Top NHS clinicians call for ‘addiction levy’ on gambling industry

theguardian.com:

The gambling industry should face a new multimillion-pound statutory “addiction levy” to fund the prevention and treatment of gambling-related harm, the most senior NHS clinicians treating gambling addiction have said.

Prof Henrietta Bowden-Jones, the director of the National Problem Gambling Clinic, and Dr Matt Gaskell, the clinical lead for the NHS Northern Gambling Service, are calling for a new independent health board to be created to tackle gambling addition.

It would be funded by a statutory levy on gambling revenues on the “polluter pays principle” – where the most harmful parts of the industry pay the most.

That board would oversee the spending of levy money, which could reach tens of millions of pounds a year, with a target to reduce gambling-related harm by 50% within five years, starting in 2024.

In a paper for the Social Market Foundation thinktank, professor Bowden-Jones and Dr Gaskell said the current voluntary arrangements for industry support for addiction services are failing badly.

“The current voluntary system has no integration of NHS services, no consistency in funding decisions, no independent evaluation of long-term impact or regulation via the Care Quality Commission, no coordinated oversight from research councils over research into harm, and serious questions have been asked about the independence of this voluntary system from the influence of the gambling industry,” they wrote.

“Furthermore, decisions about the funding of healthcare services are not overseen by experts at the Department of Health and Social Care, as would be expected, but rather officials at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.”