Fixed Odds Betting Terminals

Pat Glass Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

In the little time available I will restrict my remarks to the impact of FOBTs on increased criminality and money laundering on our high streets. We might criticise the Gambling Act 2005, but it clearly states that gambling machines must prevent

“gambling from being the being a source of crime and disorder, being associated with crime and disorder, or being used to support crime”,

yet that is exactly what is happening on our streets. These machines are being used to launder millions of pounds of money from criminality, drug dealing, loan sharking, people trafficking and so on.

There is a particularly nasty crime family in my constituency, and the Home Secretary has spoken on numerous occasions about the good work that County Durham has done to tackle organised crime. That crime family in my constituency has been moved on from “cash for crash”, drug dealing and so on, but where are they now? They are all over these FOBT machines. The Remote Gambling Association admitted in September that FOBTs represent a

“high inherent money laundering risk”.

The European Union is likely to include the machines in directive 4 on money laundering, and I would be interested to hear what the Minister thinks about that. Even the United Nations office on drugs and crime has warned that these games are used by organised crime to launder cash. The EU, the UN and even the Government recognise how dangerous this is. Despite the assertion from the gambling industry and the Association of British Bookmakers that they fully comply with the law, it is clear that, however inadvertently, these machines are now an integral and increasing part of the machinery of organised crime and money laundering. In the little time I have left, I plead with the Government to take seriously, in their review, the impact of FOBTs on money laundering and their increasing use, and to limit the stake.