Gambling: Fixed-odds Betting Terminals

Lord Strasburger Excerpts

Monday 9th February 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Strasburger]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to mitigate the misuse of fixed-odds betting terminals in betting shops.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)]

My Lords, new regulations come into force on 6 April this year that will end unsupervised high-stake gambling on fixed-odds betting terminals. All players using FOBTs are now presented with a choice to set time and money upfront. We are keeping this issue under review and remain focused on identifying gambling-related harm, wherever it is found, and devising effective measures to bear down on it hard.

[Lord Strasburger (LD)]

My Lords, one man recently laundered nearly £1 million in drug money through these machines in Coral betting shops in the north-east. Can my noble friend the Minister explain why the Government’s rather feeble plan to set the maximum stake to £50 or £100 will make any difference at all to money laundering or to the extensive gambling addiction that these machines cause, given that four out of five of those staking just a quarter of the proposed new maximum limit show signs of problem gambling?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, as regards money laundering, the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 places a duty on gambling operators to be alert to money laundering attempts and to report such attempts to the National Crime Agency. The Government expect all gambling operators to ensure that their anti-money laundering procedures are consistently and effectively applied to minimise risk and maintain good controls. On the point of the size of the stakes, the new measures will require those accessing stakes over £50 to use account-based play or to load cash over the counter. The Responsible Gambling Trust has said that in its view it is,

“overtly naïve and massively premature”,

to suggest that reducing the maximum stake size would help to reduce problem gambling.