Online casinos face curbs after review of gambling in UK
Online casinos will face tougher restrictions under government proposals to overhaul Britain’s gambling laws but the majority of measures will be subject to further consultation, signalling even more delay to long-awaited changes.
A white paper, the result of a review launched in 2020, is due to be published on Thursday, after being postponed multiple times.
Ministers will unveil plans intended to make gambling safer, following a string of high-profile cases where customers have suffered huge losses or taken their own lives.
Concrete measures expected in the white paper include:
A 1% mandatory levy on industry revenues
Online slot machine stakes limited to between £2 and £15
Measures to slow down online casino games
Looser restrictions for land-based casinos
Government-run safer gambling campaigns
Some of the most hotly contested measures, including affordability checks for punters making big losses, curbs on digital marketing and the exact level of stake limits of online slot machines, are expected to go out for further consultation, amid a legislative backlog in parliament.
Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader who chairs a cross-party parliamentary group examining gambling harms, told the Guardian he was concerned about the white paper, warning that putting out so many measures to consultation was “tantamount to doing nothing”.
It is understood there has been no decision on limits for stakes on online slot machines games, which are currently unlimited despite carrying some of the highest rates of addiction of any gambling product.
The consultation is likely to propose limits of £2 for under-25s, in line with the cap for customers of all ages on shop-based fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs). Older players may be allowed to
Read more on theguardian.com
