Fixed Odds Betting Terminals

Nick Boles Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Nick Boles)]

I understand that traditionally Opposition debates were designed to allow Her Majesty’s Opposition to attack Government policy but since 2010, when I was elected to this House, there has been a constitutional innovation, as I am sure you will have noticed, Mr Speaker. The Labour party uses these debates to attack Labour Government policy and to condemn those like the hon. Member for Bradford South (Mr Sutcliffe) who implemented those policies and to repudiate anything inherited from the period which many Labour Members like to think of as the Blairite apostasy. So this debate is nothing more than an elaborate exercise in exorcising the ghosts of new Labour’s past.

Let us examine those ghosts. In 2003 the Labour Government doubled the number of gaming machines allowed in licensed premises from two to four and increased the maximum prize from £25 to £250, but that was not enough. In 2006 the Labour Government saw the gambling industry as the handmaiden of the regeneration of cities like Glasgow, Manchester and Newcastle and they were not just proposing a row of little betting shops: they wanted super-casinos with unlimited jackpots.

There are very few people on the Opposition Benches whom I admire more than the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Dame Tessa Jowell)—I believe the Olympics would never have happened without her contribution—so in researching this debate I wanted to read her words as Secretary of State when she was promoting gambling as the best regeneration policy for Britain’s inner cities. Imagine my shock, Mr Speaker, when I discovered that all of her speeches have been erased from the Labour party website, and not just her speeches, Mr Speaker, but every speech, every policy document and every press release predating the speech by the Leader of the Opposition in September 2010.

We have all heard of communist regimes rewriting history and airbrushing photographs of the politburo, but Soviet measures pale by comparison. The history of new Labour is not just being rewritten; it is being deleted. The noble Lord Mandelson had better watch his step, or, before we know it, he will have gone the way of Kim Jong-Un’s uncle and been thrown to the ravenous dogs.

We have established that the true purpose of this debate has been to heal the Opposition’s psychological traumas. I think we can agree that we are on familiar ground. Labour has decided that another of its policies in government was a mistake. My hon. Friends in the Liberal Democrat party and my hon. Friends the Members for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) and for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) have consistently and honourably raised their concerns about that policy. In Prime Minister’s questions today, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister reaffirmed his desire to address those concerns sensibly, steadily and with evidence, and to achieve a proper balance.

The Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) has set out in a measured way the work she is doing with the gambling industry, with the Responsible Gambling Trust and with other bodies to do what the Labour Government did not do before introducing the Gambling Act 2005—namely, to conduct research into the impact of those measures. That is the research that my hon. Friend is leading, and it will produce a result.

My opposite number, the hon. Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods), raised the issue of planning controls and article 4. She asked for more powers for councils to introduce restrictions on the proliferation of betting shops on their high streets. I think I had better introduce her to one of her colleagues, a Labour councillor, Fiona Colley. She is a councillor for Southwark council, which only three months ago introduced immediate article 4 directions to prevent the conversion—

[Stephen Timms]

Will the Minister give way?

[Nick Boles]

I am sorry, I will not give way; I have only two minutes.

That Labour councillor introduced an article 4 measure with immediate effect to prevent the conversion of more premises from other use classes to that of a betting shop. Let me quote that Labour councillor’s words on the Southwark council website—[Interruption.] She is a Labour councillor, and Labour Members might want to listen to her. She knows a lot more about this than they do. Councillor Fiona Colley, who is soon to become my favourite councillor, said:

“This innovative, proactive approach to addressing planning legislation will make a tangible change to the lives of people living in areas where so-called ‘financial services’ businesses are so prolific.”

Those article 4 measures, which this Government have made it easier to use because they no longer require the approval of the Secretary of State, are good enough for Southwark. They are also good enough for Barking and Dagenham. In fact, 122 local authorities have made 270 article 4 declarations to restrict permitted development rights in the past three years. If one Labour authority in London thinks they are a good thing, and if 121 other local authorities think they are a good thing, it seems pretty clear to me that we need no more planning changes to enable councils to do what they want to do to protect their local communities. This debate has no doubt been helpful for the psychological catharsis of the Labour party, and I wish Labour Members well as they come to terms with their abiding grief about the record of the previous Government. This Government will continue, with the help of my Liberal Democrat colleagues—

[Mr Alan Campbell (Tynemouth) (Lab)]

claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36).

Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.

Question agreed to.

Question put accordingly (Standing Order No. 31(2)), That the original words stand part of the Question.