On 28th October 2022, the Bishop of St Albans brought a revised version of his Coroners (Determination of Suicide) Bill before the House of Lords for its second reading. The Bishop of Exeter spoke in support of the bill. The bill was read and sent to a Committee of the Whole House:
The Lord Bishop of St Albans: That the Bill now be read a second time.
My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-chair of Peers for Gambling Reform.
I am glad to bring before the House the Coroners (Determination of Suicide) Bill, now in its third iteration. This latest version is significantly different from the previous two; it has taken on board many of His Majesty’s Government’s criticisms and attempted to resolve them. Indeed, the Minister who dealt with the Bill in the previous Session, the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, had hoped to speak today from the Back Benches but has to be in court. He has, however, given his permission to say that he supports the aims of the Bill. Because we have tried to respond to the points made by the Government, I will listen attentively to the Minister as he outlines their response, given that I believe their concerns have largely been dealt with.
The genesis of the Bill is the frustration that many of us in your Lordships’ House have felt when we have tried to bring in sensible reforms to the Wild West of online gambling, which is causing untold suffering in communities across our nation. More than a third of a million adults in our country are now diagnosed with a gambling addiction. More than 62,000 teenagers, who in law are not even allowed to gamble, have been diagnosed with a gambling problem. With an estimated more than 400,000 suicides every year due to problem gambling, we need to address this problem in a sensible way. On a number of occasions when I and other noble Lords have raised the issue in the House, the Government have resisted our attempts to bring some order to this sector, simply claiming, “We don’t understand the size of the problem.” The Bill is a proposal for one way of obtaining more data.
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The Lord Bishop of St Albans [V]: My Lords, I am disappointed that significant parts of this statement read as if they were written by the gambling industry.
On 5th March 2020 the Bishop of St Albans, Rt Revd Alan Smith, received a written answer to a question on gambling-related suicides:
The Lord Bishop of St Albans: 
On 16th January 2020 the Bishop of St Albans, Rt Revd Alan Smith, introduced a Private Member’s Bill to the House of Lords. The Bill received its formal First Reading and awaits time for debate. 
The Church of England in Parliament 
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