Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:10 pm on 6 February 2018.
I just need to declare that I am a director and trustee of The Living Room, which has pioneered the focus on gambling as just as harmful an addiction as alcohol or tobacco or any other addiction. So, of course, I welcome this focus on it, because I have many constituents who have lost their home, lost their business as a result of their gambling addiction. We need to ensure that we are getting large organisations, like the football industry, to use their excessive wealth and dominance of the television schedules not to promote gambling, which is what they're doing at the moment, and that is a very worrying concern.
I think we should also worry that video games are being used to target children and promote a form of gambling in order to prepare them for the future. I know that the Advertising Standards Authority is on to this and endeavours to be vigilant, but I think that it's something that we all ought to worry about. I completely agree that we need to reduce our stake to £2, so I do hope that you're successful in persuading the UK Government to take the plunge on that one.
Probably the only thing I agreed with Mrs Thatcher on was that she was worried about the lottery being located in our post offices. The poorest people in our communities collect their benefits from the post office still today, despite the electronic transfers of money, and then they are invited to spend some of it immediately on gambling. That is quite an uncomfortable situation, and we all see it every time we go into a post office. So, I think it's a major concern, and I very much welcome the emphasis in this report.
I just wanted to focus on something that's not in the report, which is the issue of breastfeeding, which wasn't in last year's report either. It is confined to two lines in Dr Atherton's report. We are told that children in the most deprived areas are half as likely to be breast-fed, and that, obviously, is combined with the fact that they are twice as likely to have decayed, missing or filled teeth. There is a link in all this. When I asked you about this subject back in November, you did say that this remains a priority for Public Health Wales, and that you have asked your officials and the Royal College of Midwives to explore ways to further improve uptake and support and provide better support to families. So, I'd be keen to understand, if this information isn't available in our public health report, where we are going to find out what our strategy is on this really important subject. Because it does actually follow babies right through their lives; if they are not breast-fed, there are serious consequences to all this. It is particularly concerning that it is in the lowest income households where people are least likely to breastfeed and therefore need more support to do so. So, I'd be keen to hear what you can offer on that.