GAMING BILL. [H.L.] (Hansard, 2 November 1921)

§ LORD MUIR MACKENZIE
My Lords, anyone who heard what was said upon this subject by the Lord Chancellor in answering a Question which I ventured to put to him, would not be surprised, I think, at this Bill being now brought before your Lordships for consideration. I only hope that your Lordships will not think that, like the sons of Zeruiah, I have taken too much upon me in acting as the mouthpiece for a proposal of this kind. I have every hope that there is no opposition to the Bill in this House. I have spoken to various members of the House whose authority is recognised here, and I have not found any disposition to disapprove of it; quite the contrary. I have also had occasion to speak about it to many members of the legal profession and to Judges of the highest position, and they did not repudiate the word "ridiculous" which I ventured to use to them in conversation in regard to the state of the law as disclosed by a Judgment in your Lordships' House which nobody can doubt for a moment was absolutely correct. It is, perhaps, a presumption on my part to say so, but we know that in dealing with appeals this House is endowed with the supremest wisdom and that it cannot be overruled. As the Lord Chancellor is in his place I think I might venture to say that he rather deplored his own infallibility last week.
Everyone is familiar with the effect of that decision. It is to show that in a 142 certain class of case with which we are all very familiar, if the amount due is paid by cheque instead of in coin or in cash it is possible for the person who paid the money to get it back again. If that is not ridiculous I really do not know what is, and I venture to bring forward a proposal which appears to me to get over the difficulty. The difficulty arises, as your Lordships know, because of the discovery ill the recent case which was before the House, of a section of an Act of Parliament which had not been observed, I think, in the other Courts. That discovery has brought about the present position. The proposal I make in this Bill removes those words. That is a very simple matter. It also goes on to say that nobody may take advantage of that which had been lying hid all those years, and that from the time when the revelation of the state of the law was made in this case of SuttersversusBriggs nobody shall be able to bring an action to recover the money which he paid and which was accepted without any idea that the condition existed which has now become apparent.
I am aware, of course, that there are two difficulties in the way of proceeding with a Bill of this kind, and with this Bill. One is that there has been a sort of agreement, I am sorry to say, that during this sitting of Parliament no business is to be taken that is not Government business and business of a certain kind. I hope it is not asking too much that as Parliament happens to be sitting, as this House is at present free to do business, and as the other House must presently be in the position of marking time, the opportunity should be taken to bring about this very obvious remedy.
The other obstacle is that this Bill refers to gaming, and there are very many excellent persons who refuse to touch the subject of gaming even with the tongs. They will be disposed, perhaps, to take an adverse view of a Bill of this kind, even though it proposes so obvious and simple a remedy, because it deals with the Gaming Laws. I am quite unable and I do not feel confident to argue that subject. If I attempted to do so I might find myself speaking inadvisedly; so I will leave that alone. I will only say one thing further, that I do not think this Bill ought to proceed or that it can proceed unless there is what might be called general consent to it. But I trust that general consent 143 may be obtained. As I said before, I do not expect to find that your Lordships disapprove of the proposal which I venture to make, and I beg to move that the Bill be read a second time.

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT BIRKENHEAD)
My Lords, it might be convenient that I should make a very brief observation upon the proposals recommended to the House by the noble Lord. He has, I think, done no more than justice to the decision in question. It has not been assailed, and it cannot be assailed, by any competent lawyer, but it has, none the less, produced a very inconvenient train of consequences; and I, speaking as an individual here and not as in any way taking upon myself to bind my colleagues in a matter in which, owing to the pressure of affairs, I have not had the opportunity of ascertaining their collective view, have no hesitation in giving every measure of support which is in my power to the Bill that is now before your Lordships.
The matter is really almost in a nutshell. It was at one time the policy of the Legislature that if a man paid his gaming losses, whether he paid them in bank notes or by cheque, he should in each case be able to recover them. Then the policy changed. When I hear reflections upon lawyers I listen to them with very great impatience, because the vacillation of policy has not been the vacillation of lawyers, but has been the vacillation of laymen, and the only occasional glimpses of light that have been forthcoming in this matter have been when those of your Lordships who devote themselves to legal matters have found leisure to address themselves to the tangle with the hope of straightening it out.
Any such confusion as there is has sprung from the conflicting and the constantly varying decisions of Parliament upon the morality of the transaction. If your conception of morality in any particular aspect is static, then you may expect a vein of consistency to appear in your legislation. If, on the other hand, Parliament thinks that to be morally tolerable which ten years earlier it thought to be morally intolerable, then you arc likely to find sonic resultant confusion in your legislation. So it happened that Parliament changed its mind. At one time it said it was proper 144 that if a man paid his gaming debts by cheque or by Bank of England notes it would be possible to recover them, but, for the discouragement of gambling, it later changed its mind, and, not being an insane Parliament, it must be assumed to have changed it consistently. And if it changed its mind consistently, of course it could not have meant that a man who paid his debts in a Bank of England note should be in a position in which he could not recover them and that a man who paid them by cheque should be in a position in which he could recover them. The section of the Act which has led to confusion was unfortunately allowed to remain on the Statute Book.
What follows? We have to deal with a situation in which Parliament has said that if a man who has lost a wager pays in Bank of England notes he cannot recover it The section which says that if he has paid it by cheque he can recover it was allowed to remain on the Statute Book. Nobody knew that that section had been allowed to remain in the Act It had escaped the attention of those who had to deal with these matters. Suddenly it has been revealed that recourse may be had to the law successfully for the recovery of debts paid by cheque. My own conception of that which will follow is not that many people will avail themselves of this decision. But there are certain persons who may avail themselves of it— namely, persons who are under the obligation which springs from the discharge of a representative duty, and in these cases undoubtedly claims will be brought forward, sometimes on a large scale.
To take an illustration The executor of a deceased person who had lost £ 200,000 in betting, and had discharged his liability by cheque, would, in my judgment, be called upon to bring an action to recover this money. Conceive the position of the individual bookmaker against whom such an action is brought. He would say: "Well, I won, playing the game in a court of honour. Here is someone who brings a claim for £ 200,000 against me. If that claim is brought against me I, after all, must also have an equal opportunity of, taking advantage of the technicalities of the law." He would therefore be bound to bring actions against other persons to whom he has equally discharged his liabilities by cheque. There are grave difficulties in the Law Courts to-day owing to the amount of litigation, and I am shocked to 145 think what the resulting consequences may be if persons— many of whom do not desire to bring these actions if they are left to themselves, but who would nevertheless be bound to bring them if only as a defensive measure— are to disrupt the work of the Law Courts in the course of the next six months.
Therefore, speaking for myself, I should greatly welcome the decision of Parliament if that decision were in a very short time to apply the remedy contained in the noble Lord's Bill— an effective remedy. I cannot for the life of me see how any person who is deeply concerned with gambling should object to such a proposal. Let us examine for one brief moment how far the argument can be placed upon the kind of morality which objects to gambling. It would not be right to expect Parliament to pass such a proposal in a short period of time if there were controversy in regard to it. But how could the controversial interest of those who are, on ethical grounds, opposed to gambling be served by a state of things which enables a man— who does not share their moral objections to gambling— because he made a bet and lost it and paid it by cheque, to recover the amount owing to a legal technicality of which he was not aware when he made and paid the bet? I cannot conceive that any sound rational or considerable protest in the direction of supposed morality can be made on those grounds. Looking at it as an ordinary human being, with such application of common sense as it is in my power to make, I do not see any answer to the proposals made by the noble Lord.
I very seldom myself visit racecourses— very seldom indeed. I can truthfully say of racecourses that I amparcus et infrequens cultor It is almost equally true to say that I never risked any sum or any wager except on those few occasions on which I have been present at a racecourse. I remember once when I had occasion a year or two ago— and even after I had attained this high Office— to visit a racecourse. The name of the races I have forgotten. I went there in very respectable company, because I was taken there by the late Lord Chancellor of Ireland So there were two of us to balance, so to speak, the levity one of the other. I am sorry to say that the advice of my learned colleague, very dependable in matters of law, was far less valuable when addressed 146 to the topics of the turf, and the result was that, on one of the very few occasions when I have ventured my frail barque in those waters, I was very unfortunate. It so happened that I was not provided with a number of notes sufficient even to cover my insignificant losses, and I paid those losses by cheque. If 1 had paid them in Bank of England notes I could not have recovered them.
Is there any policy of the law to be served by allowing anyone— even I, who address your Lordships now, could do it to-morrow — to take steps to recover the sum of money which has been paid, because it was paid by cheque? The thing is a farce. Do not let anybody make the mistake of involving your Lordships, or those who speak for your Lordships in a legal capacity, in this farce. I have made it plain that we are not responsible for the farce. We have merely applied accurate consideration to the elucidation of the farce, and can be no further made responsible for it. If this House and another place can be made to realise the true facts, as I conceive them and have indisputably stated them, it would not surprise me, and it would gratify me, if a method upon the lines indicated in this Bill were adopted. For these reasons I shall certainly support the noble Lord's Bill.

§ VISCOUNT CHAPLIN
My Lords, the noble Lard who introduced this Bill began by expressing the hope that he would not be held to be taking too much upon himself in the action which he has thought it right to pursue with reference to this matter. The noble. Lord, I am sure, need be under no apprehension whatever upon that point. On the contrary, the sporting world undoubtedly, and, I believe myself, the British public generally, will be themselves greatly indebted both to the noble Lord for the speech that he has made upon this subject and for the speech that has just fallen from the Lord Chancellor.
If I may, I am going to support this Bill in a very few words upon what I believe to be a thoroughly practical ground. If the noble Lord's action is able to defeat the policy that might be pursued, he will be doing a great service to what is a very important industry in this country. Anything which seriously affected racing, or left betting in the position which it is sought to remedy by the passing of this Bill, would undoubtedly have a very serious effect upon 147 the race meetings of this country. The attendance would be greatly less, and if the attendance were less, the stakes to be run for would be very much smaller. What would be the effect of that? It would be a most prejudicial thing to what is a very important industry in this country— namely, the industry of horse-breeding
It is due to a great sport in this country, to fox-hunting and to fox-hunting alone, that the type of horses required for the Cavalry in particular is always provided It has been that sport alone which, in periods of peace, provides any number of horses of that particular type that are required in time of war. All those horses, almost without an exception, are the produce of thoroughbred sires, and these thoroughbred sires are bred for racing and for racing alone. Now if racing were seriously prejudiced, as it might be under the decision which has recently been given, if it were not for the introduction of some Bill of this kind, I do riot think anybody could say what the effect might be upon that industry to which I for one attach the greatest possible importance. Less and less of these thoroughbred sires would be produced from year to year, and by degrees we should steadily lose the production of horses in this country which has been going on for years and years, and which has made them famous and desired throughout the whole of the world.
If we only consider for a single moment what was done in the late war by Lord Viscount Chaplin 148 Allenby and his Cavalry in Palestine at, one period, I think even those who have no feeling in favour of sport would be strongly of opinion that this is a matter of very serious consideration, and, as I hold that opinion most strongly, I shall give all my support whenever it is required to the action of the noble Lord.

§ LORD MUIR MACKENZIE
My Lords. I propose to take the Committee stage of the Bill to-morrow, if your Lordships see no objection to that course.