Clause 18 - Non-commercial society
Gambling Bill
3:45 pm
Mr Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath, Conservative)
I think that I am right in rising to my feet because this group includes a number of amendments—Nos. 190, 187, 188, 191 and 192—that stand in my name. I need to explain what I had in mind.
My concern was, first, that clause 18(1)(b) seemed to involve an unusual way of expressing the activities covered. I did not understand why athletics, which is clearly a sport and one much beloved of the Minister, who has participated in events such as the great north run, should be defined separately. The Bill mentions ''sport, athletics''. That seems unnecessary. Surely athletics, as a sport, is encompassed in sport.
Secondly, I was not sure whether ''cultural activity'' was too wide a term. To return to a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Miss Kirkbride) in the debate on Tuesday, there has been a lot of concern about national lottery money going to causes that the Community Fund thought worth while but that the majority of players of the lottery and citizens of this country did not approve of.
I vividly remember being asked to appear on live national television during breakfast time when I was a shadow Minister. The Community Fund had just made an extraordinarily controversial decision to fund a project dedicated to allowing illegal asylum seekers to challenge UK Government decisions. The Home Secretary was up in arms about it, as were we. If I recall correctly, national television did a poll, asking citizens to call in to vote about whether they thought that that project was an appropriate use of lottery money. They received one of the highest votes ever—90 per cent. or more—saying that it was not an appropriate use of lottery money.
I want to be certain that talk of non-commercial societies does not lead to a repeat performance and that we do not allow a vague phrase such as ''cultural activity'' to be used as an opportunity for money to be handed to such controversial organisations. Therefore, I seek reassurance from the Government on that issue.
If the provision read
''for the purpose of enabling participation in, or of supporting, sport'',
I, as a great sports fan and deputy chairman of the all-party group on sports, would be very pleased. I hope that the Minister will understand why I suggest that there is no need to list athletics separately from other sport.
Amendment No. 192 covers another point. I hope that Members on both sides of the Committee will take the matter seriously, because it comes back to some of the points that have been made, including by Labour Back Benchers in the Committee, about not preventing the kind of legitimate activity that goes on for the purposes of fundraising for, for example, political parties or other charitable causes. We have had lots of discussions about pub quizzes and that sort of thing.
I know that there has been quite a lot of controversy about race nights. I am sure that all members of the Committee know the kind of organisations that try to raise money in that way,
whether for a school, some voluntary group, or for a political party. Such nights might involve filmed horse races, which tend to be films of races in America. There is a fixed number of six runners and the arrangements operate informally. I vividly remember—it was even before coming to the House—that, for various activities in a village where I used to live, police advice had to be taken to ensure that the particular way in which the race night was organised did not contravene the betting and gaming legislation.
It occurred to me that, as we are talking about completely rewriting gaming legislation for the whole of the country, we ought to try to ensure that race nights are not accidentally rendered illegal. Amendment No. 192 might provide a helpful opportunity to clarify the position, as with the hospice lottery point that was made earlier. I am not suggesting that my drafting is perfect, but I hope that the Minister will understand that the amendment is in a rather different category from the other amendments in the group and that he will respond positively to what I am trying to achieve.
It would be helpful if the Minister reassured us, as he did recently with hospice lotteries, that race nights will be fine and perhaps that, as a result of the Bill, it will be easier for organisers of race nights to know for certain that they are not breaching the law when they organise events that can raise a lot of money for good causes, charities, or even political parties. I look forward to hearing from him about all the amendments, but about amendment No. 192 in particular.