Online Gambling

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, the weight of opinion from all round the Chamber has fallen equally in one direction—the Minister’s head. I look forward to his handling of the responses. The contributions have been the best possible vindication of the initiative of the noble Lord, Lord Browne, in bringing this matter to our attention. We do not have to say thank you; the gratitude has been expressed in the way that people have rallied round him and supported the cause. That makes it incumbent on us to do something with the unanimity expressed. I hope that a moral force will have been let loose that will yield its own results in due course.

The noble Lord, Lord Browne, and some other noble Lord, who have contributed to this important debate are veterans in a cause which is too often laughed off by people who consider those who raise these concerns to be cranks, do-gooders or zealots. In case noble Lords think that I am exaggerating, I should tell them that after my contribution to the previous debate on gambling, which was only three or four weeks ago, I had some such comments from other Members of the House. Therefore, I hope that they read the record of this debate and realise that I am in such good and worthy company that I can be spared any of those epithets.

In the New Testament there is a story about a woman who goes on knocking at the door of a judge in her demand for justice until, finally, though grudgingly, worn out by her persistence, he lets her in and hears her case. Taking that as our example, it would be apposite to think of these proceedings therefore as the parable of the importunate noble Lord, Lord Browne. I hope that the knocking on the door that he continues to do will yield its results and allow us to consider these matters that affect the moral fibre of the country in which we live.

It is only a short time since we debated fixed-odds betting terminals. Most speakers in that debate were mystified by the news that the Government were about to conduct a consultation to reach a decision about the amount of money that could be staked on those machines. We felt that any number of consultations had taken place in the fairly recent past and failed to understand the particular nature of this one. The problem is so urgent that one consultation after another hardly seems the best methodology. A figure between £2 and £50 has been mentioned more than once, and those who mentioned it expressed the hope that £2 would be nearer the point at which judgment sits than the £50 at the other end of the spectrum. I begin my remarks by asking the Minister and the Government whether any progress is being made with this consultation and whether any clarity is beginning to emerge, and when they feel they will be able to announce the outcomes of the consultation as well as the level set for those stakes.

That is the past, but I begin there for a reason. In March 2014, the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Belmont, was persuaded to withdraw his amendment to the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Bill with an assurance that the Government would bring forward non-statutory proposals for a multi-operator self-exclusion scheme. We have heard about that from various noble Lords this afternoon. An undertaking was given that it would appear before the end of this year, although that was presented as an ultimate delay. Yet those goalposts too have now been shifted again and the summer of next year is now being spoken of. Can the Minister throw some light on this? If it is true, can he tell us whether we can have greater confidence in the latest projected date than in previous ones, and why exactly it is taking so long? Can the proposal be put on a statutory basis when it eventually comes our way?

The online self-exclusion proposal is not by any means a solution to the problem facing us, and we should not kid ourselves that it is. At the very least, we should find a way to enable someone who wishes to end their online gambling to have a one-stop route to cutting out all online sites, whether they are operating under a Gambling Commission licence or not. Some 200 such sites are quoted as having a licence, and an innumerable swarm lie beyond that. Various noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Foster, have asked precisely for that. Even if we get that assurance or that provision, of course it is nothing like enough. I have worked in the field of addiction long enough to know that the hardest thing of all for an addict of any kind is to be sufficiently self-motivated to take such an action in the first place. The very nature of addictive behaviour is the erosion of self-determination, where one’s will is dulled and overwhelmed by habit and where realism gives way to fantasy. It is a big ask to expect such people to opt for even a well-constructed self-exclusion scheme. It is like asking an alcoholic to give up drinking or asking someone suffering from depression to pull their socks up. The work I did for 17 years with the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, in establishing Addiction Today set its sights on the 12-step method—which again, is reviled by some but a proven rescue line for others—because it is a social remedy: an attempt with others to solve a problem. I am personally committed to that method myself.

We are told—we have heard the figure many times—that there are 430,000 problem gamblers, with five times that figure at risk of falling into the same category. Their habits are difficult to detect. Many of them are children. The noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, made her passionate case for children. The plea is made to protect children from being groomed—why do we not use that word?—for the gambling industry with games that feature the likes of Peter Pan and Sherlock Holmes, which have also been referred to.

The Minister is only too aware of recent debates on how best to protect children from the dangers of the internet. The Data Protection Bill is going through this House at this very moment and these matters are being discussed in great depth. I know that the Minister will certainly be smacking his lips at the prospect of debating the amendment to that Bill in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Kidron and Lady Harding, on the question of child-friendly design in the use of the internet—a concept that started to emerge in services where kids spent a considerable amount of time on social media and there was concern that they would be exposed. Initially, that concern was primarily about grooming for sexual exploitation, but it became more about exposure to all kinds of harms and criminality. Can we promise ourselves to look at proposals to protect children in the area of gambling by looking to the provisions that we seek to make to protect children from the harm imposed on them by the internet in more general terms? The wisdom there might be helpful here. We could also look at the proposals relating to age verification—that, too, has been mentioned in this debate—with a view to bringing them into play to help us deal with children at risk from gambling.

It is a fact universally acknowledged that, by its very nature, gambling will produce victims. Experts differ on the numbers but, as already mentioned, we are speaking here of hundreds of thousands. Eventually, treatment regimes will be needed to help with their mental and physical health—that is, they will be a charge on our health and social care services. In acknowledging this, will the Government consider imposing a levy on the gambling industry to meet these costs—a proposal made by many in this debate? The 0.1% contribution from the gambling industry’s £13.8 billion is derisory. A statutory levy—I was intrigued to hear about the horses and greyhounds—could produce much more money for GambleAware and related bodies to do their work and even generate finance that could be hypothecated, perhaps as a direct contribution to NHS budgets. Do the Government agree with reasoning of this kind, and would they be led to consider such a levy? If not, why not?

I could go on—there is much to say. Noble Lords have raised a number of points. They have made us all aware that, far from being cranks, do-gooders or zealots, they care deeply about the well-being of our citizens and the communities they live in. I look forward to hearing a recognition of this concern and a serious engagement with the issues raised in this most welcome debate when the Minister makes his reply.