The government should have taken action on FOBTs to protect gambling addicts long ago

When the bookies complain that the change in policy will force closures of their shops, it is rather as if Sweeney Todd protested that he could no longer sell hot meat pies if he was prevented from murdering his customers to provide cheap ingredients

The maximum stake has been reduced to £2 (Reuters)

The blandly named fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs) were better, and more accurately, known as “the crack cocaine of gambling”. Most, perhaps all, MPs are familiar with well-documented and heart-rending cases of the misery they inflicted upon families since they were legalised in 2005.

Thousands of pounds can easily be lost during a short session with a £100 maximum stake, and something in the order of £300m a year in aggregate was lost by problem gamblers – more than the equivalent sums lost by addicts on the horses, dogs and in casinos combined.

Given the widespread misery they caused, and the high-profile campaigns to ban them, it is perhaps surprising that it has taken so long for this reform to arrive. Then again, the gambling trade, thanks to the easy profits from FOBTs, has had the money to spend on some highly effective lobbying, while HM Treasury has appreciated the funds that betting duty – in reality the most regressive tax there is, given its clientele – has delivered for the hard-pressed public finances. It is, in other words, more or less nakedly about money and expedience, an amoral tale unusual even in the mercenary world of Westminster.

Or rather it has been, as the culture secretary Matt Hancock, in one of his earliest acts in office, has shown commendable courage and moral sense in bringing the maximum stake down to a more reasonable £2. This indeed from an MP whose constituency contains Newmarket, the capital city of British horse racing, and thus one with lucrative connections to the big gambling companies. He is, then, to be doubly congratulated for delivering relief to families blighted by the addiction that FOBTs foster.

The industry claims that problem gamblers will simply take their habits elsewhere, to places even less well regulated than their betting shops. Well, perhaps, but that is simply a reason for maintaining the pressure on alternative outlets, including those online. For those gamblers who prefer to waste their money away from home, they will not be able to do so with quite the same abandon on horse racing or on other sporting bets.

The FOBTs were uniquely profitable for the gambling companies, precisely because they could consume so much money in so short a space of time, and because the machines were so well attuned to some of the gambling addicts most persuasive fallacies. They breed gambling addiction in a way other forms of betting tend not to. That was what made them especially dangerous.

Gambling addiction is not a zero-sum game; deregulation can, and has, made it worse.

If there is one unarguably positive thing that the May government will deserve to be remembered for in its weak and unstable time in office, it will be the effective abolition of the FOBTs. It brings into even sharper perspective the appalling mistake the Blair government made in allowing them to take root under the Gambling Act 2005, which had as one of its objectives the protection of vulnerable people. The Brown and Cameron governments, greatly to their shame, failed to react to the real social evils that were overtaking communities as gambling addiction on FOBTs took hold in poorer neighbourhoods. Perhaps some of those responsible for this inaction will account for their behaviour. They certainly should do so.

In the meantime, the gambling firms threaten struggling high streets with the closure of bookies shops and the loss of many jobs. It may turn out that their howls of aguish are theatrical, and the effects of the changes exaggerated, and the government is likely to phase the reform in in any case. Yet even if the very worst of the dire predictions came to pass, we know that high streets can adapt to the loss of certain activities.

Moreover, there is a price that cannot be paid to ensure there are retail outlets and jobs in run-down districts, and better, more socially useful ways exist to allocate resources. When the bookies complain that the change in policy will force closures of their shops, it is rather as if Sweeney Todd protested that he could no longer make a living out of selling hot meat pies if he was prevented from murdering his customers to provide cheap ingredients. Besides, the share prices of the giants hardly budged after the announcement, suggesting any financial damage has already been discounted by the punters on the stock market.

No amount of industry spin or millions flowing to the exchequer can alter the fact that the FOBTs were an unalloyed evil; their grip on deluded gambling addicts should have been broken long ago.