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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, whether she has made an assessment of the reasons for which the the Gambling Commission contracted with the National Institute of Economic and Social Research to research the costs and benefits of gambling, with a focus on gambling-related harm; and what the cost of that contract was to the Gambling Commission.

I apologise for the delay in responding to this question.

The Gambling Commission did not sign a contract with the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NiESR). In this case, NiESR was a recipient of £140,050 in regulatory settlement funding.

Regulatory settlements are a possible outcome of Gambling Commission enforcement action and may include a financial amount paid by the operator for socially responsible purposes which address gambling-related harms. The Commission does not take possession of regulatory settlement funds at any time and the money is paid directly from the operator(s) to the organisation delivering the approved project.

More information on this process and the destinations of regulatory settlement funding is available at the Commission’s website.