Why Labour must continue to fight the dangers of unregulated gambling

Last week’s announcement that local authorities will be given new powers to stop the spread of betting shops is a victory for Labour councillors up and down the country, who have been campaigning for this for years.

Across the UK, from Liverpool to Hackney (led by the indomitable London Council’s chairman, Jules Pipe), and in my own borough of Haringey, Labour administrations have been pushing the Government to give them the powers they need to control betting shop numbers.

I started the campaign against betting shop proliferation several years ago after seeing the effect that this scourge was having on my constituency. There are now 38 betting shops in Tottenham, including 12 on the High Road alone. We recently campaigned, successfully, against Paddy Power trying to open the 39^th.

But Tottenham is not an isolated example. In constituencies all over the UK, local people have become despondent at the number of betting shops taking over their high streets. Buildings that used to be vibrant independent pubs, cafes and shops are now Ladbrokes, BetFreds and Paddy Powers. That destroys the diversity of our high streets and damages the fabric of our community.

My constituents regularly ask me how this was allowed to happen, and why the local council doesn’t do more to stop it. The short answer is that there is little the council can do. The 2005 Gambling Act, one of the biggest legislative mistakes New Labour made in government, in effect removed the ability of local councils to reject applications for new betting shops. Proliferation followed, spurred on by new digital gambling machines that have caused bookmaker profits to soar. Since witnessing the damaging effects of this first hand, I have been campaigning for action to stop betting shop proliferation, but have been met, until now, with a wall of Coalition disinterest and dismissal.

Now, finally, the Government has recognised the scale of the problem and accepted the need for action. This takes the form of a new planning use class for betting shops, so that councils are truly able to block planning applications for new bookies. It is somewhat ironic that, having voted down Joan Ruddock’s and my amendment to the 2011 Localism Bill that called for this, they are now, three years down the line and many new betting shops later, introducing the exact same measures that our amendment proposed. But it is an announcement that will be met with relief in communities around Britain, and one we should welcome.

Labour councillors that pushed for this change deserve a great deal of credit. So too do parliamentary colleagues such as Stephen Timms and Tom Watson who have been fighting this problem in their own constituencies. This announcement serves as a good example of what many of us feel could and should be Labour’s new devolution agenda – a shift in the political system towards giving local people more say over how their areas are run. In the coming years, the look and feel of community shopping areas will be determined not by a bookmaker’s bottom line but by the wants and needs of local people. That is great progress.

However, this is not the end of the road. The dangers of unregulated gambling are still very visible in the rise of fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs). These machines, often referred to as the crack cocaine of gambling, are highly addictive yet under-regulated. It is possible to gamble up to £100 every 20 seconds on them, meaning huge sums of money can be lost in a matter of minutes.  I receive heart-wrenching emails from problem gamblers who have lost hundreds of thousands of pounds, plus marriages and jobs, as a result of the lack of regulation on FOBTs. Reform is desperately needed here too.

Last week, the Government finally announced that it was prepared to lower the maximum stake on FOBTs – but only to £50, and only in some circumstances. This is still dangerously high, and many times the £2 limit on most other types of gambling machine. It is a £2 limit on FOBTs that myself, Labour colleagues and gambling campaigners have been pushing for. Until that is introduced, bookmakers will continue to take millions of pounds a year from vulnerable gamblers, leaving behind a trail of debt and despair. That is what we continue to campaign against, and once again it is Labour MPs and councillors leading the way.

David Lammy is the Labour MP for Tottenham