Board minutes for 12 September 2024

Minutes of Advisory Board for Safer Gambling (ABSG)

12 September 2024.

Remote meeting via teams.

Members:

• Anna Van Der Gaag (Chair)
• Virve Marionneau
• Phillip Newall
• Ulla Romild
• Stephen Sharman
• David Zendle.

In attendance:

• Helen Child (items 1 - 4 only)
• REDACTED.

Apologies: Spencer Murch.

1. Welcome, apologies and declarations of interest

The Chair welcomed attendees to the meeting.

Apologies were noted.

There were no new declarations of interest.

2. Welcome to new members and introductions

The Chair welcomed Virve and Spencer to the group and attendees introduced themselves.

The Chair and ABSG provided brief updates on recent events attended and areas of interest:

Single Customer View and the recent launch of the Betting and Gaming Council’s GamProtect site – this is an area which ABSG are interested in, looking at operational data across a broad spectrum of operators which can inform patterns of play. Other European regulators have been working in this area, too. It will therefore be helpful for individual ABSG members who are fluent in the language to look into this area and update ABSG on the work taking place. It is always useful to look across jurisdictions when trying to understand more on cross operator account data.

Action 1: REDACTED.

Gambling Advertising Reform Summit, held on 10 September 2024 – this had been a useful day bringing together parliamentarians, academics, regulators, policy makers and people with lived experience of gambling harm. There was a strong consensus around the links between advertising and gambling harm, as well as powerful discussions around causality. It was noted that conversations on this topic included the activities of other European countries that have already banned or restricted gambling advertising and in particular, advertising that is targeted at children and those most at risk. Causality in these countries was not considered a live argument for or against advertising and marketing as the quantum of advertising spend was evidence that the industry recognised the benefits and there were already sufficient studies to support restrictions.

Conference of the International Think Tank on Gambling Research, Policy and Practice was held in New Zealand in July – the Chair received a summary from the conference and will circulate it to ABSG members.

Action 2: REDACTED.

The Gambling Commission has received an invitation from GamLearn, asking the Commission if they would host a panel on supporting people who have been harmed by gambling which has led them to offending.

Careful consideration needs to be given to the handling of this request, and to ensure any panel held is carried out safely for those individuals.

REDACTED.

Action 3: REDACTED.

3. Minutes from the previous meeting

The minutes of the meeting held on 28 August 2024 were approved, noting that the action for the Chair to send feedback notes on the methodology paper had been completed.

REDACTED.

4. Evolution of ABSG

ABSG members received an update on the evolution of ABSG to date:

• the timing of and thinking behind the decision to review ABSG’s focus and Terms of Reference (ToRs), has been linked to the recent recruitment of new ABSG members and the current Chair’s term ending next year. With that in mind, some initial thought has been given to what the Commission would describe to an incoming Chair as to what direction ABSG is heading
• in terms of where ABSG originated, its recent work and where the demand across the Commission for ABSG’s input is coming from, it is mainly in the Research and Statistics (R&S) area
• ABSG’s remit is not only restricted to safer gambling, but also cuts across all of the Commission’s statutory objectives, with the unique selling point of ABSG being around academic networking and its depth of collective research knowledge that can be utilised
• in terms of changing the name of ABSG, there is no current name in mind – the ToRs should be reviewed and agreed first and then a name agreed that is appropriate thereafter
• Commission officials want to develop the ToRs with ABSG members to ensure all members are content with all proposed changes.

ABSG asked questions and made comments:

Direction and ToR for ABSG

On the new direction of ABSG, it is the current understanding that ABSG evaluates and gives advice where asked.

On ABSG’s accessibility to Commission colleagues looking for advice from ABSG, it is more about the Commission not currently receiving many requests for advice other than from R&S. Commission officials continue to promote ABSG, its remit and particular areas of expertise.

On ABSG’s policy around Conflicts of Interest (COIs), the policy is not the same as for other Expert Groups (EGs), which gives ABSG independence from industry whilst also ensuring full transparency.

Similar groups to ABSG have been established in different jurisdictions, but the remit varies. For example in Finland, a group is tasked to evaluate corporate practices that might be harmful, but the Finnish group has a much wider profile, with expertise from different perspectives, whereas ABSG expertise is currently more focused on research.

The revised ToRs will, to a great extent, depend on what the GC wants from ABSG, such as an academic expert group advising on research, or sharing broader perspectives on policy and practice.

When ABSG was re-named and re-purposed in 2019 from the Responsible Gambling Strategy Board (RGSB), the membership included experts from the treatment sector and public health. Membership also evolved when the COI policy was changed to specify that ABSG members could no longer receive direct funding from any industry source. Since the work ABSG carried out on the National Strategy for Gambling Harm ended in 2023to 2024, ABSG has moved away from the broader group membership and evolved into a group of experts that are more focused on gambling and gaming research.

If the premise followed is that ABSG is to provide advice on evidence gaps, research, design, governance and ethics, R&S have also talked about expanding the remit to look at questions arising from the Commission's fair and open objective as well as the objective to keep crime out of gambling.

It was noted that there is complexity in how the ABSG’s COI policy is balanced against other EG COI policies. It may be useful in this regard for the GC to consider conflicts on a sliding scale rather than a binary state.

Going forward, it is important that ABSG does joint work with the Lived Experience Advisory Panel (LEAP), as not enough work has been carried out with the new Panel members to date.

There needs to be a red line on how the COIs on independence from industry will be pulled through in the revised ToRs. ABSG needs to be very clear as to what extent this is a red line for members going forward.

As LEAP is also addressing the harms agenda, the differentiation between LEAP and ABSG will be particularly important. How the Commission wants to define ‘safer gambling’ is also important, as ‘safer gambling’ is broader than gambling harm. Perhaps ABSG could take a much stronger focus on research.

ABSG Chair recruitment

Questions to pitch to candidates for the ABSG incoming Chair role need to be clear in terms of expertise and there are various different models of chairing to think about. The current skillset of ABSG seems to be the right one, although it needs to be better defined and the expertise needs to be communicated to the Commission more widely. It should also be noted that personal skills for an incoming Chair or ABSG member might be more important than specific experience or expertise in the area of gambling research.

There is the expectation that some ABSG members would be part of the recruitment process and interview panel for the ABSG incoming Chair role.

Summary

In summary the main key topics on the evolution of ABSG are independence, research focus, COIs and safer gambling.

This topic will be brought to the next ABSG meeting for further discussion and input.

5. R&S and ABSG workplan

ABSG noted the R&S and ABSG workplan.

A brief discussion took place on the workplan:

• Commission officials are asking ABSG to give their input to the proposed plan and to indicate where they could take part in subgroups to advise on specific areas of work
• ABSG could not identify any other areas of work that are lacking at this point in time and welcomed the approach outlined.

It was agreed that a table would be circulated to ABSG whereby they could indicate what subgroups individual members want to be involved in. A small working group will be set up and coordinated by the Interim Head of Advisory Groups and the Director of R&S.

Action 4: REDACTED.

Action 5: REDACTED.

6. Evidence roadmaps

ABSG noted and welcomed the paper.

ABSG received a brief update:

• the paper sets out current thinking on plans and a high level time plan. Commission officials want to start stakeholder engagement as soon as possible
• the brief is to build on the evidence gaps and priorities piece of work carried out last year and to highlight those gaps whilst tying them into the Commission’s Corporate Strategy deliverables
• the first thing to test with ABSG is the current plan building towards our next evidence conference in the Spring of next year and onwards, and whether this is something that looks worthwhile, feasible and heading in the right direction
• an exercise needs to be conducted on what the core methodologies are in order to progress the first 2 themes (the ones that are initially to be focused on)
• key questions for ABSG today: 1) is this a good approach? 2) what are the core questions through methodology? and 3) what questions should be set out in an external survey?

ABSG asked questions and made comments:

On the approach, does this evidence roadmap look worthwhile and feasible?:

• overall, it is ABSG’s view that the approach to the evidence roadmap does look sensible and feasible
• it may be useful to have a clear link as to which Commission objective is being worked within, and any consideration on the desired impact on a particular piece of research, in order to help in the development
• the evidence roadmap will be an external document, with the team engaging with stakeholders prior to the Commission’s Spring conference in March 2025
• the earlier the ABSG can engage with this work the better and the more likely there will be a potential win-win outcome
• one of the things that other data services does is to integrate the research community early, often and also iteratively. A systems mapping process is to be carried out by Commission officials on how research groups can be integrated early and ongoing, reaching the systems by which the value of the research community can be incorporated to feed into the research challenges.

On the core questions through methodology:

• from the evidence gaps and priorities that the Commission has committed to focus on for 2023 to 2026, it is currently focusing on the first 2 evidence themes – 1) early gambling experiences and gateway products and 2) the range and variability of gambling experiences, and identifying questions under those 2 themes
• in terms of the main methodologies that are going to be used, there is currently access to open banking data and the consumer voice research programme commission by the Commission, which is survey based. The Commission will need to look at additional methodologies and identify the core questions to measure progress against
• an example of a different research methodology was discussed (opens in new tab), whereby recent developments in natural language processing are leveraged to analyse posts on a UK based online self-help gambling forum
• thinking about the variability in people’s gambling and how people are changing their gambling habits would be interesting and purposeful on a long term basis
• from an infrastructure perspective, thought should be given to what system needs to be in place to continue with evidential analysis and with that in mind, is there a need for additional support in the research field, and an infrastructure to support the evidence theme over the next 10 years and onwards. UK Research Councils will be a key part of that bigger picture, a cross cutting piece
• although it is not the Commission’s role and remit to create a rich research ecosystem, if the Commission has the ambition to be data led then it does need to push for such a research ecosystem
• the Commission is not seeing itself having a role in delivering on this research but to convene the right experts at the right time to help make progress.

What should be the questions in the survey:

• the number of questions would ideally be around 10 to 12, to understand what people see as the priorities, with perhaps an open ended question option as well (on the premise that open ended questions only do not tend to provide particularly good outcomes)
• the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) carried out a similar exercise a few years ago to develop a video gaming framework and produced a paper on research. It would be beneficial to look into how they carried out that work by way of comparison. Contact details for DCMS officials were provided
• ABSG were asked to send suggestions for questions to R&S outside of the today’s meeting.

7. Any other business

Timing of future ABSG meetings: it was agreed that in order to accommodate different time zones, future ABSG meetings would be held at 1pm or 2pm UK time, and on Tuesdays, which is the preferred day for ABSG members overall. The next meeting is scheduled for 14 November however, ABSG secretariat will look to move that to a Tuesday in November, and would also diarise a meeting in mid to late October, in order to progress ongoing work in good time (such as to shape and codesign the survey, ABSG ToRs and Chair specification).

Action 6: REDACTED.