An NHS expert has described the Government’s gambling White Paper as a “huge miss”, telling MPs he does not believe it will prevent harm or lead to a drop in referrals.

Dr Matthew Gaskell, clinical lead for the NHS Northern Gambling Service, also told the Culture, Media and Sport Committee that policy-making needs to be insulated from the influence of the gambling industry, adding: “And that’s a major concern for all of us.”

Asked if he expects referrals to his clinic to fall as a result of the gambling White Paper, Dr Gaskell said: “No, I expect them to increase.

“In part that’s due to the NHS expansion, but I don’t see a change as a result of the White Paper.

“When I reflect on what we see across the NHS clinics, we expect to see a continuation of the culture of high frequency continuous gambling. Unaffordable losses look set to continue.

“As my colleagues have expressed, a huge miss on advertising, very weak on marketing and sponsorship of our national sports – the current voluntary arrangement for the front of football shirts is a case in point, with recent research showing that only 5% of gambling logos would be addressed during a live Premier League football match by that measure.”

He went on: “There seems set to be a continuation of the business model of the industry which relies on disproportionate profits coming from those harmed and addicted from gambling.

“There seems to be little incentive for operators to comply – we could draw upon the Gambling Commission record fines as well as examples in our clinic of systemic and continuing failures.

“The ease of access to addictive content looks set to continue.

“Overall this is not a prevention-of-harm White Paper.

“The priority has to be to safeguard our citizens, to have a zero tolerance to gambling-related suicides, to create an industry where people can enjoy a night at the bingo, a day at the races, a fiver on a football accumulator at the weekend, but to stop this culture of intensive consumption that is leading to the harm that we see in the clinics.”

He added: “And we need to insulate policy-making from the influence of the gambling industry, and that’s a major concern for all of us.”

Will Prochaska, spokesman for Gambling With Lives, a charity that supports families bereaved by gambling-related suicide, told MPs that Oxford University research on 6.9 million Lloyds banking customers’ data suggested that 25% of all gamblers were significantly harmed.

He said: “I think that’s really important because a lot of debate is about this being about a tiny percentage of individuals who are vulnerable to addiction. That simply isn’t supported by the evidence. The evidence is it’s a much larger proportion of people that gamble who are significantly harmed, and that changes the policy response.

“The industry lobby who you interviewed last week will tell you that there’s just a small number of people who are likely to be addicts. And they’ll be supported by their industry charity partners – I saw the evidence particularly of the chief executive of Gordon Moody who seemed to suggest that these people would be addicts whatever happens – nothing to do with the industry, just need to put some protections around them.

“We take a very different view of that, that we’ve got a set of very dangerous products in this country that are marketed as safe. Some of these products have got very high addiction and ‘at risk’ rates – online slots have got 45% addiction and ‘at risk’ rates – yet they’re marketed and licensed by the UK government as safe, with no health warnings.

“And so what we’ve got is an industry that’s become dependent upon a set of very addictive products for a majority of their revenue and they are dependent, if you take the CEO of the Gambling Commission’s suggestion, 90% of revenue is now coming from 5% of customers.

“So you’ve got an industry which is effectively dependent upon harm.

“My view is that you cannot responsibly grow that industry and also reduce harm in the same moment. That is a paradox. It is not possible with the current structure of the industry.”

He went on: “The White Paper has some gaps in it, and one of the biggest disappointments is obviously that so much of it has been put out to consultation. I understand that ministers have done that because they’re afraid of the litigiousness of the industry, which is a great pity but I understand why they’ve done it.

“My fear is that those processes won’t be efficiently managed and that if they’re not completed before a general election then it’s anyone’s guess where we end up because we could be here in another five years talking about another few thousand deaths and a lot more harm.”

Mr Prochaska added: “We too have got a deep fear about conflicts of interests … conflicts of interest have pervaded throughout the process of the White Paper and my biggest wish is that we can clean this up, because until we can remove those conflicts of interest from the debate, I doubt that we’re really going to get the policies that we so desperately need to protect people from harm.”