Extracts from second reading debate (Commons) of the Finance (No 3) Bill - Nov 12
|
Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab):...Meanwhile, the vulnerable suffer. The
Government reneged on their promise to tackle the social
devastation wreaked on our communities by Fixed Odds Betting
Terminals, causing the resignation of a yet another Minister. It
has since become apparent that they reneged after lobbying by the
gambling industry, in spite of the known link between these
machines and people taking their own life. Here we have it: the
Chancellor of big business pays little regard to the...Request free trial
Peter Dowd (Bootle)
(Lab):...Meanwhile, the vulnerable suffer. The Government
reneged on their promise to tackle the social devastation wreaked
on our communities by Fixed
Odds Betting Terminals, causing the resignation
of a yet another Minister. It has since become apparent that they
reneged after lobbying by the gambling industry, in spite of the
known link between these machines and people taking their own life.
Here we have it: the Chancellor of big business pays little regard
to the tragedy of lives lost to this awful addiction, as long as
the gambling industry can keep making a return and continue its
donations to the Conservative party—a fact...
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP):...As hon. Members would expect, I am going to mention Fixed Odds Betting Terminals. The Government say that they cannot lower the stakes from April next year because it would not give companies enough time to prepare adequately for the changes required, yet they expect companies to prepare adequately for Brexit by April next year, despite not actually having told companies what Brexit will involve. If the Government are serious about making changes to Fixed Odds Betting Terminals, they need to stop listening to the lobby on this and start taking into account the public health benefits of the changes. Karen Lee: Does the hon. Lady agree that the delay in introducing the cut to the maximum stake on Fixed Odds Betting Terminals will lead to an increased number of people developing gambling addictions, getting into debt and, in the case of problem gamblers, even taking their own lives? Kirsty Blackman: I agree with the hon. Lady. There is a clear health impact to lowering the stakes. Making the changes in April, rather than next October, will have a genuine impact on the health of a huge number of individuals. Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con): I am very clearly on the record as having supported changing the tariff that people can spend on Fixed Odds Betting Terminals from £100 to £2; it is absolutely the right thing to do. Let me be clear that it is quite extraordinary for a Labour Member to stand up and start lecturing the Government on having made an incredibly important and valuable change to legislation that rights the wrong of this Fixed Odds Betting Terminals— Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle): Order. Mr Graham, you have been here long enough to know that we have short interventions; you do not need me to tell you that. If you want to speak, I will put you on the list, but we must have short interventions. Kirsty Blackman: I should say that I am not from the Labour party. The Government’s reasoning for the delay is what concerns me, especially when it is completely the opposite of the reasoning they are using about Brexit, where they are saying, “It’s fine. Everybody has heaps of time to prepare—loads of time.” Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab): I rise to speak today to express my sheer frustration at the refusal of this Government to change the implementation date for the stake reduction on Fixed Odds Betting Terminals. A six months’ delay from April 2019 to October 2019 may appear to be a short period, but in that six months, the bookies stand to gain nearly £1 billion profit, while many families will lose a loved one. The industry has known about the stake reduction since April this year, yet, arrogantly, it has made no plans to alter the technical capacities of the machines, and we have to ask ourselves why. Why has it refused to authorise the necessary changes? Why has it refused to accept the moral argument that these machines are dangerous? And how has it been able to use a flawed report, funded by it and structured only to support its argument, to convince this Government to stall the implementation date? Every day snippets appear in the press suggesting that things are not as they should be when it comes to this decision. Private conversations with no opportunity for scrutiny seem to have had more influence than the evidence of the all-party group on FOBTs, the Church, the voluntary sector and, most importantly, the families of those affected and the gamblers themselves.
Unfortunately for this Government, the strength of feeling right
across this House regarding this shocking decision to delay the
stake reduction will have consequences that may make their
position very uncomfortable. I urge the Treasury to accept that
it is wrong; that the decision that it has made is immoral; and
that people’s lives are more important than the bookies’ profits.
However, if the Government are not prepared to do the right
thing, I and 76 Members across this House are prepared to do so.
We will table a new clause and an amendment after the Second
Reading debate tonight to ensure that the real story behind these
dreadful machines is heard on the Floor of this House. I do not come at this as somebody who is not used to gambling or who comes from a family that does not like to gamble. For most of my childhood, I could be seen on racecourses and dog tracks with my Irish family, who kept greyhounds, and my dad, to the last week of his life, spent his retirement with a copy of the Daily Mirror on the table in an attempt to spot the winners. But betting shops today are not about a fiver each way on the 3 o’clock at Cheltenham, as individuals are staking up to £300 a minute on FOBTs. That could not be further from the reality of my childhood or my dad and uncle’s lives. Through FOBTs, bookmakers have facilitated a form of gambling at its most irresponsible, addictive and exploitative. With 43% of FOBT users thought to be problem or at-risk gamblers, it is no surprise that these machines have been called the “crack cocaine” of gambling. Even the Government have described them as a “social blight”. We already know that FOBT machines can have a truly devastating impact on the lives of individuals, but they are even worse than that. In my constituency of Mitcham and Morden, they come hand in hand with a worrying range of related problems for my local area, because as FOBTs have grown more prevalent in the betting shops around the town centre, the culture of reckless gambling they promote has contributed to an epidemic of drinking, drug taking and antisocial behaviour. In many cases, that activity now takes place inside the betting shops and bookmakers have become hubs for illicit activities and antisocial behaviour. That has seen local businesses suffer and driven customers away from a town centre that has so much to offer, but which some now worry has become less safe. Just this week, I have had to write to one of the bookmakers in Mitcham town centre, Betfred, concerning reports of drug use, drug dealing and stolen goods being sold inside the shop. Mitcham town centre, like many town centres, faces many challenges in the retail sector, but it is not helped by the attraction of people to these bookmakers in a confined area at the same time that the number of police has fallen. No longer do we have a safer neighbourhood town centre team of police, so the behaviour gets worse and more women do not want to bring their children to the town centre, as they would see street drinking, brawling and men urinating in the street. I am sure that my constituency is not unique in experiencing those issues. Betting shops are disproportionately clustered around some of the most deprived parts of the country, and the proliferation of FOBTs has served only to exacerbate many existing problems. That is why I must urge the Government seriously to reconsider their decision to delay the implementation of the £2 maximum stake: the longer it takes to bring an end to this horrible and exploitative form of gambling, the more unnecessary harm will be done to vulnerable individuals and to our town centres.
Implementing the new maximum stake might not bring an immediate
end to the problems facing our communities, as those problems
might already have gripped them too tightly, but it represents a
vital step in the right direction—a step that we should not
hesitate to take any longer. Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con): It is, as always, a pleasure to listen to the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden), who treats the House to the usual rendition from the Scottish nationalists of why they stand for independence—in truth, that is all they stand for. I rise to make a short contribution in this debate on the Second Reading of the Finance Bill, and I will restrict my comments to clause 61. I am mindful that I did not agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) on the issue of safe standing at football matches, but I have nothing but admiration for the principled stand she has taken on the matter of resetting the maximum stake for Fixed Odds Betting Terminals to £2, with that measure to be effective by next April at the latest. I completely agree with her position, which is why I have been willing to attach my name to future amendments to this Bill brought forward by friends. Apparently its implementation will take so long, but I really do not believe that that stands up to scrutiny. The Government currently say that it needs to be put in place for next autumn, but I really believe it does not need to take that long. The simple fact of the matter is that the longer we wait to implement this measure, the more damage is being inflicted on the most vulnerable people in our society. Some 43% of the people using Fixed Odds Betting Terminals are either problem or at-risk gamblers, and when we consider that 230,000 sessions on these machines in a single year resulted in losses of more than £1,000 each session, we see that any further delay in reducing the maximum stake to £2 is not justifiable in societal terms. It is also not justifiable in terms of the time that is really needed to make this adjustment happen. It is not justifiable in terms of the ongoing social costs, with the misery that occurs when individuals lose control of their decision-making faculty to a gambling addiction. And I simply cannot accept, on the grounds of any sort of morality that I would wish to be associated with, that the special pleading of the betting firms should take any sort of a priority over the damage is inflicted on society, on families and on children by those who are suffering from gambling addiction and for whom these machines are an outlet. The startling statistic is that for every second of every day these machines cost their players £57 in losses. There are 33,000 of these Fixed Odds Betting Terminals in betting shops across the UK. A helpful live ready-reckoner on the website of the all-party group on Fixed Odds Betting Terminals calculates to the second how much has been lost on these machines since the Government first called for evidence on what the maximum stake for these terminals should be. That happened way back in October 2016, and the last time I checked, which was earlier today—so after 749 days—this figure is in excess of £3.7 billion. I am not prepared to stand by—I could not do so as a matter of conscience—and do nothing when action is required. The Government have already accepted that that action is necessary and described these machines in the most disparaging terms, so I ask simply that the measure be implemented in April, at the soonest point. Perhaps a justification will be put forward that somehow it will cost the Treasury lost revenue, but at what price? Are we really saying that there is not a more productive use for these billions of pounds of economic activity in our country? I think that there is. We should not underestimate the devastating effects of the vice-like grip of an addiction such as gambling. The Government should act now to do what they have already resolved to do—not in 12 months’ time, but by April next year at the very latest. Jim Shannon: Is it not a fact that the sector and industry have had 18 months to get themselves ready for this? They knew it was coming and should have got their house in order. They do not need any more time. Stephen Kerr: The hon. Gentleman is quite right. Reference has already been made to the KPMG report, which was provided at the instigation of the Association of British Bookmakers. KPMG itself advised that that report “should not therefore be regarded as suitable to be used or relied on by any other person or for any other purpose” because its terms and scope were determined by KPMG’s client, the Association of British Bookmakers. Paddy Power Betfair wrote to the Prime Minister because it was so shocked that the report could be used as a credible source for decision making, saying that some of the assumptions in it were unrealistic.
Overcoming addiction is not simply a matter of exercising
willpower. Addiction robs people of the power to decide for
themselves. We in this House have the power to take the necessary
measures that will protect the most vulnerable people, the most
vulnerable families and the children of those families. I very
much hope that the Government will take the decision to do that
earlier. Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Ind):...That is why I join my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Stephen Kerr), who spoke movingly some moments ago, in saying that we cannot delay the action that is needed on Fixed Odds Betting Terminalsbeyond next April. It cannot be right to delay this, and it certainly cannot be right to do so on the basis of a bogus report. It has been said explicitly that that was not what the report was intended to be for or to do. For that reason, we need to come together as a House and collectively persuade the Government to think again and accept that we should bring this in from April 2019, as has long been planned. In my constituency of Dover and Deal, addiction is a big problem for many people. Whether it is to alcohol, drugs or gambling, addiction is a big problem. It is the responsibility of this House—and, in my view, this has long been settled as a responsibility of compassionate Conservatism—to look after and care for those who suffer from addiction, so I think it is the right thing to do...
Bill Grant (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock)
(Con): I am pleased to speak in support of the measures
in the Bill. I have previously spoken of a number of reservations
about some of its measures. I wish to record my disappointment at
the timetable for changes to Fixed Odds Betting Terminals. I
believe the wait is too long. We can take some comfort from the
fact that, while the Government did not oversee their
introduction, it is this Government who will see the stake
plummet to £2, but not on a timescale that I would have wished
for...
|