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Categories of Gaming Machine (Amendment) Regulations 2009

My Lords, we on these Benches agree by and large with these changes, as they will help the UK gaming industry, but deplore the fact that the Government have ignored the more urgent calls for category B3 machine changes and have failed to review the muddle of UK gambling as a whole. They have said that they will consult on category B machines but, to help the industry, that should already have been done. The Government are avoiding the much bigger challenges we face in the UK gambling market. Not least, they should be looking at the use of fixed-odds betting terminals. Have they appreciated that FOBTs provide a much more dangerous form of gambling? Indeed, the particular dangers of these terminals has inspired their nickname of the crack cocaine of gambling. Surely that would not have happened unless they were dangerous. One key objective of the Gambling Act 2005 was to protect vulnerable people from being harmed by gambling. However, because of the inadequate legislation, gamblers are being forced steadily away from gaming arcades, which have a low problem-gambling rate—just 3 per cent of players—to betting shops, which have a much higher rate, at 11 per cent of players. Conservatives support people’s right to enjoy gambling as a form of entertainment, providing the appropriate safeguards are in place to protect vulnerable players. My colleague Tobias Ellwood MP, the shadow Minister with responsibility for gambling issues, has stated:""The Government has let down not just the bingo and arcade industry that employs so many people but also the local economies that those arcades are part of"." He has also announced that an incoming Conservative Government would reverse the most damaging aspects of the Gambling Act 2005.