Fixed Odds Betting Terminals

Stephen Timms Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Grant]

I hear what the right hon. Lady says, but the location of betting premises and shops is to do with footfall, not deprivation. It is simply a matter of supply and demand.

The Government are in no doubt that there is scope for the industry to improve its ability to identify people who might be at risk and to intervene early to minimise harm. That is why we have demanded that the industry introduce better player protection measures.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Does the Minister accept the point made so forcefully by Mary Portas that the prevalence of betting shops, particularly in deprived areas, has a very damaging effect on retail centres?

[Mrs Grant]

We have of course looked carefully at the Portas review. We fed into the review, and the Government response made the point that article 4 directions exist and can be used by local authorities, in addition to the local authority licensing conditions that were recently used very successfully by Newham.

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[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

If one crosses Barking road from East Ham town hall to go into East Ham High street north, there is a Paddy Power on the corner at 387 Barking road, a Betfred just around the corner at No. 6, and two more Paddy Powers at 20 High street north and directly opposite at No. 11. At No. 56 is a Jenningsbet and, set back in Clements road directly opposite No. 45, there is a Coral. In the short walk along the high street to East Ham station, there are two more Betfreds, another Paddy Power, a Ladbrokes and a William Hill, which was the subject of the licensing committee meeting in November to which the Minister referred. On the other side of the station, there are two more Paddy Powers and a Ladbrokes.

I think that represents a concentration. It is certainly related to the economic character of the area and not simply a question of footfall. All those shops open at 7.30 or 8 in the morning. They stay open until 10 o’clock at night seven days a week, and one of them has just asked for permission to stay open till 11pm. I would be very grateful if the Minister would tell us whether the measures she is discussing with the industry will be taken up by organisations such as Paddy Power and Betfred, which account for such a large number of the recently opened shops in our area.

[Andrew Gwynne]

It seemed that the Minister was not aware that the Local Government Association said that article 4 directives were not sufficient to prevent the proliferation of betting shops on the high street. Is that not precisely why we need to reclassify betting shops out of the A2 classification so that situations such as the one on my right hon. Friend’s high street are not able to continue?

[Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is clearly the view of Conservative local authorities and, as we have heard, of the Mayor of London. I think it would also be the view across the House, were it to be tested.

To gauge public opinion when there was an application for two more Paddy Power branches last year, I held a drop-in surgery at a local community centre in my constituency. One person who came in was a former Paddy Power manager. He said that he had seen a large number of families destroyed and businesses ruined, as well as students who gambled away their student loans. He told me that by spending a day in a Paddy Power shop, one would meet half a dozen people whose lives had been destroyed by their addiction.

Last year, when Newham council refused a licence for two new Paddy Power branches, the organisation appealed. Impressed by the phalanx of sharp lawyers—and, I have to say, sold-out former police officers—who appeared, the judge duly nodded the appeal through. The truth is that existing planning and licensing powers are hopelessly inadequate, as my hon. Friend said, and need to be strengthened in the way laid out in the motion. The claim in the Government’s amendment that local authorities already have enough powers is simply not the case.

[Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Bellshill’s small main street has seven of these premises. The local council, North Lanarkshire, supported by Bellshill community council, turned one application down, only for the Scottish Government to use their powers to overrule it, so how can it be said that local authorities have these powers?

[Stephen Timms]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Government planning inspectors in England routinely overturn refusals, so the powers are inadequate. We have 87 of these shops in my borough. I think that there were nine new ones in 2011 and a similar number in 2012, which shows the scale of the problem. To underline the point, in the Paddy Power case in Newham, the judge awarded costs against the council to punish it and warn others against thinking of challenging this growth. The council was using the powers mentioned in the Government’s amendment, so those powers are clearly inadequate.

I was grateful to the Minister for acknowledging my point about Mary Portas’s review. I think she said that she agreed with Mary Portas, so why are the Government not going to act? One of the people who came to my constituency drop-in was the owner of commercial properties on East Ham high street. Frankly, he has a guilty conscience about letting his properties to betting shops, but he made the point that betting chains paid more than anyone else to occupy the units. They are very attractive tenants and, by extracting huge sums from people who cannot afford it, they are making money hand over fist. The law needs to change urgently to deal with the problem.

As the Minister said, there has recently been modest success in East Ham. The William Hill opposite East Ham station has been a magnet for drunken antisocial behaviour for a long time. After it allowed a 15-year-old to use its machines, an application was made to revoke its licence. There was the usual phalanx of lawyers and former police officers, but the upshot was that the council committee required the company to make some improvements. Among other things—I am pleased that this point has been picked up in the motion moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford)—the bookmaker was required to have at least two members of staff present whenever it was open, instead of the usual one. As far as I can tell, however, there is only ever one member of staff in the other betting shops on the high street. I understand that this is the first time such a condition has been applied and accepted by a bookmaker, and I hope that our motion suggests that that will be a precedent for elsewhere.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

Is my right hon. Friend concerned, as I am, that many of these employees do not have much training in dealing with problem gamblers? Despite what the industry says, many staff are given a job and then start work straightaway.

[Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend is right. In any case, these members of staff are one person on their own in one of these shops, many of which are quite big. They are sitting behind a glass screen, so what are they supposed to do if there is someone with a problem in the shop? There are often fights outside. Interestingly, Community, on behalf of its members working in betting shops, has supported our very good motion, and I hope that the House will agree to it.

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[Philip Davies]

If the hon. Gentleman had actually turned up, he would have known the report was unanimously supported by all members including members of the Labour party.

The first myth I want to dispel is that there has been an explosion in the number of betting offices and machines. The number of betting offices has actually declined from a peak of 14,750 in the mid-1970s to around 8,700 today and that figure has been virtually the same for the last 10 years. FOBTs—B2 machines—are also in decline: according to the Gambling Commission 4% of adults played them in 2010 and the figure dropped to 3.4% in 2011-12, and in 2013 all bookmakers reported a decline in the gross win from FOBTs.

Even in areas considered to have huge numbers of bookmakers—for example Hackney—they make up about 2.7% of all retail units. Let us take Greenwich as an example of what has happened. The number of bookmakers has gone up in Greenwich by 8% at the same time as the population in Greenwich has increased by 13%. Of course bookmakers are often in densely populated areas and some of them happen to be poorer areas, too, but the relevant fact is that they are in densely populated areas not poorer areas.

[Stephen Timms]

There are 12 bookmakers in the short stretch of East Ham high street between East Ham town hall and East Ham station. There has never been anything like such a large number in that small area before. Something dramatic has changed and it needs to be fixed.

[Philip Davies]

The right hon. Gentleman says that, but many of his constituents work in them, of course, and many of his constituents enjoy going into them. If they did not enjoy going into them, they would not be open.

It is true that more bookmakers have moved on to the high street in recent years, but their overall number has not gone up; instead they have moved from the side streets owing to lower rents because of the recession largely caused by the Labour party, and they will probably move back on to the side streets when the economy recovers and rents on the high street go back up.

Anyway, where are the legions of retailers wanting to open up on the high street in place of bookmakers? It is not a decision between having Next on the high street or William Hill or having M&S on the high street or Paddy Power. It is a choice between having Ladbrokes on the high street or a boarded-up shop.

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[Dame Angela Watkinson (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

I rise to speak in support of the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister, which sets out a sensible and measured approach to any future changes to policy on fixed odds betting terminals or local authority powers in licensing and planning that is based on research into the effect of these terminals on the 1% of gamblers identified as problem gamblers.

When I visited a local betting shop on a high street in my constituency, it was, unexpectedly, a rather quiet, low-key activity. I certainly did not recognise the picture painted by the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), who said that betting shops attracted drunkenness and bad behaviour. Gambling is as legitimate a leisure activity as going to football matches, pubs or the cinema.

[Stephen Timms]

Is the hon. Lady aware that it is well established that the staff of betting shops are instructed not to report violent incidents inside the shops in order to keep them out of the crime statistics?

[Dame Angela Watkinson]

I can only say how strongly that contrasts with my experience of visiting a local betting shop in Hornchurch.

Gambling is enjoyed by 8 million people nationally, and betting shops provide local jobs and help to stimulate the economy. People have the right to choose how they spend their disposable income. I have no gambling instinct personally. I choose not to gamble, but that choice is open to everyone, and I defend the right of others to gamble responsibly if that is their choice.

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[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—