The moral collapse of the gambling commission

Great Britain: Regulation – the moral collapse of the Gambling Commission

For those with an inclination to learn, this week’s events offer the Gambling Commission a valuable lesson in authority. The market regulator exercises a coercive authority, mandated by Parliament, over anyone who holds a licence to provide betting or gaming services in Great Britain. Where others are concerned, it must rely on moral authority – but this commodity has been all but exhausted by its own actions.

In an open letter to the Prime Minister published on Monday, a succession of activists, politicians and researchers (categories that have become increasingly indistinct), openly flouted the Commission’s authority while the ink was still dry on its guidance for how results from the Gambling Survey for Great Britain can and cannot be used. In what can only be considered a triumph of hope over experience, the Commission had promised that the issuing of its guidance document would curb the tendency of campaigners to misuse Official Statistics; but the Peers for Gambling Reform (‘PGR’) letter to Sir Keir Starmer (or ‘Sir Kier’ as these Peers appear to have dubbed him) showed this trust to be misplaced. The GSGB is not due out until this morning – but the signatories to the open letter jumped the gun by referring to “a higher picture of gambling harm than existed previously” (a claim that contravenes the guidance regardless of its attribution to the former minister, Stuart Andrew MP). 

The role of gambling market regulator is a difficult one – but the Gambling Commission has made its task needlessly troublesome by playing politics. As articles in the Racing Post and elsewhere have revealed, the Commission has in recent years suppressed evidence, manipulated surveys and facilitated the funding of anti-gambling activism through the disbursement of regulatory settlements. As the journalist Christopher Snowdon has observed, the Commission’s decision to publish misleading prevalence statistics while at the same time telling people to ignore them for the purposes of estimating prevalence is irresponsible: “They’re your statistics. Take some responsibility”, he wrote last week.

It is rumoured that at least one media outlet has refused a Gambling Commission request to amend its reporting of the GSGB. In any case, belated corrections on an obscure clarifications webpage provide scant redress for the impact of misleading headlines.

The PGR letter was revealing in other ways. In demanding the imposition of a safer gambling levy, the signatories claimed that “it is widely understood that the statutory levy would give oversight of treatment funding to the NHS, research funding to UKRI and prevention funding to OHID.” The DCMS has stated its intention to allocate commissioning responsibilities to the NHS and the UKRI but has made no such announcement with regard to the OHID, so it is unclear where the PGR is getting its information from. The appointment of OHID to the role would probably spell the beginning of the end for the licensed betting and gaming market in Great Britain. Officials at the department have indicated a desire to impose tobacco-style controls on operators and consumers; and have proposed annual increases in duties (effective prohibition), total bans on advertising and even – as bizarre as it may seem – ‘plain packaging for all gambling products (“no colours, logos or images”). They have shown a willingness to manufacture statistics and mislead policy-makers in support of this ambition.

It has been suggested on social media that the Good Law Project complaint about GambleAware (whose moral distaste for gambling pales by comparison with the OHID’s illiberalism) was designed to knock the charity out of the running to be the prevention commissioner. The Charity Commission’s rejection of the complaint (announced this week) should prompt an investigation into potential wrong-doing by those who involved (including whether the OHID had anything to do with it). Scrutiny of charities is important but requires care. Spurious accusations designed to disrupt the activities of the Third Sector is unacceptable. The Gambling Commission may not be the only ones to discover how quickly moral authority can erode.