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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, with reference to her Department's White Paper entitled High stakes: gambling reform for the digital age, published on 27 April 2023 and her article in the Racing Post, published on 2 November 2023, what steps she is taking to help ensure that the proposed financial risk checks are frictionless for consumers.

His Majesty’s Government recognises that, while millions of people gamble online without experiencing problems, for some it becomes an addiction with serious consequences. The Gambling White Paper, published in April this year, outlines a balanced and proportionate package of measures in response - one of which is a new regime of frictionless financial risk checks.

As stated in our recent response to the e-petition concerning the implementation of financial risk checks, we are clear that the checks should not overregulate the gambling sector, should not unduly disrupt the millions of people who gamble without suffering harm, and should not cause unnecessary damage to sectors which rely on betting, in particular horse racing. These will be implemented to protect those at the greatest risk of gambling harm and to stop potentially devastating and life-changing financial losses. These checks will be based on data sharing, and we will not roll them out until we are certain they are frictionless.

We have held a number of roundtables with representatives of industry, horse racing, and the Gambling Commission to discuss how we can work together to ensure that these checks will be frictionless. We have also stressed that the status quo, a host of industry-run checks, are often inconsistent, ad hoc and can be unnecessarily onerous, with customers having to manually provide reams of personal data to navigate a maze of different tick-boxes. We have urged the Gambling Commission and industry to work together to mitigate the impact of these checks while we develop a new, frictionless system.

We and the Gambling Commission have also been working closely with the Information Commissioner’s Office, credit reference agencies, and UK Finance to ensure new frictionless checks can be implemented in an effective but proportionate way. We are also exploring the role of pilots or phased implementation to ensure the checks are effective and work as intended.