APPENDIX 5: DRAFT GAMBLING (GEOGRAPHICAL
DISTRIBUTION OF LARGE AND SMALL CASINO PREMISES LICENCES) ORDER
2008: GOVERNMENT RESPONSE
Letter to the Chairman from the Rt Hon. Andy Burnham
MP, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
1. Thank you for sending me a copy of the Committee's
14th Report. I hope you will pass on my thanks to the members
of the Committee for the work it has undertaken on the report
in such a short time.
2. In view of the very real interest in this
Order in both Houses, and its importance to the 16 local authorities
around the country directly affected, I am writing to clarify
a number of apparent misunderstandings which seem to have led
to the Committee's conclusion that the Order may imperfectly achieve
its policy objectives.
3. I was particularly sorry that the Committee
should have come to this conclusion in view of the clear consensus
across all three major parties that the ability to issue the 8
large and 8 small casino licences should be awarded to the 16
licensing authorities identified by the Casino Advisory Panel.
Indeed, in defeating the earlier Order, the House of Lords sent
a message calling for these sixteen authorities to be incorporated
in a fresh order. The Order which is the subject of the Committee's
report does exactly that.
4. Many of the points I make here were made previously
to the Committee in my predecessor Tessa Jowell's letter to you
of 21 March 2007 concerning your 13th Report of last year, and
it is disappointing that the Committee appears not to have taken
this into account in reaching its fresh conclusions. I hope it
will be helpful if I seek to explain them again here, along with
a few new points which are prompted by your latest report.
Minimisation of harm from gambling
5. One of the principal arguments made again
by the Committee in its latest report, and again a theme that
runs through it, is that the Casino Advisory Panel "gave
greater weight to their specific terms of reference with their
emphasis on the research testing of impact, rather than the minimisation
of harm". I agree - that was the Panel's job, and it was
right they did so.
6. However, I do not agree that it is correct
to infer from this that the Order currently before Parliament
may imperfectly achieve its policy objectives. To do so would
seem to confuse the overarching objectives of the Gambling Act
as a whole, with the narrower policy objectives of this Order.
7. The main objectives of the Gambling Act are,
as the Committee explains in its report, to prevent crime and
to protect children and vulnerable people from harm. I am proud
that we have placed these protections at the heart of the system
of regulation of gambling in this country for the first time.
8. All casinos - both the existing estate and
the new casinos envisaged by the Act - are required to abide by
strict new rules designed to protect the public, backed by a full
range of regulatory and criminal sanctions, which the Gambling
Commission and local authorities have new and extensive powers
to enforce.
9. Even with these added safeguards, it was because
of the overriding priority we attached to minimising harm that
we decided to limit the number of new casinos permitted by the
Act. The policy intention for doing so was set out in the Statement
of National Policy of December 2004, and that was "to assess
whether their introduction leads to an increase in problem gambling"
[Paragraph 4]. A strict limit on the number of new casinos would
reduce the risk of an increase in problem gambling while this
assessment was undertaken.
10. The Panel's principal function was to identify
the areas which would best facilitate this assessment, and it
is the purpose of this Order to identify areas which will best
facilitate that assessment.
11. We take the minimisation of harm arising
from the new casinos very seriously, as do the 16 local authorities
concerned, but this policy objective will be met through other
aspects of the legislation. Indeed, had we asked the Panel to
concentrate solely on the objective of minimising harm, and not
on the facilitation of the test, we would not have a proper basis
on which to make future decisions, jeopardising the Government's
ability to meet the objective in future.
12. Finally, it is simply incorrect to suggest,
as the Committee's report does in Paragraph 12, that the Panel's
role as expressed in its terms of reference changed significantly
from that envisaged for it in December 2004 National Policy Statement.
Paragraph 9 of the National Policy Statement, which is quoted
incompletely in the Committee's report, begins by making it clear
that the role of the Panel would be "to ensure that the impact
of the new casinos can be assessed on the basis of a broad range
of information and experience".
The Panel gave weight to traceability, with the
result that urban sites were preferred to destination casinos
13. I know the question of the definition of
a destination casino was discussed at length during last year's
debate on the Order, in particular among those Parliamentarians
who were sympathetic either to Manchester or to Blackpool's bid
for the regional casino.
14. For its part, the government has never accepted
the view that "destination casino" - which is not a
term included in the legislation - should equate to a seaside
resort. We understand the arguments that have led some to suggest,
based on the experience in overseas jurisdictions, that larger
casinos should be limited to destinations which more people have
to travel to reach, and we are keen to test some of those arguments
in the British market through the eight large and eight small
casinos.
15. This was set out clearly in the December
2004 National Policy Statement on casinos. Paragraph 5 of the
statement notes that "in order properly to assess the impact
of the new casinos, there needs to be a sufficient number of casinos
in each category to allow the impacts to be assessed in a range
of areas and types of location that might be suitable (including,
for example, urban centres and seaside resorts across different
parts of Britain). "
16. That is exactly what the Panel process ended
up with in respect of the 16 new casinos, and it is exactly what
is reflected in the Order. The new casinos will be located in
a range of areas including seaside resorts like Torbay, Scarborough
and Great Yarmouth, but also including urban areas like Middlesbrough,
Newham and Wolverhampton.
17. The Committee rightly raises a number of
useful points about the challenges involved in tracing the impact
of the new casinos effectively in different types of area, with
different prevailing circumstances. However, the challenges that
the Committee correctly identifies are not limited to those areas
identified in the Order, and could equally be applied, for example,
to any of the 54 permitted areas where there is already a casino,
any seaside resort or port, or to any area with a pre-existing
regeneration plan. The fact that assessing the impact of the casino,
and disaggregating these from other effects, will be challenging
does not mean that the 16 areas identified in the Order will not
provide a good test. I hope that the Committee will agree that,
whatever the challenges, involved, it is important that we do
assess the impact in the sort of broad range of different locations
that we are identified in the Order.
18. I have recently published the advice we commissioned
from Lancaster University on assessing the impact of the new casinos.
We are currently drawing up the research specification for the
first stage of the assessment, and we will certainly wish to take
into account the points that the Committee has raised in this
context.
19. The Order allows local authorities to issue
a licence for any site within that authority's area and is not
site-specific
20. As Tessa explained in her letter last year,
it has been government policy since 2004 that the local authorities
identified in the Order should be free to award the licence to
any site within their area, and indeed are required by the Act
to consider applications made in respect of any site in their
area. We continue to believe that local authorities are best placed
to judge which sites within their area would best support their
regeneration plans.
21. The Casino Advisory Panel explained the approach
it took to this issue in its report. It emphasised in Paragraph
88 of its report that its remit was to look at areas rather than
sites, and this is what it did in finalising its recommendations.
Degree of local support
22. I understand the importance which the Committee
attaches to local support for the new casinos. I share that. Indeed,
for the first time the Gambling Act gives local people - both
directly and through their locally elected representatives - more
say over the licensing of gambling premises including casinos
in their communities.
23. My predecessor, James Purnell, wrote to the
leaders of the 16 authorities concerned last July to invite them
to reaffirm their commitment to licensing a new casino in their
area. All 16 have now confirmed that they wish to proceed, and
I hope that colleagues in both Houses will take careful account
of this renewed local commitment when the time comes to consider
the Order again.
24. The involvement of local people does not
end there. For the first time, all local authorities have been
given the power to resolve not to license a new casino in their
area. For the 16 areas that are included in the Order, local people
must be consulted on what benefits the local authority seeks to
secure from licensing the new casino. Those who live close enough
to the premises to be likely to be affected by the new casino,
or anyone with business interests that might be affected by the
new casino, will have the opportunity to make representations
as an interested party as part of the licensing process.
25. Finally, while I note the points that the
Committee makes in relation to the Regional Spatial Strategy,
as paragraph 13 of the National Policy Statement made clear, regional
planning bodies were only required to consider possible broad
locations for regional casinos within their region, and
the points the Committee makes are not relevant to the large and
small casinos which are the subject of this Order.
26. I do hope that these points help to clear
up any misunderstanding that may have arisen about the purpose
of the fresh Order and to allay any remaining concerns that the
Committee may have about the Order.
16 March 2008
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