The government should raise the stakes when it comes to gambling

The writer is an associate professor in the faculty of law at Cambridge university and vice-master of Selwyn college

Dostoevsky’s eponymous Gambler knew the experience of addiction — “how a man can sit for almost twenty-four hours at cards, without looking to right, or to left”. Yet he would have struggled to comprehend the overwhelming nature of online gambling today, with products honed to maximise length of play and amount gambled, the onslaught of advertising, the individual targeting of addicts with another free bet, another inducement.

With unfortunate timing, this still hadn’t been contemplated by the Gambling Act 2005, nor when it came into force in September 2007. That November, the first iPhone was launched in the UK. Those drafting the act had worried about super-casinos but now everyone had access to one in their pockets 24/7. 

Reports of breaches have been all too common ever since. Occasionally the Gambling Commission has responded, as with the recent record fine of £19.2mn on the William Hill group for numerous breaches of social responsibility and money laundering regulations. This included allowing a new customer to open an account and spend £23,000 in 20 minutes with no checks. Failure to protect customers from vast financial losses of this kind is associated with exacerbating gambling disorder (now recognised as a serious psychiatric illness). On average, one person in the UK takes their own life every day as a result.

The inadequacy of the current regulation is acknowledged by all political parties, and the government’s proposed response came in the recent white paper. There is much to welcome in its attempts to balance consumer freedoms and protection from harm. Positive proposals include more prescriptive rules on when operators must check customers’ financial circumstances for signs of harmful losses; a stake limit for online slots games; designing safer games; mandatory data sharing on high risk customers; and a statutory levy to fund research, education and treatment of gambling harms. But the pace of change is disappointing — despite a comprehensive consultation exercise, all the major proposals will require further consultation before legislation.

There are also two significant omissions. The first is the lack of any control on advertising rules, after massive lobbying from gambling operators and broadcasters. Robust studies have linked advertising exposure to an enhanced risk of gambling disorder and suicide. The only response? The Premier League has voluntarily announced that it will remove gambling logos from the front (not the backs or the sleeves) of players’ shirts from the 2026/27 season.

The second omission is the one which, as a lawyer, troubles me most, given that not one penny of the fines on operators is payable to their victims. In 2020 a select committee report called for an amendment to provide for civil liability, or the obligation to pay compensation for breach of the act’s codes and licensing conditions. Unfortunately the government quietly shelved this, suggesting redress via the creation of an independent gambling ombudsman instead. This is inadequate. An ombudsman can resolve disputes about money but not provide redress for the exacerbation of gambling disorder, nor compensation for the dependants of someone who took their own life as a result.

The solution must be to give the common law of negligence a role in providing civil redress. Currently, an operator owes no duty of care to gamblers; even if their software detected that the customer was in trouble and took take no action. Operators have nothing to fear if they operate ‘responsibly’, since liability will only arise if the duty of care is breached, and that breach causes harm. But without a duty, they can cause harm with impunity. This exceptional immunity from the norms of private law has no place in the 21st century.