.svg)
The Gambling Commission has said it is responding constructively to criticism from the UK statistics watchdog of its new gambling harm survey, but there remains widespread concern over the ferocity with which reform campaigners have leapt on its vastly higher problem gambling figures.
The commission’s Gambling Survey for Great Britain (GSGB) replaces older ways of measuring problem gambling in Great Britain, through what the commission said is an improved methodology, but the report has been controversial since it was first published in 2024 and faced criticism from the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) earlier this year.
Late last month, the commission issued its official response to the OSR, promising to address several of the survey’s shortcomings.
Although it praised some areas of the report, the OSR’s critiques included an admonishment that “significantly more work is needed to ... better support the appropriate use of these statistics by better understanding, and more effectively communicating, the uncertainty of the GSGB estimates”.
There has been particular concern over the use of a finding that 2.5 percent of respondents scored over eight on the Problem Gambling Severity Index (PGSI), and how this has been contrasted to the 0.4 percent rate of adults engaging in problem gambling recorded by previous official surveys.
Despite Gambling Commission warnings to gambling commentators not to deploy its new figure to extrapolate an average problem gambling rate for the entire public, campaigners and politicians have used the figure out of context to imply a massive increase in harmful gambling in Great Britain.
Open To Feedback
Gambling Commission chief executive Andrew Rhodes has previously pledged that the regulator will push back against inaccurate usage of its statistics, but while it has issued several letters of correction, critics say its approach to misinformation has been scattershot.
Going forward, when new stats are released, the regulator says it will “make it clearer to users that the GSGB produces estimates and these estimates are subject to potential biases. We will set out the impact of these potential biases, including the risk that some of the estimates about the negative consequences of gambling may be over estimated”.
The commission said it will listen more closely to stakeholders and users of its data and has set up a new email to gather feedback.
“Changing any baseline for official statistics is challenging, it needs care and takes time to bed in as all stakeholders get familiar with the new data source, what the data means and how to use it,” said Ben Haden, director of research and statistics at the Gambling Commission.
“This was always going to be the case in a sector where the derivation and use of statistics has historically been a contentious space,” he added.
However, critics of the regulator’s approach say there are still glaring issues with the GSGB and the way in which it conflicts with existing research into gambling harm.
“You have to demonstrate how other official stats cohere [with the GSGB],” explained Dan Waugh, a consultant with Regulus Partners, who argues that the commission cannot ignore the vastly different rates of problem gambling recorded by different official surveys.
Waugh, who is a frequent critic of the commission’s research, said he is broadly unimpressed with the regulator’s response to the OSR.
“It doesn’t feel like a particularly candid reply,” he told Vixio. “They’re cherry picking.”
An inability to control the narrative around the new 2.5 percent figure recorded in the GSGB has also led to a more fragmented debate around the future of gambling in the UK.
Trade groups like the Betting and Gaming Council continue to refer to the 0.4 percent figure drawn from the most recent NHS Health Survey for England.
Meanwhile, influential pressure groups like the All Party Parliamentary Group on Gambling Reform cite the 2.5 percent rate as partial justification for its new inquiry into gambling regulations, which is likely to result in calls for tougher advertising rules and possibly demands for an entirely new gambling act.
Waugh remains doubtful that any additional action by the Gambling Commission will repress claims that the UK has an established 2.5 percent problem gambling rate, even if it issues further guidance as indicated in its response to the statistics watchdog. “Most campaigners will ignore this,” he said.
The GSGB is set for further scrutiny in the weeks ahead, with a second report by Patrick Sturgis from the London School of Economics, commissioned by the regulator, due to be published in the coming days.
