1st September 2026
The following article from David Mackay, Manager of the Hi-Scot Credit Union was first published in the Stornoway Gazette on 23 August 2026.
Every so often, something changes that quietly reshapes everyday life. Familiar patterns begin to shift until we realise the world is no longer behaving quite as it once did. Over the past three years, I believe that has happened to household finance.
For 20 years, HI-Scot Credit Union has worked with households across the Highlands and Islands, helping people save, borrow responsibly and plan for the future. During most of that time, the financial challenges people faced were familiar.
Circumstances differed from one household to another, but patterns of saving and borrowing were generally predictable. People adapted to changing jobs, growing families, unexpected bills and the normal ups and downs of life, and most found a way through.
That changed after 2022.
Inflation rose sharply. Food prices increased by around a third, while energy, transport and many other essentials became significantly more expensive. In the Highlands and Islands, where the cost of everyday living is already higher than in many other parts of Scotland, those pressures have been felt particularly acutely.
The result is that many households now have far less financial breathing space. I prefer that phrase to "disposable income" because it describes something families experience rather than economists measure. It is what remains after the essentials have been paid for. It is what allows a household to replace a broken washing machine, repair a car or cope with an unexpectedly high electricity bill without immediately falling into financial difficulty. It provides choices, reduces stress and gives people confidence that an unexpected setback will not become a crisis.
At HI-Scot, we have watched that breathing space gradually disappear. Savings patterns have become less predictable. More people are drawing on savings they had hoped never to touch, while others are finding it increasingly difficult to build savings at all.
None of this means people have suddenly become worse at managing their money. If anything, many households are budgeting more carefully than ever. They are shopping around, delaying purchases, cutting back where they can and making increasingly difficult decisions simply to stand still. The problem is not that people have become less responsible. It is that there is now much less room for error.
When households have little capacity to absorb unexpected costs, problems that might once have been inconvenient can quickly become serious. One of those problems is gambling which leads me to something about which, I believe, Scotland needs to think much more carefully. If people are going to gamble anyway, who should benefit?
Public debate about gambling often begins with personal responsibility, and rightly so. Most people who gamble do so responsibly and within their means, and adults should generally be free to spend their own money as they choose. The difficulty is that the environment in which those choices are made has changed dramatically.
A generation ago, gambling usually had natural stopping points. The bookmaker closed, and going home generally meant gambling had ended for the day. Today, a casino sits inside almost every smartphone. It is available around the clock, deposits can be made in seconds and there is rarely a natural point at which the experience ends.
The scale of that change is remarkable. Between October and December 2025 alone, Britain's largest gambling operators recorded 27.4 billion online bets and spins, the equivalent of almost 300 million gambling transactions every single day.
The licensed gambling industry is no longer the whole picture. Social media is saturated with competitions offering luxury cars, dream homes, holidays and large cash prizes. Many operate legally outside traditional gambling regulation, yet the behaviour they encourage often feels remarkably similar. People pay repeatedly in the hope that the next entry might change their lives.
Children are growing up in a very different environment too. Gambling-style mechanics appear in computer games through loot boxes and random rewards years before they are legally old enough to place a bet. Gambling brands are embedded in professional sport, while prize competitions are promoted constantly across social media. By the time many young people reach adulthood, gambling is no longer unusual. It has become familiar.
Against that backdrop, the changes we have observed at HI-Scot are perhaps less surprising. Over the past four years, the proportion of members showing signs of online gambling activity has increased by around 50 per cent, while the number we would regard as problem or high-risk gamblers has doubled.
I do not believe this reflects a sudden collapse in personal responsibility. It reflects the fact that gambling losses now fall on households with far less capacity to absorb them. A loss that might once have been manageable can now mean falling behind with bills, relying on credit for everyday essentials or exhausting savings that took years to build.
For a minority of people, the consequences become far more serious. Problem gambling is associated with debt, relationship breakdown, poor mental health and, in the most tragic cases, suicide. A UK Government evidence review estimated that up to 496 deaths by suicide each year in England may be associated with problem gambling or gambling disorder.
As chief executive of a community credit union, I am less interested in the gambling industry itself than in what happens after the money has been lost. That is where organisations like ours meet the consequences.
Those figures should give all of us pause. Not because gambling is inherently wrong, and not because everyone who gambles is vulnerable, but because the consequences increasingly extend beyond the individual, affecting families, employers, communities and public services alike.
Many people will conclude that the answer is tighter regulation or stronger restrictions. That may form part of the solution, but I think there is a bigger question. Should the primary beneficiaries be private companies and shareholders? Or should communities receive a greater share of the return?
That question takes us beyond gambling itself. It takes us to the choices countries make.
THERE IS NO perfect way to regulate gambling, and there probably never will be. Every government faces the same dilemma. Adults should generally be free to spend their own money as they choose. Businesses should be free to innovate, compete and create employment. At the same time, governments have a responsibility to protect those who are most at risk and to consider the wider costs that gambling can impose on families, communities and public services.
The interesting question is not simply how countries regulate gambling differently, but what those different approaches tell us about their priorities.
Britain has largely chosen competition. Private companies compete for customers, invest heavily in technology and marketing, and generate billions of pounds in economic activity. This approach has undoubtedly delivered innovation, extensive consumer choice and significant tax revenues. Equally, it creates powerful commercial incentives to increase participation, extend playing time and encourage greater spending.
Spain has reached a different conclusion. Adults remain free to gamble, but gambling advertising has been heavily restricted, particularly where children and young people are likely to encounter it. The philosophy is straightforward. A legal activity does not automatically require unrestricted promotion, particularly where there is evidence that advertising influences behaviour and contributes to the normalisation of gambling.
Norway has approached the same issue from a different perspective. Rather than asking how gambling companies should compete, it has asked how gambling can best serve society. Most major gambling products are provided through a state-controlled operator, with a substantial proportion of the financial surplus reinvested in grassroots sport, culture and community organisations.
For a country with a population remarkably similar to Scotland's, the scale of that investment is striking. Every year the equivalent of more than £300 million is allocated to sport, alongside substantial support for culture and voluntary organisations.
Of course, Norway's sporting success cannot be attributed solely to gambling revenues. Geography, culture, participation rates and long-term investment all play important roles. No sensible person would argue that this investment alone explains Norway's remarkable run to the quarter-finals of this summer's FIFA World Cup.
Sporting success is built over decades through talented athletes, committed volunteers, excellent coaching and a culture that encourages children to enjoy sport before specialising in it. Sustained investment helps make those things possible. It builds facilities, develops coaches, supports volunteers, keeps participation affordable and creates opportunities regardless of where a child grows up or how much money their parents earn.
Whether Scotland should adopt Norway's model is entirely open to debate. Whether we should be prepared to learn from it should not be.
Ultimately, every country makes choices, and those choices reflect values as much as regulation. Britain has chosen competition. Spain has chosen greater restraint. Norway has chosen to place greater emphasis on public benefit. None of those approaches is perfect, but each reflects a different view of the relationship between personal freedom, commercial opportunity and the public good.
What should Scotland choose?
I do not pretend to have the answer. Over 20 years at HI-Scot, however, one lesson has become clearer to me than almost any other. One of the greatest assets any household can possess is financial breathing space. It allows families to absorb unexpected costs without immediately falling into crisis. It reduces stress, creates options and gives people the confidence to make considered decisions rather than simply reacting to whatever life throws at them.
Every pound saved creates a little more of that breathing space. Affordable credit provides it when life takes an unexpected turn, while practical financial education helps households build and protect it over time. Seen through that lens, gambling is only one part of a much bigger conversation.
The challenge is creating communities where more households have the capacity to withstand life's setbacks, where children grow up surrounded by opportunity rather than constant commercial temptation, and where public policy is designed not only to generate economic activity but also to strengthen community wellbeing.
That is why I find Norway so interesting. Not because it has discovered the perfect gambling system, and not because Scotland should simply copy another country's approach. I find it interesting because Norway looked at the same issue and asked a different question. Instead of concentrating solely on how gambling should be regulated, it also asked how gambling could generate wider public benefit.
Scotland does not need to copy Norway, nor does it need to copy Spain. Every country must find its own balance between personal freedom, commercial opportunity and public benefit. What matters is that we are prepared to ask whether the balance we have today is the one we would choose if we were designing the system from scratch.
At HI-Scot, our role is not to tell people how to spend their money. Our role is to help people save, borrow responsibly and build the financial breathing space that gives families greater security, greater confidence and more choices. I believe the same principle applies more widely. Good public policy should, wherever possible, create more financial breathing space rather than less.
That brings me back to the question that runs through this article. If people are going to gamble anyway, who should benefit? There is no perfect answer, but there is value in asking the question.
The choices countries make about gambling ultimately reflect something much bigger than gambling itself. They reflect how we balance personal freedom with public responsibility, how we protect those who are most vulnerable without unnecessarily restricting everyone else, and how we choose to invest in the future.
Scotland does not need to become Norway, nor should it. But neither should we assume that the way we do things today is the only way they can be done tomorrow. Good public policy evolves. It learns from experience, looks beyond national borders and has the confidence to ask difficult questions.
The decisions we make today will help shape the Scotland our children inherit tomorrow. Gambling policy is only one example, but it reminds us that public policy is rarely just about regulation. It is about the choices we make, the values we hold and the kind of country we want to become.
(David Mackay is chief executive of the HI-Scot credit union and is based in Lewis)
For more information about Hi-Scot Credit Union go HERE
Read the article in Stornoway Gazette at
https://www.stornowaygazette.co.uk/business/gambling-is-doing-damage-while-profits-disappear-from-communities-8936538