Gambling Levy Regulations 2025

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

I agree that there is a lot of information out there, but I would like to see it scrutinised more professionally. Part of the problem we heard in the committee was that access to data made it difficult for the academic studies that were carried out to find the evidence needed. I hope that the instrument will allow academics to look at issues with gambling and the prevention of gambling addiction, and that it will be an effective measure to help people to avoid this trap.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a member of Peers for Gambling Reform. I congratulate the Minister on today’s announcement, which is very welcome as this is a major health issue. It is worth reminding your Lordships, a number of whom were on the Select Committee, of the shocking statistics and why we are having this debate. More than 60,000 teenagers and a third of a million adults are formally diagnosed with some sort of gambling addiction. It affects the lives of around 2 million adults. It is a debateable figure, but possibly more than 400 people take their lives over this serious issue every year, so I congratulate the Government on taking this seriously.

I will not say too much, because my colleagues will speak on this more, but I wonder if we could be told the rationale behind the £5 maximum stake. My understanding of the research is that it needs to be much lower, so it would be very helpful to understand how His Majesty’s Government got to that figure.

The introduction of this levy is hugely helpful. For many years, operators made extensive profits—we have used that phrase in the House time and again—by privatising the profits and nationalising the costs. There are 14 gambling clinics paid for by us, via the NHS, with our taxes. The polluter clearly needs to pay for this pollution. Those gambling operators have hardly contributed even 0.1% of their GGY to support the treatment of gambling harms, so the regulations are good news. They send a signal about the seriousness with which His Majesty’s Government are taking this.

Just last week, a High Court ruling found that Sky Betting & Gaming unlawfully bombarded a problem gambler with more than 1,300 marketing emails over a two-year period, because he was identified as a high-value customer. Sadly, these sorts of people then hugely suffer.

My other concern is that, with the level of harm that is going on, we need to review the amounts for treatment before waiting for five years—which is how I understand it. I urge the Government to consider annual funding reviews, so that we can ensure that money gets to treatment quickly to support all those who are suffering.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I am not sure about declaring interests, because I have never understood how on earth I got involved in this issue. It is in an incredibly difficult arena where so many people have experienced trauma. I have never laid a bet or bought a lottery ticket. I grew up in a household that did not even have a pack of cards. None of us was exposed to anything around gambling, and nothing in my life has led me anywhere near it.

The reason that I became interested in gambling was gambling harm and what that does to people, particularly those with complex needs. I have been involved in that area of work over many years, particularly with regard to women. Those who were on the Select Committee will remember that I used to rabbit on about women when no one knew that that was an issue. Even that short time ago, we really did not address it in the Select Committee. It is very clearly an important issue, particularly around online gambling, as they are being used exploitatively in ways that we are only just becoming aware of, which I am very worried about. However, that is not what we are concerned with today.

I will not talk about the restriction on the amount that you can put into a slot machine, as that is not really my area of expertise, but I do want to talk about the compulsory levy and the move from where we are now to where we need to be. It is not very long to 1 April. With the amount of time that there is for transition, we need to make sure that there is a straightforward way ahead for those who are working on these issues, either in treatment or in prevention—and it is not as clear a division as we sometimes talk about it being. We are still a long way from knowing the amount of money that can be spent, who will spend it and how that is understood.

I congratulate my noble friend on getting the decision out today. She knows that I have some anxiety. I am not as convinced as colleagues in Peers for Gambling Reform that OHID is the right vehicle. First, OHID, virtually does not exist at the moment. It has been denuded since the change from Public Health England during Covid, and there are only three people in the Department of Health who now work for OHID. They are not in a position even to be thinking about what commissioning in this area means at the moment. There will have to be a big recruitment, very fast learning and a really clear understanding.

I love the National Health Service—my husband is back working for the NHS at the moment, even though he is 76—but, historically, it has not been good at enabling people themselves to take decisions in the journey through the change that they need to get out of their problems. Too often, it has told people what the answer is, what the treatment should be and what they need to do. My experience is that, until we get neighbourhood health organisations—I know that that is one issues being worked on in the 10-year plan—we are in danger of the NHS trying to tell people with lived experience and people running charities how they should behave, rather than seeing them as essential partners in the journey from very early prevention, when somebody first understands that they or somebody in their family might have a problem, through to when the heavy end of treatment is needed.

As an example of how it is really complicated to understand this, the previous Government said that the online help service, which is run by GamCare at the moment, is part of treatment and not prevention, when in fact, a lot of people ringing up are just asking, “Do I have a problem? Is there somebody I can talk to who might be helpful?” They are not ready for treatment or therapy as such; they want someone to help them understand the problems they are getting into and their alternative ways forward.

For me, it is a continuum between prevention and treatment. We have to make sure that funding does not totally separate those two, because then you will lose the strength of some of those voluntary organisations, particularly those that are run by people with lived experience, in how they help people through the different stages. Some are just treatment centres; if you think about the residential people or the NHS clinics, they are both into treatment. My concern as well is that, given the pressures that I know there are in the NHS, if the money goes through the NHS without any checks, there may be a push to spend it all on treatment clinics. That cannot happen, because that will mean that millions will lose that ability to engage before it becomes a big NHS issue.

On women, my experience is that they really do not want to let anybody in the state who has control over the future of their children know when they are getting into problems, because they are terrified that they will lose their children. So we have to handle this very carefully.

I know that the Minister is aware of these things, and I hope that OHID, as it grows and develops, will use people who are currently working in the commissioning area and who understand this, so that they are able to help negotiate the way forward.

On GambleAware, I thank the Minister for saying what she did. I was a trustee of GambleAware and used to get a bit annoyed by everybody out there saying, “Oh, GambleAware takes its money from the industry and it’s run by the industry”. I have never met anybody from the industry since 2005, I think. For me to be told that I was controlled by the industry was a bit of an insult, to put it mildly, when I know that that is not the case. However, I accept that too many people built this up into a great issue and so GambleAware could not continue it, but it has the expertise and the brand. It is contacted through its website about tackling gambling harm more than any other organisation in the world.

It has had incredible, really powerful campaigns in the last couple of years—for example, on stigma. It has also commissioned research: I encourage my noble friend sitting in front of me to look at the research from Bristol University, which has been peer reviewed very strictly, on the effect of harm from gambling advertising. It demonstrates that you can remove a lot of gambling advertising without affecting the main work of the gambling industry. It affects mostly those people who are on the edge of harm and who then get into it. It annoys me as a football supporter that I have to sit among all the advertising, but it does not push me into doing it.

So there are many things here. I know the Minister is aware of the issue of timing. There is much to be done to ensure that the network of providers in the voluntary sector does not end up being tipped over, because there is no certainty about its future. GambleAware is a charity and, because the trustees have responsibilities in its charitable role, it will need a deadline cut-off when it can reassure the people who use the network that there will be a future and that their money for the next year will be there.