Gambling and Child Poverty

This week, leaders from across faiths are coming together to urge the government to take ambitious action in their upcoming child poverty strategy, including by scrapping the two-child limit and benefit cap. A letter from faith leaders to the Prime Minister and Chancellor, which I have signed, has been sent this weekend, referring to proposals from IPPR and former Prime Minister Gordon Brown to introduce taxes to gambling profits to pay for the limit to be scrapped. These are the sort of creative and ambitious solutions that are urgently needed if more children aren’t going to be pushed into poverty over the coming years.

I was appointed Rector of Hackney in 2007, a post I held for almost 9 years. Throughout that time, the Old Town Hall, once a symbol of civic pride, housed a betting shop, all within the curtilage of the churchyard. The shop was majestically surrounded by medieval gravestones and a tower, built by Sir Christopher Urswick, former Priest Confessor to Lady Margaret Beaufort and Dean of Windsor in the Sixteenth Century.

Hackney’s streets were lined with many betting and pawn shops. They pointed towards and, in many ways served, the significant levels of relational, identity and material poverty that many people experienced. At that time, according to the Church Urban Fund’s Look Up Tool, 42% of children grew up in poverty in the area. Although it has reduced since then, poverty still shapes about a third of all children’s experience.

From my awareness as a school governor, through baptism visits (we trebled in size as a church over this time), and through a regular pastoral ministry, which included many funerals, I was aware of many families who lived hand to mouth. There were plenty of individuals who relied on the kindnesses of close family and friends, many of whom were also struggling. I was also very aware of those whose experiences were shaped by the greed of others, for example online payday lenders or physical doorstep lenders, to meet their essential costs. I particularly remember the day after the disturbances in the summer of 2011, a man, of significant poverty, asking the owner of an independent convenience shop had been burnt out the night before, “Who the **** is going to give me credit now?”. Such is the precarious nature trying of making ends meet.

Gambling can often, but not exclusively, be a coping mechanism for relational, identity or material poverty. This deeply addictive grasp can affect people of all backgrounds, with the lure of ‘It could be you’, as the National Lottery used to say. We can all be affected by the hope that things will get better, where gambling is the answer, with a myriad of private justifications that may fill the hours of darkness. Particularly alluring are the hungry fixed odds betting terminals, with their attraction of an instant win despite evidence to the contrary. I remember the betting shop manager in Hackney telling me how our jobs were similar, that we looked after those who attended, and we made community happen, asking for a payment in response. That gave me significant food for thought. Were we that similar?

In response to the deep pains that a gambling addiction can bring, our church organised several things. In the night shelter and food bank we ran, we included a pop up credit union. We tried to encourage projects that supported people in deep addiction, knowing that professional support was often required, far beyond the reach of the regular parish church.

It is a blight upon our society that poverty levels have not reduced comprehensively since they rose significantly in the 1980s. The fact that poverty is experienced by 30% of the UK’s children remains a national disgrace. Yet, at the same time, we know that the gross gambling yield is now over £15bn a year in the UK, whilst HMRC does not recognise gambling as a trade. It is also interesting to note that planning regulations mean that gambling establishments are classified as part of the financial sector, as we discovered when a bank became a gambling establishment at the edge of the churchyard, which needed no change of use.

Often, gambling is shaped by the complex ‘web of poverty’, a term we use at Church Urban Fund. I’ve seen the fear in the faces of those riddled with debt, who feel that there is no way out. I’ve also seen the worry in the faces of mothers and fathers who are unable to feed their children, or when it becomes impossible for them to eat, or heat their homes, which are poorly maintained by landlords who charge exorbitant rent. Again, many feel that there is no way out. But, in both situations, with adequate support and a caring community around them, there is.

However, both also require structural change. Therefore, how might gambling, with adequate intervention, provide the raw materials of funding for the removal of the two-child limit? The limit affects so many children’s opportunities, often amongst the poorest communities. There is widespread recognition amongst many charities, including the Children’s Society, that scrapping this limit would lift many thousands of children out of poverty.

The Prophet Jeremiah speaks that for any community to flourish, it must seek the welfare of the city and of others, not just themselves. Perhaps this might be such a moment where we listen to lived experience, and respond, afresh to the cries of the great Prophet?

The Rt Rev’d Rob Wickham, CEO of Church Urban Fund