I’m now eight weeks into my New Year’s resolution to spend my Fridays campaigning with some of our fantastic target seat candidates across the country. One thing that has struck me on the doorsteps is that it is not the high politics of opinion polls, votes in Parliament and endless speculation on personalities that matter to people. What actually matters is local issues – from their kid’s school to the shops on their local high street.

With that in mind, I recently lead a debate in the Lords on concerns expressed by 93 councils in England and Wales over the growth of high street betting machines. Fixed Odds Betting Terminals (FOBTs) offer high speed, high stakes gambling – with punters able to bet up to £100 every 20 seconds. To offer some comparison, other high street locations have a limit of £2 a stake and even casinos limit machine stakes to £5. Effectively, these machines have turned high street bookmakers into casinos, offering astonishingly hard forms of gambling right on people’s doorsteps.

I am not anti-gambling – but I’m concerned about the spiralling number of these machines for two reasons. Firstly, they are fuelling the proliferation of betting shops in poorer areas. It is now a common sight to see two or three betting shops on one high street. Indeed, on one street in Newham, there is an astonishing 18 betting shops and that equates to 72 FOBT machines. It’s still a tough climate for high streets; but the solution certainly isn’t betting shops sucking money out of local communities and causing huge social problems.

Secondly, it is clear that these machines are causing harm. There are countless stories of how these machines are fuelling problem gambling – two weeks after research concluded more than one in three FOBT users are problem gamblers a  gambler lost £3,500 in under an hour on these machines. Moreover, they have been linked with anti-social behaviour and crime. In November 2013 the Guardian exposed how FOBTs are used by drug dealers to launder money.

Gambling regulation is decided at a national level – but the impact is felt by people across the country. It is almost impossible for councils struggling against yet another betting shop application to successfully object in the face of the financial might of the bookmakers. Councils which have tried to object have been defeated one way or another so in an unprecedented step, 93 local authorities from across the political spectrum (and including Sutton Council led by a great local Lib Dem team) have come together to call for the Government to act.

Using the Sustainable Communities Act, they argue the stake on these machines should be cut to £2 to limit the harm they are causing. This action represents the widest support any Sustainable Communities Act proposal has ever received and has been backed by the Local Government Association. The submission is now with Government, which must respond within six months.

Bookmakers are against the proposals because they make over half their profits from these machines and warn the proposal would cause shops to shut and jobs to be lost. However, a report by NERA Economic Consulting found that the move could create a net positive 2,000 high street jobs as money returned to other more labour-intensive and productive high street shops.

Liberal Democrats have led the way in both recognising the problem of these machines and seeking solutions. At conference in 2013 we passed a motion calling for councils to get the power to limit the number of betting shops in their area. Don Foster has long campaigned against these machines and John Leech as our spokesperson on Culture, Media and Sport issues, has adopted the £2 stake as party policy. Now we must push for the Government to back the councils although I’m not convinced our Coalition partners are prepared to listen. That’s why I also hope to see a commitment to cut FOBT stakes in our manifesto in the coming weeks.

The proposal to cut the stake is a sensible solution which will bring the machines in line with international norms, stop vulnerable people losing their life savings in only a couple of hours and help reinvigorate our high streets.

* Tim Clement-Jones is Lib Dem Lords DSIT Spokesperson and former member of the Joint Committee on the draft Online Safety Bill