The four-times delayed gambling white paper has finally surfaced – and it’s another win for nanny state enthusiasts.
The paper is set to usher in huge breaches in privacy at a relatively low threshold. The overhaul of gambling legislation will be centred around ‘financial vulnerability checks’ as highlighted by Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer in the Times today: anyone who loses more than £125 within a month will face a bankruptcy check. On top of this, anyone who loses £1,000 in a day or £2,000 in 90 days could see a bank probe into their income.
What exactly is the point of the Tory party if it’s going to cave to moral panic?
Moreover, legal activity is now being carved up into different brackets for adults. Maximum stakes for online slot machines will be set at £2 for under 25s, and at £15 for over 25s. Furthermore, the paper proposes halving the amounts for which financial checks kick in for 18-24-year-olds: a seemingly sure-fire way to push newer, less experienced gamblers into a dangerous black market.
These checks on people’s background and income are so heavy-handed, they seem like the kinds of rules a government might usher in if the country suffered from a widespread gambling epidemic. But the UK doesn’t – not even close.
A report from the IEA’s Christopher Snowdon in 2021 found that problem gambling has not budged since records began in 1999: not at 60 per cent, or 6 per cent – but in fact 0.6 per cent of the population. In the past two years, this number has fallen further, down to 0.3 per cent. Despite the UK developing one of the largest regulated gambling sectors, worth an estimated £14 billion, its number of problem gamblers remains well below the global average. This is in spite of all the digital changes (and easier access) to the industry in recent years.
We have a very good idea of who these problem gamblers are: young men in their late twenties and early thirties. Yet rather than target support to those who suffer from problem gambling, every adult will now be subject to bank balance inquiries and the dredging up of their financial past, which may well put a hold (or longer-term suspension) on what is classified as perfectly legal activity.
Today’s white paper update raises a pressing question once again: what exactly is the point of the Tory party if it’s going to cave to moral panic? From sugar taxes to plain packaging on cigarettes, we have yet another nannying intervention from the Conservative party that seems to be lacking in any meaningful kind of evidence. Meanwhile they seem totally blind to the unintended consequences that might arise, including pushing the minority of gamblers with a real problem into the hands of criminals.
One cannot ignore the hint of snobbery here, too. Spending splurges are by no means restricted to the gambling sector: an expensive handbag or a luxury holiday could take a consumer to the same spending thresholds, or well past them. Problem shopping is estimated to affect around 0.75 per cent of the population (so double the rate of problem gambling), yet none of these purchases require ‘affordability checks’ on your annual income to see what your bank (and the state) think you can afford. Nor should it: like gambling, it is a serious problem for those who suffer, but it is by no means widespread. This demands targeted interventions, not blanket crackdowns for everyone.
As with virtually all nannying policies, it is once again those on low incomes who will suffer. The new plans for checks mean that those who are income-rich can take part in the fun; those on lower salaries – also doing no harm to themselves or others – will be prohibited.
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