2. Business Statement and Announcement

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:34 pm on 27 November 2018.

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Photo of Jenny Rathbone Jenny Rathbone Labour 2:34, 27 November 2018

I wondered if we could have a statement, a whole-system approach from the Government, on gambling. Last week, the Gambling Commission published its annual report on the issue of young people and gambling, and, worryingly, it is now the biggest harmful activity that young people up to 16 are engaging in. So, it's now a bigger problem than alcohol consumption by under 16-year-olds. Some of the concerns that were expressed at the cross-party group last Tuesday were that 90 per cent of pubs do not take action to prevent young people using their fruit machines. It takes them up to half an hour before they actually do anything, and meanwhile, of course, all the money's gone down the tube. So, I appreciate that the chief medical officer takes this matter very seriously, but it seems to me it's also a regulatory matter for local authorities to ensure that pubs, if they have these dreadful fruit machines, are actually supervising who's using them. Plus, I think there's a general issue around the way in which the gambling companies are penetrating—across social media, through sporting activities—young people's brains, that gambling is something that it's cool to do. And we've seen from research produced in Australia that this is a pretty terrifying way in which children's brains are being cooked. So, I wondered if we could have a statement so that we can see that the Government is taking this as seriously as we should have taken smoking some 30 years ago.