Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to her Department's publication entitled Gambling-related harms evidence review: quantitative analysis, updated on 11 January 2023, what definition of pools betting her Department used during the evidence gathering process; and which gambling activities were labelled as pools betting.

The Gambling-related harms evidence review: quantitative analysis has not been updated since original publication on 30 September 2019. The Health Survey for England (2012, 2015, 2016 and 2018) was used as the primary dataset for this review and analysis was carried out on this four-year combined and weighted dataset. Information on methods for data collection for the Health Survey for England is available at the following link:

http://healthsurvey.hscic.gov.uk/support-guidance/public-health/health-survey-for-england-2018/introduction.aspx

The Health Survey for England asks whether survey respondents have participated in several different types gambling activities, and is included in the quantitative analysis which is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/gambling-related-harms-evidence-review

Gambling activities were not specifically labelled as ‘pools betting’.