Jim McMahon
Main Page: Jim McMahon (Labour (Co-op) - Oldham West and Royton)Department Debates - View all Jim McMahon's debates with the HM Treasury
(8 years ago)
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Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alan. May I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for securing the debate and my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) for leading the all-party group on this important issue?
A lot of ground has been covered in the debate, and I will not repeat other Members’ points. There is a pattern of bookmakers clustering in towns with high levels of deprivation. I speak from the perspective of Oldham, which the Office for National Statistics recently announced as the most deprived town in England. We see massive clustering there of not only bookmakers but payday loan shops, logbook loan shops and pawnbrokers. There is a cycle of people hoping they are going to win, losing and then pawning gold or something from their house to get more money, which they feed back into the machines.
I do not accept at all that the arguments on this issue are conflicted. It is true that these machines are being used for money laundering. In fact, during the course of this debate, constituents have sent me messages on Twitter in which they name bookmakers in Oldham that are quite open about the fact that these terminals are used for money laundering. Let’s face it, if someone wants to find a way of cleaning money, losing 10% of it through one of these machines is not a bad transactional cost.
The poorest in society are paying the price. In 2014, Oldhamers fed £29 million into 100 terminals, losing an estimated £5.5 million. That is money from the pockets of the people who can least afford it. I believe in people being able to make adult choices about these things, but we have seen that the bookmakers cannot be trusted to monitor and support people who have problems. I will give one example. In Chadderton precinct, I can be stood at the door of one Ladbrokes—a bookmakers that has four fixed odds betting terminals, which is the maximum it is allowed—and you, Sir Alan, can be stood as close as we are now, at the other Ladbrokes across the precinct, which has the same number of terminals. Bookmakers know the rules and will seek a way around them. Any sense that we can trust bookmakers, which are there to make money, to look after people who are falling into trouble and have problems is wrong. I do not trust them one bit.
We need proper and fair regulation that strikes a balance between treating people like adults and letting them make a conscious decision to spend the money they earn however they choose, and ensuring there are proper restrictions where bookmakers are taking liberties. I do not believe that the Local Government Association and the 100-odd local authorities that are supporting the proposals made under the fantastic leadership of Newham Council are wrong. They know their communities, and they are asking for more Government action and local accountability and support. That is the least we can do to address this very real modern problem.