That the Grand Committee takes note of the Report from the Select Committee on the Social and Economic Impact of the Gambling Industry Gambling Harm—Time for Action (Session 2019–21, HL Paper 79).
My Lords, it is now three years since, out of the blue, I was appointed chairman of the Select Committee on the Social and Economic Impact of the Gambling Industry. Being chairman of this committee taught me a number of things. The first was how Members of your Lordships’ House, of all parties and none, can come together as a committee to pool their diverse knowledge and experience and produce a unanimous report on such a complex, contentious and important subject—a matter of life and death. I am immensely grateful to all the most diligent members of the committee who worked with me on this inquiry. The second thing that I learned was the importance of the large volume of written and oral evidence that we received from all interested parties in the sector, which we were able to evaluate and on which our report is, I hope, securely based. The third thing that I discovered as our inquiry progressed was how urgent is the need for action—a matter to which I shall return.
I start by making clear what the committee did not do: we did not recommend preventing gambling. For those who enjoy it, we recommended nothing to make it less enjoyable. Everyone spends money on things that they enjoy, such as travel, sport, the arts and other things, and, if people wish to spend their money on gambling, that is their prerogative. But “affordability is absolutely key”—that was said to us in evidence by the then CEO of one of the largest gambling operators. The problems start the moment someone begins to spend on gambling more than they might otherwise happily and safely spend on any other leisure activity. As we heard time and time again in evidence, once the problems start they escalate until, in too many cases, they get out of hand and what was once an enjoyable leisure activity becomes an addiction.
As with so many addictions, things can deteriorate disastrously and quickly but with gambling, unlike other addictions, this can happen unknown to even the closest family and friends. The committee held an informal meeting with the families of gamblers who had taken their own lives and heard heart-rending stories of how they discovered only after the deaths of their loved ones that their husbands, sons or brothers had been gambling far beyond their means. We also took formal evidence on this, and I pay particular tribute to Charles and Liz Ritchie, whose son Jack took his own life at the age of 24. They have set up a charity, Gambling with Lives, so that other parents and relations in the same situation can join with them to promote reform of the law and regulations and improve the treatment available to problem gamblers.
What is the size of the problem? As I said, our inquiry was entirely evidence-based, as it should be. Although some of the evidence is conflicting, the best estimate is that some 0.7% of the adult population—about 340,000 people—are problem gamblers. Some 55,000 of those are schoolchildren aged 11 to 16. In excess of 2 million family and friends are affected by harm to physical and mental health, loss of savings and homes, loss of jobs, criminal activity, family breakdown and sometimes, tragically, ultimately death.
My Lords, I had the honour of being a member of this committee. It was beautifully chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Grade, and had a brilliant secretary. It is an outstanding report.
I will talk about the problem of addiction. As we know, there are many forms of addiction—tobacco, alcohol, drugs and gambling—which are all very serious. Gambling is as serious as the others. The numbers addicted to gambling are, in fact, very similar to the numbers addicted to drugs and alcohol. Each affects roughly 1% of the population, yet we treat these addictions completely differently. It is quite extraordinary when you look at it.
On tobacco, for example, we ban all advertising and the NHS spends billions on treating the consequences of tobacco consumption. On drugs, we ban their consumption totally. On drug and alcohol dependence, we spend more than £1 billion each on treating those who suffer from them. What about gambling? Regulation is pretty minimal, as the noble Lord, Lord Grade, pointed out, and we provide almost no treatment to the victims. This all has to change.
I will focus on just two issues: the regulation of gambling advertising and marketing, and the treatment services for those addicted to gambling. Until the 2005 Act, most advertising of gambling was banned. Quite simply, that is the position that we need to re-establish. Nearly half of all children aged 11 to 16 report that they see gambling advertisements at least once a week. No wonder the rate of problem gambling is higher in that age group than in any other. Is this not an incredible fact about our society? It is illegal to gamble under 16, yet people aged 11 to 16 have the highest rate of addiction. That is also, of course, extremely serious for their future. As a committee, we met many gambling addicts, who almost invariably said that they had got hooked before the age of 18. At least a third of all gamblers say that it was advertising that brought them in and there is other good evidence that advertising directly causes more people to gamble.
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Layard, and I found myself in much agreement with what he was saying. I pay tribute to the committee and particularly the chairman, my noble friend Lord Grade of Yarmouth, for the work it has done and the very balanced, erudite and compelling report it produced, Gambling Harm—Time for Action.
There is a widespread if not universal view that more action is needed, and urgently. Although I accept that there is a balance to be struck between the leisure aspect of gambling and the protection of the public, particularly vulnerable members of the public—we have heard the truly chilling statistics about young children problem gamblers—the scales at present are heavily weighted in favour of the betting industry, in broad terms. There is a need for action and the public health dimension needs accentuating more. I have the greatest respect for the Minister but DCMS and the Gambling Commission have been slow to act. They need to do much more, and much more quickly.
There is a need to protect the vulnerable much more. The committee heard clearly about the problems of debt, homelessness and relationship breakdown, career and work problems, and particularly the problems of depression and suicide, which should cause us all to stop and think. The betting industry makes considerable profits; I note what the noble Lord, Lord Layard, said about distinguishing the levy from the need for the NHS to step forward, but a 1% levy on the betting industry would generate £140 million per annum, which would help to fund some of the organisations doing such great work at present. But they could do far more and, on the “polluter pays” principle, I see no problem with saying that the betting industry should pay towards the treatment of addiction services so that we can improve them to the extent of having first-class services, which is what we really need.
My Lords, I too served on the Select Committee and am grateful for the contributions of so many people, as we worked away at this subject and took evidence over an extended period. I also declare my interest as a vice-president of the LGA.
I became involved in this area long before the Select Committee started its work because, in my day job, a family came to see me and simply broke down as they told me the story of their son’s addiction and how he eventually took his own life. It was the most extraordinary and transformative hour, for me, as I listened to the sheer, raw pain of a family that had been destroyed—and to this day is still destroyed. They have not gone public; they still feel a mixture of deep hurt and shame because of what has gone on. They have not been able to rebuild their lives.
At the end of that hour, I found myself rather lamely trying to make a few comforting comments. Then I came to the House and put down a series of Questions over two or three weeks to find out about the nature of the problem, because I knew nothing about this. Much to my surprise, my inbox was filled with people contacting me to say, “Can we come and talk to you to tell you our story? Do you know what this has done to our family? My cousin’s son has just died”. Another family had lost their home. I was absolutely shocked by what I heard.
I hear the arguments that many people enjoy gambling. Our committee decided that we are not prohibitionists and do not want to stop people gambling, but there is an underbelly to this that simply has not been seen. Even on the Select Committee, some were shocked by the testimonies we heard of what is going on. It is a very different story from the wall-to-wall adverts of groups of people happily shouting and being joyful; it is actually one of lives being destroyed.
I will highlight and comment on three areas. So far, I feel the response of Her Majesty’s Government has been deeply disappointing. It does not take account of the depth and scale of the problem, and the Gambling Commission has not been much better. Often, the commission has acted because there has been a head of steam and a number of people have been raising issues. Rather than taking a proactive stance, shaping this industry and people’s response to it, it is rather lamely following behind. There are some notable exceptions in one or two things it has done, but that is my general point.
My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-chair of Peers for Gambling Reform. I, too, was a member of the House of Lords Select Committee on the Social and Economic Impact of the Gambling Industry, which was so excellently chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Grade, and supported by a splendid secretariat, as has been said.
I found membership of this Select Committee a sobering experience. As we have heard, gambling is a very big industry and it brings enjoyment to many people. but there is another side of the picture. The committee heard how addictive gambling causes homelessness, loss of employment, imprisonment, depression, alcohol dependency and, most seriously, suicide. When we take into account the figures for problem gambling, particularly among young people, as quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Grade, it is clear that this is a really serious problem in our society. All political parties have acknowledged that by committing themselves to addressing it—and that now needs to take place. But effective action to prevent the excesses, while allowing the pleasure to continue, needs joined-up thinking across government.
I and the Select Committee feared that my old department, the Treasury, would be one of the things that would drag the anchor on reform of this problem. We thought the Treasury would be inhibited by fear of killing the goose that lays the golden egg, in the form of contributions to the Exchequer each year. But this is to look at only one side of the account. It is not just about the yield from the revenue, but, even if it were, Peers for Gambling Reform commissioned NERA Economic Consulting, as the right reverend Prelate said, to assess the economic effects of the reforms that the Select Committee recommended. NERA’s report is well worth reading. It assessed, first, that the industry’s profits are easily robust enough to exceed the effects of a mandatory levy, which could fund education and treatment of those addicted.
If the noble Lord will forgive me, I am afraid that we are about to have a vote. We will take a small moment to press our buttons and then reconvene in a moment. I apologise to the noble Lord; he was mid-flow.
My Lords, we would normally delay for 10 minutes for a vote, but I suspect your Lordships have all pressed your buttons already. We might be able to continue if the Committee does not mind occasional interruptions by the jingling Bells. Shall we do that? Lord Butler, do you wish to continue?
My Lords, before the interruption I was saying that this is not just an issue for the Exchequer. There are gains for the economy as a whole if expenditure by the public in the form of problem gambling is reduced and diverted to other sectors which are more labour-intensive. The gambling industry itself is not very labour-intensive and the expenditure of those sorts of sums will generate more employment elsewhere. NERA has assessed that there could be a net gain to the economy of as many as 30,000 jobs and up to £400 million in employee earnings, which of course in itself would generate revenue to the Exchequer.
The coming publication of the White Paper is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to address deep-seated social issues. By addressing the harms of addictive gambling, the Government’s review has a chance to bring about not only a major social reform but one which is economically viable and fiscally advantageous.
We live in a world that is hungry for data, where every business, charity, NGO and government department is eager to gather more and more information about our health, habits, motivation, interests and desires. Whether we like it or not, every journey we make is tracked by CCTV, and every keystroke we make on a laptop, tablet or smartphone can be analysed so that we can be ever more effectively targeted by marketeers. I am sure we are all familiar with the eerie way that typing the name of a place, product or service into a search engine immediately leads to our being swamped with ads for that very thing.
As a lifelong professional retailer of scale eager to grow my business, I quickly recognised the value and importance of data and communications in fulfilling my corporate ambitions. The more I could learn about a prospective customer and their needs and aspirations, the better I could target and personalise my communications to persuade and encourage them to do business with my company. It worked for me then, and it is working for the gambling industry now, but with several key differences. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever become addicted to buying sofas—and we certainly tried hard—I never attempted to sell our products specifically to children, and I was working in the age before the smartphone became universal.
Now nearly every adult, young person and very many children in this country carry around a device that allows them to play games, have fun and gamble around the clock, and provides constant feedback on what they enjoy. This gives unscrupulous operators in the gambling industry the perfect opportunity to identify an individual’s weakness and exploit them—accentuating the thrill of risk taking, the adrenaline rush and the chance of winning money, and giving them every possible encouragement to gamble irresponsibly to the maximum. The speed of change facilitated by advancements in technology has been stellar. Regulations, legislation and implementations have clearly been left far behind, and they now desperately need to catch up and become relevant to fit the digital era.
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When we said in our report that, on average, one problem gambler committed suicide every day, a fact-checking organisation wrote to take issue with us. It said that the annual figure was only 250—as if that was acceptable. In fact, our evidence was that between 250 and 650 people commit suicide every year. Since we reported, a survey by Public Health England has estimated that there are 409 suicides associated with problem gambling each year in England alone. Since our committee was set up three years ago, not less than a thousand young men—it is almost invariably young men—will have taken their own lives, and this will continue for as long as nothing is done.
Who, then, should be taking action to ensure that no one gambles more than they can afford? All of us, of course, but principally the industry, the Gambling Commission and, ultimately, the Government. First, on the industry, it will take every opportunity to tell you that problem gamblers are only a small number compared to the many who enjoy an innocent flutter. It will not be so keen to tell you that although only a small proportion gamble excessively, the profit from those gamblers is out of all proportion to their number. The greater the problem, the higher the profit.
The industry’s story—in particular the story of the Betting and Gaming Council, the trade body—is that it recognises the problem but that much has already been done on a voluntary basis. The industry accepts that more needs to be done but says that it is making a major contribution to research and treatment, while working with the Gambling Commission and the Government to change law and practice so that problem gambling can be reduced. The industry welcomes the Government’s review of the Gambling Act, which will give it another opportunity to argue that a few small changes—preferably on a voluntary basis—are all that is needed. I call this approach “confess and avoid”.
Nobody, problem gambler or not, can place a bet unless an operator is prepared to accept that gamble. The operators are ultimately in control. They have an immense amount of data about their customers, especially those gambling online, which is where most gambling happens these days. They know how much their customers spend, their spending patterns and the time they spend gambling. They know who spends three hours gambling at night and who gambles heavily immediately after payday. They can access detailed information on a customer’s financial situation from bank statements, proof of income and credit checks. They know whether a customer has previously self-excluded or tried to do so, and whether a customer has more than one account with them or with other operators. They know the transaction history and risk indicators. They already have to do money-laundering checks. They could be using all their information to make sure that they accept bets only from those who can afford it. If in doubt, they should refuse the bet. Since they will not do this voluntarily, the rules must be changed to force them to do so.
One obstacle that the sector has repeatedly thrown up is the issue of data protection. It points out, correctly, that most problem gamblers have accounts with more than one operator; it says that no single operator can deal with affordability issues if it does not have the whole picture. Operators told us in evidence that they could not share the information they have with other operators. We put this to the Information Commissioner’s Office, and the ICO told us categorically that data protection legislation does not prevent gambling operators sharing the personal data of vulnerable users. That was two years ago.
Since then, there have been tripartite conversations between the industry, the ICO and the Gambling Commission to formulate ways in which data can be processed, exchanged and used. The ICO is there in an advisory capacity, and it is not for it to take the initiative. The industry has no incentive to advance matters. The Gambling Commission, which should be taking matters forward, seems to detect no great need for urgency. That is why the exchange of data is still very partial and very patchy.
I harbour a faint hope that, when my noble friend the Minister replies to this debate, he will tell us what the Government have in mind as a solution to this crucial issue. I fear, however, that your Lordships will be told in reply to this and many other questions that we will raise that we must wait even longer for the White Paper, when all will be revealed.
I can already confidently identify one major failing in the White Paper: its title. The whole exercise is labelled a review of the Gambling Act 2005. It is nice and catchy to say and a good soundbite that the Act is an analogue law in a digital age. That is true, but the full truth is much more nuanced. Although in 2005 the smartphone—in this context, a betting shop in every teenager’s pocket—was in its infancy, the Act had flexibility built into it. It is indeed a law passed in a largely analogue age, but it was already able to cope with most digital developments. It is not the Act itself that is at fault; the fault lies with those who have failed to use the powers already enshrined in it.
The Act gives the Gambling Commission almost total control of licensing conditions and codes of practice. The commission has always had the power needed to enforce them, with the ultimate sanction of suspension or removal of an operator’s licence. By amending the licence conditions as developments occurred, it could have kept pace with them. It could have dealt with most of the affordability issues that I have mentioned. To be fair, it has tightened the rules on the age and identity checks that operators must do before allowing someone to gamble online. It has also banned the use of credit cards for betting—at last. But so much more could have been done. So many lives might have been saved. The Government need to address the lack of accountability of the gambling regulator.
Among the many recommendations that the committee made, the Gambling Commission could have established a system for testing all new games against a series of harm indicators, including their addictiveness and whether they will appeal to children, and not approving a game that scores too highly on the harm indicators. It could have introduced equalisation of speed of play and spin, so that no game can be played quicker online than in a physical casino, betting shop or bingo hall. It could have required the licensing of affiliates. It could have prohibited bet-to-view and other inducements. It could have required every operator that has been notified of an individual’s self-exclusion not to send them any communications during the period of self-exclusion and thereafter to do so only if the individual removes the self-exclusion. All of this would have led to a significant reduction in problem gambling—and it still could, if action is taken now.
There are inevitably changes—just a handful—that need primary legislation. One of these is the setting up of a statutory gambling ombudsman service to settle disputes between gambling operators and gamblers. This is not a matter for the regulator. It is right that the Gambling Commission should adjudicate on breaches of licence conditions, such as when Sky Betting & Gaming distributed a promotional offer of “Bet £5, get 100 free spins” to 41,395 self-excluded customers and a quarter of a million customers who had unsubscribed from the operator’s marketing emails. However, where a punter has lost money or been otherwise affected by the failures of an industry giant, it is right that there should be an ombudsman to adjudicate, similar to the Financial Ombudsman Service.
It would also take primary legislation to create a duty of care owed by operators to their customers. To be clear, I am not just referring to operators being careful of the interests of their customers; I am talking about a duty, the breach of which could give rise to proceedings brought by a customer against an operator for breach of statutory duty. But, I repeat, the changes that need primary legislation are very few.
I conclude with a little history. It was in 1999 that Ministers of the Labour Government first considered reviewing and liberalising the law on gambling. The Budd review reported in 2001, a draft Bill was published in November 2003 and it was sent to a pre-legislative Joint Committee, which reported in April 2004. The Bill received Royal Assent in April 2005 but did not come into force until September 2007—eight years after reform was first proposed.
Fast forward 20 years: the Government promised a review of the Gambling Act in their manifesto before the 2019 election, as did the other major parties. The consultation paper was not issued until a year later. The consultation closed in March 2021, more than a year ago. A White Paper was promised by the end of that year; we are now promised it next month. If primary legislation is needed, it will be lucky to get a slot next Session but might be passed by the end of this Parliament in 2024. If, as in the case of the 2005 Act, we have to wait another two years before it is brought into force, that takes us to 2026—seven years after the first undertakings for reform. Given the gambling-related suicide rates, that cannot be acceptable.
If, in replying to this debate, the Minister tells the Grand Committee that reform of the Gambling Act itself needs to wait for an opportunity for primary legislation, that will of course be true, since the Act can be amended only by further primary legislation, but if my noble friend tells us that other gambling reform must also wait, I shall be deeply disappointed—as, I am sure, all the members of my committee will be. As I have tried to explain, so much could be done—indeed, could already have been done—by Ministers, but mostly by the Gambling Commission with the powers that it already has. The title of the committee’s report was Time for Action. That was two years ago. Meanwhile, today, like every other day, a young problem gambler may already have taken his own life. I beg to move.
Surely we should be banning the advertising of gambling, and with it the sponsorship of sports by the gambling industry, which is another form of advertising. The only exceptions could be horseracing and other similar sports, which children do not watch. The ban should also cover all forms of direct online marketing.
This is not a draconian approach, compared with what is done with other forms of addictive behaviour and substances. In fact, the YouGov poll says that two-thirds of the British population want gambling advertising banned. So why can we not have that? It simply means going back to where we were before 2005.
Since 2005, of course, a massively profitable industry has developed, with a yield of £14 billion in 2019. But 60% of those profits come from 5% of gamblers—the 5% who are either addicts or at risk. We have to protect people from getting hooked, and that means protecting them from advertising.
Then, when people are hooked, we must provide help. As the chairman said, roughly one gambler a day dies through suicide. This is a major public health problem. Yet of all addicts, only 2% to 3% get any form of treatment. This compares with 30% of those with drug and alcohol problems. There are good treatments for gambling disorders and the NHS should be providing them. As we know, 15 clinics have been promised, which should open as soon as possible, but rapidly after that we need there to be a comparable number.
There is a good model of how to organise all this in the NHS’s so-called Improving Access to Psychological Therapies—IAPT—programme for depression and anxiety disorders. In remarkable contrast to the speed of the Government’s gambling proposals, this set up nearly 100 services within its first three years. How can we tolerate just 15 clinics being proposed over an unspecified period? It is not good enough.
This problem must not get muddled up with the levy issue, because it is a duty of the NHS to treat health problems, and we know there is going to be a problem over the levy—its method of disbursement, and so on. The Government should be mandating the NHS in its annual mandate to rapidly expand the number of clinics for gambling disorder.
We know that this is not a marginal problem. The noble Lord, Lord Grade, referred to 340,000 addicts, including 55,000 aged under 16, but, of course, in addition to those numbers, their families and colleagues are affected, the community is affected and crime increases. It is estimated that altogether some 2 million people in our community are affected by this problem. The main point I am trying to make is: let us think about gambling addiction as a problem as serious as tobacco, drugs and alcohol.
I believe that we have a Minister who understands the issues and I really hope that his department can produce a White Paper which matches the scale of the problem.
As I say, the Gambling Commission and DCMS could be doing more. We need not to wait for legislation but to act urgently now. The fines and penalties are not sufficient in their impact on large corporations, as I think the committee found, and there is a need for increased powers for the Gambling Commission. It may be that that needs to wait for legislation, but I am not convinced that it does. I thank the LGA for its briefing on this, as local authorities need additional powers to stop clusters of betting shops in communities, and those would be very welcome.
Perhaps I may say something about the fast-changing nature of the gambling industry, which is why urgent and forward-looking action is needed. During the pandemic, we obviously saw a slowdown in relation to casinos and betting shops—indeed, a shutdown of them. That was temporary but meanwhile there has been a large growth in online gambling, which continues. It was of course happening before the pandemic started; between 2015-16 and 2018-19, online gambling grew by 18%. There has been a massive and continued growth online during the pandemic, as would be expected, and that continues with home working. That presents problems, particularly with the young who, as we have seen, tend to be more vulnerable. Action is therefore needed to stop the exacerbation of harm that we see in that area.
The Government and the Gambling Commission need to act decisively here and I very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Layard, in relation to advertising. It contributes to and exacerbates the harm, and urgent action is needed on that. The Government need to extend the remit of the Gambling Commission to act to prevent future harm. As my noble friend Lord Grade said, the sharing of information on affordability problems and that exchange of data is crucial. Too often, in all areas, the excuse given is of the GDPR. I sit on the Select Committee on Public Services and we have heard the same thing: “We’re restricted on the exchange of information between government departments by the GDPR”—nonsense. This is not the case, or if it is it needs changing swiftly to ensure that the reason for the legislation is to protect personal freedom and data. It is not to stop the greater good that we need to step forward to do.
There is a need for urgent action and we should not wait for legislation. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say on that but it really is the time for excuses to end. The time for action is now.
Recommendations 54 to 63 are about the statutory smart levy for research, education and treatment, and the need for it to be independently funded. This is fundamental to what we are doing and arguing for. If we are not able to provide independent funding, virtually no respectable researcher or university department will be taken seriously in today’s world. This really matters. We need to ensure that we make a division between the money coming from the industry and the way it is bounded and then distributed. As has been pointed out, the powers to introduce a statutory smart levy already exist within Section 123 of the 2005 Act. It would produce significantly more money for us to undertake the research that is currently funded by a cash-strapped NHS. As one person summed up the problem, the gambling industry has brilliantly privatised the profits and nationalised the costs: taxpayers are paying to treat the problems created by these gambling companies.
I shall say a brief word on affordability checks. It is self-evident that limiting how much an individual can deposit, based on their income, will inevitably reduce the overall harm caused. The important thing is that affordability checks have to be meaningful, not symbolic. It would in reality be no good to set the affordable limit before checks are required at £300 when, particularly at a time of rising costs, that £300 might be crucial to feeding, housing or clothing a family. I know the committee’s report never committed to any specific affordability mechanism, although my opinion is that the £100 per month soft cap proposed by the Social Market Foundation represents a sensible, evidence-based solution that would enable the majority of gamblers to continue “having a flutter”—to co-opt the industry’s language—while protecting the most vulnerable from harm.
I also want to say something on advertising and the social normalising of gambling through its very close association with—some would say hijacking of—sport. The number of adverts that you see when you watch, say, a soccer match, is striking. It is so much so that, as the Committee knows, groups of passionate soccer fans are now campaigning against them and a number of important clubs have taken a principled stand of not taking any money from the gambling industry. I salute them for what they are doing and point out that they are managing to fund their clubs without relying on the gambling industry. The argument at the moment is that if this money were not available, the whole edifice of professional football would collapse. That was the argument about tobacco a few years ago: that if football did not have the advertising revenue from tobacco, it would all collapse. It did not. Football found new ways to fund what it was doing.
On advertising, the prime recommendation is to try to end the association between sport and gambling. As has already been said, we know that something between 55,000 and 62,000 children are diagnosed with some sort of gambling problem when in law they should not be able to gamble at all, so goodness knows how many are gambling if that number are diagnosed with it. I think ending it is in the industry’s best interests. I now know three families who have decided that they do not want their young children to watch some Prime matches because they feel their children are being groomed—they use that language—and given a message which they strongly disagree with. I agree with that point.
When I was young and watched football matches, I did so because I found excitement in watching the sport, with the two teams competing. Watching a soccer match nowadays with one of my young relatives, I thought he was texting somebody but I discovered that he was placing bets on it throughout. His understanding is that you get your pleasure not by watching the sport but by betting on it. Is that not a brilliant move by the industry? It is very clever how it has changed.
There is a fundamental issue here. The independent economic research by NERA shows that the worries of the industry that it will not be able to fund itself are dubious when you look at the facts. We provided that research for those who need it. If the principle underlying the Government’s gambling reform is a public health approach, they simply cannot continue to allow gambling to dominate every facet of sport and to promote an industry that was previously merely accepted, rather than being the norm. I am proud to have been part of this Select Committee. I am dismayed to feel there is a complacency, and I urge Her Majesty’s Government to look seriously at this empirical data and take some radical steps quickly to try to stem this serious social problem we face, even if it is not quite an epidemic of suicides. I hope we will see some action on this before too long.
On the Exchequer side of the account, NERA’s report assessed not only that there would be a net gain to the Exchequer on the revenue side, but that this would be all the greater when one takes into account savings in the amount that the Government currently spend on dealing with the effects of gambling, primarily through healthcare costs. This really is a problem that can be addressed only by looking across the range of departments. In addition, by diverting some of the expenditure by the public in the form of problem gambling to other sectors that are more labour-intensive, there could be a net gain of some 30,000 jobs to the economy. So it is not simply an Exchequer matter; this is an issue where there are gains to the economy as a whole—
I am no puritan; I have never been strongly against gambling as a legitimate source of entertainment. Social gambling can add interest, enjoyment and spice to sporting events, and it has become a cultural norm, but we still must take care. Giant oaks from tiny acorns grow, and the current proliferation of the compulsive behaviour of dangerously addictive gambling, particularly among young people looking for a buzz and easy money—including those under 16 whose participation is already illegal—is an evil that we just cannot allow to continue. It is a rich seam for the gaming operators to mine, but, as we have heard, it is literally destroying lives. It creates financial hardship, emotional pain, and social, job and relationship problems, and poses a major health and suicide risk. It has progressed to a magnitude and extent that I believe are not generally recognised and acknowledged. Having spent many years working with young people through the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and Outward Bound to help them build their confidence, maximise their potential and realise their ambitions, I find it heartbreaking that so many young people are now at risk of being blighted by gambling addiction and gambling to excess, with lives even being lost because of it, as we have heard.
Gambling is not going anywhere. It has been around for ever, and it is here to stay; of that I think we can be assured. More than half the nation’s adults are regular gamblers. While most people do not develop a gambling problem, it can be a nightmare of epic proportions for those who do—at a massive cost to the gambler, their family and society at large, appealing as it does to those from all walks of life. It is a big money business and, consequently, it wields power and influence and can easily succumb to the temptation to compromise values and standards in the race for big profits.
We need to inform and regularly remind the public of the true magnitude of the problem, and urgently add gambling education to the national curriculum to make young people aware of its risks as clearly as we teach them about the dangers of drink and drugs and the importance of safe sex. Gambling is a bigger problem among teens than it is in adults, and research by the Mayo Clinic indicates—perhaps unsurprisingly—that gambling during childhood and teenage years increases the risk of developing compulsive gambling tendencies. Addressing this must be our priority. More widely, we need to look at ways of achieving a change in public attitudes to addictive gambling in the same way that we have successfully persuaded the overwhelming majority of the public that drink-driving is socially unacceptable, that it is irresponsible to get into a car without wearing a seatbelt, and that cigarette smoking is passé.
In the short term, we need urgent action by the Government to enforce the existing law that makes gambling by children illegal, and for the Gambling Commission to make much more use of its existing powers to mitigate the encouragement of problem gamblers spending more than they can afford. The Government have a manifesto commitment and a moral responsibility to invest in making gambling safe and honest, with strong and substantial protection for the most vulnerable.
This report is substantial, comprehensive, wide-ranging and most impressive. The process to start implementation is crucial and pressing. It should begin right now, with particular focus on online gambling, protecting the young specifically; stricter operator control; tighter statutory regulations on both gambling advertising and the promotion of inducements—the noble Lord, Lord Layard, went further and suggested a total gambling advertising ban; and the introduction of regular and hard-hitting education and information campaigns. It would be irresponsible in the extreme to add further delay.
Gambling is a compulsive behaviour, a process addiction that is chronic and progressive and can start off from the lightest touch: making a casual, recreational wager, simply buying a lottery ticket or scratchcard, or even having a flutter on the Grand National. I do not think we should make it easy for the young to be lured into gambling. Let us not make the gateway to gambling tempting and attractive, spurred by loosely restricted, heavyweight, focused marketing.
Gambling has brought pressure on society for generations, but now technological advances have allowed new, highly addictive games to be developed and made personalised communication easy and gambling convenient and accessible from almost anywhere at any time, allowing problem gamblers to wager and place bets at all hours of day or night, exacerbating the problem and fuelling its growth. The time is long overdue to mitigate this chronic scourge of society. Problem gamblers are gambling not only with money but with their lives. We should not. It is time for action.