Fixed Odds Betting Terminals

Debate between Tom Clarke and Stephen Timms

Wednesday 8th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[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.

Welfare Reform Bill

Debate between Tom Clarke and Stephen Timms

Tuesday 21st February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I hope that Government Members think long and hard before simply voting down Lords amendments 3B and 26B, but at the outset let me comment on the other amendments, as the Minister did.

I want in particular to welcome the Government’s concession on time-limiting contributory employment and support allowance for people in the work-related activity group. Amendments 17B to 17D and 19B provide in circumstances prescribed in regulations for a longer time limit than one year. That is a very welcome change, and I am grateful to Ministers for permitting it. The Government have made it clear that they have no intention of bringing forward such regulations, but the Bill will now at least allow a future, more fair-minded Government to do so, and I welcome that change very much.

The Minister in the other place also gave some assurances about people being treated for cancer, which has been an important issue in this debate. His assurances were, however, rather vague. They do not help people recovering from strokes or from severe mental health problems, or others who have no chance at all of getting back into work within a year, but the assurances in respect of cancer patients, in so far as they went, were helpful.

Amendment 73BA, which the Government tabled, would allow them to waive charges for the parent with care when accessing the child support system in specified circumstances. Again, we have no idea what those circumstances will be, but the amendment is nevertheless helpful rather than unhelpful.

There also needs to be movement on the policy addressed by amendments 3B and 26B, which the Minister before us still opposes. They have some perfectly reasonable aims, to which attention has been drawn in this debate. Under-occupancy of social housing is a problem; many people are stuck—overcrowded—on housing waiting lists; fewer people under-occupying would help; and a workable penalty for people who refuse an offer of smaller, more suitable accommodation could achieve that aim.

[Mr Tom Clarke]

I follow absolutely my right hon. Friend’s logic, but in the field of disability does he not recognise that in many cases the so-called extra room is there for a carer or for other physical reasons to help the disabled person? It is therefore pretty unacceptable to change that arrangement.

[Stephen Timms]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and that is why the Lords propose in their amendment an exemption for people in receipt of disability living allowance, thereby addressing exactly that point.

Our original amendment would have penalised under-occupation in a workable way. If a tenant refused a suitable offer of a smaller home, they would suffer the penalty. If, however, no smaller home were available, they would not suffer that penalty. Unfortunately, that amendment was defeated in our previous debate, but I pay tribute to the 12 Liberal Democrat Members and two Conservative Members who supported it. I am glad to see some of them in their places this afternoon.

Legal challenge to the Government’s policy seems inevitable, because it penalises people for a situation that it is impossible for them to change. The amendment could not be reintroduced in the other place because the Government claimed financial privilege, so this afternoon we have in amendments 3B and 26B a much weaker proposal. It does, however, at least protect those, like the people to whom my right hon. Friend has just drawn attention, who will be hardest hit if the Government’s policy goes through.

The proposal would safeguard four tightly defined groups: first, people in the employment and support allowance support group—those who are too ill to be expected to return to work in the near future; secondly, adults and children who receive disability living allowance or its successor, the personal independence payment; thirdly, war widows; and fourthly, foster carers, because for the purposes of housing benefit calculations foster children do not count towards a bedroom need.

Let me underline how modest the proposal now is. Many Members will take the view, for example, that war widows should not be penalised for having a spare bedroom. The proposal, however, would not protect war widows in that way. It simply says that no war widow should be fined for under-occupying her home unless she has been offered appropriate smaller accommodation. If such an offer has been made to her and she has refused it, under the Lords amendments she would be penalised. The amendments would protect her position until such an offer was made. Only tenants in one of the four specific groups would have even that safeguard. Everybody else who was under-occupying their social tenancy would, under the amendments, be penalised even if it was impossible for them to move to somewhere smaller.

The Child Poverty Action Group has highlighted an example of how similar rules currently apply in the private rented sector, which highlights the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr Clarke). Let us consider a claimant who has two daughters, one of whom has severe and uncontrollable epilepsy with frequent fits during the night. Her social worker and occupational therapist agree that the two girls need separate bedrooms. The claimant currently rents a three-bedroom house, but housing benefit covers the cost of only a two-bedroom house. The Lords amendments would fix that situation for social housing because the daughter is in receipt of disability living allowance.

I will now consider the hypothetical example of a couple in which one person has terminal cancer, which puts them in the employment and support allowance support group for people who are not expected to work again. That is one of the four specific groups that the Lords amendments would protect. The couple have a spare bedroom in their two-bedroom council house because their child moved out recently. They would be happy to move to a one-bedroom council or housing association flat but none is available. Under the Minister’s policy, that couple will be penalised, on average by £12 a week. Under the amendments, because of the exceptional circumstances, they would not be penalised. That would be the modest and reasonable effect of the amendments that the Lords agreed.

The National Housing Federation tells us that 180,000 social tenants in England are under-occupying two-bedroom homes, but that only 68,000 one-bedroom social homes became available to let in the year 2009-10. The impact assessment from the Department for Work and Pensions, which is well worth reading, states:

“According to estimates from DCLG there is a surplus of 3 bedroom properties, based on the profile of existing working-age tenants in receipt of Housing Benefit, and a lack of 1 bedroom accommodation in the social sector. In many areas this mismatch”—

I am quoting the Department here—

“could mean that there are insufficient properties to enable tenants to move to accommodation of an appropriate size even if tenants wished to move and landlords were able to facilitate this movement.”

That is the reality in many places. There simply will not be a one-bedroom home to move to. That will be the case in the constituency of the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), who intervened earlier, and in my constituency. Of course, the policy will not release a single one-bedroom home, because one cannot under-occupy a home with one bedroom.

The couple in the example, in which one person has terminal cancer, would see a cut of £12 a week or nearly £60 a month in their income. That is the average across the country. They would somehow have to make that up to their landlord from other income. The Department, no doubt trying to be helpful, gives some suggestions in the impact assessment of how they might do that:

“In these circumstances individuals may have to look further afield for appropriately sized accommodation or move to the private sector, otherwise they shall need to meet the shortfall through other means such as employment, using savings or by taking in a lodger or sub-tenant.”

I ask the House to reflect on each of those three suggestions in the case of somebody with terminal cancer. People in the ESA support group are, by definition, not in a position to work. That is why the Government have placed them in the support group. That suggestion therefore does not help. The DWP suggests instead that our terminally ill tenant in a two-bedroom flat should take in a lodger to help pay the rent. One has to ask whether the people promoting these policies have ever met anyone who will be affected by them. Of course, in many cases, the social landlord would not permit somebody to take in a lodger under the terms of their tenancy. The Department’s other suggestion is that they can use their savings. People in receipt of income-related ESA do not have very much saved—if they did, they would not receive income-related ESA.

Another alternative, as the impact assessment suggests, is that the tenant will have to move out of their council home into the private sector. In that case, their housing benefit will rise sharply. Where is the gain in forcing that to happen? The National Housing Federation, whose members are very worried about the change that the Government insist on making, makes the point that

“a couple with one child moving into the private sector from a three bed social flat in Crawley would be entitled to around £66 per week more in benefit to cover their additional housing costs.”

The key point is that it will be impossible for many of those affected to avoid the penalty. If suitable alternative accommodation can be offered to them, then fine, they can move and will no longer be under-occupying, and their benefit will continue to cover their full rent. The Lords amendments specifically allow for that. However, if there is no smaller flat available, our cancer patient will just have to take the £60 a month hit. How can that be justified?

The Minister will tell us, as he has before, that £30 million has been made available to councils in discretionary housing payments to avoid penalising a limited number of households. However, the Minister in the other place made it clear that, as the Minister of State hinted today, that money is to help foster carers and disabled people with adapted homes—so no help there for our terminally ill tenant.

Even for foster carers and disabled people in adapted homes, contrary to the impression that the Minister of State gave to the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson) and the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, there will be no certainty. People wanting help will have to go to their local council and ask for it, because it will be discretionary—that is what the word means. It will up to each local council to decide what it does with the money. It could use it for that purpose, or it could use it for a different one. If other people have already taken all the discretionary funding that has been provided, that will be it. No further help will be available.