Clause 7 - Casino

Part of Gambling Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 2:30 pm on 16 November 2004.

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Photo of Mr Tony Banks Mr Tony Banks Chair, Speaker's Advisory Committee on Works of Art 2:30, 16 November 2004

Indeed he was, and therefore, as Mr. Fletcher is working hard to try to get the Coventry casino and, who knows, perhaps the Burnley casino as well, I am sure that you will be sympathetic, Mr. Pike, to the arguments that I am putting forward.

My hon. Friend is correct: planning has been going on for some considerable time. That is because the Government said time after time until very recently—like, today—that there would be no cap on the number

of casinos, and obviously it is prudent to plan ahead. I know that—caveat emptor—one must wait and see what the Bill looks like when it becomes an Act, but the Government now have a responsibility to answer some of the problems identified by my hon. Friend that will undoubtedly arise because of the Minister's recent announcement.

The Committee broadly welcomed the cap, and then the bidding started. There are five potential and existing bids in London and that leaves only three for the rest of the country. One can see the problems that the Government and Members will get themselves into when we have to contemplate how the bids will be allocated. As I said, my constituency of West Ham and the West Ham football club, together with Las Vegas Sands, have progressed some way down the road on plans for a major development in Green street in the east end. We definitely need the regeneration. London should qualify as a regional destination area; it must do, by definition. The east end should get one of the casinos on the grounds of redevelopment potential.

I assure those hon. Members who do not know Green street that there will be little ambient gambling there because it is in one of the strongest Muslim communities in the whole of London, if not the country. I trust that not many of them will be wandering in to bet—assuming that we get one of the casinos. Will the Minister tell me whether London qualifies as an area appropriate for a regional resort destination casino? It would have to be on a high street in London, unless we decide to develop casinos on the Thames, which is an idea I advanced 12 years ago.

I agreed with the hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Miss Kirkbride) when she suggested that auctioning might be a suitable process. I said that 12 years ago. I thought it one of the ways in which the proposed Greater London authority, which I included in my Bill along with a directly elected mayor, could raise funds. Providing that applicants have gone through the necessary screening process, I see no reason why the licence to print money—it will be such now that there will only be eight of these casinos—should not be auctioned off.

If there is to be a cap on the number of regional casinos, what will happen to the large casinos? Will capping have a knock-on effect? There may be a proliferation of large casinos because we have limited the number of regional ones.

I am sorry to have gone on at some length, but that merely illustrates how many questions there are to which we need answers. I hope that my distinguished successor as Sports Minister—a great man whose family I revere and adore—will be able to answer those questions. I fear that the Government, by trying to please everyone, will end up pleasing no one and a dreadful mess will ensue. That is why I return to the point that eight is infinity on its side—the Minister will have an awfully long time to rue his mistakes.