NHS To Stop Receiving Funding From Gambling Industry

According to a report in the Sunday Times Newspaper the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK is to cut funding from gambling companies for its addiction clinics in a push to be independent in what Professor Henrietta Bowden-Jones, director of the National Problem Gambling Clinic says “from the polluter, from industry.”

It is understood the NHS will stop receiving funding from Gamble Aware which last year raised £1.2 million from the organisation which is funded in large by the gambling industry at the start of this financial year. However the newspaper said that the money raised by Gamble Aware is less than half the funds needed to run the addiction clinics in Manchester, Leeds and London.

The move could possibly indicate that the current UK government gambling review may well force a statutory levy on gambling firms to pay for treatment and addiction issues of 1% of profits.

Professor Henrietta Bowden-Jones, director of the National Problem Gambling Clinic said: “We as NHS clinicians have been asking for a very long time for independence of funding from industry. And we are very hopeful that this is an imminent announcement to come.”

Zoë Osmond, chief executive of GambleAware, said the group had long called for a mandatory levy to ensure “consistency and transparency”.