Oral Answers to Questions

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2013 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State for Culture Olympics, Media and Sport was asked—

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

1. Whether she plans to reintroduce the gambling prevalence survey; and if she will make a statement.

[The Minister of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Hugh Robertson)]

I welcome the recent announcement by the Responsible Gambling Trust of a major research project into gaming machines. A new approach to collecting data on gambling prevalence and trends in problem gambling has been adopted by the Gambling Commission; this will be cost-effective and has the potential to provide more frequent information than the old gambling prevalence survey.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Compulsive gambling ruins lives and destroys families. The most addictive form of gambling is on fixed-odds betting terminals, or gambling machines, which are described as the crack cocaine of gambling. Are the Government seriously concerned about gambling addiction, and what are they going to do to address the problem?

[Hugh Robertson]

Yes, the Government are seriously concerned about problem gambling. This is one of those quite tricky areas where common sense suggests that it is a major problem but there is a lack of evidence to back that up. I very much hope that the major research project that is being undertaken will give us the necessary evidence and, absolutely, once the problem is proved to exist, the Government will act.