Gambling-Related Harm

Rosena Allin-Khan Excerpts

Tuesday 19th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe. All Members have made incredibly valuable comments. I especially pay tribute to the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan) for securing this essential debate. As I am sure he is aware, the Labour party has been driving improvements in protections and care for gamblers, and I am pleased that there is cross-party consensus when it comes to reducing gambling-related harm. [Interruption.] I hope that his chuckle is in acknowledgment of that.

Gambling addiction currently affects 430,000 people in the UK. That many people could fill Wembley stadium four times over. Last year’s debate on fixed odds betting terminals showed us what can be achieved when politicians, experts and campaigners come together on such an important common cause. Despite opposition from the industry and, I am sorry to say, reluctance from some within the Minister’s party, we were able to achieve reform that will save lives, benefit communities and better regulate the market. I am proud that the Labour party was the driving force behind that reform.

We now need to go further. I am pleased that the fixed odds betting terminals all-party parliamentary group will continue its work under the new banner of the all-party parliamentary group on gambling-related harm. I am also proud that my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) is working with the hon. Member for Inverclyde and other parliamentarians to investigate the impact of gambling-related harm in our communities. The excellent work being done by campaigners such as Liz and Charles Ritchie at Gambling With Lives powerfully reminds us of what that harm means, and the deep destruction that it has on individual lives and families.

Last year the Labour party published our review of problem gambling and its treatment. In that review, we cited the need for additional resources in treatment, and recommended achieving that by placing a mandatory levy on gambling companies that would allow for greater training, capacity and expertise in those services, and for the establishment of specialised regional gambling treatment centres. I am pleased that the case for a mandatory levy has been taken up by other parties and organisations, and I expect it to come into effect in the coming year.

However, we also need to have a real conversation about how the money from that levy would be best allocated and spent. The Labour party believes that the debate on gambling-related harm needs a stronger and committed public health focus. In our review, we called for the formation of a working group between the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and the Department of Health and Social Care to co-ordinate that, and we would want to see similar co-ordination with a gambling mandatory levy and other public health-related priorities.

At the moment, gambling harm is too often seen as a side issue to other parts of addiction and public health. We want it at the forefront of public health thinking and, crucially, seen as an addiction in its own right. In my professional capacity as an emergency doctor, I have first-hand experience of seeing families torn apart by gambling and mental health issues—families who have lost loved ones, and walked in on their child trying to commit suicide.

Two things will be needed moving forward: first, training for GPs and healthcare professionals, to ensure proper diagnosis of problem gambling; and secondly, more dedicated clinics opened across the country. Research has shown that problem gambling is linked to social deprivation, with the highest number of betting shops clustered in areas of Liverpool, Glasgow and Birmingham that have a higher rate of unemployment. Yet the only specialised NHS treatment clinic in the entire country is in London. Even with a new clinic in Leeds, clearly much more must be done. We need to go further when it comes to the exposure and influence of gambling.

In our review, the Labour party called for a change to advertising rules—namely, a whistle-to-whistle ban. Before Christmas we saw an industry initiative that proposed a ban but that, in reality, dealt only with TV advertising. That is meaningless when more than half of our football teams’ shirts are sponsored by gambling companies, and there is rolling advertising on pitch-side billboards. The Labour party calls once again for a ban on shirt sponsorship by gambling companies.

I will conclude by looking forward to a new frontier of gambling-related harm: online gambling. Last month my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Tom Watson) gave a speech in which he outlined how online gambling can be better regulated, with limits on spend, stake and speed. Limits on how much internet gamblers can stake and spend online would be introduced under a Labour Government. Online companies have a responsibility to protect their customers from placing bets that they cannot afford, but too often operators have either neglected the care of their customers or have been too slow in their due diligence.

On spending, the Labour party would like affordability checks to be made a requirement before gambling takes place, so that people cannot lose huge sums of money that they cannot afford. Crucially, that requires a ban on credit card gambling. On stakes, the Labour party wants caps introduced on the amount that can be gambled on certain online products that are linked to harm. There was cross-party support for FOBTs stake reduction, and I hope that there will be similar support for that approach to online gambling. Labour would tackle the problems by creating a new category in the current legislation—the Gambling Act 2005—specifically for online betting, to introduce a system of thresholds placed on the spend, stake and speed of betting, giving safeguards to consumers.

The social cost of addiction, including treatment, welfare, housing and criminal justice, is as much as £1.2 billion a year. That does not even begin to cover the untold costs borne by the families and loved ones of those addicted to gambling. I know that the Minister values the lives of all those important families, who have had their lives ripped apart by gambling. I hope that she will take on board what has been said, and agree that we need to do more—indeed, that we must do more.