Gambling: Fixed-odds Betting Machines

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 30th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

It is true. I am delighted that, along with the excellent list of other good news that came out of the Budget yesterday, we are now able to provide clarity on the reduction to £2, which will help to stop extreme losses for those who can least afford them. The answer to the noble Lord’s question about why is to allow enough time for businesses to readjust. We are talking about a good number of jobs here. The Association of British Bookmakers has ascertained that there are about 21,000 jobs and 4,500 businesses. We think that that is a slight exaggeration, but we are talking about big numbers.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I refer the Minister to a reply he gave, on the last occasion the House discussed this, about the targeting of gambling at children and young people. In particular, the development of virtual reality games such as Fortnite, which is specifically targeted at young people, makes the idea of gambling normal. Will he also say a word about the contribution that the gambling companies to which he referred are supposed to make through the levy, to help people who become addicted? As many of them do not pay the voluntary levy, when do the Government intend to make it compulsory?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

As I have said in the Chamber before, we do not intend to make it compulsory. The voluntary system is working well at the moment, but we always keep it under review. The resources that we receive through the levy go towards helping problem gambling. The noble Lord made an extremely important point about the need to protect children. Problem gambling has remained consistently below 1% of the adult population for many years. Much work focused on children is going on, particularly with GambleAware. About two months ago, I noticed in the papers that a well-known TV personality took a machine from her son and smashed it against a table leg. In other words, parents need to take control and make sure that children do not spend too much time on these machines.