Labour leader Ed Miliband has promised to give councils the power to determine their own policies towards fixed odds betting terminals - potentially opening the door to a ban on the machines.
IN December, Labour party leader Ed Miliband vowed to give councils in the UK the power to curb the number of fixed odds betting terminals located within their boundaries.
These sweeping reforms would tackle what many people – including some within the gambling industry itself - have identified as a major imbalance in gambling regulation and licensing. FOBTs have divided opinion ever since they were introduced to high street betting locations in 2001. On the one hand, bookmakers have found a way of driving earnings through machine gaming, yet on the other, this far more high-stakes form of machine gambling has drawn enormous criticism from those concerned about its impact on society and, in particular, problem gambling. This criticism has come from the usual sources, of course, led by a mainstream media whose vitriolic rhetoric – perfectly encapsulated in the oft-used label ‘crack cocaine of gambling’ – seems to have been reserved for just such a cause.
So, with all this mounting anger and pressure being piled upon politicians to take action, parliament’s decision in December to vote in favour of the recommendations set out in the triennial review – recommendations that merely advocated a ‘wait and see’ approach to FOBT stakes and prizes – caused much disbelief among those calling for an immediate remedy.
What happened, however, was a failure on the part of the Liberal Democrat supporters of the anti-FOBT campaign to dissuade their colleagues from towing the coalition line and preventing the proposals from being passed and, presumably, forcing a new debate on the issue. Which is why, only days later, Labour announced its plans to alter the Gambling Act should it win the next election.
Read the full article in the February issue of InterGame
