Gambling: Addictions

(asked on 6th January 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what recent estimate the Government has made of the proportion of people who gamble who are deemed to be problem gamblers; what financial contribution the Gambling sector has made to support problem gamblers; and if he will make a statement.


Answered by
Nigel Huddleston Portrait
Nigel Huddleston
Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
This question was answered on 14th January 2021

Combined Health Survey data for 2016 estimated the rate of problem gambling amongst adults in Britain who had gambled in the past year to be 1.2%. The 2018 Health Survey for England estimated a problem gambling rate of 1% amongst adult past-year gamblers.

Gambling operators licensed by the Gambling Commission are required to make a contribution to fund research, prevention or treatment of problem gambling. The Gambling Commission publishes a list of approved recipients of these donations, and will soon publish its first set of annual data detailing the value of donations each has received. Most operators choose to give to the charity GambleAware, which received more than £10 million in donations during the 2019/20 financial year.

In July 2019, the government secured a commitment from five large operators for a tenfold increase in their contributions to the research, prevention and treatment of problem gambling over four years, rising from 0.1% to 1% of gross gambling yield. This included a commitment to spend £100 million on treatment over this period. In June 2020 it was announced that GambleAware would use these funds to expand existing treatment services. Industry body the Betting and Gaming Council has set out a planned schedule for donations which will see combined contributions from those operators involved in the commitment rise to £5 million in the financial year 2020/21, £10 million in 2021/22, £25 million in 2022/23, and £35 million in 2023/24, with an additional £25 million to be spread across the financial years 2021-23.

GambleAware is an independent charity which commissions a wide network of gambling-specific treatment services including a specialist NHS gambling clinic in London and the NHS Northern Gambling Service. Its forthcoming Strategic Commissioning Plan, due to be published in April 2021, will set out its objectives for commissioning treatment services over the next five years. It will commision additional treatment provision to complement NHS services, which are also being scaled up as part of the NHS Long-Term Plan. Up to 14 new specialist NHS gambling clinics are planned to open by 2024, with three already accepting patients. The Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) remains committed to the expansion and alignment of existing treatment provision for gambling-related harms, and continues to work collaboratively with the NHS and GambleAware to ensure effective use of the additional £100 million of industry funding allocated for treatment over the next 4 years.

The government launched its Review of the Gambling Act 2005 on 8 December with the publication of a Call for Evidence. As part of the wide scope of that Review, the government has called for evidence on the most effective means of recouping the regulatory and societal costs of gambling from operators.

Reticulating Splines