Andrew Woodman is co-founder of the Gamblers Consumer Forum and the Conservative deputy group leader on North West Leicestershire District Council.
When the Conservative-led Coalition came into power in 2010, faced with a huge deficit and the need for growth, the attitude was business, business, business.
This consistent approach endured after 2015; in 2017, ministers laid down the Growth Duty. This requires regulators to consider the economic consequences of their actions, be proportionate in their decision making, and to keep regulatory burdens to a minimum.
It would appear though that the Gambling Commission, which answers to Lucy Frazer and Stuart Andrew, have not got the memo. Its latest consultation proposes new friction for hundreds of thousands of gamblers; this will reduce tax revenues and poses a very real and possibly an existential threat to British horseracing, an industry worth £4bn to the UK and which supports 88,000 jobs.
The consultation follows the Gambling White Paper which heard much from the betting industry and the anti-gambling lobby, but precious little from the millions of ordinary gamblers who just want to have a reasonable bet without having to hand over their financial history, with scant safeguards over their personal data, to a faceless corporate institution.
The GC are currently consulting on two levels of affordability check: one when a gambler reaches a £125 net loss within a rolling 30-day period, or £500 within a rolling 365-day period via credit agency checks, and another which assesses financial risk using credit reference data, which would be triggered by losses greater than £1,000 within a rolling 24 hours or £2,000 within 90 days.
The triggers for such enhanced assessments will be lower for those aged 18 to 24. However, when a credit reference agency is unable to provide sufficient information, operators would need to ask customers for data through open banking or providing documentation. At this tier, checks could take place as often as twice a year.
If these proposals go through, the Government risks hundreds of thousands of gamblers – those who take their betting seriously or have a high disposable income – to either give up betting or go into the black market, where there is no monitoring of addiction, no tax take for the Treasury, and no income for racing via the levy.
Let me try and put this in perspective for non-gamblers. Think of one of your pleasures; perhaps you like a drink, going shopping, or dining out at a good restaurant. All activities that put you at risk, however slight, of addiction.
Would you be happy for your shopkeeper to ask you to detail your drinking habits before you buy your bottle of wine, a clothes shop to demand your credit status before you make purchase, or a restaurant to see your daily calorie consumption? This is what gamblers are facing, simply to spend their own money as they see fit.
These affordability rules are doing very little to identify addiction. Addiction is a cognitive condition defined by its utter compulsion, not motivated by money but by the dopamine regulation in the brain of the addict.
Affordability checks do very little to actually identify clinical signs of addiction, and merely tell you the extent of an individual’s disposable income.
The idea that addicts will simply withdraw from their addictive agent because regulations have prevented them from accessing it shows the Government’s fundamental lack of understanding on addiction, of that compulsion; the most likely outcome is that addicts will either move to the black market, where they will continue their addiction off the radar, or move to another addictive agent in replacement to that dopamine deficit.
Given the black market has already shown evidence of growth, and up to 63 per cent of gambling addicts also present with another addiction, it is clear for all the trouble these proposals will cause for ordinary bettors and industries like the horse racing industry, they won’t even help the very people they purport to protect.
Although the Gambling Commission deny they have mandated affordability requirements, their vague guidelines have already seen recreational and successful gamblers driven away from the regulated British market; the Betfair betting exchange (person to person betting) has seen its racing turnover drop by over half from its peak a few years ago. Common sense dictates this can’t be down to just removing addicts: the rate of problem gamblers is just 0.2 per cent.
Andrew recently wrote in the Racing Post that the Government “are determined to help the industry thrive” and “the white paper’s impact on the sport would be minimal”. He claimed that 80 per cent of people will never be impacted by even the lowest level of check and “only” about three per cent of the highest spending accounts facing more detailed checks.
I don’t know if the officials who will have come up with these figures have consulted the Gambling Commission, but estimates are that one million accounts will be subject to checks, possibly twice a year, for betting less than the daily cost of a litre of milk. Unless we see some ministerial intervention on a regulator that is clearly out of control, and which is ignoring the Growth Duty laid down by Government statute, Frazer and Andrew are at real risk of their legacy being the decimation of British horseracing.
Millions of gamblers who have been ignored by a process being imposed upon them are relying on them to do the right thing, reign in this regulator, and allow us to freely spend our own money as we wish, free of Government interference.
Andrew Woodman is co-founder of the Gamblers Consumer Forum and the Conservative deputy group leader on North West Leicestershire District Council.
When the Conservative-led Coalition came into power in 2010, faced with a huge deficit and the need for growth, the attitude was business, business, business.
This consistent approach endured after 2015; in 2017, ministers laid down the Growth Duty. This requires regulators to consider the economic consequences of their actions, be proportionate in their decision making, and to keep regulatory burdens to a minimum.
It would appear though that the Gambling Commission, which answers to Lucy Frazer and Stuart Andrew, have not got the memo. Its latest consultation proposes new friction for hundreds of thousands of gamblers; this will reduce tax revenues and poses a very real and possibly an existential threat to British horseracing, an industry worth £4bn to the UK and which supports 88,000 jobs.
The consultation follows the Gambling White Paper which heard much from the betting industry and the anti-gambling lobby, but precious little from the millions of ordinary gamblers who just want to have a reasonable bet without having to hand over their financial history, with scant safeguards over their personal data, to a faceless corporate institution.
The GC are currently consulting on two levels of affordability check: one when a gambler reaches a £125 net loss within a rolling 30-day period, or £500 within a rolling 365-day period via credit agency checks, and another which assesses financial risk using credit reference data, which would be triggered by losses greater than £1,000 within a rolling 24 hours or £2,000 within 90 days.
The triggers for such enhanced assessments will be lower for those aged 18 to 24. However, when a credit reference agency is unable to provide sufficient information, operators would need to ask customers for data through open banking or providing documentation. At this tier, checks could take place as often as twice a year.
If these proposals go through, the Government risks hundreds of thousands of gamblers – those who take their betting seriously or have a high disposable income – to either give up betting or go into the black market, where there is no monitoring of addiction, no tax take for the Treasury, and no income for racing via the levy.
Let me try and put this in perspective for non-gamblers. Think of one of your pleasures; perhaps you like a drink, going shopping, or dining out at a good restaurant. All activities that put you at risk, however slight, of addiction.
Would you be happy for your shopkeeper to ask you to detail your drinking habits before you buy your bottle of wine, a clothes shop to demand your credit status before you make purchase, or a restaurant to see your daily calorie consumption? This is what gamblers are facing, simply to spend their own money as they see fit.
These affordability rules are doing very little to identify addiction. Addiction is a cognitive condition defined by its utter compulsion, not motivated by money but by the dopamine regulation in the brain of the addict.
Affordability checks do very little to actually identify clinical signs of addiction, and merely tell you the extent of an individual’s disposable income.
The idea that addicts will simply withdraw from their addictive agent because regulations have prevented them from accessing it shows the Government’s fundamental lack of understanding on addiction, of that compulsion; the most likely outcome is that addicts will either move to the black market, where they will continue their addiction off the radar, or move to another addictive agent in replacement to that dopamine deficit.
Given the black market has already shown evidence of growth, and up to 63 per cent of gambling addicts also present with another addiction, it is clear for all the trouble these proposals will cause for ordinary bettors and industries like the horse racing industry, they won’t even help the very people they purport to protect.
Although the Gambling Commission deny they have mandated affordability requirements, their vague guidelines have already seen recreational and successful gamblers driven away from the regulated British market; the Betfair betting exchange (person to person betting) has seen its racing turnover drop by over half from its peak a few years ago. Common sense dictates this can’t be down to just removing addicts: the rate of problem gamblers is just 0.2 per cent.
Andrew recently wrote in the Racing Post that the Government “are determined to help the industry thrive” and “the white paper’s impact on the sport would be minimal”. He claimed that 80 per cent of people will never be impacted by even the lowest level of check and “only” about three per cent of the highest spending accounts facing more detailed checks.
I don’t know if the officials who will have come up with these figures have consulted the Gambling Commission, but estimates are that one million accounts will be subject to checks, possibly twice a year, for betting less than the daily cost of a litre of milk. Unless we see some ministerial intervention on a regulator that is clearly out of control, and which is ignoring the Growth Duty laid down by Government statute, Frazer and Andrew are at real risk of their legacy being the decimation of British horseracing.
Millions of gamblers who have been ignored by a process being imposed upon them are relying on them to do the right thing, reign in this regulator, and allow us to freely spend our own money as we wish, free of Government interference.