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On-course Betting

I strongly support the initiative of the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith). His constituents, a constituent of mine and others have been comparing notes, as it were, to make the case stronger. I have three points to make. First, the history of the self-employed people whom we are discussing—people who are not employed by a great state enterprise and who are trying to conduct their business, to be productive in the economy and to use their initiative—has been marred since the arrangements were changed nearly 10 years ago by the real administrative incompetence of the National Joint Pitch Council. I have records of a litany of unanswered letters and of complaints not dealt with. They were compiled by someone who kept meticulous records in an effort to do business as a successful self-employed person should. It is not satisfactory that, when the arrangements changed nearly 10 years ago, an organisation was created that was incapable of dealing fairly with day-to-day administration. That was the first cause of consistent complaint. The second was the subject of my intervention on the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green. The location of someone’s pitch is a personal matter and people feel strongly about it because it can give them an advantage on a particular course. It seems to me that, if one is dissatisfied, one is entitled to an independent adjudication that is properly conducted on the basis of rules that are known in advance and of which a record is taken, so that if anything goes wrong the matter can be considered somewhere else. In my view the appeal process should be independent. Had I been aware of the proposed arrangements before the changes were made, I would always have so argued. I am the chair of the governors at a primary school. If we turn someone down for admission, the appeal goes to a group of independent people who can tell the school to accept the applicant. I think that all hon. Members would accept that that system is the right one. The lack of proper, independent systems is a fundamental flaw that the authorities in the racing world have never dealt with. It is not sufficient for the Horserace Betting Levy Board to say that it has oversight, but that appeals are none of its business. The third point is that there is a legacy, certainly of incompetence and arguably also of corruption and preferential treatment based on personal motives, which causes disadvantage to individuals, many of whom have worked in and served the industry for a long time. None of us is arguing for a system in which, for example, being born in Chingford or Bermondsey or Devon would confer an automatic advantage over someone born in Ireland, for example. We are arguing that there should be rules that are agreed to be fair with the industry, and which are known and stuck with. People could then join a queue to make their application for a pitch. Cash flow is not an easy matter for self-employed people. I have been to race meetings and I have put money on horses, and my parents were keen on racing and taught me to understand its importance. However, as the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Devine) said, based on his much greater experience, the reality is that finances in that type of business can be really tight in some cases. We are not talking about millionaires who have lots of money to invest and for whom the problems that we are discussing are unimportant. You can win a lot, but you can lose a lot too. Reparation is therefore an issue, and I want to add my plea for it to happen. My plea to the Minister is that, by whatever mechanism can be agreed—including on a cross-party basis in the House, and between those whom we represent—there should be an independent review of what has gone on, so that if people have clearly been disadvantaged there will be a way to give recompense. The people whom we are talking about are alive and well and have not given up battling. They have merely failed to succeed in breaking through the existing mechanism, so we need another one. We look to Government to intervene, because it must be better to act politically and in the public arena than to go through the courts. There is huge interest in the success of the racing industry in this country; it is an important industry. If our race courses are to be places where people, including tourists and visitors, want to go, they need to know that the system is fair; and if we are to produce employment in the racing industry for people from this country, it is important that they, too, know that the system is fair. People will not enter the business if they think that they will be disadvantaged or that information will be withheld from them without recourse. I hope that the Government response will be much more positive. Many people have been fighting this battle for a long time—years and years—but it is not too late to put things right. It is not too late to create a system that, when the arrangements change in the autumn, will be fair and will be seen to be so, with independent processes for dealing with complaints.