My honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Gerry Sutcliffe) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.

I have had a number of discussions with the gambling industry in which they have now assured me that they will provide £5 million each year as a minimum commitment over the next three years to fund gambling research, education and treatment. The chair and trustees of the industry fundraising body (the Responsibility in Gambling Trust—RIGT) working with Business in Sport and Leisure (BISL) and the other trade bodies are publicly committed to over-achieving the minimum sum of £15 million over three years and have set out credible plans to do so. They have secured significant corporate backing already.

The trustees of the new commissioning body—the Responsible Gambling Fund (RGF)—are satisfied that the assurances given to them by the trustees of RIGT are sufficiently robust to allow them to develop three- year funding programmes. This will enable RGF and service providers in the field to plan sensibly. I also saw a successful transition to the new structures for underpinning the strengthened voluntary arrangements as critical. I am pleased that there has been an appropriate transfer of undertakings to the new commissioning body and agreement by the fund’s trustees to a shared executive to support both the Strategy Board and the RGF. It is my and the Strategy Board’s firm expectation that the new shared chief executive role will be advertised shortly and the post filled by the autumn.

This is not a decision that we have come to lightly. However, on the basis of the assurances provided by the industry and on the funding agreement that has been reached between RIGT and RGF, I have decided to announce that we will not need to introduce a statutory levy.

With all three elements in place, the Strategy Board, under the expert chairmanship of Baroness Julia Neuberger, will have the industry commitment and resources to be able to do the job that it was set up to do. I look forward to the board’s initial report in the autumn on what the strategy and priorities should be.

We recently completed a consultation on how a statutory levy would be implemented. That consultation made it clear that any levy would take full account of any voluntary payments made up to the point of introduction. I make that point to reassure those who have committed themselves to making the voluntary system work that, if they are let down by less public spirited competitors and I am forced to resurrect the idea of a levy, those who have contributed will benefit from their contributions—not the reverse.