§ 11.21 a.m.
§ The MINISTER of STATE, HOME OFFICE (Lord Harris of Greenwich)My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill 959 be now read a second time. I should like to give a fairly full account, both of the background to this Bill and of its main provisions. The existing law on lotteries is contained in the Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Act 1963, which was a consolidating measure. The fundamental principle of the law is that all lotteries are unlawful, subject to certain well-defined exceptions. There are three well-defined exceptions: first, there are small lotteries held as an incident of an entertainment—this covers the raffle at a village fete or cricket club dinner. Secondly, there are private lotteries, where the sale of tickets is restricted to people working or living on the same premises or to members of a society or club formed for purposes not connected with gambling. Thirdly, and of most concern to us today, there are small public lotteries promoted on behalf of a society conducted wholly or mainly for charitable, athletic or cultural activities or for other purposes not those of private gain or of any commercial undertaking. This kind of small public lottery at present operates under financial limits which, with changes in money value, have become highly restrictive. The present limits, which date from the mid-1950s, set the maximum price of a ticket at 5 pence, the maximum prize at £100 and the maximum turnover at £750. These limits are now unrealistic, and there is a need for them to be revised to enable the valuable work carried out by many societies to continue.
In 1971 an Interdepartmental Working Party of officials was set up by the Government of the day. It examined the whole field of the law relating to lotteries and it considered the related forms of long-odds gambling such as football pools and competitions like "spot-the-ball ". Among the recommendations of the Working Party, which were published in December 1973, was one for increases in the financial limits on small public lotteries, together with an increase in the present restriction on expenses of 10 per cent. of the proceeds. The Working Party also recommended that local authorities should be allowed to promote small lotteries in a similar way, and that the Gaming Board for Great Britain should have a general supervisory role over small public lotteries and a direct responsibility for the registration 960 of lotteries run by local authorities. These recommendations have been much discussed over the past year, and two Private Member's Bills were introduced in another place which would have allowed local authorities to promote lotteries on a considerable scale. The Government, though not opposed in principle to provisions for local authority lotteries, made it clear that they saw objections to local authority lotteries on the scale proposed. Your Lordships will recall that when the first of these Private Member's Bills reached this House, they were not disposed to assist its further progress.
The Government's present view is that there is an urgent need to raise the outdated financial limits on public lotteries promoted by societies. They see no objection—and indeed some advantage—if local authorities are authorised to promote lotteries on the same scale. This is the background to the Bill which we are now debating. It is related to some of the recommendations of the Interdepartmental Working Party on Lotteries; but I ought at this stage to make it clear that the Bill is not intended to cover the whole field of the Working Party's report. That dealt with other issues such as large lotteries, pool betting and prize competitions. As was said when the Working Party's report was published, these issues
reveal sharp conflicts of interest and raise large questions of moral and social judgment ".The Government have not yet come to conclusions on these matters, and it may well be that further inquiry and discussion are needed before sound conclusions can be reached. We therefore see the Bill now before the House as a limited measure, but one well-justified at this point in time.I should now like to turn to the main structure of the Bill: Clauses 8 and 9 are particularly relevant. The new financial limits proposed are 25p for a ticket, £1,000 for a single prize and £10,000 turnover for lotteries held more frequently than monthly. If lotteries are held at less frequent intervals, the permitted prize and turnover limits are higher. Not more than 52 lotteries may be promoted in any period of twelve months. There is an outside limit of 30 per cent. of the proceeds of the lottery 961 which may be appropriated for expenses, and, as now, there is a limit of 50 per cent. on the proportion of the proceeds which may be appropriated for prizes. I should add that the Secretary of State is given the power to vary financial limits in the Bill by Order; this should avoid the need for substantive legislation if further alteration seems necessary at some future date.
Societies conducted for the same purposes as under the existing law will be able to promote lotteries within these limits. What is new here is that local authorities will be able to promote lotteries within the same limits. Local authorities at all levels will be able to promote lotteries for any purpose for which they have power to incur expenditure under any enactment. It has been fundamental to the Government's approach that local authorities should not promote lotteries on a larger scale than that permitted to societies, and we do not see the Bill as an instrument for making a major change in the pattern of local authority finance. But we think that the new powers may well enable local authorities to start projects—probably of an amenity nature—for which otherwise the necessary money would not be available.
Lotteries on the larger scale permitted by this Bill will require competent supervision. A society wishing to promote lotteries will be required, as now, to register with the local authority, usually the district council. And, if the expected turnover exceeds £5,000, the society will have to register the lottery scheme with the Gaming Board, who with their experience and expertise in a related field are clearly the appropriate supervisory authority. The Gaming Board will have power to refuse or revoke registration in certain circumstances, and will have power to require the provision of accounts and any other information in relation to lottery schemes. Local authorities will be required to have their own lottery schemes approved by the whole authority, not just by a committee of the authority, and the proceeds of a local authority lottery must be paid into a lottery fund. All local authority lottery schemes have to be registered with the Gaming Board. These requirements as to registration of societies and schemes are set out in Schedules 1 and 2. Additionally, in Clause 10, the Bill empowers the Secretary of State to 962 make regulations governing provisions to be included in a lottery scheme and governing the promotion of lotteries. Taken together, these measures should provide the necessary control and skilled supervision of the larger lotteries permitted under the Bill.
Summarising the essential purposes of the Bill, it is intended to restore to charitable, sporting and cultural organisations the potential of lotteries for fund raising for which those organisations are now so urgently in need. In this connection it will be possible for the Secretary of State, once the Bill has become law, to bring Clause 13 into operation by means of an Order under Clause 19, and this will enable societies to derive some benefit from the increased limits without having to wait for the making of detailed regulations. The Bill will, we are sure, prove of benefit to many voluntary organisations. It also empowers local authorities to promote lotteries within limits which should safeguard the interests of the voluntary organisations. Lastly, lotteries on the scale now proposed make it appropriate to bring in the Gaming Board to supervise the larger society lotteries and the local authority lotteries. This Bill is a limited but timely and practical measure, which I commend to the House. I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.
§ Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Harris of Greenwich.)
§ 11.29 a.m.
§ Earl COWLEYMy Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, for having explained in such clarity and detail the content and purpose of the Bill before us this morning. However, I think it is important to remind the House of the social background to this Bill. Britain at the moment has some of the greatest opportunities for gambling of any country in the Western world. There exists already in this country an annual gambling turnover of £2,500 million, with a net loss to those people who take part of some £800 million every year. Thus, it is against this social background that the Bill before us must be considered.
Even so, we on this side of the House have supported in principle the extension of the power to hold lotteries to local authorities, in order to harness some of 963 these funds that go in gambling to a social purpose, provided that the controls on those lotteries are adequate. However, as noble Lords know, the question of lotteries has had a very chequered career in this House over recent years. The Lotteries (Greater London) Bill, which was to permit the Greater London Council to run lotteries, was introduced by my noble friend Lord Windlesham some six years ago, but was rejected by your Lordships on Second Reading after strong opposition from the then Labour Government. More recently, a similar fate befell the first Local Lotteries Bill, which was introduced in another place by my right honourable friend the Member for Crosby.
Furthermore, when the 1973 Report of the Inter-Departmental Working Party on Lotteries, which the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, has mentioned—the Working Party was set up by my right honourable friend the then Home Secretary—was debated in this House, on a Motion initiated by my noble friend Lord Mansfield, it received a very mixed reception. The Report, as the noble Lord has said, went much wider than the scope of the Bill before us. The Report dealt with the whole area of the present law as it relates to lotteries, pool betting and prize competitions. However, the Working Party put forward recommendations as to how a new and more comprehensive framework could be built up to cover this area of long-odds gambling.
As the noble Lord, Lord Harris, has explained to the House, the present Bill deals almost exclusively with the small, publicly conducted lotteries. These are already permitted for certain societies under Section 45 of the Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Act 1963. But this Bill raises the financial limits, removes some of the limitations, and extends the right to hold lotteries to local authorities. This change of attitude on the part of the Labour Government is reflected in the Labour Party's Policy Group's evidence to the Layfield Committee of Inquiry on Local Government Finance, where they stated:
One purely voluntary source of revenue for local authorities would be local lotteries. They could only make a small contribution to financing the range of services provided by 964 local authorities in Britain, but no source of revenue which is virtually painless should be ignored. We propose that local authorities should be empowered by national legislation to organise lotteries if they so wish.In the light of the Government's decision to introduce their own Bill into another place, my right honourable friend agreed to withdraw his second Local Lotteries Bill, although I should remind the House that the two Bills differ in very substantial ways, especially in the area of financial restrictions.Thus, while much of the Government Bill's lineage is Conservative, it has to a certain extent been born deformed. For it seems to me that the Government have taken the Whitney Report's recommendations, my right honourable friend's Bill and Section 45 of the 1963 Act, mixed them together, added some Home Office salt, some Treasury pepper and a few Socialist herbs, put the concoction through a sieve, and baked it far too quickly instead of giving it the time that really should be allowed, with the result that one is left with an unpalatable mess. With any luck, during the Committee stage and the Report stage in this House, your Lordships will be able to add some sauce that will make the meal far more edible when it is returned to another place.
My Lords, this Bill is nothing more than piecemeal legislation and is in complete contradiction to the recommendations of the Inter-Departmental Working Party on Lotteries. In paragraph 76 of their Report, in the Conclusion section, it is stated:
Although the proposals allow room for adjustments of detail, in general they are closely interlocking and need to be considered as a whole.In fact, the Bill neither implements their recommendations as to large lotteries, nor does it do so as to small lotteries. It admittedly raises the limits above those recommended for small lotteries, but it does not go so far as the recommendations as to large lotteries in the Report. Thus the Bill falls between two stools. It is important that this Bill should be corrected, since it seems that the Government have no intention of introducing subsequent legislation in this area in the near future in order to complete the picture, because on 30th April, during the Report stage in another place, the noble Lord's 965 honourable friend, the Under-Secretary of State at the Home Office, said:With regard to further legislation … I cannot, of course, say exactly when the next Bill, if any, will be introduced."—[Official Report, Commons; col. 684.]As the Bill stands, Clause 1 will permit all local authorities, from the smallest parish council to the largest county council, and an inordinate number of societies and organisations as defined in the Bill, to hold lotteries. There are some 8,600 local authorities in this country and about 1,000 registered charities, without mentioning the other organisations which will become eligible. I do not believe that even the Government know the potential number of organisations that will be allowed to hold lotteries. Each one will be permitted to hold 52 lotteries every year. Even if only the local authorities decided to participate and promoted the maximum number of lotteries annually at the maximum permitted turnover, the total proceeds could amount to £4,500 million a year. This is more than double the estimated gambling turnover in this country at the present time. While I fully concede that not every organisation or local authority will necessarily take advantage of the power under this Bill, the risk of vast numbers of failed lotteries is extremely high.Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Harris, when he replies to this debate can tell the House what will happen to the losses in excess of the income of the lotteries which are promoted by the societies and local authorities. In the case of local authorities, is it true that they will in fact have to be borne by the general rate? The Bill, as drafted, is surprisingly blank on this point. Furthermore, the problem is further compounded by the financial limits as laid down in Clause 9, subsections (7), (8) and (9). One has only to look at them to see that there is in fact a positive incentive to hold the maximum numbers of lotteries permitted every year; because if 52 lotteries a year are held the potential return is over £500,000. If only one lottery a year is held the potential return is only £40,000 a year.
Another point is that the Bill makes no distinction between large societies and local authorities, on the one hand, and their lesser counterparts, on the other. The same restrictions are applied to the parish council as to the GLC. In fact, as 966 the Bill stands, it is not really worth the while of a large authority or society to hold a lottery. Thus, one is denied the expertise that those organisations have. While a maximum return or turnover of £½ million is of tremendous benefit and an incentive to a parish council, it is relative "peanuts" to an organisation like the GLC. Even to reach that limit, one would have to have a lottery every week of the year. The larger societies and local authorities should be given higher limits, or should have no limit put upon them. This is the only logical course that can be taken.
I appreciate the argument that is put forward by the Government, that local authorities and societies must be treated equally in order that the societies should not become swamped, but I think one can carry parity to an illogical extreme. The swamping of societies is just as likely to happen if, under the Bill as drafted, the financial limits are retained at the present level, as it would if one raised the financial levels to those that could benefit best—for example, the GLC or Covent Garden. When the noble Lord replies to the debate, perhaps he could say what is the precise position regarding joint lotteries and how will the financial restrictions be calculated. If local authorities or societies joined together, will they have the restriction of one authority or society operating a lottery or will it be the total of all those taking part?
As the House will see from Clauses 2 and 3 of the Bill, a tremendous strain will be put upon the Gaming Board. The Board will be required to register all society schemes over £5,000 and all local authority schemes. Such restrictions and control are not imposed even on a licensed betting office, of which there are some 14,000 with an annual turnover of about £1,500,000,000.
There is every chance that the Board will become so overloaded that the nature, quality and effectiveness of its existing work will suffer. One only has to read the Under-Secretary of State's Written Answer to my honourable friend's Question of 25th April to see how heavy the Board's existing duties are. The noble Lord's honourable friend has already said that the Board's staff will probably have to be increased by 50 per cent. It is likely that it will have to be increased by considerably more than 967 that, which looks rather strange in the light of what is said in the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum under the "Effects of the Bill on Public Service Manpower ":
Some increase will be necessary in the staff of the Gaming Board".When he replies, could the noble Lord say what negotiations the Government have had with the Board and what the reactions of the Board have been to its possible new duties. Furthermore, is the Board to remain as one unit, or is it to be divided, with a section specifically created to implement its new responsibilities under this Bill?I have very real doubts about the wisdom of putting so much extra work into the lap of the Board. Paragraph 48 of the working party's report says:
Ideally, we should like to see control assumed by the Gaming Board, and although we do not believe this to be feasible, given the large number of lotteries likely to he involved, we consider that the Board should be given a general supervisory role ".I support that sentiment, but it is not contained in the Bill as drafted. I implore the noble Lord to consider whether it might not be a better idea for some of the detailed work and control to be undertaken by the Department of the Environment, with the Board having a general supervisory role.Since so much of the control and implementation of the Bill is dependent upon Regulations made by the Secretary of State under Clause 10, perhaps the noble Lord could tell the House whether the Government intend to produce the promised consultation document about the Regulations which his honourable friend in another place said would be produced. Can he produce this document before the Bill leaves this House? Because without having any real idea of the contents of these Regulations, one will be tempted to play it safe when considering which Amendments to advocate to this House and which to leave.
In view of the workload which will be before the House in the near future, it would be extremely helpful if the noble Lord could have the consultation document placed in the Library before the Committee stage of this Bill.
We on this side of the House in general welcome the Bill because we support the 968 principle behind it. But because of what we consider to be its obvious shortcomings, of which I have mentioned a few, our support at best can only be regarded as lukewarm.
§ 11.46 a.m.
§ Lord WIGGMy Lords, in July of last year I took the responsibility of urging your Lordships not to give the Local Lotteries Bill a Second Reading. Subsequently, I found myself involved with lawyers in a number of cases which could have ended in the courts, because I was charged with having spoken in the House without having declared my interest. I thought my interest in the matter was well known, and I am declaring it again today. I wonder whether your Lordships will be content if I say that I am speaking solely for myself. If there is any aspect of my association with betting and gaming that is unknown, I shall be very glad to refer to it in depth. It has its origin in my service in the Army when I remember getting four days CB for playing pontoon, only to discover from an Officers' Mess waiter that my company commander who gave me the CB was a little upset because he had given me four days for playing pontoon while he and the padre had been playing bridge for much higher stakes! That began my interest, which has continued over the years.
I have held a number of appointments from both Conservative and Labour Governments and I take pride in the fact that by applying logic—my proletarian origins would compel me to say commonsense—to this problem, my thinking has enabled a Labour Government to adopt policies not of suppression but of control and trying to harness a human frailty and turning it to the common good. The result was that when a Labour Administration took over, with all the philosophies that come from the other side, the total amount received by the Revenue in respect of this colossal turnover was of the order of £33 million. It is now £250 million. At least that was a step in the right direction; and if similar thinking were applied by both the Opposition and the Government, causing no great hardship, it could be considerably increased. In other words, both Governments have talked a great deal of nonsense not only on this subject but on others, not because 969 their thinking is imperfect, nor particularly because they are humbugs but because they do not get down to the grass roots of the matter.
The Lotteries Bill that was introduced as a result of the efforts of Mr. Page and an ex-Department of the Environment Minister—I noted with some interest that the noble Earl, Lord Cowley, urged us to go back to the Department of the Environment—wandered quite off the point and embarked on a course of action which would end up in a great deal of trouble here and, I may say, a great deal of nonsense.
So with the first point I hope I have cleared my own position adequately. The second point is that what I pleaded for last July was not a renunciation of the principles of the Bill but that this House should exercise one of the two functions for which in my judgment it has a right to claim to exist; namely to exercise delaying powers. If the other place, with a mandate from the electorate, passes a piece of legislation then for your Lordships to oppose the Second Reading of that Bill is a serious matter, but when it comes to a Private Member's Bill which is palpable nonsense it seems to me that it is the duty of this House not necessarily to reject it but to delay it. That is what I did and I pleaded that the Government should go back, think again and produce a Government Bill which would tackle some of the problems. This Bill is the result, but I entirely agree with the noble Earl, Lord Cowley, that it is piecemeal. However, let us go back a little into history, because it comes ill from a spokesman for the Conservative Party even to caution the Government here as to their action in this matter.
Going back a little, your Lordships' House in its judicial role gave a judgment on "Spot the ball". As I understand it—and I am no lawyer—the decision was that the "Spot the ball "contest was not a pool operation. However, I believe that in their judgment they indicated that, if the matter had come before them as a lottery, the decision would have been very different. In fact half the local newspapers of this country continue to exist on this dichotomy in their Lordships' judgment.
970 Of course the Government were frightened. When Governments come up against a minefield they lack guts and send the civil servants to cross the minefield. So the Government set up an inter-Departmental committee under Mr. Whitney, who produced a very able Report, because the Conservative Government of the day—a spokesman of which now comes along and talks about piece-meal legislation—did not have the guts to tackle the problem. That is the simple truth. Nothing was done and when the present Government came into Office they did not gain in courage either, so here we are. The thing is shot through with anomalies.
I will just mention one. What justification is there for putting a limit on a bingo prize—which is a game played by the proletariat, of which I have the honour to be a member—while no limit is placed on football pools, which have produced vast fortunes? I understand that the largest fortune in this country, amounting to some £600 million, has been made out of football pools. I should like some of that £600 million to be diverted to the common good, either to the Exchequer or, as I would argue, in order to put sport on a sound basis, or even to put the Arts on a sound basis. What is needed is a Royal Commission. Actually, I do not like Royal Commissions—a Select Committee of both Houses to look at the gaming problem right across the board would be far better.
Let us start with one basic assumption, that those who bet—and I do, sometimes successfully but not as often as I should like—are in no way inferior to those who go to the vicar's garden party and engage in a tombola. We are both taking a chance and in morals there is no difference between us. Or is there any difference between myself and the Prime Minister? If I may use one of my favourite aphorisms; he never bets but gambles; I never gamble but bet. There is no difference between us but "there is gold in them thar hills".
If in fact the problem is not tackled soundly we run into the danger, as has happened in other countries, of major outbreaks of crime. I have never ceased to pay tribute to the courage of the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Saffron Walden, when he was Secretary of State 971 at the Home Department and when he tackled the problem, following pledges given in the run-up to the 1950 Election. I was proud, and indeed honoured—and I say it quite frankly—when he appointed me to the Horserace Totalisator Board because of the part I had played in the Racecourse Betting Control Board, and I played some small part in tackling this problem. It needs to be tackled not piecemeal but as a whole, because the problem gets worse.
One can be led astray by astronomical figures. The noble Earl, Lord Cowley, put the total turnover at £2,500 million. Piffle!—£3,500 mililon legally, if you like. Heaven knows what the danger will be of its going underground! There is a very great danger of that because, if the point is reached when those who engage in this operation find their livelihood being taken from them, they will revert to type and will go back to illegality. Illegal betting is a major source of corruption of the police and of the body politic, and the evidence is not far to seek. So this Bill has my support as a first step.
I hope very much that we are not going to mess around with the Department of the Environment because that Department's hand in this affair is a thoroughly bad one. I will tell your Lordships what I think happened. I think that Mr. Page, a Member of another place, when he was a Minister "cooked up" the original Bill but not having the guts to tackle it he intended to plant it on to a Private Member who had a good place in the ballot. Having lost the Election he had to look for another "mug" and he found one in the person of Mr. John Silkin. This is very interesting. If one looks at the Second Reading debate in another place one finds Mr. John Silkin moving the Second Reading, and it had nothing to do with him—it was a Home Office Bill. Why did he do it? Because, in fact, he was in favour, having been sold the dummy by Mr. Page. But then he lost the fight in the Home Affairs Committee because, when he arrived at the Home Affairs Committee and other Departments, including the Home Office, not to mention the Treasury who had to look at the implications of this nonsense, he, having sponsored the Bill, then had to move the 972 rejection of the very Bill that he had been intriguing to get through the House. That is the situation and it is all very plain.
If I may say so, in this field it is time that we ceased to moralise. We should get down to brass tacks and realise that there is no difference between the vicar and the vicar's garden party, and the Stock Exchange and people like myself who back horses. In each case our activity should be controlled but not suppressed; in each case we should pay for our frailty and that price should be used for the public good. I would implore the Government, not only so far as this Bill is concerned but right across the board, to look at the problem again. The Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Act of 1963 is a consolidated measure. It was born of the political courage and wisdom, if I may say so, of my political opponent the noble Lord, Lord Butler. It has operated for 10 years and what is perfectly clear is that it has operated in a very different way from the way in which the Home Office and the advisers of the noble Lord, Lord Butler, thought it would operate.
Ten years have gone by. The Act is now producing a large sum in the way of revenue; the social matrix which produced it has undergone change. It is now time, before your Lordships or another place seek to legislate, to come to grips with the problem, to try to understand it and to realise that for better or worse large numbers of our fellow countrymen get some pleasure in having a bet or filling in a football pool coupon or going to bingo. They are neither better nor worse for going or not going, and certainly they cannot be spoken to in superior terms by those people who do not choose to back a horse but who choose to go along and estimate the size of the cake cooked by the vicar's wife.
So I plead that we should take all the humbug out of it. Let us introduce some clear thinking into it and realise that, whether or not we like it, it is part of the British way of life. If the Government are foolish enough—and I am sure this Government will not be foolish enough—to go back and seek to suppress that which cannot be suppressed, or to use the police to suppress it, they are running into a whole lot of trouble and they could produce a social evil of great magnitude.
973 I apologise for taking up your Lordships' time. I was provoked into doing it because, having done what I did in July of last year—without, may I say, much support from the Government; not one member of the Government went into the Lobby with me—having done the dirty work for them, I thought I should like to come along today to congratulate the Government on having learnt a lesson, though they have not admitted it. May their powers be ever strengthened, and may they recognise that there are problems here which badly need to be tackled.
§ 12 noon.
§ The Lord Bishop of PORTSMOUTHMy Lords, we are very grateful indeed to the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, for what he has said. I want to follow on in support of his argument that this is piece-meal legislation, and that, because of it, the Bill deserves to be sent back for fuller consideration. It has already been said that the Working Party in a sense made as its prime objective, its central feature, the curbing of the pools. This Bill has skilfully avoided that whole issue. As has been said, until the area of lotteries and gambling is looked at as a whole and not in a piecemeal fashion, we shall not produce anything useful for our society.
My Lords, I must declare that I have no antagonism to lotteries in principle. I am only too aware that most of us spend our lives every day making a gamble of some kind. I am told, and I accept this definition, that my faith is a betting of my life on the fact of God. The rewards of that betting, I would say, are very considerable indeed. I do not want to criticise the Bill on general principles, but on the details as they are presented to us. First and foremost, I believe there is an urgent need for an overall look at the whole sphere covered by the Bill or, indeed, the sphere which it does not cover. My fear is that if this Bill goes through as it is, then the bigger issue of the curbing of the pools and the big lotteries will be forgotten and just left aside. The extent of revenue which could be made available for valuable purposes is unlimited. This is one point which worries me.
The second point which worries me is that while I agree that the smaller pools limits should be increased, I regret that 974 they have been increased to the point where they have to be referred to the Gaming Board. If those small lotteries had been left at a figure of £5,000, the Gaming Board need not have been brought into it. I took part in the Committee stage of the Gaming Act. I believe our purpose then was to give the Gaming Board the necessary teeth to do its job. I am frightened that the enormous amount of extra work which reference of all the lottery schemes will involve for the Gaming Board will affect its major purpose. I support the hope that the Government will look afresh at this particular point.
My Lords, I suppose it has to be accepted that local authority lotteries will become a fact. These will add enormously to the number of lotteries, as has been said already. I do not think it can be denied that even at the present level this will very adversely affect those societies, sporting clubs, et cetera, which depend upon lotteries for their very existence. The other thing which worries me very much, quite honestly, is that it is doubtful whether the act of making it possible for local authorities to run lotteries will stir them and the public into a realistic approach which is essential to the whole question of local public expenditure. This was just touched on this morning. I cannot help thinking that while the amount which will accrue to a local authority from a lottery may be comparatively small, just at the moment, when the local authorities have been told, "The party is over" we are in fact saying to them, "Let the party begin ". I believe the need for local authorities responsibly and honestly to look at the way in which their resources are being used before further avenues are opened is very strong indeed.
Then there must be concern about the volume of lotteries likely to follow from this legislation. Mention has been made of this. If this Bill were to go through as it stands, it would seem that the number of acute failures would be very considerable indeed, and in the meantime there would be a considerable badgering of the public. This leads us straight on to a consideration of Clause 10 and the way in which lottery tickets are to be sold to the public. A growth of kiosks for this purpose is not likely to be very popular. If traders were allowed to sell local authority lottery tickets, it would 975 be extremely difficult to keep a check on what they were doing. I think the Working Party assumed that house-to-house sales would take place. I find this objectionable on every count; it would become a very great nuisance. It is one thing for local authorities and other bodies to wish to promote lotteries, but it is quite another thing for Parliament to give the power to them to do so without any realistic estimate of the effect upon the general public. I fear that the already harassed housewife, badgered at the front door by the insurance agent, by the hire purchase agent, by the slick salesman, will yet again have someone coming round selling tickets for a local government lottery, which would just add to the burden. What about the remuneration of the ticket sellers? It has been suggested that they should work on commission. The thought of people going round simply "flogging" tickets in order that they might gain an adequate living is one which is not worthy of the kind of society in which we live. It is reducing human beings to something less than they ought to be, to my mind.
Then I am worried about the Schedules, which are very important to this Bill. Either there is to be control, or there is not. It is quite hopeless, having a system of control which does not work. Schedule 1 was part of the 1956 Act, and was taken over into the 1963 Act. It has never worked, neither is there any power given by it to the local authorities to enable it to work. The local authorities register societies and receive returns of lotteries from them. They have no means, in fact, of finding out what lotteries were promoted by the registered societies. They have no duty to examine the returns and no powers to do anything about those returns which seem to be questionable. The local authorities have power only to receive those returns and to preserve them for the public to examine. When the 1956 Act was passing through Parliament the power of the public to inspect was regarded as a considerable safeguard, but experience has shown that in only a very few isolated cases has any member of the public asked to see those returns in all the years since then. The local authority is given no criteria by which to judge a scheme. It is given no duty 976 to examine it and no powers to do anything about it if it seems faulty. Lottery after lottery could be promoted on a scheme which was basically undesirable, and the local authority would have no responsibility and no powers to do anything about it.
In the debate on the Report the Under-Secretary of State suggested that additional controls were not necessary on lotteries up to £5,000. She said that lotteries over £5,000 were well controlled because the Gaming Board had powers to send for papers and accounts. Indeed, that is the case, but apart from any spot checking it may do, the Gaming Board will have no information sent to it about any lottery which is promoted under schemes which it has approved. I believe that the control of lotteries and the way in which they are registered and indeed run desperately need re-looking at, for in the long run I believe the fundamental things about a lottery are, first of all, the purpose for which it is being run, whether that is a good purpose or a bad one, and secondly the way in which it is controlled and seen to be working properly. For all these reasons, and others, I very much hope that we can have a new look at this matter. Along with the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, I would appeal to the Government to look at the whole area, instead of attempting something which is purely piecemeal legislation.
§ 12.12 p.m.
§ Lord AIREDALEMy Lords, before I forget to do so, may I join with the right reverend Prelate in deploring the prospect of paid door-to-door salesmen selling lottery tickets, in particular because the people likely to be at home during normal working hours will not be the working husband or the working wife but the elderly person, probably a pensioner, and the person least well able to afford lottery tickets, and possibly the person most easily gullible and capable of being pressurised by professional salesmen. I was not intending to begin quite like that. I was going to say first that I thought that this matter was not very much a Party question, and that while I do not claim to speak with the unanimous voice of the whole of the Liberal Party upon it, nevertheless I believe the few things that I have to 977 say have considerable support with my noble friends.
If we are considering to what extent we are discussing gambling in this debate, I suppose it all depends on what goes on in the mind of the person who is buying a lottery ticket. If you buy a ticket at the Church fete, or in support of the local cricket club, I suppose that your mind is more upon subscribing to the cause than upon the prize that you may be lucky enough to win. So far as that goes, and in so far as this Bill touches these clubs and smaller, modest lotteries of that kind, I would have no quarrel with it at all. I would say "good luck" to them. It is a well established custom that they raise their revenue through lotteries, and by all means let this continue. But when you get lotteries of a size likely to be of interest to a local authority, then I imagine that the chance is that the prize is of such a size that the average subscriber is thinking at least as much of the prospect of his winning that prize as he is of making a contribution to the purpose of the lottery, and at that stage I would say that we are talking about gambling. It would seem to me that there is a contradiction between the policy of central Government, who tend by taxation to discourage gambling, and the local authorities who, under this Bill, are being empowered positively to promote gambling. I know that Governments get accused of hypocrisy in being told that they appear to decry gambling and yet they draw large revenues from it. Nevertheless, it is undeniably true that taxation discourages gambling.
I suppose one will be told that the apparent conflict here is resolved on account of the good cause, or worthy project, in support of which the local authority is going to conduct its lottery. All I can say about that is that the lottery is an extraordinarily extravagant and expensive way of financing any worth while project. I understand that the realities of running lotteries (of which, admittedly, I have no personal experience) are that you have to allocate up to 40 per cent. of the total pool in prize money to make the thing attractive, you have administrative expenses ranging between 15 per cent. and 30 per cent.—I think those figures are actually inserted in this Bill—and the net result is that you will not have more 978 than 20 per cent. of the total pool available for the purpose of the lottery.
If you raise the money not by a lottery but on the rates, I suppose the contrary argument comes forward, "Well, why force ratepayers to support projects which they will not enjoy?" "Why", I may be asked, "do you force the bedridden ratepayer to pay a contribution towards a swimming pool?" Well, admittedly, not every amenity which a local authority can provide can be enjoyed by every ratepayer. The best you can do is to provide a range of amenities so that the greatest number of people will get the greatest benefit. Probably the bedridden ratepayer who cannot enjoy a swimming pool gets enormous benefit, disproportionate benefit, out of the county library. Surely the best that councillors can do in their wisdom is to draw up in order of priority, a list of the amenities which are required, and allocate money out of the rates as and when money can be afforded for these amenities. I shall be told that the rate burden is enormous, that people are groaning under the rate burden, and that these things really cannot be provided to any further extent out of the rates. Well, it is an odd argument to say that if five times the cost of the project can be raised by the sale of lottery tickets, therefore a sum five times less cannot be raised fairly as a burden on the rates.
I fear that this Bill will lead the large local authority, that cannot be interested in this Bill because the limits are of a size which cannot be of interest to them, to say, "We are being discriminated against. If small local authorities are permitted to run lotteries on a scale which is of interest to them, it is unfair to us, the larger authorities, that we do not have similar powers to run lotteries of interest to us." I think that the floodgates will open and that we will have a whole new avenue of gambling, superimposed upon all the gambling we have in this country today. To that extent I deplore the Bill, but I say "good luck" to the little girl who sells tickets for the sugar cake at the church bazaar.
§ 12.20 p.m.
§ Lord PITT of HAMPSTBADMy Lords, may I ask your Lordships to look at this Bill from a different angle to that from which it has been looked at until now? I should like your Lordships 979 to look at it from the angle of someone deeply involved in local authority affairs; active in one of the largest local authorities; disturbed about the present limited base of local government finance; seeing a lottery as a possible help to a local authority, and then seeing this Bill. I am such a person in that I was a member of the London County Council from 1961 until its demise, and I have been a member of the Greater London Council from its inception. That means that I have been involved with London government for the past 14 years, and except for one year, when I was Chairman of the Greater London Council, I have been associated with London government finance. I was on the Finance Committee during the whole period that I was on the L.C.C. I was on the Greater London Council's Finance Committee until it was reorganised. I have been on the Policy and Resources Committee since the reorganisation, and the year before I became Chairman of the Greater London Council I was Vice-Chairman of its Policy and Resources Committee.
The question of what to do to provide additional revenue in order to meet some of the costs of local government has bothered us in County Hall ever since I have been there. We have made many different suggestions, some of which your Lordships know about. We thought that a lottery could help and, as your Lordships know, in 1968–69 we endeavoured to promote a Bill to give us the power to run such a lottery. This Bill was defeated on Second Reading in your Lordships' House. We were very disappointed, but we picked ourselves up and decided to try again.
Last April we again discussed this matter and on a free vote in the Council Chamber the Council decided, by 69 votes to 27, to press again for powers to run a lottery. In our evidence to the Lay-field Committee, we indicated that we thought a lottery would help as an additional source—one among many, because we made a lot of other suggestions.
Therefore we were firmly in support of the Bill which was discussed in the last Parliament, and in the early part of this Session, and we were all very happy when we heard that the Government were introducing a Lotteries Bill into Parliament. However, I must confess to your Lordships that I was shattered when I read 980 the Bill, because it makes it quite impossible for any local authority to run a lottery—except a parish council. Since there are no parish councils in London, I must say, as a London councillor, that it strikes me that this is once again evidence that Central Government invariably discriminates against London.
Further, I am unable to understand the philosophy underlying the Bill, because it is so at variance with the Labour Party's evidence to Layfield, as quoted by the noble Earl opposite. The memorandum submitted to Layfield by the Labour Party supported a lottery along the lines on which the Greater London Council wants a lottery. I must apologise to my noble friend Lord Harris of Greenwich for being late and so not hearing the beginning of his speech. But I was in time to hear him assert quite firmly that it is not the intention of the Government, certainly not through this Bill—
§ Lord WIGGMy Lords, will my noble friend pardon me for just a moment? In putting the case for London, does he not recollect that on 21st May last year an official of the Greater London Council put out a circular setting out the economics of the problem as the GLC saw them? It broke down like this. Of the sum of £500,000 a month, £225,000 was to go to the GLC and £225,000 was for prizes, making a total of £450,000, leaving £43,500 for expenses and £6,500 for reserve. The GLC had completely forgotten that the £500,000 would attract 40 per cent. tax, so that it was economic nonsense from the word "Go"; plus the fact that the GLC proposed—I do not know how, unless it was as a result of prayer—to sell 2 million tickets a month for a cost of £43,500.
§ Lord PITT of HAMPSTEADMy Lords, I shall deal with that matter in my own way. But this is hardly relevant, the point being that the Council would not be interested in a lottery which produced £520,000. The expense of setting up the machinery makes it nonsense. In fact, it would be of no value even to a London borough. Since it would not be of any value to a London borough, it would be of even less value to the Greater London Council. Your Lordships must try to remember that the Greater London Council and the Inner 981 London Education Authority together make a call on the rates of £690 million in a year. Therefore, £520,000 would simply not interest the GLC. There would be no point in doing that. Therefore this is quite irrelevant, except to bring me back to the point which I was trying to make; that the Bill, as it is, with its limitation, is of no value to any local authority of any size. In its memorandum the Labour Party expressed the same point of view as the Council, and therefore I find the philosophy behind the Government's Bill a little difficult to understand.
Of course, as the right reverend Prelate said, the revenue will not be large. But there is a great difference between £520,000 and £5 million. While £520,000 would not enable us to do very much for any of our services, £5 million would help a lot with, for example, arts and recreation. When we introduced the Bill in 1969, it was resolved that the proceeds would be used for arts and recreation. I shall go into a little detail about what we spend on arts and recreation, to show how valuable £5 million would be to that service.
We spend £20 million at the moment on arts and recreation. In terms of providing major parks and providing entertainment within those parks, we precept to the extent of £1½ million in order to support the Lea Valley Authority, which will provide amenities for East London, Essex and Hertfordshire. We precept to a similar amount in order to help the arts, drama, music, particularly the large orchestras who could never subsist without the assistance we give them, ballet and the like. We maintain and manage the whole of the South Bank complex, the Festival Hall, the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Hayward Gallery, the Purcell Rooms, and, of course, we provided the site and with the Government we are in the process of meeting the cost of the National Theatre. We are also at this moment trying to steel ourselves to meet the subsidy cost of running the theatre, because we know we will have to make a substantial contribution to that.
At the same time we are trying to provide additional open space and additional recreation for parts of inner London that are without; and at this moment we are in the process of collect- 982 ing several acres to build Burgess Park in Southwark and the East London open space in Tower Hamlets. All these things are being done at the present time. Your Lordships will see, therefore, that, if we could add £5 million to that budget, it would make a tremendous difference. It would enable us to expand the services that we are rendering the people of London and enable us to do what is part of our duty, to retain the cultural heritage of this city.
Everyone who has served in Government, not only local government, knows that when there are pressing needs, such as housing at the present time, it is very easy to say, "Well, we cannot spend so much on arts and recreation; it must be put to housing. "It is the easiest thing on earth, it is the greatest temptation. I have mentioned the things we do in this field in order to show your Lordships how we resist that temptation year after year. But there is no doubt we are well aware that a small addition to the budget that we now make for arts and recreation could make a tremendous difference to the situation in London. We were looking forward to getting powers so that we could do just that, but, of course, that is not possible under this Bill. I want to make a plea to the Government. I hope my noble friend was not as adamant as he sounded when he indicated that a lottery was not intended to provides an additional source of local government finance. I hope the Government will think again and will be prepared to lift the limit. My own view is that there is no real sense in a limit, but if the Government insist that there must be a limit, let it be more realistic, let it be nearer the level that is required to enable the local authority to do something worthwhile.
Then there is also the possibility—and I ask the Government to look at this again more closely—of enabling local authorities in an area to amalgamate their efforts in the running of a lottery. In other words, what I am suggesting is that in London, for example, there should really be only one lottery. As the Bill now stands, if London local authorities decide to use the powers, there would be, or could be, 34 lotteries running in London at the same time. I ask the Government to relent and allow them to run one lottery and allow the upper limit to be 983 the aggregate limit that the boroughs would have had; in other words, if all 34 authorities are running a lottery, let it be the limit times 34. They probably will not all run it; certainly you may get about 20 boroughs joining together, and that will provide a reasonable sum. It would have the dual effect of, first of all, allowing for a larger sum, and also preventing the duplication which is inevitable if this Bill as it is becomes law. As I said before, it is my view that it will not be used at all, but if it is used we are going to have much duplication.
Finally, my Lords, if you will bear with me, I find it difficult to understand the attitude to lotteries in this country. After all, this country has an international reputation for its organisation of horse racing. This country has a large number of betting shops, the football pools, a large industry; the country has a national lottery, because that is what the premium bond is. It is perfectly true that you can always sell your bond back and get back £1. but if you had invested that £1 in national savings certificates, at the end of four years you would get £1.34; if you bought one of the national bonds at 9½ per cent., at the end of four years it would be worth 38p more.
§ Lord HALEMy Lords, if the noble Lord would forgive me for a moment, would it not be better to advocate first that a savings bond should be accompanied by a Government warning that when you cash this bond it will be worth less, and very often much less than when you bought it. Does not that, therefore, mean that about the only argument in favour of lotteries is that, on the whole, they offer a rather better opportunity, despite all the swindling and all the cutting off and all the diminishing, than investing your money in Government securities, and a better opportunity for indulging false hopes, which at the moment are a commodity which would reduce the incidence of duodenal ulcer?
§ Lord PITT of HAMPSTEADMy Lords, I should like to thank my noble friend for his help. At the national level we have this level of gambling. At the lower level we have always had the clubs, and now through this Bill we will have the parish club, as I see it. What we are being told is that at the intermediate 984 level, where the community as a community could benefit from a lottery, that shall be frowned upon. I find that very difficult to understand. I hope the Government will look at this matter again and try to bring the Bill closer to the Memorandum of the Labour Party on this subject. There is no doubt in my mind that a London lottery would be of great benefit to the people of London. I hope your Lordships would not continue to deny them that benefit.
§ 12.40 p.m.
§ Baroness MACLEOD of BORVEMy Lords, I very much enjoyed, and agreed with many of the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Pitt of Hampstead. My brief comments will be about charities, whereas the noble Lord, Lord Pitt, was dealing with millions of pounds. I welcome the Bill from the point of view of charities which run small lotteries. At this time more and more charities are being registered, but they have less and less money to support them. Every charity with which I am concerned is finding that less money is being given by people who have in the past been generous in their support. The reason, of course, is inflation, which is hitting everybody, and not, in my view, a lack of will or thought for charities.
One way in which charities collect money is from lotteries through to small raffles. We—perhaps I should say that I speak on behalf of some of the charities with which I am concerned—welcome what I might call the inflation of the ticket, the amount at which tickets may be sold, from 5p to 25p and from £1,000 in prizes up to £5,000. This will be an encouragement. I am not, and never have been, a gambler. A long time ago my parents bought me a raffle ticket and with it I won a pair of pigeons, which to a small child was wonderful; the only drawback was that they did not breed because they were both males. Since then I have never been very keen about the ordinary lottery or gamble. On the other hand, I do, and I hope that others do, support the sending out of tickets on behalf of charities. As others have said, most British people like a gamble or a game of chance, and if one can combine the two with a contribution to charity, then that finds favour with many people. The charities they support are in very great need. Not only is this true of 985 those charities which cover human beings, but also those which cover homes for cats and dogs and all sorts of other things. I personally put human beings first.
Many charities are in grave financial trouble and I believe that, with one or two reservations, this Bill will help to encourage people to spend modest amounts in their aid. I feel, however, that to raise the expenses limit from 10 per cent. to 30 per cent. is too great an increase, even in an inflationary period. A limit of, say, 20 per cent. or 25 per cent. should be sufficient and, in common with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth, and the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, I can visualise that under the regulations in Clause 10(3) (a) and (b) small children might be sent round streets and along country lanes selling lottery tickets. I should like the age limit at which children may sell lottery tickets to be set downwards, so to speak. With these few remarks, and for the reasons I have given, I support the Bill.
§ 12.45 p.m.
§ Lord ROBBINSMy Lords, I apologise for not having put my name down to speak on this Bill, but having listened to the debate I feel impelled to join my voice to those of noble Lords who have already indicated their disappointment that your Lordships are being invited to consider, in relation to this extremely important and extensive social and economic problem, such a pettifogging and ill-considered measure. Indeed, it is most extraordinary that the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, and his right honourable friend, who are among the most intelligent and sensitive people in public life today, should place before your Lordships such a trifling and muddled suggestion for legislation. I am not even sure that it commends itself on the ground of indexation. In a period when the value of money is changing by about 2 per cent. per month we are confronted with a Bill which simply lays down certain limits in absolute arithmetical terms. But that is a digression and a small point compared with the administrative and, I would say, philosophical deficiencies of the outlook which has produced this ridiculous mouse.
As other noble Lords have said, there have been outstanding contradictions in the attitude of society in the last 100 986 years to this whole problem of gambling. The noble Lord, Lord Pitt of Hampstead, indicated that we have in a fumbling sort of way, sometimes aided by great experts like the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, and sometimes just grubbing along as amateurs, emancipated ourselves in some respects from the narrow limitations of the Victorian outlook. Remember, the horror of lotteries did not extend to the earlier great ages of culture; Westminster Bridge was built as a result of public lotteries. We have the pools, premium bonds, licensed bookmaking and the rest; but so far as lotteries are concerned, surely the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, is absolutely right in saying that there is not a ha'porth of difference between having a bet on a lottery ticket, having a go on the pools or putting one's money into a premium bond. From the ethical point of view these things are absolutely on all fours and it is surely not grown up to persist under a legislative framework to treat them as though they were different; but when we are asked to consider the lottery question we are simply asked to consider a minor matter of indexation.
Quite apart from that, as the noble Earl, Lord Cowley, indicated, and as the noble Lord, Lord Pitt, pointed out in his notable speech, this Bill contains administrative monstrosities. What is supposed to be appropriate for the parish, against which I have no animus, applies also to the Greater London Council and to other possible enterprises; and all sorts of arbitrary limits are placed on this and that without any attempt to survey the problem as it deserves to be surveyed, as a whole. What is the reason for this?
The noble Lord, Lord Airedale, advanced one reason—and it was a rational argument—for restricting the scope of this kind of activity to comparatively small sums; namely, that he thought the same purposes as are in the minds of those who advocate more spacious views could be accomplished at less cost. Whether or not that is technically so, I would not venture to pronounce upon in the presence of experts like the noble Lord, Lord Wigg. I guess that it may or may not be so, and that it depends upon the administrative machinery which is devised. However, I suggest in all friendliness to the noble Lord that he is looking at only one side 987 of the business. It may very well be that a new British Library could be considerably financed out of public money at less cost than the running of a lottery. That may or may not be so, but the fact is that taxes and rates evoke resentment, whereas the purchase of a lottery ticket may not evoke resentment at all.
I am not, I must confess to the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, a betting man, though in my young days I used occasionally to invest a pound or two in the purchase of a ticket in the Calcutta Stakes. That never cost me any pain at all. I used to lie in my bath thinking of the wonderful things I could do if I won a prize and, though I know that some rigid moralists would say that that would diminish one's energy more than other activities in life, I do not myself think that my own dynamic has been tremendously restricted by these innocent bathroom speculations. Therefore, I suggest to the noble Lord that he should think again, and that the matters which he and I have at heart—the advancement of the Arts, innocent sport and so on—could be materially aided at a lower psychological cost than by putting it all on central or local government finance as at present raised.
Finally, my Lords, I should like to make one remark about the area of speculation in this field. I suggest that it is not only local government which deserves to be given wider elbow room on the lines suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Pitt of Hampstead; there are other very worthy enterprises which do not necessarily come even under the aegis of the Greater London Council. The latter has done wonderful things for culture in my lifetime. I do not know whether it regards itself as particularly responsible for the development of the Royal Opera House but, as a member of the board of the Royal Opera House, groping with gigantic deficits and contemplating the opportunity of 100 years to extend that beautiful building and to give it accommodation—apart from the auditorium—which will bear comparison with the accommodation of the other national opera houses, I am acutely aware of what could be done if we had elbow room to do what the Australian authorities have done; that is, to finance the creation of an opera house by means of a lottery.
§ Lord WIGGMy Lords, I hope that the noble Lord will not let his imagination run riot in his bath. Of course there are innumerable things one could do, but what we are looking for is the wherewithal with which to do them. The noble Lord will, I am sure, appreciate this quite simple sum. The Treasurer of the GLC sent out a circular and he estimated the expenses at £43,500, as against £225,000 for prizes and £225,000 for the GLC, so it is roughly 10 per cent. The Bill proposes 30 per cent. What the noble Lord, Lord Airedale, does not understand is that the pools promoters engage in a vast business and they have collectors. In the ultimate here, one will be competing right across the board with a highly developed, very competent, commercial operation on the one hand, and a range of costs which arc quite uncertain. I put this very simple point to the noble Lord. is it not far better for a group of people, including the noble Lord himself, whose mind would take the basic economics into account, to make absolutely sure that the GLC, other local authorities, the pools promoters, the Churches and the innumerable voluntary societies are all going after the same 6p, the same shilling or the same 5p at ever increasing costs?
§ Lord ROBBINSMy Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, enables me to bring my observations to a conclusion forthwith, because the next item in the rough notes I had jotted down before rising was a note to express complete agreement with the noble Lord that the whole question needs going into much more thoroughly than, apparently, it has been gone into by the authorities responsible for this piece of projected legislation. There are grave dangers in tackling this matter in a piecemeal fashion. I join wholeheartedly with the noble Lord, Lord Wigg—whose speech I thought was one of the utmost value—in his suggestion that this would be a suitable matter for investigation. I rather share his distrust of Royal Commissions, which drag on indefinitely, but it might be done by a Select Committee.
§ Lord AIREDALEMy Lords, as the noble Lord was kind enough to refer to my speech two or three times, I should like to put this point to him. Is it not relevant that when a local authority is considering whether to finance a project out of the rates on the one hand, or from 989 a lottery on the other hand, if it is done by lottery unfairness creeps in, in that people who have not contributed to the lottery nevertheless get the benefit of the use of the swimming pool or whatever it may be? One will have two sets of people who will get something for nothing: there will be the lucky prizewinners on the one hand, and the people who have not contributed to the lottery but who, in the end, will have the use of the swimming pool on the other hand.
§ Lord ROBBINSMy Lords, I can only answer the noble Lord by saying that, if I had had the opportunity of contributing to a lottery in favour of some noble cause in which I was interested—for instance, that to which the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, is devoting his life—it would not matter a row of beans to me that somebody should enjoy it who had not bought a ticket.
§ Viscount ECCLESMy Lords, may I very briefly support all that has been said about the muddle of the Bill. I am afraid that I did not really look at it until today, but I feel that it is a Bill that ought to be taken back for the principle behind it to be lookd at. The finances of so many of our really great artistic activities which exist now, and others which we ought to start or to expand, are in a very poor state. If we can help them in this way, we should do it, but it will not happen under this Bill and there are alternative methods which the Government should look at. For instance, they might give income tax relief on subscriptions to accepted institutions up to a limited amount every year. I asked the Government to take the Bill away and do what the noble Lords, Lord Wigg and Lord Robbins, have asked.
§ 1.4 p.m.
§ Lord HARRIS of GREENWICHMy Lords, may I begin by saying that a number of detailed points have been made and that I shall do my best to answer them, but, inevitably, some points will not be answered. I suspect that I shall have the opportunity of answering some of those points during the Committee stage of the Bill, so, if I fail to answer any question, I hope that the noble Lord concerned will acquit me of discourtesy.
I begin by saying that the only speech of which I found myself almost wholly in 990 favour was that of the noble Baroness, Lady Macleod. She addressed herself to one point which very few other Members of your Lordships' House have considered that is, what will happen, if the Bill is not put on the Statute Book, to the voluntary and charitable organisations which are at the moment having a very severe time. In another connection I have Ministerial responsibility for voluntary organisations—that is, in the Voluntary Services Unit of the Home Office. We are confronted with a situation in which, as a result of inflation, many voluntary organisations are facing the imminent likelihood of being driven out of business altogether. Many underprivileged members of our society will suffer severely in such a situation. Therefore, I am bound to say that I found the argument of the noble Baroness—who, I believe, was one of the few Members of your Lordships' House who was wholly and unreservedly in favour of the Bill—most convincing on this point.
I feel that the point which I have made to some extent answers the noble Earl, the right reverend Prelate and others in their objection to what they describe as piecemeal legislation. I do not myself take the view that it is inherently objectionable if the piece of legislation concerned is aimed at doing something useful for society. I suggest that the Bill achieves some limited value in the field to which I have just referred. The alternative would have been to have awaited a major Government Bill dealing with such matters as nationwide lotteries, football pools and so on. In the present situation regarding the Government's timetable, it is unlikely that such a Bill would have been brought forward in the immediate future. That being so, what is before the House today would not have been capable of being enacted and thus, in the particular area to which the noble Baroness has referred, we should not have been in a position to assist voluntary organisations and other bodies of this sort in doing worth-while work for their fellow members of society. It seems to me, if I may say so with respect, that that argument is rather more convincing than that of the noble Earl, and the right reverend Prelate.
My Lords, in coming to the points made by the noble Earl—
§ Earl COWLEYMy Lords—
§ Lord HARRIS of GREENWICHMy Lords, I was coming to the detailed points, but if the noble Earl has another point to raise, I shall be glad to give way.
§ Earl COWLEYMy Lords, I was going to put it to the noble Lord that one can still achieve the points raised by my noble friend Lady Macleod without putting all the rest of the stuff into the Bill. One can still amend Section 45 of the 1963 Act to raise the financial limits without all the rest of the mess which is in this Bill.
§ Lord HARRIS of GREENWICHMy Lords, that may be true, but I think that what the noble Earl is saying is different from what he said at the beginning in his speech, where he gave the impression that the Bill was too narrowly drawn. Now he says that it is too wide. With respect, that is not the logic that I normally associate with him.
Now I come to the particular points that he raised. I was a little puzzled as to whether he was in favour of what I could describe as the Page Bill or not; whether he was in favour of the Bill before your Lordships last year which endeavoured to assist the local authorities in the way that my noble friend Lord Pitt would have them assisted. The House decided by a large majority in favour of the Amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Wigg, preventing that Bill from getting a Second Reading. I looked at Hansard to find which way the noble Earl voted. He voted with the minority on that occasion, which applies to his position today: a minority even affecting a number—
§ Lord HARRIS of GREENWICHMy Lords, that is true; but with respect to my noble friend, he has pointed out in the past that this House should be aware of its limitations and that it should not endeavour to put itself against a clear decision of another place.
§ Lord HARRIS of GREENWICHWith respect, I must be permitted to answer the question the noble Lord has put. It was the view of Ministers then that it was inappropriate to vote on the 992 Second Reading of a Bill which had commanded a majority in another place. Whether that was right or wrong is a matter of debate; but that was the view we took. I made it clear in my speech that the Government were not in favour of the Bill. My noble friend is wholly right in saying that Ministers did not vote on that occasion; that was the reason for it.
§ Lord WIGGMy Lords, on the other hand, the noble Lord must not misrepresent me. On many occasions in this House I have argued and argued that the justification for this Chamber is on two points; its revising and its delaying functions. I said in my speech that I did not want to reject it; I wanted to delay it because it was a bad measure and needed second thoughts. The noble Lord has just put those second thoughts.
§ Lord HARRIS of GREENWICHMy Lords, on that point we agree. Nevertheless, I wanted to make it clear that Ministers did not vote for the reasons I have given.
§ Earl COWLEYMy Lords—
§ Lord HARRIS of GREENWICHMy Lords, with respect I must proceed. If the noble Earl would like to intervene later I will give way. As I have pointed out, when dealing with the point made by the noble Baroness, I think the voluntary organisations will have considerable benefit under the Bill. I think the noble Earl also raised a question about what would happen if a local authority lottery failed. If it is a financial disaster, the responsibility is clearly that of the local authority. The rate fund in the final analysis would be responsible for any debts incurred by the local authority. We are not creating a new statutory requirement that local authorities should be compelled to have lotteries. It is a matter for their own decision. It may be that some authorities like the Greater London Council to which the noble Lord, Lord Pitt, referred, will decide not to introduce a lottery. So far as the Greater London Council and other large authorities are concerned he takes the view that the Bill does not go far enough. The noble Earl raised the question of additional responsibilities on the Gaming Board. It imposes a fairly significant additional burden on them. We 993 have had a number of discussions with the Board recently about the scale of these burdens and the staffing implications. As my honourable friend the Parliamentary Secretary has said, there would have to be a fairly significant increase in the staffing of the Board as a consequence of this Bill.
The noble Earl asked a question about the Consultative Document. I have had news for him. There is no question of it being available before the Committee stage. We want to discuss it with a number of the other interests and I fear that, as a result, there is no prospect of it coming before this Bill reaches the Statute Book. I am sorry, but there was no alternative. The noble Earl wanted to speak—
§ Earl COWLEYMy Lords, I want to point out to the noble Lord that the convention of this House is that one does not oppose Government Bills on Second Reading but that that convention does not apply to Private Members' Bills. On his answer to the question about the losses of lotteries being funded by the general rates, I cannot understand his attitude to allow that when he says in his opening speech that benefit from the lottery should not be used to help general rate and the purposes covered by it.
§ Lord HARRIS of GREENWICHMy Lords, if a lottery is successful, then the ratepayers will derive advantage from it. A lottery is no different position, so far as the local authority is concerned, than any other activity. If you have direct building operations and they are a failure, the ratepayers must accept the responsibility. If they are dissatisfied, then they had better get rid of the members of the local authority. That seems to be the way out of the problem, but it does not seem to me to be the job of Government to "nanny" them; it is for the local authority to determine the right and sensible thing to be done. I hope they will do that.
The noble Lord, Lord Airedale, made an interesting philosophical point about what was and what was not gambling. I fear that on this occasion I am not able to agree wholly with him. He said that in the event of a lottery being promoted by some voluntary body, the person who bought a ticket was indifferent as to whether or not he won a prize, since he 994 was motivated largely by the warmth of his feelings towards the organisation concerned. I am bound to say that when I am approached by sellers of lottery tickets—and I purchase a number of them during the summer months in the grounds of the Kent Cricket Club, of which I am a member—although I hope that the cause of Kent cricket prospers, I am very much in favour of winning a prize. Incidentally, I am glad to say that on one occasion I won £5 and was gratified by that result. Therefore, I do not quite take the noble Lord's point that there is an inherent difference between a lottery organised by a voluntary organisation and one organised by a public body, because in one case you do not mind whether or not you win, and in the other case you do. I think that, broadly speaking, people are hoping to win when they subscribe sums of money in this way, and personally I do not think there is anything particularly objectionable in that.
I have already dealt with a number of points. I concede immediately to my noble friend Lord Pitt that a number of the large local authorities are dissatisfied with the Bill and would like us to go a great deal further. But I am bound to say that I share the view which was taken by your Lordships' House last year that this is not in itself desirable. I think that decision was right and that the Government are right now to have drafted the Bill as they have.
§ On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.