.svg)
Body
The Gambling Commission has threatened to name and shame organisations it believes are misusing problem gambling data, in particular those who use statistics to underplay the level of gambling harm in the UK.
The years-long saga to reform the UK’s gambling regulations, which reached a new inflection point with the recent release of a series of white paper consultations, has seen countless research papers and opinion pieces use facts and figures to argue for or against various proposals since the government began the project in 2020.
In a blog published on Monday (August 14), Andrew Rhodes, the chief executive of the Gambling Commission, appeared exasperated with the way statistics have been manipulated to push various agendas in the debate.
“Everyone has the right to put forward their argument or opinion and there has been little shortage of that in recent times,” he wrote. “However, much as everyone is entitled to present their arguments, what is wholly unacceptable is the misuse of statistics to support that argument.”
Rhodes claims that the commission had seen a “significant increase” in the dodgy use of numbers in recent months, particularly around problem gambling rates.
Campaigners of various kinds often conflate problem gambling and gambling-related harm, he said.
Problem gambling is used to refer to dangerous levels of gambling that cause damage to individuals or those around them. Meanwhile, gambling-related harm is a measure of the negative impact gambling has on health and well-being. The former is more strictly defined by addiction experts, while the latter is a less refined concept.
“Multiple individuals and organisations have misused problem gambling statistics to create an inaccurate picture,” said Rhodes.
In particular, he said, people have used the figure that 0.3 percent of people in Great Britain are currently experiencing problem gambling to argue that 99.7 percent of the population gamble without being harmed.
These figures include the entire adult population and not only those people that gamble, which some commentators have misrepresented, the commission chief executive said.
Others have suggested that 0.3 percent of the population is “at-risk” of gambling harm, a conclusion the commission also rejects. That claim confuses problem gambling and gambling-related harm, Rhodes said, also pointing to a 2021 Health Survey that suggested more than 5 percent of gamblers were at least partially at risk from gambling-related harm.
Rhodes also complained of frequent attempts to argue that problem gambling rates are moving up or down by comparing various statistics.
“This, at face value, is not an unreasonable thing to do … however, we have seen examples of comparisons being made where report authors have made clear that reports cannot be validly compared due to limitations, often related to data collection issues due to the COVID-19 pandemic or changes made to survey methodologies,” he said.
“What is clear from the statistics is that the problem gambling rate overall is low, compared to the level of participation, but when we go beneath the surface of those numbers the picture is more complicated and requires statistics to be properly understood and properly used when discussing these matters,” said Rhodes.
The commission is also poised to take action against those it sees as misusing official statistics.
Rhodes said that the regulator has already reported one instance to the Office for Statistics Regulation and will do so again in the future.
“The Commission also reserves the right to publicly challenge the misuse of statistics by any party, if they fail to correct their misstatement,” he said.
