Online Gambling

Lord Wigley Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Richardson, for reasons that will shortly be evident. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Belmont, for introducing this most timely of debates.

In my childhood in non-conformist rural Wales, gambling of all sorts was a sin, as the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, will no doubt recall. People were expected, in line with Methodist orthodoxy, to work for their entitlement and never to expect anything for nothing. That day and age has clearly changed, not necessarily for the better, for there were many good social reasons on whose foundation that orthodoxy was built, and some of those social reasons are relevant to today’s debate.

I am glad that noble Lords who have participated, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Browne, in opening this debate, have made the essential link between problem gambling and the growth of online gambling facilities and their accessibility in a domestic setting. In addressing this subject, I do not for one moment take a fundamentalist line that all gambling is, of necessity, evil and that nothing but harm will come to those who participate. How could I, having entered elected politics, the biggest gamble of my life?

The majority of those who gamble do so responsibly, but there is always a danger of pressing that line too far. Everyone will want to identify himself or herself as a responsible person yet still may be in the minority for whom gambling can be a devastating affliction, leading to considerable harm. In reality, there are unacceptable consequences of gambling that go beyond the group identified as problem gamblers, as has been described very effectively in the research paper by Langham and others that was published by BMC Public Health last year. That paper is well worth studying. Its aim, as noted in its conclusions, was,

“to create a dialogue that will lead to a more coherent interpretation of gambling harm across treatment providers, policy makers and researchers”.

It identifies a number of elements as dimensions of harm; namely, financial harm, relationship disruption, emotional or psychological distress, detriments to health, cultural harm, reduced performance at work and criminal activity. That is quite a list, and we, as policymakers, would be negligent to ignore it.

A study of gambling-related harm undertaken in Victoria, Australia, by Matthew Browne and others was published in March this year. It aimed to calculate the burden of gambling harm on the quality of life of the population. The conclusion was that gambling-related harm was associated with 101,675 years of life lost in Victoria. Significantly, this is equivalent to two-thirds of that caused by alcohol use and dependency. Problem gamblers suffered 50% worse than moderate-risk gamblers in that analysis and three times worse than low-risk gamblers. However, because of their greater prevalence, moderate and low-risk gamblers accounted for 85% of the population level harm that was done. However, it is clearly problem gamblers who rightly demand our attention today.

The noble Lord, Lord Browne, rightly focused on the links between problem gambling and online gambling, and I am totally convinced that the availability of gambling opportunities within one’s own home, facilitated by online gambling, is a very serious component in tempting people into gambling. People who would never be seen dead in a bookmaker’s shop or in a roulette salon can be drawn in by the ease of opportunity and sometimes by the boredom of being at home, perhaps alone or in a caring capacity, for long hours. It is revealing that two of the groups most prone to problem gambling are those who are economically inactive and, sadly, those who are carers.

It is one thing to identify a problem; it is quite another to put forward a solution or even policies which may alleviate the problem. However, it strikes me that there is one glaring opportunity to try to reduce the number of those who get seduced into gambling online, and that is to do something about the television advertising of gambling which seems to be quite overbearing in proximity to televised sport on commercial television channels. We get in-your-face advertising of gambling before, during and after sporting events. Every possible aspect seems fair game for a bet: who scores, when they score, the most likely scorer, and all the rest. It seems that the slogan is, “Where there's a point, there’s a punter”. Their frequency is matched only by their vulgarity.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, emphasised a moment ago, young people are particularly attracted to sport and are among the most committed viewers of televised sport. It is surely fundamentally wrong that such a vulnerable captive audience should be targeted with adverts that will lead some—yes, perhaps a minority, but some—down the path that eventually makes them problem gamblers.

To my mind, for the protection of such groups, the advertising of gambling on television should be banned by law. Other anti-social activities which can have an addictive element, such as smoking and drinking alcohol, have been subjected to restrictive legislation—rightly so—and I believe that the promotion of gambling on television should be treated in the same way. If it were possible to ban it also from social media, that is something else which I would support, because of the vulnerability of young people to those media, although such action may be more difficult to enforce.

I am sure that we will hear the squeals of commercial television companies whose profits might be marginally lowered by such an intervention, and I am sure that some sporting activities will complain that if money does not come to them from television companies, there will be less paid by them for transmitting live sports. But I am going to take a lot of persuading that soccer has too little money available—on the contrary, the wages paid to top players are scandalously high and a sad reflection on the values of our society. I will equally take much persuading that bringing big sums of money into rugby has done very much for its well-being.

Restricting, or banning, advertising of gambling on television is only one of many initiatives which are needed in relation to problem gambling. I hope, however, that it is one the Government will seriously consider as they address the concerns emanating from today’s debate.