If the congressional rumors are true, we can soon do more than just dream about a blank sheet of paper.
Three years after the Gambling Act review was first published and two years since the call for evidence, the government’s market reform proposals are understood to be near.
The fact that we are approaching the beginning of the end (or the end of the beginning) of this stretch must have been a source of solace for weary participants.
What is less positive is the suggestion that the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is charting a light path on legislation, with implementation responsibility largely delegated to the Gambling Commission – a organization has been repeatedly criticized when competence and integrity are concerned.
The National Audit Office, the congressional Public Accounts Committee, and the House of Commons DCMS selection committee have all offered dry assessments of the committee in recent years.
Party-wide parliamentary groups on (respectively) harm related to gambling, betting and gaming have rated the regulator “not fit for purpose”, and the Social Markets Organization has called for a resolution. this organ body.
Critics point to the collapse of the Football Index and the lack of oversight of the National Strategy to reduce gambling harms (including the distribution of £40m without assessment) as examples. on poor performance by regulators.
Withdrawal without explanation
In September, the commission suspended guidance on interacting with customers remotely just 10 days before it went into effect, leaving licensees to follow a set of guidelines that didn’t exist.
The annual assurance statement (which the 40 largest licensees were expected to complete by mid-December) was withdrawn without explanation.
Requests for regulatory clarity are often denied, leaving stakeholders of all shades frustrated with the non-interaction culture.
Beyond efficiency concerns, the committee appears to have abandoned any pretense of ethical neutrality over staking, avoiding customer-centric market regulation in favor of the health campaign. public to eliminate harmful behavior at all costs.
Part of the problem was that the committee downplayed the definition of harm to the point of absurdity, saying that people would be harmed if they chose to spend money on horses instead of going to the movies or if they spent less time on people they care about. is the result of bingo.
In a similar way, the committee distorted the meaning of vulnerability, which the Gambling Act clearly purports to refer to a special status in adults (similar to child vulnerability). ).
However, under the regulator’s revisionism, young people are considered vulnerable, but so are older people.
The new world is not so brave
A person is vulnerable if they are in “poor physical health” (NHS Digital estimates that 43% of adults have a chronic illness); “poor mental health” (17% of adults with a common mental disorder); if a person loses a loved one (about 15% of us every year—National Bereavement Alliance); “responsible to care” (13%—Carers UK); have “dyslexia” (10%—NHS); or if one has “a higher-than-standard level of confidence or risk tolerance” – which one could argue applies to all but the most conservative bettors.
The committee’s less-than-brave new world seems reserved only for the vulnerable and the victims whose risk is attributed to a unified negative aspect.
Culture Digital Department Gambling Act Gambling commissions International Media and Sports
