Why Labour might be right with its call for new gambling regulations

We need to ask whether the costs of liberalisation that the industry has benefited handsomely from are now outweighing the benefits. It would help if the two main parties could reach a consensus about that rather than trading jabs

James Moore
Chief Business Commentator
Thursday 20 September 2018 13:29 BST
Comments
Labour's Tom Watson has described problem gambling as a "public health emergency"
Labour's Tom Watson has described problem gambling as a "public health emergency"

Like Ray Winstone declares in the ads, I’m a member of the world’s leading online betting company (Bet365 for the record). And like the actor, I gamble responsibly.

The problem comes with those that don’t. Labour, the party that did so much to liberalise Britain’s gambling laws, thinks there are too many people in that category, and that the ads the industry runs during live events (3-1 on Harry Kane to score next!) are proving too successful at creating new addicts.

It has also suggested stopping bookies from taking bets on credit cards.

Does it have a point? Deputy leader Tom Watson has described problem gambling as ‘a public health emergency’. Some would describe that as hyperbole. It rather depends upon your view of a report commissioned by the party that identified 430,000 addicts in the UK, 25,000 of whom were said to be under 16.

The Conservatives didn’t miss a trick in jabbing at Mr Watson’s party for the liberalisation it introduced, but it should have a care. It set the dogs running with the National Lottery, which saw millions of people taking part in a massive weekly national punt on a set of numbers, and did much to normalise the activity. The minimum age was set at just 16.

I worked for The Sportsman when the short lived national gambling newspaper was launched in 2006, even editing the paper on a couple of occasions. We hoped to capitalise on the boom in sports betting that that year’s World Cup was expected to (and ultimately did) usher in.

While the paper didn’t last long (although it was great fun while it did) I remember clearly a conversation with an older member of staff, who wrote about horse racing and had seen it all.

“I worry, you know, about how easy it now is, and the effect on some of the younger people we have here. Some of them could get into real trouble,” he said, referring to online betting, and the fact that most of those young people were avid users of Betfair when they weren’t busy writing.

I airily dismissed his fears as overdone. Now I’m not so sure. I’ve heard too many stories like the one about the classroom assistant whose thing was bingo, only to find out that she’d lost in excess of £10,000 without noticing. When you pay via card, or (in her case), via multiple cards, it’s really rather easy to do that. It doesn’t feel quite so real as handing over cash at a counter and not getting anything back.

Betting companies pay for the ads Labour wants to ban because they work. People click on, get their money on, and get their thrill. It does make watching a match more exciting. Any event on which you have money staked is more exciting. To some, the feeling is as potent as any drug.

You are not going to turn back the clock to the days when betting shops were the only game in town, and were designed to be as unfriendly and unwelcoming as possible. The internet isn’t going anywhere for a start.

But maybe it is time to rein in the regulations some. Sure there will be fall out form doing so. Betting companies pay a lot of tax, and employ a lot of people, for a start.

The question is whether the costs imposed by their product on society now outweighs those undoubted benefits.

We need to find an answer, and it would be helpful, with that aim in mind, if the issue became rather less of a political football.

The gambling industry is a lot of fun. Gambling is a lot of fun, if you don’t stake more than you can afford to lose. If, in other words, you do it like Ray and I do.

But too many don’t.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in