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

Lord Trevethin and Oaksey Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Trevethin and Oaksey (CB)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness. I declare various interests. I was honoured to be on the committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Grade. I make a very modest contribution as a vice-chair of Peers for Gambling Reform, which is so ably and vigorously led by the noble Lord, Lord Foster, who will be speaking shortly. I also draw attention to the interests I declared in the committee which might be thought to travel in conflicting directions. I grew up in a horseracing family; I have been surrounded by gamblers all my life; I gamble, usually with enjoyment but almost invariably unprofitably; and I still have family connections with the horseracing world. Those are my amateur interests which might be thought to be relevant. I have a professional connection with gambling problems in that I have acted as a barrister in a number of cases involving very serious allegations against gambling operators. In the course of that work, I have seen alarming evidence of deliberate and, it might be said, even cruel exploitation of gamblers with serious problems, and it is with that in mind that I shall address only one recommendation that the committee has made.

Before I do that, I echo what the noble Baroness just said about the distinction to be drawn between, as she put it, open-air gambling at the races on the one hand and online gambling on the other. Horseracing, which is dear to me and my family and about which the next speaker may well have a bit to say, is part of the fabric of British life. There is a danger, which I am sure the Government will be mindful of, that the necessary reforms in this area might have an unfortunate effect on the horseracing industry. The time to address that will be when we know what the Government’s proposals are, but I am aware from contact with the horseracing authority that there are concerns in respect of restrictions on advertising and affordability checks. Horseracing should, within reason, be protected.

Having made that modest plea for horseracing, of which I am fond, I will now briefly speak from a forensic perspective, if I am able to achieve that, about one recommendation that I think is critical. The starting point is to recognise that gambling operators are subject to a considerable conflict of interest when they are asked by the law or the regulator to take steps to protect problem gamblers. The conflict is obvious: the bigger the problem, the more profit the gambling operator makes. I have seen cases in which that problem is vividly brought out. The existence of that problem means that the Government’s reforms must recognise that it is completely unrealistic to expect the gambling operators to cleanse their own stables and act properly in future. The necessary standards have to be imposed on the gambling operators, and I suspect that they would accept that. It is almost unfair to expect them to behave entirely properly, given the commercial interests at work.

The recommendation that the committee has made and that I wish to speak to is that the office of a gambling ombudsman be created. I am quite familiar with the work of ombudsmen in my world, the legal world, so I know how they operate. They have very important powers. When a complaint is made to an ombudsman, the ombudsman normally has the power to drill down into the underlying evidence and, in particular, to get the relevant emails—which is where the devil is to be found—if the ombudsman thinks it appropriate to do so.

I am doubtful that effective redress will be available in every case in which a gambler has been unfairly treated by a gambling operator; sometimes it will and sometimes it will not. It will not be obtained in the courts, because the courts are too expensive. It might sometimes be provided by the ombudsman, but the real value of creating an ombudsman is that in cases of abuse and unfair exploitation, where a complaint is made to the ombudsman, the ombudsman can then make a comprehensive and searching inquiry into the underlying facts. That is critical, because it will expose misconduct by the gambling operators. The misconduct can be referred to the Gambling Commission, which I think is beginning to wake up to the scale of the problem that confronts us. The Gambling Commission has the power to impose extremely substantial fines, as it is beginning to do.

That seems to me to be one very effective potential route to a reform of the industry and a mitigation of the harms of which so many of your Lordships have spoken. I am not entirely confident at the moment, but I very much hope the Government’s proposals will include that which the committee has suggested in relation to the creation of an ombudsman. We shall see.