Gambling Harms: Children and Young People

(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)

Thursday 15th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[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.