Gambling: Regulatory Reform

Charlie Maynard Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Charlie Maynard (Witney) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered reform of gambling regulation.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. We are here to talk about gambling regulation and to discuss the scale of the problem. There is clear evidence that current regulation of the gambling industry is not adequate to protect people from harm, including children and young people. Figures published by the Gambling Commission this October showed that 1.4 million people in Britain have a gambling problem. That number is not spread equally: young men aged 25 to 34 are most affected, with 5.5% experiencing at least moderate-risk gambling, and rates are much higher in more deprived communities, with men in the most deprived areas twice as likely as those in more well-off areas to be moderate-risk gamblers.

Evidence suggests that while many people gamble a bit, the vast majority of profits derived by gambling firms come from a small number of gamblers. The House of Lords Gambling Industry Committee found that 60% of the industry’s profits come from just 5% of customers, who are either problem gamblers or at risk. Recent Gambling Commission figures also show that the harms caused by gambling are increasingly being experienced by children, with the proportion of young people being exposed to significant harms more than doubling between 2023 and 2024. Moreover, the harms caused by gambling are not isolated to the individuals who take part; when it reaches a harmful level, it can have devastating impacts for families and right across communities, in every constituency.

Gambling is linked to addiction, debt and other serious harms, and can negatively impact mental and physical health, relationships, finances, employment and education, but it is comparatively less regulated than other harmful industries and not taxed to directly reflect the harms it causes. In my home patch of Witney, Oxfordshire county council identified gambling addiction as a key risk factor in its recently updated suicide prevention strategy. Research by Gambling with Lives, a charity established in 2018 by families bereaved by gambling suicides, shows that, shockingly, there are hundreds of gambling-related suicides each year, an average of around one a day.

The impact on the public purse is also significant. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research found that a person experiencing problem gambling leads to an additional £3,700 spend per year in higher welfare payments, healthcare and criminal justice costs, and the cost of homelessness. A research report from the University of Oxford by Dr Naomi Muggleton showed that as many as one in four gamblers are harmed.

The industry continues to develop rapidly, and regulation must keep pace and remain fit for purpose. The Lancet public health commission on gambling found in 2024:

“Digitalisation has transformed the production and operation of commercial gambling… The commercial gambling industry has also developed strong partnerships in media and social media. Sponsoring and partnering with professional sports organisations provides gambling operators with marketing opportunities with huge new audiences.”

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

In the light of that, some two years ago it was recommended very clearly that a gambling ombudsman should be set up. So far, across two Governments, nothing has happened on that. That is needed to check that all these elements are being dealt with at the same time. Does the hon. Gentleman not agree with me that that should be one of the first acts that the Government should get on with right now?

[Charlie Maynard]

I fully agree and will cover that shortly.

The Lancet commission concluded that

“gambling poses a threat to public health, the control of which requires a substantial expansion and tightening of gambling industry regulation”.

So what should we do? First, we should limit the impact of gambling advertising, marketing and sponsorship, especially the extent to which children and young people are exposed to it. The industry spends £2 billion a year on gambling advertising and would not be putting that money in without a high degree of certainty that it will be more than paid back in profits. Some 80% of that is spent online, which is why children so often come across gambling and gambling companies.

Research undertaken by the Gambling Commission found that 34% of British bettors admitted to being influenced by advertising, and 16% stated that ads caused them to increase their gambling. Research published this year found that 96% of people aged 11 to 24 had seen gambling marketing messages in the month before the study, and were more likely to bet as a result. On Twitter—or X—alone, there are more than a million gambling ads in the UK each year. Football matches are saturated by gambling ads; there were thousands of gambling messages during the opening weekend of the English premier league alone, across various channels.

Many of our neighbours have taken action. In 2018, Italy banned all online advertising of gambling products. Spain added strong restrictions in 2020. Germany did the same in 2021, as did the Netherlands and Belgium in 2023. Finland and Sweden are set to implement restrictions in 2027. By contrast, here in the UK, the 2023 White Paper on reforming gambling for the digital age acknowledged the harm caused by marketing but opted to continue with a mostly self-regulatory approach. I think such an approach means a huge amount of harm will continue, so I urge the Minister to look again at that, given the damage the sector does and the action already taken by others to mitigate it in their countries. There is strong public support for greater restrictions, too, with polling showing that 51% of people think all gambling advertising, promotion and sponsorship should be banned, and 78% think that nobody under the age of 18 should be exposed to it.

Secondly, underpinning all this, we need a statutory independent gambling ombudsman with real power, exactly as the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) stated. That was recommended in the 2023 gambling White Paper and was intended to be established and operational within 12 months, and yet no progress has been made. I also understand that the Government have asked the gambling industry, of all people, to come up with ideas on how the ombudsman should be run—a case of poacher turned gamekeeper if ever there was one. If that is the case, are the Government really serious about setting up an ombudsman with effective powers that it actually uses? Will the Minister please clarify what steps are being taken to achieve that?

Thirdly, another area where our regulation has a disconnect is licensing frameworks. Pubs are licensed by local authorities. Licensing for vape shops, requiring retailers to obtain a personal licence to sell the products and a premises licence for their storage and sale, is currently under consideration in the Tobacco and Vapes Bill. Given that, why do local authorities not have the powers they need to prevent new gambling premises from opening? We should review and implement the relevant commitments in the 2023 gambling White Paper, which seeks to strengthen local authority discretion and better reflect community harm. I would welcome an update from the Minister on plans to review and progress the recommendations in the White Paper.

Finally, I welcome the Chancellor’s decision to increase gaming duty in last week’s Budget—that was an important step. I now encourage the Government to consider directing some of the revenue raised from that towards taking steps better to regulate the industry and reduce the personal and social harms it contributes to in the long term.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Charlie Maynard]

I thank the Minister and the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French), as well as all the Members who attended the debate; and you, Sir Desmond, for chairing it. I appreciate the sensible, fair and respectful way that we have handled the debate and the shared recognition that gambling can be fun but can also do a whole lot of damage. We have to try to balance that as best we can. I think we have all tried to do that in our own way.

I thank the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) for doing his best to make the other case. He did a fair job of that. I thought my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Cameron Thomas) and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) did excellent jobs in detailing the damage done, particularly so with regard to M, who my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury mentioned. After the debate, I will be asking about where he is now.

I also thank the hon. Member for Worthing West (Dr Cooper) and my hon. Friend the Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine) for bringing a great range of thought with regard to the public health aspects of this issue. They made very valuable contributions on that. The shadow Minister did a great job of making the case for the other side of the argument.

I thank the Minister for all his input. It was very helpful that he explained where the Government are on the gambling levy, local authorities and the cumulative impact assessments. I will admit to being less clear about the Government’s position on online advertising and what they are planning to do with that £2 billion—when, where and how. I look forward to staying in touch on that. Similarly, the issue of the ombudsman was not covered in detail. I would welcome an intervention from the Minister to provide some clarity on that.

[Ian Murray]

I am surprised and grateful to the hon. Member for allowing me to intervene. The gambling ombudsman is the most effective way to deliver independent alternative dispute resolution. We know that that will require primary legislation, and we are conscious of the need to put in place an appropriate mechanism as soon as possible. It has not been ruled out. Work on this is ongoing, but it will require primary legislation. As I said at the end of my speech, with all the other things that we want to do to try to bed this in, we are very conscious that the industry is having to deal with an awful lot of change at the moment, but it is still on the agenda.

[Charlie Maynard]

I thank the Minister for that. I believe we have covered everything. I appreciate everybody’s being here.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered reform of gambling regulation.