High Street Gambling Reform

Bobby Dean Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dawn Butler]

That rule must not be changed, and I will tell my hon. Friend for why. Gambling shops get around that rule by having iPads, which are classified as lower stake machines, that do not work. That is how they get away with having more B3 machines, which are the most addictive machines where you can put in £20 and lose it in a minute. That is why the rule should not be liberalised. As I say, the business model is quite shocking.

Across the nation, an average of 13.4% of people are categorised as low-risk gamblers, with 2.9% categorised as high-risk. In Brent, 17.1% of residents are categorised as low-risk and 6.2% as high-risk. This shows the link between the proliferation of gambling shops and harm. One kind of business that is found on high streets when there are lots of gambling shops is pawn shops, because people lose their money and then pawn what they can to gamble more to try to win it back.

I am not saying that we should ban gambling all together, but we have to be honest about the harm that is being caused at the moment. The Gambling Act 2005 is completely out of date.

The latest iteration of this campaign has been a personal journey for me and has increased my understanding of the harms of gambling. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Bayswater (Joe Powell), with whom I went into some gambling shops, and who is running an excellent campaign to stop a huge gambling shop opening in his constituency, I have met some amazing people, and I want to talk about their testimonies. I interviewed two of them, and those interviews are on my Substack. Their testimonies opened my eyes, and I hope they do the same for anyone else who hears them. They also moved me to tears.

Jackie Olden is a phenomenal campaigner. Her mum, Wendy Hughes, worked at a bookmaker. After Wendy was given free plays on the machine so that she could entice the punters with the bright lights, the sounds and the music when the customer wins, she became addicted and started gambling with her own money. Towards the end of her life, Wendy gambled on a slot machine for 16 hours straight; the staff knew how she liked her tea and coffee, and bought her food so that she did not leave. Wendy had maxed out her credit card, so they kept her in the shop over 12 hours so that her credit card limit would be renewed and she could take out money and start gambling again. They knew her favourite chair and her favourite machine, and they let her gamble for 16 hours. Wendy lost almost £2,000 in that session. Merkur was fined £95,000 as a result of social responsibility failings—none of that money, I might add, went to the family.

Wendy later died of cancer. [Interruption.] I am getting quite emotional, sorry—Jackie is an amazing campaigner. Wendy had told her daughter that she was gambling to win enough money to pay for her funeral. The people in that gambling shop knew she was dying of cancer; they saw her emaciated body as she kept going in to gamble.

Charles and Liz Ritchie lost their son, Jack, at the tender age of 24. Jack had a gambling addiction. In his suicide note, he said that he would never be free from gambling, and that is why he took his life. Charles told me that Jack got addicted at school; he and his friends would go into gambling shops and he would place bets with his dinner money. Okay, things have been strengthened, and there are now checks on young people who look under 18, but there were not then. Using his dinner money to gamble, Jack had two big wins, winning £1,000, and became addicted, chasing that win time and again. His parents did not find this out until after he died.

In their grief, Charles and Liz decided to mobilise others, and they have since set up an amazing charity called Gambling with Lives. There are so many people who have been fighting this addiction on their own. The Labour Government have done some good work; there was just one NHS gambling clinic when Jack died, and now there are 15. However, there is so much more that we must do.

[Bobby Dean (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

The hon. Member is making a really powerful speech. We had representatives from the gambling industry in front of the Treasury Committee recently, and that revealed to me that such stories are not tragic by-products of an industry that is actually okay, but actually part of the business strategy of that industry. The gambling industry receives 60% of its profits from 5% of its customers. It needs people like the ones the hon. Member refers to, in the circumstances that they are in, in order to make the profits that it survives on. Does the hon. Member agree that it was a disgrace that the representatives in front of the Treasury Committee said that there is no evidence of social harm related to gambling?

[Dawn Butler]

Not only do I agree but I find it shocking that they can blatantly ignore the evidence and lie like that. You wonder sometimes how people sleep at night knowing the harm that is being caused.

We are not saying, “Scrap all gambling”, but we have to recognise and understand the harms and do what we can to stop and prevent them. Gambling with Lives has helped influence NHS centres and the guidelines of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, which I will come to later. That is really important in how we identify and link gambling harms to the increase in mental health and suicides. At the moment we have an average of one suicide a day due to gambling harms.

I met Rob Davies, a reporter from The Guardian, who was the first person to take me into an adult gaming centre and show me the ropes, which are basically, “Stick your money in the machine and press the button”. There is no skill to it at all, and there is even an autoplay option so that the user does not have to keep pressing the button. It also spins at 0.25 seconds, which is why a user can lose £20 very quickly.

Veterans came to give evidence as part of the work of the APPG on gambling reform, and their evidence shocked me, because I had not realised just how prolific gambling was among our veterans and those in the armed forces. If we think about it, because of the gambling industry’s business model, they are the ideal clientele. They have experienced occupational stress and trauma, and face long deployments and separation from their support networks. There is also a cultural acceptance of gambling as a social activity and easy access to gambling opportunities. There are even addictive B3 machines in Army barracks. We do not know how many there are; we are still trying to get those numbers.

It is shocking that the gambling is so prolific, because despite the obvious risks of gambling, there is an additional risk for those in the armed forces at an organisational level. It can reduce operational readiness and leave personnel distracted, vulnerable to bribery or criminal influence and less able to focus on their duty, which increases the risk of errors that may endanger them, their colleagues and operational outcomes. We have to tackle gambling in the armed forces if we want them to be able to do their job properly. We must also protect veterans.

I have also spoken to Tom Fleming, Lord Foster of Bath, Harj Gahley, and Tom Goudsmit and Adam Brichto, who are making an important documentary on gambling harms.

To end, I want to address what gambling harms are and what the Government can do about them. Gambling harms include domestic abuse, rent arrears, mental health decline, relationship breakdown, and suicides, especially in young men, as we have spoken about. There is also a link to violence against women and girls. The Government want to tackle violence against women and girls, but to do so they must tackle gambling. When I asked the gambling industry why it needed some shops to be open 24/7, I was told that it is because taxi drivers who are working nights can come in after a hard night’s work and basically gamble away their wages. What used to happen is that people who lost their money—their wages—used to get really angry, pick the chairs up and smash the machines. The machines cost about £40,000, so the chairs were made so heavy that people could not pick them up and smash the machines. It is absolutely shocking.

There are links between gambling and homelessness. Rent money is being gambled away. I met a gambler who was thrown out of his house by his wife because he had just gambled away all their money; they could not even afford food. There is also suicide, particularly among young men. Gambling is not like drugs and alcohol, where we can see or smell it. It can be hidden for a while until someone has no money and is desperate. That is why sometimes it is found really late: because it gets to that desperate point.

The Social Market Foundation notes that residents consistently associate high concentrations of gambling venues with increased antisocial behaviour, reduced feelings of safety and a decline in pride in people’s high streets. If we want pride in place, we need to clear up our high streets.

GambleAware shone a light on the scary prospect of young children being systematically groomed by the industry. Young people who are being groomed become desensitised to gambling, specifically through gaming. The same addictive hooks are being used to get young people addicted to the games and gambling—and it is more potent than drugs and alcohol.

Some influencers are being paid to influence young people to gamble. Sixteen-year-old boys are more vulnerable to that than any other group, and that is because there are video games, such as EA Sports FC—I have never played it, so do not know it—with loot boxes and virtual currencies that people can use to pay. We have to get a grip on that and we need to work with creators. I have been working with Caspar Lee, Joe Sugg, Ambar Driscoll, Joshua Pieters and Giuseppe Federici on how we can involve, help, develop and nurture current and future creators. Will the Minister also meet that group of creators to see what we can do to help that industry?

Action must be taken. The Social Market Foundation says that the statutory duty to “aim to permit” gambling premises

“is no longer fit for purpose.”

As an activity, it prevents councils from responding to evidence of harm and local opposition, and it erodes the ability of local communities to shape their neighbourhoods. This is what needs to be done: the foundation has five steps and I will read them out, because I agree with them all.

“1) Greater licensing powers should be granted to local authorities, including cumulative impact assessments, with no further delay.

2) Public health directors should be included in the gambling licensing process, as they are for alcohol.

3) The current premises licence classifications should be reviewed, particularly in relation to AGCs operating under bingo licences.”

Bingo licences are another way that those adult gaming centres get away with saying that they are a bingo hall, when there is no live bingo played at all and it is mainly B3 machines, which, by the way, make an average of £30,000 a year. That is money that goes directly from the poor to the gambling industry.

Let me continue with the list of recommendations:

“4) The cap on annual licence fees payable by premises to local authorities should be increased”—

at the moment it is just £1,000—

“to at least £2,000, and the amount of the fee reviewed…

5) The balance of responsibilities between local authorities and the gambling commission on enforcement and inspection of regulations should be clarified.”

That is very opaque at the moment. The sixth recommendation is about the “aim to permit” rule. Basically, we need to get rid.

In addition to those recommendations, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines and recommendations for healthcare professionals say that when people go to their GP for appointments and are asked if they have an alcohol or drug addiction, they should also be asked if they have a gambling addiction. That way, we can identify the link between gambling, mental health breakdown and suicide.

Gambling harm harms us all. For every person who is addicted to gambling, six or seven people—their family members, close friends and even work colleagues—are also affected. If we want safer streets, safer homes and safer minds, we must tackle the gambling industry and the harm of gambling and end “aim to permit”. That would make a dramatic improvement.