Here’s the introduction – well wortth a read
ver the years, a variety of national troubles have been characterised as the British disease – among them economic stagnation, football hooliganism and nostalgia for empire. But there is a strong case for saying that the real British disease is and always has been gambling. According to the Gambling Commission, 44% of Britons today aged over 16 are gamblers of some kind, with 27% taking part in online gambling. That’s about 30 million gamblers, with the numbers concentrated in the under-50s. The truth is that we are not a nation of shopkeepers but a nation of punters.
The law was last redrawn in Labour’s 2005 Gambling Act. Its underlying intention, extraordinary though it now seems, was to promote legal but regulated gambling. Though this was itself dubious, and although the bill was improved during its passage through parliament, it reckoned altogether without two important things. The first was that many people’s real disposable income would contract, not increase, over the years, making easier gambling a significant factor in any cost of living crisis. The second was that online gambling was about to mushroom into the main form of recreational gambling.
The need to update the law in the light of the online gambling explosion is the main reason why the Conservatives have finally returned to the subject. Today, almost anyone can gamble cashlessly by smartphone from their sitting room or wherever else they happen to be, using gambling services provided by multinational tech companies, whose data analytics and advertising dominate the industry. The new white paper proposes a mandatory levy on the industry, compulsory limits on stakes and curbs on bonus offers.
