Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:18 pm on 26 June 2018.
I'll ask the Secretary to write to you on that.FootnoteLink It is right to say that we don't want to see a proliferation of betting shops, but that's part of the problem. Online gambling—it's never been easier to gamble. There was a time when you physically had to walk into a betting shop in order to do it. Most people didn't do that. There were some people for whom it was a lifestyle choice, but it didn't happen to most people. Now, of course, because it's so easy to gamble—. For example, just to give some figures to Members here, there were 152,000 adverts in 2006 relating to gambling; in 2012—and I suspect the figure's gone up since then—there were 1.39 million. Well, that kind of barrage of information is bound to have an effect to encourage people who otherwise wouldn't have gone into a betting shop years ago to gamble, to gamble more, and then, of course, to create problem gambling. If we don't allow advertising for tobacco and alcohol on tv, why do we allow the advertising of gambling? I think that's a question for the UK Government to resolve.