5. Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services: The Chief Medical Officer's Annual Report 2016-17

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:59 pm on 6 February 2018.

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Photo of Mick Antoniw Mick Antoniw Labour 4:59, 6 February 2018

Cabinet Secretary, I won't go over many of the points that have been covered on the gambling issue. Can I just say, first of all, you'll remember the individual Members' debate we had here in 2013—I think this Assembly is one of the first of the Parliaments to actually have a detailed, thorough debate on the issue of the emerging problem of growing gambling? In fact, it was that debate—when people say, 'Well, what do these debates mean?'—that actually led, in the Wales Act, to at least some devolution of powers in respect of fixed-odd betting machines. Unfortunately, it didn't attract the sort of attention that occurred later on, but I think it's fair to say that this Assembly has led the way, actually, in identifying and looking at ways in which gambling could be dealt with as a public health issue. 

What's important about this report as well is that almost half of it—17 pages of it —deals with what is identified as an emerging public health challenge, and this is the thing that we've had in the various debates in this particular Assembly. And it's a very good report, because it also, in terms of establishing a task and finish group in terms of the need for more research—. You'll recall that all that research was stopped in 2010, so that the actual data we have has been limited until the work that was done in terms of the report that Jane Hutt and myself and others funded. But this gives us an opportunity now to do proper analysis, proper investigation, into the actual scale of the problem. Very importantly, what is identified is that whatever work is done has to be free of the influence of the tobacco industry—I beg your pardon, the gambling industry; that's another issue—an industry that has ploughed money into research, but has a stranglehold over that research, the direction it has, and research that seems to go around in circles for decades. So, it's very important that we are independent of that.

Can I also say one other thing? Of course, many of us have been watching some of the recent sporting successes of Welsh soccer teams, and of course Spurs are playing Newport tomorrow night. There may even be Assembly Members who will be at that very game. But I raise the point not to diminish anyone's enthusiasm for their local team, but because of the stranglehold that gambling now has over sport: the identification in people's minds of sport, of soccer, of whole varieties of sports, with gambling. Those of us who will watch that game that night will see, around all the ground now, all the gambling adverts. We will see the texts that come on the phones, the stuff that comes onto online and so on. And whatever capacity we have—we can do some things on fixed-odd betting machines, we can do stuff in terms of our planning powers—I think we also have to look at our association with sport within Wales in terms of how we actually tackle and ensure that there isn't that growth of gambling advertising taking place, and that we also engage with Westminster over the fact that, having identified a public health issue, we actually need the powers to be able to deal with it. One of the problems, of course, with the Wales Act is it limits the capacity we might have had in certain areas of gambling as a public health issue—