Clause 122 - Exemption for small-scale operators
Gambling Bill
11:00 am
Mr Richard Page (South West Hertfordshire, Conservative)
I support my hon. Friend's arguments. We have shades of clause 56 in this debate. I am not asking the Minister to look at it again, and officials need not worry either. The issue is simply that that clause said on the age limit for category D gaming machines:
''The Secretary of State may by order create an offence of inviting, causing or permitting a child'',
and so on. We managed to tease out of the Minister the fact that the Secretary of State may come forward only if there were compelling reasons. The Minister was short on telling us what a compelling reason was, but we got the idea that it would have to be of a dramatic nature.
In clause 122, tremendous powers are again given to the Secretary of State. It is a little bureaucratic and heavy-handed:
''In this section 'small-scale' operator shall have such meaning as the Secretary of State may prescribe by regulations.''
We are again putting immense power in the hands of the Secretary of State—or of the officials who will write the regulations that will duly appear for the House to agree. If the Minister will not accept the amendment, it is incumbent on him to give some idea of what the Government understand a small-scale operator to be. There must be some definition, and it would be helpful to hear it now rather than at a later date in a raft of regulations over which we have no control.