Gambling advertising is absolutely everywhere and inescapable. The adverts make gambling seem normal, fun and a game of skill – even though the sophisticated algorithms are loaded against the gambler, allowing the gambling companies to make supersize profits.

In decades to come, people will look back on our current era with the wonder that we look back on the 1970s and 1980s when tobacco advertising was all pervasive, when cricketers played in the Benson and Hedges Cup and rugby players competed for the John Player Cup. Tobacco adverts portrayed their product as normal, fun and even sophisticated – which we now know to be untrue.

People have the right to gamble if they want to, just as they have the right to smoke, but they shouldn’t be subjected to adverts that distort the truth to get them hooked. There are 1.4m gambling addicts in this country, and 500 suicides a year, with the NHS looking to open 15 gambling clinics by 2024.

And just as passive smoking affects those around the smoker, so passive gambling affects those families who have an addict in their midst.

The rapid change of culture secretaries in recent years has prevented the Government from updating the gambling laws which were written before everyone walked around with a betting shop in their pocket with a direct entry into their bank account. So the proposed limits on the amount that can be tipped into a slot machine are welcome as are the affordability checks on gamblers who are losing large amounts – but the Government should be acting on this now, not just talking.