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

Lord Kirkham Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Kirkham (Con)]

We live in a world that is hungry for data, where every business, charity, NGO and government department is eager to gather more and more information about our health, habits, motivation, interests and desires. Whether we like it or not, every journey we make is tracked by CCTV, and every keystroke we make on a laptop, tablet or smartphone can be analysed so that we can be ever more effectively targeted by marketeers. I am sure we are all familiar with the eerie way that typing the name of a place, product or service into a search engine immediately leads to our being swamped with ads for that very thing.

As a lifelong professional retailer of scale eager to grow my business, I quickly recognised the value and importance of data and communications in fulfilling my corporate ambitions. The more I could learn about a prospective customer and their needs and aspirations, the better I could target and personalise my communications to persuade and encourage them to do business with my company. It worked for me then, and it is working for the gambling industry now, but with several key differences. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever become addicted to buying sofas—and we certainly tried hard—I never attempted to sell our products specifically to children, and I was working in the age before the smartphone became universal.

Now nearly every adult, young person and very many children in this country carry around a device that allows them to play games, have fun and gamble around the clock, and provides constant feedback on what they enjoy. This gives unscrupulous operators in the gambling industry the perfect opportunity to identify an individual’s weakness and exploit them—accentuating the thrill of risk taking, the adrenaline rush and the chance of winning money, and giving them every possible encouragement to gamble irresponsibly to the maximum. The speed of change facilitated by advancements in technology has been stellar. Regulations, legislation and implementations have clearly been left far behind, and they now desperately need to catch up and become relevant to fit the digital era.

I am no puritan; I have never been strongly against gambling as a legitimate source of entertainment. Social gambling can add interest, enjoyment and spice to sporting events, and it has become a cultural norm, but we still must take care. Giant oaks from tiny acorns grow, and the current proliferation of the compulsive behaviour of dangerously addictive gambling, particularly among young people looking for a buzz and easy money—including those under 16 whose participation is already illegal—is an evil that we just cannot allow to continue. It is a rich seam for the gaming operators to mine, but, as we have heard, it is literally destroying lives. It creates financial hardship, emotional pain, and social, job and relationship problems, and poses a major health and suicide risk. It has progressed to a magnitude and extent that I believe are not generally recognised and acknowledged. Having spent many years working with young people through the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and Outward Bound to help them build their confidence, maximise their potential and realise their ambitions, I find it heartbreaking that so many young people are now at risk of being blighted by gambling addiction and gambling to excess, with lives even being lost because of it, as we have heard.

Gambling is not going anywhere. It has been around for ever, and it is here to stay; of that I think we can be assured. More than half the nation’s adults are regular gamblers. While most people do not develop a gambling problem, it can be a nightmare of epic proportions for those who do—at a massive cost to the gambler, their family and society at large, appealing as it does to those from all walks of life. It is a big money business and, consequently, it wields power and influence and can easily succumb to the temptation to compromise values and standards in the race for big profits.

We need to inform and regularly remind the public of the true magnitude of the problem, and urgently add gambling education to the national curriculum to make young people aware of its risks as clearly as we teach them about the dangers of drink and drugs and the importance of safe sex. Gambling is a bigger problem among teens than it is in adults, and research by the Mayo Clinic indicates—perhaps unsurprisingly—that gambling during childhood and teenage years increases the risk of developing compulsive gambling tendencies. Addressing this must be our priority. More widely, we need to look at ways of achieving a change in public attitudes to addictive gambling in the same way that we have successfully persuaded the overwhelming majority of the public that drink-driving is socially unacceptable, that it is irresponsible to get into a car without wearing a seatbelt, and that cigarette smoking is passé.

In the short term, we need urgent action by the Government to enforce the existing law that makes gambling by children illegal, and for the Gambling Commission to make much more use of its existing powers to mitigate the encouragement of problem gamblers spending more than they can afford. The Government have a manifesto commitment and a moral responsibility to invest in making gambling safe and honest, with strong and substantial protection for the most vulnerable.

This report is substantial, comprehensive, wide-ranging and most impressive. The process to start implementation is crucial and pressing. It should begin right now, with particular focus on online gambling, protecting the young specifically; stricter operator control; tighter statutory regulations on both gambling advertising and the promotion of inducements—the noble Lord, Lord Layard, went further and suggested a total gambling advertising ban; and the introduction of regular and hard-hitting education and information campaigns. It would be irresponsible in the extreme to add further delay.

Gambling is a compulsive behaviour, a process addiction that is chronic and progressive and can start off from the lightest touch: making a casual, recreational wager, simply buying a lottery ticket or scratchcard, or even having a flutter on the Grand National. I do not think we should make it easy for the young to be lured into gambling. Let us not make the gateway to gambling tempting and attractive, spurred by loosely restricted, heavyweight, focused marketing.

Gambling has brought pressure on society for generations, but now technological advances have allowed new, highly addictive games to be developed and made personalised communication easy and gambling convenient and accessible from almost anywhere at any time, allowing problem gamblers to wager and place bets at all hours of day or night, exacerbating the problem and fuelling its growth. The time is long overdue to mitigate this chronic scourge of society. Problem gamblers are gambling not only with money but with their lives. We should not. It is time for action.