Online Gambling — House of Lords, 2017-11-23
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Floella Benjamin (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Browne, on securing this important debate. I am pleased to be able to speak in the debate because many people have contacted me to raise their concerns about children becoming addicted to online gambling and being targeted for this abuse. To fully comprehend the situation that children are being lured into, think of how children are offered free drugs at the school gates by drug dealers to get them hooked. This can be compared to children and young people being targeted to gamble online. I was shocked and horrified when I looked online and saw how the nation’s children are being targeted. Gambling addiction is not given the attention that it desperately needs, like drugs and alcohol abuse, especially in relation to young people, yet it is just as disastrous and much more common than a lot of people think, sadly with an alarming suicide rate Gambling addiction devastates lives. It goes under the radar and is extremely embarrassing for victims, especially for pre-teens and teenagers in secondary school. As they have no income, pupils are often cornered into stealing for a stake—it produces out-of-character actions that will impact negatively on their home and school life. The organisation Odds/Off has set up a gambling awareness and abuse prevention programme and has found that nine out of 10 problem gamblers started gambling between the ages of 11 and 16 and did not understand the severity and reality of this dependency until it was too late My concern is how easily children become involved in online gambling. Believe it or not, it is surprisingly easy for a young person to download a gambling app, open an account and start actively gambling. All they have to do is lie about their age. It is rare for gambling companies to ask for any form of photo ID until the user attempts to withdraw winnings, yet they can credit their account with unlimited funds without photo ID. This means that, as long as the child is losing their or their parents’ money to the bookmakers, the gambling company will not make any attempt to stop them. This has to change Before I get on to the facts and figures, I want to raise an important point of policy, which I hope the Minister will respond to. The question is: where does the responsibility for protecting children from online gambling-related harm lie in the current flurry of strategy documents that are being published? The Government’s Consultation on Proposals for Changes to Gaming Machines and Social Responsibility Measures says at paragraph 5.11: "The Government is committed to ensuring young and vulnerable people are protected from gambling-related harm—both online and offline" It goes on to refer to the recently published internet safety strategy Green Paper as addressing, "the responsibilities of companies to their users, the use of technical solutions to prevent online harms and government’s role in supporting users" However, there is little mention of online gambling harm in the Green Paper. I am concerned that there is a risk that the protection of children from the harms of gambling online will fall through the gap and that this aspect of regulation will not receive the attention that it fully deserves Why should I be concerned about this? Because, as the Government acknowledge in their Green Paper, "there is an association between early gambling participation and problem gambling in adulthood" Statistics published by the Gambling Commission on 14 November show that public trust in gambling is falling dramatically. It says: "There are also significant public concerns about the volume, nature and scheduling of gambling advertising and the impact this could have on future generations" We should be concerned about what is happening to our children now and the impact that it could have on them in later life. According to figures published in 2016, more young people are gambling than are smoking or drinking. Not all of the gambling is online, but some of it is. Some 3% of 11 to 15 year-olds have spent their own money on online gambling, but 6% have gambled online using their parents’ accounts, either with or without permission. Even if children are not gambling online, they are seeing adverts for gambling online. Some 63% of 11 to 15 year-olds have seen gambling ads on social media and 57% have seen them on other websites; 9% of young people are following gambling companies on social media Gambling seeps into our children’s consciousness. Some of this enticement is very subtle. An investigation by the Times in October revealed that more than 30 online gambling games targeted children through the cunning use of children’s storybook characters, cartoons and things that are relevant to them in their life, such as sporting heroes, especially football stars. Some of the products did not involve real money and were a fairly blatant example of the online gambling industry trying to entice our children into gambling. Professor Mark Griffiths of the International Gaming Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University has said: "Research has shown that when we look at those children who are problem gamblers, the number one risk factor is playing games online for free" I welcome the joint letter of 20 October from the Gambling Commission, the Advertising Standards Authority, the Committee of Advertising Practice and the Remote Gambling Association, all saying that action would be taken against such ads. But, like many others in this House and the general public, I am concerned that letters such as this are just not going far enough and that more effective action is needed. I refer again to the Government’s gambling paper, which says: "The Government is clear that on gambling advertising, as with other aspects of social responsibility, more should be done by operators and others who benefit from gambling to minimise the risks to vulnerable people" The Government are consulting on a number of proposals to give more teeth to the Gambling Commission’s licensing code if there are breaches to the industry’s advertising codes. However, I question whether these actions go far enough. One of the three licensing objectives in the Gambling Act 2005 is, "protecting children and other vulnerable persons from being harmed or exploited by gambling" Given that, why are the Government not prepared to go further and amend the Gambling Act to make it an offence to provide any form of game for children that involves the act of gambling, even if the currency is not real money? Perhaps the Minister can tell the House why this option is not being pursued. Can he also tell the House how the Government are ensuring that the current regulatory framework provides sufficient protection to children at a time when gambling and online safety are under the spotlight once again I am concerned that the industry does not seem sufficiently motivated to address any of these issues. It would be far more effective for the Government to use their regulatory powers in Section 123 of the Gambling Act 2005 to introduce a statutory levy. This money would have to be sufficient to meet the needs of Britain’s 430,000 problem gamblers and to develop preventive measures to help the further 2 million people who the Gambling Commission says are at risk. More important, the Government must also ensure that sufficient attention is given to preventing children and young people from becoming addicted to online gambling and protecting them from the long-term misery associated with it. It is our moral duty to do so because, let us not forget, childhood lasts a lifetime. So this debate is a wake-up call—to parents, teachers, the Government, the industry; in fact, to the whole of society—if we truly care about our children’s future and want to save them from falling into the pit of despair of addictive gambling abuse. Let us work together to protect and safeguard our children and young people from online gambling abusers.