MPS attack online gambling industry for failing addicts
BRITAIN’S gambling industry will come under attack tomorrow when a hard-hitting report blasts bosses for not doing enough to help those harmed by gambling.
A cross-party group of MPS, who were at the forefront of the successful campaign to slash the amount that can be bet on fixed-odds betting terminals from £100 to £2, now has online gambling in its sights.
The online industry will be condemned for preying on vulnerable people.
The MPS will also be critical of the Gambling Commission – the body responsible for regulating everything from arcades and bingo to lotteries and internet betting.
Tomorrow’s report will kick-start a campaign to ensure there is “proper” regulation of the online industry and that this will be a priority for the next government.
Carolyn Harris, the chairwoman of the Gambling Related Harm crossparty group of MPS, said: “People have lost their family. People have lost their homes. Whatever the industry and the regulators think they are doing, they are not doing enough.”
She described efforts to help addicts as “failing beyond belief”.
Many people with gambling troubles have other problems, she argued, saying: “A lot of people have PTSD. A lot of people have acquired brain injury. A lot of people have trauma in their life.”
Ms Harris has encountered cases of people who had suffered sexual abuse and “turned to gambling as a way to black that out and they have become addicted”.
Tomorrow’s report will call for a complete overhaul of the gambling industry and “drastic changes to the ways things are done”.
Ms Harris, a Swansea East MP who came to national attention with a successful campaign to scrap child burial fees, said British gambling law had not kept pace with the online revolution.
She said: “Technology has moved on. Legislation hasn’t.” During the investigation leading up to the report, Ms Harris met with leading figures in the gambling sector.
She said: “I think they would like to pretend they are not aware [of the scale of the problem] but I believe they are completely aware... At the end of the day, money seems to be far more important than the human cost.”
Other members of the group include former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith and Thatcher-era minister Sir Peter Bottomley.
Mr Duncan Smith said: “The Gambling Commission has got to get some teeth. It is completely toothless and does nothing to stop this so it now needs to force the gambling companies to face up to their responsibilities and it needs to do it now.”
The report is expected to call for greater regulation of television advertising for gambling companies and for measures to ensure the industry does more to fund help for addicts.
Around £14.5billion was spent on gambling in Great Britain between October 2017 and September 2018 – of which £5.6billion was online.
Last year there were 106,670 people employed in the industry.
Research from 2016 suggests that 0.7 per cent of people aged 16-plus in Great Britain are “problem gamblers”.
The Gambling Commission reported that “6.6 per cent of gamblers in England are at low or moderate risk of developing problems with their gambling”.