Leader – Hackney Council’s gesture politics over betting shops
Something must be done!
With great fanfare Hackney’s Labour leadership has thrown up its hands and uttered these immortal – and vague – words in relation to what it calls the ‘blight’ of betting shops.
To be fair, it has done a bit more than this – Hackney Council, along with numerous other local authorities, is writing to local government secretary Eric Pickles asking for Town Halls to be handed more powers to restrict where bookies can set up shop.
Licensing laws place bookies in the same bracket as financial institutions, meaning councils cannot normally refuse them permission to open simply because of the type of businesses they are.
But if Hackney’s Labour leadership is really serious about helping gambling addicts to kick their habit, it could do more than merely rail against what Mayor Jules Pipe has called “financial vampires”.
The Town Hall could resolve to plough money into services for those suffering from this disease rather engaging in mere gesture politics.
The Association of British Bookmakers (ABB) does of course have its own agenda, but it is not wrong when it describes the Town Hall’s stance as “political posturing”.
Betting shops per se are not the problem. When politicians talk about problem gambling they are presumably referring to high speed, high stakes betting terminals rather than a flutter on the gee-gees. Betting machines rake in money for betting shops as punters can lose thousands of pounds on them in minutes.
And not all betting happens on the high street. Much of it now takes place online.
The ABB has recently agreed on new restrictions to allow customers to place their own limits on the amount of money they can spend on betting machines after coming under pressure from Labour figures including Ed Miliband.
But which party deregulated gambling and encouraged ‘supercasinos’ when in power nationally? None other than Labour, whose hand-wringing seems like frantically trying to slam shut the stable door after the horse has bolted.
Labour’s error in allowing betting shops to flourish was at least acknowledged by Mayor Pipe at last month’s full council meeting.
Perhaps he has a longer memory than some.
I wonder if they are classified as financial institutions in order to achieve a higher tax rate? I was thinking about the disproportionate volume of betting shops on the 149 from Tottenham to Liverpool St yesterday when every time the bus stopped I was looking at a betting shop. Surely Gaming would be a more appropriate umbrella?
The (national) Labour policies around gambling were terrible but that doesn’t mean that members of the same party can’t realise that and try and change things: I’m glad there is action.
Incidentally, when you say: “The Town Hall could resolve to plough money into services for those suffering from this disease rather engaging in mere gesture politics” what money is that? Have you not read about the massive cuts Hackney and other inner-city Boroughs have had to their budgets?
There are many programmes and services – including these – that I am sure the Council (and other Councils) would like to provide but simply cannot – surely your anger should be directed at the Coalition Government who have made the cuts that stop the services, not those who cannot provide them because of the cuts.
I’m neither a Labour Party member (or voter) nor a Council employee (any Council) yet I can understand these simple facts – it’s a shame the Citizen fails to do so.
HackneyShire: Had Hackney Labour not cut council tax in real terms again this year, it could have freed up £360,000 for programmes such as help for people with addictions. That is the answer to your question.
You adopt Tory policies and you get Tory problems: ‘private affluence and public squalor’ (as JK Galbraith famously described the US).
Sarah
I would have put Council Tax up too (and think a combined snub by the inner city Boroughs to Tory policies the best move) but if you seriously think that £360k would have made the slightest difference to something like this in the face of the huge central government cuts then you are living on a different planet. Just look at the other areas where Councils are forced into making cuts and you’ll see my point – all the people that are suffering as a result that all need more but there is nothing to give them.
It may be convenient for the Citizen to make a cheap point (as usual – ironically while criticising the Council for doing the same) but the anger should be directed at the Government: that is where the problems stem from. And, as I said, there are no funds to be ploughed in anywhere, end of.
HackneyShire:
I agree that £360,000 is not very much money, but it is not, as you say, ‘no’ money.
Moreover, had Hackney Council increased council tax by an average of just 1% in each of the past nine years rather than freezing it, the cumulative increase would have yielded quite a bit more to spend on social and other programmes.
Hold on people what’s with the £3.1M that the Conservative councilors found in Hackney Led Labour Council Waste Money, to put it into the benefits to secure and bring the benefit standards to what it was to a 100%.
Guess what Labour said No and toke the £3.1M that could help us a lot and give us back the full 100% Befits! They instead put into road humps, bumps that we all against as hackney has enough humps!
We need to take our act together and fight this one out with the mad council who is has the manopoly in hackney