The cost-of-living crisis is driving gambling addicts to risk even more – it’s time for ministers to act

Terror comes in many forms. But in peacetime, at least, there are few things more frightening than not being able to pay your debts. A week ago, the Mail’s front page highlighted ‘families’ growing mountain of debt’. Based on figures from the accountants PwC, this showed that the total amount of unsecured debt in the UK (in other words, not including mortgages) had risen to £400 billion — equivalent to more than £16,000 per household.

With borrowing rates rising, and the prices of essential goods likewise, this predicament — most of all for the poorest — must be an element in the fact that more than two million Britons have used at least three days’ worth of ‘emergency food’ at foodbanks in the past year.

A significant proportion of those people will be in employment, not down-and-outs. This is an argument brandished by the public sector unions when threatening strike action.

The general secretary of the PCS union, Mark Serwotka, claimed to the BBC that ‘40,000 public sector workers are using foodbanks’. And the Fire Brigades Union, on December 29, tweeted: ‘Many ordinary firefighters, on £32,244, are forced to foodbanks.’

Distress

This provoked the Conservative MP Brendan Clarke- Smith to respond: ‘I respect the profession, but £32,244 and using a foodbank. Never heard such a ridiculous thing in my life. I earned a lot less than that for most of my teaching career, and so do many of my constituents. If true, which is unlikely, I suggest learning how to budget and prioritise.’

But, as those figures for unsecured debts suggest, many are in a position where even a salary above the national average won’t keep the wolf from the door. When the cost of living surges much higher than you could have foreseen, you can’t walk away from such obligations (or not without facing the bailiffs and the prospect of personal bankruptcy).

It is seldom mentioned in this context, but I wonder to what extent the rising use of foodbanks, tied to genuine financial distress, is linked to the issue of ‘problem gambling’, as well as poverty.

Since the deeply misguided decision by the Blair/Brown administration in 2005 to ‘liberalise’ the gambling industry, this has been a social disaster in the making, most damaging to the poorest families with which the Labour Party has always claimed a special affinity.

Fifteen years later, the House of Lords assessed the wreckage in a report entitled Gambling Harm — Time For Action. It found that a third of a million Britons are ‘disordered’ gamblers. And it estimated that for each such ‘problem’ gambler, six other people (so, another two million) are ‘harmed by the break-up of families, crime, loss of employment, loss of homes and, ultimately, loss of life’.

This last, devastating consequence was why, in 2018, I met a group of families who had been shattered by the suicide of one of their number — all young men, as it happened — caused by the shame and helplessness of their addiction, and the catastrophic effect on their finances.

Among them were Liz and Charles ritchie, whose 24-year- old son, Jack, a teacher, had killed himself in such circumstances. They launched the charity Gambling With Lives, tied to my interview with these families in the Daily Mail. Liz and Charles were awarded MBes in the New Year Honours.

That is a tribute to what Gambling With Lives has been doing to raise the public awareness of this issue since then; but I’m sure what Liz and Charles really want is for the Government to implement the reforms which the Conservatives promised in their 2019 manifesto, but which have been repeatedly postponed.

Among the measures that the ritchies have called for is a ban on gambling advertising. That, unfortunately, won’t happen. The minister responsible, Paul Scully, has indicated only that he might demand a ‘hardening’ of the warning in gambling ads, beyond the current, vapid, ‘when the fun stops, stop’.

Profits

In Australia, the government has done something of the sort, demanding such warnings as ‘You win some, you lose more’ and, ‘Imagine what you could be buying instead’. Such as food for your family.

But the problem with addiction is that it defies dissuasion. And it is from the addicted, or so-called ‘problem’ gamblers, that the companies gain the bulk of their profits, according to that House of Lords report. The firms also find vast pickings amongst the least well-off.

This was true of the fixed odds betting terminals (FoBTs), which, until the Government, in 2018, took the decision to reduce the maximum stake from £100 to £2, were a huge money spinner (for their owners) in the poorest parts of the country.

A 2021 report from the Standard Life Foundation charity revealed that the ‘UK’s most deprived areas have more than ten times the number of betting shops than the most affluent parts. Those with the least resources are being targeted more’.

Now the companies, having seen their betting shop revenues hit by belatedly effective regulation of FoBTs, are concentrating on the online business, where the Government has so far refrained from imposing similar stake limits.

Last June, the National Centre for Social research found losses across all types of online gambling were ‘strongly skewed’ towards the most deprived areas.

The scale is astounding. In four of the past five years, British ‘punters’ have lost more than £14 billion in all forms of betting. By 2021, the size of the UK’s regulated online gambling market alone had reached, according to the leading industry analysts H2 Gambling Capital, a figure of $12.5 billion (£10.34 billion) the biggest in the world, outstripping the U.S.’s $11 billion (£9.1 billion).

No wonder that the boss of the UK online gambling website Bet365, Denise Coates, was able to take home total pay of nearly £1.3 billion in the five years to 2021.

She also pays great wodges of tax to the exchequer. The Treasury has always been anxious to do nothing to mess up the business model of firms such as Bet365.

But one friend of mine, who used to work for the Treasury, was a dissident voice. He emailed me: ‘I would ban all “free” bets and all adverts. And I would limit the ability of people on benefits to gamble. I know a person who spends all her benefits within 48 hours (on betting). Her wonderful father gives her £3 a day to buy food. He says if he gives her a fiver she will gamble £2.’

Block

My ex-Treasury friend is suggesting exactly the sort of legislation which MPs who receive either pay or freebies from the gambling industry are trying to block. According to a recent audit, a total of 28 MPs — 19 Conservative, nine Labour — had within a single year received almost £225,000 in payments or perks from the gambling industry.

A tremendous investigation published last month by Bloomberg, entitled online Casino Smartphone Gambling: How The UK And Its Politicians Got Hooked, showed how although Tory MPs were the majority in this group, the offices of the Labour Leader Keir Starmer and the Shadow Chancellor rachel reeves had received donations totalling £35,000 from gambling industry tycoons.

It described a party thrown at the last Labour conference, sponsored by the Betting and Gaming Council (the industry lobby group), at which ‘Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, took to a makeshift stage emblazoned with the BGC’s logo and belted out a pop ballad … and Keir Starmer mingled with guests, including the BGC’s Ceo Michael Dugher — a former Labour MP — and other industry representatives’.

So it’s all the more important that rishi Sunak acts now and introduces the stricter regulations his party promised but which it has repeatedly deferred.

Because not only is there no sign that the financial squeeze has reduced gambling spend, it may even be causing more to use it as a desperate way to make a bit extra. A survey published last month by Gamble Aware reported that ‘one in four women who gamble are expecting to gamble more because of the cost-of-living crisis’.

What more does Mr Sunak need to know?