he does not want to damage in any way.

[Stewart Hosie (in the Chair)]

If hon. Members can keep their speeches to around eight minutes or less, we should be great with time. I call Laura Farris.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

But that is not an affordability check.

[Stewart Hosie (in the Chair)]

Order.

[Gavin Newlands]

But it is a problem, so that supports my argument, not the hon. Gentleman’s, I would suggest. I will come on to affordability checks later and if he wants to intervene then, he is more than welcome to do so.

With that all being said, the Scottish Government obviously recognise the benefits of racing to the economy and the positive impact that it has had on employment in communities across Scotland. The 2018 annual review highlighted that the sport generated more than £300 million to the Scottish economy, as well as sustaining nearly 3,500 full-time equivalent jobs. Who can forget that, yet again, Corach Rambler brought home the grand national to Scotland earlier this year? According to Scottish Racing, by 2025, the impact of Scottish racing is projected to rise from just over £300 million to half a billion pounds of revenue for Scotland’s economy, with £50 million in tax revenues. Each year, most of that goes to the Scottish Government.

Racing remains the second most popularly attended sport in Scotland after football. It attracts a diverse section of society, with nearly nine out of 10 racegoers comprising people from both middle and lower socioeconomic groups. Females account for over half of all race-goers in Scotland, and it is set to support 3,700 jobs, including in employment across Scotland’s racecourses and tourism activities supported by race-goers. It also supports or sustains jobs through the development of racehorses such as Corach Rambler, media coverage of race days and off-course betting.

From time to time, all of us will receive, particularly around the grand national and what have you, a number of emails about animal welfare in relation to horseracing. The hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson) can speak better than the rest of us combined on this issue, given his depth of knowledge, so it was good to have his input, too.

Animal welfare is covered by devolved legislation, which makes the keeper of an animal responsible for its welfare and permits the prosecution of those who do not ensure such welfare, such as the need for a suitable environment, and so on. The British Horseracing Authority, which I have met a couple of times over the years, assures us that it complies with all aspects of the Animal Welfare Act 2006 through its rules of racing and the licensing and inspection of participants. It works closely with a range of animal welfare organisations, such as World Horse Welfare, to maintain and promote horse welfare. The BHA also seeks to minimise the risk of injury and fatality to thoroughbred horses on racecourses, and it records and analyses such incidents.

Much of today’s discussion has been about the gambling levy and affordability. We in the SNP think that the gambling levy should go further to tackle gambling-related harms, such as by dealing with advertising, regulating online bookmakers and ensuring that the levy funding is allocated properly. As the Minister will know, this is a completely reserved matter, and a review took place that generated some 16,000 responses. Forty-seven per cent of people surveyed in the UK had gambled in some way in the four weeks before the survey. Most gambling—I am happy to admit that I very occasionally dabble, although it has been a number of years since I have done so—is done without any harm. However, for those who face problem gambling, the impact can be harmful and addictive, with one person committing suicide in the UK every day because of gambling-related harms. Thankfully, the Gambling Act will be modernised and made more effective for the digital age by providing adequate protections, notwithstanding a lot of the very good points made about some of the overseas websites, which we need to do more to address.

Sexual Offences (Pardons Etc) Bill

Debate between Philip Davies and Stewart Hosie

Friday 21st October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I was coming on to that point. The hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire made a fair point in that respect, but if the hon. Lady will forgive me, I shall come on to deal with her point in a few moments.

I was saying that we should be wary of getting into the habit—it seems that we are already in it—of always being anxious to apologise for things that other people have done in the past. Unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty, who is clearly a notable exception, we rarely apologise for the things that we have done. I suspect that the public are usually keener for us to apologise for the mistakes that we have made rather than taking the easy option of apologising for the mistakes that we think people made hundreds of years ago. Tony Blair is a prime example. He was very keen to apologise for slavery that somebody else had done hundreds of years previously, but he would not apologise for the mess he left in Iraq following the Iraq war. I suspect that most people would regard it as more worth while for him to apologise for the decisions that he took, rather than for the decisions that others took many years previously. I do not generally like that particular approach to politics, but I leave it there.

Although my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North (Craig Williams) was slightly chastised for it, I think he was absolutely right to pull up our friends from the Scottish National party for coming here and chastising the Minister for introducing something late in the day, going very slowly and all the rest of it. The Bill applies only to England and Wales, and the Minister is going virtually all the way that the SNP would like him to go—not fully, I appreciate, but he is going an awful long way to meet their requests. It is slightly churlish of SNP Members not to have given the Minister more credit for that.

Moreover, the Scottish Administration have not introduced this law, even though they have had plenty of opportunity to do so. It would be interesting to carry out a freedom of information request to see how many letters the Scottish Government have received from SNP MPs about introducing this particular law in the Scottish Parliament. SNP Members should be wary of criticising this Government, who have clearly gone a lot further than the SNP Administration have in Scotland. A bit of humility on that particular point would not have gone amiss.

On the substance, I said that the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire made a good point—it was a rhetorical flourish, but still a good point—when he said that we should be more concerned about the living than the dead. There is something in that. The problem is that once we start going down this route, it becomes difficult to stop the juggernaut in its process. It can become difficult if people try to draw distinctions. For example, once we have pardoned Dr Alan Turing—I have not heard anyone say that that should not have happened—it becomes an intellectual nonsense to deprive other people of the same pardon who were convicted of exactly the same offences but did not have such an exciting life and achieve as much in their jobs as he did. Dr Alan Turing’s sexuality is irrelevant to his achievements. It should not have been because of his achievements that he was pardoned; he was pardoned for something which, as far as I can see, was irrelevant to them, and if he is pardoned for that, it becomes very difficult not to pardon other people.

I think the point that the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire was rightly making is that once the Government have accepted that people who are deceased should be pardoned, it then becomes very difficult intellectually to ask why the same should not apply to people who are still alive. That is a fair point, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to it.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point about the juggernaut and the various stages that might ensue. However, as my hon. Friend made clear in his speech, this is essentially a victimless crime. What possible harm can it do—rather than good, of course—to pardon people who, in essence, committed no crime at all?

[Philip Davies]

I do not disagree with the hon. Gentleman’s sentiment, and I made that clear at the outset. My point is that the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire has selected a certain group of offences. My hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Craig Whittaker) made a very fair point, which people ought to consider. In the past, many other offences have been committed which I would term victimless crimes.

[Stewart Hosie]

Such as?

[Philip Davies]

The metric martyrs are a prime example. Steve Thoburn sadly died with a criminal conviction for selling produce in imperial measures. That, I would argue, was a victimless crime. The customers were perfectly happy to buy the produce and Steve Thoburn was happy to sell it. There was no victim, but he died with a criminal conviction. He still has a criminal conviction. He has not been posthumously pardoned.