Forthcoming proposed changes to the LCCPs - the issue of reporting suicide.

A couple of weeks ago, the Gambling Commission called for submissions on three proposed changes to the Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice, (the rules which govern operators of gambling businesses).

Here is a link to the proposed changes explaining the reason for the proposal and allowing the public to comment:

Two of the changes are minor and sensible, and few will object to them (indeed, one simply updates a statutory reference).

However, one gave me much pause for thought. It is a change which mandates operators to report to the Commission as a notifiable key event if they become aware that any of their customers has died by suicide. Failure to do so would be a breach of licence.

It goes without saying that this is a very sensitive subject. I think that it is one that merits submissions from interested parties. I have some fairly firm views on the proposal - which is that the proposed amendment should not be made.

I have set out my thoughts on this below.

You may agree, or you may disagree - and I certainly do not claim to have particular experience, wisdom or insight - but I think it is something on which operators should express their views.

Here is a summary of what I said:

12 To what extent do you agree with the Commission’s proposal to add a specific requirement to the LCCP, which requires a licensee to notify us if it becomes aware that a person who has gambled with it has died by suicide?

"Strongly disagree" [from a range of five multiple choice answers]

Please give your reasons for your answers below:

I think that there are very strong objections to this proposal. Here are my reasons. First, whatever the status of this information, the fact that such information is collected and thought relevant will be picked up by journalists and commentators and used in a strongly negative way. It will be said by them (quite truthfully) "in a change to the rules, the UK regulator has forced operators to report the number of their customers who commit suicide".

The implication of this is that (i) there is a statistically relevant correlation between those suicides and the fact of gambling with that operator (ii) that the Commission is assessing which operators' activities lead to the most deaths by suicide and so on. Such conclusions are deeply damaging, and thus, that sort of information should only be turned into a compulsory requirement if it is going to have a very significant benefit.

I know of no other industry which has to report this type of data (those who manufacture or sell alcohol? Hotel groups?) Still less is there any balancing data to show other contributing factors to suicide (alcohol, low intelligence, economic deprivation, drugs, other mental health issues). There appears to be no precedent for this type of self-reporting. The gambling industry is being singled out.

To give a similar example, how would the Commission feel about being asked in its annual report to publish the number of deaths from suicide of its employees or ex-employees? Even if (as I hope very likely) the Commission was able to report "there were no Commission employees who killed themselves while working at the Commission this year", the mere fact that the question is asked and the report is made is sufficient to establish a link in the public mind between working for the Commission and taking one's own life - something which could not fail to have a harmful effect on the perception of the Commission as an employer.

Crucially, the Commission accepts that the information provided as a result of this change "would not and cannot be used to measure suicides associated with gambling or act as a proxy for such figures". But somewhat in contradiction to that statement, the Commission also indicates its intention to use information gleaned "to inform our ongoing consideration of policy and, in particular, whether further protection measures are needed in the sector". In other words, having accepted that the data cannot be used in understanding any relation between gambling and suicide, the Commission still justifies its collection on the basis that it will inform its policy making.

How is it possible to use material which is admitted to be of no probative value as a means of directing policy development?

Finally, there are a myriad of difficulties in the requirement from a practical point of view : The Commission says that this is not intended to impose a duty to investigate the personal lives of individuals - but that is precisely what the requirement will mean in practice.

There were 3,899 suicides in the UK in 2022. But only 30% of these had a date of death that was also in 2022. Given coroner involvement, a finding of suicide often comes many months after the event itself.

Are operators supposed to enquire of all accounts closed as a result of death of the customer whether there was an inquest with a finding of suicide? What if the cause of death is uncertain? How many efforts are operators obliged to make in order to discover and publish this highly sensitive information - which may not be the wish of individual who took their own life or their grieving relatives.

The Commission is already able to scan the records of coroners and to identify those verdicts of suicide and perform its own investigations based upon official information rather than data gained from this proposed reporting obligation - so it seems unlikely that the collection of this material will add to the available stock of knowledge.

There is a grave danger that these kind of statistics are misused or misunderstood. For example, the former minister Tracey Crouch has publicly cited an estimated figure of 2 suicides linked to gambling "every working day" (i.e. about 520 per annum). But it is likely that at least 1,750 of the 3,899 suicides in the UK in 2022 were people who gambled - simply because about 45% of the population gamble. For that matter, based upon population data, about 48% of suicides in the UK are committed by those with blue eyes. Those are examples of co-incidence in data sets, not of correlation between them.

In conclusion, the proposal imposes a disproportionate and prejudicial burden on the industry, accepted to be of little or no material benefit in terms of increasing understanding of the link between gambling activity and suicide.

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To be very clear, I am in favour of industry reporting which gives rise to valuable data. However, there is a huge danger in creating data sets which imply simplistic correlation. This is, in my belief, a good example.

But what do others think?