Key players in gambling revolution

A FORMER Labour minister and crony of the disgraced late Robert Maxwell has emerged as a key figure in the threatened gambling revolution.

Lord Donoughue was a member of the Parliamentary committee which scrutinised the controversial Gambling Bill.

Of the committee's 16 members, 14 had links to the gambling industry - including the peer who disclosed that he owns shares in the casino giant Stanley Leisure.

But MPs from all parties have voiced alarm at his failure to reveal that his son Steve heads a lobby firm which represents a string of big gambling companies.

Steve Donoughue, 34, set up the Gambling Consultancy to offer firms access to 'key decision makers', including his father's former colleagues in Government.

Before setting up the consultancy, Donoughue worked as the accountancy group KPMG's gambling industries consultant, a job which involved him advising the Home Office on its plans to privatise the Tote.

His firm boasts an impressive list of clients including Ladbrokes, the Association of British Bookmakers, the online gaming firm Bet365.com and Crown Casino, an Australian company owned by Kerry Packer.

While Lord Donoughue has not technically breached the House of Lords code of conduct by failing to reveal his son's business activities, MPs said it would have been better to have disclosed them.

The peer, a former Downing Street adviser to Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, was criticised three years ago in the official report into the collapse of Robert Maxwell's business empire. He had been hired as a director at London and Bishopsgate Investments - one of Maxwell's key firms - on a salary of £436,000 a year.

The inquiry censured him for not doing enough to stop this firm being used as a conduit for money to be secretly siphoned out of company pension funds.

The Department of Trade and Industry declared that if he had done more he might have uncovered and halted a scandal which left thousands of Maxwell pensioners in penury.

Lord Donoughue - who was handed his peerage by his old friend Neil Kinnock - left his job at London and Bishopsgate three months before Maxwell's death exposed the scale of the massive financial scam.

Despite the controversy over his role, Tony Blair made him one of his Agriculture Ministers in 1997, a job he held for two years before standing down.

I was stealing from my mother

TOM MacDonald has a message for anyone who dismisses the dangers of relaxing the gaming laws. A 48-year-old policeman from Glasgow, he is single and lives alone in a one-bedroom flat after a lifelong battle with gambling addiction. This is his story.

'Every morning I wake up and think to myself: Gambling has beaten me in the past but today I'm not going to place a bet. For 11 years this routine has kept me from returning to the habit that almost destroyed me.

As a small child I loved to go with my dad to place bets on the horses. By the time I was 14 I was a compulsive gambler. My father had died when I was seven and my mum was only on a secretary's wage. But I stole from her to pay off debts I had run up playing cards in the school toilets.

By the age of 18 I was a regular in bookmakers all over Glasgow. I would bet on anything - horses, football matches, even the Eurovision Song Contest. The buzz was amazing. Once I put £50 on a horse at 20-1. When it won I made £1,000. But for every big win there were many more big losses.

Eventually I was banned from all the casinos in Glasgow for not paying my debts. So I travelled to Edinburgh to get my fix.

My lowest point came in 1992. Sitting alone in my flat on Christmas Day eating egg and chips, unable to face my family because I owed them so much money, my life was in pieces.

By the time I was made bankrupt in 1993 I owed £15,000 that I had no way of paying back.

I had six credit cards, four loans and my house was about to be repossessed. My life was in tatters. I had spent my entire youth in and out of bookmakers and casinos, which left no time to find someone to share my life with - gambling was my life.

With the bailiffs at my door I had no option but to accept bankruptcy. Somehow I managed to keep my house by making small payments. However, I had to resign from my job because the stress was affecting my work.

When my last pay packet arrived I took it straight to the bookmakers and put it on a horse - I lost it all. Gambling was killing me.

When I got home that night I called a man from work who I knew went to Gamblers Anonymous. I told him the mess I was in and within ten minutes he was at my door, offering to take me to a meeting.

That was the turning point. I knew I had to stop and with the help of the friends I made at GA I have managed to stay off a bet for 11 years. I go to meetings three times a week.

After a few months I was able to go back to my job in the police. I now have my family and friends back.

Most importantly I was able to pay my mother all that I owed her before she died three years ago. A gambling addiction is not something that you can ever be cured of so I can't say I will never place another bet. All I can do is take each day at a time.'