Gambling survey finds problem gambling is stabilising: CEN 9.28.07 p 5. September 30, 2007
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Gambling, House of Lords, Popular Culture.trackback
Over a quarter of a million people are addicted to gambling, a government report has found. The Gambling Prevalence Survey 2007 found that those hooked on gambling numbered over 284,000, while over 68 percent of the population played games of chance last year in Britain.
The study, prepared on behalf of the Gambling Commission, found that 32 million adults had participated in some form of gambling activity within the past year. A similar study in 1999 found that 33 million adults or 72 percent of the population were gamblers.
The most popular form of gambling is the National Lottery draw with 10 million participants or 57% of the population.
Scratchcards (20%), betting on horse races (17%) and playing slot machines (14%) also topped the list, while internet gambling rounded out the top five at 6%.
Problem gamblers were estimated to comprise 0.6% of the adult population, or 284,000 people. The 1999 survey identified 0.5% of the adult population with a gambling problem, or around 236,000 adults.
The British Gambling Prevalence Survey was undertaken by the Gambling Commission to quantify the “nature and scale of gambling in Great Britain.”
“It was commissioned as part of the Gambling Commission’s commitment to the licensing objectives of keeping crime out of gambling, ensuring gambling is conducted fairly and openly, and protecting children and vulnerable people from harm from gambling,” the government said.
However the Rt. Rev David Chillingworth, Bishop of St Andrews, Dunkeld & Dunblane argued the “key message” of the report is that problem gambling had not increased. “This is a complacent statement” he argued as those affected by problem gambling were not just the gamblers, but their families and society as a whole.
“Gambling is now mainstream in British life through the presence of the National Lottery and scratch cards,” he said. “Its presence steadily corrodes the quality of our national life” while the “dream of instant wealth creates empty hopes,” Bishop Chillingworth argued.
“The support of ‘good causes’ is not an adequate justification for institutionalised gambling on this scale. It creates issues of values for voluntary organisations and for churches who are forced to seek funding from the Lottery in spite of their opposition to gambling,” he argued.
On March 28 the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishops of Peterborough and Southwell and Nottingham backed Liberal Democrat Lord Clement-Jones in opposing plans for a Manchester super casino, defeating the governments Gambling Order.
Speaking in the House Dr. Williams said his “unease” with the Gambling bill was with the “sleight of hand by which the whole business of the gambling industry has become coupled with the regeneration theme in ways which-I have to be candid-I find quite baffling.”
“While it is undoubtedly true statistically that casino gambling represents a relatively small segment of the overall problem of addictive gambling, none the less it represents a significant part and a social factor whose impact on its immediate environment is not restricted to addictive gambling,” he argued in opposition to the bill.
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