Bereaved families staged a parliamentary protest yesterday to demand official investigations into all gambling-related suicides.
The Gambling Commission has investigated only three cases of gambling-related suicide in recent years, according to campaigners, a fraction of the 400 addicts who take their own lives annually.
The failure to find out what happened could be allowing firms to get away with breaking the law in the most devastating cases, according to Gambling With Lives, which represents bereaved families.
More than 2,000 gambling addicts have taken their own lives since 2016, according to Public Health England.
Members of 18 bereaved families gathered outside Parliament to demand regulators investigate all future gambling deaths
Yesterday, the gambling minister said the Government had a ‘moral duty to do a lot more' because it was ‘clear to me there is a serious problem with the number of people who have gambling addictions'.
The intervention by Chris Philp, the parliamentary under-secretary in the Department for https://pokelol.com/ Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, raised hopes the Government will rein in the gambling giants.
The Daily Mail has been calling for greater protection for addicts with its Stop the Gambling Predators campaign.
Ministers are expected to announce proposals to reform the Gambling Act early next year in the biggest shake-up of the industry's laws for 16 years.
Bookmakers may be forced to ask for customers' payslips to prove they can afford their gambling.