|
Mr. Caborn: I shall give the full explanation of the schedule. It is a technical measure setting out, in
Column Number: 512
considerable detail, how to get the club gaming or club machine permit. I will highlight a couple of important points.
Paragraphs 1 to 3 deal with submitting the application. Those eligible to submit an application for a club gaming permit are members' clubs and miners' welfare institutes. Those organisations and commercial clubs can also apply for a club machine permit.
Paragraph 10 provides an important fast-track procedure for clubs or institutes in England and Wales which have alcohol licences under section 72 of the Licensing Act 2003. That Act is due for implementation before the Gambling Bill can take effect. The fast-track procedure is available because a club or institute with an alcohol licence will, as the hon. Gentleman said, have been through a licensing process to obtain their club premises certificate. It would be not only onerous but unnecessarily costly to make such premises repeat the entire process. As a result, special truncated procedures are available to clubs and institutes with permission to serve alcohol on their premises.
Permits will last for 10 years unless they cease to have effect because of lapse, surrender, cancellation or forfeiture. There is one exception to that 10-year rule: if a club has been given a permit under the fast-track procedure, the gaming permit will not expire unless the club premises certificate also ceases to have effect.
Licensing authorities must have regard to any guidance issued by the gambling commission in making decisions about permits, and they must have regard to the licensing objectives in carrying out the functions that I outlined. The licensing authority can delegate functions in schedule 10 to a licensing committee, which can determine applications for permits, as well as cancelling them. Officers of the authority can also undertake certain functions on behalf of the committee. The schedule provides an appropriate and workable mechanism for the application and granting of permits. We are not forcing clubs to sell alcohol. I am talking about card clubs and—
Mr. Moss: What clubs?
Mr. Caborn: Card clubs. With that explanation, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will agree to the schedule.
Mr. Moss: I am not sure that I got the answer that I was looking for. Schedule 10 is about club machine permits, and card clubs do not come under that. Presumably, they are covered under club gaming permits. There may well be gaming clubs that do not sell alcohol, do not have entertainment and therefore do not need the club premises certificate that they would have to seek as clubs under the 2003 Act. I do not know how many clubs of that ilk there would be. I cannot believe that there are many. Perhaps the Minister can give the Committee an assessment of how many would be caught by the first bit of the schedule.
Mr. Caborn: The heading of the schedule is ''Club Gaming Permits and Club Machine Permits'', and that
Column Number: 513
is what it addresses. The gaming part is as important as the machine permits. What I have said about cards comes into that. As I said, the schedule relates to gaming and machine permits.
Mr. Moss: I am fully aware of that. I am just making the point that I would have thought that most clubs would be selling alcohol, would want some entertainment, and, if they had gaming machines, would have only a small number, all of which would be category C and no higher. I cannot believe that there are clubs that exist just for people to play a few machines. I do not know how many card clubs there are in the country; it cannot be that many. Yet in schedule 10, and in some clauses, there is a huge amount of regulation. What does it relate to? The Minister has not answered the question about the scale of the situation.
Mr. Caborn: I shall try yet again to answer the question. We are talking about gaming. There may well be clubs that are set up for gaming—playing cards—which do not want to sell alcohol. All that we are doing is making provision for them in the Bill. It is as simple as that. I will read the schedule heading again: ''Club Gaming Permits and Club Machine Permits''. There may well be clubs whose members want to play cards or games of that nature, but who do not want the club to sell alcohol.
Mr. Prisk: Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Caborn: The hon. Gentleman has only just come in. He came in halfway through my explanation.
Mr. Prisk: The Minister is suggesting that we are flogging the issue, but it is important. We want to achieve clarity. What he is suggesting, given our earlier discussion about the need for members' clubs to be in a physical location, is that a group of people could have a game of cards at home and that would not be regulated, but if the same group met in what is defined as a members' club—a physical location—they would have to have a permit. That seems a peculiarity.
Mr. Caborn: To be honest, if the hon. Gentleman had been here for the whole debate and did not keep nipping in and out, it would not be a bad thing. He wants clarity, but attendance would not be a bad idea either. If we are going into such detail, we all ought to be present while we discuss the schedule. The club has to get a permit depending on the type of game. I hope that that puts that issue to bed.
Mr. Prisk: Although it is important to listen to every scintilla of the Minister's contribution and although I apologise to you, Mr. Gale, for missing the wisdom of that contribution, sadly the call of the right hon. Gentleman's speech was not as important as the call of nature.
Question put and agreed to.
Schedule 10, as amended, agreed to.
Mr. Don Foster (Bath) (LD): On a point of order, Mr. Gale. I seek your guidance. This morning, when Mr. Pike was in the Chair, we were discussing part 5 of schedule 9, which once again dealt with the definitions of local authorities for planning purposes. I made the
Column Number: 514
point that I was still waiting for the reply to the questions that I asked when we discussed exactly the same issue on clause 2. I am happy to acknowledge to the Minister and to you, Mr. Gale, that I received the letter during the lunch period.
The reason for my point of order and my request for help is that, having read the detailed explanation provided by the Department, I am now even more firmly convinced that the unitary authority of Bath and North East Somerset council is not covered by the definition. Given that there will be no further opportunity during Committee to discuss it, I wonder if you can advise me, Mr. Gale, about how I might remedy what is clearly a problem.
The Chairman: Although that is not a point of order for the Chair, I can say to the hon. Gentleman that he has been in the House long enough to know that there are other opportunities for him to seek clarification: first, by letter; secondly, by catching the eye of the Chair and raising the issue on Report or even on Third Reading.
Clause 260
Bingo
3.15 pm
Mr. Illsley: I beg to move amendment No. 351, in clause 260, page 116, line 10, leave out '£1,000' and insert '£2,000'.
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments:
No. 352, in clause 260, page 116, line 12, leave out '£1,000' and insert '£2,000'.
No. 353, in clause 260, page 116, line 16, leave out '£1,000' and insert '£2,000'.
No. 354, in clause 260, page 116, line 18, leave out '£1,000' and insert '£2,000'.
No. 355, in clause 266, page 118, line 7, leave out '£1,000' and insert '£2,000'.
No. 356, in clause 266, page 118, line 9, leave out '£1,000' and insert '£2,000'.
No. 357, in clause 266, page 118, line 12, leave out '£1,000' and insert '£2,000'.
No. 358, in clause 266, page 118, line 14, leave out '£1,000' and insert '£2,000'.
Mr. Illsley: We now come to the most important part of the Bill so far. It is a pleasure to move the amendment on behalf of the clubs movement, and it is a pleasure also to speak in Committee, because one or two of us on the Government Back Benches have been slowly losing the will to live.
The amendments are straightforward—simply replacing the limit of £1,000 with £2,000. Although that is a doubling of the limit, it is still a very moderate figure, particularly when one takes into account some of the sums for casino and other forms of gambling that the Bill deals with. I will go into more detail as we go along, but the original declaration of the gambling review body left the figure at £1,000. When the Joint Committee scrutinised the draft Bill, it thought that the figure should have been £2,000, and recommended
Column Number: 515
that. The Government did not accept that, because they felt that such a figure bordered on commercial bingo, and decided to stick with £1,000. The point that I wish to make between now and 5.30 pm next Tuesday is that perhaps £2,000 is more appropriate. It does not relate to commercial bingo; in fact, far from it.
In order to consider the matter in more detail, we must go back to the Budd report, which recommended the £1,000 limit. Chapter 8 of the report does not even mention bingo in clubs—not once. The only time that the report mentions bingo in relation to clubs is in the chapter about recommendations, and in particular from paragraph 25.15 onwards. In those paragraphs, the committee said that it understood that there were plans to introduce linked bingo to working men's clubs to be run by a commercial company, with prizes of up to £20,000. Obviously, that would be commercial bingo, but the report mentioned neither where that proposal came from nor how far advanced it was.
The report continued by stating that a figure of that magnitude would be commercial bingo and that there should be some control over commercial bingo. No one would disagree with that. It went on to say:
''We recommend that where the size of prizes for equal chance gaming (such as bingo) in pubs or clubs is beyond the limit of £1,000 per week, it should be regulated''.
Even the Budd committee itself started talking about a £20,000 commercial limit, but then put a limit on working men's clubs of £1,000. One must ask why the Budd committee did not recommend a limit of £10,000 or £5,000. Why did it propose a limit as low as £1,000? My view is that its comments on a linked game for a prize of £20,000 were a red herring to justify the limit of £1,000.
We have to remember that that £1,000 is averaged out over seven days. Let us consider some of the larger working men's clubs, which are mainly in the north of England. We have referred to Conservative clubs, which I am sure run bingo competitions as well. I should say that I am probably the only man in Barnsley who has not been in the Barnsley Conservative club, such is the quality of its snooker table. Some of the clubs have a huge membership and £1,000 is easily achievable over several days of bingo in the course of seven days. A limit of £1,000 would mean that many clubs would have to go through the bureaucratic procedure of obtaining the relevant permits. So, I question the Budd report and why the committee came up with the figure of £1,000. It has misled people into fearing linked commercial games in every working men's club for a prize of £20,000, which probably should require a permit.
The Budd report made other recommendations on commercial bingo. It said that there should be
''no statutory limits on the stakes and prizes in bingo games''
and that
''there should be no restrictions on the frequency of multiple bingo games''
It went on to say:
''We recommend that roll-overs should be permitted''
Column Number: 516
in commercial bingo. The Budd committee effectively said that the commercial sector could have a free-for-all—what prize money it wants, roll-overs and the rest of it—but that the naughty working men's clubs in the north of England should be allowed prize money totalling only £1,000 over seven days. To coin a phrase, there is a touch of snobbery about some of this. For some reason, there is a theme of limiting working men's clubs to £1,000, but letting commercial organisations have what they want. It is worth bearing in mind that the Club and Institute Union and the Committee of Registered Clubs Associations did not give evidence to Budd—oral evidence perhaps—whereas the Bingo Association did. There is a slant towards the commercial game.
|
