Gambling White Paper

Debate between Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay and Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean

Wednesday 20th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My noble friend is right. Through the work that we have done on the review of the Gambling Act we have, of course, engaged with lots of people, including from the industry, many of whom have been taking forward important actions to make sure that people can gamble safely, fairly and without a problem. All the thoughts we have had through that consultation will be reflected in the White Paper.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean (Lab)]

The Minister has said that he needs better data. What better data does he require than the fact that 60,000 children in this country are addicted to gambling? Surely, for most of us, that data is sufficient for the Government to be taking far stronger action than he has outlined.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

We are also looking at the way that we can collate data from the industry and from academia to make sure that we have proper evidence-based data such as the noble Baroness suggests fed into the review, which will be published in the coming weeks.