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The Tote

I put on record our thanks to the staff of the House who have prepared the briefing—Greg Howard and his colleagues have done a first-class job and have saved us many hours of research. It is not often that I buy the Racing Post—in fact, I do not think I have ever done so before—but I bought it this morning. At £1.50 it is nearly twice the price of The Guardian—[Interruption.] It is not quite as left wing as The Guardian, but I spoke to someone this morning who said that the subject we are discussing was going to be in the Racing Post. When I sat down on the tube, a guy saw that I had the Racing Post. He proceeded to tell me about a horse that will be running at Brighton and why. He told me about this great trainer—I cannot even remember the name now—and why they run horses at Brighton and run them on the flat late and so on. I just sat there in absolute amazement and did not think anything about it, but it shows that when someone buys the Racing Post people start a conversation. Last month, Alistair Osborne was quoted in The Sunday Times:"““Imagine this. The starting stalls open. Horses thunder down the course. The winning post looms. And then the whole field goes round again. And again. For seven flaming years.””" To some extent, that is the situation we are debating and, before anybody gets up to make an intervention, I can tell them that I have been party to going round and round the course—I was probably the ringmaster. My hon. Friend the Minister—my very good friend—unfortunately drew the short straw and had to take the matter on from then. We are where we are and it is no good looking back. We must look to the future and I predicate a large part of my argument today on a certainty: Labour Governments were elected in the last two elections on the basis of manifestos that referred to the Tote and how the money from the Tote should go into racing. I believe we are committed to that and I hope that the Government, with the support of the House, can see it through.