Clause 83 - Membership
Gambling Bill
5:00 pm
Mr Malcolm Moss (Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; North East Cambridgeshire, Conservative)
The amendments deal with membership—perhaps identity is a better term—for people who will be using casino facilities in the future. The present law states that anyone entering a casino to participate must be a member. We also have the 24-hour rule that people cannot join and immediately start playing the tables.
It is considered that membership or identity needs to be retained in future for all casinos, especially the new regional casinos. We know from discussions with those who wish to invest in the new regional casinos that, without branding them, American investors, in particular, are wholly against any form of membership. They argue that they need so many people to come through the doors of the regional casinos—20,000 over a weekend is the target. They said that they could not possibly cope with dealing with membership applications for such a large number.
Regulation 8(1) of the Money Laundering Regulations 2003 from the second EU directive on money laundering states:
''A person who operates a casino by way of a business in the United Kingdom must obtain satisfactory evidence of identity of any person before allowing that person to use the casino's gaming facilities.''
At other times, è1,000 has been mentioned in respect of money laundering, which is about £700, and it has been said that the matter of identity would kick in when someone had gambled or perhaps won that sum—I am not sure which way round it is. In any event, a threshold figure was mentioned. If my sources are correct, the regulation that I quoted means that all people playing in a casino must supply ID.
It is important that anyone utilising a casino in future should provide ID. It will help the operators to know their clients. The existing operators to whom we have been talking and those who intend to come into the industry if they are lucky enough to win one of the franchises insist that the last thing they want are problem gamblers coming through their doors. It is important therefore that they know the individuals
who play their machines, rather than the gaming tables, so they can do something about those who are causing problems not only for the casino, but who have difficulties in their private lives.
Counselling in casinos is a positive course of action for problem gamblers in America, and American investors want to replicate that in regional casinos here. They want the gambling commission to ensure that proper accreditation and counselling schemes are part of the whole scenario of regional casinos. We are certainly much in favour of that. However, how could we offer a counselling service when the identity of the individuals is not known?
We learned from further discussions with an operator of casinos in South Africa that to play category A machines a person uses a magnetic card, which is given to him as he enters the casino. The person cashes in money and receives the card to play the machines. The card has the person's ID on it, comprising name, address and, I suppose, a photograph. It is a form of ID, so that the casino operators know who is playing which machines, who is gambling heavily and who is potentially going into loss.
We were told that there has never been a problem in administering that system and that operators would be happy to implement it in the United Kingdom if they were lucky enough to be successful in gaining a regional casino franchise. That is not a problem. It would be helpful to the Committee if the Government said the amendments were perfectly acceptable. We were close to that position with a previous amendment, so perhaps we can edge a little nearer, score a bulls-eye and hit the jackpot.