HC Deb 11 June 1968 vol 766 cc81-100

Notwithstanding anything in Section 21 of this Act, the Secretary of State shall not make regulations requiring a licensing authority to refuse to grant or renew a licence under Part II of this Act to any club on the grounds that the premises are used for purposes other than gaming.—[Mr. Carlisle.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

Mr. Carlisle

I beg to move, That the Clause be read a Second time.

This new Clause goes to the heart of Part II of the Bill and deals with a matter which caused considerable lengthy debate in Committee; that is, the type of club which the Home Secretary foresees being permitted to have a licence under the Bill, and particularly the type of regulations which he proposes to make which would prevent certain types of clubs getting licences. It may be convenient to remind the House of the background of this new Clause. On Second Reading the Home Secretary said: My object will be to exclude gaming altogether from night clubs and similar clubs and establishments, and substantially to restrict the number of clubs specialising in gaming …"— [OFFICIAL REPORT, 13th February, 1968; Vol. 758, c. 1171.] I want to refer to the words, "to exclude gaming altogether from night clubs and similar clubs and establishments". It is clear from what the Home Secretary said then, and, indeed, in Committee, that his intention was to pass regulations which would prevent gaming licences being obtained by clubs that have other activities than gaming.

This matter was raised first by the hon. and learned Member for Stoke Newington and Hackney, North (Mr. Weitzman) during Committee stage when he attempted to move a Clause which had a similar intention, although the wording was slightly different. As a result of the debate on that Clause the then Parliamentary Secretary slightly changed his attitude towards the matter. In Committee he said that he had noted hon. Members' speeches, he had recognised that there was a difficult problem, and that he thought it right, in the light of those speeches, that the Government should not press on the Committee, or indeed on the House, a final decision. He went on to say that the intention of the Government was that they would seek the advice of the Gaming Board and that they would not frame their regulations until the Gaming Board had given that advice. Nevertheless, the hon. Gentleman quite rightly made it clear, because he did not wish in any way to mislead the Committee, that it might well be that, as a result of that advice, the Home Secretary would still come before the House with regulations which would specifically prevent the issue of a licence to any club which had facilities other than pure gaming.

The object of the new Clause is to give Parliament the opportunity to write into the Bill a statement that the Home Secretary shall not, under his powers under Clause 21 of the Bill, make regulations requiring licensing justices to refuse to grant a licence merely on the ground that the club has other facilities. This is the substantial difference between this new Clause and the Clause moved by the hon. and learned Member for Stoke Newing-ton and Hackney, North.

The object of his Clause was that the Home Secretary should specifically tell the licensing justices that they should not refuse a licence if the club had other facilities. We are not saying that he should not dictate to the licensing justices. They would still have the power to license or not license any club as they thought fit. All we are saying is that the Home Secretary should not exclude from their area of consideration those clubs, which, for simplicity's sake, were regarded as mixed clubs during Committee stage, where some other activity than gaming applies. All hon. Members on the Committee, other than the Government spokesman, felt that it would be wrong for the Home Secretary to make an arbitrary decision that no club could have a licence if other facilities than gaming were provided.

5.45 p.m.

I will give two examples. The first is the cabaret type of club which is prevalent in the North-West and the North-East of England. The second is the Playboy type of club where at the moment in separate rooms wholly separate facilities on the basis of dancing and things of that nature are provided as well as gaming but still under the one club roof. I can only repeat what I said on Second Reading. I do not believe that there is anything socially more objectionable in allowing gaming to occur in clubs which have other facilities than to permit pure gaming clubs. My feeling is that those clubs which have other facilities are in many ways socially more desirable than purely gaming establishments.

I will deal, first, with the cabaret clubs, because I know that many hon. Members on both sides have knowledge of those and will have contributions to make. There is no doubt that in the North of England there are many clubs which, on a Saturday night, provide cabaret entertainment of a high standard, much of which is provided and paid for because the clubs also make money on gaming. The proprietors of those clubs seem convinced that, in the absence of being permitted to continue their gaming activities, they would not be able to afford the type of artistes and the standard of entertainment which is now provided.

Although many of my hon. Friends may not agree, I think that the Home Secretary would be on very strong ground if he said, "Never in the same room." There is a lot to be said for keeping the gaming not only not in the same room as the cabaret but not in the same room as the bar. But there is no justification for saying that one cannot have a well-run casino gaming room merely because one also provides other entertainment for the same or other members of the same family. It would be stupid to suggest that hard gaming is a harmless family activity. Nevertheless, one accepts and knows that the kind of clubs one is talking about in the North of England provide much family entertainment on a Saturday night through their cabaret media.

I believe that the real attitude we should take on this part of the Bill was something expressed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes) during the debate on this part of the Bill when he said that surely the important thing was that we should retain a high standard of club and, provided we only licensed clubs which were of a high standard, what on earth difference did it make whether they were solely gaming clubs or were gaming clubs with other facilities as well.

I believe that the Amendments to the Bill which we are to discuss later and which I am sure will be welcomed by practically everyone in the House, whereby the Government have decided that before any premises can get a licence they must get a certificate of approval from the Board without any right of appeal from that arbitrary decision, should ensure that any club that gets a licence, having first secured a certificate of approval and gone successfully through the licensing process before the licensing justices, must be a club of high standard. If it is a club of high standard, I do not see why we should, by regulation, prevent or attempt to prevent it having a licence to carry on gaming merely because it provides other facilities as well.

Leaving aside cabaret clubs on which other hon. Gentlemen may be better able to speak from a constituency viewpoint than I am, I come back to the general principle of those clubs which perhaps have gaming on one floor and dancing on another. Here I am bound to repeat the name of the Playboy Club, although I got a highly abusive letter from someone who complained about hon. Members who advertise only American and not British gaming institutions. I believe that many hon. Members on both sides of the House who were in the Committee had the opportunity of visiting some of these places. If gaming can be reasonably innocent, then I believe it is no less innocent in those clubs which have other facilities, with gaming taking place on a floor apart, than it is in clubs where gaming only is being carried on. It would be a great pity if a club which provided other facilities besides gaming were to be prevented from providing those other facilities, or compelled to throw out that part of the club which perhaps subsidises its other facilities.

During the Committee stage, the proposals of the Government were opposed by practically everybody, and it was as a result of that that the Government in part gave way. I hope that now they will give way still further and accept this new Clause and agree not to try, by regulation, to prevent clubs of this kind having the right, at least, to apply for a licence.

Mr. Oakes

As on the last new Clause I was consistent with what I said and did in Committee, so in this new Clause I shall be equally consistent with what I said upstairs.

I would again stress to my right hon. Friend the complete difference between clubs of this nature, cabaret clubs in the provinces and, in particular, those in the North of England, and the type of clubs I am quite certain my right hon. Friend envisages which exist in the Metropolitan area. In most towns in the North we have very little live entertainment. There was none at all for years after the theatres had closed down as a result of lack of support and because artistes were concentrated in London.

Clubs were set up and made money, some of it from their gaming activities; but the money they made from those activities, to the credit of the owners of those clubs, was used to build better premises, and to this day it is being used to bring live high-class entertainment into provincial towns. These clubs do not make money in the sense that London clubs do out of gaming. They use the profits from gaming to subsidise the entertainment they are providing, often the only live entertainment being provided in the area.

The money comes from drinks sold at the bar. It is in this way that most of the clubs make profits. They have spent vast sums of money in building excellent clubs and providing facilities which the brewers have never thought of providing, hence the great number of people who go to clubs and the less who go to the pubs.

I believe that it would be quite wrong, with no reason having been given in Committee—I do not know whether any reason can be given to the House today —to say that because entertainment is provided on those club premises all the capital that has been tied up in the clubs must disappear, that, therefore, the live entertainment must disappear and that, virtually, the clubs must close. My right hon. Friend may say that there is no need for a club to close, but if a club is not a financial success it is bound to close. These clubs have to nay very high rates to get top artistes to come out of the Metropolitan area and to the provinces. For that reason the clubs must have a source of money and the gaming tables in the clubs are that source.

With regard to the kind of gaming that takes place in these clubs, as was said upstairs—and I believe that hon. Members on both sides will reinforce this— while it may not be quite a harmless family game of bingo it is not far short of it. This is not gaming on a vast scale where hundreds or thousands of pounds change hands during the course of the night and where someone may come out ruined. The family go along to these clubs and it may be that in the course of the evening father may have a spin on the roulette wheel, but little beyond that.

The clubs are most careful in limiting the amount of stakes in the gaming room because they must rely on those people coming back. This is not London. This is a provincial town and it may well be the same people coming to the club week after week. If they were to find that they were leaving the club with no money, that all the housekeeping money had gone, they would stop going to the club. That would be bad business for the club. It does not happen.

As the hon. Member for Runcorn (Mr. Carlisle) said, the former Under-Secretary in Committee conceded that at least the Gaming Board would be consulted on this before any action was taken with regard to regulations. That is a good thing. Even better is an Amendment which I did not notice when it was made upstairs to Schedule 2, paragraph 23, on page 50 of the amended Bill, providing that Subject to the next folowing sub-paragraph,"— which relates only to bingo clubs— on granting or renewing a licence under this Act the licensing authority (whether they impose any restrictions under sub-paragraph (1) of this paragraph or not) may impose restrictions limiting the purposes, other than gaming, for which, while the licence is in force, the relevant premises may be used, either generally or at such times as may be specified in the restrictions. Could that be paving the way—I hope it is—for the Gaming Board not to have to make a blanket refusal of a licence to any club where entertainment takes place, but to be able itself to pick and choose whether or not a club is a good and well run one, which is the Board's job? No one objects to the cabaret club which is not completely legal and is not abiding by the rules, failing to get a licence. But I and my hon. Friends and hon. Gentlemen opposite object to the refusal of a licence solely on the ground that entertainment takes place within the club premises.

Like the hon. Member for Runcorn, I would entirely agree that the gaming facilities of a club should be in a separate room, perhaps on a separate floor, away from where the cabaret and drinking is going on. In my experience, this is invariably the case. Certainly, the gaming is in a room separate from the cabaret. Therefore, as far as the new Clause is concerned, I am keeping an open mind, because I do not know what my right hon. Friend will say at the end.

I would like him to bear very much in mind that hon. Members on all sides of the House from the provinces who have experience of this type of club can assure him that in the main they are harmless in respect of the vice that attaches to gaming; but much more important, they have employed the profits they have gained from gaming to bring entertainment to areas which otherwise would not have had it, and in terms of both entertainment and premises have brightened up towns.

I would like my right hon. Friend to regard most carefully what was said by the hon. Member for Runcorn. Whether we accept the Clause depends on what my right hon. Friend says in reply to the debate.

6.0 p.m.

Mr. Weitzman

As the hon. Member for Runcorn (Mr. Carlisle) said, I raised this point in Committee in a somewhat different form. I should like to echo something that was said by the hon. Member for Peterborough (Sir Harmar Nicholls) when we debated the first new Clause. It seems curious that when a Bill is committed to a Committee, and that Committee goes through the Bill line by line, and word by word, and the whole Committee, apart from the then Under-Secretary of State, is in favour of the principle behind an Amendment, the Government should not say, "We have a new Clause which represents what the Committee as a whole agree to, and, therefore, we shall accept the principle behind it, whether in its present form or some other form". It is important from the point of view of the working of Parliament that that should be done.

Secondly, it is wrong to say that what we ought to establish here is a monopoly of gaming clubs, that is, that we should give a licence to gaming clubs which carry on only gaming, because those words establish a monopoly. Surely it is wrong to grant a licence to a club which is concerned only with gaming? I do not want to repeat the powerful arguments which have been put forward today. There are cabaret clubs, and other clubs, part of whose activities consist of gaming, and where the profits from the gaming are used largely to provide good entertainment by way of cabarets. Why should not that be so? I could not understand my right hon. Friend's attitude during the Second Reading debate when he said that he was going to see that clubs, apart from gaming clubs, were not allowed to do any gaming. On the face of it, that seems to be wrong.

I rather like the wording of the Clause, because it seems to put the matter very clearly. An application is made for a gaming licence. The machinery of the Board is available to vet the bona fides of the applicant. That is the first stile over which the applicant has to get. Having got over it the matter then proceeds to the licensing justices who have power to inquire whether, in all the circumstances, it is proper to grant a licence.

The Clause says that no regulations shall be made requiring a licensing authority to refuse to grant or renew a licence under Part II of this Act to any club on the grounds that the premises are used for purposes other than gaming. All the circumstances will be before the justices. They will know the constitution of the club. They will know the premises. They will know that the application has been vetted by the Board. They will go into the matter and consider whether, in the circumstances, it is proper to grant a licence. I cannot see how it can be said to be unreasonable to agree to a preposition of that kind.

I therefore hope that my right hon. Friend will accept the Clause, or at any rate agree to insert a provision along the lines of it.

Mr. Deedes

I support the Clause. It is early days in which to reach a final decision on this matter. This is one of the more dangerous parts of the Bill, because we are inviting ourselves to make one of those judgments which, in the end, is nearly always proved to be faulty.

I have no local interest in a cabaret club, but there is another side to the coin. It may be said that the money acquired by these means ought not to be used to draw in talent, which then becomes unavailable anywhere else, from the diminishing music-hall scene. The case has been made that a lot of talent is drawn into the cabaret club circle which can afford prices which no one else can afford because of the manner in which it is financed, and that this leads to the detriment of entertainment elsewhere. I do not press the matter, because I have no local interest in cabaret clubs.

It is open to question whether the gaming club which exists for gaming only, with a minimum of facilities for refreshment or other amusement, is necessarily less dangerous or less squalid than the sort of establishment which some of my hon. Friends would like to see. Some of us have had the experience during recent weeks of visiting a wide variety of establishments. The ones which chilled my blood were those in which people were there for gaming, and for no other reason. Those in which people sit around a shoe or wheel without any other form of comfort or interest are those which from time to time bring me round to the Home Secretary's side. I hope, therefore, that he will weigh carefully whether that is the sort of establishment with which he wants to end up.

If the right hon. Gentleman tries to impose restrictions and goes contrary to the sense of the Clause, he must consider what will happen when some of these establishments seek to provide facilities of their own. I raised this point in Committee. What limit will be imposed on the comforts which gaming clubs can offer to their customers as an added inducement to go there, and how close will it be possible to get to the night club style of establishment by adding amenities to the wheel and shoe? This is something which the Board will have to regulate, but before we come to a final decision let us bear in mind that the thing may not work out quite as we hope now.

The evil which the right hon. Gentleman has in mind of people going out for an evening's entertainment and being lured into a form of gaming which they neither expected before they went out, nor desire to participate in when they enter the premises, can be exaggerated. Why not allow the Board to build up a little experience in this matter before we reach any irrevocable decision? Nearly everything that has been said on this matter both here and in Committee is based on very little evidence. What little we have seen does not amount to experience worthy of the name. After six months or a year the Board will have a much clearer view of whether there are evils involved, and whether there ought to be restrictions and regulations.

I hope that the Home Secretary will accept that approach.

Mr. Arthur Davidson (Accrington)

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Oakes) I, too, have a fair record of consistency in this rather limited but important matter, and I hope to be consistent today. The Home Secretary knows my views. I expressed them on Second Reading, and also with moderate eloquence in Committee upstairs. I ask him not to be too swayed by the London argument, because clubs in the North-West, particularly Lancashire, are very different. The hon. Member for Runcorn (Mr. Carlisle) said that going to a cabaret club has become a regular pattern of life for ordinary decent families in the North-West. I would not like these clubs, which provide good live entertainment in an area where there is not just a dearth of it but where the music hall and live theatre are non-existent, replaced because of a rigid Clause about hard gaming establishments. I fear that that would happen.

I agree that the gaming facilities of such a club should be completely separate, but the vast majority of people who go to them go to see the cabaret and not to gamble. My right hon. Friend is wrong if he believes that, because there is cabaret and gaming in the same club, people who gamble modestly will be made into compulsive and addicted gamblers. There is no evidence that that would happen.

The new Clause has merit and I ask him not to be too rigid in his interpretation. I will listen to him very carefully.

Mr. Paget

It would be possible to make a long list of absurd things which one would wish to restrain the Minister from doing, but I can see no point in it. I cannot imagine that any Home Secretary would be foolish enough to put into Clause 21 a general prohibition about a gambling club ever being used for any other purpose, because that would be ridiculous—

Mr. Hogg

But the trouble is that it was precisely this which the right hon. Gentleman at least gave us the impression on Second Reading that he would do. This is why we wish to restrain him from doing so or at least that he should undertake not to do so.

Mr. Paget

But it is not-in the Bill now and I did not understand my right hon. Friend to mean that.

Of course one must apply one's common sense to this and realise how different the circumstances may be. On the one hand, it would be highly undesirable if the cabaret artistes took people to the gaming tables and sat beside them, as is often done in France, with girls acting as hostesses or performers to persuade people to gamble. It would also be undesirable to restrain northern clubs, which are having perfectly proper cabarets, from doing what is the best thing they do.

6.15 p.m.

We are all claiming consistency with our remarks in Committee and I must fall in with that, although I see no particular wisdom in not changing one's mind after hearing further arguments. My line in Committee, which I am not yet persuaded was wrong, was that the only rule which my right hon. Friend need make is that the club should abide by the rules approved for it by the Board, and that the Board would give its certificate of approval on the basis of those rules, which would include the club's objectives, perhaps cabaret, as well as limitations as to where on the premises it would be held.

If the arrangements met the Board's approval, which would have my right hon. Friend's confidence, it would be all right. If they did not, it would be all wrong. But surely we do not want a general provision under Clause 21 applying everywhere, to all clubs. Let us leave this to the Board. We should let the rules of each club be part of its application for approval and let them set out what the club proposes to do. If they are approved and abided by, they should, also have my right hon. Friend's approval.

Mr. Callaghan

The value of the Committee stage is that it enables hon. Members to think again. I have been influenced by some of the arguments. I repudiate once again the odd constitutional doctrine which has taken root on both sides this afternoon that, because something was decided in Committee, or the Committee expressed a certain view, the House itself cannot take a different one. If that were so, we might as well get rid of most of the Report stage, whose object is to allow Members to think again and the whole House to express its view.

I know that there is a great passion for reforming all our institutions, but we will not do so to the point of saying that everything done in Committee should be regarded as sacrosanct for ever, because that would be rubbish—

Sir S. McAdden

Does the right hon. Gentleman not appreciate that our point was that, in Committee, all hon. Members are present, hear the discussion and vote, whereas on Report only a handful of Members attend, they do not hear the discussion and they vote without having heard it. That is not an expression of Parliament's will.

Mr. Callaghan

With respect, those hon. Members present today are the same ones as; were in Committee. It is clear that the great majority of the House has complete confidence in the Government's wisdom in this matter, and, until they express themselves to the contrary, a majority has always been the best argument in these matters.

As the hon. Member for Runcorn (Mr. Carlisle) said, this goes to the heart of the issue of whether hard gaming should be combined with cabaret or other entertainment. As I said on Second Reading, I confess to a very strong repugnance that it should be so combined. It is an advantage, because, if the right hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes) went to a strict gaming club which was nothing else and felt repelled by the atmosphere, that would be a guarantee that he was not likely to return, whereas if he were seduced by the top-class cabaret as well, he might fall a victim and I do not want to lose him to anything of that sort, at least until he is defeated at the next election.

So I confess to a prejudice for having a relatively small core of hard gaming clubs, because hard gaming is an evil. It brings with it blackmail, extortion and, in the extreme case, murder. There is no avoiding this issue. I therefore do not wish, as long as I am in this office to encourage people to indulge in hard gaming.

I said that I had been influenced by what had been said. I have been influenced to the extent that there are a number of institutions—the clubs in the North are a classic case—where gaming is used to subsidise high-class cabaret shows and is subsidiary to the shows. There is nothing that I want to say against the people of the North. Indeed, I could say a lot for them. They live, work and play hard and they deserve everything that they get in this sphere. I mention them because this is a particular phenomenon of the North and one that I want to take into account.

Before doing so, however, I return to the fact that scarcely anything has contributed more to the popularity of hard gaming such as roulette, craps and blackjack than their adoption by the clubs. More people have been introduced to hard gaming through cabaret clubs than in any other way—people who previously had no idea what these things were about—and this is supported by strong arguments of social policy, irrespective of practical points of view. It is this which brought the Council of Churches on Gambling down on the side of the argument for restriction. A number of these cabaret clubs—and they are not all as innocent as is sometimes made out—have been so intent on increasing profits from the tables that it has become the custom to play roulette not with just one zero, but with two, and to provide games like boule with four or five zeros. This is extortion, but the clubs claim that it is essential if the cabaret is to survive.

I want to hold a balance in this position. We must be careful how far we allow the clubs to go in this matter. I understand that these cabaret clubs are attracting a very high standard and quality of artist and are charging in some cases absolutely minimal entrance fees such as Is. or 2s. for the whole evening. It is difficult to believe that people would not be prepared to pay more for an evening's entertainment by well-known artistes. If they are not, then that is not a very good argument for saying that there is such a compelling demand. I invite the House to hold a balance in this matter.

I return to the point made by the hon. Member for Runcorn. If we accepted the new Clause which he moved we would be doing what I was asked not to do, which is to prejudge the issue. I do not press the House to judge the issue finally tonight. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Oakes) should remember that under Clause 49(3) I am empowered to make different regulations for different areas. Both he and my hon. Friend the Member for Accrington (Mr. Arthur Davidson) asked me not to be over-influenced by London. I urge them to remember that under that provision Any power to make regulations under this Act may be exercised so as to make different provision for different areas or in relation to different cases or different circumstances to which the power is applicable. There is flexibility in the Measure and I would like to see consideration given to this question of the need for flexibility. Thus, for the reasons I have given, I do not wish to accept the new Clause because to do so would be to prejudge the issue. But in the light of the discussion which has taken place, I repeat what was said in a guarded form in Committee by the Under Secretary; I would like the Gaming Board to go into the whole question, to balance the arguments, some of which I have adduced today, about the need for this provision, to examine it in depth and then to advise me, after which 1 shall be able to decide the best regulations, which would then, at that stage, come before Parliament.

This would enable the considerations which have been advanced by hon. Members on both sides to be taken into account. It would also enable me to return to the House with the advantage of the Gaming Board's full consideration of the social and practical issues involved. I hope that the House will be willing to accept this as a way of meeting some of the legitimate criticisms that have been made, since I fear that I cannot ask the House to accept the new Clause.

Mr. Hogg

I am glad that the Home Secretary has gone as far as he has towards meeting a point of view with which, I fear, he is somewhat out of sympathy and about which I wish to comment further. Had he been a little more forthcoming I would have felt less hesitation about the matter, because I appreciate that there are technical arguments against a new Clause of this kind, which would limit the power of regulations. I was disturbed by the general tenor of the right hon. Gentleman's remarks because I was alarmed by his approach. I have no doubt about his sincerity, but I have considerable disquiet about the extent of his naivety.

I do not think that I take a particularly less social attitude—a cosy and imprecise phrase which the right hon. Gentleman constantly uses on these occasions—than does the Home Secretary. I regard gambling as irrational and I have always tried to discourage people from doing it. In so far as I have been able to influence my family, I have virtually prevented them from doing it. I would always do the same for other people.

I have reached two baffling conclusions in the matter of gambling and they have a close bearing on the subject of the new Clause. The first is that the only way of controlling it is by licensing and taxing it, with a board in control. The second is that if one wants to get rid of blackmail, extortion and murder—the three emotive words the Horte Secritaly threw into the pool—one must forget, once and for all, one's subjective, moral convictions about gambling as gambling and put the matter under a form of control, which is the aim of the Bill.

It is because I have these convictions that 1 am profoundly disturbed about the approach which the Home Secretary makes to this question of the so-called mixed club. The word "hypocrisy" has been used a few times today. Continental peoples tend to charge the British public and Parliament with hypocrisy very much because of their attitude to this subject of gambling. I do not think that it is hypocrisy. It is, rather, naivety. We begin by coming to conclusions that we cannot altogether prevent smoking, drinking or perhaps other things which may or may not be thought to be immoral— and in this class gambling is normally included—and then, having decided to allow it, we make it as unpleasant as possible, so we think. The result is that the public-house produces only beer, that the betting shop produces only betting and that the gambling establishment apparently produces only gambling, and not " bunnies " as well. The result is that one gets a kind of hard-faced viciousness to which my right hon. Friend referred, with none of the civilising influences of music or even food, which, one would think, might temper the viciousness of the activity.

6.30 p.m.

I personally, although I think my own attitude is as strongly antagonistic to gambling as is the Home Secretary's, view this with profound disquiet. I was touched not a little by the fact that in common with Archbishop Lord Fisher of Lambeth I was myself selected by the promoters of the Playboy Club for foundation membership. Unlike the former Primate, I did not write to The Times in protest, because I thought that it was something of a compliment, if not to my virtue at least to my virility, but I did not actually take that membership up.

However, I must say that, at any rate, in principle, I am quite unable to see that the Playboy Club is inherently more vicious than, say, Crockford's, or one of the other ones. I cannot see why the Home Secretary should take this view. On the contrary, my general approach to this matter is that we should see what our experience of this kind of club may be.

If the Home Secretary, in reply to my hon. and learned Friend, said simply that he was proposing to think about it again in the light of his prejudices I should have unhesitatingly advised this side of the House to divide in favour of this new Clause. I am rather moved by the fact that he seems to recognise that he is not, after all, the right man to decide this kind of thing and that he proposes, so he has informed the House, to leave it to the Board. Well, that is some sign of grace—

Mr. Callaghan

I do not propose to leave it to the Board. I said I would consult the Board, and, obviously, take its advice, but the final decision must remain with me. I promise the right hon. and learned Gentleman that I am not naive, but we may see, as any Home Secretary has seen, the consequences, and the evil consequences, which underlie this gambling. This must be constantly in the mind of every Member in the Chamber when considering this subject.

Mr. Hogg

I think not the least naive thing about the Home Secretary is his refusal to believe that those who differ from him have the same knowledge of social conditions as he. I think that the mistake he is making, if he will allow me to say so, is in not realising that the object of the Bill, if it is successful, is precisely to cut out, by a close type of control, the kind of evils to which he is referring. I admit that those evils have existed in the past. I have already, on Second Reading and in numerous debates in Committee, described why, I think, those evils have arisen.

The evils to which the Home Secretary refers, blackmail, extortion, and even violence and murder, are due precisely to the fact that in the past we have either outlawed gaming altogether, which meant that we put it into the hands, virtually, of the criminal classes, who enforce a kind of gangster law of their own, or, alternatively, have done what the 1963 Bill did, left them with the necessity of strong-arm methods, and have not adopted the method, which the Bill rightly adopts, of control subject to licence, and, I hope, subsequently, of sufficiently high taxation to limit, both to the punter and to the promoter of the gambling club, the profitability of the exercise.

Once we have done that we must have the courage to allow the proposals made in a Bill of this kind some opportunity for success. The trouble with the Home Secretary is that he never will have the courage of his convictions in this matter and always tries to paint the lily with some kind of prohibitions which, in the nature of things, will only repeat the mistakes which we have made in the past and which we are trying to get out of.

I was saying, when the right hon. Gentleman—courteously, of course—interrupted me, that he had seemed to me to betray some sign of grace towards the end of his speech in recognising that, as it were, he does not propose to be the best judge of this matter, but proposes to take the advice of the Board, advice which the Board will tender to him after a certain amount of experience and not simply from a priori thinking. This, above all, is a matter in which a priori thinking ought to be avoided and experience ought to be our guide as to what we do in the future, which is precisely why we on this side of the House are anxious to give the Board the maximum degree of power, and rejoice that the Home Secretary has, to some extent at any rate, yielded to our persuasion, because he has said that he proposes to take the advice of the Board. While I recognise that the legal responsibility must, under the framework of the Bill, remain with him, I hope that he will take the Board's advice and not simply receive it.

Because the right hon. Gentleman said that, my own disposition is that we accept that assurance, because I can see that there are technical reasons against this new Clause, of the kind which the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) said—one can draw up a list of silly things we do not want to do and then prohibit the Home Secretary from not doing them. That, I agree, would be contemptuous of the Government and, perhaps, bad from the point of view of legislation, because our list would never be wholly exhaustive.

I rejoice at the small signs of grace which the Home Secretary has shown, and I hope that, after some experience of the operation, he will be less Puritan in his outlook, and believe that those who do not take the view that he takes about these things are not in themselves less moral.

Mr. W. R. Rees-Davies (Isle of Thanet)

I apologise to the House for adding a few words, but I do so because a few things were not covered in debate here or in Committee. I underline every word which my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) has so eloquently expressed.

In all countries at present where gambling is going on—France, Belgium, America—the move is away from the isolated casino and rather towards the club, and on town planning grounds the move is now to have one hereditament in which in part of the area there is dancing, in another part cabaret, in another part gaming; but, of course, it is a separate gaming room.

There is in this debate a good deal of misunderstanding of this fact and of what the position is. For example, if we take Berkeley Square, and the well-known club there, I presume that the famous night club in the basement is to be treated as being in separate premises from the equally well-known gaming institution on the first floor. I imagine that it is so; I imagine that it is wholly separate.

Take Hamilton Place. There, there is now a night club in the basement, one of the best restaurants possible on the ground floor, and gaming on the first floor. Within the past year those premises have very much improved their gaming and facilities. They are now among the best in the world.

There are up and down the country at present certain places where I agree with the Home Secretary that the cabaret should not be on the same site as the gaming. There should be a quite separate means of entry. For example, one would pay to go into the cabaret on the ground floor and then have to go as a member into a totally separate club for gaming. In so far as the premises are totally separate, I agree that in that sense of the word they should be separate. But it is absurd if the suggestion is that we should have to close all our best clubs, or that they would have to go to totally separate premises like Crockford's.

The reason for this suggestion in the Home Office originally is that when France began gaming it decided to have totally separate casinos. It is only (relatively recently that one finds the private club in Paris. There is one for men only, and it is there that one gets what the Home Secretary calls hard gaming. I think that it is right to have separate rooms for hard gaming, but in the North it is not, in the main, hard gaming in the true sense of the word. I do not propose to go into the argument about whether men and women are induced into gaming. They are introduced with the Is. or the 2s., as they are on football pools and elsewhere.

We must not overlook that we have, with all its evils, probably the most successful gaming set-up in the world outside Nevada. The clubs are doing very well. It is just part of the swinging London of today and of the provinces that they should have the amenities and facilities of gambling which a civilised society should be able to have today.

Mr. Carlisle

In view of the speech by the Home Secretary, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Clause.

Motion and Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

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