Examination of Witnesses (Questions 580-592)
DR ANNETTE
CROSBIE, MAUREEN
PURVIS, JOHN
HAYNES AND
LORD DAVID
LIPSEY
16 SEPTEMBER 2004
Q580 Joan Ruddock: In a sense, the Bill
will accelerate this—
Lord Lipsey: It will deal with
the problem. I would quite like it to happen in an evolutionary
way. If you introduced that tomorrow, they would all shut. If,
in the meantime, while the Bill is coming along we have time to
get them to migrate to the NGRC and have some new tracks from
that, that would be great. That is another reason why I do not
want the Bill to take absolutely immediate effect so far as
greyhounds are concerned.
Joan Ruddock: May I ask about the incident
at Wimbledon. I have no expertise in this field whatsoever, but
I would have thought that keeping dogs in a kennel in a 30 degree
temperature and then expecting them to go out and race would be
somewhat like having human beings in the Olympics—
Chairman: Paula Radcliffe.
Q581 Joan Ruddock: Exactly. Human beings
are trained in these conditions for many, many, many months before
they attempt to do a race in what are abnormal conditions for
the UK. Was it appropriate for dogs to be subjected to that kind
of stress?
Mr Haynes: If I may answer this
one. There is already air management in Wimbledon kennels.
Q582 Joan Ruddock: We heard that point,
but on this one day they raced when they did not have it.
Mr Haynes: They did. They have
air management there but they brought in boosters for the very
warm weather, which they kept from July through to the end of
August.
Q583 Joan Ruddock: These dogs were still
hot, anyway.
Mr Haynes: We are not talking
30 degrees. I know the kennels very well and I can assure you
there are no dogs suffering at all in there. It is my rules which
brought in the booster fans. I said, "In very hot weather,
in the BAGS, afternoon racing, you need extra air management,"
and they brought in some ones that can just stand there, some
temporary ones. There was no uncomfortableness in there, believe
me. The good thing about it, anyway, is that they have now decided
to put a brand new air-conditioning unit into the kennels before
next summer.
Lord Lipsey: Much of this air
management of tracks did not exist until there was a great drive
from the industry and from the fund to support tracks in putting
it in. I think every track—
Mr Haynes: Every track.
Lord Lipsey: —now has a
proper air management system. If we had been before you five years
ago, that would not have been the case.
Q584 Joan Ruddock: Every track, we keep
reminding ourselves, is only the tracks which are in—
Lord Lipsey: Sorry, every NGRC
track. That is quite right, yes.
Q585 Joan Ruddock: Exactly. Do the members
of your association go and race their dogs at the independent
tracks or not?
Mr Haynes: No.
Q586 Joan Ruddock: There is no cross-over
between the two?
Lord Lipsey: There certainly should
not be. If we catch them, we will have their guts for gaiters.
Q587 Joan Ruddock: So it is a separate
body of people about whom we know nothing that is racing at the
independents?
Lord Lipsey: Indeed.
Q588 Chairman: Could I just finish off
by asking Greyhounds UK a question. You have put two, quite strong,
racily-worded paragraphs into your evidence. Paragraph 3, says,
"Our conclusion on examination of the proposal in the draft
Bill is that the Government has failed the greyhounds not by accident
but by design" and you conclude in paragraph 17 by saying,
"Delay invites the criticism that Defra, the Department of
Culture, Media and Sport and the Treasury are in collusion to
maximise new gambling opportunities in preference to legislating
to safeguard welfare standards for greyhounds." Do you have
any concrete evidence to support either of those two rather strongly-worded
statements?
Ms Purvis: It is an inference.
It is all about the money. I came across the other day something
in a de-regulation greyhound racing order 1995 which was about
the Royal Commission in the 1930s, that there was a concern to
limit the availability of urban betting opportunities at a time
when greyhound tracks were much more prevalent. The concern then
was to limit the availability of betting opportunities for working
men in urban areas. That had the effect of limiting the race days,
so that there was not so much pressure on the dogs and so that
there was not so much racing. In the mid-eighties that was all
abolished and now there is an awful lot of money at stake. With
the casino revolution, with the de-regulation of gambling, it
is predicted that there is going to be £9 billion worth of
inward investment and £5 billion a year of revenue as a result
from that. Lots of greyhound tracks have indicated that they also
want to become casinos, to integrate casinos, and our feeling
was that to start imposing people from the outside, looking at
what was going on, might actually be an inhibition on this.
Q589 Chairman: Could you not argue the
reverse? If in fact everything you said was true about the resources
that could come in, and the combination of gambling facilities
and greyhound tracks—because obviously they offer a certain
spectacle, part of the inducement for people to come and enjoy
those facilities—if there is any shortage of resources to
bring in the welfare package which Lord Lipsey and Mr Haynes have
described, that could actually speed up the process rather than
slow it down.
Ms Purvis: May I say, Chairman,
those two things do not necessarily go together. There certainly
would be the extra resources, but whether they would be devoted
to welfare is quite something else again.
Q590 Chairman: I suppose, in fairness,
I ought to give a postscript to Lord Lipsey on that.
Lord Lipsey: Two points. First
of all, the bookmakers, who have given us the extra money, have
welfare at the top of their priority list. Why do they have it?
Because they are worried that otherwise there will be a system
of regulation that will make it impossible for the greyhound industry
to continue and for them to make money from it. It is a commercial
decision, but they want the money to go to welfare. They are not
pressing for it to go to other things. The second point I think
I would make is that there is a number of rather exotic assertions
in Greyhounds UK evidence that you should consider with great
care. I see, for example, that Greyhounds UK—
Q591 Chairman: We consider all our evidence,
Lord Lipsey, with very great care from wherever it comes.
Lord Lipsey: Greyhounds UK say
that the scheme I just told you about for independent tracks to
migrate to the NGRC has been done because we think they will all
turn into lovely "Race-inos" and make lots of money.
I may say that I invented this scheme and it had not even occurred
to me that such a thing would be possible until I read the Greyhounds
UK evidence as I came into this room today. If you looked at some
of these tracks, I do not think you would think they were the
natural sites for highly profitable "Race-inos".
Q592 Alan Simpson: Could I just ask,
do any of you know what odds the bookies are offering on you getting
an external regulatory system?
Lord Lipsey: I would not offer
you odds, Mr Simpson, because you are in possession of inside
information—indeed, a power to affect the result. You and
Mr Fallon might be in the dock together!
Chairman: On that note, I shall draw
this very interesting and educative line of questioning to a conclusion.
May I thank both organisations for your contributions, again for
your written evidence and your responses to our questions this
morning. Thank you both very much indeed.
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