Gambling-related Harm

Carolyn Harris Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2022 Westminster Hall

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered gambling-related harm.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Rees. I am delighted to have secured this debate to talk about the urgent need for reform of the gambling laws. After two and half years of debates, reports and evidence sessions and, sadly, years of harm, addiction and ultimately loss of life, I was pleased to hear the Minister last week confirm that the publication of the long-awaited White Paper is not just imminent, but “very, very imminent”.

I urge the Minister to keep his word. He knows that the longer we wait to bring outdated and ineffective gambling laws into the digital age, the more people will fall victim to insidious online gambling products. For years, colleagues across the House and I have faced an onslaught of opposition from the gambling industry, for which the status quo is the perfect mix of outdated legislation, weak sanctions and limited scope. The reforms that we propose would fix that broken state of affairs.

Last week, GambleAware, a charity linked to the industry, reported that an estimated 1.4 million people suffer harms related to gambling, and that gambling has returned to pre-pandemic levels. According to the Gambling Commission, there are 55,000 problem gamblers aged 11 to 16. A Public Health England report found that 0.5% of people are problem gamblers, 3.8% are at risk and 7% are negatively affected by others’ gambling. The same report estimated that the cost of gambling-related harm is £1.27 billion annually.

Online gambling in particular must be addressed. The majority of online gambling revenue is derived from those classed either as problem gamblers or as at risk. The House of Lords Select Committee on the Gambling Industry found that 60% of gambling industry profits come from the 5% experiencing gambling harm. The University of Liverpool found that for online gambling that is even higher, with 86% of profits coming from that small cohort.

Rather than enter into a proper dialogue with those who are looking to reform and improve our gambling laws, the industry has come forward with very little in the way of remedies. It has resorted to playground name-calling, labelling those who are seeking improvements and reform as prohibitionists and, in my case, a Methodist. As a Welsh woman, I do not consider that an insult. That response is simply not good enough.

People having a bet on the Grand National, placing their Saturday accumulator, or enjoying a night at bingo or in the casino, are not—I repeat not—the focus of our reforms. We are fighting against people being seriously harmed, families being destroyed and lives being lost through gambling addiction and disorder. We cannot, in good conscience, stand by and see any more gambling-related suicides. Nor can we see people turn to substance abuse or crime as a way out of their addiction.

The playbook that the industry uses is very similar to the one it used during the debate on fixed odds betting terminals. We must not be fooled by that narrative. The industry says that the problem is historical, yet just a few weeks ago 888 was fined to the tune of £9.4 million for multiple failings. The industry says that reforms will harm the economy and result in job losses, which is exactly the same argument it used ahead of the reduction in the stake on fixed odds betting terminals. Despite warnings from the industry that 4,500 of the 9,000 betting shops would close as a result of reducing the stake to £2 a spin, 8,000 betting shops are still open today, and many are still clustered in some of our most deprived communities.

Last year, Peers for Gambling Reform commissioned a report, which was carried out by NERA Economic Consulting and concluded that

“industry profits are likely to exceed”

any financial costs associated with proposed reforms. The report stated that

“diverting expenditure by the public to other sectors which are more labour intensive than the gambling sector could create up to 30,000 new jobs, and employee earnings could increase by up to £400 million.”

Proposed reforms would see a

“net increase of £68-£87 million in tax revenues”,

rather than a net loss to the Exchequer. The industry argues that any reform at all will drive people to the black market, but the Gambling Commission has already said that the industry overestimates the existence of the black market, and it is not an argument to hold back reform.

What improvements are needed in the upcoming White Paper? Most importantly, the case for a centralised and independent affordability assessment is overwhelming. It cannot be right that online operators permit customers to deposit and lose hundreds of thousands of pounds, despite those customers having no regular source of income and often using money that is funded by crime. There has been a lot of debate about the level of a soft affordability cap, by which I mean the point at which an open banking check would kick in. Putting a limit of £100 a month on net deposits is a sensible, proportionate and, more importantly, evidence-based position, especially when we consider that the average level of disposable income in Britain is £450 a month, and that 73% of slot players and 85% of non-slot players lose £50 or less a month. A soft cap at £100 is therefore low enough to enable the vast majority of gamblers to continue without any checks whatever, as the vast majority of gambling activity occurs below this level. A £100 check would kick in only for those who gamble well above the average amount each month. Moreover, it does not preclude gamblers spending more than that. It just means that they would have to have an enhanced affordability check, which—surprise, surprise—many of the industry operators already carry out.

I also want to mention several banks that have been supporting their customers by providing gambling blocks. Monzo and Starling were among the first to do so, and I cannot understand why many banks do not offer the same support. It should be mandatory. There are now loopholes whereby gambling companies can accept non-card payments or the information available to the block is not accurate. I ask that Ministers work with the banking industry to ensure that all banks provide a comprehensive blocking facility.

[Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con)]

I wonder what the answer is. I fully understand what the hon. Lady is proposing, but look at the hard evidence from Norway. Norway has done exactly what the hon. Lady is proposing, but 66% of all gambling stakes in Norway are done on the black market or dark web. How does the hon. Lady propose that that does not happen in this case?

[Carolyn Harris]

Doing nothing is certainly not the answer. I know little about the Norway study, but just because Norway has not been successful, it does not mean to say that the UK Government would not be successful. We cannot afford to have any more of the issues that we have encountered for the last 17 years. Enough life has been lost, and doing nothing is not an answer.

I would like to pay tribute to Annie Ashton, who bravely started an e-petition when her husband Luke sadly took his own life after being lured back into gambling by relentless operators. I strongly back her calls to end the poisonous inducements that the industry uses to hook people on its addictive products. There is no such thing as a free bet.

It is not just inducements that are a massive problem. Gambling advertising has proliferated in recent years. We are now bombarded with gambling adverts on TV, online, at football matches and on billboards. I know that colleagues are particularly concerned about the impact that that has on children. If we look at recent published data, we can see the scale of the problem: 96% of people aged 11 to 24 have seen gambling marketing messages in the last month and are more likely to bet as a result; 45% of 11 to 17-year-olds and 72% of 18 to 24-year-olds see gambling advertising at least once a week on their social media, with one-third of young people reporting seeing it daily; 41,000 under 16-year-olds—children—are estimated to be followers of gambling-related accounts on social media; and 1,200 hours of gambling ads have been played on the radio during the school run hours over the last year.

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady welcome the whistle-to-whistle ban on advertisements for gambling, which has seen a 97% reduction in the amount of adverts that children see? Would she support what Bet365, a company in Stoke-on-Trent, is supporting, which is that only branding should be advertised, mainly on the pitch side, not any actual odds or free bets that, I agree with her, can be too inducing and, therefore dangerous?

[Carolyn Harris]

The whistle-to-whistle ban is not worth the paper it was written on. As for supporting anything Bet365 has done, I am sorry, I could not possibly do that. My experience of it does not allow me to do that.

That is a fraction of the alarming statistics that come across my desk each day. We know from research by Ipsos MORI and the University of Stirling that regular exposure to gambling promotions can change perceptions and associations with gambling over time and impact the likelihood that young people will gamble in the future. That advertising is a catalyst to risk and problem gambling in secondary school-aged children as a result, according to the Journal of Gambling Studies.

How can we let gambling companies spend more than £1.5 billion a year on advertising to the extent that in one single televised football match over 700 gambling logos were visible throughout the game? That is insane.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady think that kind of answers the last intervention? If the gambling companies that are businesses did not think the advertising was successful in capturing more people, would they put £1.5 billion into it, or would they stop advertising now?

[Carolyn Harris]

The right hon. Gentleman will know my answer. I was surprised when I saw the comment from the industry that advertising did not affect people’s behaviour. I thought if that was the case spending £1 would be ridiculous, but to spend £1.5 billion beggars belief.

[Jonathan Gullis]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Carolyn Harris]

I am going to make progress. Economic research has already proven that a ban on gambling advertising in sport would be unlikely to significantly harm sports leagues and teams. The non-gambling sponsors exist and are ready to fill any gap created. With our proposed carve-outs for sectors such as horse racing, we can ensure protection on all sides.

Next is the need for a statutory levy. Chronic underinvestment in the gambling treatment system has led to a scenario in which treatment is unregulated, unaccountable and fails to use the evidence base in the treatment strategies. Between 2% and 3% of people with gambling problems enter the treatment system and nearly all of them enter it through self-referral. A 1% smart levy on industry revenue would provide £130 million, which would be an increase of over £100 million on what we currently receive. That would significantly reduce the UK’s disparity with other nations that spend far more per gambler on treatment than the UK does, increasing funds for improved and—most importantly—industry-free education. That would put the UK at the forefront of research on an issue that affects millions of people across the world, would improve our understanding of how gambling is developing in this country and would inform future regulation.

There should be stake limits for online gambling, to give parity with land-based venues, including a maximum £2 stake on harmful slot content. Given the rapidly changing nature of both land-based gambling and online gambling, it is essential that limits on stakes and prizes, and potentially other factors, are renewed on a triannual basis.

A gambling ombudsman must be set up to ensure fair representation for those who experience problems with operators. Although the Gambling Commission receives complaints as the basis for possible enforcement action, it does not act on behalf of customers in pursuit of redress. That has allowed operators to withhold winnings unfairly and to use obscure terms and conditions to require customers to wager their deposit dozens of times before they are allowed to withdraw their money.

I know that the Gambling Commission has already introduced very welcome identity and age verification requirements, banned the use of credit cards, acted in relation to speed of play and length of time spent on a game, taken measures to require customers to have information on their winnings and their losses, and required all operators to sign up to GAMSTOP. However, there is far, far more to be done.

It is not just my colleagues on the all-party parliamentary group on gambling-related harm or the Peers for Gambling Reform group who support these measures. Recent polling commissioned by YouGov confirms that the British public are also on our side. Of those surveyed, 78% believe that gambling advertising should be completely banned on all platforms before the watershed and 67% also think that sports clubs should no longer have gambling sponsors on their kits or around their stadiums. In addition, 79% of those surveyed believe that under-18s should not be exposed to gambling advertisements in any form and 72% agree with me that affordability checks should be in place to help to prevent people from losing more money than they can afford to lose. Also, 69% of those surveyed think that online slots should have a maximum stake of £2. Finally, 76% of those surveyed think that the gambling industry should not get to choose where funding for treatment for gambling addiction and research goes. For me, that is a bit of a no-brainer, because doing otherwise is letting the gambling industry mark its own homework; the gambling industry gives the money, so it gets to say where it is spent. It is the people who are damaged the most who lose out; this industry only cares about its profits.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

The hon. Member is making the most impassioned contribution. I hope that I will not interrupt the stream of useful statistics that support her argument, but I will just give an example of—I had better be careful in my description—a senior medical person in the highlands who was well-off and well-paid. They committed suicide and it was discovered afterwards that they were a gambling addict.

The point I am making, and I am sure the hon. Member will agree, is that it is a mistake to think that gambling is something that just affects one particular sector of society; it is a problem that can hit anyone. And the local community in the highlands has never quite got over that person’s death.

I will conclude my remarks by saying that it is worth remembering that gambling is all over the place; it is found at every level of society.

[Carolyn Harris]

I will not name names either. I will just say that there are people in this room at this very moment who have made the greatest sacrifice of all, having given their children to an addiction, with little done to support them.

It is clear that the British public, the evidence, and the momentum are all on the side of reform. All we are asking for is effective protections to be put in place for customers, and for an industry that is all too often shamelessly exploitative to be reined in and regulated effectively. If we tackle the question of affordability, ensure restrictions on advertising and introduce stake limits to help prevent harm, we can tackle gambling disorder and addiction at its very core. If we push to introduce a statutory levy on the industry to properly fund research, education and treatment, along with a gambling ombudsman, we can at least try to help those who are already stuck in the depths of exploitation.

This is a once-in-a-generation chance to update our laws and, most importantly, save lives. It is now in the hands of a few people who I pray to God are listening to this debate, because the time for talking is done; now is the time for action. The gambling industry has run amok for 17 years. It cannot be allowed to be so destructive any longer.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con)]

Everybody here understands the damage caused by addiction, not just to the individual but to families, marriages and communities. Nobody doubts for a minute the challenges that the Government face in trying to regulate, in this case, the gambling industry to protect the most vulnerable, while at the same allowing the vast majority to enjoy their hobby or, in some cases, profession without it becoming an overburdened, bureaucratic straitjacket or without imposing a nanny-state solution on the majority. I say that because if the industry is restricted too harshly, the evidence shows that it just forces people on to the black market or the dark web, where there are absolutely no checks or balances in place to protect people. No, it is not difficult to access for someone who wants or needs to use it.

The reality is that problem gambling rates in the UK, at 0.3%, are low compared with our neighbours: in Italy, it is 2.4%; in Norway, 1.4%; and in France, 1.3%. Despite what the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) says, a big part of that success is down to what industry in the UK has embraced, with programmes like “BeGambleAware”. That is not just a saying or catchphrase, but something tangible in every regulated high street betting shop with human interaction, as well as their online presence. The large industry players in this country have pledged contributions of over £100 million for research, education and treatment in this area.

[Carolyn Harris]

Will the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that for the money the industry has given, it says where it is spent? It has influence over how that money is spent and therefore it precludes people from accessing services because they feel there is industry interference.

[Craig Whittaker]

I was trying to highlight the fact that the hon. Lady said earlier that the industry was doing nothing, and the reality is that it is not doing nothing. It is actually part of why we have a much lower gambling problem in this country than our neighbours do. The industry is also spending a further £10 million on safer gambling education for all 11 to 19-year-olds throughout the country. As we have seen during the pandemic when we were all working from home, advertising on safer gambling is a much larger proportion of the money spent on gambling adverts.

That does not mean that we do nothing more. Of course there is more to do, and anyone who has experienced living with a problem gambler knows how potentially life-damaging it is for everyone around them. It is therefore right that any review of gambling has the most vulnerable at its heart.

Let us briefly look at what happens when we abandon a balanced, competitive, regulated market, which is the only way to deter the hugely increasing black market. I mentioned Norway earlier, which introduced restrictions on stakes, strict affordability checks, and curbs on advertising. Instead of protecting the most vulnerable, it drove them to the black market, where 66% of all gambling in Norway now takes place. There is no human interaction on that market, no checks on affordability, and no lifelines available, either. So Norway’s 1.4% problem gambling figure is much higher because it does not know where the problem gamblers are.

--- Later in debate ---

[Carolyn Harris]

I would like to congratulate Bet365: it has mobilised speakers well today, and I hope that its protection of vulnerable customers is as tenacious as its ability to get MPs to come and speak on its behalf in a Westminster Hall debate.

The word I would take from today is “protection”. Some of us have spoken about how we want to protect vulnerable people, but others may be more inclined to protect the profits of the industry. I know which side I am on: I want to protect the lives of vulnerable people who are, on a daily basis, being exploited by this industry.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered gambling-related harm.