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Lord Moynihan: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister and other noble Lords for their contributions to the debate on this amendment. A number of important points arise.
First, I want to clarify that the Tote—I think that noble Lords on the other side were about to jump to their feet on this point when the Minister stated it—is not owned by Parliament; the Tote is owned by no one. It would be owned by Parliament if the Government nationalised it, but until they do so in order to privatise it, it is not owned by Parliament. As a Minster in another place said, the Horserace Totaliser Board,
"is responsible for the assets owned by the Tote but the Tote itself is owned by no one".—[Official Report, Commons, 26/5/99; col. 152W.]
I move on to the substance of what the noble Lord stated. There is widespread support on all sides of the House for the Minister to continue his work to ensure that the Tote is successfully sold to a racing trust. He stated just now:
He went further than that and said that it must be "beyond doubt" in this Chamber that that is the intention.
I fully appreciate the rules of government accounting and I am sure that noble Lords on all sides do also. But, equally, the rules of government accounting would apply had we placed the Racing Trust on the face of this legislation. Had the will of Parliament been expressed by an amendment to Part 1 that requested that the Tote should be sold to a racing
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trust, then that sole condition on the face of the Bill would have to be observed and in due course it would be wholly appropriate, after the legislation was enacted, for the rules of government accounting to come into play and to be observed to the letter. No one doubts that.
The issue is not the rules of government accounting; it is whether or not Parliament should be requested to pass legislation which, as drafted at present, does not require the Government to sell to a racing trust. I do not deny the integrity or the wish of the Minister, nor that of the Minster for Sport, in achieving that goal. The more he states clearly that that is exactly what the Government wish, the more I ask why it is not placed on the face of the Bill.
Given that no alternative is under consideration by the Government and given that it is "beyond doubt" that that is the Government's intention, then it seems wholly reasonable to put that intention on the face of the legislation and ensure that, once it is passed, the Government can conclude their negotiations. That is the position taken by noble Lords on these Benches.
We have a good amount of time between now and the first day back in September for those negotiations to be completed in principle. I accept that it can only be in principle. But by completing these negotiations in principle and coming back to this House with the outcome of those negotiations, we would be in a position in early September where we had a deal in principle that could be put before the House. I should be very surprised if independent valuations had not already been taken by both sides. I understand that those negotiations are already under way, and so there is no time constraint and it would be perfectly possible for negotiations to be completed within that period.
The point at which a deal could be put before the House is the point—here I agree with the Minister—at which the House would need to consider whether to approve Part 1 as it stood or whether to amend it further. We have a great opportunity at Third Reading to have an admissibility of amendments to enable the Government to fulfil undertakings given at earlier stages of the Bill. Never was it more appropriate than in this Bill. In those circumstances, I will not press my amendment to a vote because the Government have every opportunity to return to the issue, to state that their intention to sell to the Racing Trust has been completed in principle and to give details about the work that has been done on exclusivity. This is the first time that we have heard that the Government will give the Racing Trust exclusivity. I hope that that will involve a standard exclusivity agreement and that it will have a deadline. I also hope that a deadline of early September, subject to parliamentary approval of the legislation, would be reasonable.
Why am I still therefore concerned about the Minister's position? I beg to differ with the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, who said that the Treasury's paramount objective was to sell the Tote. In my experience, the paramount objective of many Treasury mandarins is to maximise revenue for the Government. If the Treasury
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had the opportunity to sell the Tote for £300 million, for example, rather than for £100 million while making an arrangement that was in the interests of racing, there would be people in the Treasury, I regret to say, who would urge very strongly that it should be sold for the maximum value achievable. That is the basis of my concern. I hope that all the good comments made by noble Lords and Ministers in another place prove that the will of Parliament, reflecting the manifesto commitment, recognise that in this case it is in the interests of racing for the Tote to be nationalised and then privatised again to a racing trust.
I remain unconvinced in this regard. I cannot understand why, if that is the whole purpose of Part 1, we do not include in it the sale to the Racing Trust and ask Parliament to approve that. Today we have not done so and we will hear in September about whether progress has been made to the point at which Parliament can be convinced that there is no need to refer to the Racing Trust in the Bill.
Until that time comes, I will leave the Minister with the following conclusion. Unless all the preparatory work has been done to reach an agreement in principle with the Racing Trust, as it stands the Opposition cannot support Part 1. Either there must be significant progress towards the delivery to a racing trust through the sale process that the Minister outlined or it should be argued that the Tote is better off staying as it is, rather than being nationalised and sold—at whatever price, in whatever circumstances and on whatever terms—by the Government to whomever they wish. I regret to say that that is exactly how Part 1 currently reads.
I hope that those provisos and remarks will encourage the Minister to get motoring and conclude the deal by the date on which we will return in September. I respond to the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, who was concerned about the amount of parliamentary time that may be involved, by assuring him that if an adequate deal is done with the Racing Trust, proceedings on Part 1 will be covered very quickly indeed by both Houses.
Lord Lipsey: My Lords, before I withdraw Amendment No. 2—
Lord Moynihan: My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 2 [Successor company: transfer]:
Lord Lipsey moved Amendment No. 2:
"( ) Any transfer to a successor company other than one that is owned by a consortium whose primary purpose is the improvement and support of horseracing shall not take place unless the transfer is approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I apologise to noble Lords for interrupting just now. Before I do not move this amendment—I apologise; I am moving it. I will get my procedures right in a minute, perhaps.
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I am interested in probing the nature of the constraint on the Government spending money. I said that I wanted the arrangement to be as near as dammit a deal and, to be frank, there is much that cannot be done by 7 September, including due diligence, a total funding package and state aid clearance for some matters, although we could be pretty much on top of various other issues. If the Government's position is that they cannot finalise the deal until we have the Bill, because we are not allowed to do so by the conventions, we will require an amendment of the kind moved by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, or myself to give Parliament a chance to come back if it does not like the consequences. The obvious thing to do on 7 September would be to say, "Sorry, we cannot really get as far as we had hoped, and we will accept one or other of the amendments", which would not cut across any parliamentary or accounting conventions. If enough progress is made—we will be some way short of the full deal, as I said—we may be able to dispense with that. I hope that the Minister will comment on the exact nature of the constraint, as he sees it. I beg to move.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I cannot go very much further than I did previously. I am afraid that there is still an element of misunderstanding in this regard about government accounting rules. We cannot conclude or complete negotiations even in principle in advance of Royal Assent. That means that we cannot take actions that are irreversible. Perhaps it would be better if I wrote in more detail about this to noble Lords who have taken part in this debate because, inevitably, I am simplifying. It does not matter whether the date is 7 September, 7 October or 7 November. There is preparatory work that we can do; I gave an example of that. We can have and agree an independent valuation, which we can submit for state aid purposes. However, we cannot conclude or complete negotiations in advance of Royal Assent. To do so would be for the Government to assume Parliament's wishes before it had expressed them.
We do not own the Tote—the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, is right in one sense that no one owns it. However, even if no one owns it, Parliament is its guardian; I hope that the noble Lord can agree with that. We can make good progress and I hope that by early September we will have done so. But there is a point beyond which, for entirely proper reasons, we cannot go. I know that that sounds to some extent like Catch-22; there is an element of that. However, it is for the protection of the public interest and Parliament that we must act in that way.
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