Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what estimate her Department has made of the number of people identified as problem gamblers in each of the last five years; and if she will make a statement.

The 2012 England and Scotland Health Survey estimated that the problem gambling prevalence rate among adults in England and Scotland was 0.6% which equated to approximately 280,000 people. The latest data available is through the 2015 Health Survey for Great Britain, published on 24 August (NatCen report), which estimated that the problem gambling prevalence rate among adults in Great Britain was 0.8% which equated to approximately 430,000 people. We take problem gambling seriously and launched the review last year and I hope to publish the findings in October.

Further information on the 2012 data can be found here:

http://natcen.ac.uk/media/308703/gambling-england-scotland-headline-report-to-gc-v1-0.pdf

Further information on the 2015 data can be found here: http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/PDF/survey-data/Gambling-behaviour-in-Great-Britain-2015.pdf