Gambling (Categorisation and Use of B2 Gaming Machines) Bill [HL]

Lord Collins of Highbury Excerpts

Friday 11th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been an incredibly interesting and informative debate. I have learned things today that I did not know before. It seems to sum up the world today. Is legislation catching up with the new world of technology? It certainly seems like that is the issue. One issue which concerns me, but has not been mentioned so far, is bingo. It is a community activity and, conducted communally, it is a very positive thing. But online gambling has taken the word “bingo”, adapted it and changed it out of all recognition. It has now become a gambling activity done in isolation, not a community one. How do we catch up with these things?

My noble friend Lord Lipsey made a very strong case for gambling, as he regularly does in the Bishops’ Bar. I agree with him. I value the local bookmaker’s shop; it is a community resource. People still visit it on a Saturday morning to plan their bets for the day’s racing. I pop in occasionally. I have been known to visit casinos. I enjoy gambling. But what we are talking about here is a change. My noble friend Lady Sherlock is right to draw our attention to these things. Do we expect the sort of activity which we have heard described in a casino to be in multiple shops in our high street? Has something not gone wrong here? The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, and many other noble Lords highlighted this. Whether we are talking about betting shops, FOBTs or even private clubs, nowadays people only have to pick up their mobile phones to gamble huge amounts of money constantly every minute, every hour. They do not have to go too far. We have to grapple with these issues and better understand them.

It is just over a year since the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, instigated a QSD on this subject. That was followed, in the same month, by a debate on the Government’s Gaming Machine (Circumstances of Use) (Amendment) Regulations. The Minister assured me that he had read my speeches in both debates, so I will not repeat them today. We have heard some very strong arguments that were also made a year ago. We debated those regulations when the Government introduced the £50 cap for supervision. The cap was set without any evidence that it would protect vulnerable people from getting into debt or developing a gambling addiction. Even today, the Government cannot really explain how they came to decide that a £50 cap would deal with problem gambling. The limit that was set then relies on the betting industry to apply it. Also, customers can bet above £50 with permission from betting shop staff.

As other noble Lords have said, last month the DCMS published an evaluation of those regulations. As the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, pointed out, there has been, despite marketing campaigns, a relatively low uptake of verified accounts, and over-the-counter authorisation of stakes over £50 appeared to occur in a very low percentage of sessions. The evidence showed that people bet below £50 but increase the duration of their sessions. The department is saying that this is possibly because people are being more cautious and taking their time over gambling, thus meeting the objectives of the regulations. However, given the speed of these roulette tables, it could be that they are betting more.

The report states that there was a £6.2 billion fall in stakes over £50 from 2014 to 2015 but that there had been an increase in the total amount staked in the £40 to £50 range. The Government have said that the evaluation of the 2015 regulations,

“indicates that a large proportion of players of FOBTs may now be making a more conscious choice to control their playing behaviour and their stake level. We will now consider the findings of the evaluation before deciding if there is a need for further action”.

I will come back to this point later on.

I am not sure if it is a foretaste of what is to come, but, as a consequence of the Smith commission stating:

“The Scottish Parliament will have the power to prevent the proliferation of Fixed-Odds Betting Terminals”,

the Scotland Bill devolves legislative competence to the Scottish Parliament for gaming machines where the maximum charge for a single play is more than £10. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, said, the power would be limited to applications for new licences. This means that FOBTs with a stake of less than £10 would remain the responsibility of the UK Government. The threshold does not extend to other matters such as the speed of play or the type of game being played. Is this move in the Scotland Bill an indication of the Government’s intention to set a national FOBT threshold of £10?

After 16 years of fixed-odd betting terminals on our high streets at £100 per spin, we are still no nearer to a conclusive answer on whether they are safe to operate in local betting shops. Clearly not enough has been done to curtail the proliferation of FOBTs, which many—I am one of them—consider to be a blight on our high streets. We have heard today and read evidence of how they can damage the lives of many of the most vulnerable in our society, so it is vital for the Government to look closely at their approach and do more to protect FOBT users. Clearly, as we have heard in the debate, the use of FOBTs is a growing concern among the public.

As the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said, local authorities have a statutory duty to uphold the licensing objectives, which are to ensure that gambling is fair and open, is not associated with crime and does not harm the young or vulnerable. As we have been reminded in the debate, 93 councils believe FOBTs are in breach of all of these objectives and so have joined Newham in calling for the maximum stake to be capped at £2 a spin.

During the passage of what became the 2005 Act, my noble friend Lady Jowell expressed concern about the gambling industry becoming “overly dependent” on growth driven by the machines and about their role in problem gambling. On the decision to have a limit of four machines in each betting shop, she said that,

“there was no certainty that these machines would remain, because we were absolutely clear that we could not know at that stage what their effect was likely to be”.

As the Opposition, we maintain our commitment to tackling FOBTs at local level, through the devolution of power over planning issues. In our manifesto, we stated clearly that communities would be,

“able to review betting shop licences in their area and reduce the number of fixed-odds betting terminals in existing betting shops—or ban them entirely—in response to local concerns”.

Another issue we have heard about in the debate is that of betting shop staff, who are on the front line when it comes to consumer protection and to spotting criminal activities such as money laundering. They face a very difficult job in difficult circumstances, but single-staffing is commonplace in betting shops and becoming increasingly so. I raised these concerns with the Association of British Bookmakers, which remains convinced that it is proportionate to have single-staff betting shops. I am not convinced that that can ever be the case, particularly when the Government have regulations about monitoring problem gamblers, which the bookmakers have agreed to. Does the Minister agree with me that staff would be in a better position to intervene and help problem gamblers if they were not on their own? Are the Government prepared to act to ensure that FOBT operators have at least two members of staff present at all times, making this a licensing condition if necessary?

We have heard from across the Chamber today that one of the key issues cited for inaction on FOBTs is lack of evidence—or, where there is evidence, whether it is sustainable. The Government have continually referred to research commissioned by the Responsible Gambling Trust as justification for their approach. To be clear, it is certainly our view that any response or action must be evidence-based—anything else would be wrong—but my concern, which was touched on by my noble friend, is that while bookmakers continue to have such a strong influence over the research agenda and the commissioning process, we will never, in the words of the Prime Minister, “get to grips” with this issue. Does the Minister agree that betting shop operators and FOBT operators should be required to collect and provide standardised data on the use of FOBTs, to allow independent researchers to analyse their impact, so as to help inform future decision-making?

At the end of last month, my honourable friend Carolyn Harris, the MP for Swansea East, asked the Secretary of State for DCMS when his department planned to launch the next triennial review of gaming machine stake and prize limits. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, raised this as well. The Minister—unfortunately in my opinion—linked the response to that question with the department’s review of the regulations on the £50, and said that the department would be considering the findings of that evaluation before deciding whether there is any need for further action. But I think we have heard in this debate that there is a consensus across the board that action is needed.

One action the Minister can make today is to give a clear indication that the triennial review will be conducted and to give us a date for when it will start. I do not think that we can wait any longer for some clear indications about this. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, that the triennial review should include the limits to FOBTs and should come through quickly. The last time the review was conducted, it took a year to come to any conclusions. Let us get a date now before we have to wait any longer.