On 21 November 2007, I spoke in another debate on horse racing:

"I congratulate the hon. Member for East Devon (Mr. Swire) on securing this very important debate. I agree with him that Turf TV has immense implications throughout the industry. I would like to return, however, to the matter mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Devine) although his exposition of the problems of pitch bookmakers was so full that there is very little that I can add. However, I feel that I must add my weight to his cause, particularly in the interests of constituents of mine such as the Morrill family and Adrian Pariser.

Surely the current situation that many in the trackside betting industry find themselves in was never intended when the Gambling Act 2005 was first proposed, and it is important to look at the specific matter of trackside list positions and their future allocation. Obviously, the gambling industry as a whole has undergone immense change over the past few years. I disagree with the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr. Robertson) because I think that it is completely different from the inherited system that has damaged the livelihoods of constituents of mine and of the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith) who has done so much to highlight the problems in recent years.

Throughout the many changes, however, the horse racing industry has shown a willingness to reform. Outmoded practices, such as the notion of an inherited seniority being handed down from parent to child have now given way to the trading of assets in a free and open market. The opening of trade in pick-list positions has led to much-needed fresh blood and new investment in the racing industry, but that fresh blood itself is feeling let down and abandoned by the industry, because those people are now being told that the pick positions, in which they invested so much money, are no longer theirs. Most in the industry would agree that changes made in recent years to modernise it have been of immense benefit to all parties concerned, until now perhaps.

The RCA will continue to argue, of course, that because it owns the physical asset, it is up to it to determine, by whatever means it sees fit, who trades there. However, we must say also that the pick position is merely the order in which a bookmaker can choose their position of trade on the race course, and not an actual physical pitch position. That distinction is obviously important to the RCA, but I suggest that the argument is deliberately two-dimensional in its thinking. An asset does not need to be physical. For example, a CD manufacturer does not own the music that it presses on to plastic. Already, we have agreed on, and spent many hours debating in this place, the concept of intellectual property. I argue also that there is such a thing as moral property, which is what the bookmaker owns.

The RCA clearly recognises the accrued value of a bookmaker's position on a pick-list, otherwise why would it be attempting to wrestle the control of the pick-list away from the bookmakers? Although it has always been acknowledged, ever since the 2001 gambling review report, that negotiations would take place on admissions charges for bookmakers to race courses, as my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston has mentioned, the tenure of list positions was never in question until March this year, despite numerous—88—meetings on the subject. It has always been understood by the buyer, seller and administrator that list positions were to be held in perpetuity.

The decision of the RCA to lay claim to the commercial benefits to be gained by the auction of valuable pitch positions has, as we have heard, stunned the National Joint Pitch Council, which set it up in the first place. It is quite disingenuous for the RCA to argue back in 2001, and then in 2003, that the Government advocated a change in the arrangement for pitch allocations and a move to commercial arrangements. It is a short-term smash and grab. I believe that the Government had no such intention, and that that is an interpretation of the 2005 Act, which serves only to increase the commercial gain of the RCA, at the expense of the very people and businesses without which there would be no trackside betting industry—in other words, the very people and business that, together with the trainers and jockeys, give the entire industry its flavour and value.

Indeed, the Government's recommendations went only as far as a change to the five-time rule. That refers to the rent of the pitch, not to the asset itself—the moral property. There is no reason why commercial arrangements by the RCA about the rent cannot take place while recognising the bookmakers' list positions, as it has always done. The RCA, again disingenuously, is attempting to use the umbrella term "commercial arrangements" to refer to both the rent and the assets, when, in fact, they are, always have been, and should remain entirely distinct and separate.

We are talking essentially about the livelihoods of hundreds of people in our gaming sector, but particularly about the family bookmakers, as we heard during the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport sittings, which many Members present attended. The family bookmakers have spent generations in the industry, and my constituents who trade under the name, Taffy, have been hit by a triple whammy: first, over the father-child rule, secondly over pitch allocations and sales, about which I cannot go into detail because of actions taken by the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green, and finally, over losing the last thing that they possess—their pitch position. The family have been hit three times within one generation, but the measure will affect small rather than large bookmakers. Large bookmakers will also be damaged, but they have large assets, and we are discussing small, family firms.

Trackside bookmakers are asking for nothing more than clarity about the assets that they have accrued either through generations of hard work or by commercial acquisition. Let us not forget that some bookmakers in the south-east have spent more than £1 million buying something that they believed they would hold in perpetuity. We want those assets to continue to be recognised as the industry standard, as all concerned have always understood them to be—that is until suddenly last March when the bombshell was dropped on the bookmakers.

For the RCA to use the period of transition between the passing of the Gambling Act 2005 and its implementation as a means to wrest control of the assets of hundreds of trackside bookmakers is a blatant misinterpretation of the Act as it was intended. We have it in our power to set out in clear guidelines for both the RCA and the bookmakers precisely which areas are open to reform under the new legislation, and which areas are not. We, as legislators, have a responsibility to take any misinterpretation of legislation on board and clarify it, not leave it entirely up to the industry. Until the guidance is made clear, the trackside betting industry will remain at an effective standstill. Until we clearly define the parameters of the 2005 Act, many in the industry will not know whether their most important commercial asset, which involves the future of their children and their business, is to be rendered entirely worthless. The situation is entirely unacceptable."

I was asked:

"I agree wholeheartedly with the hon. Lady. As somebody who sits on the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, I recognise the position that she outlines, but if the RCA decides to press on and the Government will not intervene, does she at least agree that the bookmakers concerned should be compensated for the loss of their assets? If she agrees, does she think that the compensation should come from the race courses or from the Government?"

And responded:

"I agree that should the RCA continue in that way—and I sincerely hope that it will not because it is not a moral route—it should compensate the bookmakers to an amount equivalent not to their current value, but to their value before the bombshell was dropped on them."

I was then questioned:

"I am mindful of what my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) says, but the money for the pitches never went to the race courses in the first place; it went up and down families, or they bought from friends or associates. The National Joint Pitch Council is more responsible than the race courses, is it not?"

And said in response:

"I am going into the details not about responsibility, but about what the RCA plans to do. We must look to the future rather than to the past. However, the RCA is taking the assets. Whatever the responsibility in the past, the RCA will benefit; it is taking a commercial property away from families who have owned it for generations. Therefore, the RCA is entirely responsible. We should all do everything in our power to ensure that the commercial trading of pick-list positions remains where it has always been—not taken in a short-term smash-and-grab raid. It should stay in the hands of the bookmakers themselves."