Government’s Gambling Review Faces Further Delay Until At Least May

The government’s long-awaited review into the gambling laws has been delayed again, with the report now not expected to be completed until May. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport confirmed the launch of the review in December of 2020, with a white paper due to be published before the end of last year. That was delayed until the start of 2022 after John Whittingdale was replaced as the Gambling Minister by Chis Philp as part of a cabinet reshuffle. Now the proposals are unlikely to see the light of day until May.

With gambling addiction campaigners and Labour MPs feeling that the release of the report is crucial in tacking gambling related problems, there is a sense that the delay in the release of the report is about Tory Party squabbling rather than genuine reasons. As the government looks to kick the review into the long grass once again, the frustration for those that campaigned for it in the first place is that more people are harmed by gambling with every passing day. Part of the problem is that the report is being produced by the DCMS and the Gambling Commission, with the latter being under-resourced.

What The Review Is For

In December of 2020, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport confirmed that there would be a review of gambling laws, which hadn’t seen any major alteration since the passing of the Gambling Act in 2005. At the time, a ‘reformer’s shopping list’ was drawn up by critics of the gambling industry, who wanted the governmental body to look at things like deposit limits, stake limits for online slots and games, better affordability checks, a ban on gambling companies sponsoring sports clubs and a legal redress for punters that had been wronged by gambling companies.

The review was always likely to have a broad scope, with sources saying that the DCMS was going to target ‘almost every area of gambling law’. Ever since there was a limit imposed on the maximum stake that a player could use on Fixed Odds Betting Terminals, there have been many that believe that a similar thing should be introduced for online slots, for example. Many people feel that the government has a responsibility to introduce firmer laws and regulations on the gambling industry, which it was believed, perhaps naively, that this review would do.

Why It’s Been Delayed

Chris McAndrew, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Exactly why the report into the state of the gambling industry has been delayed isn’t exactly clear. The excuse coming out from the governmental departments involved in the issue is that more research is needed, but there are many that believe that the difficulty that the Prime Minister currently finds himself in is the real reason for the delay. There is certainly a fear amongst some that the fact that Boris Johnson’s future is uncertain means that a decision has been taken to delay proceedings, given that Johnson is in favour of gambling reforms where others are not.

The Chair of the Gambling Related Harm All-Party Parliamentary Group that is examining the subject for the government, Labour MP Carolyn Harris, said on the matter,

“Of course time must be taken to gather the evidence to ensure the right reforms are put in place, but the gambling review was announced over two years ago. Every day of delay leads to further gambling-related harm while the industry rakes in profits. The government must not let its own internal problems stand in the way of much needed reforms for this country. It is time for action.”

The call by the PM to replace the minister for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport late September 2021 with Nadine Dorries has also lead to ambiguity in relation to publication of the new review.  Nadine seems to have spent her initial time as culture minister freezing the BBC license fee and has mentioned little about the new gambling rule changes.  Indeed, not much is known at all about her views on new gambling legislation.

Why There Is Concern About The Delay

As you might imagine, many of the figures that were encouraging the government to carry out a review of the Gambling Act 2005 more than a year ago are now expressing their dismay that it seems as if things are going to be delayed even further. The co-founder of Gambling With Lives, Liz Ritchie, made the point that delays will cost lives. She set up the charity with her husband after her son Jack committed suicide after becoming addicted to gambling whilst still at school and is desperate for more to be done to help other people in a similar situation.

She said,

“Someone takes their life every day in the UK because of gambling, so we simply cannot wait until May to see this white paper. How many more families need to be shattered by highly addictive gambling products and predatory gambling industry practices before the government acts?”

It was a sentiment that was echoed by Matt Zarb-Cousin, a recovering gambling addict who runs Clean Up Gambling, a campaign group. He said that the review needs to be published urgently, before more people are harmed because the regulation in place ‘is not fit for purpose’.

Is There A More Nefarious Reason For The Delay?

There are some who believe that the reason for the delay in the publication of the report is much more nefarious than just gathering more information. Members of Parliament have come under renewed criticism recently because of their links to the gambling industry. At the start of 2021, for example, questions were asked of the then-Health Secretary because of more than £350,000 in donations that he had received from the horse racing industry. That came after the Cheltenham Festival in 2020 had been deemed a ‘super spreader’ event and questions had been asked about why it had been allowed to go ahead.

Whilst Cheltenham was the most high-profile of events to come under scrutiny and Hancock suffered as a result of that, he was fair from the only MP to receive donations from the gambling industry. At the start of this year, a group of MPs produced a report that was critical of the United Kingdom Gambling Commission for trying to reduce addiction, only for it to emerge after the fact that members of that All-Party Parliamentary Group had taken thousands of pounds in hospitality from the very industry that it was supposed to be looking into.

With that in mind, there are certainly some people out there that believe that the delay in the report is more to do with some of those tasked with criticising the gambling industry constantly receiving payments from it. Scott Benton was one such MP, who said on the seventh of July that any review must not be driven by an ‘ideology’ that was ‘anti-gambling’, hours before heading to watch England play Denmark in the European Championship semi-final at Wembley thanks to the gambling company Entain.

According to an investigation by the Guardian, 19 Conservative MPs and nine Labour ones had taken nearly £225,000 in wages and freebies from gambling industry members between August 2020 and November 2021. Given that shares in betting companies plunged in the wake of news that a £2 maximum stake might be introduced to online slots, it is hardly surprising that the gambling industry might want to stop such curbs on their profits being introduced. The only real surprise is that none of the Members of Parliament broke any rules when they were being wined and dined by the gambling industry.

Political Games Being Played?

Obviously those involved in the decision making would deny any suggestion of nefarious reasons for the delay into the report on the gambling industry being released. Instead, they would suggest that more evidence was being gathered by all of those concerned in order to ensure that the right decision on the matter is reached. In reality, a combination of their ties to the betting industry and the pressure that the Prime Minister is currently under is likely to be the reason for the delay. As long as Boris Johnson is focused on saving his own job, everything else will take a back seat.

Indeed, we saw this play out on a global scale when the Prime Minister delayed a phone call with Vladimir Putin over Russian aggression towards Ukraine. The phone call was delayed from its scheduled starting point because Johnson had to make a statement to parliament over the parties that had been held at 10 Downing Street during the national lockdown, suggesting that even the looming chance of war was secondary to ‘Operation Save Big Dog’, in which Johnson attempted to save his own skin rather that carry out his role as the country’s leader.

If war isn’t as important as Boris Johnson’s political career then it is difficult to see how this Conservative government would put gambling reform higher up the list. Instead, delaying the report into changes that might be made to the Gambling Commission, the 2005 Gambling Act and the world of betting in general might well have been a political calculation.

Indeed, the massively underfunded and under resourced UKGC is taking all the flak for failings in gambling laws when in reality the time has already passed for politicians to step up.  Either more resources need to be given to the UKGC to do its job with a wider ranging mandate or the commission could be remodelled and placed alongside a gambling ombudsman.  Whatever happens people in the industry and outside of it just want something to happen.  Everyone accepts the 2005 Act is out of date but without new legislation it is difficult to effect any real change.

Johnson is already struggling to control his back benches, so it isn’t really a surprise that he might want to throw them a morsel of appeasement, given that they will mostly be in favour of a largely unregulated gambling market.