Statement in response to the Responsible Gambling Trust on The Times article and news of the Charity Commission investigation in a Daily Express article
Responding to an article in The Times entitled Gambling charity faces inquiry into its industry links, the Responsible Gambling Trust (RGT) issued a statement containing a number of misleading assertions.
The RGT state that: “no complaints have been made to the [Charity] Commission”, but the article actually states that: “Campaigners are preparing a dossier of evidence to present to the commission, which will review the findings before deciding whether to investigate.”
This is true, as the Campaign for Fairer Gambling (CFG) has prepared a submission to the Charity Commission, following an article in the Daily Express, The CFG has now made an initial detailed documentary submission on this matter to the regulator.
Having commissioned research that advances the commercial interests of RGT trustees at the expense of those the RGT is supposed to protect from harm, CFG believe that an investigation is warranted into whether the RGT has breached charity law.
The RGT’s closeness to the industry, and the industry influence over the research agenda, was detailed in a report by Goldsmith’s University entitled “Fair Game”, which quotes RGT Chair, Neil Goulden, stating: “There is very clear evidence that problem gambling is about the individual and not any specific gambling product or products”.
The consensus within the research community is that gambling related harm is the consequence of a multitude of factors including the individual, the product and its environment. The notion that harm only arises from an individual’s predisposition to it is entirely self-serving on the part of the industry, as it precludes any restrictions on products and their accessibility.
The RGT state that the research committee is chaired by Jo Wolff, implying that this proves the RGT is independent. Mr Wolff spoke out against stake reduction at the RGT’s Harm Minimisation conference in 2014, shortly after the RGT’s research into Fixed Odds Betting Terminals (FOBTs) was published.
The vast majority of the research, conducted by FeatureSpace, did not even consider the impact of reducing the £100 stake on harm prevention. Only Dr Adrian Parke’s paper considered stake in isolation from other factors, and found that betting £20 a spin, compared to betting £2 a spin, impaired decision-making ability.
The RGT state that CFG is “itself funded by money which ultimately comes from gambling”. Derek Webb and Hannah O’Donnell fund CFG. Both have retired from commercial activity and have chosen to give up their own money and time to campaign against the most addictive and the most harmful form of gambling. To compare CFG to the RGT in the manner RGT have done is very misleading.
At the time the research into FOBTs was commissioned, trustees at RGT included Richard Glynn, the then CEO of Ladbrokes, Carl Leaver, the CEO of Coral, and RGT was Chaired by Neil Goulden, who was also at the time Chair of the Association of British Bookmakers. These individuals had a clear commercial interest in maintaining the status quo of £100 a spin on FOBTs, and it is nothing short of farcical that they were at the RGT when key research was commissioned, on which government have since based policy.
The RGT was formed from Gambling Research Education and Treatment (GREaT), which was also Chaired by Neil Goulden. GREaT’s remit was to provide funds from the industry to the independent Responsible Gambling Fund (RGF). However, RGF trustees were forced to resign as they “could not act with a degree of independence” from the industry.
The RGF said that the conflict arose from the gambling industry wanting more involvement on how money raised by GREaT should be spent, and that the charity would "not be complying with charity law" if the partnership were to continue as it had been, and that “the gambling industry has much stronger interest in funding treatment than it does in funding research”.
The bookmakers refused to participate in an RGF study on gaming machines in situ. Bingo Halls and Arcades offered researchers access to their premises, but the bookmakers refused. The research found that even when gambling on machines capped at £2 a spin, players had a propensity to stake up to the maximum.
Following the resignation of RGF trustees, GREaT took over the remit of the RGF, and the RGT was formed. It raises £6m a year, less than 0.1% of industry gross gambling yield, and exists to preserve control of the research agenda and to ensure a statutory levy, which would raise far more than £6m a year, is not implemented. As a charity, it is not subject to the FOI Act so there is very little transparency.
Whilst the RGT has consistently stated that the Responsible Gambling Strategy Board (RGSB) set the FOBT research questions, the Gambling Commission has refuted this, and said that the RGT set the FOBT research questions. The research questions set the parameters of the FOBT research, which did not focus on the impact of the £100 stake on levels of harm but on identifying problem gamblers.
The CFG will provide new information to the Charity Commission as it emerges over the coming months, which will support our submission. CFG calls on the Department of Culture, Media and Sport to conduct a full investigation to determine who set the FOBT research questions, why these questions were chosen, and to make public the findings of the investigation.
For further information about the Campaign for Fairer Gambling and its Stop the FOBTs campaign, please visit www.fairergambling.org / www.stopthefobts.org
