Gambling Advertising

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

Thursday 25th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran]

My noble friend brings great experience to this, including from his time as a Minister at the Home Office. There are no plans currently to move responsibility for gambling to the Home Office, although my department works very closely with the Home Office and others in overseeing this. In relation to my noble friend’s comments about social media, work is going on specifically on that area to make sure that adverts are not targeted at people under 25 or at children. We are working actively with the platforms to ensure that gambling ads do not appear for those who have self-excluded from gambling.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, almost a year ago on 2 July, in a parliamentary Statement, the Government announced three measures agreed with gaming companies to

“deliver real and meaningful progress on support for problem gamblers”.—[Official Report, 2/7/19; col. 1345.]

The noble Lord, Lord Ashton of Hyde, said the Government expected change and, if it did not manifest, would take other measures and did not rule out legislation. Is the Government’s judgment that the industry’s actions are delivering real, meaningful progress? What metrics are the Government using, and will they publish their calculations?

[Baroness Barran]

The main metric that the Government use to measure the extent of problem gambling is the British Gambling Prevalence Survey, which looks at population levels of problem gambling. That has remained unchanged over 20 years, at slightly below 1%. I appreciate the context of the noble Lord’s question: with the prevalence of gambling advertising and promotion, intuitively one would expect that figure to rise, but there is not evidence for that at the moment.