Sport: Gambling Advertising

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Wednesday 13th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

This has been an excellent debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan) on securing it and starting us off in his own style—it is always fun to sum up his speeches. He questioned whether some of the Conservative Members might be at Cheltenham, present company clearly excluded. He spoke about puppy dogs and toilet roll, and then got to free bets, but he was absolutely right. He also mentioned the hypocrisy—I would not say “rank” hypocrisy—from MPs who seek to advertise. He mentioned that he will be seeking to encourage folk to vote “Cowan” and vote SNP. Hopefully, that will be made easier by the fact that he is stealing a significant chunk of my constituency at the next election, so there are some SNP voters waiting there for him.

My hon. Friend made a good point about the consent of spectators and viewers. Those images and adverts are everywhere; not everyone wants to see them, but they are in their face regardless. He then spoke about all the moments in sporting history when we were not subject to such adverts. I can understand Torvill and Dean, the battles between Coe and Ovett, and of course Andy Murray, but I found Ian Botham to be a stretch too far. That is at least two Tories that a younger Mr Cowan idolised, and I am not sure that will go down well. [Laughter.]

I am being a bit flippant about the very serious issue that lies beneath today’s debate: problem gambling and how we end it. I remember very well when, I think in the first year that I had been elected, a chap came along to my constituency surgery in Linwood. He was there for the whole surgery, essentially 45 minutes, talking to me about his story, his gambling past and how he had been at death’s door; he had ruined his life, ruined his family, and so on. He had been offered no real assistance in trying to stop, certainly nothing from the gambling industry, and he was looking to try to help others from going down the same path. Fixed odds betting terminals were certainly part of his path, and we have legislated on those, but it progressed into all sorts of different forms of gambling. He manged to turn his life around, but that is not the norm.

The former Conservative leader, the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), the quiet man who once said he was turning up the volume, turned it down today, due to his voice trouble. I was going to say that he had my sympathy, but he is a Spurs season ticket holder, so things are looking up—I will come on to the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) in a minute! The right hon. Gentleman made a very good point about subliminal messaging through advertising that says, “If you gamble just a bit more, then you’ll win.” All of us have probably been suckered into something at some point or another, whether it is gambling, a purchase, or something else, by of subliminal advertising. He mentioned that there was a reference to gambling every 21 seconds in premier league matches, but I think the hon. Member for Sheffield Central said it was every 16 seconds. I do not know whether those are conflicting figures or I just misheard, but either way, it is a significant number; I just wanted to recognise that there were two figures there for Hansard.

The hon. Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) mentioned that she might put a bet on the grand national, and that her partner puts on an acca on occasion. That makes me think back to my younger days and how much gambling used to play a part in my pre-rugby rituals. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde, I used to play rugby, and my friends and I would meet on a Saturday morning and “put lines on”, as we said —that would be called an acca now. Then we would go and play pool, at which we invariably gambled a bit against each other, and then go downstairs to play the puggies, which is a term for fruit machines in western Scotland. I had not given that any thought until the hon. Member for Luton South said that. I very rarely do any gambling these days, but in my younger days, we thought nothing of gambling as a matter of course. For the benefit of Hansard, the hon. Lady is pointing to her phone, and she is absolutely right that it is so much easier to access the internet on phones these days as well. She also said that two thirds of fans said that the voluntary regs have not prevented children from being able to access or see TV advertising, and I think we all see that. She mentioned Luton Town, one of the very few teams in sport to ban gambling from not just its shops, but its stadium, which is to be commended.

Yesterday morning, I said that Westminster Hall should be named in the honour of the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), because he is always here and always puts in a shift. He praised Luton Town, and said that all teams should perhaps reflect on its gambling ban, including his own. He neglected to mention which team that was, but we might hazard a guess. One of his better points—or best points; better points sounds as if he did not make any good points, and he made some excellent ones—was on the fact that we teach our young people and young adults about excessive drinking, smoking, excessive speed in cars, and so on, but we do not seem to talk about gambling as much, which we should.

The hon. Member for Sheffield Central noted that this was the first time he had been called after the hon. Member for Strangford in all the time he had been here. If it had been anybody else, that might have sounded like a moan or a challenge to the Chair, but having worked with the hon. Member for Sheffield Central a few years ago, I know it certainly was not that. He mentioned that he was a Sheffield United season ticket holder. I have to say that I do not think they have troubles to seek this season in a footballing sense, but as a St Johnstone fan, I share his frustrations, given that St Johnstone is near the lower end of the table for the moment. He also mentioned the study by the Universities of Sheffield and Glasgow, and their findings that the more people are exposed to advertising, the more likely they are to gamble, and the more likely people are to gamble, the more likely they are to fall into problem gambling, seem obvious. He also mentioned big tobacco. It fought advertising bans, and so on, but a lot that we have done about smoking has paid dividends. If we put in the work on gambling, we can see dividends there as well.

It is fairly clear that gambling regulations must protect vulnerable people from harms, regardless of where they are exposed to gambling adverts. The time has beyond passed for action to tackle the shocking rise in gambling advertising. The Government have been praised for the work they have done in some areas hitherto, but we need to look pretty sharpish at their failure to address this problem, because advertising revenue has grown massively since the passage of the Gambling Act 2005. The National Audit Office estimated that there was a 56% increase in advertising spend by gambling operators between 2014 and 2017, driven primarily by online and social media advertising. If that was the proportion in 2017, goodness knows where it is now.

The Government’s White Paper on gambling is obviously to be welcomed. Its proposals include tougher restrictions on bonuses and direct marketing; making advertising smarter and safer; a new approach to safer gambling messaging; and socially responsible sport sponsorship—which is one of the main issues we are here to talk about. The Premier League has announced that front-of-shirt advertising for gambling is to end by the end of 2025-26 season, but the Culture, Media and Sport Committee said, as we have discussed, that:

“The withdrawal of gambling sponsorship from the front of Premier League players’ kit is welcome, but it will not significantly reduce the volume of gambling adverts visible during top-flight matches.”

It is pretty clear that there is a need for the Government to regulate gambling advertising, and we need to have a comprehensive conversation about how, if at all, gambling adverts should be allowed. Ultimately, this is a policy debate about the reduction of harms, and what is the point of us being here if we are not going to try to reduce harms for all of our constituents? We call on the Government to actively consider legislating to restrict the amount of advertising that gambling firms can procure in public broadcasting and sporting events.

The only slight caveat—not to that previous point, but in general terms—was to something that the hon. Member for Sheffield Central said. He said that there is absolutely no need for this form of advertising in principle—I agree 100%—and that there is enough money in football so football does not need that money. The only slight caveat I have, having met Scottish clubs and umbrella bodies, is that the Scottish game is not awash with the same level of money as the game in England. Advertising revenue is much harder to come by in Scotland, with it being a much smaller market in comparison with England, so restrictions could cause problems. That does not mean we should not address and tackle this issue, but we should put on the record that it is not as straightforward in Scotland, Wales and so on as it perhaps is south of the border.

In 2018-19, gambling companies yielded more than £11 billion, which raised about £3 billion for the Government in gambling duties. The industry has been transformed by social and technological changes, and licensed gambling has grown by 57% in real terms in the last decade. But British gamblers lose £14 billion a year, according to the Gambling Commission, and Britain is home to the world’s largest regulated online betting market, with £14.2 billion in profits each year. Other countries, such as Germany, have introduced limits on how much customers can deposit. In our view, the 2005 Act must be modernised and made effective for the digital age, to provide adequate protection against gambling-related harms for problem gamblers and children.

To conclude, for problem gamblers the impact of gambling can be harmful and massively addictive. We have heard already that more than one person a day commits suicide in the UK because of gambling-related harms. Sadly, as we heard, that includes Jack Ritchie, who lived in the constituency of the hon. Member for Sheffield Central. Two million families are blighted by problem gambling, and more than 55,000 children between the ages of 11 and 16 are addicted to it. Those are pretty shocking statistics.

I will finish with this: according to a YouGov survey of 18,000 people, commissioned by GambleAware, gambling addiction rates may be nine times higher than the betting industry claims. GambleAware estimates that 1.4 million people are being harmed by their own gambling, with a further 1.5 million at risk. Although this debate’s attendance has not been as good as it perhaps should have been, we have had five Back Bench speeches, and now one Front-Bench speech, all speaking with one voice on this issue. It is time for the Government to act, or indeed for a new incoming Government to do so, if one is elected at the end of the year.