Coroners (Determination of Suicide) Bill [HL]

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 19th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate for introducing this Bill. It would enable coroners to record gambling addiction as a relevant factor when recording a suicide.

At present, according to the Library Note, data on the correlation between problem gambling and deaths by suicide remains limited. As we have heard, Public Health England’s recent review concluded that problem gambling should be seen as a public health issue. As the right reverend Prelate has said, the purpose of this Bill is to better understand gambling-related suicide and its victims. This will help to inform future policy and more appropriate medical interventions aimed at treating problem gambling. I would be interested to hear from the Minister what progress has been made since the right reverend Prelate introduced his previous Bill, in January 2020.

The Bill would make changes via amendments to the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 and the 2013 rules. These rules provide a national framework for current good practice. From the Library Note, the chief coroner’s current guidance states that the conclusion of a hearing, or verdict,

“should be based on facts and must not include the coroners or jury’s opinion, other than on those matters which the law allows”,

such as the identity of the deceased and when and where they had died. The mechanism of death can be recorded as “suicide”, rather than the broad circumstances of the suicide. The right reverend Prelate showed a coroner’s form, where he gave various examples of things that can be recorded, but this did not include gambling-related harm.

The report by PHE shows that the people most at risk of harmful gambling are concentrated in areas of higher deprivation and are likely to already be experiencing greater health inequalities. The Government’s rhetoric is that of levelling up, so surely this should include a better understanding of the effects of gambling on suicides. This was a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett.

A significant proportion of the population gamble. Most do it as an occasional hobby that is enjoyable, social and fun—I occasionally gamble. However, for a worryingly high number of people, particularly young people, it can lead to harm. Researchers believe that online gambling carries a higher risk of harm; that is based on figures from before the pandemic and lockdowns, and there is every reason to believe that the situation has deteriorated as a result of the lockdowns. Free betting introductions are relentlessly promoted online, through our leading sports teams and international advertising. It is a whole world of excitement, risk and glamour, which sucks people in for an occasional triumph—or probably another loss.

There have been a number of studies seeking to link problem gambling and suicide. The Library Note mentions a 2019 study by the Gambling Commission and GambleAware, which concluded that there is a link. However, the study was based on data from 2007—the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, referred to that data—and it was recommended that further and better data should be made available. Also, there was a Lancet journal article in 2021, concerning young people and gambling, which pointed towards a link between problem gambling and suicide. Many Peers have referred to the PHE review, which considered a host of gambling harms, including suicide, and recommended that this should be seen as a public health issue.

I want to introduce a note of scepticism into this debate, and I hope my scepticism can be seen as constructive. I am a long-standing member of the all-party group on drugs and alcohol, and, on a few occasions, we have had speakers from the ONS talk to us about the recording of deaths from drug overdoses. The figures show that about double the number of men die from drug poisoning than women, and that, roughly speaking, there are three times as many male suicides as female suicides.

However, the point I took from the ONS speakers at the all-party group was the difficulty in recording reliable data over time because of the changes in the recording mechanism. So, although the headline conclusions are stark, there is genuine difficulty in seeing the impact of different types of drugs leading to deaths, for example. In fact, I think it is fair to say that the more one goes into the detail of the data regarding drug deaths, the more difficult it is to draw sound conclusions. So I wonder what the right reverend Prelate thinks should be recorded in the case of a suicide. Should it be the opinion of the jury, the coroner, the doctor or the family and friends that gambling was a factor in the suicide? What about other factors, such as drug and alcohol use, mental health, family break-up and physical health? The list goes on. This is essentially the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay.

My point is that gambling does indeed seem to be a factor in many suicides, but how to quantify that on a statistical basis is a difficult question that would, and should, have an enduring effect on government health policy. I do not know what the Minister is going to say, but I hope she will use her influence to get the ONS, or perhaps another government body, to look at the substance of the right reverend Prelate’s proposal and either respond positively to the Bill or tell us that regulational guidance is a more appropriate way forward.

Turning to the various speakers in today’s debate, I was amused to hear about the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, placing 10 straight bets at a casino in Cannes and losing all 10. That may well have been the luckiest day of his life. I was also particularly sympathetic, if that is the right word, to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, about the way in which the gambling industry seeks to argue its case in this arena by pointing to the complexity of the issue. In a way, I have been pointing to the complexity of the issue—I understand that—and, in a sense, it is muddying the waters. But that is not a reason for not making progress; it is a reason for acknowledging the complexities and trying to come up with a good, statistically based approach to recording the data.

Finally, I wish the right reverend Prelate a very happy International Men’s Day today.

Coroners (Determination of Suicide) Bill [HL]

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede Excerpts

3rd reading
Friday 25th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I shall make just one or two brief comments. I am sure everybody is greatly relieved that the timing is going so well this afternoon, and I really shall not delay your Lordships for too long, but this gives me an opportunity to say one or two brief things and then give some thanks.

The reason behind the Bill is that, seven or eight years ago, a couple came to see me, sat in my study and told me how their son had taken his life because of a gambling problem. The sad thing about that story was the way they talked about the fact that they could see what was happening. He had gone in and out of treatment, but they just could not reach out to him. They knew what was going to happen, and they watched as he slowly spiralled down until that fateful day when he took his life. That led me on a journey. Eventually, we managed to get a Select Committee here. As your Lordships may be aware, Peers for Gambling Reform is now, I think, the largest lobbying group in the House of Lords.

That is what inspired me to work on this; that is the background. It is a very human story. The Bill has what sounds a rather calm, dispassionate title. The issue before us is that, whenever we try to grapple with this, we are told by the Government that we simply do not know the nature and size of the problem. Last year, Public Health England gave the most comprehensive estimate to date of the number of annual gambling-related suicides: 409 in one year. That accounts for 8% of all suicides in 2020.

In the recent inquest into the tragic death of Jack Ritchie, the coroner’s conclusion was that warnings, information and treatment of problem gambling had been “woefully inadequate” and failed to meet Jack’s needs. The coroner said that he could not be blamed for his gambling problem. That brought home to many of us something that we already knew: that many of these online products have been designed to be addictive and are having a devastating impact on people. The suicide headline is just the tip of the problem, but it is the most dreadful part of it.

I have learned an awful lot from putting the Bill forward. I am grateful for the help I have had from other Members of the House, but particularly from the Minister, who very kindly met with me. He has been very honest about the problems he sees with it, and I understand that. If we had had time, I would have brought amendments to address some of those points. I intend to put another Private Member’s Bill in the ballot for the next round, which will be a much broader Bill that will pick up many of the concerns of coroners, some lawyers, and indeed the Government.

Fundamentally however, my motivations behind the Bill have not altered. Suicide is a terrible thing and the best way to tackle it is to identify the underlying causes and put in strategies to address them. So I am grateful for all those who have helped it get this far and I will be returning to this later on. However, with those final words I draw to a close.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

I too have no wish to delay the House, but I will say a couple of words to congratulate the right reverend Prelate on the progress he has made with the Bill and on his expressed wish to take the matter further with a further Private Member’s Bill. My experience of Private Members’ Bills is certainly that it is an attritional process that he is engaged in, and I am glad to hear that he is working constructively with the Minister. As we heard in the earlier debate, the Minister is very keen on data and he will no doubt be focusing his question—if I can put it like that—on how the coroners’ service can address the concerns which the right reverend Prelate has quite rightly raised.

The right reverend Prelate told a very moving story when he introduced the debate today and gave some statistics on the reality of addictive online gambling products. I have to say that anyone who has had anything to do with young men will know that such products are absolutely ubiquitously used, and there are all sorts of ways of enticing people into gambling further. So I wish the right reverend Prelate—and the Minister—well with future Private Members’ Bills.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Wolfson of Tredegar) (Con)]

My Lords, I too have no wish to delay the House but, like the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede, I also thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans for highlighting this important issue and enabling us to have the time in the House today. I thank him for giving me his time earlier in the week. With all respect to other meetings which I had during the week, that was one which I found really interesting and from which I learned a lot.

I will say word about the legislation and, as the right reverend Prelate indicated, the Government’s approach. The legislation would require a coroner or inquest jury to record gambling addiction and any other relevant factors in a conclusion of death by suicide. Of course, the Government endorse the sentiment behind the Bill and recognise the importance of gathering quality information on the circumstances leading to self-harm and suicide, including the role that gambling can play. However, the Government do not agree that these proposals are the appropriate way to tackle the issue. As my noble friend Lady Scott set out at Second Reading, they would result in a significant expansion of the coroner’s jurisdiction to identify the perceived reason—the “why”—behind an individual’s suicide death, and we do not consider this to be appropriate for the fact-finding summary process of a coroner’s investigation, which is really focused on the hard factual questions of who, where, how and when. We also have a concern that information gathered in this way would likely be both incomplete and inconsistently obtained and therefore would not provide a sound basis for delivering the interventions needed to secure improved outcomes in this important area.