‘Lessons not learned’ from suicides

THE betting industry was yesterday accused of failing to learn lessons from dozens of gambling-linked suicides.

The Gambling Commission has looked into only nine deaths since 2016 – a tiny proportion of the total number.

Yet there are thought to be 409 gambling suicides a year in England alone, according to research by Public Health England (PHE), formerly an agency of the UK Department of Health.

Campaigners said it was a ‘national scandal’ that the betting industry, which nets £14billion in customer losses every year, had failed to learn lessons from the deaths.

They blamed ‘inadequate reporting and investigation’ and questioned why the commission had not been notified of more suicides. A Daily Mail investigation published yesterday revealed up to 115 suicides in which problem gambling was a factor.

Bereaved families said the devastating roll-call of names showed ‘the stark reality’ of the harm caused by ‘greedy and amoral’ companies.

Despite this, only three fines totalling £5million have been issued over suicides.

Aspers Casino was fined after businessman Huseyin Yaman took his own life in 2018, hours after losing £25,000 on ‘crack cocaine’ slot machines in its casino in London. Witnesses said he was spoken to twice to see if he had a problem but was not removed from the casino.

Playtech was fined £3.5million after the death of engineer Chris Bruney in 2017, who took his own life hours after he was handed a £400 cash bonus. The case was investigated only after the family reported his death to the regulator and provided data collected by Mr Bruney’s bereaved partner from his betting account.

The Betting and Gaming Council, an industry lobby group, said the PHE study was unreliable due to its small sample size and flawed methodology.

A spokesman added: ‘Latest figures from the Gambling Commission showed the rate of problem gambling [is] 0.2 per cent – down from 0.4 the year previous.’