Have politicians lost interest in the gambling sector?

Gambling has ceased to be an important topic for political parties and has become a secondary issue.

The last time the UK went to the polls, the gambling industry was in the spotlight, with each of the Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat and Scottish National manifestos including plans to reform and restrict the sector in some cases.

A key part of these plans was a review of the 2005 Gambling Act, which used the phrase “analogue law for the digital age” as shorthand for rejecting the legislation as outdated in the smartphone era.

As the Wiggin law firm noted at the time, such “significant unanimity among politicians who disagree on no single issue” meant that change was well on its way.

But in 2024, after Brexit, Covid and last year’s Gambling Act white paper, the industry is barely making it onto the manifestos. When the white paper was published, Betting and Gaming Council CEO (now chairman) Michael Dugher called it a “once-in-a-generation moment of change”.

He said its publication should end “long and often polarised debates about gambling”. At first glance, the lack of policy plans for the industry suggests Westminster agrees.

Have politicians resolved the gambling reform dispute?

But as Dan Waugh of Regulus Partners notes, the 2019 manifestos were unique simply because they covered gambling in any depth. The inclusion of gambling in those documents “represented a clustering of issues around gambling,” he says.

This comes after pressure was put on the industry, which first saw fixed-odds betting terminal (FOBT) stakes reduced to £2, and campaigners in and around Parliament turned their attention to online gaming.

“The lack of interest, outside the Liberal Democrats, is really not exceptional,” Waugh says of 2024. Gambling has not traditionally been a vote-getter – or a vote-loser – so historically it has been ignored when manifestos are written.

“The fact that we have had a review (of the Gambling Act) and that many of the changes that have been introduced are policies that were called for by parties in the last election perhaps explains their lack of interest,” Waugh notes.

“(The Conservatives) may think they’ve had a review of the legislation and so the matter is settled. But Labour just had a few mild statements there about raising standards.”

Gambling doesn’t fit neatly into political division lines

Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats have committed to a general statement on “reducing gambling-related harm”.

Labour also noted its intention to “reform gambling regulation, strengthen protections” as the party said it “recognises how the gambling landscape has evolved since 2005”. Much of this, thanks to the white paper, is already happening.

And Waugh says the Labour government looks pretty reassuring from a gambling perspective. “I don’t think Labour has a particularly negative agenda for the gambling industry at the moment,” he says, and it’s worth noting that there are no real party divisions when it comes to reform.

For example, the extremely active All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Gambling Harm included politicians from across the spectrum, including Carolyn Harris from Labour, Ian Duncan Smith from the Conservative Party and Ronnie Cowan from the Scottish National Party.

What about reform activists?

Around 2019, there was a significant gambling reform field operation in support of the APPG, spearheaded by Derek Webb’s Fair Gambling Campaign and supported by prominent campaigners such as Matt Zarb-Cousin.

Since then, the Campaign for Fairer Gambling’s focus has shifted to the United States, and while Zarb-Cousin remains a vocal and eloquent activist, his work extends to anti-gambling solutions like GamBan. That’s left groups like Gambling with Lives at the forefront of the effort.

Without broad support from many groups, these campaigns are no longer as successful as they once were.

Where will the pressure for reform come from?

“The Conservatives and Labour, ideologically, are not a million miles apart,” Waugh says. But as he noted on the World Series of Politics podcast, most of the work of government is done by civil servants, not politicians.

“There’s pretty strong evidence to suggest that the major state bodies have been captured, or at least as far as they concern gambling, have been captured by a very strong public health movement in this country that really sees gambling as the new tobacco,” he says.

For example, the Office for Healthcare Improvement and Inequalities – part of the Department of Health – published a paper in the Lancet Journal setting out a series of 81 recommendations for government intervention in the gambling market.

“Prohibition Territory”

Some of the interventions were incredibly sensible, says Waugh, so much so that they already exist. But others were more extreme, such as a total ban on gambling advertising and marketing, even at racetracks. The bureau also proposed a ban on the sale of wine, beer and spirits in casinos, bingo halls and racetracks, and an industry tax that would annually exceed the rate of inflation.

“(It) pretty quickly gets into prohibition territory because it makes the market uneconomic,” he notes. Perhaps most bizarrely, there’s a proposal to introduce packaging controls for gambling products. Think of what that does to a deck of cards, he says.

“(These are) pretty crazy policies, but these are people who are in executive positions in the UK government who are proposing these kinds of measures. And perhaps the most alarming element is that there is some evidence that the Gambling Commission is sympathetic to some of their policies.

“I think elections are important to some extent, but they can also be a bit of a sideshow because a lot of government bodies seem to have an anti-gambling agenda now.”

And reforms have not stood still – although casinos may argue otherwise after the election campaign slowed their improvements.

The White Paper has sparked extensive consultation and changes to existing regulations, and operators remain concerned about the significant uncertainties surrounding upcoming changes such as credit checks. It could be argued that it is not that the industry is no longer feeling the heat, but rather that the effects of the work to meet the 2019 commitments are still being felt.