Lord Foster of Bath (LD)

My Lords, I am absolutely delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Bourne. I share the concerns that he expressed. I am not going to oppose this statutory instrument but I want to raise some concerns about it, not least in terms of the potential impact on increasing gambling harm. The Minister has been very generous with her time in speaking with me on a number of occasions recently; I am very grateful for that. She already knows that I have considerable concern about the Government’s current approach, which seems to suggest that, in the wider desire of the Government to increase the whole state of the economy in the country, they also want to grow the gambling industry as part of that. I have argued with the Minister—although I know that she disagrees—that it is simply not possible to grow the gambling industry without also having an increase in gambling harm, whereas she and the Government believe that it is possible both to grow the industry and to reduce the level of gambling harm. You would not increase the tobacco industry and expect it to reduce the consumption of tobacco; the same is true for products in the gambling sector. No doubt this debate will continue between me, the Minister and others over the coming months. If I look at this statutory instrument, I have some real concerns about it. We have with it an impact assessment. A few minutes ago, the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, asked a simple question: could we have some more data about the length of time spent on these machines? He will be delighted to know that, on page 19 of the impact assessment, that data, which we are told is “a useful insight into how customers currently play on gaming machines”, is provided. Unfortunately, however, all of the figures are blacked out. We are advised that this is helpful information, yet it—together with many other bits that would be very helpful to us—is blacked out. The noble Lord, Lord Bourne, is concerned about some of the parts of the report that talk about the possibility of these measures leading to increased gambling harm. Paragraph 2.68 says: “Overall, the existing evidence on the causal link between increasing the number of gaming machines in casinos and harm is inconclusive”. So it is not convinced. It goes on: “Although we have data on gaming machine participation rates and harm, we are unable to confidently state the nature of the causal connection between the two”. This evidence that we have, the most useful bits of it blacked out, suggests that even the Government are not sure about the level of harm.