Coroners (Determination of Suicide) Bill [HL]

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 19th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise, like other Members of your Lordships’ House, to first thank the right reverend Prelate for presenting us with the Bill and giving us such a clear outline of the reasons for it. We have had a very useful debate—I particularly note that the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, stressed that this is about much more than gambling. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, summed it up in quoting two words: this is about the “public interest”. This is about changing the law to ensure that the coroners’ courts act more in the public interest.

However, I will focus on the gambling industry aspects of this and declare my position as a member of Peers for Gambling Reform. As in the debate on the last Bill, I begin by reflecting on the political situation in which we find ourselves. There is a great deal of public concern about the impact of corporate lobbyists on government policy and decision-making. We have seen the gambling industry scream to previously unknown levels of economic returns and size as a result of deregulation that has happened over decades. It is obviously a very rich industry with a great deal of money—very often stashed in tax havens—and the public are watching this to see what happens and what controls will be put on this out-of-control industry that is causing so much damage to both individuals and communities.

Very often in your Lordships’ House, we hear about the Government’s levelling-up agenda. The poorest communities are suffering the most from the impact of the gambling industry being out of control. Taking control of the gambling industry would be a step towards levelling up.

However, I come to the very specific issue of the relationship between gambling and suicide. There was a useful report from Public Health England in 2019 on stakeholder perspectives on gambling-related harms. It says that the gambling industry, like other “unhealthy commodity industries” such as alcohol, tobacco and junk-food producers,

“frame health behaviours as complex problems as a strategy to argue against effective primary prevention policies”.

So, it is really important that the right reverend Prelate, in introducing this Bill, stressed that the complexity of suicide is understood. This is talking about a range of factors and recording what may well be one of a range of factors.

The report from Public Health England notes that the gambling industry often tries to shift the blame on to other addictions that problem gamblers might face, such as alcohol and drug abuse. Again, what the Bill allows for is an understanding of the complex interrelationship, but we also need to acknowledge, as the PHE report did, that the gambling itself might have led to the other addictions.

Looking again at the report, it is interesting to see the conclusions drawn by non-commercial stakeholders —people not from the industry. They call for a

“broadly adopted a public health perspective”

and

“action to treat gambling-related harms as a public health issue”.

It is worth stressing that the Bill will not cause any direct government action; it will not change policies in respect of the treatment of the gambling industry, nor will it directly improve treatment for people with gambling addiction or problem gambling more generally. However, if we can quantify the problem and if we simply had the information, that would create the evidence, which would surely be a powerful push against the force of the lobbying industry. How can we argue against having that information?

Others have referred to this, but we have to look at the actual numbers and see just how deep a concern this is. The charity Gambling with Lives believes that between 4% and 11% of suicides in the UK might be gambling-related—that comes from a report from 2020. The report of the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey of 2007, which is one of the last extremely science-based, peer-reviewed-type studies that we have, concluded that, among people who had made a suicide attempt in the previous year, one in 20 were problem gamblers and another one in 20 were at-risk gamblers. So we get there to a total figure of about one in 10, which is very much in the range of the figure put forward by Gambling with Lives.

We also have to look to a study from 2019, published in the journal Addictive Behaviors, which suggested that the problem was getting worse and:

“A higher proportion of individuals entering treatment had attempted suicide in more recent intake years.”


It further stated that in

“each year since 2013, approximately 30% of individuals accessing treatment for gambling problems … have attempted suicide prior to starting treatment”.

There is a great deal of evidence there. It is of varying ages and comes from varying sources. I suggest to the Minister that bringing this evidence together through the coroners’ courts is a very obvious and simple step, and I hope we will hear a positive response from the Government to this debate.