Regulators inaction on gambler suicides 'will cost more lives'

The widow of a man who took his own life after becoming addicted to gambling says more people will die because the regulator will not investigate suicides linked to the addiction.

- Emily Dugan

Annie Ashton plans legal action against the Gambling Commission after it said it would not investigate or penalise Betfair over her husband Luke's death. Ashton said a coroner's verdict naming Betfair and criticising its safeguarding should have prompted an investigation by the regulator. She said she was appalled to be told by the commission this month that it would not take further action.

"More people will die because they're not actually looking at the people that it's destroying," she said. "I just think they, 're just unfit for purpose. They should not be the regulatory body. They're too tied up with the industry. I absolutely dread to think what someone would have to go through for it to be investigated."

Ashton's case was the first where a gambling operator was formally involved in an inquest after the coroner made Flutter, Betfair's parent company, an "interested person" in the proceedings. The Leicester coroner, Ivan Cartwright, criticised its failure to intervene in the lead-up to Luke's suicide. In a landmark verdict in June, he ruled that "gambling disorder" had contributed to his death.