Young People

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I would like to say a few words building on the excellent speech by the noble Lord, Lord Chadlington, on the extraordinary effect that gambling is having on young people today.

The Gambling Commission’s report Young People & Gambling 2018 revealed the extraordinary scale of the problem. After years of progress, gambling participation is up with 14% of 11 to 16 year-olds having spent their own money on gambling. That is more than those who have drunk alcohol, smoked or taken illegal drugs. As we have already heard, the report estimated that 55,000 young people are now classed as problem gamblers.

It is extraordinary that some companies seem to encourage gambling. For example, the “Victoria Derbyshire” programme did an exposé on a casino company running a student poker league and offering student discounts and free drinks. I think of the children who are encouraged to gamble by associating it with celebrities. Recently, Logan Paul, made famous on YouTube, participated in a boxing bout watched around the world by young people. It was sponsored by a gambling firm. It is exactly this kind of event that attracts children and socialises them into believing that gambling is normal and—this is the key thing—an integral part of sport.

For many of us it is sport where gambling’s most malign influence becomes apparent, whether it is the wall of gambling advertisements on the TV, often by former stars of the sport, or the pitch-side adverts. I too welcome the whistle-to-whistle ban proposed by sections of the gambling industry, although it does not deal with pitch-side adverts, online targeted advertisements and football shirts bearing the logos of gambling firms. It was this relationship between football and gambling that prompted Simon Stevens, the head of NHS England, to designate gambling addiction as one of the “new threats” facing our health service, yet despite nine Premier League teams being sponsored by betting companies and the estimated gross gambling yield of £13.9 billion last year, the situation remains that the gambling industry has privatised profits and nationalised social costs.

Children love sport, and so they should, but why should they be bombarded without any choice with endless adverts? They see on average 3.8 gambling adverts a day and 66% of children have seen gambling adverts on television. In response, the charity BeGambleAware has started a campaign called “Can we have our ball back?” It is aimed at taking back sport from the gambling industry. If it does not succeed, we will create a generation who know the enjoyment of sport only through the prism of betting.

My third point is about the changing nature of gambling. The digital natives of the younger generation are wonderfully adept at using the internet and smartphones and are most at risk from the switch by gambling firms to online methods such as running adverts on social media, creating accounts followed by people with no age-verification necessary, and infecting game apps—even educational ones—with a constant barrage of betting adverts. Yet, more than that, the very nature of gambling is changing. No longer are people young or old limited by how long a bookie’s shop stays open and no longer are people easily prevented from gambling if they are underage, which is why we urgently need age verification. Phones with apps promoted by television personalities and games with in-app gambling facilities mark the change in the nature of gambling since 2005 when the Gambling Act was passed. Back then, no one had heard of loot boxes and skins, which is why countries such as Belgium have designated them as forms of gambling.

This debate is centred on the challenges facing young people and I have no doubt that one of them is the huge rise in gambling, which is why I hope we may have a special inquiry committee to investigate the social and economic impacts of gambling today.