National Health Service (NHS) England is to stop taking cash from the gambling industry for the treatment of people suffering from addiction. NHS England’s national mental health director, Claire Murdoch, has written to the grant-making charity GambleAware to say the NHS will be fully funding its own gambling services from April 1. It comes as the NHS faces record demand for support and is launching two new gambling clinics in Southampton and Stoke-On-Trent. This will take the number of specialist clinics across England to seven. Murdoch said the funding decision had been “heavily influenced” by patients who were uncomfortable about using services paid for by industry—a view that has been echoed by medics. GambleAware accounts show it collected £16 million between April and December last year in voluntary donations from the gambling industry to fund a range of treatment services. These include NHS gambling clinics, which received £1.2 million in …