Academics hit out at Labour’s plans to “work with the industry”

A pair of academics have slammed Labour’s manifesto commitment of working with the industry to ensure improved responsible gambling.

Goldsmiths’ Professor Rebecca Cassidy and Dr May van Schalkwyk from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine penned a joint letter, which was published by the Guardian, to push back against the party policy.

Labour revealed its commitment to reforming the sector in its 2024 manifesto published last Thursday, 13 June, ahead of the general election on 4 July.

Within the 136-page document, titled Change, gambling was afforded a single paragraph under the party’s plan to ‘Build an NHS fit for the future’.

The paragraph reads: “Labour is committed to reducing gambling-related harm. Recognising the evolution of the gambling landscape since 2005, Labour will reform gambling regulation, strengthening protections.

“We will continue to work with the industry on how to ensure responsible gambling.”

And it is the final line of that commitment that Cassidy and van Schalkwyk took umbrage with in a scathing open letter which took aim at the industry.

The pair alleged the industry has shown it is “disinclined to, as well as incapable of, protecting customers from harm” and Labour’s promise to work with the sector demonstrates a “lack of engagement with the facts of gambling harm”.

They wrote: “Gambling business models demand that they use sophisticated marketing strategies to extract maximum profit from every user of their products.

“Fine if your business is umbrellas or socks, but gambling is different – it can destroy lives, families and communities. We know the industry’s products are harmful, even at low levels of use, and designed to be addictive.

“Preventing harm should be the priority, not providing funding for treatment afterwards. The partners in this endeavour should be the health community, not the industry or those dependent on its funding.

“Reviving ‘responsible gambling’, and presenting the industry as a legitimate partner in responding to the public health issues it causes, is contrary to the evidence, and conflicts with Labour’s commitment to promoting health and equity,” the academics added.

Cassidy is the author of Vicious Games: capitalism and gambling (published in 2020) and is part of the Anthropology department at Goldsmiths.

She previously received a grant from the European Research Council in 2011 to develop GAMSOC, a project about gambling in Europe, operated out of Goldsmiths.

The project aimed to explore “how regulations and technologies are framing a diversity of gambling products and behaviours across geographical, legal, historical and conceptual boundaries”. Research ended in 2014.

Meanwhile, the Conservative Party failed to give the sector a single mention in its manifesto, while the Liberal Democrats have committed to introduce affordability checks and restrict marketing.