Young People: Gambling Harm

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 23rd July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in following the noble Lord, Lord Herbert, I put on the record that the Green Party very much supports the affordability checks that the Government are planning to introduce. We have an awful lot of money sloshing around in the UK economy in all sorts of areas, and keeping a closer eye on it is clearly a very good idea. I should perhaps declare an interest in that tomorrow I will be speaking at a protest on the 100th anniversary of the first official greyhound race, calling for a ban on greyhound racing in England to follow those in Scotland and Wales.

I declare my position as a member of Peers for Gambling Reform and thank our formidable leader, the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, for securing this debate. I echo his hope that our new Prime Minister might act at scale to reverse many of the disastrous impacts of the ill-conceived Gambling Act 2005.

We are focusing today on children and, like many noble Lords, I will draw on the Young People and Gambling 2025 report from the Gambling Commission, particularly looking at advertising. Essentially, half of young people—children under 18—are exposed to gambling-related adverts weekly. Boys are more likely than girls to be exposed, because of the very strong sporting link, which has been closely identified. They also have a huge amount of exposure to social media personalities promoting gambling.

Another report, released last year, from GambleAware, revealed that children as young as 11 reported that they are regularly tempted to try betting, after being flooded on their social media feeds on the apps with celebrities and sports start promoting gambling. As the noble Baroness, Lady Gerada, said, this an avoidable harm, to which we are subjecting our young people.

I want to go to the young people themselves, because the GambleAware study found that nearly four in five children said that nobody under the age of 18 should be exposed to gambling adverts. We often hear about how we should listen to the people affected. Let us listen to the young people who are saying, “Stop exposing us to this”. We know it is harmful and very seductive. That is the reality.

On that, I come to something that is absolutely directed at young people. Anyone who has a young person in their life will probably be aware of Roblox—a hugely popular gaming platform. I have to credit Sky News, particularly reporter Mickey Carroll and colleagues, who have demonstrated again and again how much illegal casinos are advertising on Roblox to children. After that group of journalists reported in 2024, some of the illegal casinos were shut down. Roblox Corporation, with its capitalisation of $40 billion and 2,400 staff, shut down some of those casinos. But, just in May, the reporter found an email in their inbox, stating, “BloxFlip is Back!”. This is an illegal casino, operating on this children’s gaming platform. It emailed her, because she had signed up to research it, to say that it is now back and she could play.

Yes, many of these illegal casinos have a geoblock, so, theoretically, you are not able to access them in the UK. I am sure that most noble Lords in this debate do not need to be reminded about VPNs, but should any of the children happen not to know about VPNs, you can find on all the chat platforms the casino operators helpfully telling people how they can get round geoblocks by using VPNs. I have based that on the research and media reports.

I finally come to the cry from the heart from a woman, who is a mother of two children, including a 10 year-old called George, who is autistic and has ADHD. This ties to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Foster, about the convergence of gambling practices and gaming practices. This mother reflects on how randomised rewards, rare item drops, daily log-in streaks, limited-time events and constant prompts to return use many of the same behavioural principles as gambling. I ask noble Lords to imagine one final story. There was a reward that was available only if you played on Christmas day. This mother talked about Christmas day being a warzone in her family as a result of that.