Online Gambling

Lord Morrow Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morrow (DUP)]

My Lords, I too congratulate my noble friend Lord Browne of Belmont on securing this important debate. Like him, I want to make it clear from the outset that I am also deeply concerned about FOBTs, and this debate should not detract from the need to deal with them. From a Northern Ireland perspective, there are reasons to believe that FOBTs are not legal at all. If the courts rule that they are legal, I would want to see a maximum £2 stake. It is interesting to note that the machines have been banned in the Republic of Ireland. Having made these points, however, I want to be clear that it is just as important that we deal with the equally serious challenges presented by online problem gambling.

In May this year the Department for Communities in Northern Ireland published a gambling prevalence survey for 2016. More than 1,000 people were surveyed about their gambling habits and were asked to consider public attitudes to gambling. The survey illustrates that problem gambling both online and offline is a significant issue in Northern Ireland. It found, as did the previous survey conducted in 2011, that Northern Ireland has a significantly higher incidence of problem gambling than any other region of the United Kingdom. The survey found that 2.3% of the respondents were deemed to be problem gamblers compared with 0.8% in Great Britain. Broadly speaking, this equates to between 32,000 and 43,000 individuals in Northern Ireland, depending on how the figures are calculated.

Many noble Lords will be aware that the Gambling Commission estimates that there are some 430,000 problem gamblers in Great Britain today. If Northern Ireland is added, the figure comes to around 460,000 or 470,000 problem gamblers in the United Kingdom, a figure which includes individuals betting both online and offline. As I am sure is the case in the rest of the United Kingdom, over recent years Northern Ireland has seen a significant increase in the number of individuals who are gambling online. In 2010, 5.4% of those surveyed had gambled online in the past year, but that figure approximately doubled over the next five years, rising to 10.6% in 2016. Among those who responded to the survey and indicated that they gamble, online gambling was engaged in more by younger people. Some 23.6% of those aged between 16 and 24 indicated that they gambled online, compared with only 3% of those aged over 65.

We all know that problem gambling can have a devastating impact on individual lives. I want to tell the tragic tale of one young man from County Fermanagh whose story was reported in the Belfast Telegraph in March this year. Peter and Sadie Keogh told the Belfast Telegraph about the death of their son Lewis, who took his own life having run up debts of more than £50,000 due to his gambling addiction. Peter and Sadie had no idea that Lewis had a gambling addiction and discovered it only after his death. As Peter put it, “Lewis was gambling on the internet, he was gambling on his own in bed and he was gambling at night”. Peter and Sadie told Lewis’s story to warn others of the dangers of gambling addiction and where it can lead. They have bravely told Lewis’s story and I highly commend them for doing so. One of the things I find striking about this tragic story and the others that have been related is the age of online problem gamblers who are committing suicide. They are all either very young or quite young. This fits with the online gambling demographic highlighted by the Northern Ireland survey. In light of that, I ask the Minister what focused support is being made available to young online problem gamblers.

Another striking thing I found when studying problem gambling is its impact on families. One online problem gambler who spoke to parliamentarians this week talked of how, at the height of his addiction, he had popped into the house to get a coat for his son, who was in the car. In the few moments he was in the house he had a strong urge to go to his laptop. He emerged two and a half hours later to find his young son asleep in his car seat, his face still wet with the tears he had cried himself to sleep with. Another problem gambler testified that when you are driven by the addiction, anything that stops you gambling is an annoyance. It thus has the devastating effect of making wives and children an annoyance. Some may regard this as the necessary price to pay for a deregulated gambling sector, but I personally do not.

When we seek to measure the social and environmental pollution caused by online and offline gambling by saying that 470,000 problem gamblers are affected, we kid ourselves. The truth is that for every problem gambler there is a family and countless lives impacted in untold ways. Even if we cannot be moved by the suffering, we should surely be moved by the figures. Speaking as I do the day after the Budget, it is worth remembering that the annual cost of family breakdown is £48 billion. In this regard, I was particularly struck by the following observation made in a recent article by Dominic Lawson:

“Divorce Online, a firm which logs all uncontested divorce petitions, last year revealed that gambling is now cited as a cause for marital break-up in no fewer than one in five of such petitions. Only a few years ago, it was cited in only one out of every 15 such claims”.


That is an extraordinary development with far-reaching implications. The well-being implications of marriage breakdown on adults and children are huge. Working on the basis that the polluter pays, I wonder whether the Minister could clarify how much money the industry is paying back to invest in marriage support services.

We as legislators have a responsibility to take concrete action to protect and help individuals suffering from gambling addiction. In the rest of my contribution, I would like to focus on the specific steps that I believe we need to take. First, I echo everything that has been said by other noble Lords about MOSES. We should be in no doubt about its importance. I regret that the coalition Government did not place it on a statutory footing and hope that, in the context of the present gambling consultation, the current Government will reconsider. I am particularly pleased to see in the briefing from GamCare that MOSES will be UK-wide. It is certainly very much needed in Northern Ireland, given our significantly higher problem gambling figures.

Advertising will be crucial and needs to be sustained, not a one-off. The gambling industry in the UK is certainly not shy about advertising its services, so I hope it will be willing to invest in a campaign to protect some of its own customers. There must be an initial review of the efficacy of GAMSTOP with a view to fine-tuning it after the first year. Given our higher problem gambling prevalence figure, this review should particularly consider the impact of GAMSTOP in Northern Ireland.

Secondly, I want to talk about the gambling levy. At the moment, my understanding is that it does not apply to Northern Ireland. This is odd, given that the Province embraces gambling providers and has a higher problem gambling prevalence figure. No doubt this is informed by the fact that standing behind the voluntary levy is Section 123 of the Gambling Act 2005, which applies only to Great Britain. For as long as the levy remains voluntary, however, and is not actually constrained by the Act, it certainly should extend to Northern Ireland. What is really required is a statutory levy, which may require two separate pieces of legislation, one for Great Britain and one for Northern Ireland. In a sense it does not matter how it is mandated, just as long as it is mandated. In my opinion it should be worth at least the problem gambling prevalence figure, which would be 2.3% for Northern Ireland. The industry should certainly pay for all the relevant treatment services and for MOSES.

Thirdly, I want briefly to agree with a legislative ban on gambling sites taking bets between midnight and 6 am. In this regard, I particularly highlight the observation of the father of Lewis Keogh that most of his gambling was done at night. I should like to say more, but the Clock has caught up with me.