Extracts from Westminster Hall debate on Gambling-Related Harm - Mar 19

Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab): It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe, and I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan) on securing this important debate. Many hon. Friends present have campaigned vigorously for the stake on Fixed Odds Betting Terminals to be cut to £2. The blight of FOBTs was eventually acknowledged by the Government, and that stake will be reduced in April this year...

...Above all, the industry needs to take responsibility for itself. Remote gambling is a growing industry, and it must learn the lessons of Fixed Odds Betting Terminals. It cannot be that time after time the Government must step in to prevent large and financially powerful industries from disregarding the harm they are doing to the vulnerable in society. The scourge of online gambling is becoming a matter of national urgency. We cannot sit back and let those problems continue, and I will not do so.

Mr Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con):...Of course, the industry is smart. It has invested a lot of the extra money it has got—all those billions—into figuring out how people go about gambling. As the hon. Member for Swansea East said, we had this whole debate about Fixed Odds Betting Terminals, which were a problem. I am astonished that, given all the evidence, it took us so long to finally get movement, first from the Gambling Commission and finally from the Government. The onslaught from the gambling industry was a sight to behold. There was an onslaught of misrepresented figures and everything else. I will not go into the details, because I am sure that stands in history and testimony...

Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP):...With their limited powers, the Scottish Government have already committed to using planning legislation to address the proliferation of betting shops in specified areas. However, our task as a society must be to prevent and reduce the harm that gambling causes. I very much welcome the Government’s action to reduce the stake on Fixed Odds Betting Terminals. I know there was great pressure from some Tory MPs and the betting industry itself, which has very deep pockets, to try to prevent that from happening....

Graham P. Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab):...We have accepted the precautionary principle in the case of Fixed Odds Betting Terminals. I am delighted that the cap has been lowered to £2 and I congratulate those, including my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) and the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green, who were in the vanguard of the campaign. Equally, going back to 2012, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) will remember the efforts of my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Tom Watson) who was one of the first people to raise the matter in this place. He expressed great concern, which I shared at the time, and I do not think thanks have been expressed to him in the debate...

...According to official data on Fixed Odds Betting Terminals, which, as everyone knows, allow users to bet up to £100 every 20 seconds on the spin, the amount that British gamblers lost on them last year doubled. The last figure is for 2016 when it went up from £1 billion to £1.8 billion. That is a colossal amount of money to have been lost, and dividing it up by constituency allows us to appreciate how much. If the council tax collected by my local district council is compared with the amount spent in the same area by being pushed into Fixed Odds Betting Terminals, the contrast between the two figures is dramatic. Of course the amount that goes into FOBTs is far more significant...

Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP): It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan) not just on securing the debate but on his incredible, dogged work on the issue. He has pursued it with serious vigour and—as I am sure applies to other Members who have worked on the matter of Fixed Odds Betting Terminals—under huge pressure from betting firms...

Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab):...Gambling addiction currently affects 430,000 people in the UK. That many people could fill Wembley stadium four times over. Last year’s debate on Fixed Odds Betting Terminals showed us what can be achieved when politicians, experts and campaigners come together on such an important common cause. Despite opposition from the industry and, I am sorry to say, reluctance from some within the Minister’s party, we were able to achieve reform that will save lives, benefit communities and better regulate the market. I am proud that the Labour party was the driving force behind that reform.

We now need to go further. I am pleased that the Fixed Odds Betting Terminals all-party parliamentary group will continue its work under the new banner of the all-party parliamentary group on gambling-related harm. I am also proud that my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) is working with the hon. Member for Inverclyde and other parliamentarians to investigate the impact of gambling-related harm in our communities. The excellent work being done by campaigners such as Liz and Charles Ritchie at Gambling With Lives powerfully reminds us of what that harm means, and the deep destruction that it has on individual lives and families....

To read the whole debate, CLICK HERE