Church calls for Government warning to gambling industry

The Church of England has welcomed the announcement from the Government on Tuesday that it will no longer build a supercasino in Manchester, but encouraged Culture Secretary Andy Burnham to go further by issuing a warning to the industry that he will enforce a statutory levy that will go towards the care of problem gamblers.

After the Government eased up restrictions on gambling, Dr Philip Giddings, chairman of the Church's Mission and Public Affairs Council, said that funding the treatment of problem gamblers was the least the £10-billion-a-year industry could do.

"The Culture Secretary is exactly right when he says it is unacceptable that only 360 out of 3,800 licensed operators have contributed to the Responsibility in Gambling Trust," he said.

"The Government has eased restrictions on their industry, so the least they could do is to show responsibility in funding research into and treatment of the side-effects."

He pointed to the risk of more problem gamblers once the new casinos are built. The planned casinos are larger than existing casinos in Britain and will increase the number of high stake machines as much as sevenfold.

"Mr Burnham has every reason to put the funding on a statutory basis," said Dr Giddings.

Tuesday's announcement in Parliament ended nearly a year of Government wavering on the supercasino and has been welcomed by a number of Christian bodies, including the Evangelical Alliance, The Salvation Army and the Manchester-based Church Action on Poverty,.

The Salvation Army said that although it was pleased that the Government had U-turned on its supercasino plans, it remained concerned over the 16 larger casinos.

"The alleged 'regenerative benefits' of these new casinos are yet to be proved and the onus is on local authorities and operators to ensure they have taken all necessary steps to identify and address the social consequences in their communities," it said.

"We remain concerned about a normalisation of gambling in our society, which could negatively affect many vulnerable people and draw them into serious debt. Problem gambling already has a negative impact on the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in this country and as a society we should be doing all we can to reduce not increase that number," The Salvation Army said in a statement.