So, you can see. We’ve heard from Sarah and Joseph. Gambling isn’t a game, it’s a very real problem. They’re paying a high price for it, and they’re not the only ones. You may have heard about Cardiff postal worker Colin Chapman, who was arrested just last week for stealing parcels worth £40,000 in order to fund his gambling addiction. Or you might even remember Willie Thorne, the former UK snooker champion who went bankrupt after gambling away more than £1 million, but, of course, it’s not just money that’s being lost. People are losing their homes, they’re losing their marriages, they’re losing their health from stress, and they’re losing their place and purpose in society. And, I’m afraid, some have even lost their lives.

On 31 March last year, 18-year-old Omair Abbas from Cardiff put on his work uniform and he said goodbye to his parents and left home, but, unfortunately, it wasn’t a day like any other. Fewer than two weeks later, he was found dead. He’d taken his own life after struggling with thousands of pounds-worth of debt. He’d maxed out his overdraft, he’d taken out credit on his credit cards, and even though he’d confided in close friends that he was depressed and had occasionally thought of taking his own life, unfortunately they were unable to prevent it from happening. I think his story, his death, should be a wake-up call to us all.

Excessive gambling is trapping people into an addictive cycle of losing and winning and losing and losing and losing. As we’ve heard, it can lead to incredibly tough emotional, financial and mental health problems. But the majority of addicts struggle in silence. Many people who struggle with gambling don’t reach out for help until they’ve hit crisis point, and recent research suggests that just one in 10 people with gambling problems actually do seek formal help. But, unfortunately, all too often the help that they need isn’t always available to them.

Now, thankfully, people are beginning to wake up to this public health time bomb, and I was very pleased to hear, from the chief medical officer at the recent Beat the Odds conference, that there is some work that he’s been doing on this subject. We were also hearing, of course, about the excellent work of the Living Room, here in Cardiff, and North Wales-based CAIS, which are helping to raise awareness of problem-gambling and helping to develop services to support addicts, and it’s beginning now, I think, to pay some dividends. The Living Room and CAIS, of course, organise the annual Beat the Odds conference—the Excessive Gambling Wales conference, which is held here in Cardiff, in the Pierhead, and it’s been invaluable in bringing academics, policy makers, public health experts and service providers together to examine the challenges presented by this problem and to work towards solutions. It’s helped dozens of gambling addicts so far, and it’s pioneered and developed new programmes that have helped addicts to turn their lives around. Of course, I mustn’t forget either to acknowledge the excellent work that has been undertaken by Carolyn Harris and the all-party parliamentary group on gambling also.

GambleAware, GamCare, Beat the Odds, the Living Room, CAIS—they’re all doing their bit, but there’s still a huge amount of work to do. So, what can we do? Well, we need to restrict gambling advertising. It’s wrong that every time you click on to Google or you turn on your tv, there’s an advert encouraging you to gamble. We need to change the planning system here in Wales to prevent the proliferation of betting shops in our communities and to stop further fixed-odds betting terminals turning up in our communities. We need greater recognition of the public health risks of problem gambling and significant investment in recovery services such as those provided by Beat the Odds, and we need to take immediate and urgent action to reduce the maximum stake on fixed-odds betting terminals and reduce the number of them across the country. Now, I recognise that some of the powers to do and deliver those things lie in Westminster, but that doesn’t stop us doing our bit with the powers that we’ve already got, such as changing the planning system and developing those universally accessible support services from being delivered.

The stakes are too high to ignore this problem any longer. Gambling is destroying lives. It can affect anyone anywhere at any time, and our young people are particularly vulnerable. So, instead of reading about crises that have happened, I think we all need to work harder to prevent them from becoming a news item in the first place. We owe it to Omair, Sarah, Joseph and the thousands of others in Wales who are victims of gambling addiction, to address this growing problem, and we must act now.