Gambling Advertising

Alex Ballinger Excerpts

Thursday 23rd April 2026 Westminster Hall

[Alex Ballinger (Halesowen) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered gambling advertising.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Harris, particularly as you have taken such an interest in gambling harm over many years. I am grateful to be able to open this debate on gambling advertising and its impact across the United Kingdom, and to be joined by Members such as my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Dr Cooper), who is co-sponsoring the debate and who, like me, is a member of the all-party parliamentary group on gambling reform.

The interest in the debate reflects the growing concern in Parliament and beyond about the scale, reach and consequences of gambling advertising in the UK and about its growing impact on children and young people. This debate comes at an important moment. This week, the APPG and Peers for Gambling Reform released their report on gambling advertising, which brings together academic evidence, lived experience and policy analysis to make the case that our current system is not working.

Gambling advertising is everywhere: on our television screens, in our football stadiums, on local radio, on social media, where it is promoted by influencers, and on video games played by children. It is also increasingly sophisticated, targeted and personalised. Our APPG report shows that the industry now spends £2 billion a year on gambling advertising and marketing, in a deliberate and sustained effort to drive engagement, normalise gambling and grow the market, including by creating future generations of gamblers.

We must be honest about what that means: greater exposure leads to greater participation, and greater participation leads to more gambling harm. We have heard repeatedly—through research, from clinicians and, most importantly, from those with lived experience—that gambling advertising acts as a trigger. For those trying to stop gambling, it undermines their recovery.

[Charlie Dewhirst (Bridlington and The Wolds) (Con)]

The Government’s own gambling White Paper said there was no evidence of a causal link between gambling advertising and an increase in problem gambling. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that that is set out in the White Paper quite clearly?

[Alex Ballinger]

I will not accept that. Having met lots of people with lived experience of gambling and having seen the evidence in our report, I know there is a clear link between gambling advertising and halting the recovery of people with gambling addictions.

An argument often used by the industry is that more evidence is needed, but I will come later in my speech to why that is not a problem—it was not a barrier, for example, when we introduced restrictions on tobacco advertising several years ago.

For children and young people, the situation is even more concerning, because gambling advertising normalises gambling long before they are legally able to gamble. Our report highlights data from the Gambling Commission’s “Young People and Gambling” report, which found that 79% of children had seen gambling adverts or—64% of them on television, and 74% online. That is four out of five children in the country exposed to gambling advertising, which is more than the proportion of children who read for pleasure.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I have already apologised to you, Mrs Harris, to the hon. Member for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger) and to the Minister for the fact that, because of the strikes, I need to take a taxi to catch my plane, so I cannot, unfortunately, be here for the whole debate. However, I spoke to the hon. Member for Halesowen before the debate about Northern Ireland’s gambling laws, and although I think he is already aware of this, I would like to put on record that those laws predate the internet, meaning that remote or online gambling is completely unregulated in Northern Ireland. Gambling operators can advertise in Northern Ireland if they hold a licence from the Gambling Commission. However, it is notable that the Gambling Commission does not have jurisdiction in Northern Ireland, meaning that the Advertising Standards Authority cannot refer operators that commit multiple breaches of its codes there to the Gambling Commission. Does the hon. Member agree that that lack of regulation must be rectified urgently? I suppose that that is also a question for the Minister to respond to at the end.

[Alex Ballinger]

The hon. Member is completely right: gambling regulation is devolved in Northern Ireland, and the problem there is similar to the one we have in the rest of the country; in fact, the scale of gambling harm is even higher than it is in Great Britain. Members of the APPG have been talking to colleagues in Stormont in a similar all-party group, and they face similar challenges in calling for greater regulation. I completely agree with the hon. Member’s comments, and I am glad he has put them on the record.

Gambling advertising is all over spaces that children spend time in, and unfortunately our regulations have completely failed to keep pace. We rely far too much on self-regulation and voluntary codes that deliver only partial measures, even as evidence mounts that children continue to be widely exposed. The evidence presented in our report is unequivocal: these measures have not worked.

The so-called whistle-to-whistle ban is a case in point. It was introduced with the intention of protecting children from exposure during live sports, yet research shows that thousands of gambling messages still appear during matches through pitch-side advertising, sponsorship and branding that falls entirely outside the scope of the ban. It is similar online, where regulators have struggled to respond to the rise of content marketing and influencer promotion. Those forms of advertising are often not recognised as advertising at all by younger audiences, who are less equipped to identify and critically assess what is being advertised to them.

The UK is also falling behind other jurisdictions. Countries such as Italy, Spain, Australia, the Netherlands and Belgium have recognised the risks to young people and have introduced meaningful restrictions on gambling advertising, sponsorship and promotions. By contrast, the UK is delaying action, with a demand for ever more evidence. However, as our report makes clear, that sets an impossible standard. We do not apply that standard to other areas of public health, especially where children are concerned. We did not wait until the evidence became overwhelming before restricting tobacco or junk food advertising to children. Instead, we acted based on credible evidence of harm and a duty to protect the public, especially children and young people.

[Jim Shannon]

I spoke to the hon. Member about this beforehand, but problem gambling is a critical issue for us in Northern Ireland, where rate is 3%, compared with 2.7% here on the mainland. A recent survey found that 65% of adults in Northern Ireland felt there were “too many gambling advertisements”, 71% supported a watershed for gambling advertising and 42% said gambling advertising should be banned altogether. Does the hon. Member not agree that this House can and must work with the Northern Ireland Assembly back home to ensure that immediate protections are enshrined in law?

[Alex Ballinger]

The hon. Member raises the scale of public interest in this issue in Northern Ireland, and the number of people who are fed up and have had too much of gambling adverts, particularly those that are bombarding our children. I am glad he raises the situation in Northern Ireland, and we should be working together more to tackle this issue.

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Highgate) (Lab)]

Moving on slightly from Northern Ireland to Kilburn, in my constituency, there are a lot of gambling shops and casinos on Kilburn High Road. A constituent recently told me she had entered into the Gambling Commission’s self-exclusion agreement. Her regular casino knew that, but still allowed her in, and she subsequently lost thousands of pounds. My hon. Friend is talking about advertising, but is he aware of the shortcomings of the Gambling Commission’s self-exclusion agreement? It seems to be failing my constituents in Kilburn, who are exposed to so many gambling shops every time they leave their house.

[Alex Ballinger]

I am terribly sorry to hear my hon. Friend’s story about her constituent. It does sound like another failure of the self-exclusion system. We have heard similar stories in other places; I met one person with lived experience in Portsmouth, who signed up to self-exclusion but was able to gamble away his life savings in several shops that were not enforcing the rules properly.

The principle of credible evidence being shown—as it was with the tobacco industry and the junk food industry—should also be applied to our restrictions on gambling advertising. That is why our report calls for a significant intervention and a step change in how gambling advertising is regulated in this country, with protections for children and young people at its core. As shown in Northern Ireland, that is an approach that the UK public strongly support. According to polling, 65% of the public want stricter regulation of the gambling industry, and 68% say that under-18s should not see gambling advertising at all.

Let me highlight some of the key recommendations from our report. We recommend an end to gambling advertising before the 9 pm watershed, as part of a broader effort to reduce children’s exposure across TV and radio. We recommend an end to gambling sponsorship in sports, with the exception of horseracing and greyhound racing. Research by the University of Bristol in 2025 found that football fans were exposed to more than 27,000 gambling messages during the opening weekend of that year’s premier league—nearly triple the number in 2023. We recommend an end to content marketing and influencer-led promotion, where gambling is embedded in entertainment formats, making it particularly difficult for children and young people to recognise when they are being advertised to. Finally, we call for stronger enforcement, particularly of unlicensed operators, alongside greater transparency across digital advertising, including the introduction of “know your customer” requirements.

The current system has allowed commercial interests to outweigh sensible protections for children and young people, and we have a duty to change that. We have a duty to ensure that children are not routinely exposed to advertising for an activity that carries well-evidenced risks. We have a duty to support those experiencing harm, rather than allowing a system that can actively undermine recovery. And we have a duty to ensure that regulation keeps pace with the reality of the modern advertising landscape. This is not about being anti-gambling; it is about being proportionate, responsible and evidence-led. It is about recognising that when an industry invests billions in marketing, there are consequences, and those consequences are felt most clearly by children and young people.

This issue can be resolved now. The evidence is already there. The public concern is enormous. As the APPG report sets out, the Government have many of the powers they require to act; the question now is whether we are prepared to use them. I hope the Minister—she is not the Minister for gambling, so I appreciate her coming here today—will reflect carefully on our findings and share them with the Minister for gambling. I also hope Ministers will reflect on the case the report makes for a more precautionary public health-led approach that places the protection of children and young people at its heart.

I would be grateful if the Minister could tell us in her response what assessment the Government have made of the cumulative impact of gambling advertising exposure, particularly on children and young people; whether further action is being considered to reduce that exposure across sport, broadcast and online environments; and how the Government intend that regulation to keep pace with emerging forms of advertising, including content marketing and influencer promotion.

This is an opportunity to take a more coherent and forward-looking approach that reflects both the evidence and the expectations of the public.

[Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)]

I have listened with great interest, but is it not true that the hon. Gentleman has been written to on numerous occasions by the Gambling Commission for a misuse of their figures? Although I agree with some of the things he says, I am rather concerned that if that is the case, some of the figures he is citing here in Parliament, which will be reported in Hansard, are also not correct.

[Alex Ballinger]

I am afraid that is not correct. The Gambling Commission has not written to me challenging my figures. Members of the gambling industry have written to the all-party group challenging some of the figures in other reports, but our figures are from the Gambling Commission’s own survey on children and young people. The statistics I have pulled out today are directly from that survey, and no one is challenging those statistics.

[Esther McVey]

Three times they have written to you.

[Alex Ballinger]

They have not written to me.

We need to properly safeguard the next generation from gambling advertising that aims to normalise an activity that has been proven to be extremely harmful, and something that the Government have the power to act on today.

[Charlie Dewhirst (Bridlington and The Wolds) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris. I congratulate the hon. Members for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger) and for Worthing West (Dr Cooper) on securing this important debate.

Sport is one of the UK’s soft power superpowers. Formula 1 is worth over £12 billion a year to our economy, supporting more than 6,000 jobs. Horseracing supports more than 85,000 British jobs and contributes over £4 billion to the economy. The Premier League adds a further £9.8 billion to the economy and supports over 100,000 jobs, those jobs contribute over £4 billion in tax annually. Sky Sports recently signed a £125 million five-year contract with the Professional Darts Corporation —double the previous contract—and we have seen a huge boost in that sport in the last decade or so, all underpinned by sponsorship from companies.

[Alex Ballinger]

The hon. Member talks about Formula 1, as well as other sports, but does he remember the rules that changed the tobacco sponsorship of Formula 1 and the strong resistance of that industry to those changes because of the arguments he is making right now? Does he also recognise that Formula 1 has become more successful after those changes?

[Charlie Dewhirst]

Over the decades, Formula 1 has always been a great British success story. The banning of tobacco ads in such a global sport was not necessarily such a problem, because its reach and ability to bring in advertising revenue from other industries was more than it was for, say, snooker or darts. The ban almost destroyed snooker, which had become heavily reliant on tobacco sponsorship. It took a number of years for it to increase those revenues again.

I will come on to the unregulated gambling market, because that is playing a part in some of these sports and it is really important that we cover that. We need to recognise that there is a particularly close link—a symbiotic relationship—between gambling and, for example, horseracing, particularly for the regulated sector and those British companies that we all know and see on our high street, so we must be careful.

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[Charlie Dewhirst]

I think the industry is making good progress on this. It has certainly made a massive difference in recent decades, from where we have come to where we are now. As I said, and as I will go on to discuss further, there is a difference between the regulated market and the unregulated market. There are those companies that fall within the laws of this country and that are working hard to address some of these problems, and there are those that are not based in this country, over which we have no control. That is a serious problem.

[Alex Ballinger]

The hon. Member is making his point very well. He is talking about the unregulated market, which we also have real concerns about. Does he share my concern that some unregulated market advertising is being mixed with the regulated market advertising? Right now, we have premier league football clubs with unregulated front-of-shirt sponsors, and that should not be allowed.

[Charlie Dewhirst]

I could not agree with the hon. Member more. As a big football fan, this has been shocking for me. Growing up back in the ’90s, when Leeds United FC was last successful, what I would see on the front of a football shirt was a well-known brand, possibly British and possibly not. Looking at football shirts now, I often have no idea what the company is until I find out that it is, of course, an unregulated, foreign gambling site that is paying big money to the industry—I will share some figures on that in a minute. The Premier League has taken the right approach in banning those advertising deals from next season.

As I say, there is much we can do to work with the gambling sector in this country, but we also need to make sure that unregulated and illegal gambling firms do not have the ability to advertise to and target residents of this nation, because they are not regulated as they would be under UK law. We must also recognise the importance of preventing aggressive advertising towards vulnerable people and particularly children, as the hon. Member said in his opening remarks.

The balanced and evidence-led reforms made by the previous Government helped to strengthen protections, but there may be more to do. We can supplement the already-robust rules to ensure that we do more, but it is important that we do our very best to prevent children from being exposed in the way they might be at the moment. The hon. Member made an excellent point about the ways in which companies can dodge regulations, particularly those relating to football, where there has been a problem. The Premier League at least has recognised that and taken voluntary action to end it.

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[Charlie Dewhirst]

Absolutely; I could not agree more with my right hon. Friend. We have seen that trend not just in gambling but in tobacco. Taxation levels have become so high that they have created an enormous black market, which I believe has led to the Treasury losing about £6 billion in revenue. Any sector that is over-taxed or over-regulated will be replaced by a black market.

[Alex Ballinger]

I was not expecting to hear the hon. Member parroting big tobacco talking lines. Because of all the public health benefits and because of the reduced number of people dying from lung cancer, I think the public would be happy that the rate of smoking has reduced from 60% in the 1950s to 10%. Some 65% of people think children should not be exposed to gambling adverts at all. Does he share the public’s concern?

[Charlie Dewhirst]

I used an example of another sector to make a wider point that, if we over-tax or over-regulate anything, it will encourage the creation of a black market. There are various issues with that, whether for those exposed to the black market or for the Treasury, which might have concerns about the impact of a black market on its bottom line. It was a wider point about over-regulation and over-taxation, and there are number of examples of that.

I have already said that we should not allow gambling firms to target children in any way because they are not legally allowed to bet, and there has been progress. The reforms under the last Government were quite robust, and I always welcome ideas about how we can go further on that, but we should not necessarily go too far. Banning gambling advertising in sport, with the exception of horseracing and greyhound racing, feels excessive to me. There are other ways that we can address this.

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[Charlie Dewhirst]

Thank you, Mrs Harris.

I will put some numbers on my discussion of the value of regulated versus unregulated advertising. The regulated market is expected to decline by more than £107 million this year, but unregulated companies will increase their expenditure to £845 million this year, which is up 32%, and to £934 million by the end of 2028, which is another 10% rise. A significant proportion of that investment originates from overseas companies that are not paying British tax, not regulated by the British market and not subject to British laws.

It is not just about advertising. More advertising by unregulated and illegal gambling companies only drives people to the harmful, unregulated and untaxed black market. Stakes on the illegal market are already estimated to equate to £4.3 billion per year. A PwC report based on H2 Gambling Capital data shows that the size and growth of the UK’s unregulated market has increased in recent years, alongside the implementation of tighter regulations. In my opening, I mentioned that regular betting and gaming contributes £6.8 billion to our economy and generates £4 billion in taxes—£4 billion that the Treasury could potentially lose. The effects of that are self-evident.

There are other measures that are squeezing people. The Gambling Commission has found that there are concerns about the introduction of new checks and how intrusive they may be. The last Government wanted to pilot that scheme, and there are potential benefits to it, but we have to be a bit careful, because the concern is that blanket checks are being brought in without a pilot scheme. People are naturally nervous—the regular people who like to have a bet are concerned—about the intrusive nature of what private companies, and indeed the Government, are doing to try to access their financial data. We need to be wary of that, because it can put people off using British, regulated companies and push them toward foreign, unregulated spaces that are not subject to the same gambling taxation, which often allows for more attractive stakes and so on.

All of that is drawing people into a place we do not want them to be in. We do not want to over-regulate our own market and force people into a place that is of no advantage to us and that we have no influence over. We must be very mindful of that, whether it is gambling or any other sector.

The modelling shows a depressing outlook for the industry under the current taxation system. There is some very headline-grabbing stuff: Coral has pulled out of its deal to sponsor Cheltenham, and the industry expects to lose 16,000 jobs across the UK, a number of which are high-tech jobs. This is a high-tech industry these days; there is a huge online element to it, as we know. Those jobs will be lost in places such as Stoke, Warrington, Leeds, Sunderland, Manchester, Nottingham and Newcastle-under-Lyme where the successful gambling firms are based. Those job losses will then filter down to the gambling shops on our high streets; in recent weeks, we saw William Hill announce the loss of 200 high street stores.

Beyond the costs to the taxpayer and people’s jobs and lives, gambling advertising and sponsorship also supports broadcast media and sports across the spectrum. As well as regulated advertising falling, the WARC report also found that sponsorship by regulated companies plateaued in 2021 and is set to decline. That sponsorship covers prize money, along with increased levels of interest, competition and viewership. It is a virtuous circle. It gets people enthused by sport and gets them involved. It is not something that we should see as simply a bad thing to do.

Given that much free-to-air sports coverage—along with the lower levels or grassroots of certain sports—is largely dependent on this advertising revenue, there is a risk that we will further lose free-to-air coverage because sports will have to look to a more lucrative broadcast deals. Look at examples from the grassroots, with those firms sponsoring lower league clubs in football and the good work that they do there to support grassroots football—it is not just about what is going on in the premier league. We see less of those things on a day-to-day basis, but they are going on in clubs across the country.

While sponsorship by regulated companies plateaued and is falling, total sponsorship by the gaming sector has grown, from £158 million in 2019 to £250 million this year. The growth is not by those regulated companies, however. Unregulated firms have accelerated their sponsorship—more than tripling it in the same period—and by next year more than half of sponsorship will be by unregulated firms.

[Alex Ballinger]

The hon. Member’s concerns are about the unregulated market. However, the proposals in the APPG report are talking about restrictions on gambling advertising, including unregulated gambling advertising. He talks about the growth in unregulated gambling advertising, which is of course a big problem. But surely if those restrictions were implemented, it would give a better chance to bookkeepers that already have shops on the high street and a well-known reputation?

[Carolyn Harris (in the Chair)]

Order. These are very long interventions. Some Members have given a speech and others will have an opportunity to speak later and will be able to make their points. We need to make progress.

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[Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris. I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I thank the hon. Members for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger) and for Worthing West (Dr Cooper) for securing this debate.

I wish everyone a happy St George’s day. Perhaps the Minister for Creative Industries, Media and Arts is off celebrating St George’s day in his own Scottish way somewhere—I was looking forward to delivering that joke to him, so I am disappointed he is not here. Although I welcome the Minister covering this very important debate, I know there will be some confusion among the public about why no one from DCMS with direct responsibility for this policy area was available to respond. Hopefully, the Minister will still be able to answer some of the key questions on behalf of the Government before their complete collapse.

We all know that the Government are yet again distracted by their latest scandal in Downing Street, and that Labour MPs are preparing the runners and riders for their leadership contest; but we meet today to discuss gambling regulation at a very important juncture in terms of how we move forward with the regulated gambling industry in the UK. As we predicted would happen before Labour’s latest tax-hiking Budget, jobs are being lost and high street shops are closing, as we have already heard. Sponsorship for British sport is also being cut, and an illegal, dangerous black market continues to grow each week. Quite clearly, Labour did not properly vet the information they were being provided.

This is also a crucial time for the Gambling Commission. Major changes are happening at the top of the organisation and, as I understand it, it is deliberating on whether to move forward with controversial affordability checks despite major concerns from a range of stakeholders about their accuracy and, again, the unintended consequences of fuelling the illegal and dangerous black market. Today’s debate is therefore timely, and I have listened very carefully to contributions from hon. Members across the Chamber.

As always, there are a range of views. On the left, we have some who are more prohibitionist and view all forms of gambling through the prism of harm. On the right—thankfully not represented in the Chamber today—there are those who believe that party leaders should be allowed to promote their own crypto and pyramid schemes with no accountability. Then we have the rest of us, more in the middle ground, who are trying to find a sensible and pragmatic approach to regulation that provides protections and support for those suffering from addiction while recognising the regulated gambling sector’s contribution to jobs, the economy, British culture and sport.

As I have said in previous debates, I have no problem bashing the bookies; it is a British pastime between punter and bookmaker, and I am unashamedly pro-consumer. But as we are seeing now, the Government have inadvertently stacked the deck in favour of the illegal black market. In preparing for this debate, I was reminded of what gambling looked like when I was growing up in south-east London: those dark and dingy betting shops with beads covering the shop doors, and the wall of smoke that would occasionally escape, allowing some fresh air into the building.

While some of those small pens might have stayed in some shops, times have changed. The regulated industry has modernised, and technology has transformed how many people gamble across the country.

[Alex Ballinger]

The shadow Minister is talking about an historical example of a bookmaker’s. At that time, how many children and young people were exposed to gambling advertising? Is he happy with a Premier League weekend having 27,000 adverts that families might be watching?

[Mr French]

That is an interesting point about how bookmakers operate. My grandfather was really keen on horseracing when I was growing up; I remember often standing in the corner of the betting shop while he had a gamble or watching horseracing on the TV. The hon. Member’s APPG has made an interesting distinction about the carve-out of the advertising ban that it has committed to; if I understand it correctly, the APPG believes that younger people or children do not watch horseracing, compared with football—is that the argument for why there is a carve-out?

[Alex Ballinger]

Will the hon. Gentleman let me respond?

[Carolyn Harris (in the Chair)]

Order. Mr Ballinger, please sit down. Shadow Minister, please speak through the Chair.

[Carolyn Harris (in the Chair)]

Thank you. Mr Ballinger, if you want to intervene, can you do it appropriately?

[Alex Ballinger]

The APPG recognise that horseracing and greyhound racing are much more dependent on gambling advertising than other industries; that is why we made that separation.

[Mr French]

I thank the hon. Member for making that distinction; I understood it as being something to do with whether children watched racing. The point I was trying to make was that times have changed. When I worked in a shop—some 20-odd years ago, when I was a student—a strict rule was brought in to stop children being allowed inside the premises. There was a lot of discussion then about whether it was safer for a child to be just inside the door of a bookmaker’s or to be standing outside. That is probably not as big an issue today as it was then, but I remember that discussion being had circa 20 years ago. Times have changed, and how bookmakers operate has also changed.

The debate around gambling and gambling harms boils down to a simple but important question: how do we reduce harm from gambling without driving people into more dangerous spaces? Advertising, the subject of today’s debate, forms an important part of that discussion. Gambling, when properly regulated, is a legitimate leisure activity enjoyed by more than 20 million people across the United Kingdom every month. That averages out at more than 30,000 people in every constituency across the country. The overwhelming majority of those people gamble without harm.

The role of Government is to balance regulation for people who enjoy a flutter safely, while ensuring that those who need help can receive it as a matter of urgency. Government should not act as a heavy, puritanical hand prohibiting all avenues of fun. That is why the distinction between the regulated and unregulated market is so important. Advertising by UK-licensed operators is not a free-for-all, as some would have us believe; it is controlled and is subject to oversight by the anti-gambling commission and the Advertising Standards Authority, which has been strengthened significantly in recent years. That has resulted in some good progress: for example, I understand that the whistle-to-whistle ban has reduced children’s exposure to betting adverts during live sport by 97%. The Premier League will soon ban front-of-shirt gambling sponsors, and online campaigns are age-gated, with operators prohibited from using personalities with strong appeal to children. However, those regulations do not apply to those who act beyond the law in the black market.

The Government have been clear that there is little evidence of a causal link between exposure to advertising and problem gambling. Crucially, the evidence does not show that advertising drives participation. Advertising influences which brand people choose, not whether they gamble at all. That matters, because restricting the regulated sector too heavily will not remove demand; the Government will simply be redirecting it to the unregulated market, where harm becomes the norm. Independent analysis from WARC suggests that UK gambling advertising spend will reach around £1.9 billion this year, with half—between £800 million and £900 million, and increasing—already coming from unregulated operators.

We are approaching a tipping point. Close to half of all gambling advertising seen by UK consumers comes from operators that are not licensed in this country and can act beyond the law. It is the direction of travel that concerns me most: WARC’s research shows that while licensed operator spend has fallen, illegal and unregulated spend is growing sharply. That is a sign of a market shifting quickly and decisively, and we must be honest about what sits behind that shift. The Government have increased regulation on the legal sector, but done very little so far to stop the illegal black market.

While licensed operators are seeing their ability to advertise reduced, illegal operators are expanding aggressively, particularly online, and particularly aimed at children and younger people. Those unregulated operators do not follow the rules. They do not verify age; they do not offer safeguards such as deposit limits or self-exclusion; they do not contribute to treatment or research; they do not pay tax. Those companies actively market themselves as being outside the system, with “Not on GamStop”—a favoured slogan that is deliberately used to appeal to the most vulnerable. This is not a marginal issue. Up to 1.5 million people in Britain are estimated to be using these sites already, staking as much as £10 billion a year.

Today’s advertising frontline is not so much television as social media, streaming platforms and influencers. Around 62% of children report regularly seeing gambling-related content online on platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, Twitch and Instagram—I use some of those platforms myself, though I am not sure what Twitch is. What they see is not the regulated sector: they are seeing influencers who are paid to promote black market gambling sites—sites that would never be allowed to advertise through regulated channels and that offer inducements and access without safeguards. Among those young people who follow gambling content, nearly one in three report seeing an influencer advertising the products. The reality is that we have built a system that tightly regulates those who comply with the law, while those who do not are free to exploit the faster-growing parts of the media landscape.

We must be honest about the risk of getting this wrong. By clamping down further on regulated advertising without tackling illegal activity, we will not clean up this space. We will simply cede the territory to the illegal operators. We will make it harder for consumers to distinguish between safe and unsafe operators, pushing more people towards platforms that offer no protections at all. The Government’s priority must be enforcement in the spaces where harm is now most concentrated.

I will conclude by asking the Minister a series of specific questions that I hope she can answer or follow up in writing. First, will the Government bring forward proposals to place a clear duty on social media platforms to identify and remove illegal gambling advertising, particularly influencer-led promotion of unlicensed sites? Secondly, what steps are the Government taking against unlicensed operators targeting UK consumers online? Thirdly, can the Minister set out a timeline for action on unlicensed gambling sponsorship in sport, and will the Government go further to prevent UK clubs from entering into partnerships with operators that are not licensed in this country?

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[Alex Ballinger]

Thank you, Mrs Harris. I thank all Members who have joined in this lively debate: the hon. Member for Bridlington and The Wolds (Charlie Dewhirst), my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Dr Cooper), the Minister, the shadow Minister and the Liberal Democrat spokesperson. We have covered a lot of issues and it has been one of the few debates in which we have had an exchange of views rather than of party political positions, so I appreciate that.

I will respond to the comments of the right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey). I have not seen that correspondence, but she seems certain that I have received it, so I will go back and check.

[Esther McVey]

It is on the record.

[Alex Ballinger]

I will check, but I think my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West responded on what the all-party group may have said.

I should say very briefly that there seems to have been a big debate about the unregulated market and the regulated market. I think that is important. There were questions about the size of the unregulated market, and some of that is in our report, which I have just looked at: it is approximately 9% of the online space, with 700 operators, according to Yield Sec. As everyone has said, that is largely driven by the unregulated market going after people who have been banned by GamStop.

[Esther McVey]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Alex Ballinger]

I will not give way at this point, because I am just wrapping up—

[Esther McVey]

I will give you the information that you don’t have—

[Alex Ballinger]

It is in the report. I have just told you.

[Carolyn Harris (in the Chair)]

Order. Can we not have debate across the Chamber, please? Can you finish your wind-up, Mr Ballinger?

[Alex Ballinger]

Absolutely. This has been driven a lot by the argument that the unregulated industry will somehow capture the market. If we are talking about restrictions on gambling advertising, that should include such restrictions on the unregulated gambling market, which as we can see is already advertising in football and online in lots of spaces. Those are things that we are calling for, too. That 9% of the market, which is in our report, will hopefully not grow.

We should not pretend that the unregulated market is the only one causing problems. There are issues in the regulated market as well. We have heard about the bonuses, the promotions, the free bets and other issues from people with lived experience, who have faced them in the regulated market too, which is the majority of gambling harm.

Across the House, I think there is a wish to go further in protecting children and young people, even though we may have disagreements about how we do so. There are some good recommendations in our report, I hope, for sensible steps to protect children and young people from gambling advertising, and particularly from gambling harms that might come to them in future.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered gambling advertising.