The daughters of a man who committed suicide after gambling away all his money have highlighted the dangers of the National Lottery.
Speaking to The Times, Freya and Maddy Goff warned that while their 54-year-old father Steve had signed up to Gamstop to try and prevent himself from betting, the self-exclusion scheme had not blocked him from using unlicensed gambling websites or the National Lottery.
In the three months signed-up to Gamstop before his death, Steve made 137 payments to the lottery, amounting to a total of £3,366. Two days before his suicide, he used the remaining funds in his bank account on the National Lottery draw.
‘Desperation’
Daughter Maddy said: “All of it is gambling to somebody who has an addiction. They’re going to do anything that they can — especially when, with the National Lottery, it’s such a big amount of money that you could win. For someone that’s desperate, they’re going to give it a try.”
Coroner Emma Whitting, who concluded that Steve’s suicide was a result of his gambling addiction, highlighted the loophole in a prevention of future deaths report sent to the Gambling Commission.
She explained: “By not including online gambling with the National Lottery Draw in the Gamstop scheme, there is a risk that consumers having self-excluded via Gamstop will still gamble online with the National Lottery Draw.”
In response, the regulator confirmed that it will be exploring several options in the coming months, including whether to make self-exclusion to the National Lottery a mandatory or optional part of Gamstop.
‘I couldn’t buy food’
Last year, GambleAware warned that playing the National Lottery is not “risk free”.
Following a GambleAware-commissioned survey of almost 18,000 adults by YouGov, it reported that 74 per cent of the public believe the National Lottery “should signpost people to support for gambling harm on its products”.
One person told YouGov: “When I gave up gambling and self-excluded myself from places I could gamble, the one thing I couldn’t bar myself from was playing the lottery in shops. When I got a craving in my early recovery, I bought £450 worth of scratch cards.”
Another said: “I wasn’t able to buy food for about a week because I’d spent the food shopping money on scratch cards”.
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