It has been nearly six years since the Social Market Foundation, a leftish think tank, came up with the brilliant wheeze of banning people from spending more money on gambling than they can afford. They proposed a £23 a week cap on gambling expenditure and said that anyone who wanted to exceed this “socially acceptable gambling budget” would have to prove that they were good for it. They did not explain how this would work in practice, but in a submission to the Gambling Commission in 2021, their gambling regulation spokesman, Dr James Noyes, said that the checks should be “non-intrusive” and “based on the data already held” by the company.
The idea of “frictionless affordability checks” was supported by the the Gambling Commission, the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Gambling Related Harm, the House of Lords’ Select Committee on the Social and Economic Impact of the Gambling Industry and every anti-gambling group worth its salt, but it was a mirage. Background checks for County Court Judgements and past bankruptcies are insufficient to show whether a person is spending beyond their means. Customers can be phoned up and asked if they have an adequate income, but nothing compels them to tell the truth. When push comes to shove, you need bank statements and pay slips, but two-thirds of punters are unwilling to show these to a bookmaker.
And why should they? Gambling companies use all sorts of methods to identify problematic patterns of play and intervene with questions and advice, but they cannot look into their customers’ souls. If they ask too many questions, there are plenty of unregulated and offshore websites for punters to bet on. And since those websites do not pay tax, they often offer better odds. When General Betting Duty rises from 15 per cent to 25 per cent next year, “black market” sites will gain a further competitive advantage over the companies that are regulated by the Gambling Commission.
Read the rest at The Critic.
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