Gaming Machines

(asked on 19th June 2018) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps his Department is taking to prevent harm to vulnerable people until the £2 stake reduction for fixed-odds betting terminals is introduced.


Answered by
Tracey Crouch Portrait
Tracey Crouch
This question was answered on 27th June 2018

Carolyn Harris MP, Labour

Minister answering: Tracey Crouch MP

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport what steps his Department is taking to prevent harm to vulnerable people until the £2 stake reduction for fixed-odds betting terminals is introduced. 155335

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, for what reasons the implementation period for the B2 stake reduction is now expected to take longer than the 9 to 12 months set out in the Impact Assessment published alongside the Government’s recent consultation response on proposals to changes to Gaming Machines and Social Responsibility Measures. 155337

ANSWER

The Gambling Commission regulates the industry according to the licensing objectives, which include protecting children and other vulnerable persons from being harmed or exploited by gambling. It protects gambling customers and the wider public from harm through its licence conditions and codes of practice and compliance and enforcement activity


The Government published its response to the consultation on proposed changes to gaming machines and social responsibility measures on 17 May. As well as the stake reduction on B2 machines, the consultation response included a package of measures that will strengthen protections around gaming machines, online gambling, gambling advertising and treatment for problem gamblers, for which work is already under way. The measures include:

  • Protection measures on other category B gaming machines;
  • Increasing player protections around online gambling including stronger age verification rules and proposals to require operators to set limits on consumers’ spending until affordability checks have been conducted;
  • Doing more on research, education and treatment of problem gambling, including for Public Health England (PHE) to carry out a review of the evidence relating to the public health harms of gambling;
  • Enhancing protections around gambling advertising, including a major multi-million pound responsible gambling advertising campaign led by GambleAware, which will be launched later this year;
  • We will also be considering the issue of 16 year olds playing National Lottery products as part of the next licence competition for the National Lottery. We will aim to gather evidence on this issue in order to consider it fully in time for the next licence competition.

The Government will deliver the reduction in stake through secondary legislation in due course. We are currently preparing draft regulations needed to make the change, alongside engaging with the gambling industry to ensure they are given sufficient time to implement and complete the technological changes for the reduction in maximum stake for Fixed-Odds Betting Terminals.

Reticulating Splines