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My third interest is that I was, for the two years in which the Gambling Bill went through Parliament, the Minister responsible for that legislation, under the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. The last six months of that period, October 2004 until just before the 2005 election, in which there was a huge reaction to the Bill and casinos in particular, are burnt deeply in my psyche. I hate to bring the Daily Mail into debates in this House, but it was outstanding in its opposition to all aspects of the then Gambling Bill. It was followed by a large body of opinion across all parts of the House and the public.
The Government’s position then, which I believe this House would now take, was that there are three public-policy options on gambling. The first is to suppress it: prohibition. Nobody has advocated that; it is obvious, as has been shown in many jurisdictions worldwide, that prohibition simply drives gambling underground rather than enabling it to be regulated. The second is to let it rip, with no regulation at all. Again, I do not think that position has had any support in Parliament or among the public. The third option—the Government’s option after seven years of debate, including the independent report by a committee under Sir Alan Budd—was that gambling should be strictly regulated; that you should not say that it is not a legitimate leisure pastime for many
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I come to my fourth declaration of interest, as a social researcher in business for nearly 40 years. The important point is that casinos are a very small part of the possible dangers of gambling and problem gambling. Three per cent of people in this country go to casinos. If the prevalence study being carried out shows that that goes up to 4, 5 or 6 per cent, the number of problem gamblers whose problems arise from casinos will be well under 1 per cent, almost certainly well under 0.5 per cent. The real dangers in gambling do not come from casinos; they come from accessible gambling—machines in betting offices, pubs and clubs, and online and telephone gambling. The Gambling Act has put severe restrictions on machines in pubs, clubs and betting offices to avoid what would otherwise have been the position: gambling problems like those in New South Wales, Queensland or Victoria in Australia. Online gambling is much more difficult because participants do not have to go to sites based and regulated in the United Kingdom. We still have a long way to go on that. The issue—I know this point has not been raised yet, but I got to my feet early—ought not to be problem gambling from casinos because they are not the significant element.
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As the Minister who was responsible for the Gambling Bill, I want to speak about the process by which we arrived at today’s position. Because of the adverse reaction to the Bill when it was published in October 2004, the Government compromised. Instead of saying that the number of casinos of any kind should be restricted by size limits—in other words, saying that casinos should be so big that no business decision would be taken to have more than 20, 25 or perhaps 30 large casinos—we were obliged to say to the House of Commons that there would be an arbitrary number: eight, eight and eight. That is what we did. It is not rational in policy terms, because eight cannot be defended any more than seven or nine or any other number; it was the number acceptable to the House of Commons at the time. The condition on which that compromise was reached was that the decision would be taken not politically by the Government but by an independent panel. None of the debate that took place in either House went against that idea or suggested that Ministers or Parliament should take the decision rather than an independent panel. Of course, in the end, an order has to be made and has to go through Parliament, but objection to the order is surely justified only if Ministers go against the independent advice that they were offered rather than accepting it as they have done.
It does not seem to me that a case has been made out from any point of view for rejecting these orders. The Government have fulfilled the commitment they made to Parliament in the run-up to the last general election. Whatever doubts there may be about the detail of the independent panel’s work, it fulfilled its remit. On that basis, this House should not overturn the order before it today.
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Lord Lipsey: My Lords, I speak because I, together with my noble friend Lady Golding, wrote to a number of Peers on our side of the House to suggest that unless the Government had a change of heart over the order before us tonight, they should vote against it. I am here this afternoon to explain that they have had a significant change of heart. I hope, therefore, that the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, will be rejected and that the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Golding will be accepted on the basis of the assurance given to us.
There is a threefold alliance, as the Minister said, of people inclined to oppose this order. I cannot call it an “unholy alliance” since the Bishops’ Benches are in favour of the alliance, but it is a strange alliance, at least. There are those who are against gambling and casinos; those who do not like the choice of Manchester, and most of them would like the choice to be Blackpool; and there are those, among whom I include myself, who have doubts about the procedure that has been followed. I want briefly to address all three matters.
I address most briefly of all the case of those against gambling. I am not very good at making the case for it; I have lost the argument every morning over the breakfast table with my wife for the past six months, and I do not expect that I shall win it in your Lordships’ House. Anyway, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday I am strongly in favour of casinos because of the regeneration benefits they bring and because they prevent under-the-counter gambling on the internet. On Tuesday, Thursdays and Saturdays I worry about their effect on problem gamblers and the danger of taking money off the poor. So I am not a desperate fan of having any casinos. On Sunday I get a day of rest.
But, the time for the anti-gamblers to make their case was when this Bill was before Parliament and they were trying to convince the Government not to go ahead with it. What is not acceptable is that when an order under it comes forward—as it was always envisaged one would come forward to name the casinos—the issue of principle is re-opened. That is against the conventions of this House. That has been, as has been pointed out, broken on only two occasions since the 1970s, and it is not the right way to carry forward that argument.
Secondly, there are those who think that the casino should be in Blackpool rather than Manchester. I am sympathetic to having one in Blackpool, although I listened hard and long to the case for Manchester. In some of the pro-Blackpool propaganda put about—and I relate to a lot of it—the case against Manchester has been hugely overstated so that people think that some uncontrolled den of iniquity is to be erected in east Manchester, to which the poor people of Manchester will go and lose all their money. I think that that is most unlikely.
The way to get a casino in Blackpool is to have one in Manchester also because they test different properties of casinos. The one in Manchester will test whether an inner city casino has the ill effects some people fear—although I do not believe it will—and
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The noble Lord, Lord McNally, who is a very old friend and close colleague at times, is a great lover of Blackpool. I love both places, but he has chosen that loving Blackpool means hating Manchester. If his Front Bench gets its way this afternoon—and it is sad to see him on the Back Benches, but we know why he is there for now—and in 10 years’ time he is walking down the promenade of Blackpool as it will be if it does not get a casino, perhaps he will remember that it was his vote this afternoon that stopped, as I will demonstrate, a process that in my view will inevitably lead in quite short order to a second super-casino in Blackpool. He must weigh that in his conscience.
I turn finally to the procedure, which caused me to join my noble friend Lady Golding in opposing this issue. I thought that it was pretty poor that the Secretary of State received this report at nine in the morning and at three o’clock in the afternoon said that she would lay an order before Parliament enforcing it. She said subsequently that she studied it in the four weeks that followed. I am reminded of Lewis Carroll, “Sentence first—verdict afterwards”. That was poor, and was one of the reasons why we wanted a Joint Committee to be set up. I do not defend that bit of the process. However, this is where I come to the agreement that has emerged over the past weeks, days and nights of negotiation. I am afraid that my noble friend Lord Davies, who had been speaking for some time and who was trying to get to the end of his remarks for the benefit of the House, did not fully set out for the House where the Government have given way.
The amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Golding, which condemns that haste and which was resisted by the Government, is now accepted by the Government. We were told that there was no way that we could have a Joint Committee because, “We know what it will conclude”. The idea was resisted by the Government but is now accepted by the Government. A review of the way in which the decision was taken and put before the House was rejected by the Government but is today accepted by the Government. The idea that such a review should pave the way for the next stage of the legislation and should look towards the possibility of further casinos was resisted by the Government—my God, to the last trench. Since last night, it has been accepted by the Government. A Minister gave a statement that contemplated consensus in this Parliament for a second casino in Blackpool, although not one that would take effect—rightly, I think—until the next Parliament, and that would lead to regulations in the next Parliament. Again, there is ministerial blood feet deep over that retreat, but retreat they have.
In my considered view, which I give to the House knowing that it will offend those who are against casinos in principle, if this afternoon the House rejects the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and if as a consequence, with the Government’s full agreement, the House accepts the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Golding, for which she has worked so hard, it will set
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If the House votes tonight in favour of the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, we will get an order for the 16 casinos but we will not move forward on the super-casino in short order or in long order. Indeed, it is very likely that we will never move forward on it. Some quarters of the House will welcome that, others will not; but that is the reality. If the House rejects the noble Lord’s amendment, we will have started an inexorable process whereby, unless public opinion or some other great outside factor changes against casinos, it is very likely that the House will get the chance to decide whether it wants a second casino in Blackpool in the light of all the evidence that is available at the time. Given that process, it is very likely that it will get it. For that reason, I hope that the House will reject the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, accept the agreement that has been reached with the Government, and vote enthusiastically to support the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Golding.
The Archbishop of Canterbury: My Lords, I have listened very carefully to the remarks made by the Minister and others about the procedural gravity of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones; but I feel the need to speak to the reasons that have made me deeply sympathetic to that amendment and to the concerns underlying it. They are both particular and general. The particular reasons have already been detailed by a number of other noble Lords. We have already heard how the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee of your Lordships’ House has exposed some of the confusions and inconsistencies in the terms of reference of the Casino Advisory Panel, especially as those have related to criteria of social impact. The oscillation between discussing these in negative and in positive terms does not encourage the casual reader.
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To take one example from the proceedings of the Merits Committee, I note that the question is left open of how benefits can be secured to local people rather than large investors. That question, which was raised by the noble Lord, Lord James of Blackheath, was answered simply in terms of that being, so to speak, referred to the responsibility of local government to resolve. I find that an inadequate and worrying response.
Sadly, the general impression that has been given is of a piece of inadequately monitored social experimentation. The very language of “test of social impact” fails to take seriously enough the fact that social impact is not something which comes and goes
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My general grounds for unease do not rest primarily on a principled opposition to all forms of gambling in any shape in any place. Belonging to a church which has a mixed record on these matters, I can hardly take the moral ground with too much confidence. My objection is rather to the sleight of hand by which the whole business of the gambling industry has become coupled with the regeneration theme in ways which—I have to be candid—I find quite baffling. We have been reminded already by several noble Lords that terms such as problem gambling conceal a rather more unpalatable and extreme reality, of which some have spoken, in terms of addictive behaviour. While it is undoubtedly true statistically that casino gambling represents a relatively small segment of the overall problem of addictive gambling, none the less it represents a significant part and a social factor whose impact on its immediate environment is not restricted to addictive gambling.
But how would we react if we were discussing not this particular form of addiction but other forms of addiction? Surely, we should be extremely anxious about monitoring effects, so designing policies that they would be secure in advance, not subjecting them simply to an impact test. We should be very concerned about the resources to be made available for potential victims of this development. We recognise in other contexts that addiction is a nursery of crime as well as of poverty. In our discussion, that should be at the forefront of our minds. Why, if we raise these questions in relation to other forms of addictive behaviour, do we not raise them clearly here?
In conclusion, I should like to go back to regeneration. I have said that I find it a puzzling word to use in connection with this theme. I wonder whether the undoubted enthusiasm of some local authorities for the presence of casinos in their midst has something to do with the absence of other viable forms of regeneration policy proposed to them. Institutions that can encourage criminality and intensify irresponsibility are poor allies of social and civic regeneration. It may be—I believe that it is—that we cannot simply turn our eyes away from the social reality of gambling and the desire of people to gamble. I should be the last to wish this brushed under the carpet, to use a phrase that has already been used today in your Lordships’ House. None the less, I am left with these questions about the procedure by which this order has been brought before us and the advice on which it is based. I hold no great brief for Blackpool, but one thing that might be observed about these criteria is that they lack that through-and-through consistency which is one of the better known aspects of one of the better known products of Blackpool.
I am left then with asking who in the community at large actively initiates and wants these proposals, as
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Lord Blaker: My Lords, for 28 years I represented Blackpool South in the other place, and I shall refer to regeneration in a moment. As my long-term friend on the Liberal Democrat Benches has mentioned, the business of Blackpool is entertainment and tourism. Those activities form by far the biggest industries in the town. It is the result of the railways. In the middle of the 19th century the town of Blackpool was created by the railways. Before then, Blackpool had been just a little fishing village. People could come by train from the whole of the north of England and, indeed, from further away. Especially at the weekend, between April and October, people came in their crowds. I recall seeing the three railway stations full of trains, and the trains full of people. That growth was the result of generation. It was generation by very intelligent and brave people who developed the new industry of tourism, which did not exist before the trains came. They built the Tower, the Winter Gardens and various other important attractions in the town. The other feature of the town has been entertainment. In the past entertainers like Les Dawson and others came every summer to perform on Blackpool Pier and were an enormous attraction. That no longer takes place.
What has been happening to Blackpool? The town needs regeneration projects for a number of reasons which go beyond the scope of its powers. The most important is the development in the 1970s of tourism in warmer and sunnier climates. That was not the fault of Blackpool. Equally important was the increasing mobility of the British public. When I first went there in the 1960s, I suppose a minority of British people had motor cars. Now they almost all have them, so they do not have to go to Blackpool for two weeks at a time, reserving their place six months ahead. If on a Thursday evening the weather forecast for Blackpool is good, visitors can call their favourite guest house to reserve a room for the weekend. Those are two of the reasons why there has been a decline in the fortunes of the town. Another factor is the growth of television, because people now watch television far more than they used to. It takes them away from Blackpool. Average earnings in Blackpool are £100 a week less than the national average, which is another factor illustrating the important need for regeneration.
All this means that Blackpool is very keen on having a resort casino, and it has been working on the project for quite a long time. A resort casino is important because it creates less human hardship. Indeed, the general view across the board and every source on the subject suggests that such casinos are less harmful than urban casinos. That is certainly the view of both the Merits Committee and the Casino Advisory Panel. The resort casino is characterised by the fact that people have to come from a long distance to visit it. They need to make preparations for their
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The Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee quotes Professor Collins from Salford University, an expert on tourism, as saying,
- “destination resort casinos, with a very wide catchment area, are more likely to bring greater benefits with less costs to local communities than are urban casinos whose customers come mostly from within the jurisdiction”.
That confirms the point I am making.
In that same report, the chairman of the committee asked Professor Crow, the chairman of the panel:
“If I recollect, you thought, for example, that it was easier to test the social impact in Manchester than it would be for Blackpool because Blackpool’s population going to the casino would come from a wider area ...
Chairman: ... does that not mean that in practice you tended to knock out any consideration of a destination casino on that ground?
Professor Crow: If by ‘destination casino’ we mean one where most of the customers come from a long distance ... Yes.
Chairman: So your interpretation of the meaning of the terms of reference that you were given was effectively that the best possible test for methodological reasons made it virtually impossible for you to recommend to the Government that there should be a destination casino?
thus eliminating Blackpool in a sentence.
If the chairman of the panel was misguided in that context, he seems to have regarded the choice of Manchester as a guinea pig that would be testing the effects of an urban casino on the human people in that city. But if there is going to be a guinea pig, there should be something to test that guinea pig against. The point about the resort casino is that if there is only one, there is no comparison you can make. It would be much better, if there is going to be a resort casino, for there to be another one as well so that proper conclusions could be drawn. One can test the merits of resort casinos as opposed to urban casinos with regard to the smaller towns, because they are two different types and you can compare one with the other; seven resort casinos and nine urban casinos.
In rejecting Blackpool, the panel was also rejecting the views of the Northwest Regional Development Agency, the Regional Assembly and the regional economic strategy, all of which regarded Blackpool as the most important place for a regional casino.
Lord McNally: My Lords, it is a great pleasure and an honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Blaker. Many of the things he touched on are in the Report on Coastal Towns, which I recommend for Easter reading. I freely accept that some of the issues we talk about do not just apply to Blackpool; indeed, the bulk of what I want to say is not a plea for Blackpool but to address the issue before us—this order.
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