The problem with the hon. Gentleman’s argument is that smoking has gone down in this country every single year, without fail, since 1975—every single year, without fail, whether before or after the smoking ban. It was therefore inevitable that after a ban on smoking it would go down, because it would have gone down if there had been no ban. That cause and effect argument does not wash with me, I am afraid. People who bet will go on to the internet.
To give another argument, The Times had an article based on information from the Gambling Commission showing that 16% of under-16s were gambling every week. What were they gambling on? It was not fixed odds betting terminals—they were not going into betting shops. They were gambling on fruit machines, and largely on national lottery scratchcards. People can purchase those scratchcards at 16. They can gamble at 16 on the national lottery.
Who argues against that in this House—who argues against young people getting into gambling at the age of 16 like that? I do. I think it is an absolute outrage that people can play the national lottery at 16. If we believe that gambling should be allowed only at 18, that should be the case for all gambling. But who is arguing against playing the lottery at 16? No one. Even though young people are getting into gambling on scratchcards, people do not complain. That is not because they care about the people losing money; it is because they are concerned about the people winning the money. The money from the lottery goes to good causes, so people think it is fine for others to get an addiction to scratchcards. Although they do not like to say so, and so dress it up by saying they are concerned about problem gamblers, the fact is that what lies behind measures such as the new clause is that people do not like the people who are winning the money. They do not give a stuff about the people who are losing the money. That is the sad thing.
How much did Derek Webb give to problem-gambling charities when he was accumulating his hundreds of millions of pounds? Perhaps he did give some money,
but I am not aware of anything. The bookmakers give millions and millions—about £6 million a year—to problem-gambling charities to help people with their treatment, and that would be under threat if we did away with these betting shops.
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I know my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames) cares a great deal about the racing industry, and every single betting shop in this country gives £30,000 in picture rights to racing. Every shop that closes means £30,000 less for the racing industry, which employs an awful lot of people. The proposal will have unintended consequences.
New clause 1 is a solution looking for a problem, and it is motivated by people who are simply against gambling. They do not like gambling and they do not like betting shops. That is fair enough, and it is a perfectly respectable position to hold, but they should at least be honest about it and about the motivation behind the new clause. It is not about problem gamblers. There will be problem gamblers whether we have fixed-odds betting terminals or not, and we must do everything we can to help those individuals to get out of the mess that they are in with their lives. Problem gambling will be solved by treatment, education and research, not by getting rid of a product or targeting betting shops because we do not happen to like them. Most people in here have probably never even been into a betting shop and met the customers, but that does not stop Members spouting on about something that they know next to nothing about.
The hon. Member for Hyndburn talked about the clustering of betting shops on the high street. The fact of the matter is that a person can only go into one shop at a time, and the fact that there are two, three, four or five shops on a high street does not make that person more or less of a problem gambler. Whether there is one shop or five makes absolutely no difference to problem gamblers, and it is absolute nonsense to suggest that it does.