Gaming Machines and Social Responsibility — House of Lords, 2018-05-17
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Thomas Ashton (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am very grateful to the two Front Benches for their comments. They are welcome to this announcement. It is a great pleasure to be congratulated for a change, and I genuinely am very grateful for that. I absolutely take noble Lords’ point that it was a cross-party effort to change this. As the noble Lord, Lord Foster, said, he has been around a long time and he has been at this particular subject for some time—I am glad that he is glad that what he wanted has finally come to pass. I, too, pay tribute to Carolyn Harris and the work of the cross-party APPG, and I am sure I shall have a chance to acknowledge other contributions later. I will also pass on the noble Lord’s mention of Tracey Crouch. She has taken this on as a personal crusade in many ways, so I will pass on those views As is only to be expected, a number of other points were raised, some possibly with disappointment, as were some questions. Both noble Lords mentioned the levy. This has been an ongoing discussion point. The reason we have not introduced a compulsory statutory levy at the moment is that we want the industry, Gamble Aware and the commission to build and improve on the voluntary system. We want them to do this voluntarily and with enthusiasm; we want them to be socially responsible and we expect them to make a lot of progress on this. This announcement today shows that if they do not, and if they are not socially responsible, we will be prepared to legislate. I am absolutely clear, as the Secretary of State has been, that if we do not get the right level of contribution and enthusiasm from the industry, we will consider legislation The noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, talked about children gambling and we absolutely understand the issues about children, the possible effect of online gambling on them and the normalisation of gambling, which is an issue to be aware of. Strict controls are, of course, already in place to prevent children gambling online or in individual premises. These are enforced by the Gambling Commission, which is actively looking at increasing the protections online. We have outlined in the response today some of the extra things that we are doing to protect children. The fact is that most gambling by children at the moment is legal—such as betting in playgrounds and so on. We are absolutely aware of the problems, and I can assure noble Lords that we will monitor this. The additional features that we have announced today will help, but this is not the end of the story; we will continue to monitor these things The noble Lord, Lord Foster, talked about implementation. We want to get on with this. We have waited long enough and we have sat and listened to a lot of representations from a lot of people. We have made this decision and we want to get on with it. However, this has to go through Parliament, and I hope noble Lords will give it their support when it arrives here. We want, equally, to engage with the gambling industry, because—quite possibly this is the only bad thing about today—there will be some job losses. There are mitigating factors in this: we have a very full employment situation, the possible job losses are spread around the country and there are measures to help, but there will be some involuntary redundancies as a result of this. Interestingly, however, the gambling operators’ own figures showed that there would be about 3,200 job losses by 2020, even if we had not changed the stake at all, because the mood of the public is changing on this. I cannot set out an exact timetable today, but obviously we want to carry on with implementation and do it as quickly as we can The noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, asked about contactless cards. We made clear at the consultation stage that we had concerns about the introduction of contactless payment on gaming machines, but there appears to be continued industry-wide support for the introduction of contactless payments. This gives the potential for corresponding player protection measures that could be introduced alongside this form of payment, because of the data that can be received from them The noble Lord, Lord Foster, asked about the powers of local authorities. Of course we understand the concerns about the number of betting shops on the high street. Although the numbers have been stable over the past year, they are actually in decline, and I think the effect of what we have announced today will mean that there will be less to be concerned about. We will have to see what the impact is and whether it is quite as bad as the industry says—we will have to see, as the figures are not absolutely clear. We will have to monitor that, and I can assure the noble Lord that we will do so I say again that I am very grateful for the welcome that noble Lords have given. Lastly, I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Foster, about the bravery of Baroness Jowell, not only in facing her death but in being able to say that they had got it wrong. To his credit, Tom Watson for the Labour Party said the same this morning.