Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:30 pm on 3 June 2020.
I think it's a point well made, actually, by the Member, and I recognise his longstanding and continuing interest in the real public health harms caused by gambling. I don't think now is the time to go into the division of powers that exist, but we do still need to understand what that means and we do understand that there has been a significant increase in online gambling, as the Member sets out. So, I will definitely take it up specifically with the chief medical officer about where we are and what that means in terms of not just our understanding of the harms caused now, but what that means for the future. If more people are spending more time on online gambling, there's no guarantee—in fact, we'd expect that it would be not the case that those people will disappear and stop online gambling in exactly the same numbers as we progress out of the lockdown. We could be talking about longer term challenges in terms of the addiction that gambling sadly is for some people. So, I'll happily take it up with the chief medical officer, and I'm happy to undertake to write to the Member in due course.