|
|
Jeff Ennis: To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport when she will publish the report of the Gambling Review Body.[4980]Tessa Jowell: I am today laying copies of the report before Parliament. It is being published as a Command Paper, and the full textwill be available on my Department's website (www.culture.gov.uk).I am very grateful to Sir Alan Budd and his fellow members of the Review Body for their work. They have done a fine job. They weregiven a wide and challenging remit: to modernise the regulation of gambling in Great Britain, taking account of all relevantfactors, including its social impact. Their report, based on extensive evidence and research, provides a thorough analysis of theissues and a coherent package of proposals. We are all in their debt.All around the world legislators have grappled with the problem of how best to regulate gambling. There is no single solution whichis right for all times and for all places. Gambling itself is continually evolving. Our present gambling laws were, for example,enacted before the internet was created and they make no provision for its use as a gambling medium. Regulation equally needs totake account of changing social circumstances and public expectations. There is no doubt that our current laws, as well as being toocomplex and out of date, fail to reflect the extent to which gambling has become an everyday part of the way in which millions ofpeople choose to spend their leisure.The Gambling Review Body has identified a number of proposals which would lift regulatory constraints which may no longer bejustified. At the same time there are proposals which would provide additional safeguards which the Review Body sees as needed toachieve the overall policy aims of protecting children and the vulnerable, ensuring fairness to the punter and keeping crime out ofgambling. The report accordingly recommends a new balance of regulation in the public interest. It is also clear from the reportthat we are looking at the scope for improving a system with many strengths: through its own and its regulators' efforts Britishgambling is among the world leaders.We now plan to discuss with interested bodies the issues which implementation of the Review Body's recommendations would raise. Weshall also welcome comments from members of the public and all sources: these should be sent to my Department by the end of October.I shall want to take these consultation and comments into account before reaching final decisions on the way ahead. I shall alsowant to consider carefully the potential impact of the Review Body's proposals on the National Lottery before deciding how toproceed.In the meantime there is no reason to halt all work on changes which are consistent with the Review Body's conclusions and which canbe taken forward without cutting across future legislation. We shall, for example, continue to work on plans to sell the Tote toracing and to end the horserace betting levy; and there are also regulatory reform proposals which are already subject to publicconsultation or parliamentary scrutiny. We need to consider them again in the light of the Review Body's work, but where progresscan sensibly be made which will bring early benefits to the public and the industry alike, it should be made. |