Dear Chris,
Supporting appropriate use of gambling-related harms evidence review
I wrote to colleagues in the Department for Health and Social Care in September 2024 regarding a case raised with the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) about the 2023 report ‘The economic and social cost of harms associated with gambling in England’ by the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID).
We were grateful for the chance to meet with OHID to discuss the concerns raised and identify opportunities to improve the clarity and transparency of the information. My letter set out several recommendations that OHID committed to take in response to our findings.
Since then, the OHID report has continued to be a focus of cases raised with OSR. While these cases concern the communication of statistics by different individuals and organisations, they are united by references made about the OHID report that incorrectly refer to harm caused by problem gambling, rather than being associated with gambling.
We appreciate that the report does state that the links between problem gambling behaviours and harms are associative and do not demonstrate causality. However, the examples shared with us suggest that the distinction between association and causation is not being fully understood by users. This undermines the analysis and creates the potential for people to be misled.
We have tried to engage with OHID on several occasions to strongly encourage it to consider actions that could be taken to support the appropriate use of these figures. For example, including a prominent disclaimer or banner on the publication itself to clarify this point. However, we have lacked any recent engagement from OHID to engage with the importance of this issue.
I am therefore writing to urge you to put measures in place to prevent the potential misuse of this analysis. I would be grateful for your commitment and continued support in ensuring statistics and data are communicated in a way that supports the public good and strengthens public debate.
Yours sincerely
Ed Humpherson
Director General for OSR