The Church of England condemned the Government’s liberalisation of the gambling laws yesterday, blaming it for a tenfold increase in spending on gaming. The Church called for a statutory levy on the industry to pay for education and treatment of gambling addicts.

The General Synod, meeting at Church House, Westminster, passed a resolution stating it was “gravely concerned” that expenditure on gaming had risen from £4 billion to £40 billion over four years.

The synod stopped short of calling for a ban, but the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, called on the industry to help to clean up its act. “We expect industries to clean up their pollution,” he said. “The gambling industry is profoundly costly, its human pollution in terms of promoting addiction, destroying family life and so forth, is manifest. The gambling industry needs to take responsibility.” A large number of people in Britain felt “deeply uneasy” about the trends in gambling, he said.

“Gambling is socially costly and whatever is said about supposed financial benefits, the creation of jobs and so forth in an area, one has to build in the cost in terms of all those factors that have been drawn to our attention already this afternoon.”

Calling on Andy Burnham, the Culture Secretary, to invoke the powers granted by the Gambling Act 2005 and introduce a statutory levy on the gambling industry to fund treatment, research and education, the Archbishop linked the issue with mental health, also to be debated by the synod this week, and to the campaign against gambling by the slavery abolitionist William Wilberforce.

“It doesn’t do us any harm, I think, to make the connection. If in the synod we are concerned about mental health issues in the nation at large, then this particular question of gambling comes broadly under that head, and we need to see it as such, as a witness to our commitment to a healthy society – healthy persons delivered from precisely that slavery of addiction.”

In its motion, the synod urged members of parish churches around the country to make sure they get involved with any local authority consultations on new casinos. All churches are being asked to take measures “to combat the detrimental effects of gambling in various forms.”

The Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, called for an independent review of concerns about gambling being raised by bodies such as the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He said: “Gambling takes millions of pounds away from the poor families and communities, far more than can be put back.”

Canon Alma Servant, of Manches-ter, described how she had worked in a casino serving tea and coffee on the gaming floors when she was an undergraduate in the early 1970s. She said she watched the profits being counted at the end of each session, and only once did the casino make a loss. The experience had put her off casinos for life, she said.

“They are buildings, one could say cultures, dedicated to nothing else but money.” She continued: “During every session, people’s husbands or usually wives will turn up and try and get their husbands to go home. This may be at two in the morning. It may happen more than once a week.”

She would hear whispers of men who had lost their businesses. On a couple of occasions, when she asked where a customer had gone, she was told that he had committed suicide.

The Bishop of Blackburn, the Right Rev Nicholas Reade, said that he had supported the campaign for a Black-pool supercasino because it would have created up to 2,500 jobs and contributed towards alleviating poverty. His greater concern was for the internet gambler, who could gamble for 24 hours a day.