Schedule 1 - Betting: Prize Competitions: Definition of Payment to Enter
Gambling Bill
2:45 pm
Mr Malcolm Moss (Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; North East Cambridgeshire, Conservative)
I am grateful to the Minister, but he did not deal with the other examples that I gave. Paragraph 7 simply refers to
''a requirement to pay in order to take possession of a prize''.
There could be a wide interpretation of ''pay''. Who is being paid? That is the reason for the amendment's being specific.
Obviously, if the promoter of the competition scam is the one to whom one must give the money, we are quite happy for that situation to be caught in the legislation. However, in the other examples of payments being made, the Bill does not say to whom, it just says ''to pay''. Our amendment is more focused on the recipient of the extra money, who is part of a scam that states, ''You have won a worthless prize but to get it you have to pay a lot more money.'' We are obviously on the side of the Government in wanting to outlaw that practice, but currently valid competitions are running in which there will be a payment of some kind before the prize comes into one's possession. I am not sure that the Minister has addressed that point.