Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Bill

Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Grand Committee

[Baroness Golding]

My Lords, a number of years ago the All-Party Betting and Gaming Committee did a very short inquiry into suspicious betting in sports. We took evidence from a number of sporting organisations, which was very freely given. We published the results of it and there was quite a bit of talk about it at the time, but nothing has happened. I should say to the noble Baroness that the area of most concern was cricket, and this was before any big scandal arose. The report was put on the shelf and left there. I hope that with the noble Baroness’s help we will bring this to a greater audience. It is a real problem, and something needs to be done. I hope that the Minister will help give the amendment a favourable reply.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I must apologise for not being present at Second Reading but I am not an expert in gambling, although I visited a casino once. As ever, it is a joy to be here today in your Lordships’ House; it truly is an education. I congratulate the noble Baroness on tabling the amendment because of how it refers to sport. She has put forward a very strong case for what needs to be done in this area so I will not repeat it, and of course I defer to the extensive experience of the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, in this area.

The area that I would like to pick up on is around the sharing of information, which is vital. Every time we see a story in the press about match fixing or dishonourable behaviour, it affects the wider public perception of sport and raises further doubts and gossip. Ultimately, it affects how parents think about that sport and how they encourage their children to be involved in it, and how people engage in that sport. It does a great disservice to the wonderful parts of sport that we all know. I think that national governing bodies and international bodies would welcome all the support and help that they can receive, not just to tackle ongoing cases but to put measures in place for the future. Governing bodies cannot always be two steps behind, as they are now. With drug-testing in sport, much more information is shared and we are able to look at it intelligently, to track patterns and see how we tackle it. This is such an important issue that I hope that the noble Baroness continues to press it at further stages of the Bill.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, this is one of the most important of the amendments that we are discussing today, and it has been good, but short, debate. At the heart of it is the concept of what sport is and how we regard it. It is clear that it has to be fair competition; it has to be between participants who are playing under the same and agreed rules; and it is vital that all participants are competing to win and not following some agenda and that the officials are honest and are seen to be so. Therefore, there are a number of very important moving parts in any event like this. Sport is important also, as has been said, because it seems to be part of our culture, particularly in Britain. It is important for how we stand in the world and how we operate that our sports should be run effectively and are above reproach and suspicion.

If that is to be the case, it falls to the governing bodies—the international bodies, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan—to police what is happening and to make sure that conduct is appropriate. This Bill is remote from that, because those governing bodies have an unavoidable duty and should be held to task for it. However, the growth in the number of betting services has meant that there is a surrogate way of checking out what is happening on the ground. Where strange events in betting are happening, which are often seen, and when there are strange outcomes that can perhaps be looked at in retrospect, it is important that they are properly investigated and any criminality or other bad behaviour taken account of.

We need to make sure—and this is the point of the amendments—that the structures of regulation match the aspirations that we have for our sport and for those who operate within it. It may well be true that match fixing is not the most important threat facing sport—it was suggested that it is drugs—but the points made by Jacques Rogge and the International Olympic Committee are important in this context. In response to that, the DCMS set up its own review, the Rick Parry review of sports betting integrity, which suggested that a specific risk was posed to sports integrity as a result of the current licensing regime. If that is the case—and the Minister must speak his feelings about it—surely the present situation does not match up to the aspirations that we have for our sport. To split responsibilities for spread betting from those of the Gambling Commission is clearly going to lead to trouble. It is interesting that the three amendments in this group give a range of options, a pick-and-mix, as to how to do it. One could leave things as they are, with two bodies responsible, but it would then be necessary for the Government to ensure that arrangements for reporting—as picked up by the noble Baroness—were exactly the same, so that both the Gambling Commission and the FCA could ensure that irregular patterns were reported to the authorities as quickly as possible. That would be one approach.

The second approach would be to make the Gambling Commission fully responsible for all aspects of gambling activity, which would have a clarity that is lacking in the present arrangements. In that way, licence condition 15.1, which is generally accepted to be very good, could be applied to all areas. In that situation—and this is the third option—you could keep the general responsibilities for spread betting within the FCA, but licence condition 15.1 in relation to gambling operations would have effect within that. There are therefore three options for the Minister to consider. It is important that we get some clarity on this. If we cannot get some movement, we will need to come back to the matter on Report and at later stages.

Could the Minister respond also on the question of whether we have sufficient legal power to deal with match fixing? There is some concern that the UK does not have a specific law to deal with the offence of cheating or match fixing in sport. The current arrangements, set out in the Gambling Act 2005, were deficient in relation to the recent case of the Pakistani bowlers; I defer to the noble Baroness, who is nodding vigorously, so it seems I am correct on this. It seems perverse to have had this piece of legislation in place and yet to have discovered that the way in which they were eventually prosecuted was through the Fraud Act, not the Gambling Act. This was clearly an offence in terms of match fixing. If we do not have sufficiency in legislation, could we not take this opportunity to bring ourselves up to date?

There has been a core reaction here by the European Parliament, with its action plan on organised crime, corruption and money-laundering, which recommends that member states should make sports rigging a criminal offence in order to strengthen the fight against illegal sports betting. I hope that the Minister will consider that.