Gambling Advertising

Lord Smith of Hindhead Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Smith of Hindhead (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, for initiating this debate and pay tribute to his tenacious pursuit of this particular subject. He and I have worked together for quite some time and served on your Lordships’ Select Committee on gambling harm a few years ago. I declare my own interest as the CEO of the Association of Conservative Clubs. We have several hundred clubs throughout the UK, all of which have gaming machines, play bingo and have small-scale lotteries. I also declare my interest as the chairman of the National Conservative Draws Society, an established society lottery with an income or turnover in excess of £1 million each year.

We have been here before, speaking about gambling advertising and gambling harm, and we have talked before about how to protect children from the harm of advertising. I can recall discussing the subject of loot boxes back in 2016, and I am sure the subject will be mentioned again today. The latest game is “Fortnite”, whose loot boxes I say will be the next ones we will be talking about, in a few months or years to come.

I will today address not just the point that gambling advertising is too much; I think everybody here knows and agrees that we see far more gambling advertising now than we used to. If there is more gambling advertising, there will be more people who gamble. If there are more people who gamble, the 0.5% of people who suffer from gambling harm will increase, and the 0.9% of young people who suffer from gambling harm and have a gambling problem will also increase.

The point I will make today is not that gambling advertising is on the increase, and that more people gamble as a result. I will talk specifically about one area where we might be able to help: children who are suffering from gambling harm, having perhaps been exposed to too much gambling advertising. Problem gambling rises each year; advertising spend on gambling rises each year; and gambling among young people—that is, ages under 18; even under 11 years of age in some cases—is rising as well.

I read the Gambling Commission’s 2023 report on young people and their gambling behaviour, attitudes and awareness. It has an interesting section on young people gambling using a parent’s account. It said:

“Overall, young people were more likely to use their parent’s or guardian’s accounts for any type of online gambling with their permission (6 percent), rather than without (2 percent). When looking at specific gambling accounts, young people were more likely to have played National Lottery games online with their parent’s or guardian’s permission (5 percent), than without (2 percent). Similarly, young people were more likely to have played on gambling websites or placed bets online with their parent’s or guardian’s permission (5 percent) compared with those without (2 percent)”.


We can conclude, therefore, that some parents give permission for their children to gamble, and that it is possible for children to gamble without their parent’s or guardian’s permission, meaning that some young people were playing either via their own account or by hacking into a parent’s account.

Something has gone wrong here with security measures. It should not be possible for a young person to gamble under their own name and details, and it should not be right they do it under their parent’s or guardian’s accounts. I suggest it would be a good idea to mandate a two-factor identification process to be put in place on all online gambling sites, so that if a child is trying to gamble without their parents’ knowledge, their parents’ mobile phones could be notified. This process could deter the child by making it harder for them to get online. Secondly, could the industry do more to provide information and education about the dangers of gambling to children and parents alike?

In terms of how this relates to marketing and advertising, if gambling operators have not got the correct safety measures in place to protect children from accessing their products—and this includes the National Lottery—they should not be able to advertise their services, or even operate until their product can be shown to be safe. We would shut down a bar if under-18s were found to be systematically slipping through and purchasing alcohol undetected. I do not really see the difference here at all. That might be something to think about.

Perhaps we might also touch on the mixed messages we sometimes send about the sports personalities involved with the gambling industry; at the same time, we are just about to wave off our team to France for the Olympic Games, which is almost solely supported by gambling, through the National Lottery.

Gambling Harm (Social and Economic Impact of the Gambling Industry Committee Report)

Lord Smith of Hindhead Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Smith of Hindhead (Con)]

My Lords, it was an honour to serve on the Select Committee under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Grade. I thank him for his leadership, and I thank the staff who supported the committee and our witnesses, as well as colleagues who together produced a report which I believe is both balanced and considered. I declare my interests as a member of this committee and my other related interests as set out in the register.

Having become so used in recent months to a speaking time of just three minutes—and, in one case, two—I hardly knew what to do with myself when I learned that today we would have an advisory speaking time of five to six minutes. However, as the subject of gambling is so wide-ranging, I shall endeavour to stick to just a couple of topics.

As we are aware, a great deal has changed since 2005 in the way we gamble, socialise and spend our leisure time and money. The internet is the biggest catalyst in this change, with 24-hour access to online gambling in our pockets. The review our committee undertook was overdue and I hope our findings and recommendations will provide a measured framework for responsible and safe gambling while, at the same time, protecting the individual rights of those who enjoy gambling. As we said in our report, our aim was to make recommendations which

“will make gambling safer for all, but no less enjoyable for those who do participate safely.”

I hope our recommendation that triennial reviews should be reinstated will be given serious consideration. This is an efficient way to officially and systematically evaluate the gambling industry, the social landscape and key players such as the Gambling Commission, GambleAware and others. Can my noble friend the Minister clarify this point?

I clearly recall the look of panic, followed by temporary blankness, when I asked the then CEO of GambleAware what GambleAware does. The additional funding it had recently received seemed to have increased the size of its offices and admin staff, yet it was still unable to confirm its funding of, for example, GamCare, one of the excellent providers of help for people with gambling problems, for more than 12 months.

My question is whether GambleAware remains fit for purpose—whatever that purpose is—and, importantly, whether the funding of GambleAware is to be removed from voluntary industry donations and provided instead by the new, often mentioned levy. If that is the case, I ask my noble friend the Minister whether the Government are considering any alternatives to a statutory levy to fund research, education and treatment. Critically, do the Government recognise the disproportionate impact that a one-size-fits-all rate might have on land-based operators, which carry fixed costs and support large numbers of local jobs in their venues, compared with online operators?

If a statutory levy is being considered, will it apply to the National Lottery? Your Lordships will be aware that I have often set out my views on how the National Lottery has moved so far away from its original objectives that it is really now a gambling operator, albeit one governed by a separate Act. With the number of draw-based players declining and more of Camelot’s record profits being made via scratchcards and online instant win games, that would appear to be the case.

However, the mixed message continues when one considers that a person who plays just the six draw-based games each week, excluding scratchcards and online games, would spend £1,092 each year—and would be considered as being socially responsible as well as supporting good causes and, of course, Team GB. By contrast, a person who wishes to spend the same amount of money in a casino or betting on sports should, in the view of some experts, have to undergo an affordability check and might be regarded by others as some sort of social degenerate.

Camelot has recently been fined £3.15 million for mistakenly telling 20,000 players that they did not have winning tickets and sending marketing material to 65,400 people with potential gambling addictions. Noble Lords will not be surprised that I welcomed the Gambling Commission’s decision not to renew Camelot’s licence to operate the National Lottery beyond 2024, but I urge the new operator not to fall into the same trap as the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan did of “Dream Big Play Small”.

Finally, I hope that a happier balance between those who enjoy gambling and those who are rightly concerned about gambling harm can be achieved. Significant strides have already been taken by the industry to make gambling safer. Yes, it is an important industry in terms of tax yield and employment but a shared view that more can always be done without spoiling the enjoyment for the overwhelming majority who enjoy the occasional flutter is a target we should all collectively hope to achieve.

Gambling Advertising

Lord Smith of Hindhead Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Smith of Hindhead (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Foster, for initiating this important debate. I refer to my interests as set out in the register.

We sometimes risk forgetting in these debates that, for millions of people in the UK, gambling is an enjoyable pastime which causes no harm and is part of the general social cohesion of weekly life. I enjoy the occasional flutter; I play the National Lottery and I enjoy a day at the races. I hope this does not make me a social degenerate.

In many ways, like the noble Lord, Lord Bethell, I want to try to help protect the gambling industry from itself. In an age in which self-governance is always preferable to top-down regulations, I want to encourage, for example, the industry to stop using tipsters and affiliates. Most tipsters and affiliates operate on social media; what they can say or the advice they give are not regulated, and they often make their money when the consumer loses bets. It is hard to imagine any other financial product being permitted to be sold so directly and recklessly. If the industry does not abandon this scheme soon, some type of licensing code will be needed to curb the predatory nature of that part of the business.

Secondly, I am concerned by reports of the number of women seeking treatment for gambling harm more than doubling in the last five years. I am often a bit shocked when I see an advert for online bingo, for example; it is easy to see how people can be tempted to sign up to these gambling products after watching such colourful—often pink and brightly illuminated—adverts depicting ladies, perhaps with a glass of wine, socialising together at online bingo on their tablets or mobiles with so-called online friends. A very different reality is experienced by thousands of women who, having clicked on almost any of the bingo sites, are besieged by pop-ups, VIP invitations and free monetary vouchers. My understanding of the advertising standards code is that an advert cannot suggest that gambling can provide an escape from personal, professional or educational problems such as loneliness or depression. These sorts of adverts should really be looked at again by those making them and by the advertising regulators.

Lastly—I have raised this in the past—advertising standards on the National Lottery need bringing up to the same level playing field as the rest of the gambling industry. It cannot be right that we expect responsible gambling companies to put warnings such as “When the fun stops, stop” and “Bet to your pocket” while the National Lottery is permitted to use such taglines as “Set For Life”, “Dream Big Play Small” and “The fun starts here”. What the National Lottery is now becoming is not represented by its adverts; it is an online, instant-win, scratch-card gambling brand, more akin to any of the big online gambling companies and not solely the national institution it perhaps once was, selling paper lottery tickets. More work needs to be done in this area.

Gambling Commission: Data

Lord Smith of Hindhead Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right that good data drives good policy, and that is what we want to see in the review. The Gambling Commission is working with operators on how they can share data where they believe a customer is at risk, and the Information Commissioner has confirmed that data protection law can permit this in relation to the work on single customer view, as the noble Lord mentioned. We encourage the industry to trial a solution swiftly.

[Lord Smith of Hindhead (Con)]

My Lords, I refer to my interests as set out in the register. Some reports have estimated that unregulated gambling on the dark web and black market has doubled during the pandemic. Can my noble friend the Minister tell the House whether his department is working or has plans to work with the Gambling Commission to investigate illegal gambling activity taking place and to collect data on the levels of money being spent?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The dark web is clearly one area where the changes over the last 15 years can be seen. We called for evidence on the black market as part of our review and we must make sure that the Gambling Commission is set up to respond flexibly to the challenges that the future will bring. The commission has also received an uplift to its licence fees, which came into effect this month, which will strengthen the resources which it has to monitor and tackle illegal gambling.

Gambling-related Harms

Lord Smith of Hindhead Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Smith of Hindhead (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans for initiating this important debate and declare my interests as set out in the register. I congratulate my noble friend the Minister on his recent promotion and wish him every success in his new role.

I think we all want to minimise or, better still, eradicate the harm caused by gambling, but I hope we can achieve this while not hampering those who are able to gamble happily and without harm, and without demonising an industry which, certainly in recent years, has taken the role of intervention and social responsibility a little more seriously than in the past. We know that much more than money is lost when a person is negatively affected by gambling: a person’s mental health is at stake; indeed, in some cases, their life is at stake. The mental health of those around them is adversely affected and it is particularly tragic when we hear reports of children suffering from either their own gambling addictions or those of their caregivers.

I am pleased that GambleAware recently decided to widen its data-sharing pool within the research community by sharing its annual treatment and support surveys. I hope this will shed more light on the composition of those who are involved in such programmes and whether there were any steps that prevented their participation in such treatments. I hope others will follow suit—better decisions can be made when more information is available. If the Government want an evidence-based review, then clearly there must be evidence.

I note the report uses the terminology

““Estimated … costs … associated with gambling”,


but it is not possible to say that these costs were caused by gambling. A big part of the total estimated costs of gambling health harms in the report

“is based on the direct costs to government of treating depression, alcohol dependence and illicit drug use”

and other complex areas. Does the Minister agree that it would be good to try to get this figure of the costs of gambling harm to a position where there could be more accuracy? Does he also agree that we need to be very careful not to confuse the two issues?

The report says that the National Lottery is the most common type of gambling across all age groups, except among younger people, where scratch cards are more common. The report also points out that the proportion of children and young people who participate in gambling has been reducing, which is positive news, and that the most common forms of children’s participation are playing the lottery, including online lottery games, using scratch cards or placing private bets with friends. I have never understood why the National Lottery is always singled out from other forms of gambling, both in this report and in most others which are published, including those by the Gambling Commission. There is a reported total amount of gambling spend and then a different figure which includes National Lottery spend, giving the impression that the National Lottery is somehow removed from gambling activities. The National Lottery is gambling.

Just to be clear, I am no more anti-National Lottery than I am anti-gambling. I appreciate that the National Lottery supports many good causes and can create social cohesion but let me give one simple example of the mixed messages we have become involved with. Those of us who have an interest in this subject have been debating and considering the gamblification of sport and the potential harm, mainly to young men, of gambling companies’ advertising, particularly at Premier League football. Yet earlier this year, we were bombarded with adverts giving patriotic encouragement to get behind Team GB and buy £5 and £10 scratch cards. Camelot makes around 43% of its profits from instant-win online games and scratch cards. A huge part of its business is indistinguishable from other gambling companies, yet it remains untarnished by the normalisation of gambling. There have been many reported cases where people have said that playing the National Lottery was a gateway into gambling addiction. I think this area of gambling activity deserves more research.

Finally, there were aspects of the report I was pleasantly surprised to read, such as that the proportion of young people participating in any gambling has reduced by 23%, and that, based on the 2018 data, the number of people with a problem with gambling has remained fairly constant and has not increased since 2012. It is encouraging that, even during lockdowns, there seems to have been an overall reduction and only a very slight increase in online activity. According to recent Gambling Commission reports, the proportion of gamblers assessed as being at medium risk of harm has halved from 1.4% of the adult population to 0.7% since the end of last year. I hope this shows that, in some areas, effective work is being carried out by both the gambling industry and bodies such as GamCare to combat gambling harms. I also hope that quality, evidence-based research can continue to be pulled together as we move closer to reforming the 2005 Act and that the continuing trend to drive up standards in the regulated industry will go even further in tackling problem gambling.

National Lottery

Lord Smith of Hindhead Excerpts

Wednesday 14th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I am happy to take the right reverend Prelate’s point back to colleagues in the department, but I hope that he will recognise the value of the work that the National Lottery Heritage Fund does.

[Lord Smith of Hindhead (Con)]

My Lords, with reference to my interests as set out in the register, if a person plays the six draw-based National Lottery games each week, excluding scratch cards and online games, they spend £21. With the current fuss being made about affordability in gambling, is it right that the state-franchised lottery is encouraging people to “dream big” and gamble over £1,000 a year?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am not sure that I would agree with my noble friend and call affordability a fuss—I think that for once I may have a number of your Lordships on my side. Affordability is important but, as my noble friend knows, we see the lowest level of problem gambling in the lottery games. As I said in response to the earlier question, the primary purpose of the lottery is to provide money for good causes and 30% of the revenue raised has done that since its inception.

Gambling Reform

Lord Smith of Hindhead Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I apologise; we slightly missed the beginning of the right reverend Prelate’s comments, in the Chamber. If I have missed anything, I will write to him, but I think I got the essence of his question. We are of course looking at the economic costs. I do not recognise the £6.5 billion figure that the right reverend Prelate cites, but he is aware that one of the complexities of looking at this is the comorbidity between gambling and other forms of harm, which we need to take into consideration.

[Lord Smith of Hindhead (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests, as set out in the register. Can my noble friend the Minister assure me that, when her department develops these crucial reforms to the gambling industry, she will ensure that this review is not just evidence-based but grounded on a wide range of opinion that takes into account both the NERA report and the most recent research from a variety of organisations and groups, including the industry itself?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I reassure my noble friend that we are considering a very wide range of evidence. Our call for evidence received over 16,000 submissions from a wide range of organisations—from charities, academics and the gambling industry, but also broadcasters, local government and sports organisations. We are considering it all carefully.

Destination Management Organisations

Lord Smith of Hindhead Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes a good point, but the picture is slightly more complicated than the one that she paints. She is right that there are areas of shortage, but in significant portions of the industry staff are still on furlough. There are great geographic variations on that, and we are working closely with the sector to assess how we can respond to the challenges it faces.

[Lord Smith of Hindhead (Con)]

My Lords, can the Minister tell the House how the stronger towns funding, the future high streets fund, the levelling-up fund, the UK shared prosperity fund, the welcome back fund and the coastal community fund are being co-ordinated to provide a coherent strategy for tourism and, specifically, for seaside towns?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for highlighting the varied and sustained support that the Government have been offering in the range of funds that he cited, some of which have been available since 2019 and others which are yet to be launched. We are working across Whitehall and with local and regional stakeholders, including DMOs, to make sure that ongoing investment in places reflects their local priorities and needs.

Gambling: Early Mortality

Lord Smith of Hindhead Excerpts

Tuesday 20th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The main focus for addressing the issues that the noble Lord rightly raises is through our review of the Gambling Act. The online safety Bill, as he is aware, will focus on user-generated content in particular.

[Lord Smith of Hindhead (Con)]

My Lords, with reference to my interests as set out in the register, and bearing in mind the good advice that prevention is always better than cure, would my noble friend tell the House how many schools have included teaching students about the risks of potential gambling harm in PSHE classes or, indeed, whether schools are being actively encouraged to incorporate that important subject?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Department for Education does not record how schools teach their pupils about gambling, but young people will be taught about gambling risks as part of the statutory health education curriculum, including the accumulation of debt. Training modules have been developed for teachers, including a specific section on gambling.

Online Gambling: Stake Limits

Lord Smith of Hindhead Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his question. As we have said, we are considering all options in this regard but have also made major commitments to increasing provision for those who are negatively impacted by gambling. We hope very much that the evidence arising from the review will shape that thinking going forward.

[Lord Smith of Hindhead (Con)]

My Lords, I refer to my interests as set out in the register. Does my noble friend agree that if a limit on stakes for online prizes is introduced, as I think it should be, then such limits must apply equally to the maximum stake for all National Lottery online instant win games, which is currently £10?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The current maximum stake for National Lottery online instant win games has actually been changed to £5, following the Gambling Commission’s decision to withdraw all £10 online instant win games last summer. The National Lottery is regulated under a separate framework from commercial gambling, which reflects the lower ratios of harm observed there.