Board minutes for 21 January 2025

Minutes of Advisory Board for Safer Gambling (ABSG)

21 January 2025.

Remote meeting via teams.

Members:

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

In attendance: REDACTED.

Apologies: Virve Marionneau.

1. Welcome, apologies and declarations of interest

The Chair welcomed members to the meeting and noted apologies.

No new declarations of interest were raised.

2. Minutes of last meeting for approval

The minutes of 17 December 2024 were shared and approved subject to the following:

It was agreed that paragraph 3.3.2 would be removed from the 17 December minutes for clarity purposes.

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Item 3: Roadmaps workshop approach

ABSG were provided with an update on the work being undertaken by the research team on evidence roadmaps and the planned evidence workshops:

Received 65 external and 14 internal responses to the stakeholder survey from a range of respondents including academics, researchers, policy makers and/or public sector, people with lived experience and third sector organisations. The level of respondents per group was mixed. Academics and industry provided the most responses. The team have taken this into account when reviewing findings.

The team ran a practice workshop with internal colleagues where they identified some areas for refinement before the workshops start next week.

Because of a lower response rate from survey participants in certain sectors, some workshops will include participants who have not completed the survey. These participants will lack the background information and context compared with those who completed the survey.

Each workshop will include background information, survey finding highlights and will last around 2 hours. Due to the large amount of information in the findings, the plan is for each workshop to focus on the priorities identified by the survey participants of their grouping.

The proposed workshop slides and workshop approach were shared with ABSG, and members were asked for their feedback.

ABSG provided their feedback:

Members agreed that overall, the approach outlined by the team was good. They recommended iterating the content based on the experience with each workshop and implementing lessons learned into the later workshops.

It was noted that each workshop group would require a slightly different approach (the 4 groups are: Researchers and Academics; Policy makers and/or Public Sector; People with Lived Experience and Third Sector organisations; and Industry).

The group commented that the planned use of technology was good, but that the team should be aware that workshop participant ability to engage with technology is likely to vary. Whatever technology is used, there will be some that will find it a challenge.

It was suggested that the team consider break-out groups, depending on workshop size. It was felt that smaller groups (around 6) would be unlikely to need this, but it would be good for larger groups.

Members queried how big the difference in the priorities that the groups would be looking at will be. The potential for priorities to be skewed where there was a small response number was also raised. Gambling Commission executives reported that they have considered potential bias and all workshops will look at the wider priorities, but they will be getting the groups to focus on the topics that mean the most to them. They believe the Commission will get the most value from the workshops overall by using this approach.

Members noted the lack of responses around product and product design, compared to the amount of data about this in literature. It was suggested that this might be a gap.

It was queried what level of notetaking would be taking place during the workshops. It was suggested that it could be useful to have dual notetakers: the main facilitator and another notetaker who can keep track of what facilitators are being asked by participators to identify if there are any patterns of responses.

Members recommended that the team include some example steps in the roadmap framework slide to help participants understand what kind of activity the team is looking for.

The Commission executive noted that the outcomes of the workshops will feed into a session that will be run at the Spring Conference in March.

Item 4: Feedback on evidence hierarchies paper and governance framework

Evidence hierarchies paper

The Commission executive thanked ABSG for the draft version of the paper.

The Chair noted that the group had identified some philosophical questions around systematic reviews and that there were still a few points that needed refining. Members agreed that the outcomes of the paper could have a positive impact on raising standards of research in this field. It was also noted that the benefits of the work do not need to be bound by a particular jurisdiction and could be equally valuable outside of GB.

ABSG members asked the Commission executive when they required the final version of the paper and it was agreed this would be delivered by 8 March. ABSG members agreed to reconvene to finalise the paper by the end of February.

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The Commission executive noted that the evidence hierarchies work was sparked by a comment made by an ABSG member during the last Spring Conference and asked whether the group thought that the resulting direction of travel was the right one.

ABSG members commented that it was a good start but also noted that the Commission has an opportunity to feed into the impact agenda that academics often need for their work; for example, by making any impact evident and/or transparent when an academic has provided something of value to the Commission.

Commission officials reported that the Commission acknowledges influential pieces of research that have informed their work and when consultation exercises are undertaken the evidence used is referenced. However, in this case this is often not everything that they have looked at as this can cover hundreds of research pieces – which is too many to reference within a document. Additionally, Commission officials have written letters to academics to acknowledge their work and have issued letters to accompany bids for funding. However, Commission officials noted that this feedback was important and would be something for them to take away and consider.

Commission officials also noted that the Commission will have a role to play in the new levy system which is likely to include working alongside UKRI and commissioning research. Commission officials see that ABSG members will be a valuable source of support in this area.

Research governance framework

ABSG were provided with an outline of the plans and support needed for the research governance framework. The framework will:

• set out research values, principles, standards, and ethics
• identify roles and responsibilities
• articulate how the Commission will monitor and assess this
• share and promote best practice
• be a transparent published piece available on the Commission website.

The research team noted that the draft evidence hierarchies paper had been helpful in the discussions they have been having on the research governance framework so far.

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Commission officials asked if 1 or 2 members of ABSG would be willing to support the team on the development of the governance framework. It was agreed that ABSG will consider this and confirm with the team.

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Item 5: Terms of Reference review

ABSG were provided with an update on the work that Commission officials are initiating across all expert groups as a result of the initial review of the ABSG ToR and group name. Commission officials are pausing current activities on the ABSG review to take time over the next few weeks to undertake a comprehensive and holistic approach to reviewing all the expert groups.

Commission officials noted that expert groups had been incorporated at different times and for different reasons. The expert groups team will be reviewing the groups to look at where there can be better alignment across a range of areas including but not limited to; terms of reference; conflicts of interest policies, publishing policies, website presence and naming.

ABSG members noted that the areas they identified as important to be resolved for ABSG were consistency, independence and the ability to disseminate advice. Members noted that they felt it was a core value for the group to be able to publish advice not requested by the Commission, but offered to it, via independent journals if the Commission decided not to publish.

Concerns were raised by ABSG members that the value of the group would be lost if there was too much standardisation across expert groups.

Commission officials reassured ABSG members that the Commission is not expecting each group to be the same, but there needed to be alignment across the fundamental core of expert groups. Commission officials also noted that they would be reviewing both the use of the term ‘independent’ and the issue raised around the publication of advice offered but not formally requested by the Commission on topics of mutual interest.

Concern was raised by ABSG members on the impact of any name change. Members felt that the current naming (Board) was appropriate as it conveys the provision of strategic advice. Other potential group names such as ‘panel or ‘forum’ were not seen as suitable for the group.

ABSG members noted that it will depend on what the Commission wants from expert groups and questioned whether advice would be considered as equivalent across the groups. ABSG members made the point that the groups should be considered as different. If expert groups are put on an even plane, regardless of whether they maintain some differences in terms of reference, this is likely to be taken as a statement of equivalence if groups are explicitly labelled as peers. ABSG members noted that members of the other expert groups could not be considered as peers or colleagues to ABSG and flagged that this may be unintentionally interpreted as a statement of values by the Commission if this was to occur.

Commission officials said that they will come back to the group once the thinking had developed further to provide an update. ABSG members will have the opportunity to provide further comments and feedback at that point.

Item 6: AOB

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It was noted that Virve and Spencer had not had a meeting invitation from the Data Innovation Hub team, and the Governance Stakeholder Manager was asked to send a reminder.

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ABSG members asked for official meeting diary invitations to be sent out for the 2025 meetings, now that they had been agreed.

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