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Categories of Gaming Machine (Amendment) Regulations 2009

My Lords, if you look at these regulations, there is not much to argue about, unless you disagree fundamentally with the idea of gambling as a form of entertainment. Issues have been raised about whether the gambling legislation that we have needs a complete review, and whether much of the structure has gone wrong. However, I shall put away that sword for another day. We are talking about making a series of small changes at the softer end of gambling, which is being hit hard. We are talking about making category C machines more profitable, by giving people an inducement to invest in them by making them more fun to play. I remember a conversation a good few years ago with a friend in a pub who was pumping money into a machine. I said, "You didn’t get anything back". He said, "Yes, but I had a good game". The attraction was the element of chance, and playing the nudge backwards and forwards. I appreciate that the Minister is trying to make a high enough profit margin for these machines to keep them interesting and keep them used. They are also used to subsidise things like pubs and other forms of club activity. I do not have a fundamental problem here, but is this enough? Has it been done soon enough? I do not know. I feel a degree of sympathy for the Government. They are in that horrible cleft-stick position: do we consult or do we act quickly? I am afraid that they will get splinters either way—on what part of their anatomy is down to the skill of the Minister in question. Let us just say that there is no right answer here, merely the best one that you can make at the time. What has happened here? When it comes to grab machines and penny-fall machines, my experience of them as a small child in fairs was that they grabbed nothing and gave you nothing, so you might as well have just given them your money. Making them actually work, I suggest, would be the first step forward. I do not have a fundamental problem with this and neither do the majority of my colleagues. However, we might be dealing with a symptom rather than the main problem of the decline of much of our seaside soft gambling and machine industry.