Arts

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bragg, for securing this debate, and I am particularly glad we are debating the contribution of the arts not just to finance and the economy but to society. The arts are fundamental to human flourishing, to expanding our imaginations, to deepening our sympathies and to touching all aspects of our lives that, so often, the merely financial fails to engage with.

Of course, the arts do make a significant contribution to the wealth of this nation, and we are fortunate to be home to some of the world’s leading orchestras, musicians, playwrights, theatres, artists and galleries. In my own diocese in Hertfordshire there is a rapid expansion of studios that are attracting filmmakers from around the world, which is important. But the danger is that we do not give enough time and attention to thinking, “Where are these musicians and artists going to come from, and where are they first going to get the experience of the arts? Where are the ordinary people, in their homes and families, engaging with the sheer delight of creativity?” That is why I find it deeply sad that many young people do not have the access to artistic expression or musical education in their communities, homes, or, sadly sometimes, even in their schools.

As I go around the communities in Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, I note that, in many villages, the only place with any communal singing left is the church; what was once a bigger part of communal life is dwindling. But the music and arts are not just for professionals: they should be accessible to all, and this really matters. I have spoken before in this Chamber about how many of the UK’s composers, including Vaughan Williams, Elgar, Howells, Taverner and Rutter began their musical careers because they were caught up in local music making in their churches. Without this opportunity, many of them might never have touched the artistic part of their lives and developed their skills.

A significant number of contemporary musicians also started out in local—sometimes church—choirs, such as Ed Sheeran, Annie Lennox and Chris Martin of Coldplay. The Royal School of Church Music is just one example of an organisation that is working at grass roots across our country to bring the joy of music making to so many others that would not otherwise experience it, for example through its Voice for Life course. In my own diocese, the St Albans chorister outreach project has worked with over 80 primary schools and given thousands of primary school-age children the opportunity to participate in and enjoy singing. The National Schools Singing Programme, run by the Roman Catholic Church, has already expanded into 27 of Britain’s 32 Catholic dioceses, reaching more than 17,000 children in 175 schools.

None of this is funded by the state, but, in some limited cases, all that is needed to get it going is some limited seed-corn funding. Yet, in the face of financial pressures, those very modest amounts of money have been renewed, which has enabled people to get going; it has given them a life experience of the joy of music and art and set them off in a career that has been such a blessing to many people. So my question to the Minister is: will His Majesty’s Government take a fresh look to ensure that we do not just fund flagship arts projects but have modest amounts of money to release the arts among a much wider group of people in our nation?

Gambling White Paper

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I had the pleasure of serving on the committee which the noble Lord mentions. As I say, we have not waited for the publication of our review—the most extensive review of gambling laws since 2005—to take action where needed, including banning gambling on credit cards and raising the age for playing the National Lottery. We are taking action while making sure that we give the issue the thorough consideration that it deserves.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of Peers for Gambling Reform. We should be shocked at the statistics that the noble Lord, Lord Foster, gave—60,000 young people not just gambling but addicted to gambling. How many children who should not be gambling at all are caught up in this? This is damaging lives and families every day of the year. Surely we need to take some firm action, such as addressing this ubiquitous advertising on sports occasions which is normalising gambling instead of encouraging people simply to participate and enjoy sport for its own sake. When will the Government take some action on this?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The right reverend Prelate is right to point to the need for better data. We welcome and encourage work to build the high-quality evidence base which is needed to inform policy. As he knows, that is an area we looked at through the review, as is the question of advertising. We have considered the evidence on that carefully, including the different risks of harms associated with certain sports and on children. We will set out our conclusions in the White Paper.

Gambling Harm (Social and Economic Impact of the Gambling Industry Committee Report)

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2022 Grand Committee

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I too served on the Select Committee and am grateful for the contributions of so many people, as we worked away at this subject and took evidence over an extended period. I also declare my interest as a vice-president of the LGA.

I became involved in this area long before the Select Committee started its work because, in my day job, a family came to see me and simply broke down as they told me the story of their son’s addiction and how he eventually took his own life. It was the most extraordinary and transformative hour, for me, as I listened to the sheer, raw pain of a family that had been destroyed—and to this day is still destroyed. They have not gone public; they still feel a mixture of deep hurt and shame because of what has gone on. They have not been able to rebuild their lives.

At the end of that hour, I found myself rather lamely trying to make a few comforting comments. Then I came to the House and put down a series of Questions over two or three weeks to find out about the nature of the problem, because I knew nothing about this. Much to my surprise, my inbox was filled with people contacting me to say, “Can we come and talk to you to tell you our story? Do you know what this has done to our family? My cousin’s son has just died”. Another family had lost their home. I was absolutely shocked by what I heard.

I hear the arguments that many people enjoy gambling. Our committee decided that we are not prohibitionists and do not want to stop people gambling, but there is an underbelly to this that simply has not been seen. Even on the Select Committee, some were shocked by the testimonies we heard of what is going on. It is a very different story from the wall-to-wall adverts of groups of people happily shouting and being joyful; it is actually one of lives being destroyed.

I will highlight and comment on three areas. So far, I feel the response of Her Majesty’s Government has been deeply disappointing. It does not take account of the depth and scale of the problem, and the Gambling Commission has not been much better. Often, the commission has acted because there has been a head of steam and a number of people have been raising issues. Rather than taking a proactive stance, shaping this industry and people’s response to it, it is rather lamely following behind. There are some notable exceptions in one or two things it has done, but that is my general point.

Recommendations 54 to 63 are about the statutory smart levy for research, education and treatment, and the need for it to be independently funded. This is fundamental to what we are doing and arguing for. If we are not able to provide independent funding, virtually no respectable researcher or university department will be taken seriously in today’s world. This really matters. We need to ensure that we make a division between the money coming from the industry and the way it is bounded and then distributed. As has been pointed out, the powers to introduce a statutory smart levy already exist within Section 123 of the 2005 Act. It would produce significantly more money for us to undertake the research that is currently funded by a cash-strapped NHS. As one person summed up the problem, the gambling industry has brilliantly privatised the profits and nationalised the costs: taxpayers are paying to treat the problems created by these gambling companies.

I shall say a brief word on affordability checks. It is self-evident that limiting how much an individual can deposit, based on their income, will inevitably reduce the overall harm caused. The important thing is that affordability checks have to be meaningful, not symbolic. It would in reality be no good to set the affordable limit before checks are required at £300 when, particularly at a time of rising costs, that £300 might be crucial to feeding, housing or clothing a family. I know the committee’s report never committed to any specific affordability mechanism, although my opinion is that the £100 per month soft cap proposed by the Social Market Foundation represents a sensible, evidence-based solution that would enable the majority of gamblers to continue “having a flutter”—to co-opt the industry’s language—while protecting the most vulnerable from harm.

I also want to say something on advertising and the social normalising of gambling through its very close association with—some would say hijacking of—sport. The number of adverts that you see when you watch, say, a soccer match, is striking. It is so much so that, as the Committee knows, groups of passionate soccer fans are now campaigning against them and a number of important clubs have taken a principled stand of not taking any money from the gambling industry. I salute them for what they are doing and point out that they are managing to fund their clubs without relying on the gambling industry. The argument at the moment is that if this money were not available, the whole edifice of professional football would collapse. That was the argument about tobacco a few years ago: that if football did not have the advertising revenue from tobacco, it would all collapse. It did not. Football found new ways to fund what it was doing.

On advertising, the prime recommendation is to try to end the association between sport and gambling. As has already been said, we know that something between 55,000 and 62,000 children are diagnosed with some sort of gambling problem when in law they should not be able to gamble at all, so goodness knows how many are gambling if that number are diagnosed with it. I think ending it is in the industry’s best interests. I now know three families who have decided that they do not want their young children to watch some Prime matches because they feel their children are being groomed—they use that language—and given a message which they strongly disagree with. I agree with that point.

When I was young and watched football matches, I did so because I found excitement in watching the sport, with the two teams competing. Watching a soccer match nowadays with one of my young relatives, I thought he was texting somebody but I discovered that he was placing bets on it throughout. His understanding is that you get your pleasure not by watching the sport but by betting on it. Is that not a brilliant move by the industry? It is very clever how it has changed.

There is a fundamental issue here. The independent economic research by NERA shows that the worries of the industry that it will not be able to fund itself are dubious when you look at the facts. We provided that research for those who need it. If the principle underlying the Government’s gambling reform is a public health approach, they simply cannot continue to allow gambling to dominate every facet of sport and to promote an industry that was previously merely accepted, rather than being the norm. I am proud to have been part of this Select Committee. I am dismayed to feel there is a complacency, and I urge Her Majesty’s Government to look seriously at this empirical data and take some radical steps quickly to try to stem this serious social problem we face, even if it is not quite an epidemic of suicides. I hope we will see some action on this before too long.

Gambling Act 2005

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The Gambling Act review is looking at the Gambling Commission’s powers and resources, and how it uses them. The Commission has a new chairman and chief executive, who will be working closely with DCMS as they implement their vision for the organisation, but between April 2020 and March 2021 the commission imposed more than £30 million in financial penalties for breaches of its licensing conditions.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a member of Peers for Gambling Reform. The British Medical Journal said:

“We do not allow tobacco companies to design tobacco control policies, yet the gambling industry, through the organisations it funds, shapes our responses to … harms”.


Does the Minister agree that the system of voluntary levies is part of the problem, because the industry is controlling the messaging, and that what we need are statutory, smart levies to give total independence to research, treatment and education if we are really to tackle gambling-related harms?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The Government have always been clear that they will look at the case for alternative funding mechanisms if there is a funding gap. All options remain on the table, including a statutory levy such as the right reverend Prelate suggests. The Department for Health and Social Care is working to improve care and treatment pathways to support the 15 clinics that were committed to in the NHS long-term plan. NHS England has also worked with GambleAware to design effective treatment.

Social Media: Deaths of Children

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2022 Grand Committee

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for securing this most important debate on the contributory role of social media to the deaths of children, and I pay tribute to her persistent campaigning on this subject. It is a timely debate given that only a month ago we received the legislative scrutiny committee’s report on the draft online harms Bill.

I want to focus on the whole question of the extent to which we understand the numbers and the causes of child deaths, not only where social media plays a significant role but in a whole range of other issues. This is a much broader problem than just this topic, although it is a superb example of why we need better research and better recording of data.

In December, your Lordships’ House debated the Second Reading of my Coroners (Determination of Suicide) Bill. It would require coroners to record any relevant contributory factors once a death by suicide has been officially determined. It would not be a finding in law, the results would be anonymised and published anonymously, and it would be akin to the well-established processes that hospitals have for recording comorbidities of death.

All sorts of groups are campaigning and looking for much better data. Your Lordships will know that the reason why I have brought forward the Coroners (Determination of Suicide) Bill is because we have been trying to get accurate stats on gambling-related suicides—many of them are of younger adults—which, according to the recent evidence from Public Health England, accounts for roughly 8% of all suicides. That is a really significant number of suicides. Regardless of the criticisms of my Bill on feasibility, there is an important principle here about how we record comorbidities and use that evidence. Again and again when campaigning against massively powerful industries, one argument is that we do not really have the statistics. I have to say that Her Majesty’s Government officially come back with the same argument again and again, so for the last five years, my question has been, “Please will you help us to start getting accurate stats?” That is why I turned up with the idea of a coroners Bill. It is absolutely crucial to get the accurate stats because, if we do not, we will never be able to devise strategies to reduce the number of suicides. You do not reduce suicides in general by saying nice and comforting things about it to people; you find out what the causes are and get a strategy to address each one. Particularly when we have something that causes 8% of deaths, we really need to collect that sort of evidence.

Of course the Government are legislating to prevent child exposure to some of the content that Molly Russell and others saw, but it is absolutely crucial that we get ways of trying to understand properly what is going on. The Government say that my Bill will not be an appropriate mechanism to collect the evidence. What it has led us to is discussions with a number of coroners about postvention studies, which may be how we can get hold of that data. However it is, we need it. Will the Minister tell the Committee specifically what Her Majesty’s Government are doing to try to get this data, rather than keeping saying, “Oh dear, we haven’t got it”? It is vital that it is collected, if we are to have an evidence-based approach to preventing suicides in relation to all associated risk factors.

Gambling: Children and Young People

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

Certainly, I had the pleasure of serving on that committee before I joined Her Majesty’s Government. I thank noble Lords who also served on that committee. That work and much else, including the research that we are discussing today, will be taken into account as part of our review of the Gambling Act.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-chair of Peers for Gambling Reform. As the noble Lord, Lord Foster, has already mentioned, 60,000-plus young people are diagnosed as suffering from gambling-related harm in this country. What consideration have Her Majesty’s Government given to ensuring, perhaps under the online harms Bill, that social media companies will provide an opt-in age-verification tool so that we can provide additional protections for our young people to protect them from these adverts?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I assure the right reverend Prelate that the Gambling Act review is taking a close look at the rules regarding advertising on social media. We want full use to be made of all the scope that technology offers when it comes to targeting adverts appropriately.

Gambling-related Harms

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2021 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the report by Public Health England Gambling-related harms evidence review, published on 30 September.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a vice-chair of Peers for Gambling Reform. I thank Public Health England and all those who worked on this review, which sheds light on the health impacts of gambling-related harms and quantifies the direct cost of gambling harms to the Government. The review concluded that 0.5% of our population were considered problem gamblers and 7% of the population of the UK are negatively affected by gambling. This is over 4 million people in England and over 5 million people across the UK as a whole, which is one in 12 people either directly or indirectly affected by gambling-related harms. This is a significant social problem.

One of the striking things are the regional discrepancies, with the north-west and north-east having the highest percentage of at-risk gamblers and the south-west having the lowest percentage. The north hosts some of England’s poorest and most deprived communities and, as a 2021 study from the Standard Life Foundation found, the UK’s most deprived areas have 10 times more betting shops than the more affluent parts of the country. Therefore, I hope that Her Majesty’s Government will not view the current gambling review as a mechanism simply to strike a new status quo compromise between themselves and gambling operators. Instead, it needs to be built into the levelling-up agenda.

This report shows that the current status quo between the Government and gambling operators is a rotten deal for taxpayers. When the gambling review was launched in December 2020, the then Commons Minister Nigel Huddleston set the tone by mentioning the £3 billion a year tax contribution from the industry. The harms caused by gambling, however, were quietly skated over, including the financial costs and suicides. I was absolutely astonished that the Government would laud the tax contributions from the industry without any recognition that gambling was simultaneously costing the Government huge sums and creating huge social damage.

Over 20% of contributions from the gambling industry, equivalent to around £647 million, can be costed directly to the Treasury for gambling-related harms. That is on top of an estimated £619 million in intangible costs stemming from an estimated 409 gambling-related suicides every year. I therefore hope the Government will support my Private Member’s Bill so that more accurate data can be collected on the number of gambling-related suicides.

Based on the polluter pays principle, the gambling industry should pay for the harms it causes. Currently, the Government rely on the good will of gambling companies in the form of a voluntary levy to help fund research, education and treatment. However, rather than the £100 million spread over five years promised by the industry, we need a mandatory levy set at 1% of gross gambling yield, which would bring in about £150 million annually according to the economic research undertaken by NERA. Furthermore, it would remove the industry’s control over the disbursement of funds for research, treatment and education and break the link that makes many academics unwilling to accept funding because their research will not be taken seriously.

At a time when there are such massive calls on the public purse, efforts to reduce gambling-related harm would in turn reduce the direct costs to the Government of criminal activity, unemployment and financial harms associated with problem gambling. Public Health England identified gambling-related debt as a key factor in many other areas as well, including relationship breakdown, mental health problems, crime, bankruptcy and homelessness. Indeed, in the media hardly a week goes by without stories of people being convicted of stealing to fund an addiction. In financial harms and criminal activity, we have an associated direct cost to the Government of about £225 million a year.

Anyone who happened to catch Paul Merson’s BBC documentary on gambling addiction on Monday evening will have heard not only the story of how his life has been dominated by the scourge of this addiction but the tragic story of Joshua, whose parents I met, who in the last three years of his life gambled away his salary, each time on the very day he received it. We do not know how many of those 409 gambling-related suicides, as estimated by Public Health England, were associated with financial debt, but certainly all the anecdotal evidence indicates that it was the vast majority.

A fascinating aspect of this research was the difference in approach identified by Public Health England between commercial and non-commercial stakeholders. Commercial stakeholders thought the focus should be on intervention and treatment rather than on creating a safer gambling environment. They wanted to blame a small group of weak individuals, whom we should pity and give a bit of support to, instead of acknowledging that many of these products are designed to be addictive right from the start when they are put together.

It is significant that, in many instances of gambling-related suicide, gambling operators, far from attempting to intervene on behalf of a gambler’s welfare, are still actively encouraging the person to gamble right up to their death—indeed, sometimes after the person has died they receive calls and offers of free gambling. There is virtually no incentive for operator intervention. The attitude of the operators, as captured by Professor Rebecca Cassidy, highlights the ambiguity of the industry’s position. When one individual attempted to set up a data-sharing network to identify customers of concern, the response was, “Why on earth should we share anything about our best customers with you?” There was not even a tacit admission that problem gamblers bring in the vast majority of income for gambling companies. Interventions need to occur before an individual reaches the point where they gamble away their entire income. Even then, the fact that current regulations allow someone to gamble all their income, bank balance or savings in one session highlights the seriousness of the problem we still face.

Public Health England admits that the evidence suggests that gambling should be considered a public health issue, which in my mind implies that we need a public health approach. This will not be achieved by relying on the good will of profit-driven gambling operators to intervene. A firm line on affordability checks is required to prevent individuals susceptible to harm from depositing unaffordable amounts, alongside a comprehensive network of intervention and treatment. Any effective affordability mechanism will require some form of data sharing and greater co-operation between the FCA, the PRA and the Gambling Commission. I hope the Government will review the affordability recommendations made by the Centre for Social Justice in its May 2021 report Not a Game.

The Betting and Gaming Council often falls back on the mantra that loads of people enjoy a flutter in a safe and responsible way. There is some element of truth in that, but anyone who takes the trouble to scroll through the Gambling with Lives “Remembering” page will see countless faces of young men and women for whom a flutter became the start of something that eventually proved fatal. These are the victims of gambling-related harm. As the Government study Public Health England’s excellent evidence review, their mind should be focused on how best to prevent future tragedies, rather than on placating an industry that is complacent or, worse still, almost encourages problem gambling.

Finally, will the Minister give me an assurance that the findings of this review will be taken into account in the Government’s White Paper on gambling reform, which I gather is now to be published next year?

Gambling Reform

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2021 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the report produced by NERA Economic Consulting for the Peers for Gambling Reform group Economic Assessment of Selected House of Lords Gambling Reforms, published on 26 May, what assessment they have made of the positive economic effects of implementing the recommendations of the Select Committee on the Social and Economic Impact of the Gambling Industry (HL Paper 79, Session 2019–21).

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans [V]]

I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and declare my interest as a vice-chair of Peers for Gambling Reform.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, we are carefully considering the report by NERA Economic Consulting, along with the large amount of evidence we have received in connection with our review. There are clearly difficulties in making precise predictions, but we welcome this analysis. We aim to publish a White Paper by the end of the year, setting out our conclusions and the next steps for the gambling review.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans [V]]

[Inaudible]—the IPPR estimates for the cost of problem gambling are between £270 million and £1.17 billion per annum, but there is evidence to suggest these are underestimates. Extrapolating problem gambling costs from studies in other jurisdictions suggests it could be as much as £6.5 billion—far beyond the £3 billion in annual tax contributions provided by the gambling industry. Will the Government commit to researching the costs of problem gambling, so we can determine whether the contributions from the gambling industry are offset by the damage caused by it?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I apologise; we slightly missed the beginning of the right reverend Prelate’s comments, in the Chamber. If I have missed anything, I will write to him, but I think I got the essence of his question. We are of course looking at the economic costs. I do not recognise the £6.5 billion figure that the right reverend Prelate cites, but he is aware that one of the complexities of looking at this is the comorbidity between gambling and other forms of harm, which we need to take into consideration.

Events Research Programme

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I cannot judge other people’s opinion on this, but we have certainly been transparent, as the noble Baroness sets out clearly, in what is possible and achievable in these trials. We have been very clear that the purpose of these pilots is to release the data when it has been fully analysed, which I hope will be very shortly, so that organisations working in the live events area can plan and reopen as quickly and safely as possible.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans [V]]

My Lords, the Church of England has adopted a clear policy on encouraging people to be vaccinated. However, at the same time, like many organisations, we cater for a variety of people, some with strongly held ethical convictions and objections to the vaccine, covering issues from animal testing to the use of aborted foetal cells. What plans do Her Majesty’s Government have to uphold freedom of religion and belief and offer an alternative to vaccine certification for religious events?

Gambling: Early Mortality

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Tuesday 20th April 2021 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the research by Dr Naomi Muggleton linking gambling and early mortality, published in Nature Human Behaviour on 4 February, what plans they have to transfer responsibility for gambling policy to the Department of Health and Social Care.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, responsibility for gambling is shared across departments. DCMS leads on industry regulation, which is key to harm prevention. DHSC leads on gambling as a health issue and on treatment, and we work closely together. We are pleased to see more research being done and we are considering the findings carefully. Dr Muggleton’s research shows a correlation between higher gambling spend and lower well-being but does not look at causes.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

I thank the Minister for her response. As the recent research suggests, gambling-related harm and problem gambling produce a negative result across a whole variety of indicators, including health. Despite this, the Government continue to hold on to the idea that the industry is a net contributor to the Treasury, without taking into account the huge other costs being incurred. Will the Government consider undertaking a comprehensive study of the direct and associated costs, such as health, incarcerations, homelessness and social welfare, all caused by gambling harm, which materially affect the Treasury’s receipts?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The right reverend Prelate raises important points. He will be aware that Public Health England is doing research at the moment, looking at how to reduce gambling harms and how to recoup the costs to society, which I hope will go some way to reassuring him.