HC Deb 25 February 1931 vol 248 cc2134-6
Mr. MORRIS

I beg to move, "That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Racecourse Betting Act, 1928."

It is not necessary that I should this afternoon say anything about the widespread evils of betting. They were admitted by the promoters and supporters of the Act of 1928, and I shall confine myself now to the narrower but none the less important issues arising from the administration of that Act. That Act was passed, as the House will remember, to provide for two things. It provided for the setting up, for the first time in this country, of totalisators upon racecourses, and the House was assured that these totalisators were to be operated upon racecourses promoted for the purpose of horse-racing only. The control of the totalisators was vested under the Act in a Racecourse Control Board, a body consisting of 12 members, five of whom are Government representatives; and it becomes material now to inquire what has been the result of that Act in its operation and how far the Act itself has carried out the professed intentions of Parliament and the professed intentions of those who promoted the Bill.

The Chairman of the Board, Sir Clement Hindley, in a speech which was delivered on the 13th December, 1928, immediately after the paining of the Act, said this: The Board is fully alive to the necessity of providing credit facilities. We shall undoubtedly make arrangements for credit betting. That was the pronouncement of the Chairman, who was appointed to his office by the Secretary of State for Home Affairs. We cannot in this House, under the Act, review the activities of the Board. The Board is free and untrammelled from any Parliamentary restraint, and we cannot discuss its policy in this House. The only thing we can do, as I understand it, is to review the activities of the Board in some such way as this. That was the policy of the Board as stated by its Chairman within a few months of the passing of the Act in 1928, and that was confirmed by other members of the Board and other Government representatives on the Board. Credit betting was one thing that was condemned by the hon. and gallant Member for Abingdon (Major Glyn), who promoted the Bill in 1928. In making his speech on the Second Reading of that Bill, having admitted the widespread evils of betting, he said that if there was one form of betting which he condemned, it was the form of credit betting.

It is true to say that even under the operations of the Board credit betting is not actually allowed upon the racecourse itself, but ways and means have been devised by the Board of Control to get over the difficulty that has been placed in their way by the Act, and I turn to the report of the Board of Control, paragraph 63, where they set out a number of schemes that have been placed before them in order to attract a large volume of betting to the totalisator, and they say that one of the schemes which they have considered is the form of credit betting. Then they say: It was overlooked in this case that the law forbids cash betting except on the racecourse, that the Board cannot undertake to give credit, and that it can only legally operate the totalisator on a racecourse. Then, in paragraph 67 of the report, there appears something which is totally new, and it is a means of getting around the difficulty. They say: The Board, after full consideration of all possible schemes, came to the conclusion that the first and obvious step was to make this established method of communication available for totalisator bets as for bets laid off with bookmakers on the racecourse. They accordingly entered into negotiations with the London and Provincial Sporting News Agency Limited (known as the "Blower") which has set up an extremely efficient organisation of the kind described above, with connections on a very large number of racecourses. Under the arrangement eventually agreed upon with this company, which included the payment of a commission in respect of money staked by it at the totalisator on the racecourse, telephone communication is established with a separate office room set aside for the purpose in the totalisator building on the racecourse. This company can carry on credit betting, but so far as totalisators are concerned it carries on cash betting on the racecourse. That has been carried a step further. I find that in the "Daily Mail" of the 17th of this month there appears this paragraph: