Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether he has made an assessment of (a) whether the stake reduction on Fixed Odds Betting Terminals contributed towards achieving the Gambling Act 2005’s licensing objectives and (b) the effect of the time taken between the 2016 review and implementation in 2019 of the stake reduction on the achievement of those licensing objectives.

The licensing objectives in the Gambling Act 2005 are principles to be applied by the Gambling Commission and other licensing authorities in exercising their functions under the Act. The Commission is required to permit gambling in so far as it thinks it reasonably consistent with pursuit of the licensing objectives: a) preventing gambling from being a source of crime or disorder, being associated with crime or disorder or being used to support crime, b) ensuring that gambling is conducted in a fair and open way, and c) protecting children and other vulnerable persons from being harmed or exploited by gambling.

The government’s Review of Gaming Machines and Social Responsibility Measures began with the publication of a call for evidence in autumn 2016, including on whether changes were needed to stake and prize limits on gaming machines. The objective of the Review was to determine what, if any, changes were needed to strike the right balance between socially responsible growth and the protection of consumers and wider communities. The call for evidence was followed by a consultation paper published in October 2017, with the government’s decision to cut stakes on B2 machines in betting shops to £2 announced in the government response to the consultation in May 2018. The stake cut was in due course implemented via statutory instrument in April 2019.

The government gave careful consideration to a wide range of evidence in the course of the Gaming Machines Review and this evidence and government’s analysis and conclusions were set out in the consultation, government response and the accompanying impact assessment, published at

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/consultation-on-proposals-for-changes-to-gaming-machines-and-social-responsibility-measures. Evidence submitted to the call for evidence was also published at https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/call-for-evidence-review-of-gaming-machines-and-social-responsibility-measures.