Professor Henrietta Bowden-Jones, Director of the National Problem Gambling Clinic (NPGC), and Dr Matt Gaskell, Clinical Lead for the NHS Northern Gambling Service, voiced their support for a levy on gambling companies, with expenditure to be overseen by an independent health board.
In a paper for the Social Market Foundation (SMF) think-tank, Bowden-Jones and Gaskell backed calls for a “statutory levy” on gambling businesses, and said a new Joint Advisory Levy Board should be created.
This board, they said, should be led by the Department of Health and Social Care, not the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), who they claim has resisted repeated calls from various stakeholders to introduce a statutory levy.
In fact, this was but one criticism levied against Britain’s current system. Bowden-Jones and Gaskell wrote: “The current voluntary system has no integration of NHS services, no consistency in funding decisions, no independent evaluation of long-term impact or regulation via the Care Quality Commission, no coordinated oversight from research councils over research into harm and serious questions have been asked about the independence of this voluntary system from the influence of the gambling industry.”
Their recommendations come as the government prepares to publish a long-awaited review of Britain’s gambling laws, with various parties having previously declared their support or opposition to a statutory levy.
Among those who support such a move is Dr James Noyes, Senior Fellow at the SMF and Co-Author of the paper.
He said: “The Gambling Act Review White Paper is a unique opportunity to fix this broken system and put harm prevention and treatment where it belongs: under the leadership of the Department of Health and Social Care, funded through a proper statutory framework.”
