Don’t delay £2 limit on betting machines, peers tell Hammond

TEN peers yesterday called on the Chancellor to urgently bring forward the clampdown on ‘crack cocaine’ high-stakes betting machines after the Daily Mail highlighted their devastating consequences.

They told Philip Hammond there was no ‘moral and ethical’ justification for a planned two-year delay before the maximum stake on fixed odds betting terminals (FOBTs) is slashed from £100 to £2.

The peers cited a harrowing article in this week’s newspaper which described the terrible toll caused to families of gambling-related suicides, often of young people who were first hooked by the machines found in most high street bookmakers.

Gamblers can bet £100 every 20 seconds on FOBTs – which offer casinostyle games such as roulette – meaning they can end up losing thousands of pounds in a single session.

Last month ministers pledged the maximum stake would be cut – despite pleas from the betting industry that the hit to profits would see jobs lost – but MPs branded Mr Hammond ‘morally reprehensible’ after

‘Children will be ruined’

being told the change will not take place until 2020.

Now a letter organised by Lord Chadlington states: ‘This timeline must be reconsidered as a matter of urgency. Government must take into account the policy implications not only at an economic level, but also from a moral and ethical standpoint.

‘Research suggests some two million people are in danger of becoming problem gamblers, and some 500,000 already are. As the Daily Mail so graphically showed this week, suicide is blighting families with perhaps as many as two every working day being attributed to gambling.’

This newspaper has led a longrunning campaign against FOBTs since Labour’s 2005 Gambling Act saw the number of machines increase from 20,000 to nearly 35,000. They have been blamed for increasing levels of gambling addiction, crime, debt, violence and family breakdown.

Earlier this week the Mail told the heart-breaking story of how Jack Ritchie, the son of a consultant psychotherapist and senior civil servant, killed himself because of a gambling addiction which began when he played FOBTs when still a schoolboy.

His grieving mother Liz told of her fury that the industry has been given two years’ grace before the stake reduction comes in, saying: ‘How many more of our children will be ruined in the meantime?’

The lords’ letter comes after bookmaker William Hill was accused of trying to ‘milk more cash’ from gamblers.

The firm, which has 2,300 betting shops and almost 10,000 FOBTs, told staff to remind customers they can still bet big because the limits have not yet been changed.

The decision to slash the stake on FOBTs followed lobbying by bookmakers – which make about £50,000-a-year profit from each one – claiming it would cost the Treasury £1.1billion in lost taxes over three years.

A Government spokesman said: ‘We are changing the rules so they balance the needs of vulnerable people, those who gamble responsibly and people who work in this sector.

‘But we must get this right, and are engaging with the industry to ensure it has sufficient time to implement these technological changes.’