When anniversaries collide: 20 years of the ALLIANCE and legalised gambling

Mark shares his experience with gambling harms, and how this intersected with the launch of the ALLIANCE's ScotRGH programme in 2020.

This year, 2026, marks the 20^th anniversary of the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland. Or, as most people know it, the ALLIANCE.

My own involvement with the ALLIANCE has been through the Scotland Reducing Gambling Harm programme which sits under the ALLIANCE umbrella. Both through following their programme of organised events, such as round tables and conferences, and through being a member of their Lived Experience forum.

The ScotRGH programme was not part of the ALLIANCE when it originally launched 20 years ago. Having been established in 2020, this would make 2026 their sixth anniversary rather than their 20^th, but from a purely personal perspective both years mark significant anniversary events in my own experiences around harmful gambling and addiction.

As well as marking the first year of existence of the ALLIANCE, 2006 marked the first full year of legislative implementation of the Gambling Act 2005. This Act singlehandedly changed how we in the UK engaged with gambling, or rather, how gambling was allowed to engage with us. It was an Act brought about by the Westminster government with one sole political purpose; reversing the economic stagnation in Labour heartlands brought about by declining heavy industries. The Gambling Act was meant to create a whole new leisure sector hoping to emulate and mirror the successes in America of Las Vegas and Atlantic City. The talk in the papers of 20 years ago centred on Supercasinos; massive gambling hubs to draw the public to spend money domestically rather than flying abroad.

Several sites were earmarked to house the Brave New World of gambling. Mainly these were based in the North of England, but Glasgow was also listed as one, with Ibrox stadium being seen as a strong contender. The irony of this being that it was the advent of technology that enabled remote, online gambling, which both put the final nail in the coffin of Supercasinos, and turned Ibrox, and every elite level football stadium, into a hotbed of gambling.

Sports stadiums became hosts to both fixed physical and walking human billboards for advertising gambling products. Those passionate about following football became a key target market for newly licensed gambling operators seeking to carve out a lucrative yet harm-present business for their own commercial benefit.

And it worked. I, and thousands like me, took to gambling on sports like ducks to water. My own passion for football and understanding of the game became a dangerous pathway into converting hunches and competitive prediction into something backed by hard cash down the local bookies, or increasingly, through the tap of a virtual phone screen button. Gambling was suddenly everywhere, and it was so normal.

And the normalisation of anything brings increased risk. Especially with something like gambling where the efforts made to make it attractive, to appear ‘fun’ and easily accessible, were not matched with similar effort to protects against the risks of it. My own fall into using gambling for addictive harm came as part of a personal life crisis. My marriage broke down, perpetuating a period of dark introspection and avoidance of painful reality. Losing myself in the process of gambling became preferable to facing up to my emotional distress. Gambling stopped being ‘fun’ and became a form of escape and a means for perpetuating self-harm. I used gambling to punish myself, oblivious to how it would also be harming those around me. I ended up defrauding my employer to perpetuate my gambling narcissism. The amount involved left no alternative response but lengthy imprisonment.

I left prison in 2020, chastened by my experiences and keen to ensure that other individuals and families did not unwittingly follow my own destructive pathway. What I found was an environment where gambling was freely enabled in Scotland but people in Scotland had no control over this. Gambling was a “reserved” power, regulated through the 2005 Act and vested solely in Westminster. All the tax revenues from gambling went South. To the tune of billions of pounds. But the harms lying behind any tax monies accrued in Scotland very much stayed right here in Scotland. Gambling was not a political issue up here. Yet, looking around, I could see that gambling harms did exist.

Thankfully I was not alone in this. Public Health Scotland, through the Scottish Public Health Network (ScotPHN), also saw this. As did the ALLIANCE. The creation of the Scotland Reducing Gambling Harms programme in 2020, the same year I left prison, was really the manifestation of growing public and professional recognition that unaddressed harm lived among us. ScotRGH’s development under the umbrella of the ALLIANCE was also very apt, as what the programme really epitomised was a collective need to make gambling harms recognisable in Scottish life, and particularly in Scotland’s politics. The forum which I joined represented the first truly organised attempt at giving lived experience a voice in how Scotland responded to gambling related harm.

Today, twenty years on from the formation of the ALLIANCE, and also the Gambling Act, we have a new reality around gambling harms within Scotland. The same collective alliance of healthcare professionals, charities, and organised lived experience which lay behind the formation of ScotRGH has also acted at a UK level to bring about change at Westminster as to how gambling harms are recognised and addressed within the corridors of Holyrood. The gambling statutory levy which was introduced this year now means that for the first time ever dedicated public funds are present and available in Scotland to address and prevent harms caused in Scotland. Harms which were painfully present because of unfettered growth over two whole decades of gambling as a normalised activity. An activity visibly impacting all aspects of our society.

ScotRGH, and addressing gambling harms, may only be a very small part of what the ALLIANCE does across all its activities, but it is also a powerful reminder that collective action can become empowered to effect incredible positive change.

Never ever underestimate the power which lies within the hands of ordinary people.

The ALLIANCE is continuing proof of that.

Twenty years old, yet only just beginning.

You can learn more here about the ALLIANCE’s ScotRGH programme and find out about the ScotRGH Lived Experience Forum.

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