UK gambling treatment groups respond after criticism of industry funding
Several group have defended the work carried out with voluntary donations from gambling operators.
UK.- Deal Me Out (DMO) and other gambling harm treatment groups have raised concerns about a recent parliamentary hearing in the UK. In a letter to the Health and Social Care Select Committee, they argue that MPs were led by a partial view of how gambling-related harms are treated in the April 2 hearing.
Several public health professionals attended the hearing and discussed the distribution of funding for gambling harm treatment as well as the extent of the gambling industry’s influence on research. Academics claimed that many existing treatment and prevention programmes had lacked rigor because they depended on voluntary donations. Afterwards, the MPs on the select committee then wrote to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) calling for reforms.
However, the letter from DMO reads: “Our main concern is the repeated assertion by Professors Heather Wardle and Sam Chamberlain, and Lucy Hubber that the gambling industry is somehow negatively influencing research and treatment of gambling harm. This is – at best – outdated, and at worst, fiction.
“To help address this imbalance we are providing accurate and updated information from the organisations at the forefront of treating and preventing gambling-related harms. We would be happy to brief you and Committee members to give you a full picture of the situation.”
The letter is signed by several support treatment providers, including BetBlocker, EPIC Global Solutions, Gordon Moody and the Player Protection Hub. They argue that work on gambling harm prevention has been going on for years without state funding and deny that the industry’s provision of funds exerted a negative influence.
They also claim that it is only via the normalisation of gambling that we can hope to raise public awareness of the risks of gambling and the tools and strategies that can keep people safe” and suggest that the academics speaking at the select committee hearing were “amplifying the stigma around gambling harm and cutting off resources that could be used to reduce harm” despite good intentions.
“We reject the language of stigmatisation and argue passionately that the only way to fight the harm caused by gambling is for politicians, regulators, treatment services, researchers, those with lived experience, the media and the gambling industry to work together,” the letter reads.
The debate comes after the new British gambling levy came into force last month. The mandatory levy replaces the previous system of voluntary donations that operators made to GambleAware, which has served as the distributor of funds to various bodies.
The rate that licensees must pay will range from 0.1 per cent of gross gambling revenue (GGR) for remote and non-remote pool betting operations, gambling machine operations and family entertainment centres to 1.1 per cent for online gambling and betting, bingo and software licensees. The levy will be invoiced on an annual basis every year on September 1, starting this year. Payment will have to be made by October 1. Failure to pay can lead to licence revocation.
