Examination of Witnesses (Questions 280
- 299)
THURSDAY 8 JANUARY 2004
MS HELENA
CHAMBERS, MRS
JENNIFER HOGG,
MS RACHEL
LAMPARD AND
MR JONATHAN
LOMAX
Q280 Jeff Ennis: What are the risks
of blurring the boundaries between "soft" and "hard"
forms of gambling which certain people have given us evidence
to the effect that it will be a possible outcome of the current
proposals?
Mr Lomax: Currently public policy
does recognise obviously differences between different types of
gambling and their potential dangers, particularly with regard
to casinos, and public policy recognises that by requiring a membership
arrangement with the casino and a 24-hour kind of cooling-off
period, if you like, between going to the casino and being allowed
to play. We see the removal of this as quite a significant blurring,
if you like, because you are taking out of public policy that
distinction between games in a casino which, statistics seem to
show, are slightly more dangerous in terms of problem gambling
and making it in effect not that much more difficult to play than
buying a National Lottery ticket, so that blurring, I think, is
happening there. Also, as we have heard this morning, some of
the Government's definitions of "soft" and "hard",
we would have issue with. I think the most obvious of those, and
I will not go into detail because we did earlier on in the Committee,
was children and Category D machines. I have to say again that
every member of this panel believes that Category D machines should
not be available for play to children and we believe that that
distinction that the Government have made and, if I may say, the
changed designation of what they are called is actually completely
arbitrary and, as the learned academics this morning showed, there
is no evidence really to show that. Also as was mentioned, in
the survey that we have had done, 82 per cent of the population
said that they did not think that children under the age of 18
should play fruit machines. This can also be seen in the modelling
aspect that we heard of earlier with the mix of the family entertainment
centres and perhaps the feeling that if children see adults behaving
responsibly or not, then at least there is that kind of socialisation
aspect there, but, as was pointed out I think again this morning,
there is no evidence really to show that that does halt problem
gambling in the future and in fact if they are being shown poor
examples, that can be quite a negative thing.
Q281 Jeff Ennis: So you would like
to see the complete banning of any new machines, including the
ones which currently exist, say, in amusement arcades at resorts?
Ms Lampard: Yes, we do not think
they are appropriate for children under the age of 18.
Q282 Jeff Ennis: What about the type
of facility you get at a motorway service station where it says
that only the over-18s can go in this area or whatever, which
is an incidental type of business to the core business of that
particular facility?
Ms Lampard: On the whole question
of kind of ambient gambling or incidental gambling, our major
concerns would not be so much with the motorway service station-type
approach as the chip shop taxi rank kind of approach where we
have spoken already about the Category D. It is very important
that if you can keep your gambling under control, it is a conscious
decision and you know how much you can afford to lose, then if
you gamble incidentally, that is far less likely to happen. The
particular concern also with the chip shop model is that it is
very unsupervised. You are only going to need a machine permit,
so there is not going to be the same degree of regulation and
licensing, and there is a question there of whether any type of
social responsibility is going to be involved as well. The second
area, I think, where we would have concerns is around pubs and
clubs which you may well have already heard about. You have visited
GamCare already, so you will have seen their statistics, but their
statistics for last year showed that the number of fruit machine
gamblers who did the majority of their gambling in pubs and clubs
rose from under 20 per cent to over 30 per cent in one year who
were problem gamblers, and there is a real concern about the mixing
of alcohol and gambling in that the more you drink, the less likely
you are to gamble wisely. There are also going to be problems
about children in pubs and clubs where those kind of machines
are available and the stress that it puts on the staff having
to enforce the law and ensure that children do not have access
to them. I think that the chip shop model and the pubs and clubs
are our two main concerns in terms of gambling.
Q283 Jeff Ennis: So you are not as
concerned about the motorway service stations' over-18 type of
scenario?
Ms Lampard: I do not think we
are as concerned, but obviously—
Q284 Jeff Ennis: So you would not
want to ban them?
Ms Lampard: Well, speaking personally
because this is not something we have discussed as a group here,
I think that gambling should be in places where people go to expect
to gamble.
Mr Lomax: There is also an issue
of supervision. We have all been to motorway service stations
and those barriers are not controlled by an adult checking on
anybody's age, so there is an issue of supervision there, I think.
Ms Chambers: If I can add a further
point, my background is in the treatment of problem dependent
behaviours and another factor here which fits in very neatly with
this destination gambling idea is that the people who have suffered
from a dependency issue, one of the things is triggers that can
trigger that behaviour occurring again and people learn rehearsed
techniques for preparing for these scenarios and dealing with
them. Whereas one cannot control 100 per cent every environment,
it is nonetheless true to say that in these areas where you may
not expect to find these things, but do find them, that is not
a particularly helpful model, particularly if it is going to bring
more gambling into areas which you are also having to avoid.
Q285 Chairman: Dr Sue Fischer has
said that, "controlling one's response to gambling requires
certain life skills which are likely to be under-developed in
children and young people". Now, can you tell us what these
life skills are and what protection should be offered to protect
those without them?
Ms Lampard: I think we are all
absolutely delighted to hear the reiteration by the Government
that gambling is an adult activity. That is something we absolutely
agree with. It is not aimed at children and we are glad to see
that the legislation provides some provision for this. I think
the life skills are about how you stay in control, how you keep
the ability to be almost slightly detached, not to overreact to
the winnings and the losings. I think Mark Griffiths spoke very
openly this morning about how the gambling experience, the gambling
episode can overtake even an adult who is used to this kind of
thing. Now, the impact that that would have on a child of eight,
nine, ten or eleven, you can really imagine that. That is not
to say that these things come automatically with adulthood, but
the kind of life skills and life experiences are more likely to
be accrued over time. We have already spoken about our concerns
about access to Category D machines and I think that that would
be our kind of primary response, that children do not have the
degree of emotional maturity to deal with the emotions that gambling
can throw up and it is clear from the Salvation Army poll that
the majority of the population seems to agree with that point
of view. I would say that if the Committee or the Government are
not willing to look at these machines, then we really need to
get the research that will show whether there is the damage that
we fear there is to children from playing on fruit machines and
be willing to take the difficult decisions a few years down the
line if this is shown to be true. Also, as a kind of secondary
point, I would raise the issue of children's access to other forms
of gambling, where even if they cannot play it, they can be there.
They are still going to be allowed into bingo halls, for example,
and pubs and clubs. There is also the question of the advertising
or the inducement of children to gamble which appears in the draft
legislation. We have all had more spam e-mails, I think, than
we would probably care to remember, but the number of those which
will come from gambling sites, for example, and spam messages
over your mobile phone, it is not acceptable for those to be sent
to children without any effort being made by the companies to
find out who owns the number or who owns the e-mail address.
Q286 Chairman: Do you think it is
feasible or appropriate to integrate education about gambling
and its dangers into the education which schools give to the young
in respect of sex and alcohol?
Ms Lampard: I think it is important
to say that education is not the same as life skills. We are actually
talking about two very different things here and I think we would
also recognise that school curricula are already quite over-loaded
in terms of the demands being made upon them in terms of citizenship
and personal and social welfare, valuable as these things are.
Having said that, there are resources that are already available.
There is one produced by GamCare called A Certain Debt
which is aimed at 12 to 15-year-olds and which tries to look at
increasing the awareness of what gambling is, the dangers of uncontrolled
gambling, and also what it means to gamble responsibly if you
do decide to gamble, to decide how much you want to lose and to
look at gambling as a leisure activity rather than as a way of
investing money and it should never take up a significant amount
of your time. Trying to get those lessons across to children and
young people would be very valuable, and also teaching statistics
within schools, learning that if you have had heads rather than
tails nine times out of ten, then on the tenth time, it is still
just as likely to be heads.
Q287 Chairman: A very good analogy!
Ms Chambers: Here I would just
say that I think we are all involved in working with young people
in one way or another in our own communities and in my case anyway
with regard to drugs and alcohol as well as gambling. We follow
with great interest evidence about the effects and the outcomes
of education-based initiatives on these areas. Although there
is some very positive work being done, and we are all engaged
in it, we do believe that there is some benefit in doing so and
it has to be said that the evidence about prevention programmes
in schools, for example, is critical, to say the least, so this
is something where the field as a whole, I think, would not claim
to have the skills to effectively prevent it and I think this
is something for education and that needs to be recognised in
terms of the balance of measures that are being introduced.[40]
Q288 Viscount Falkland: There is
evidence that those on lower incomes spend more in proportion
to their means on gambling than those on higher incomes. Is there
in your view a risk that, as is the case with the National Lottery,
gambling taxes can be seen by some as a tax on the poor? If I
could just add a rider to that, none of us, I do not think, would
disagree that gambling for some people is a significant cause
of their debt position, including card debt, as we heard in the
earlier evidence. How do you think this could be minimised?
Mr Lomax: Obviously in the absolutely
literal sense gambling taxation falls equally on every gambler,
but the studies do show that those with lower incomes tend to
spend a higher proportion of that income on gambling, so there
is a sense in which you could look at an increase in gambling
opportunities and, therefore, taxation as regressive because if
things carry on as they are, we can safely say that those with
lower incomes will be spending a higher proportion on it, so we
know that already. That is actually doubly disappointing when
you consider that actually the Government at present spend virtually
nothing on treatment of problem gamblers, particularly with the
notion of that taxation. On the debt issue, as I am sure you are
aware, the Salvation Army and indeed lots of churches deal with
thousands of vulnerable people each year. If I can just give two
very short anecdotes, there is a homelessness centre about a quarter
of a mile from here, a Salvation Army one, on Great Peter Street.
I spoke to the manager there a couple of weeks ago and at this
present time there are 28 residents, blokes, in that place there
who in their key worker sessions are claiming, and it is all self-diagnosed,
but identifying problem gambling as a real issue for them. More
than that, there are three gentlemen at the hostel, just this
one hostel in Central London, who have asked members of staff
in the hostel to actually accompany them to the post office or
wherever to pick up their benefits so that they can be escorted
back to the hostel because they actually do not trust themselves
to go alone. There are some better stories. There is a chap also
called Roger from Scotland whom I was also speaking to around
this issue who basically got into gambling through horseracing
and things cascaded, as these things tend to do. His wife asked
him to move out and then, after he moved back to his parents,
they asked him to move out, so he ended up at one of our homelessness
centres in Bradford. Now, after a lot of work not just on the
Salvation Army's part, but other agencies as well, Roger has really
sorted himself out and I spoke to him in our head office a couple
of weeks ago over a coffee and he was just off to his job with
one of the train companies in south-east London, so there is some
hope, but both of those show that yes, I think this does have
a disproportionate effect on those on low incomes. What can be
done? I think the first thing is credit cards in terms that we
are all very concerned about the proliferation of gambling on
credit. There just seems to be something innately worrying about
that and again our poll showed that 94 per cent of the population
feel that allowing people to gamble with credit cards would put
people at a greater risk of incurring gambling debts. It sounds
obvious. It is obvious and people are saying it is obvious. The
second thing is membership. If we go back to the casino issue
again, it is things like loyalty cards or membership tallies that
allow you to keep track of what you are spending. It is not a
walk in off the street issue and so you are not really sure what
is going on. That is one potential safeguard. The third and final
issue is debt counselling. We have heard a lot about problem gambling
as an illness or a condition that the academics and the psychologists
can speak to you about, but as these gentlemen a quarter of a
mile from here know, it is about financial issues as well and
being able to deal with their money. So we would like to see some
real highlighting of debt counselling as an issue.
Q289 Viscount Falkland: Could I ask
you whether it would surprise you to hear that yesterday when
we went to GamCare we met a young woman whose partner had got
their relationship into such a state that they were on the verge
of having their house repossessed and this had been going on for
a long time and she showed us a batch of that morning's mail to
her husband offering further lending facilities from credit card
companies?
Mr Lomax: It would not be surprising
at all. I would not feel qualified to speak about the psychology
of crossovers between problem gambling and other kinds of financial
problems, but anecdotally that does seem to be the case. GamCare
say that the average level of debt for somebody who rings a helpline
is about (19,000. The Office of National Statistics in November
or December released statistics saying that for the average household
it is (5,000 of unsecured debt. That is still a large amount of
unsecured debt. For problem gamblers it is already four times
higher and we are really very concerned about that.
Q290 Lord Wade of Chorlton: Do you
believe that the NHS should accept that problem gambling is a
problem like drinking or any other problem that people get involved
in and so ought to be treated at the cost of the NHS?
Mr Lomax: As was raised earlier
in one of the questions, it seems to me a very obvious potential
consequence for the NHS. As Professor Orford was saying earlier
on, this is a public health issue. The language of gambling is
as a leisure activity which many people enjoy and that is absolutely
fine and the Government are very keen to push that leisure activity
angle for obvious reasons, but as Professor Orford definitively
pointed out this morning, this is already a public health issue
and as such I am sure that the NHS really would want to be involved
in that.
Q291 Lord Donoughue of Ashton: There
will be new gambling facilities developed under the Bill, if it
proceeds and that would go to the local authorities who do not
necessarily have experience in this area and for whom it is not
clear what priority it would be. What factors do you think local
authorities should take into account when considering these applications
and who should they consult before proceeding?
Mrs Hogg: We do have lots of grass-roots
experience of this now and I am very glad that the Committee is
going to address planning and licensing on the twenty-ninth which
I look forward to with great interest. We feel that the social
impact must become what planners call a material consideration
in the planning process. What we are finding at the moment is
that if you start raising concern about the social impact of a
building proposal planning officers' eyes glaze over because it
is outside their remit, the borough council planning committee
members are very wary of even raising it because they do not want
to hand the developer grounds for appeal by raising something
which is outside of the remit and social agency professionals
who we have spoken to may agree with the logic that it is going
to add to their burden but they do not feel able to comment against
a matter such as this is which is already stated government policy
and this is our frustration. We want to see four things. The first
one is consultation. We would like the statutory consultees, as
they are termed in the planning process, to include any of the
agencies who pick up the pieces and that could potentially be
very broad. We do want social impact to be a material consideration.
Secondly, we would like a multi-dimensional approach. We would
like there to be a statutory requirement on the planning committees
to commission an independent report on the economic, social and
infrastructure effects of any significant development and this
would bring it all out into the open. Thirdly, proportionality,
we think that such an independent report should cover the area
from which the casino development plans to draw its customers.
For instance in Blackpool, where some people want a casino resort,
the casino resort plans to draw customers from a very wide area
and so the social impact should be determined across the whole
of the north-west because the footprints of the building will
be very broad. I know section 129 of the Act talks about adjoining
properties but we feel that is really inadequate. Finally, we
come back to what the learned professors were saying about the
need for more research because as soon as you ask the social agency
professionals to come in they will say "Where's the research".
At the moment we feel the planning process is not able to offer
local communities sufficient protection.
Q292 Lord Wade of Chorlton: These
two questions follow on from the submissions we have had from
the Methodist Church. You state in your submission that you strongly
recommend that a reference to social responsibility codes be included
in the Bill itself and also that the Commission should have regard
to whether the applicant has made a demonstrable commitment to
operating in a socially responsible way. Could you just explain
why you think that is necessary and how you would expect operators
to demonstrate that social responsibility?
Ms Lampard: I understand social
responsibility as being about the gambling operators taking responsibility
for the damage that gambling can cause to some of their customers.
Whilst the contributions they may make to treatment and research
and education are very important, it is not just about corporate
giving, it is about business practices and how they operate. There
are two specific reasons why I think there should be particular
mention of social responsibility within the face of the Bill itself.
First of all, there is a lot of scepticism about this Bill. The
constituencies that we represent are quite fearful in many ways
that it is going to result in a free for all. Social responsibility
is constantly mentioned by the Government. I am always mentioning
it when I am trying to defend some of the things that the Bill
is trying to achieve. If it could be incorporated into the Bill
itself it would leave the Government and the people who are trying
to defend it a lot less exposed. Secondly, I think it is so central
to the new regime that this needs to be in a sense drawn to the
attention of the gambling industry in the starkest way possible.
Under clause 56(ii) there are the range of issues that the Gambling
Commission have to have regard to in forming an opinion about
the suitability of an applicant for a licence and they are things
like integrity, competence and financial situation. If a demonstrable
commitment to social responsibility was included alongside that
that would embed social responsibility concepts and practices
deeply within the Bill. It would also mean that social responsibility
would count from day one. It would not just be when you broke
a code, you would have to demonstrate from day one that you were
implementing this throughout your organisation.
Q293 Lord Wade of Chorlton: Are you
saying that social responsibility is too easy to define in all
kinds of different ways?
Ms Lampard: Shall I tell you how
I would define it?
Q294 Lord Wade of Chorlton: That
is what I am asking you to do. If you do not want to do it now,
you might like to write to us and explain to us what you mean
by it and what you would expect the company to carry out in practice,
that is the point.
Ms Lampard: I am sure the Committee
will have seen the many voluntary codes that already exist across
the industry. I think there are five areas that I would want to
see companies abiding by in terms of social responsibility. The
first is about how you prevent children's access and that might
be about checking ID on the way in. If you are doing Internet
gambling then it might be about not using the kind of cards that
children have access to. Solo cards are available to people of
14 or so and you can use them on some Internet gambling sites.
The second area is how you make the customer aware of what they
are getting into, that might be things like probabilities of play
that was referred to in the previous session. The third one is
the structural concepts of what types of games are particularly
problematic and how do you reduce that risk element, so it might
be about introducing reality checks or clocks or breaks in machine
gaming, the kind of thing that actually reduces the structural
likelihood of developing problems with your gambling. The fourth
is about how you act towards people who are at risk of losing
control of their gambling, how you treat problem gamblers, so
that might be about having help-lines, leaflets or little stickers
on the machines. It might be about having trained staff so that
if somebody gets to the point where they say "This is out
of control. I can't handle it anymore. What shall I do?"
somebody is there not necessarily to give them counselling but
who will know how to handle that situation, that person and to
help them to move on to recovery, to deal with their problems.
The fifth one relates to how the gambling industry and the operators
themselves actually relate to the communities around them, whether
it is agreements about the treatment of the local environment
or it is about involvement in local projects, but that should
be part of the social responsibility. I would argue that they
need to be able to demonstrate that before getting their licences,
in order to be able to get it and that is the only way that we
are going to build into the Bill the guarantees and the safeguards
aimed at children and vulnerable people that the Government has
placed so high on its agenda.
Chairman: Thank you very much. That is
very clear and very helpful.
Q295 Lord Faulkner of Worcester: I
would like to ask you about the Gambling Industry Charitable Trust.
Jennifer, you make the point in your written evidence that you
believe it is essential that the GICT is independent of the industry.
Can you say what you mean by that?
Mrs Hogg: I think
what we meant by that was that we would like to see a trust that
has credibility. The name itself is questionable, the Gambling
Industry Charitable Trust. It all depends on who is in the driving
seat. If the industry is prepared to allow a body to call it to
account, something that has teeth, then we would be very interested
in that. If it is going to dispense funds it would not be quite
so effective.
Q296 Lord Faulkner of Worcester: Do
you think representatives of the industry should sit on it?
Mrs Hogg: It depends who is in
the driving seat, but what we would like to see is a multi-dimensional
body with representatives of organisations that treat gambling
involved, faith groups definitely, if that was appropriate, social
agencies, addiction specialists, educationalists, we would like
to see a broad remit.
Q297 Lord Mancroft: As
trustees?
Ms Lampard: Either as trustees
or in terms of an advisory group. It is about having breadth and
having a range of people who are able to set the funding priorities
and also the research priorities which the industry will then
fund and that could be an arm's length approach.
Q298 Lord Faulkner of Worcester: Is
the basis of the arm's length approach not a voluntary contribution
but one that is statutorily contained in the Bill?
Ms Lampard: There are a variety
of views on this.
Q299 Lord Faulkner of Worcester: I
am asking you for yours.
Ms Lampard: My view is that we
ought to give the voluntary approach a chance. That is partly
on the basis that it is always good if you can get people to buy
into things as they are far more likely to care about the spirit
of it. Research, looking at other jurisdictions, shows that if
you have a levy you get less money because much more of it will
go on the administration. So I would want to see a voluntary levy
given a chance but with a big stick behind it if it does not work
out and that stick being waived very firmly at members of the
industry who at the moment are freeloading on the other people
who are contributing to the trust. We make the suggestion in our
submission that the Commission might like to look at the question
of donations to the trust itself or other appropriate bodies as
part of the evidence of compliance with social responsibility
codes.
40 Note by Witness: My point is that prevention
programmes have not been shown to have reliable effects in reducing
problem behaviours in the drug and alcohol fields. This has to
be taken into account in the draft legislation; it cannot be presumed
that education or prevention programmes will reduce the risks
of children developing problems with gambling. The evidence suggests
considerable doubt and uncertainty in this area. Back
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