Part of 3. Topical Questions – in the Senedd at 3:17 pm on 21 March 2018.
Thank you for the series of points and questions raised. I've previously indicated in the debate around the chief medical officer's report that the Government will bring forward a statement on how we expect to use our new powers once we have them, and you can expect that in the near and not the long-term future. I know that some Members had an opportunity to meet the chief medical officer today, and I welcome the broader gathering of interest and desire to do something that goes across a range of parties. I'm thinking about our Welsh parliamentary colleague Carolyn Harris who's led a high profile and active campaign on fixed-odds betting terminals through Parliament. So, the issue is very current and is very real in all of our communities.
I won't be able to deal with all of the points in the question today, but I will certainly undertake to cover those and come up with a more considered statement. But in particular, if I refer back to comments made by the leader of the house yesterday about the advertising issues, which are mentioned in the Gambling Commission's report, and the points about the public health agenda, it is a genuine awareness-raising campaign that we need to have to understand how people behave. I don't think we can rely on the industry self-regulating and simply being responsible. Some more steps have been taken, but I think there is more to do and more to be done. In particular, on your point about advertising, whilst there are things we'd want to see advertising bids coming forward for, there is something that goes into one of the points the Gambling Commission themselves raised.
Now, our party on the UK level has policies to have a compulsory levy on the gambling industry. The Gambling Commission themselves said that, essentially, there is a good case for the industry itself to do more to meet its obligations. They currently provide about 0.1 per cent of turnover into GambleAware, and, actually, they could and should do more. The Gambling Commission themselves recognise that if the industry does not meet their obligations on a voluntary basis, there is a strong case to consider a statutory levy. I certainly will be, after I've given it consideration, making a statement to this place, and I'll write to the UK Government, where most of these powers still rest.