Gambling Commission welcomes review Call for Evidence
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has launched the Gambling Act Review with the publication of a Call for Evidence into the UK Gambling Act 2005. Following this, the Gambling Commission has welcomed the Government’s Call for Evidence, which will run until 31 March 2021, with the aim of looking at online restrictions, marketing, and the powers of the Gambling Commission as part of a major and wide-ranging review of gambling laws.
Responding to the publication of the Call for Evidence, Gambling Commission CEO, Neil McArthur said: “Our job is to make gambling safer and the Review creates an opportunity to build on the progress we have made to protect players and the public – such as strengthened age and identity verification, strict new guidance for so-called VIP schemes and banning gambling with credit cards.
“As the statutory adviser to the Secretary of State we look forward to contributing our advice to help with the government’s Review and we will continue our close working relationship with DCMS as the Review proceeds. We’ve made it clear to gambling operators that we will continue to work at pace to take action to protect consumers while the Review of the Gambling Act is underway.”
Responding to the launch of the Government’s Gambling Review, Michael Dugher, chief executive of the Betting and Gaming Council, said: “As the standards body for the regulated industry, we strongly welcome the launch of the Government’s Review. We called for it to be wide-ranging and evidence-led, and it provides an important opportunity to drive further changes on safer gambling introduced by the industry in the past year.
“Problem gambling may be low at around 0.7 per cent and as the DCMS has said there is no evidence that it has increased in the last 20 years, but one problem gambler is one too many. So, I hope Ministers will focus in with laser-like precision on problem gamblers and those at risk. The Government must ensure that any changes do not drive people to the unregulated black market online, where there aren’t any safeguards to protect vulnerable people.
When launching the review, Oliver Dowden, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport stated the much-publicised view that “the Gambling Act is an analogue law in a digital age”, adding that the industry had evolved at breakneck speed since 2005 and that the legislation had not kept pace with technology, to protect online gamblers.
However, Richard Williams, Gambling and Regulatory partner at the law firm Keystone Law suggests that this is rose-tinted view, and the current legislation is not so antiquated, adding: “Whilst technology has certainly moved on significantly since 2005, the rose-tinted view that all gambling in 2005 took place in land-based premises, at bookmakers, casinos, racecourses or on piers is wrong. The 2005 Act regulated “remote gambling” using the internet and operators such as William Hill had already launched their online casinos in the UK by the early 2000s, years before the Gambling Act 2005 became law. If politicians took a history lesson, they would see that the current legislation is not so antiquated and, in my view, could easily be modified to deal with areas where technological developments have encouraged irresponsible gambling.
“Some action is certainly necessary to ensure that certain sectors of the remote gambling industry are more tightly regulated, so that they do not take advantage of vulnerable consumers. Asking the industry to police itself has proved to be futile. As gambling operators only win when customers lose, it is clearly difficult to tell a commercial business to turn away its best customers. “Gambling is a broad activity both land-based and online and ranging from lotteries, sports betting, gaming machines, bingo to casinos. Some of this activity involves gambling for leisure, with lower stakes and lower risks. Any review of legislation should concentrate on higher risk activity, such as online casinos, where vast sums of money can be lost in a short space of time. Controlling this higher risk gambling activity could already be achieved through tougher licence conditions and revised technical standards (e.g. restricting maximum stakes, speed of play, losses, or deposits etc). In my view therefore, it is not necessary to replace the entire Gambling Act 2005 Act with new legislation to deal with these issues.”
