The Gambling Commission has said it will “robustly tackle” misuse of new official statistics on gambling which have been published on Thursday morning.
The industry regulator has claimed the controversial first annual report of the Gambling Survey for Great Britain (GSGB) is set to become one of the largest of its type globally and will establish a new baseline for understanding gambling behaviour in Britain.
It has warned that the figures contained within the GSGB are not directly comparable with results from previous surveys and should not be used to gross up the prevalence of problem gambling to the whole population due to the use of a differing methodology, adding it will “always robustly tackle any misuse of official statistics”.
However, campaigners have already used the figures to call on the government to take action, claiming current reforms are based on incorrect information.
Meanwhile industry body the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) has voiced concerns that the results may be unreliable and overstate gambling participation and problem gambling.
Special reports
The most controversial aspect of the survey has been the reported levels of problem gambling.
The GSGB has found a problem gambling rate of 2.5 per cent of respondents, several higher than the previous NHS Health Surveys from which official statistics were taken.
However, the commission pointed out that an independent review of the GSGB by Professor Patrick Sturgis of the London School of Economics had said that estimates of problem gambling rates should be used with caution as there was a risk the new methodology “substantially overstates the true level of gambling and gambling harm in the population”.
The report’s figures found that betting on sports and races had the lowest problem gambling rate outside lottery and bingo.
Tim Miller: Gambling Commisison aiming to gather the “best possible evidence on gambling”
The Gambling Commission’s executive director of research and policy Tim Miller said: “One of our aims as a regulator is to ensure we gather the best possible evidence on gambling – and today’s publication is the next significant step forward in our journey on creating a robust source of evidence for gambling in Great Britain.
“Data in this report represents the first year of a new baseline, against which future changes can be compared and as such will prove invaluable in deepening further our understanding of gambling across the country.”
Professor Sturgis claimed the new survey “will significantly enhance the evidence base on patterns and trends in gambling behaviour” and that it “implements state-of-the-art methodology to a very high standard”.
He added: “With an annual sample size of 20,000 individual interviews across the nations and regions of Great Britain, the survey will provide researchers and policy makers with fine-grained and timely data across a broad range of key indicators.”
A spokesperson for the BGC said the methodology used in the GSGB was different to previous approaches and that it should not be used to make direct comparisons with previous surveys.
They added: “Our members are concerned these findings may be unreliable because there is a significant risk GSGB overstates gambling participation and gambling-related harm.
“Surveys using predominantly online self-completion consistently produce higher estimates of gambling participation and associated harms, compared to established alternative survey methods.
“The BGC and our members are committed to raising standards and we welcome any robust study that accurately gauges betting and gaming participation and problem gambling prevalence.”
The report found that 48 per cent of adults aged 18 and above had participated in any form of gambling in the previous four weeks, although that reduced to 27 per cent when those who only participated in lottery draws were excluded.
When asked to rate their feelings towards gambling, 41 per cent of adults who had gambled in the previous 12 months rated the last time they gambled positively and 21 per cent negatively, although those figures changed to 50 per cent and 19 per cent respectively when lottery draws were excluded.
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