Orders of the Day — National Lottery Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 11:49 am on 17 January 1992.

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Photo of Mr David Alton Mr David Alton , Liverpool Mossley Hill 11:49, 17 January 1992

A number of seductive but misleading arguments have been put by hon. Members, especially by the hon. and learned Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence), to support the idea of a national lottery. I hope that by the conclusion of our debate hon. Members will have carefully considered the implications of a lottery, not least the implications for jobs, and will recognise that this is one gamble which the House should not take.

Before turning to my principal reasons for opposing the Bill, I will address some of the bogus arguments put in the debate. One country that has been quoted as a place in which a national lottery co-exists with the football pools is Italy. Taking Italy as an example, with the dubious base of gambling there, reveals the reason why the football pools and the lottery are able to co-exist. Presumably, along with importing Italian methods, we shall also bring in some of the Italian family-based companies from Naples and from Sicily.

For months, many hon. Members have said that we must have a lottery because, come 1992, the European floodgates will open and punters will desert the pools for French or German lotteries. Huge prizes will lure away the stakes and British money will be sucked into a European black hole. That argument has seduced hon. Members and charities. Despite its obvious appeal to xenophobia, the argument, if true, would have to be taken seriously. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul, which works for the under-privileged and those at risk, responded to the original inquiry about a national lottery by saying, not surprisingly: as the Common Market will allow other countries' national lotteries to sell tickets in this country, it would be as well to have one established as a defence. In other words, if we are going to be bitten, it might as well be by a British snake rather than by a foreign one.

The myth that continental lotteries will flood the United Kingdom market needs to be destroyed once and for all. It was abundantly clear during the European Commission hearings on gambling that all member states were implacably opposed to the principle of cross-border trading in lotteries. Most lotteries are state monopolies, so it is hardly surprising that national Governments are extremely reluctant to put the proceeds of national lotteries which they run at risk in a single market. Our Government have endorsed that view, despite all that was said by the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. Howell).

We know the Government's view from the written reply that the Under-Secretary gave to the hon. Member for Cunninghame, North (Mr. Wilson). As recently as 12 December 1991, the Minister said that the Home Office had no proposals to include gambling within the terms of the single market. A flood of continental lotteries—[HON. MEMBERS: "Liberal Democrat policy?"] I can tell hon. Members what Liberal Democrat policy is because it was discussed at our parliamentary party meeting last week. I am glad to say that we have come out against the principle of a national lottery. A flood of continental lotteries, 1992 and the European Community are all imaginary windmills at which the House will, I hope, tilt today.

The second myth is the dreamland of unimagined riches. We are told that hidden pots of gold will be produced to provide £3 billion for Sports Council projects. Let us think of a figure—£2 billion or £3 billion every year, depending on the person to whom one listens—for the sum that would flood into the Exchequer. That would be the equivalent of 1·5p off income tax. That is the scale of the fabulous windfall. If the figures were true, Treasury Ministers would be queuing up to speak in the debate today and would argue in favour of a national lottery. In a country in which more than £52 billion of consumer debt is currently outstanding and in which economists are concluding that people cannot afford to spend their way out of the recession, where will the money come from?

The United Kingdom gambling market is already the biggest in Europe. The country spends more per head of population on gambling than the rest of Europe—£4·50 per head per week. If the new money is to come through extra gambling, who will that affect? All the figures show that it will be lower income groups who will be milked. They spend the most. Why should they disproportionately pay for Covent Garden, the National gallery or the Sports Council? Even if the figures could be believed, they are based on a regressive principle which the House should reject. Those are the flawed arguments of those who promote a national lottery.

There are other reasons why the House should decline to give the Bill a Second Reading, and the first is jobs. In Liverpool, 71,601 people are currently unemployed. Some 15,000 women are unemployed in Liverpool. They are bread winners for the family and they do not receive pin money; it is their livelihood. As the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) said when she came to open the new Vernons building in Liverpool, "three cheers" for the workers there, and for the excellence and standards maintained in the factory. Littlewoods, Vernons and Zetters employ more than 6,500 people in Liverpool, Glasgow, Cardiff and London. A further 70,000 are paid as agents collecting coupons every week.

By contrast, computerised and centralised national lotteries dispose of people. In France, just 400 people operate the national lottery, while in Germany one large lottery employs just 180 people. When we are told that jobs may come even to Wigan or to the north, let us realise that the substitute for jobs is a loss of almost 6,500 jobs compared with a maximum of 400 jobs needed to run the national lottery. At a time of increasing dole queues, is the House seriously going to gamble with the livelihood of more than 6,000 people?

Is not it also the height of irony that we have three successful private companies which will effectively face nationalisation without compensation if the Bill is successful today? That is what is coming from the champions of private enterprise.

In a letter to The Times, already quoted, on 26 December, Paul Zetter said: the choice is stark: football pools or a national lottery. You will readily understand why I oppose a national lottery. Malcolm Hughes, the managing director of Vernons, says: It is not possible to find an example anywhere in the world of a National Lottery and a Pools industry thriving side by side. In case after case, arrival of a lottery has squeezed out Pools Games and the examples of Australia. Belgium and, more recently, Greece all bear testimony to this fact. Malcolm Davidson, the managing director of Littlewoods, quoted from a letter to the financial director, Colin Thwaite, from Coopers and Lybrand Deloitte. We have already heard part of it. The letter says: A UK national lottery would effectively kill off the football pools within a period of weeks … A successful national lottery would act as a substitute for the football pools … as a result of this the level of employment within the industry will be dramatically reduced. In a letter to me on 16 December, the Prime Minister confirmed that the Government see those implications. He said: I can assure you that we are very well aware of the potential implications for existing charitable lotteries and for the existing gambling industry, in particular the football pools who, as you say, are an important source of employment in the Liverpool area and who make payments to football and now more widely to sport and the arts via the new Foundation. Apart from jobs, a national lottery would also hit existing football clubs' lotteries and charities. The letter from the Lotteries Council has already been quoted. It says that some lotteries would face extinction from a national scheme. The Irish experience, to which other hon. Members have referred, points to that. In July 1991, 16 leading charities wrote to the Taoiseach saying that charitable lotteries had lost half their income and that the situation has reached crisis point. In other words, 50 per cent. of the money going into charities was lost as a result of the national lottery. Not only would our charities be hit, but sports, the arts and the Football Trust would stand to lose £100 million. The Treasury would say goodbye to the £300 million generated by the pools.

The third substantial reason for opposing the Bill centres on the undesirability of deliberately stimulating gambling as a way in which to finance public services and needs. If a hospital needs a dialysis machine, if a school needs a soccer pitch or if a community needs an arts centre, surely we should pay for it through taxation and voluntary effort, not by proliferating the modes of gambling.

By destroying the football pools, a national lottery gambles with people's jobs. It would undermine existing lotteries run by charities and football clubs. It would promise Alice-in-Wonderland gains, while risking the £300 million now generated by the pools. I hope that, in this pell-mell rush to a national lottery, the House will consider these matters and will vote against the Bill.