5. Will the First Minister make a statement on the public health implications of problem gambling? OAQ52247

Problem gambling has the potential to harm not just individual gamblers but also family, friends and society as a whole. As we all know, hardships can include financial hardship, psychological distress and the breakdown of personal relationships. We do support a range of measures to address this, including support, advocacy, information and appropriate regulation.

Thank you for that, First Minister. Like everyone here across the parties, we welcomed the announcement by the UK Government the other week of the intention to reduce the maximum bet for fixed-odds betting terminals to £2—something that we've discussed in this Chamber on a cross-party basis for almost five years. Of course, we'll need to see legislation, we need a timetable to make sure that this thing actually happens, and I wonder if you've given some thought to the issue as to whether this has implications in respect of the Wales Act 2017 with regard to our devolved responsibility, whether an LCM will be required, and whether there is an opportunity through an Order in Council for the devolution of gambling properly. Because, in terms of dealing with the health implications, we know of the significant issue with regard to young gamblers, 11 to 15-year-olds, we have powers already in respect of education and planning, and what we really need is to develop a strategy to deal with the growing problem, recognised by the Chief Medical Officer for Wales, of problem gambling, online gambling, using the powers that we've got at the moment, but also the opportunity to get proper devolution of full gambling responsibilities so that we can actually have all the tools to tackle this emerging epidemic.

I agree. It would appear that the announcement that was made last week means that the powers that Welsh Ministers have under the Wales Act become moot. What the powers actually say is that they give us the ability to limit the number of machines with a stake of more than £10 in respect of new betting premises licences. Well, if the maximum stake is only £2, then those powers are academic. So, I think it is appropriate for us to look again at what would be appropriate for Wales in terms of further powers over gambling.

First Minister, recognising the symptoms of gambling isn't always that easy and neither is providing the appropriate support, as people respond differently to interventions, but for the more intractable problems, if you like, I wonder if you could tell me whether Welsh Government is able to identify how many people in Wales have been allocated a social worker to help them with their problem, or indeed have accessed rehabilitation residential centres, either in Wales or elsewhere. I appreciate you may not have the answer today, but if you could write to me with that answer I would be grateful, because I'd like to know who's actually picking up the tab for the support that we're offering.

I'm happy to write to the Member with that information, and will do so.

Further to the questions and answers so far, a 2016 report published by the Institute for Public Policy Research suggests that problem gambling costs the Welsh Government between £40 million and £70 million every year. Since gambling and advertising are reserved powers, you can't be proactive on gambling, you can only react to the problems. So, for clarity, and following what you said to Mick Antoniw, why don't you demand that Westminster gives us the powers we need to minimise the financial cost, but more importantly the human cost, of problem gambling?

What would need to be addressed is online and tv advertising, because that's where a lot of gambling comes from now. For a long time, it hasn't been possible to advertise tobacco on tv. For a long time, it hasn't been possible to advertise alcohol on tv. And yet, gambling advertising has increased. If we're saying that, for many people, gambling is an addition, as alcohol and tobacco can be for some people, why is it the case that gambling advertising has gone up? For example, there were 152,000 adverts in 2006 but 1.3 million adverts shown in 2012—and those figures are already six years old.

Anybody who watches any kind of sporting event will notice the invitations for people to put a bet on there and then about who's going to score the next goal in the second half, who's going to score the next try, what the final score will be. It has the potential to cause huge addiction. So, if we look at gambling, we have to look at what happens in terms of internet regulation, what happens in terms of broadcasting. So, it does impact on other areas. By far, to my mind, the easiest way of dealing with regulating gambling is to do it on a UK-wide basis, but certainly one of the things that I would want to look at in the future is what would we look to do in Wales that takes us beyond the powers we were given in the 2017 Act, which now appear not to be worth anything.