Finance (No. 3) Bill

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Clive Lewis

Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 20th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Clive Lewis]

My hon. Friend makes his excellent point well, and I agree with it entirely.

Page 11 of that report describes what “at risk of closure” actually means. It means that once the £2 cap is implemented, just under half of those shops would make a net annual profit of £20,000 or less. Are we seriously to believe that a net profit of £20,000 a year is terminal? KPMG did not think so. The report concludes that these shops would not close, but would simply be “less profitable”. The threat was not to our constituents’ jobs, but to corporate profits. Can the Minister assure Members that the Treasury will never again seek to justify resisting evidence-based policy on the basis of secret reports and clandestine meetings?

By choosing to take such an approach, the Treasury ignored the recommendation in the May 2018 gambling review that the £2 limit should be adopted within nine to 12 months. Let us remember that that policy was designed to reduce the harm caused by gambling addiction. The evidence of harm associated with FOBTs is overwhelming, with that harm disproportionately felt by the poorest in our society. Put simply, there are twice as many betting shops in the poorest 55 boroughs of the UK as there are in the most affluent 115.

Even in narrow economic terms, viewing the delay as merely a reduction in tax income to the Exchequer makes little sense. As we have heard today, the social cost of addiction, crime and debt that accompanies the ever-increasing losses on FOBTs is estimated by the Centre for Economics and Business Research to cost the UK £1.5 billion a year. It has an impact on many aspects of social welfare, including employment, mental health and financial stability, so the awful human cost, about which we have heard so powerfully, is matched by an economic cost that we all bear as a society and as an economy as well. Perhaps the Minister would address whether the Government have factored into any of their fiscal calculations the prospect of alleviating the cost to public services, given a decline in gambling-related harm and crime?

Of course, the most important reason for an immediate stake reduction is a moral one—an issue of social justice that must be resolved. Lives are being destroyed, and this policy change is a milestone on our journey to tackle this harm. Labour Members are proud be part of taking that step forward, and we will keep striving to carry on making these changes until eventually we get to the bottom of what the gambling industry actually is: something that preys on people’s vulnerabilities. Labour Members recognise that quite clearly.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I want to summarise some of the issues relating to the amendments standing in my name and those of many others, including, most importantly, my hon. Friends the Members for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) and for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan)—they are hon. Friends in this case, although I am not sure they will want to be pursuing that one further. This genuinely was a very cross-party process. Interestingly, the list of names of Members who support the amendments tells us everything we need to know about the strength of feeling that existed in the House.

We accept the Government’s change, to which I shall come back in a moment, but it is worth reminding ourselves that this process has had a long gestation. I remember having conversations with my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) probably two years ago, at least—