Gambling: Regulatory Reform

Laura Kyrke-Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Dr Beccy Cooper (Worthing West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I thank the hon. Member for Witney (Charlie Maynard) for securing this timely debate. It is interesting to hear different Members from across the House taking a stand on this issue. I listened with interest to my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), who has bet365 in his constituency; he spoke about his need to make sure his residents have good jobs, but also about how to balance those harms. It is interesting to hear how we can move forward with that.

I welcome the Government’s Budget announcements increasing remote gaming duty and general betting duty as a way to tackle some of our more harmful forms of gambling, particularly in online gaming. That is something that the all-party parliamentary group on gambling reform and many Members across this House have championed—it is a cross-party issue.

This move from the Chancellor goes some way towards addressing the many billions of pounds that gambling harm costs the public purse. The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities estimates that the public health costs of gambling in England alone are between £1 billion and £1.77 billion, but that figure captures only a subset of costs: it relies on self-reporting and the methodology does not include costs including secondary mental health services, alcohol and drug use, lost tax from employment and the cost of lives lost to gambling suicide.

Furthermore, the cost of gambling goes far beyond the individual themselves. For every person experiencing problem gambling, it is estimated that up to six others are affected—their families, children, employers and community members.

[Laura Kyrke-Smith (Aylesbury) (Lab)]

On the point about the effects going beyond the person experiencing problem gambling, I was contacted by my constituent Chloe Long, who tragically and heartbreakingly lost her brother to gambling-related suicide last year. In his case, the challenge was not the regulated gambling industry, as we have been discussing; he was doing all the right things in terms of self-excluding and signing up to GamStop, but was still able to access the black market sites. We have to think more creatively about how we can solve that problem. Does my hon. Friend agree that there must be much more awareness out there of just how severe the risks of gambling addiction can be and of the devastating effect it can have, not just on the people we lose through it, but on their families, children and friends for decades to come?

[Dr Cooper]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. Gambling has become ubiquitous in our society. It is endemic. We watch the television; we have online roulette in our pockets—it is everywhere. We must also be mindful of the black market as well as the legal gambling companies, and go after both with ferocity to make sure the harms are reduced.

Having established the need to recognise the public health costs of the most dangerous gambling products, we should review the taxation of other harmful forms of gambling, particularly the most dangerous category—the B3 machines in adult gaming centres. It is right that the duty paid by those machines is set at a higher rate. The Gambling Commission, which we have already heard about, must do more to ensure that licence conditions are followed by adult gaming centres. There are widespread reports of breaches of the rules, notably the 80/20 rule relating to the most harmful category of machine, and games that facilitate much higher stakes than is permitted in the licensing codes.

Let us be clear; gambling is highly profitable, and that profit cannot be separated from the harm inflicted. We have already heard this, but it is worth stating again: 60% of the industry’s profits come from 5% of customers who are either addicted or at risk.