Westminster Hall

Thursday 15th January 2026 Westminster Hall

Thursday 15 January 2026

[Dame Siobhain McDonagh in the Chair]

Backbench Business

Thursday 15th January 2026 Westminster Hall

Food Inflation

Thursday 15th January 2026 Westminster Hall

13:30

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Friern Barnet) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the impact of food inflation on the cost of living.

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Siobhain. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate, which I requested in October last year, and to those colleagues who are here today to speak in the debate and supported the application to the Committee.

We know that, whatever our political persuasion, politics at its best is about values. I came into politics to do everything I could to ensure that every single child in every single family has the best possible start in life. How do we measure that? How do we track progress on this fundamental principle, so crucial to who we are as a society? We know that the cumulative effect of inflation meant that UK food prices rose by a total of 38.6% between November 2020 and 2025. An element of that, of course, is linked to energy inputs into food processing.

I hope there is a consensus, right across the political divide, that the most basic indicator of whether every child has the best start in life is whether every single family, whatever their circumstances, can afford decent, nutritious food. Without first applying that most fundamental of benchmarks, how on earth can we even begin to think about ensuring that every young person has the chance to thrive in school, in work and in life?

Surely we can all agree, across the political spectrum, that the existence of food banks for families in 2026 is a stain on our conscience. I pay tribute to the great work of the Middle Lane food bank and all the other food banks in my constituency, with wonderful volunteers—faith groups, charities and local grassroots people, doing their best every day to ensure that every family has access to quality, nutritious food—but why are we having to do that?

I will be asking the Minister to commit to ending the need for food banks for families by the end of this Parliament, to work with colleagues on the possibility of an essentials guarantee in our social security system, to ensure that local housing allowance keeps up with the reality of rental costs and to investigate a publicly backed food hub or wholesale platform that could create more inclusive local communities.

I am so pleased that the two-child cap on universal credit has now been scrapped—a decision made since I lodged the request for this debate. From April this year, that policy change will go to the heart of what we need: a society where everyone can thrive, and the change that people voted for in July 2024.

Why do we not have an economy that works for everyone? Maybe we need to start by looking back into history. During the second world war, as all kinds of items became scarce, the rationing system tried to ensure an equitable distribution of all the essentials, but there was one exception: eating out was off the ration. So long as people could afford to go to the Ritz, the Carlton or another nice restaurant, they did not need to give a second thought to rationing. The Government then, working hard to at least give the impression of equality, decided in 1942 to cap restaurant meals at five shillings—I am told that is £21.70 in today’s money—and limit them to three courses.

Much has changed, of course; in 1945, the Labour Government rebuilt the country, introduced the national health service and built the welfare state. However, if we are to make any honest and thoughtful assessment of how far we have come since 1945, the first thing we need to look at is whether every family can afford nutritious food, without having to make the choice to go without it.

The Trussell Trust’s second “Hunger in the UK” report found that, in 2024, 14.1 million people, including 3.8 million children, lived in food-insecure households. In the borough of Haringey, of which most of my constituency forms a part, 3,938 households are likely to be facing food poverty. The report also found that the risk of hunger can be a lottery, depending where people live; households in the most deprived areas in the UK are three times as likely to be food insecure as households in the least deprived areas.

Some groups of people also face much higher risks of hunger and food bank use than others. In the Trussell community in 2024, three in four people were disabled. One in three children under the age of five are now growing up in a food-insecure household.

There has also been a growth in the number of people in working households being referred to food banks; they now represent nearly a third of referrals. More than two thirds of those working households are on incomes so low that they are also in receipt of universal credit. Most alarmingly of all, hardship is becoming normalised; the report says that 61% of people who experienced food insecurity did not consider themselves to be facing hardship, meaning that they did not really want to turn to a food bank for support. Families going without food no longer even consider themselves to be in hardship.

How did we get here? It is an income problem, a poverty problem and a structural problem, and we need to have an honest conversation about that. Over half of people receiving universal credit experienced hunger last year and 87% of people referred to food banks were in receipt of means-tested benefits. Families struggling to afford food also generally struggle to afford other essentials. For example, people referred to food banks in the Trussell community in 2024 on average had just £104 a week to live on after housing costs—just 17% of what the average household across the UK has. Ultimately, the need for food banks is about incomes, not food; it is an inability to afford food and, of course, other essentials such as rent, clothing and toiletries.

We need to recognise the issues that bring households to a point where they cannot cover the cost of both food and other essentials. Real median household incomes have fallen and wage growth has failed to keep up with the cost of living. Meanwhile, private rents have also risen at record rates, made worse by the failure of housing benefit and the failure—for quite some time now—to have sufficient housing supply to reduce the cost of rent. In 2024, half of all private renters receiving social security for housing costs experienced food insecurity and those households on the lowest incomes have suffered the most. The Food Foundation estimates that since April 2022 the price of a typical basket of food has increased by nearly a third.

We also know that the prices of cheaper food rose at a much higher rate than the prices of more expensive food.

[John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate. She is right to highlight the issue of inflation, especially food inflation, but does she also recognise that although the price of food is going up, the food producers, predominantly farmers, are not seeing a similar rise in the income they get for producing that valuable food?

[Catherine West]

Indeed; if the hon. Gentleman is a listener to “Farming Today”, which I listen to in the mornings, he will know that the price of milk goes up and down, which makes it very hard for dairy farmers to survive. I agree that there is something there, and I am sure the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has been looking at it.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right in identifying the structure here. The market is one that is ripe for abuse. There are 15 behemoth retailers at the top and 210,000 primary producers at the bottom, leading to a situation where our constituents cannot afford to buy the food and the food producers cannot make a profit in producing it. Surely what we need to do is to look at that supply chain between the supermarket and the farm gate, build on the excellent work of Baroness Batters and her farming profitability review, and come forward with a revised food strategy, which we have been promised.

[Catherine West]

I know the Minister will have much to say on that issue, and I look forward to her response.

[Adam Jogee (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

I shall add a Labour voice to the case for supply and production, but first I pay tribute to the Newcastle-Staffs Foodbank in Newcastle-under-Lyme, which does wonderful work, particularly at the Newcastle Congregational Church on King Street.

The intervention by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) about supply and production speaks to the importance of the wonderful farmers in Newcastle-under-Lyme, such as the Jones family in Audley and the Williams family in Wrinehill. We can feed ourselves, but we can only do so if we support the farmers in my constituency, and those up and down our country.

[Catherine West]

Indeed, and it is wonderful to hear hon. Members speaking up on behalf of their constituents, particularly farmers—we now have so much more information about farming now than there was before.

Coming back to the point about the prices of cheaper foods rising at a much higher rate than the prices of more expensive food, cheapflation means that low-income families lose out. We know one reason for that is that margins on cheaper food are much tighter than those on more expensive food, so suppliers cannot absorb rising costs and households who are already selecting the cheapest varieties have nowhere else to go.

We also know that food inflation in the UK is generally higher than for our neighbours in Europe. Academic studies have suggested that Brexit has added as much as eight percentage points to food inflation, amounting to an extra £6.95 billion in food costs from December 2019 to March 2023. Since Brexit, the UK has lost the complex network of agrifood supply chains that we had shared with other members of the EU.

[Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I wonder whether my hon. Friend heard the testimony of Toby Ovens, the managing director of Broughton Transport Solutions, to the Business and Trade Committee the other day. He spoke about how we have lost that complex network, but gained a mountain of paperwork, which is accounting for much of the costs that are incurred for the food that is coming into our country. That includes 26 different stamps that he now has to get to import food into our country. Does she recognise that one of the ways that we can help bring food costs down is to get that sanitary and phytosanitary deal signed?

[Catherine West]

My hon. Friend is quite right, and is well versed on these issues. UK businesses face more red tape when they want to import from and export to the EU, invariably adding to costs in the sector. On 19 May last year, the UK and the EU agreed an exciting new strategic partnership, including an agreement to work towards a common sanitary and phytosanitary—SPS—area agreement to make agrifood trade easier. The Government estimate that that deal would add £9 billion to the UK economy in the long term. My right hon. Friend the Paymaster General, who is also Minister for European Union Relations, has said that it will bring down prices on supermarket shelves. I pay tribute to him and his excellent civil servants for everything they are doing to foster a good working relationship with Brussels and secure a better deal for UK food suppliers.

In my constituency, we are blessed with a huge range of small shops and market stalls selling fruit and veg of every kind, but that is not the case across every region of the UK. Fresh food deserts—areas where people rely on convenience stores—are an increasing phenomenon. As research from Which? shows, people who have to rely on smaller supermarket convenience stores are often charged more for the same products, and do not always have access to budget and own brand ranges.

In the same way that people in the 1940s could go to a nice restaurant for a ration book-free dinner, in 2026 people can gain access to cheaper fresh food and budget ranges if they have access to a car so they can go to the out-of-town supermarket. A Sainsbury’s poster from the rationing era acclaims the freshness of their produce due to high turnover of stock and guarantees that there will be no profiteering. I invite every supermarket to produce a 2026 version of that poster and to guarantee that they will not charge more for everyday food items in their small convenience stores than they do in their out-of-town supermarkets, and that their budget ranges will be available at all their convenience stores.

[Ben Coleman (Chelsea and Fulham) (Lab)]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for calling for this important debate. The Health and Social Care Committee are currently doing an inquiry into food, and supermarkets will be coming in shortly to talk to us about how they operate—we will have a lot of questions to ask. Obesity and nutrition are a particular challenge for people on low incomes. It is more than twice as expensive to buy healthy food. Does she agree that we need a cross-Government strategy to bring the price of food within a range that people on lower incomes can afford, and make sure that good, healthy food is not only affordable, but accessible everywhere in the country? We need Government, business and experts to work together on that. The time is now. The problem is real and needs to be addressed.

[Catherine West]

I look forward to reading the report that comes out of my hon. Friend’s Committee.

How do we build a future without food banks? Let us look at what has worked. As a former borough leader, I introduced free school meals for all primary school children. It was a great equaliser and social leveller. Children were more focused and made better progress; families who were just about managing saved money; there was no stigma, as everyone sat together, and the people serving the food got the London living wage. These meals provide an opportunity for children to sit down to eat a nutritionally balanced meal, have meaningful conversations with adults and learn to eat with a knife and fork. Under our mayor, free school meals for all primary school children were subsequently rolled out across London. More secondary school children will benefit under this Government’s new policies for all families receiving universal credit. I take my hat off to the Government for that change.

I am also incredibly proud of the Government’s Best Start in Life holiday activities and food clubs, something my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson) has campaigned on for years in this place, along with other Members. That £600 million investment, over three years, means nutritious meals and exciting activities for half a million children across the country every year, helping children to achieve and thrive. It means consistency for parents, who will not face a cliff edge on childcare when term time ends, and money back in the pockets of parents who would otherwise have to fork out during the holidays just so they can work to put food on the table. Children who attend the holiday activities and food clubs are more likely to take part in sport and exercise, which addresses the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Ben Coleman), and children feel more confident and social with their peers after attending a club.

Most importantly of all, as I have said, the scrapping of the two-child cap on universal credit will start making a real difference in April this year. It will be the most cost-effective way to lift half a million children out of poverty, and allow them to look forward to supporting their parents at the same time.

The essentials guarantee that I would like the Minister to consider would embed in our social security system the widely supported principle that, at a minimum, universal credit should protect households against going without the essentials. The experts—the Trussell Trust and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation—are calling for an independent process to advise the Government on benefit rates. As the Minister is from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, she may well wish a Minister from the Department for Work and Pensions to answer this point, but it needs to be said again and again that income is one of the key drivers of food bank need. As independent process to set universal credit could advise the Government to ensure that rates are based on need and essential costs.

A protected minimum floor for universal credit would provide a safety net below which no one should fall. It would build on the introduction of the fair repayment rate by limiting all universal credit reductions, including from the benefit cap, to 15% below the standard allowance. It would also provide support to households, both in and out of work, and help over 240,000 children.

The local housing allowance has not kept up with the cost of housing. We know that the Government are straining every sinew to bring on new, genuinely affordable homes, but the local housing allowance remains frozen while we wait for that reality to unfold. If that remains the case over the course of this Parliament, renters will be about £700 worse off by 2029, and 50,000 renters will be pulled into poverty. If we do not re-establish the link between the local housing allowance and actual rents, increasing numbers of people will be forced to turn to food banks because they simply will not be able to pay the rent.

Will the Minister commit to ending the need for food banks for families by the end of this Parliament? We have made other commitments on things we are going to do by the end of the Parliament—for example, on immigration —but what is more important than ensuring that every family and child can afford nutritious food? Will the Minister work with colleagues across the ministerial teams on the possibility of an essentials guarantee in our social security system, and on ensuring that the local housing allowance keeps up with the reality of rental costs in the private sector?

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

On Friday, I visited the Coexist Community Kitchen in my constituency, which does amazing work to get the community in. It runs cookery classes, is accessible and has affordable and healthy food, and sometimes it is free. Quite a lot of people go there on social prescriptions. On the issue of cross-departmental working, does my hon. Friend agree that is not enough for the health service just to issue prescriptions? It needs to support community kitchens so that they can do the cookery classes and make the food available. There needs to be institutional support, as well as the prescribing end of it.

[Catherine West]

My hon. Friend, who is a former Minister, makes an excellent point. I know that the Minister present will look into our idea of a publicly backed food hub or wholesale platform. It could operate on a cost-recovery basis and work with local suppliers to help them to supply food to local schools, households and NHS facilities in their area at stable and affordable prices, thereby helping to develop thriving and inclusive local economies.

When it heard this debate was going to happen, the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union wrote to me to say that despite being in work, six out of 10 food workers say their wages are insufficient for them to meet their basic needs, such as food and energy, while nearly half say they are feeling food-insecure. Three out of 10 say they do not have enough food to feed themselves and their families. Let us make a difference. Let us make the change that we all voted for in July 2024.

13:49

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

May I say what a pleasure it is to serve not only under your chairship, Dame Siobhain, but on the Treasury Committee with you and the hon. Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West)?

I first became engaged in this subject during my first Parliament, when I joined the all-party parliamentary group on hunger and food poverty with the late Frank Field. He taught me a great deal, and we worked together on a cross-party basis to produce a report on hunger and food poverty. I was drawn to this topic by the fact that the Trussell Trust was founded in Salisbury by Paddy and Carol Henderson, who were taking food into Bulgaria at the time. In 2000, the first food bank was opened in Salisbury, and we now see food banks across the country.

While I will address what the hon. Lady spoke about, it is also important that we reflect on some of the deeper challenges that exist with food inflation, which is running at a much higher rate than the prevailing level of inflation. In preparing for this debate, I examined the facts carefully and read briefings from UKHospitality, the Food and Drink Federation, the National Farmers Union and the Trussell Trust, all of which provide helpful analysis. Over the five-year period up to August 2025, food inflation was about 10% higher than the prevailing general level of inflation. As the hon. Lady set out, that has had a massive impact on the poorest in our communities, who in different ways spend a higher proportion of their income on food.

We in this Chamber can all attribute different weightings to different aspects of this issue, including international global agricultural prices and the clearly significant disruption to the supply chain after the invasion of Ukraine. The Bank of England would assert that domestic labour costs and high pay growth is a key factor, particularly in sectors such as horticulture, where there is a degree of mechanisation. However, we are never going to remove the reliance—I speak as the son of a horticulturalist—on the hard work of people being paid to do a manual job.

In a written answer published just last week, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury spoke about the Government’s intention to set out the food inflation gateway to examine all the different drivers of inflation. I acknowledge the work the Government are doing, and I am sure the Minister will follow up on that to reset somewhat the relationship with the EU. Business rates are also a factor, but if we look across milk, sugar, cheese and flour—some of the most basic staple foodstuffs—we see significant increases over the last five years, which range from 19% for flour up to 56% for sugar and 46% for milk. We have to be honest about all the different regulations and obligations that we put on those who supply our food and prepare it for us in restaurants. The input-cost pressures need to be carefully weighed against one another.

I mentioned the significant increases in labour costs, and the agricultural sector’s reliance on labour, but it is also about energy costs. Our energy costs are 45% higher at this point in time than those in France and Germany. That is a cost that many of the food processing industries just cannot avoid. The Government will assert that they are on a transformational journey, but until that we reach the destination, the costs are incredibly high and difficult to bear.

Animal welfare is an important issue for many in the Chamber and across the House. If we look at how farming works, we see that there is actually a lower density of poultry and beef, which leads to different costs for producing some of those things. We want to have it all, including the extended producer responsibility—a whole life-cycle responsibility for packaging. When we take all these things together, simultaneously, in a five-year period of global disruption, the outcome is very worrying. It would be remiss not to mention the impact of climate change on crops such as coffee, cocoa and palm oil.

The net effect is that food is too expensive for the most vulnerable and the poorest in our communities. That has really difficult consequences. It is a massive part of our economy. UKHospitality covers, I think, 123,000 venues, and 10% of all UK jobs. The sector generates £54 billion in tax receipts, so the changes that we make to its input costs will have enormous consequences. We have to be honest about which changes we are prepared to prioritise and which changes we cannot afford at this point in time, because they will have an impact.

I want to make a few observations about food poverty. Just last week I visited Maria Stevenson, who manages the Salisbury food bank, which used to be a Trussell Trust food bank and is now independent. She does an amazing job of analysing those who use the food bank—those who go occasionally or on a recurring basis—to try to give them additional support and make interventions, such as supporting them to secure the right benefits or helping them with other things in their lives. We have to grasp that.

None of us want to see food banks grow. We should have pride in what Paddy and Carol Henderson did all those years ago, but not in seeing food banks grow as they have over the last 25 years. We have to be honest about the situations people are in. Next Monday, we will have a financial wellbeing workshop in our guildhall in Salisbury, where the Money and Pensions Service is inviting people to open up and talk about cost of living pressures, so that we can find solutions.

I do not expect the Minister to be able to go through all the input costs today and give an analysis of how they are going to be reduced—although I recognise that there were some hopeful signs at the end of last year on both food inflation and general inflation, albeit from a higher base than I would have liked to have seen. We must also look into people’s wider financial wellbeing and the circumstances they find themselves in.

Inflation is insidious. It removes the buying power of our constituents. One of the wealthiest countries in the world has people who do not have enough food to eat. We must all redouble our efforts to tackle that, so that we can be proud of what we have achieved by the end of our time in Parliament. My experience is that, given their complicated circumstances, those experiencing food poverty need more than just a handout.

13:58

[Brian Leishman (Alloa and Grangemouth) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to have you in the Chair today, Dame Siobhain. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West) for securing this debate, and I thank the right hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen) for his interesting, informative and considered contribution, especially in respect of food bank volunteers doing an awful lot more work than providing food.

Since 2010, we have seen an unholy trinity. First came the cruel and wicked ideology of austerity, which impoverished communities from all four nations of the United Kingdom. Political decisions were designed to create the inequality that ravaged communities up and down the country so severely, and academics at the University of Glasgow have linked that to hundreds of excess deaths. Then we had a pandemic, which increased further the wealth inequality from the years of crippling austerity, as the few got richer and accumulated more assets at the expense of the many.

We have witnessed eye-watering increases in life’s essentials—food, energy, fuel, shelter and insurance—but at the same time wages have fallen in real terms for most of us. That obscene reality has been neatly packaged and labelled as the “cost of living crisis”, and that phrase has now entered everyday language. Millions of people struggling has become an accepted, normalised part of life, but for the millions in that position, describing it as “living” is wholly inaccurate.

Having to choose between heating and eating is no life; it is a battle merely to exist. I know that, because I have been in a similar position. Years ago, I had to tell my young son that he should have his tea on his own, “Because dad’s not hungry. I’ll have something after, once you go to bed.” But the truth was that we could not afford to eat. We went without, so he could have a meal. Those are the circumstances for hundreds of thousands of Scots today, right now.

Hunger and hardship are on the rise. According to recent research by the Trussell Trust, more than 1 million Scots went hungry due to a lack of money to buy food, including more than 200,000 children. This winter, Trussell Trust food banks expect to provide an emergency food parcel every 10 seconds—a 40% increase over the winter period compared with five years ago. An increase in food bank use has been a long-term trend. More than 14 million people, including 3.8 million children, live in food-insecure households.

True to form for the country of gross inequality that we are, there is a gulf in the risk of hunger, depending on where someone lives in the UK. Households in the most deprived areas are three times more likely to be food insecure than households in the least deprived areas. Three in four people referred to food banks under the Trussell umbrella are disabled, and one in three children under five are growing up in food-insecure households.

A key reason for growing food bank reliance is a social security system that is failing to protect people. The heightened cost of living has the largest impact on those with no savings, those already in debt or arrears or those on universal credit. In fact, just over half of the people on universal credit in the UK experienced hunger last year, and 87% of people referred to food banks in 2025 were in receipt of means-tested benefits.

People on low wages are also impacted. I am 43 years old and when I was at school, if one of my peers was living in poverty, it was probably because their parents were unemployed. But nowadays, 30% of people referred to the Trussell Trust are working. Under a right-wing Government, the 2010s were a decade of wage suppression and wage stagnation. With austerity, wealth accumulation and cost of living pressures, working people have been plunged into deprivation, and politicians have allowed that to happen.

Relentless campaigning by civil society outside this place, and inside this place by me and other Labour MPs, influenced the Government to abolish the biggest driver of hunger and hardship: the two-child cap. By removing that wicked policy, Labour has lifted just under half a million kids out of poverty and hardship. Actions like that are why I joined the Labour party and why I remain in it today, but they must only be the start. Food bank use is rising, and my party needs to be far bolder and more ambitious now that we are in power. Make no mistake: the country needs us to be.

One measurement of what kind of country we live in is how our social security system functions, and whether it properly looks after the disadvantaged and the most vulnerable in our society. In government, we need to work with charities and with third sector and community organisations, which are heroically supporting people across the country who are struggling to eat and make ends meet. We must introduce a new programme like the essentials guarantee, which would embed in our social security system the fundamental principle that universal credit should protect people from going without the essentials of food, heating and toiletries.

Giving people a right to food should be part of that. We must ensure that people can eat and that their children are not going hungry. That is why I am fully behind the campaign by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne) to introduce a “right to food” law, and why I will be helping to support his Right to Food Commission when it comes to Scotland to take evidence in May.

Of course, we should have a policy with a minimum floor in universal credit—a safety net that no one among us should ever fall through. We live in the sixth largest economy on planet Earth and poverty is a political choice. Because it is a political choice, it can be eradicated. We just need the politicians and the Government that are willing to do that.

We have to build a future in which people no longer rely on donations, charity and food banks, just to exist. We should start by implementing an essentials guarantee so that the basic rate of UC actually covers life’s essentials —that could be a Britain that we are all proud of.

[Dame Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)]

In order to get everybody in, I ask Members to adhere to a discretionary five-minute limit on speeches. I call Katie Lam.

14:07

[Katie Lam (Weald of Kent) (Con)]

As ever, it is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dame Siobhain. I thank the hon. Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West) for securing the debate.

For many people across the country, rising food prices are one of the most concrete ways in which the cost of living crisis impacts their lives. Thanks to rising costs, many families simply do not have enough money left at the end of the month to save for a home, plan a holiday or even send their children on a school trip.

In general, prices rise because of three things. First, they can rise because too many people want too few goods. If the demand for something grows faster than the supply, the price will of course rise. We saw that in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The supply of Ukrainian wheat fell, demand stayed the same and global food prices rose.

Secondly, prices can rise because it becomes more expensive to produce goods in the first place. To keep earning enough to survive, the people who produce those goods will need to increase their prices to cover their growing costs. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) mentioned, we see that today, as this Government’s energy policies create the highest industrial energy prices in the developed world. Higher energy prices for businesses mean higher production costs, causing prices to rise. The same is true of higher taxes or greater regulatory costs, both of which this Government have imposed on businesses of all kinds.

Thirdly, prices can rise because of external factors, which can also be in response to Government policy. If the Government increase the supply of money, say, or keep interest rates too low, people will be more likely to spend, reducing the relative value of the pound in their pocket and, again, causing prices to rise.

If we talk to anybody involved in producing food in this country, we will hear a lot about the second cause. Costs are rising and prices are rising with them. As I mentioned, that is due partly to energy costs, but also partly to the vast sums food producers must spend to comply with the regulations they need to navigate if they ever want to sell their products.

Let us take dairy farms as just one example. What hurdles must a dairy farmer in Kent, in my constituency, clear if they want to sell milk, cheese or butter? To even begin the process, all dairy farmers must register with the Food Standards Agency as a dairy producer. If they want to turn some of their milk into cheese or butter, they must also get a separate approval as a food business establishment.

Cows must be kept according to regulations set out under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 and the Welfare of Farmed Animals (England) Regulations 2007, which include rules on space, housing and veterinary care. The herd must be regularly tested by the Animal and Plant Health Agency for tuberculosis and brucellosis. They must be specifically protected to minimise contact with badgers, with the construction of specific fences and feeding facilities. Farmers must also create and implement a hazard analysis and critical contact point plan identifying all potential contamination hazards and setting out plans to minimise them. They must test for certain bacteria and must be prepared for unannounced inspections by the Food Standards Agency.

If farmers want to sell milk, they must comply with the Drinking Milk (England) Regulations 2008, which define the appropriate fat content for different sorts of milk and sets out specific rules on pasteurisation. If they want to turn the milk into cheese, they must comply with certain compositional standards, including rules on protected designations for specific regional varieties. If they want to turn the milk into butter, they must comply with the Spreadable Fats (Marketing Standards) and the Milk Products (Protection of Designations) (England) Regulations 2008, including rules on additives and fat percentage.

Then there are rules on labelling and marketing, on mandatory written contracts on milk sales to regulate pricing, and on manure spreading and waste management. If farmers want to adapt their buildings or extend them, they need to navigate the labyrinth of our planning system. Then and only then are they allowed to sell their milk, butter or cheese, and the price in the shops will need to reflect all the costs I have just mentioned if they want to keep the farm running.

[Kerry McCarthy]

It is always easy to criticise regulation, but we often find that regulations are introduced for very real reasons, whether that is protecting public health, animal welfare and so on. Will the hon. Member tell us which of the regulations and requirements she has listed ought to be dropped?

[Katie Lam]

What is important here, and what I am trying to set out, is how many costs farmers have to meet even just to get their produce out of the door. When we talk about food prices, it is inevitable that we will talk about why those prices rise, what the costs are and how they might be going up. Many of my farmers work incredibly hard to put food on people’s tables, and my aim is to talk through the costs they face even just to be able legally to sell their produce. It is important for constituents who are listening to this debate to understand what goes into the pint of milk that they buy.

Dairy farmers live an extremely difficult lifestyle. They work long hours and can never afford to take a day off—the cows will, after all, always need milking. Thanks to farmers’ hard work, we are able to enjoy some of the finest dairy products anywhere in the world. Given the difficulties they face, we should not be making their lives harder by forcing them to navigate mountains of paperwork and endless regulatory compliance. It is bad for them and bad for those who want to buy their products at an affordable price.

[Ms Creasy]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Katie Lam]

I am so sorry; I am running out of time.

The same is true across every other type of farming or food production, from vegetables to vineyards. For the sake of those who put food on our plates and of families working hard to make ends meet, will the Minister—who I notice is wearing our favourite suit jacket again today, as am I—please explain what steps the Government are taking to reduce costs for food producers and, in turn, for producers across this country?

Finally, those Government hurdles are due not just to legislation. Peter Hall at Little Mill Farm in Marden in my constituency does incredible work with the Felix Project. He gives away thousands of apples and pears from his orchards to be eaten by children who would otherwise not be able to eat them. He would happily sell them to local schools at cost price or lower, but the tangled bureaucracy of procurement makes that impossible. Addressing that issue would be a win for everyone. It would mean healthier food being provided cheaply for local children, supporting our farmers, tackling food waste, and preventing orchards from having to be grubbed up, which releases a lot of carbon into the atmosphere. Will the Minister please set out any plans she might have to make it easier for local farmers to sell their produce to state institutions nearby?

14:13

[Mr Luke Charters (York Outer) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West) for securing today’s debate. I know that you have both been consistent voices on food insecurity.

I start by giving a shout out to a local legend. Adam Raffell of the York Trussell Trust has done amazing work for families in York, for which I thank him today. I also thank the Prime Minister for his relentless focus on the cost of living, on which we have to bear down.

The Food and Drink Federation has shown that, since January 2020, food inflation has consistently outstripped non-food inflation. What was the cause? It was when the damaging and disastrous botched Brexit deal came into effect. Over the channel, our European neighbours, to be fair, have also faced rising food costs, but nowhere near as sharply. UK food inflation peaked at nearly 20%, year on year, in 2023 under the Conservative party’s watch, while countries such as Germany and France peaked lower and returned to normal much faster. The UK is worse off, which tells us that we have to work more closely with our European friends.

The Prime Minister recently said:

“if it’s in our national interest to have…closer alignment with the single market…we should consider that”,

and when it comes to food price inflation, I think the answer is a resounding yes. Although Reform and the Tories want to shout at Brussels, that will not pay for people’s weekly food shop. An SPS agreement and closer alignment would strip out so much red tape, checks and delays. Fewer inspections and mutually recognised standards would mean less time stuck at the border, lower costs for hauliers and fewer spoiled loads. All those savings could be passed on to the hard-working families of this country.

Like any toddler, my son Robin’s favourite food item is, of course, the Freddo frog. The famous Freddo index shows that since I was born—in 1995, believe it or not —there has been a 260% increase in the cost of the treasured Freddo. However, we also know of the phenomenon called shrinkflation. A few weeks ago, many of us gathered around the Christmas tree with our families, enjoying a tub of choccies. This year’s tubs of Roses were more than 100 grams lighter than they were in 2018, but the cost has increased by 20%. If shrinkflation is so significant, does the Minister agree with the idea that it perhaps needs to be reflected on food packaging?

Another iconic British institution is the meal deal. We were all devastated when its price tipped from £3 to £3.50 or more—it was £3 in Tesco for over a decade. Can I make a confession to the House? As a tight Yorkshireman, I am always grabbing the three most expensive products—crisps, drink and sarnie—even if I do not really like them, just to get the biggest discount. I have written to some retailers, saying, “Shouldn’t we have a bit of an arms race? Who can be the first supermarket to get the meal deal back down to £3.50?” What a wonderful cost of living measure that would be for the grafters of Britain.

As a northerner, can I turn to another place to get a hearty snack? The Greggs sausage roll is well up there and, yes, I would pick Greggs over Gail’s any day of the week. However, the price of a simple sausage roll has shot up by more than 50% in less than a decade. Something is not quite right there. It has gone up by 53% since 2016—I wonder what happened in that year. If anyone from Greggs is watching, can we have a serious deal on sausage rolls? Perhaps we could have a cost of living week when sausage rolls are just a quid?

What can we do? We need supermarkets and big food brands to play their part. They are making record profits, which should come with responsibility. Initiatives such as a cost of living week could be a start. Discounts on essentials, loyalty schemes that really make a difference and fair pricing on some staples should be the norm. We need more transparency, and labels should provide that.

[Adam Jogee]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. It is not for me to touch on stereotypes, but being his mate and, at Christmas, his secret Santa recipient, I can confirm that he is very generous indeed. We are all enjoying his speech immensely, but I wonder whether he agrees that no farm in this United Kingdom is better than a Staffordshire farm—with Ulster farms running close, of course, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) knows. With that in mind, we should all have a “Buy British” approach. That is good for my people in Newcastle-under-Lyme and for producers, and it will be good for our economy, too.

[Mr Charters]

My hon. Friend is spot on. If I can give a shout out to one of my constituents, I love buying from Grey Leys farm. It produces the most beautiful Jersey milk. Would it not be brilliant if schools and hospitals in the York area bought local dairy products? Speaking of milk, we should have an awareness of food inflation’s impact on gluten-free and similar products for allergy sufferers and those with intolerances.

Tory Britain was defined by misery. Prices were up, wages squeezed and families left to struggle. Today, we are cutting prescription charges, tackling rail fares and easing the pressure where we can, but we must go further on food inflation to support the hard-working families of Britain.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Dame Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)]

I am very sorry to say this, but it would be great if the two final Back Benchers could stick to about four minutes.

14:19

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain. I say a big thank you to the hon. Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West) for setting the scene, and to the right hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen).

This is a very important debate, because so many families out there are struggling. I very much welcome the Government’s commitment to ending the two-child benefit cap. It will definitely make changes, but we cannot see those changes just yet. In Northern Ireland, annual food price inflation is 5.1%, and grocery spending has reached £4.4 billion.

The first Trussell Trust food bank in Northern Ireland was in Newtownards in my constituency, and food bank use last year was up 35%. We now see middle-class families, who have a wage but are unable to cope, using food banks. Overall consumer inflation in Northern Ireland has stayed around similar levels to that of the UK, which is about 4% to 5%. Recent research from Safefood indicates that food costs vary for many families. In some cases, it can be 50% of take-home pay for those with children.

I will give three examples in the short time I have. I know a family of two—a mother and daughter—who spend about £450 a month on groceries, including staple top-ups such as bread and milk. They made me aware that their rent is £600, so households are spending almost as much as their rent on groceries to eat well.

The second example is a family of five: two adults who work full time and three children aged from two to nine—wee tots, I would call them. They told me that they spend about £180 to £200 a week on groceries. Many may think that seems so much to be spending, but we often do not think of the breakfast before school, the break-time snack, lunch, dinner and endless litres of milk for children. Many working families are not eligible for free school meals, and parents want to ensure that their children have healthy, hearty meals. They have to get it right for their children from the very beginning. I would encourage children to drink their milk.

I want to briefly touch on the cost of baby formula, which has been increasing for numerous years. Certain formulas can range from £8 to £16 per standard tin, and that is not to mention the recent recall of SMA milk due to the potential presence of cereulide. Many families bulk-buy milk, and they will have to source it elsewhere in the meantime, before they can be compensated. They cannot do without milk for their children, so we have to address that increase in price. Almost £16 per standard tin is just too much.

The reality is that the announcements in the Chancellor’s Budget of benefit uplifts and the freezing of tax thresholds do not go far enough to support a huge proportion of the population. Rising grocery prices create challenges for everyone. I am increasingly seeing working families struggle from month to month while trying to do their best and hold down their full-time jobs. In all my time as an elected representative, I have never seen such pressure on working families across this United Kingdom. The pressure is huge. In this economy, most people are feeling the impact. It is a month-to-month struggle, and they are not able to save. The cost of living means those families are not able to get back on their feet.

So what do we do? We look to the Minister. She will have to forgive me for saying that she will have to dig deep into her pockets. Our constituents need more help. The cost of living is stretching household budgets to breaking point. I believe that this is the Government’s responsibility. To be fair to them, they are doing what they can to ensure that no household is left struggling to put food on the table. We should look forward to having a society in which everyone can meet their basic needs without worry. If we cannot do it today, we need to do it as soon as possible.

14:23

[John Milne (Horsham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Siobhain. I thank the hon. Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West) for securing this debate.

I am a member of the Work and Pensions Committee, and we have been looking at the impact of the cost of living crisis on a range of vulnerable groups. The effects are everywhere: not just in the most deprived areas of the country, but even among wealthier communities, including my constituency. In the interest of time, I will concentrate on Horsham.

Local demand has surged. Horsham food bank tells me that its monthly distribution of food parcels has risen dramatically year on year. There has been a sharp rise in children requiring support, which mirrors the regional data that shows a 56% rise in food bank use across the south-east.

My constituent Rachel is a mother and a disabled woman whose partner works full time. She told me that there is often nothing left after she has paid the energy bill and fed her family. She lives on biscuits, because half the time she cannot afford to cook. She said that she feels exhausted and out of options, and she is unsurprisingly affected by depression. That has come about for her not because of poor choices but because incomes have simply not kept pace with the essentials.

I pay tribute to the fantastic work being done by organisations such as Horsham District food bank and FareShare Sussex & Surrey. I was interested in what the right hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen) said about his local food bank, and there are lots of parallels with the work happening in Horsham.

FareShare has said that it prepared millions of meals last year to support local families who face rising cost pressures. It describes the combination of high food and energy costs as making the past year “the toughest yet” for its operations. It is moving beyond simply handing out food, and it also offers advice and helps people to put themselves in stronger positions. The food bank is in a unique position to build trust with people who might otherwise slip through the cracks because they are perhaps afraid or too shy to explain their circumstances. Timely advice on finances, nutrition and cooking can help people to get themselves off the dependency culture altogether.

So many people are living with no margin for error—if the washing machine goes wrong or the boiler breaks down, it is an instant crisis—so what more can we do? First, we need to ensure that universal credit and other benefits are set at a level that genuinely protects people from going without essentials. Joseph Rowntree Foundation research shows that current benefits still fall short of the real cost of living by £28, with shortfalls pushing families into hardship.

As previous speakers have mentioned, an essentials guarantee in our social security system would mean that no one should fall below the floor of being unable to afford food and heat. To make this lasting and fair, we need an independent process to set benefit levels that draws on evidence, including lived experience, rather than leaving them to annual discretionary decisions. Many experts and organisations are now calling for such an essentials guarantee as a sensible way to depoliticise rates and anchor them to actual costs.

Secondly, we can cut the cost of food without spending even a penny. Research from the London School of Economics shows that Brexit added billions to household bills—costing individual households over £200 a year on average—and saw price hikes on basic essentials such as meat, cheese and many others that Members have mentioned. The Liberal Democrats have long argued that maintaining a customs arrangement with our closest trading partners could help to reduce unnecessary costs on imported foods that end up in people’s shopping baskets, while still protecting good British farming.

Finally, local action matters, too. Devolution and targeted investment in local food infrastructure can link farms with food charities and community kitchens, create jobs and build resilience without making charity a default safety net. Food banks like those run by Horsham Matters are working towards the best result possible: making themselves unnecessary. Let us give them a helping hand.

14:28

[Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)]

I commend the hon. Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West) on securing this hugely important debate. The cost of living, particularly the cost of food, is one of issues I get contacted about the most by my constituents. The high cost of living is being driven by rising food prices. I was astounded just last week, when someone emailed me a photo of an £8 tube of toothpaste from the supermarket in Badger Farm in Winchester. It was not a special new one that claims to whiten teeth and cure all oral ailments; it was just bog-standard toothpaste. I think we are all finding that we leave the supermarket baffled. Often, I just pop in for some essentials and I leave with a bag of shopping that has come to £50 or £60. It is affecting absolutely everyone. We are finding that people are struggling just to meet the absolute basics—not just food, but other life essentials.

Several Members have spoken about farming and food producers. As a vet who grew up on a farm and so has worked in farming in many capacities, I think that that is one of the most underestimated ways of helping to address the cost of living crisis.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) mentioned, farm-gate prices are so low that many farmers are earning significantly less than the living wage, yet supermarket prices are so high that many people cannot afford to buy basic, decent quality food. That shows the necessity of the revised food strategy, which has to be an imperative for this Government.

I know what it is like to have to get up at 5.30 in the morning to milk cows, to calve cows in the middle of the night and to work all night lambing. Farmers work all hours in all weathers, but their income at the end of the year is often not related to the amount of work they put in, because it can be affected by factors completely out of their control, such as a disease outbreak, a trade deal or a weather event. The frustration of not getting rewarded for the amount of effort, time and energy they put in is making many see long-term futures in farming as unsustainable. They need a huge amount of support.

Food security is part of our national security, but 45% of our food is imported. Given the volatile geopolitical situation, food is more than ever a key component of our national resilience. While we are desperate to have food that is more affordable, we must be mindful that signing trade deals with the USA that would undercut our farmers on welfare, environmental and basic public health standards would be hugely detrimental. We do not want chicken that has been washed in chlorine, we do not want hormone-treated beef and we do not want eggs that have been produced by battery hens. That would be bad for British farming, for animal welfare and, given the antibiotic use, for public health. I urge the Government to ensure that it is enshrined in any trade deals that those standards would be protected.

I want to pay tribute to the food banks in Winchester, which I have visited on more than one occasion. We have the Winchester Basics Bank and the food pantry in Unit12. I thank the huge team of more than 80 staff and volunteers for all their work; they are extremely busy at the moment. I also thank the community, faith groups and churches that support them.

Taking a step back, despite all our economic troubles, we are one of the wealthiest nations on the planet. We can be a nation where an honest day’s work pays a living wage, where no one with a full-time job has to go to food banks to feed their children, and where no child ever goes to school hungry. We have to make these choices urgently; we must address them as soon as we can.

14:33

[Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Siobhain. I thank the hon. Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West) for securing this important debate, throughout which we have heard valuable contributions from Members rightly raising concerns on behalf of their constituents. We all know that food inflation significantly impacts the cost of living by eroding household purchasing power, and that it disproportionately affects those in low-income households, leading to food insecurity. Just last November, 61% of adults in Great Britain reported an increased cost of living compared to the previous month. Much of the reason for that was linked to the inflation of food prices.

I join Members across the House in thanking those who are going out of their way to support those who need it in their own constituencies, not only with advice but through operating food banks and providing comfort and support. Imogen and her team in the Salvation Army in Keighley, who I have met many a time, do fantastic work to help families not only in Keighley but across the wider Worth valley area in my constituency. I pay particular tribute to her and her team.

[John Lamont]

During this debate, much discussion has been about food banks. It is important that we also recognise food larders—I have a number in my constituency —where large shops and supermarkets donate their food at the end of the day or before the sell-by date. They minimise food waste and enable people to access low-cost or free food that they would otherwise have to pay for.

[Robbie Moore]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and he must have known what I was coming on to in my speech. There are many other organisations and companies that are producing excess amounts of food. We need to reduce food waste, which is ridiculously high in this country, and utilise and redistribute high-quality food through a localised logistics system or a national strategic approach. Those at both grassroots and national level need to be thanked, but much more work is needed to focus on reducing food waste to help those on lower incomes.

Lower-income families spend a large proportion of their budget on food—about 14% in the UK compared to 9% for higher-income households—making those who are more vulnerable much more exposed to price spikes. We have already heard that the price of flour has increased by 19% and milk by about 46% in a relatively short period of time. As well as the vulnerability sitting with those low-income households in terms of their purchasing power, it also sits with the primary producer: the farmers and growers who are exposed to those spikes. They are not only exposed to their own vulnerability; they also lack resilience because they are entered into contracts with unfair terms and unfair adjustment mechanisms linked to supply and demand, and they have to compete against commodities and food that can be produced at much cheaper prices in places with different standards.

While the end price for some food products fluctuates for the primary producer—we have seen that with lamb, beef and milk prices this year—for others they do not. For example, in the arable sector, cereal prices are linked to global commodity prices and some of those feed wheat prices have not really changed in the last 20 years. Exposing those primary producers to fluctuating prices depending on what they are producing, but not mitigating the increase in associated input costs for producing that food, directly hits food inflation prices.

My hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) mentioned the vulnerability associated with farm-gate prices. Return rates for our farmers sit at about 1%, if not at all, and therefore many of our primary producers are not even breaking even. That is why the Baroness Batters farming profitability review was welcomed, although it was frustrating that the Government held that report back. They did not give the opportunity for it to be debated on the Floor of the House through an oral statement; they just relied on a written statement. I encourage the Minister to allow time for us to get to grips with debating such a significant and valuable report so that all Members can contribute towards it. A key recommendation in that report was around the supply chain, which, as I think has been acknowledged, is not fit for purpose and disadvantages primary producers. That is why we want more funding and power going to the Grocery Code Adjudicator.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) and my hon. Friend the Member for Weald of Kent (Katie Lam) highlighted the challenges around input costs increasing for our food producers and farmers. That has not been helped by policy choices and tax choices brought forward by the Labour Government in the last 18 months. Let us look at the rise in labour costs: the Bank of England says that the increasing costs associated with labour through the rise in employer national insurance, coupled with the rise in the national minimum wage from £11.44 to £12.21 an hour—a rise of about 6.7%—has dramatically impacted not only the horticultural sector, but many of those food-producing businesses and large employers.

In April, employer national insurance rose from 13.8% to 15%, while the threshold has significantly reduced, falling from £9,100 to £5,000 per employee annually. That disproportionately affects companies who employ lower-paid, younger and part-time workers, many of whom are employed in the horticultural industry and the food-producing sector. That is, of course, combined with uncertainty around levels of investment. We have seen the changes to inheritance tax come through, and that is holding back a level of investment: many of those involved in the food supply chain want to invest, but are holding back due to uncertainty about being able to mitigate the inheritance tax changes coming down the line.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Weald of Kent picked up on, we have also seen new regulation, particularly for the dairy industry, and the hurdles that those sectors need to jump through simply to get their food product on the table. New regulation is having inflationary challenges: the un-Employment Rights Bill worked its way through the House and led to stagnation in business decisions, with investment held back from moving into automation. I am being contacted, as I am sure other Members are, by many employers who are not willing to risk employing people because of the challenges associated with the Employment Rights Act. I dare say many of those are young people and those with special educational needs or learning challenges, who want to get their first step on the employment ladder, but many of those businesses are holding back, which is leading to inflationary challenges.

There is also the extended producer responsibility tax, which has been recognised by not only the British Retail Consortium but the Food and Drink Federation as creating an inflationary challenge for our food sector, estimated to be about £1.4 billion, which will be passed on to consumers by those supermarkets. The British Retail Consortium believes that 80% of those EPR costs will be passed on to consumers, which will lead to higher food prices. Then there are the increasing energy prices; the funding being taken away from our primary producers—our farmers—such as delinked payments dramatically reducing in a short period of time to £600 as an annual payment, where just two years ago they would have been receiving much more; and challenges with the fertiliser tax and sustainable farming incentive.

That just adds to the inflationary challenges associate with food prices, which are predominantly hitting those on the lowest incomes. I ask the Minister not only what the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will be doing, but what conversations they will be having with the wider Government Departments. It is fine to have a food security strategy, but if that does not sit at the heart of Government, it is for the birds. The reality is that, if it sits under a Secretary of State who has responsibility for food but is not bought into by the likes of the Chancellor and those who are making fiscal adjustments, it will not have the positive impact that it needs to; we have seen that from the last two Budgets that have come out of this Labour Government.

I also want to understand from the Minister what recommendations she and her Department will be taking forward at speed—not only the few announced by Baroness Batters’ profitability review, but that specifically address food inflation challenges, give fairer reassurance to our farmers that farm-gate prices will increase and they will get what they deserve for the primary product they are producing and, ultimately, help those on the lowest incomes across all our constituencies with the cost of living.

14:43

[The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Dame Angela Eagle)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your excellent chairmanship, Dame Siobhain. I too enjoyed being a member of the Treasury Committee—as the right hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen) still does—to which you always make a trenchant and relevant contribution. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet (Catherine West) on successfully securing this debate—I think she is on the Treasury Committee as well. There seems to be a preponderance of current or ex-Treasury Committee members in this debate, which perhaps suggests that the issue before us, food inflation, is, as anyone who has listened with an open mind to all the excellent contributions will realise, quite a complex issue.

There is no single cause for the fact that, in the UK, food inflation for the last period has been running about 1% above CPI inflation rates. Many Members, from all parts of the House, have talked about the effect that that has had on their constituents. This debate reflects real concerns about food inflation and cost of living pressures that are affecting millions of households across our country. Those pressures have been building for years, and too many families were left to face them alone under the previous Government. Tackling the cost of living remains at the heart of what this Labour Government hope to achieve in our time in office.

Food poverty is not an abstract issue, as many of us who visit food banks in our constituencies know; nor is food insecurity, which now touches more than 14 million people in our country—not a small number, and a very sobering one when we think about it. In my constituency, I see parents skipping meals so that their children can eat. I see many others relying on food banks to get by. When I was first elected, we did not have any food banks in Wallasey; we now have too many. All are doing a fantastic job; I pay tribute to the work that Wirral food bank does, and to the many volunteers who run social supermarkets and food clubs in the constituency, which have grown up to meet need as it has arisen.

I also pay tribute to Feeding Britain, which was started by Frank Field, who was my constituency neighbour. He perceived this issue and how much it was growing, and in his usual way he decided that he was going to do something practical and see what he could do to help. He did, and Feeding Britain now makes an important and interesting contribution to the work we are all doing to bring about this Labour Government’s manifesto commitment to ending the mass use of emergency food parcels by the end of this Parliament.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I echo what the Minister said about Frank Field. Quite a long time ago now, he approached me about setting up Feeding Bristol as an offshoot of Feeding Britain. Feeding Bristol has gone from strength to strength, particularly with its holiday hunger programme, which provided tens of thousands of meals for children who would otherwise have gone hungry during the school holidays. We all owe Frank a debt of gratitude for that.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I was thinking, when I attended his funeral a few years ago, what an effect he had at a grassroots level with his vision for getting stuff done. There are many hundreds of thousands of people up and down the country who, even though they might not know it, owe him a debt of gratitude.

The actions we have taken start with easing cost of living pressures and raising living standards. It is obvious, as many colleagues on the Government side of this Chamber have said, that one of the basic causes of food insecurity is the price of food, but it is also people’s inability to have enough income to do one of the most basic things in life: putting food on their family’s plates—or their own. Analysis demonstrates that that difficulty particularly affects those with children and those who have disabilities or other issues around being able to earn a reasonable amount of money if they are in work, so that they can cover basic costs. The Trussell Trust demonstrated, as my hon. Friend the Member for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman) said, that a third of those who attend food banks for emergency food parcels are in work.

I found it interesting to hear Opposition Members say that increases in the national minimum wage or in the money that people earn for working were actually part of the problem. Those who do low-wage work also have to eat. Although the increases add a cost, we have to appreciate that maintaining a very low-pay society will not help us get out of this problem.

[John Glen]

I hear what the Minister says, but does she not recognise that if the prevailing increase in the national living wage is 6.7% and inflation is about half that, and given the other costs mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore), many employers will not be able to take on any casual extra staff? They may even need to release some members of staff, which surely does not help anyone.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

The right hon. Gentleman is correct at the margins, but I am also correct that having a very low-wage economy and not increasing the national living wage does not have a positive effect. As with all economic analysis, some of this is about the balance and which effect comes out top. We have tried many years with chronic low pay and very few rights at work, so we are now going to try something different. On the Government Benches, we think that people deserve a living wage for doing a full-time job. That is how we will get out of this situation.

The Government are taking a strategic, joined-up approach to tackling the cost of food to build a more resilient and fairer food system for the long term. I hope to reassure the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) that we are joining up across Government and it is not just DEFRA talking about this. Just this morning, I joined my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice (Emma Hardy) at a food poverty conference hosted by the Department for Work and Pensions, which brought together representatives from local authorities, the third sector and civil society. That is where we can forge local, practical solutions to some of the problems that we have all perceived in our constituencies. The Government’s job in that circumstance is to try to facilitate and empower those things to happen, rather than have a top-down approach that mandates what to do. There are certain things that we can have an effect on, and there are others that we need to use empowerment to bring about.

We are working together across Government to tackle this issue head on. That includes the child poverty strategy to boost family incomes and cut essential costs. It also includes the 10-year plan from the Department of Health and Social Care to tackle the link between poverty and obesity, which is an extremely important aspect of these debates; and the expansion and improvement of free school meals by the Department for Education. I personally believe that we must break the link between poverty and obesity, and get good nutritional food to everybody in the country. It is often cheaper to eat good nutritional food, but many people live in constituencies where there are food deserts or where, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Friern Barnet said, there is a poverty premium on getting to good nutritious food, and we have to work with the industry to try to deal with that.

We are co-ordinating across Government to deliver real change and to break the cycle of sticking-plaster politics that preceded us. From April, the value of Healthy Start will increase by 10%. The weekly value will increase from £4.25 to £4.65 for pregnant women and children aged one to four, and from £8.50 to £9.30 for children under one. We will continue to work with retailers to expand access to healthy, affordable food, which we at DEFRA are particularly interested in bringing about. The expansion of free school meals will benefit about half a million more pupils, save families up to £495 per child per year and lift about 100,000 children out of relative poverty by the end of this Parliament.

We are extending the holiday activities and food programme, with £600 million to support children during school holidays. That was particularly welcomed by the local activists at the food poverty conference that I attended this morning. Our free breakfast clubs will be rolled out nationally, starting with 750 schools, ensuring that no child starts the day hungry for food. I have visited some of those breakfast clubs in my constituency; seeing children eating, playing naturally and being ready to learn as school starts is a real boost.

At DEFRA, we are introducing the food inflation gateway to ensure the impact of regulation. Opposition Members have been through some of the issues that they worry about with respect to that—none at greater length than the hon. Member for Weald of Kent (Katie Lam). The food inflation gateway is there to ensure that the impact of regulation on food prices is properly assessed before implementation and is looked at cumulatively. Together, those actions are preventing the chaotic and unsequenced policymaking that characterised a lot of the chaos of our predecessor Governments.

We know that food price inflation is just part of a wider challenge on the cost of living, and our approach goes beyond tackling the cost of food alone—from energy bills to childcare. That is why this Government are taking action on all fronts: raising the minimum wage—I recognise that we and the Opposition have a bit of a political disagreement about the effect of that—extending the £3 bus fare cap to keep transport affordable, ensuring that Best Start in Life family hubs can be present in every local authority, backed by £500 million of funding, and removing the cruel and ideological two-child limit on universal credit to ensure that families receive support for all children, thereby helping to lift an estimated 450,000 children out of poverty. That is a serious and ambitious series of actions to tackle the pressures that families face.

I am also acutely aware of the pressures that farmers face, which is why we are looking to see what we can do—as the Batters report suggested—to strengthen the fair dealing regulations for farmers to ensure that they get a fair price for the food they produce. Building on the Food Strategy Advisory Board established by my predecessor, we are collaborating across the entire food chain to deliver a system that works for everyone. We have a great deal of work to do. It is not simple, but we are determined to get on with it.

14:57

[Catherine West]

We have had an excellent debate and a lot of hope from the Minister in her remarks today. We have seen GDP figures up, the costs of borrowing falling, train fares frozen and cheaper fuel bills announced in the Budget, a pick-up in the housing market and the lifting of the two-child cap in April. There is a lot that we can be hopeful about. There is also the increase in the minimum wage, which has consistently been voted against by the Opposition.

This is not a new debate, but we must all redouble our efforts to reduce the use of food banks, particularly by families. We must also look at an essentials guarantee in social security systems, the cost of housing and how that contributes to poverty and food inflation. The SPS agreement with Europe is a very exciting development. We want supermarkets to pledge to stock budget ranges in their convenience stores. We would also like DEFRA to continue to back the food hub and wholesale platform publicly to develop thriving local inclusive economies.

We have so much to do. We are getting there, and with the excellent work of Ministers, together with thoughtful contributions from Back Bench Members, I am sure that we will arrive by the end of the Parliament.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the impact of food inflation on the cost of living.

Gambling Harms: Children and Young People

Thursday 15th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Emma Lewell in the Chair]

15:00

[Kevin McKenna (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the impact of gambling harms on children and young people.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell, and to see so many people in the Chamber today for this important debate. I am very aware that the topic of gambling and the harms that it causes to children and young people is important to many Members of this House and many of our constituents. There have already been quite a number of debates on gambling in this Parliament, and I know that Select Committees have looked at it as well. I have talked to my constituents and to various people who have been campaigning against the harms caused by gambling, and we feel that there has been a gap when it comes to looking at the impact: a lot of attention has been paid to adults who are gambling, but there are also real impacts on children.

I pay tribute to hon. Members who have been taking a strong stand on gambling. My hon. Friend the Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler) has been campaigning very hard on the impacts, and the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) has been working tirelessly over the years. It is a cross-party concern, so it is really good to see lots of people here.

I want to say thank you to my constituent Lesley, who lost her son to gambling several years ago. She cannot be here today, because she is having surgery, but apparently she is watching the debate through one puffy eye. My heart goes out to Lesley and to everyone who has lost loved ones due to gambling. We lose something like 500 people a year in this country directly to gambling, through suicide. The impacts are massive.

What I really want to explore today, in relation to children and young people, is how we should look at gambling as a public health issue, and one that is of rising concern because of changes in the way people gamble. People are gambling with all sorts of new technologies, and the country is gambling with lives. The charity Gambling With Lives is here: it has supported me, other MPs and our constituents who have lost people, and I want to say a massive thank you for its support.

We also have Rosie here today, who lost her son a few years ago to gambling. When people have lost those who are dear to them, it is so brave that they are standing up and saying, “This has to stop, because it is needless.” Gambling is a normal human activity—but perfectly normal human activities such as eating, drinking and, frankly, having sex are things that we look at through a public health lens, because there are health consequences, and gambling needs to be treated in the same way.

With children and young people, it helps to look at the two broad ways in which they experience harms. People can experience harms from gambling directly. The number of people who engage with gambling at a very young age is shocking. Something that stood out to me was when I met a young person in his early 20s who is now a real advocate, particularly for the impacts of gambling on communities that face high levels of deprivation and poverty. He started gambling when he was seven and had a serious gambling addiction by the time he went to secondary school, which had massive impacts on his schooling, his education and his relationships as he was trying to learn how to handle his finances in life.

We all know that people should not be gambling when they are seven, and as parliamentarians we all know that the law says they should not be gambling when they are seven—but it is happening. That is partly because the nature of gambling in our society is changing, including the way people access it. It is not just that they are going to the old turf accountants or the bookies on the high street; there are many new, innovative ways in which people are accessing gambling. Although I welcome innovation, I do not welcome innovation where it causes harm.

We also need to look at how much gambling is happening online on people’s phones, and possibly at the interactions between the psychological mechanisms behind gambling and social media, because they have a lot in common. This room is full of politicians, and politicians may well doomscroll occasionally on social media—it is not unheard of. Lots of people in this room will know the feeling of scrolling through feeds on various social media platforms that I will not mention, at this point, and getting addicted. That is because various social media platforms have been engineered to hijack our dopamine chemistry and the reward centres in our brain—the stuff that we evolved so we could handle risky situations.

Gambling is a way of handling risk and turning risk into an activity that is pleasurable or exciting to a lot of people. We need to be able to handle risk, but people have hijacked it, just as some of the food companies and producers have frankly hijacked our appetites and driven us towards foods that drive up obesity. In the same way, alcohol companies can drive up drinking. I like alcohol, and none of this is a prohibitionist argument: it is an argument about regulation.

The second key issue is that, as well as being engaged in gambling, children are affected indirectly. I will address the direct harms first. Because people use social media, children have access to smartphones, meaning that the harm manifests in the same way as with adults who are gambling legally. They can access gambling 24/7 and are subjected to gambling advertisements and inducements to gamble at all times. That is what is happening to our children.

Although adverts are, in theory, targeted at adults, children are experiencing them, in the same way that they experience many other harms and things that we do not want them to see online. These adverts are designed to get into people’s heads and get them to engage in gambling, often at points in the evening when they are quite vulnerable. Adults are reporting that, because advertising and gambling companies have all this data on them, adverts are being targeted towards the late evening, when they may be on their own in their bedroom and feeling a bit tired. When their defences are down, that is when they see a little inducement to gamble. The same is happening to children.

We should be aware that the gambling industry spends about £2 billion on advertising in the United Kingdom. It is not spending that for nothing. We also know that, roughly speaking, the impacts of gambling on society cost about £1.7 billion. That is a soft figure, but it could well be a lot more; it is very hard to calculate the harms. The advertising industry is spending at least as much on advertising as the harm it is causing to our nation. That should give us pause for thought about the real impacts on our economy.

There is a lot of concern, not just over the accessibility of gambling and online slot games, but about the fact that many of them are marketed as games. I am a little bit old and I do not play computer games with loot boxes, but loot boxes are a form of gambling. This House has looked at them, and they are an inducement to gamble. Children are being exposed to the gamification of something that can cause harm.

We must look at gambling as a social activity that, for a very large number of people, is fatal. If we were looking at it as an illness, we would say that it had a high mortality rate. Of course, gambling addiction is an illness, and it does have a high mortality rate. That is why we need to look at it as a public health issue.

When children start as young as seven, they do not have the same defences as adults. There is increasing evidence that a person’s brain has higher levels of plasticity until their mid-20s, and that adolescents are more likely to engage in risk-taking behaviours. At the same time that we want adolescents to start to learn responsibility in life, gambling is getting in and hijacking the development of people’s ability to handle their own finances and adult decisions, and it is sucking them into online games.

I am very concerned about that, but I am equally concerned about the effects on children when an adult in their household is gambling. There is a double effect. We all know that if a household has someone in it whose gambling is out of control and causing damage, that can have knock-on and ripple effects. For children, who are in a more vulnerable position, we know that emotional and psychological harms are caused by being in a household with someone who is gambling, because of the behaviours that the adult starts to express—the tension and anxiety that they may be going through, and the unhelpful lessons that they may be teaching that young child.

We also know that gambling, and financial distress generally, can lead to conflict within families. It can lead to tensions, to relationship breakdowns and—as situations like this so often do in families, and as too many of us know from our own experiences and those of our constituents—to a spiral of abuse and neglect. Gambling is a key driver of that. If our Government are really serious about bringing prevention to the fore in the health strategy, they need to identify risks and harms and intervene early. Gambling is among those risks and harms.

I do not think we can make our health strategy work without tackling gambling, because so many other things are tied in with it. Financial insecurity is a key driver of health problems and health inequalities, and gambling is a part of the puzzle that we need to address. Gambling can also lead to financial deprivation; if there is no money left, the children are going to suffer. We know that parents will often prioritise feeding their children ahead of themselves, but where the adult in the situation is a gambling addict, they are likely, unfortunately, to prioritise their gambling over their child. That is where there is a vulnerable, non-consenting child who needs extra support.

Those are the categories of harms, so we must think about what they mean in practice for children. What are the impacts? The harms are reflected in behavioural and physical changes in the children. It is obvious that there are physical changes as a result of being short of food, but there are also physical and behavioural effects of abuse and neglect that lead to longer-term impacts over a child’s whole life. They can impact a child’s ability to function well at school, and thereby impact educational attainment. They can impact the child’s expectations of life. They can reduce their life chances. They can also add to a lot of the problems that we are facing across the country, where we have people in families with multigenerational unemployment who have not learned the habit of working, and children who think that gambling may be the way to a prosperous life. That is a real impact, and it impacts on so many other parts of the Government’s missions.

We want to get people into work—into stable employment—but, if this is the environment that they are in, it can hamper that goal. My question to the Minister is, “If the companies that are playing these games—that are inducing harm and using the techniques of modern social media and modern online tools to get into people’s heads—are undermining the Government’s other missions, how are we going to act on that?” That is a really important question.

Gambling also has intergenerational effects, because children affected by it may become problem gamblers themselves. We are talking about large numbers of people: we think that 190,000 children in this country between the ages of 11 and 17 are affected by problem gambling. Nearly 25% of people who use online slot machines are engaged in problem gambling, and when we add it all up and include people who are at risk, it is about 40% of the total number of people who are gambling online. Those are large numbers of people in a growing and rapidly adapting market.

I would like to hear from the Minister about how the Government can move faster. We have seen challenges in the last few weeks with nudification tools, child abuse images and sexual abuse material appearing on mainstream social media because of the adaptability of artificial intelligence tools and their ability to move really fast. The tech companies are—as we want them to—innovating and developing things quickly, so the Government need to change their pace of action as well. I think we are a bit too slow on this issue.

[Ben Coleman (Chelsea and Fulham) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing the debate. Gambling is one of the most pernicious public health issues of our times, as we have said on the Health and Social Care Committee. It has to be seen as a public health issue. Children who are bombarded with gambling ads on social media and who are learning to see betting as a normal part of the environment are just being exploited by adults. They have undeveloped risk judgment and undeveloped impulse control. We have a generation being primed for addiction.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government should do a number of things: ban gambling ads on platforms accessible to minors, prohibit influencer promotions, enforce harsh penalties on violators, mandate addiction warnings, require robust age verification and fund prevention programmes? In short, does he agree that it is time for the Government to see this as a public health issue and get tough with the simply gross adults behind this online exploitation, who are damaging our children and their future?

[Kevin McKenna]

My hon. Friend is very knowledgeable about this subject, and he is bang on about all those actions. It is exactly that: gambling has to be treated as a public health issue. I would endorse all those actions. The key thing is that we look to regulate alcohol, junk food and all such items because we know that they cause risk and cost us all money; if they are increasing demand on the NHS, they are costing us money. Who is paying for that? At the moment, it is not the gambling firms, which are externalising the costs of their business on the rest of us, and causing harm in society.

I really endorse what my hon. Friend said; we need to treat gambling as a risk, in the same way that we treat smoking, air pollution and drinking, and we need to manage it. That needs to be the lens through which the Government look at gambling, particularly when we consider children, who, of course, are different participants in society, economically. They are in a more vulnerable position, and they are our future. I entirely endorse that intervention, which leads me on to some key things.

I know that many of my hon. Friends want to speak and have some key points to make, but I need to reiterate that, at a fundamental level, this is not about banning gambling; it is about managing the harms caused by gambling. I represent a seaside constituency that has a dog track and seaside slot arcades. Those are things that we can manage, and they are in places we would expect to see such things. However, we know that, as gambling starts to move into new areas, that brings in new risks. That is why the fact that some of those things are moving away from seaside areas, where they can be controlled and people are used to regulating them, is a really important issue. I am not asking for us to ban them; I am asking for us to regulate, and to treat gambling harms as a public health emergency, which is what I believe they are developing into, because the tech is moving so fast.

I see my hon. Friend the Member for Brent East has taken her place.

[Dawn Butler (Brent East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and is giving an excellent speech. It is not about banning gambling; it is about safeguarding. There are companies that are grooming children now to get them addicted to gambling. That is why we have to tackle gambling harms, not just online, but on our high streets. That is why my campaign to remove “aim to permit” from the Gambling Act 2005 is so important. Does he agree that this is all very much connected?

[Kevin McKenna]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend; this is all very much interconnected. She used the terminology “grooming”; those psychology-based behaviours really are a form of grooming and manipulation. I also think it would help to start thinking about the effect of secondary gambling on people, in the same way that we think about secondary smoking. Passive smoking became a very big concern; I do not want to call it “passive gambling”, but the secondary effects of gambling need to be taken as seriously as its direct effects.

What are the Government doing in terms of regulating gambling as a public health issue? That is a key question for the Minister. I really welcome the changes to the gambling levy, and I particularly welcome the fact that it is targeted at children in poverty; the money is being used to offset the harm, socially, that is directly caused by gambling.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Ben Coleman) said, we also need to regulate gambling advertising, so how are the Government ensuring that gambling advertising regulations keep pace with the change in modern digital technologies, especially social media and pop-up ads? What steps are the Government taking to protect children and young people from gambling-related harm through the course of their whole lives?

While it is grabbing children while they are young—sometimes leading to the worst outcomes of all, with children killing themselves young—it is also affecting them as they move into adulthood and employment. Unfortunately, because once someone has this addiction it is very hard to move beyond it, even with a lot of intervention, many of those people then die in their adulthood; but the harm started earlier. I would really like to hear from the Minister on that.

15:19

[Alex Ballinger (Halesowen) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Kevin McKenna) for delivering an excellent speech that covered many of the issues on which many of us in the all-party parliamentary group on gambling reform have been campaigning. I also thank him for organising this debate, as it is really important to focus on young people.

Like many in this room, I am a member of that all-party parliamentary group, and we are particularly concerned about the harms that gambling causes to people across the board. I put on record my thanks to the Government for listening to our campaign on gambling taxation, through which we have raised additional money from the most harmful forms of gambling: addictive online slots and casinos. We are protecting people by incentivising gambling companies not to work in those areas.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey mentioned, the scale of gambling harm in the country is enormous. He talked about how 2.7% of the population suffers from gambling harm, but I find the figure among young people most striking: it is 10.2% for those under the age of 25. Some 70,000 children under the age of 18 face serious gambling harms, including addiction, debt and mental health problems. We are certainly priming people in the next generation to get into even more trouble when they reach the legal age at which they are able to gamble properly.

I want to talk about gambling advertising in particular. The all-party group recently had an inquiry on the subject, on the back of which we have written to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the gambling Minister. I want to highlight some of the things that we pulled out from that inquiry, particularly the effect that gambling advertising has on children and young people. Whether it is through social media, sport or even gaming, we are particularly concerned about the way in which such advertising normalises gambling among people under 18. People of that age, who are not even legally able to participate in gambling, are being bombarded by adverts across the board.

There is loads of research on this issue, and a lot of it points to the fact that many gambling adverts target boys rather than girls, and they are much more likely to receive them. The University of Liverpool highlighted a really high incidence of new cases of problem gambling particularly among boys and young men between the ages of 17 and 20. In fact, 57% of boys under the age of 18 have seen gambling adverts at sport events in the last year. The University of Bristol found that, in just the opening weekend of the premier league alone, there were 27,000 gambling adverts or inducements.

Football is of course a family sport, and lots of people of all ages go. We have to ask ourselves: do we think it is acceptable that children—whether they are going with their parents, going alone or watching it on television—are subject to so many gambling adverts? We have talked about the voluntary industry measures that have been put in place, including the front-of-shirt ban that is planned to be introduced later this year. Obviously, that is a step in the right direction, but it is just a drop in the ocean compared with the number of gambling adverts that we see in a typical football match.

Social media is also an enormous problem—53% of boys have seen gambling adverts on social media. Of course, we are debating whether people under 16 should even be able to access social media, but one of the reasons against it is the amount of harmful content to which they are exposed, and gambling adverts are one such example. Particularly concerning is the fact that 31% of children who have been exposed to gambling adverts have seen them through influencers. These people are not typically talking about doing paid adverts or showing themselves as gambling advertisers; they are simply influencers talking about the ways in which people can access gambling products online.

There is a real problem in the self-regulation of content marketing. The Advertising Standards Authority has a Committee of Advertising Practice code of practice that requires gambling marketing communications to be clearly identifiable as such, but again and again, we are not seeing that followed. In fact, 74% of gambling ads on social media were found not to follow that basic rule, which is seriously concerning.

As we have spoken about, gaming is a real challenge—37% of young people who use games have been exposed to gambling-related marketing. Games are designed with the same psychological elements that we might see in gambling, as they target dopamine and encourage people to take that chance of an opportunity to win. Having elements of gambling and actual gambling in computer games means that we are priming children to get involved in dangerous types of gambling in future. Influencers on platforms like Twitch are using opportunities to promote gambling and talking about it, which is very concerning.

Recent research by the academic Leon Xiao, who has provided advice to DCMS, found that 26% of games offered loot boxes that are illegal under current interpretations of gambling law. There is a real lack of enforcement and a lot of people are operating in this grey area, providing things that, under many interpretations of the law, are not legal. I have not even talked about the opportunities available to children to access the unregulated gambling market or to use crypto, or the many other dangerous types of gambling.

It is clear from talking to the many MPs engaged on this issue that the public are tired of this. Some 74% of people polled think that there are too many gambling adverts in sports and that under-18s should not be exposed to gambling advertising at all. That is a position that many of us can agree with. It seems completely reasonable considering the scale of harm that we are seeing.

A lot of the current situation stems from the fact that the Gambling Act was established in 2005 and we have not had primary legislation since then, while the world has changed completely. Many Members have talked about digitisation and smart phones, and how 24/7 online casinos have made things more difficult. We need to change the Act, but the Government could do a lot of things right now that would not require primary legislation, including effective regulation on advertising, marketing and sponsorship. That can already be done by the Gambling Commission and the Advertising Standards Authority.

Many other European countries, including the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Spain and Belgium, have much stronger advertising restrictions than the UK. I urge the Minister to look at what lessons we might learn from other countries. I also ask him about the Betting and Gaming Council’s report on gambling advertising, which I understand was commissioned by the Government and informs their policy at the moment. Does he agree that asking the BGC to mark its own homework in that way is problematic? Will the Government commit to publishing the findings from that report so that we can all see what advice the Government are getting from the sector?

The evidence is clear. The public are tired of gambling adverts—that much is obvious. I urge the Government to heed the report of the all-party parliamentary group on gambling reform, which will include proposals on limiting the most harmful forms of advertising, particularly as it affects young people. I will not pre-empt the report, which will be coming soon, but it will include lots of sensible steps that we can take on restrictions. It is important that we do not let outdated regulations allow more children to slip through the net and be primed for gambling harm in the future.

15:28

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a real pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I thank the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Kevin McKenna) for bringing this debate, for giving us lots of detail and information, and for giving us an opportunity to participate. I welcome the Minister and am glad to see him in his place. I look forward to his response to our questions and requests. He is always a Minister who responds and tries to give us some reassurance, which will be good to hear.

The hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey gave examples, and referred to a seven-year-old child. Probably my first understanding of what it was like to have an addiction to gambling was through a couple called Peter and Sadie Keogh from Enniskillen in Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, who lost their son Lewis to a gambling addiction. He started gambling at a very early age. Unfortunately, he lost his life to it. Ultimately, I am here to represent them and all others who have experienced a loss as well.

As we know, gambling legislation is different in Northern Ireland, yet we know the harm of gambling is still rife, similar to the situation here that Members have referred to. Greater protections must be put in place. GambleAware’s 2024 survey found that some 1.6 million children in the UK live with an adult who displays signs of a problematic gambling addiction. It is not always about the person who gambles from an early age; the problem can also be the effect of gambling on young children. The survey also discovered that children exposed to gambling are four times more likely to go on to experience gambling issues themselves. Within the past 12 months, of those who had seen family members gamble, one in 15 people, or 7%, noted that it made them feel worried, and one in 20, or 5%, reported that it made them feel sad. That illustrates clearly the issues and the impact on families, and particularly children.

Gambling among children and young people is a significant and increasing problem, as shown by the most recent Gambling Commission annual survey, which found that some three in 10—almost a third—of 11 to 17-year olds had spent their own money on any gambling activity in the past 12 months, up from 27% in 2024. The hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey gave the incredible example of a seven-year-old; I cannot begin to understand how that happened, or the impact on the seven-year-old or, indeed, on the family.

I have a couple of questions for the Minister on the Gordon Moody charity. Members here on the mainland will probably know that it is a specialist provider of residential treatment for gambling harms. Over the last period of time, it has accepted and treated some 40,000 people for addiction. I met people from the charity only this week, to prepare information for this debate. They had seen a threefold increase in the number of applicants aged 18 to 24 seeking treatment in recent years. They made up 7.4% of the total applicants in 2025, up from 2.6%. The charity has two treatment centres, and a women’s treatment centre as well, which deal with and try to help and support the families. Northern Ireland has no dedicated rehab centre under the Gordon Moody umbrella, but residents from Northern Ireland are entitled to, and do apply for, residential rehab for gambling, and are subsequently treated in the centres.

I have seen at first hand the results of gambling for family units at every level, and it is important that the necessary support is available to those experiencing gambling-related harms. That is why it is welcome that the statutory gambling levy will see more than £100 million of funding for research and for the prevention and treatment of gambling harms—indeed, the figure may even be more, perhaps £120 million. Whatever it is, it is a massive increase, and it should be ploughed back in directly to help those with addiction problems.

It is vital, however, that the new system does not disrupt the existing, proven service that has been treating people for gambling-related harm for many years. One of the existing organisations is the Gordon Moody charity I mentioned, which offers specialist residential treatment to users across the United Kingdom. That needs to be retained, and the charity’s services must be available, because they are vital.

The levy funding is due to kick in from April 2026, which is coming up. The Gordon Moody charity and others are facing a cliff edge, with no clarity as to whether they will be in receipt of funding after that time. As of late last year, Gordon Moody has already had to ration its service and it faces the possibility of further limiting the people it treats. It is therefore rather urgent—I ask the Minister to forgive me for throwing it on him at short notice, but we need some clarity on the matter today, if at all possible. I urge the Government to move quickly and to provide the interim funding for the next 12 months, while the long-term NHS funding frameworks are finalised.

The levy applies only to England, Scotland and Wales. From 1 April it will mean that people in need of support for gambling-related harms in Northern Ireland will be at a significant disadvantage, unless they can access a place in the centres referred to. The Northern Ireland Executive needs to commence the statutory power. The Minister is always very active, and able to put forward a case, so will he take the opportunity to speak to the relevant Minister in Northern Ireland—I think it is Gordon Lyons—to ensure that no nation is left behind in the darkness, with no access to treatment?

Gambling may be a sport for some, but for others it is a gateway to addiction, family breakdown and unemployment issues. As the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey said, in the same way as there is support for alcohol and drug addiction, there should be help for those with a gambling addiction. They must have similar treatment and that has to be funded. Those who create the games must pay towards the damage that is done, and that needs to be UK-wide. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say and to the encouragement that he will, without doubt, give us all.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Emma Lewell (in the Chair)]

There will now be a five-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches.

15:34

[Lizzi Collinge (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Kevin McKenna) for securing this important debate, and for outlining so eloquently the harms caused to the estimated 1.65 million children who live in a household with a problem gambler.

Increasingly, children are not just affected by gambling harms; they are being actively targeted. Even in the past two years we have seen a doubling of problem gambling among young people aged 11 to 17. It is hard to be surprised when it is everywhere we look. Every single Premier League team has gambling sponsorship. In the commercial break, we see celebrities from Danny Dyer to Harry Redknapp promoting casino sites. One ad says that

“you don’t need to know everything about every sport. All you need is a feeling and a phone.”

That message is not subtle, and it is backed by money.

The industry spends a whopping £2 billion a year on advertising, and it does that because it works. In a GambleAware survey of 2,000 young people aged 11 to 17, a quarter said that seeing celebrities gamble or promote gambling made them want to try it themselves. Among boys aged 16 and 17, that rose to more than a third. Now, remember that most people—falsely—think themselves immune to advertising or celebrity endorsement, so the real number of young people who are being directly influenced to feel positively towards gambling is likely to be much higher.

According to the same survey, nearly 90% of children aged between 13 and 17 are exposed to gambling content online. Beyond the billboards and television ads lies a digital world that is far harder for parents like me to see, and it is far harder to regulate. Although some Members may not be familiar with platforms such as Twitch or Kick—I admit that I was not—their children will be. I must pay tribute here to my gen Z staffer Cat, who educated me, an elderly millennial born in the late 1900s, about these platforms. When I first heard the phrase “late 1900s”, I had never been prouder of our generation. It is a beautiful phrase.

The platforms that young people go on are flooded with live betting streams. Children watch them in their bedrooms, with parents completely unaware of what they are seeing. One in three children follow gambling-related creators. Many of the streamers are in paid contracts with big crypto casino brands. They are not gambling their own money; it is free credit given to them by the casinos, and it is rigged to show young people how easy it can be for them to win big or recoup any losses from gambling.

If talking up the thrill of betting is not a quick enough route to acquiring new, younger customers, many streamers use affiliate-referral links, whereby younger viewers are encouraged to join gambling platforms and streamers are rewarded with a hefty commission for each viewer they convert into a customer. Although these sites are nominally supposed to be 18-plus, the age restrictions can be got around, and some sites based overseas are a bit less fussy than operators based here.

Some of the creators did not start out promoting gambling. They built their audience first, with young people feeling a strong, trusting relationship with the influencers. Then, as the content creators build their followers, they become attractive to sponsors, so now their primary job is not entertainment but to bring their audience to their sponsors. To deal with urges, children report trying to watch gambling instead of doing it, but that does not work. It is called the urge paradox, and it makes them more likely to engage in harmful activity. This is the active cultivation of young people as customers.

We now know far more about how exposure, habit and addiction take hold. If gambling is now embedded in the digital spaces where children spend their time, regulation must meet them there. Earlier this week, we changed gambling taxes to concentrate on the most problematic online gambling and raise money to tackle child poverty. I urge the Minister to look at the measures proposed by Members today and by the APPG, to see how we as a Labour Government can further protect young people and others from gambling harm.

15:39

[Mr Richard Quigley (Isle of Wight West) (Lab)]

What a fantastic pleasure it is to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Kevin McKenna) for securing this important debate, and for his wider campaigning on this issue.

Gambling is not harmless. For young people, whose minds are still developing and are far more susceptible to addiction and social pressures, the risks are even greater. Some on the Opposition Benches often warn of a so-called nanny state or of Government overreach, but failing to act on gambling harms would be turning a blind eye to a growing crisis that is harming the most vulnerable in our society.

In many tragic cases, it is tearing families apart. Declan Cregan has bravely spoken out about how he became addicted to £1-spin gambling websites during his school lunch break. What began as a seemingly low-stakes, low-risk habit spiralled into a 10-year struggle that ultimately cost him around half a million pounds. It is not only those living with addiction who suffer the consequences; parents Peter and Sadie Keogh have faced the unimaginable pain of losing their son, who ended his own life after being overwhelmed by a gambling addiction.

Early exposure to gambling does not simply pose a risk but casts a devastating and far-reaching shadow over young people, families and whole communities. We know that gambling is harmful for adults, and often targeted at those who are already financially vulnerable, but the safeguards designed to protect children and young people have simply not kept pace with the realities of the digital age. Some 31% of young people report seeing gambling content promoted by influencers and, according to GambleAware, 30% of 11 to 17-year-olds have spent their own money on gambling in the last 12 months—a 3% increase since 2024. Despite those trends, GambleAware has warned that as a nation we still rely far too heavily on self-regulation, with responsibility spread across multiple Government Departments and no single point of accountability.

Meanwhile, existing intervention and support services are often designed with adults in mind. Young people who seek help frequently describe wanting confidential, youth-friendly support that feels private and accessible, but instead find services that make them feel further alienated and misunderstood. Many young people do not recognise their behaviour as harmful; they do not see themselves as problem gamblers, and see their actions as normal, or even expected, youthful risk taking. Tragically, they realise only when they are financially, socially and psychologically deep into the addiction that what seemed like harmless fun has taken a profound toll.

Gambling companies, whether online or on the high street, have repeatedly shown their unwillingness to take genuine responsibility for safeguarding their customers. Only last week, in response to a signature on a joint letter on the harms of gambling led by my hon. Friend the Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler), I received a reply that effectively told me how wrong I was. It informed me of the virtues of gambling for our high streets and local economies. If these organisations are so convinced of the good they do, they should have nothing to fear from proper scrutiny. But we know that they are all too happy with the status quo, and wish to continue to mark their own homework.

If we are to meaningfully confront the escalating crisis of youth gambling, the Government must move beyond incremental tweaks and adopt a proactive, uncompromising approach to addressing the well-evidenced harms associated with it. We need swift, decisive action to modernise protections so that they reflect the realities of a digital world—one in which young people are routinely targeted and relentlessly exposed to risk. The support we offer must be designed to genuinely resonate with children and teenagers, meeting them where they are, speaking in a language they trust and providing services they will actually use. Only then can we stem the rising tide of harm and safeguard the wellbeing of the next generation.

15:43

[Tristan Osborne (Chatham and Aylesford) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I thank those who have led the debate in our communities, including my hon. Friends the Members for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Kevin McKenna) and for Brent East (Dawn Butler), and the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), who are among the many Members with a passion for this issue. There are also all-party parliamentary groups that lead outstanding cross-party work on behalf of parliamentarians who have realised the scale and scope of this issue. I pay tribute to all the constituents who have communicated with me and raised this issue in campaign organisations and groups.

I have a personal testimony. One of my family members passed away early because of a gambling addiction—a secret addiction that we were unaware of until he passed away and his gambling debts were fully transparent. There are many families across the country who have been touched by similar stories about family members, friends and neighbours.

This issue is directly linked to how companies interact with people, and particularly the way that modern communication technologies are impacting young people. As colleagues have correctly enunciated today, 30% of young people have seen gambling-related content online. Advertising at sports events, such as premiership football games, is normalising the interaction with particular brands. There is also the use of online influencers, with young people looking up to or interacting with individuals who are being sponsored by organisations. There is a clear corporate agenda, with gambling companies seeking to increase their reach into ever younger cohorts.

We know that this is a growing problem. In 2023, 0.7% of young people aged between 11 and 17 experienced gambling addiction, but that has increased to 1.5% now. That is linked to online gamification and the mobile devices in our pockets. Some 8% of young people gambled online, indicating that apps and casino sites—many based in international locations, with extremely weak barriers in place—are flouting legislation in this country. We also know that gambling on e-sports and other gambling is proliferating around the world—the problem persists not just here—so there are case studies from elsewhere that we can learn from.

Lancet Public Health recently looked into the issue and suggested that there is a gender divide here too. As colleagues have said, young boys are far more susceptible to the influences I have talked about—overwhelmingly so—than young girls, with 49% of young boys who are impacted by gambling having interacted with online media platforms. We also know that the sector is spending a fortune on influencing and advertising. As has been correctly articulated, £2 billion is spent annually in this space.

As Sports Minister, my predecessor as MP for Chatham and Aylesford, Dame Tracey Crouch, did outstanding work to try to restrict gambling access, through her work on fixed odds betting terminals. Indeed, she resigned as a Minister because the then Government did not take this issue, or the influence of the sector, seriously. I support her and the work that she has done. We need to be careful that extremely expansive commercial operators are not unduly influencing us; we must take that extremely seriously.

In the time I have left, I have some questions for the Minister. There is now a well-established, foundational link, both direct and indirect, between advertising and harm. What more can we do, working with the Advertising Standards Agency, to restrict such advertising? Several European countries have already done so. The Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Spain and Belgium have introduced regulations, so there is precedent for such restrictions.

What can we do to work with football and other sports to restrict advertising near schools and sports grounds in order to restrict excessive content marketing? What can we do to regulate the newer forms of gambling and advertising that we increasingly see on mobile devices? What can we do to ensure that the NHS and our other public health bodies really face up to this challenge, and can give free stigma-free advice to our young people?

Lastly, as I mentioned, every individual in this room will have come across cases where gambling addiction and harm have impacted someone, but that is just scratching the surface of a pernicious problem. If we do not deal with it in a respectful but forceful way as a Government, we will create legacy issues for generations to come.

15:48

[Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate my hon. Friend—and fellow Kent MP—the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Kevin McKenna) on securing the debate and on his extremely insightful speech. He showed his background as a clinician, but also his concern for his constituents.

As others have said, this is indeed a very timely debate. The latest figures on young people and gambling, published in November by the Gambling Commission, should be a concern to us all. Some 49% of 11 to 17-year-olds had experienced gambling in the previous 12 months. Even more worryingly, 30% of 11 to 17-year-olds had spent their own money on gambling in the previous 12 months. I understand from GamCare, the charity that runs the national gambling helpline, that in the last year callers to that helpline from my constituency of Dartford identified all sorts of problems—including financial difficulties, anxiety, stress and depression—as the personal impacts of their gambling.

GamCare also highlighted to me that among parents who are already gamblers at risk of harm, almost half have bet with their children and 38% have, for example, bought them a scratchcard. That might be innocent enough in itself, but it is a gateway activity likely to lead to problem gambling as those young people move into gaming and sports. Half of these parents report that they think their children are likely to gamble in the future, including by betting on sports and playing casino games when they are old enough. That is concerning when up to 2.2 million children are growing up in households where an adult is experiencing gambling harms.

I am, however, heartened by some of the steps the Government are taking across the piece, such as ensuring that the gambling levy money is spent on research and treatment and targets the communities and people most at risk, and the Chancellor’s announcement in the Budget that we are seeking to raise taxes on the most harmful forms of gambling. I am proud to be a member of the Treasury Committee, which wrote a report recommending that to the Chancellor prior to the Budget.

One area the Government should look at—the Minister might address this when he sums up—is how we reduce the exposure of young people to gambling-related advertising. That was highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger), who has done so much work in this area. Four in five young people have seen or heard adverts or promotions for gambling through online or offline sources.

As a football fan, I see the level of gambling marketing in sport all the time. I welcome the voluntary front-of-shirt ban the Premier League is bringing in from the start of next season. My club, Crystal Palace, is in need of a new sponsor, not just because of the disaster of last Saturday, but because its current sponsor is a gambling company.

[Laura Kyrke-Smith (Aylesbury) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. It is vital that gambling companies come off football shirts, and I am so pleased that that is happening. I have a constituent, Chloe Long, who tragically lost her brother Ollie to gambling-related suicide. He was a big football fan, and she has spoken so powerfully about how ubiquitous the problem is, as my hon. Friend has said. She worries about young people growing up exposed to so much gambling advertising as a result of watching sport. My concern is that just asking clubs to look at this on a voluntary basis will not be enough. Does my hon. Friend agree that we may need to look at tougher action and clamp down on this link between gambling companies and sport on more than just a voluntary basis?

[Jim Dickson]

My hon. Friend raises an extremely tragic case, which I will deal with later in my speech. She also makes that link between sport, gambling and addiction, which is so pernicious, and which we need to see action on to ensure that we create an environment in which people are prevented from becoming addicted, rather than being encouraged.

As my hon. Friend rightly says, the front-of-shirt ban will not be nearly enough on its own; it is far from the end of the story. Gambling advertising, including perimeter TV and social media, continues to proliferate in sport. There are also the other parts of the shirt; this is a front-of-shirt ban on advertising, so stand by for lots more gambling company adverts on sleeves and other parts of the shirt from next season.

I have spoken before of my concerns about how the coroner service responds to gambling-related suicides. I remain of the view that the Government should ensure that the causes of preventable deaths, including ones related to gambling, are properly examined and addressed to prevent future deaths, with the evidence submitted by families properly considered.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Laura Kyrke-Smith) mentioned, just this week the inquest concluded into the death of Ollie Long, a football fan who took his own life after struggling with addiction for eight years, starting as a young person in his 20s. In his tragic case, there was a particular concern that, despite being registered with GamStop, which locked him out of the mainstream gambling industry, he was—likely through online advertising—able to place bets via online casinos based abroad. Although the coroner would not, as the family wished, include gambling as a cause of death, she has written to the Government to raise her concerns about the risks posed by illegal gambling sites, which is an issue Ministers are familiar with.

As we support and treat adults who suffer from gambling harms and we try to reduce the incentives in our wider environment to gamble, we have an opportunity to ensure that we do not allow this generation of young people to turn into the next generation of gambling addicts, with disastrous consequences for their life chances. Let us take that opportunity.

15:54

[Paulette Hamilton (Birmingham Erdington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Kevin McKenna) for securing this important debate.

Gambling is increasingly accessible to children and young people, whether through online platforms, advertising or other media. There are serious concerns about the long-term consequences this will have on the health, wellbeing and development of children and young people across the country.

I am particularly concerned about the betting shops on our high street. On the high street in my constituency there are eight gambling establishments—on one street. Since I became an MP, I have objected to every planning application for a betting shop on our high street. Sadly, I have not won a single decision. I will never, ever let one go unchallenged, because as a former nurse I know all too well the terrible toll gambling can take on people’s mental health and wellbeing, and sometimes it takes their lives. It pushes families into debt and can lead to addiction, which isolates people from their communities. It is also known to cause antisocial behaviour and to have knock-on effects that harm the entire area.

Birmingham Erdington is a young constituency with low educational outcomes, high unemployment and many houses in multiple occupation, so I am particularly concerned about the effects of gambling. The gambling industry spent £2 billion on advertising and marketing in 2024. That was not by chance; it deliberately targets some of the most vulnerable people in our society. More than 1.5 million people suffer from problem gambling, with many more at risk. The annual societal cost of gambling harms is up to a staggering £1.7 billion.

We know that young people are more vulnerable to being harmed by gambling. That is due to natural brain development and unmediated exposure to gambling at an earlier age, through advertising, marketing and the presence of gambling-like elements in places parents might not expect, including loot-box mechanics—which I knew nothing about—in video games aimed at children. Some 69% of 11 to 17-year-olds recall seeing gambling advertising, which acts as a gateway into more serious gambling as they get older. The results are stark. The annual student gambling survey found that 49% of students gamble, with four in 10 reporting that gambling has affected their university experience.

The effects are inescapable. There are hundreds of gambling-related suicides annually in Britain—between 2% and 9% of all suicides. That cannot continue. Today I am calling on the Government and regulators to come together to ensure that young people are protected and that our high streets do not continue to be wrecked by out-of-control gambling and betting shops. The challenge is not insurmountable. Support is available, stigma can be challenged and change is possible. Gambling must be seen as a public health issue. Children need to be educated at an early age through the public health lens in schools, and education needs to be provided to families and parents. I will continue fighting for our young people and for the safe, vibrant high streets that our communities so deserve.

15:59

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Kevin McKenna) on his extremely knowledgeable and passionate opening speech. All the contributions that we have heard today have been based on a huge amount of knowledge, experience of constituents and personal connections. I am really grateful to colleagues; I have learned a lot from them.

Gambling clearly poses a serious threat to the wellbeing of our children and young people across the country. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that it is a very serious public health issue that needs tackling. As he said, some of the harm is indirect: adults in the family may be involved in problem gambling. Two thirds of people who gamble are in some degree of debt, and there are 400 gambling-related suicides per year, so gambling has devastating consequences for families and knock-on impacts on mental and physical health, education, employment and crime.

On indirect harms, I was shocked to read in the Gambling Commission’s November 2025 report that three in five young people had some experience of gambling, and that half had gambled in the past 12 months. Much of that takes place through arcade gambling but, as we have heard today, online gambling is a growing problem. It includes traditional gambling sites and games with loot boxes, which encourage gambling-type behaviour that sometimes puts our children on a trajectory to full-blown gambling in later life. I am sure hon. Members have read or heard about the shocking story of a 16-year-old who, in 2022, lost thousands of pounds online in just a few weeks after seeing adverts at a football game—we have heard a lot about football advertising today—and setting up an account in his father’s name.

We are becoming increasingly aware of the addictive nature of social media and of how addictive algorithms are being harnessed to prey on and profit from children’s vulnerabilities in many different ways—not just gambling. The Gambling Commission’s 2025 survey found that young people are more likely to be exposed to gambling-related advertisements weekly online than they are offline. Thirty-one per cent of young people who saw gambling-related content on social media reported that influencers had advertising gambling-related content to them.

Concerningly, online gambling-related adverts give the impression that it is possible to make a lot of money quickly, while failing to portray the harms that gambling can cause. Given that, according to Action for Children, one in five children say that they worry about their family’s financial situation, it is particularly cruel to prey on children’s vulnerabilities in that way.

The knowledge that children and young people are regularly being encouraged to engage in risky behaviour with potentially devastating consequences clearly demonstrates the need for protection for children and young people, who are not aware of the dangers. Indeed, three in four children say that they want more to be done to reduce the amount of gambling advertising and content that they see. GambleAware’s recent report found that seven in 10 children agree that it is difficult to avoid gambling advertising and content. When asked what they would say to those who produced the gambling ads, one child said that they felt that gambling operators and advertisers were

“grooming children into thinking gambling is exciting and fun and win lots of money. You”—

the advertisers—

“need to put the dangers and the loss of money on adverts”.

Given that gambling causes psychological distress, financial and social difficulties, and even addiction, it is clear that we need to reform the system to protect our young people. The Liberal Democrats have long been calling for reforms to protect people from gambling harms. We very much welcomed the Government’s decision to double the remote gaming duty—a policy that we have long been calling for—but we believe that further decisive action is needed to combat the harms caused by problem gambling. We call on the Government to curb the impact of gambling advertising, marketing and sponsorship, including by ending inducements, direct marketing, gambling marketing and sponsorships at sports events, and pre-watershed gambling advertising. They should also introduce clear and enforceable restrictions on content marketing, particularly on social media, create a statutory independent gambling ombudsman with real power to protect consumers and resolve complaints, and replace the current self-regulation of gambling advertising with independent and enforceable regulation.

Given the role in this scourge that is played by social media and its harmful content and addictive algorithms, as well as harmful gaming, there is now growing cross-party consensus that Government need to take decisive action much more broadly to protect our children from online harms, of which gambling is only one. I hope that not just the Minister today but Ministers across Departments will listen to representations and proposals from both sides of the House to ensure that we protect our children and young people from addiction, because we need to do that if we are serious about giving them every opportunity to thrive and fulfil their full potential.

16:05

[Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

It is, as always, a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. For full transparency, I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Kevin McKenna) for securing this important debate. The protection of children and young people should unite every Member of this House. We all recognise that under-18s should not be gambling, and it is right that the law is strict on that point. Young people are still developing, as others have argued; they are more exposed to online influence and less equipped to assess long-term risks and consequences. That is why it is somewhat difficult to square claims that even limited exposure to gambling advertising is intolerable with the arguments made by some on the Government Benches for 16-year-olds to have the vote—but I will move on, because that is not the purpose of today’s debate.

If we are to make real progress in protecting children, we must be clear about where harm and exposure actually arise, particularly in the online world, as we have heard, and ensure that our response is based on the best possible evidence. Crucially, as we have heard, harm to children does not come only from direct participation. Many children experience gambling harm indirectly—from parents or loved ones who themselves struggle with addiction. That can mean financial instability, stress at home, relationship breakdowns and wider impacts on a child’s wellbeing, education and mental health. Those knock-on effects are real and deserve serious attention from Government.

That is why prevention, early intervention and family support matter so much. To that end, I would appreciate the Minister telling me or trying to work out why I have yet to receive a response to the letter that I, my right hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Stuart Andrew) and my hon. Friend the Member for Droitwich and Evesham (Nigel Huddleston) sent to the Secretary of State on 6 November regarding the impending cliff edge on funding that fantastic charities such as Gordon Moody, Betknowmore UK, Deal Me Out, Ygam and GamCare are all facing. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) has raised the issue, and the Minister will be aware that I raised it with him personally before Christmas, because we do need to ensure that Government understand the unnecessary worry that has been caused to charities that have real expertise in this space.

I understand that there may be interim grants to cover the next financial year, but that information is only just starting to come to light. I ask the Minister to tell us why the Government have left these essential charities in the dark over the future of the services that they provide, and whether the Government will finally—hopefully—get their act together and engage with the sector, so that a real, working solution can be put in place for the long term and we do not have this ongoing situation in which gambling harm seems to fall between the DCMS and the Department of Health and Social Care. That is a real issue and concern. As a shadow Minister, I have visited a number of these charities to see the work that is happening on the ground. They do incredible work and have incredible expertise in helping people across the country, so we must ensure that gambling harm does not fall between the cracks any more.

Much of the debate has focused so far on advertising. There is no question but that children should not be targeted, and within the regulated sector they are not permitted to be. But at the same time, as we have heard, we cannot ignore the wider online environment in which children now live. Evidence shows that when young people encounter gambling-related content, it is most often through social media, streaming platforms and online influencers—the places where enforcement is hardest and protections are weakest. This is the area that I have most concern about as a shadow Minister, and I have spoken about it before, particularly in relation to some of the crypto scams that we see online. Someone mentioned doomscrolling, and I sometimes come across this content when doomscrolling. Illegal and unlicensed operators are exploiting this space and exploiting young people. They use influencers and celebrities in ways that licensed operators are explicitly banned from doing, and they operate in overseas jurisdictions, which means that age checks can be bypassed entirely. Once a child enters this space, there are no safeguards at all—no limits, no interventions and no support.

We must be honest about unintended consequences. When policy decisions, including sharp tax rises, weaken the legal, regulated market—I have said openly before that I do not mind bashing the bookies, but I am worried about the growth of this—the activity does not stop, but moves to the illegal market. I have made that point before in the House. Evidence from abroad shows such displacement to the black market, where there are no age checks, safeguards or accountability. In my opinion, that environment is far more dangerous for children and adults alike. Of course, we know that gambling harms exist, and every case involving a child is one too many, but they do not exist in isolation. They are closely linked, as we have heard, to mental health, family circumstances, financial stress and patterns of online behaviour.

That is why education, parental engagement and digital literacy must sit at the heart of the Government’s response. Children need a clear understanding of risk and probability, a resilience to online marketing and the confidence to question what they see online. Parents need support, information and early help when problems arise. If Government Members want to do what is best for children and completely remove their exposure to unregulated, predatory advertisements from black market sites, I kindly encourage them to back the Conservatives’ plan to raise the age of consent for social media to 16 years old to support children and parents. It is a bold policy that, as we have heard, has cross-party support, and I urge the Government to get on with it. I think it is the bold action that is needed to tackle online harms, including gambling harms.

Moreover, the statutory levy provides an opportunity to fund evidence-based education, treatment and prevention, including support for families affected by gambling addiction. That funding must be targeted, evaluated and focused on what works. Would the Minister outline what he is doing to step up work on this issue to ensure that charities have the funding certainty they require to continue their operations across the country? What are the Government doing to ensure that the Gambling Commission has the resources and the right approach to tackle the illegal black market and the targeting of young people on social media, particularly in relation to crypto?

16:11

[The Minister for Creative Industries, Media and Arts (Ian Murray)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. You are a good friend to us all.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Kevin McKenna) on securing this important debate. I thought his speech was great; it covered all bases in looking at where we are on gambling harms. He was absolutely right to point out that significant attention is paid to gambling harms, but little attention is paid to the effects that those harms have on children and young people. I am glad we have sorted some of that in this debate.

My heart goes out to Lesley. I hope she has been watching this, albeit through one eye, and we all wish her a speedy recovery. I also pay tribute to Rosie, who is in the Public Gallery. Speaking as a father to two children, losing a child is heartbreaking, but using the loss of a child as a catalyst for campaigning on this issue is completely heroic and much beyond the strength of many of us. I thank her for that.

Unlike alcohol addiction, gambling is an invisible addiction, and it is often hidden from family members and friends, as we have heard from hon. Members. We must ensure that there are safeguards in place, particularly for children and young people; otherwise, we risk a generational slip into gambling harms, as many Members have said. There has been massive innovation in the gambling sector, which is why this issue has been brought to the fore. Young people have certainly been much more exposed to risks than other groups. I appreciate the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey about direct and indirect harms. I think we have to deal with that.

Let me canter through some of the issues that my hon. Friend raised, before dealing with those raised by other hon. Members. My hon. Friend spoke about loot boxes, which were mentioned by a number of Members. We have commissioned independent academic research to assess the effectiveness of the new industry-led measures to improve player protections with regards to loot boxes in video games. We have engaged with the relevant Government Departments and regulators to consider the next steps, which will be published alongside the academic research in due course later this year. Some 20% of the gambling levy is going into research; we need a lot more research into these areas to make sure that any other regulations or guardrails that we introduce are fit for purpose, as these issues are changing all the time.

My hon. Friend mentioned the impact of parental gambling on children and households. That is a key part of the impact that parents’ gambling has on children and young people. Statistics from the Gambling Commission’s young people and gambling survey, which many Members have referred to, show that nearly 30% of young people have seen a family member they live with gamble. We also note the findings that young people who consider themselves to be risk-takers were also more likely to have seen a family member gamble. The National Gambling Clinic offers support for people aged 13 to 18 in England who have experienced harm from gambling. It offers a family and friends service alongside that, which provides support to those impacted by someone else’s difficulties with gambling. Further to that, as I have already mentioned, 30% of funds from the statutory gambling levy—£120 million this year, in total—are being put towards prevention, some of which will subsequently be used to inform the Government’s children and young people’s strategy.

My hon. Friend quite rightly raised the issue of increased gambling activity among children and young people, and the stats on that have been read out a number of times already. We continue to monitor that issue, particularly in the sector of unregulated gambling, such as private bets between family and friends. We have all done it: we have been driving with the family, including the kids, in the car, and have had a little side bet on whether the next car that passes will be red or white, or something like that to pass the time. We need to be careful that what we do is not accidentally causing our families to slip into thinking that gambling is normalised, an issue that many people have already raised.

My hon. Friend also mentioned the Department of Health and Social Care and the fact that gambling is a health issue. I am aware that some Members of this House wish gambling to be considered a health issue for the Department of Health and Social Care—we heard that earlier from the Select Committee member, my hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Ben Coleman), who is no longer in his place. We continue to work closely with the Department of Health and Social Care, colleagues and other stakeholders beyond Government to ensure that the wide-ranging harms associated with gambling are thoroughly considered and are reflected in future policy. That is why we have set the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities and NHS England, alongside the appropriate bodies in Scotland and Wales, the task of commissioning for the prevention and treatment strands of the levy respectively. Gambling harm is partly the responsibility of the Department of Health and Social Care too.

The Government’s men’s health strategy was touched on by some hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey. We have heard that gambling harm tends to be most prevalent in young boys, and the evidence points to that. Young men are more likely to gamble at higher levels, particularly with online casino-style betting. The Gambling Commission published research into the drivers behind that in December last year. What is clear is the need for further gambling education, and we are committed to working with relevant stakeholders and the prevention commissioner to explore the role of education in protecting children and young people from gambling-related harms.

On the assessment of voluntary advertising measures, all licensed gaming operators in the UK must adhere to the Gambling Commission’s licensing conditions and codes of practice, which require compliance with robust advertising codes enforced by the Advertising Standards Authority. The codes are regularly reviewed and updated, and they include a wide range of provisions designed to protect children and young people from harm. Those rules are further supplemented by a number of voluntary industry measures, such as the industry code for socially responsible advertising, and we continue to monitor the evidence base and to work with a number of stakeholders when considering the effectiveness of current regulations and gambling advertising. I am sure that the Gambling Commission has heard this debate, and the Backbench Business Committee debate we had last week.

I welcome the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger). I have heard him speak many times over the last couple of weeks, and he has not mentioned that Halesowen is the town of culture this year—he has missed another lobbying opportunity, but I put that on the record on his behalf. I thank him for welcoming our tax changes, including the £26 million from those tax changes that is being put straight into looking at and being more robust with the illegal market. I thank him for all he does with the APPG on gambling reform.

My hon. Friend welcomed the front-of-shirt ban; with that ban, I think the Premier League acknowledged the scale of the exposure problem, something that all hon. Members have mentioned and want to reflect on. He also raised the Betting and Gaming Council’s report; I am not avoiding the question, but it is for the council to decide whether it wants to publish that report. I am sure it will have heard both my remarks and his on whether it decides to do that.

I am surprised that the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) spoke in this debate—he is normally such a shy and retiring Member. He is of course right to reflect on the fact that the gambling regulations in Northern Ireland are different, but I can reassure him that gambling officials met with their Northern Irish counterparts just last month to discuss gambling harm. They want to learn from best practice in both organisations.

The hon. Member also raised the specialist providers for the treatment of gambling harm and the late Gordon Moody, as did the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French). I thank them all for the work that they do. The gambling levy of £120 million will help. The applications for it opened yesterday, and I encourage all hon. Member who have any contacts with those bodies to make sure that they are applying for those contracts.

My hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) and many other hon. Members highlighted that the industry spends £2 billion a year on advertising—why? Because it works. Nobody spends money on advertising if it does not work. I enjoyed her saying that we are all from the late 1900s—I had not considered that before, but I certainly feel like it today. She also pushed us on what measures we can take.

My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight West (Mr Quigley) notes that young people have seen this as being normalised; that is something that we are all having to deal with. He mentioned the letter sent to the gambling industry last week, and the response that he got, highlighting how wrong he was. I gently suggest to the industry that that is not the way to respond; they should engage with the issues and, if there is an argument to be made, let us have that argument, rather than telling hon. Members that they are wrong when they raise significant issues on behalf of their constituents.

I pay tribute to Peter and Sadie Keogh after the tragedy they faced in their family, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tristan Osborne) for telling the personal story of his family. He asked about youth-specific gambling support: the National Gambling Clinic is an NHS service that provides free, confidential support for those aged between 13 and 18 experiencing gambling-related harm, and I would encourage any family member or anybody of that age to get in touch and engage with that service.

On gambling-related suicide, we all read the BBC story about Ollie Long this week, and many Members have referred to it. The Government recognise that the link between gambling and suicide is a sensitive area and a difficult one to research because of the linkages. It is very complex; I hope the 20% dedicated from the levy will help us with that research to build a much better picture of the harms and the direct associated areas. The Department of Health and Social Care also has a suicide prevention strategy; that is the health part of this, which is important for us to see.

I hope I have covered most of the issues that have been raised by hon. Members., I apologise to the shadow Minister about the letter sent to the Secretary of State on 6 November; we will chase that up and reply to the hon. Gentleman. I highlight the £120 million raised by the levy this year: the 30% that goes into prevention, the 30% that goes into treatment, the 20% that goes into research—I ask people please to engage with those distribution bodies—and the extra £26 million to tackle the illegal market. We all know the illegal market is a problem and I hope that money goes some way to dealing with some of those big issues.

To finish, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Erdington (Paulette Hamilton) raised the proliferation of betting on the high street. We know that is a problem; we had a Backbench Business debate on it last week, where we discussed those particular harms. In the interests of time, I refer her to that debate so she can see the result. The Prime Minister did answer a Prime Minister’s question from my hon. Friend the Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler), who has been leading the charge on this, and he is fully committed to making sure those cumulative impact assessments are part of the planning and licensing process. I hope that will help the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Erdington in some way.

I hope I have answered all the issues that were raised in the debate. We will continue to have these debates as the months and years roll by. The gambling Minister, Baroness Twycross, who is in the other place, who takes the lead on this, will have heard the debate and we will have regular meetings on the issues that come out of it. I hope that hon. Members continue to interact with the debate and continue the sterling work they have been doing.

16:23

[Kevin McKenna]

I thank every Member who has contributed to this debate. It has been very powerful, and I have valued the detail that people have added; many are key bits of evidence that build up to show the threat that gambling represents to children and young people in this country. I particularly commend my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger) and the work that the APPG on gambling reform does. That work was important in preparing my understanding of the problem before this debate, as was the great work done by the Health and Social Care Committee. It was good to hear some members of that Committee contributing today. This debate has shown how profoundly this issue has affected people and how rapidly it is changing.

I thank the Minister for his reply, particularly his commitment to research. It is really important—the only thing I would add is that we have to move fast. As someone from a health background, who has been involved in many health studies, I know that they can move too slowly. We are on rapidly shifting ground, so there are we need to take. While his Department does sterling work on this, I reiterate my feeling that, as always, health should be the principal lens through which we look at this issue. I thank the Chair, and everyone who has contributed to the debate.

Question put and agreed to. 

Resolved,  

That this House has considered the impact of gambling harms on children and young people.

16:24

Sitting adjourned.