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Northern Ireland’s All-Party Group on Reducing Harm Related to Gambling (APG) has made 57 recommendations to the Northern Ireland Executive, including a new independent regulator and spending loss limits.
The regulator would be tasked with enforcing gambling laws, licensing and issuing fines, according to the APG’s report of its inquiry into public health approaches to tackling gambling-related harm, which was published on June 19.
The APG said: “The findings of this inquiry come at a critical juncture for NI and gambling reform. As noted in the report, NI is falling behind neighbouring jurisdictions in this regard — we remain a ‘Wild West’ as Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland proceed with wide-ranging updates to their gambling laws.”
The report also recommends treating gambling as a public health issue in line with the approach adopted for alcohol and tobacco, establishing a gambling ombudsman and introducing a financial levy on operators to fund research, education and treatment.
Additionally, the APG wants the Department for Communities (DfC), which oversees gambling policy, to be mandated to consult the Department of Health when developing gambling-related policies and regulations, and that a Health Impact Assessment should be undertaken for the next phase of gambling reform.
A spokesperson for the DfC told Vixio GamblingCompliance that it “received the report on June 23 and will consider its contents and recommendations”.
Other notable recommendations include creating a “single sign-on mechanism (SSO)”, which would create a single user profile for verification and affordability cap on gambling spending, which it recommends should be set at £150 or £100 losses a month.
It also says consideration should be given to an advertising ban and regulating loot box mechanisms in video games.
The APG, whose members are lawmakers from various political parties, based the report on written and oral evidence it received between December 2022 and January 2024.
Gordon Lyons, the minister for communities since February 2024, said his current mandate would be used to ensure gambling legal changes would be ready to be introduced as soon as possible at the start of the next mandate.
Lyons met the APG on April 30, saying that “this would be the biggest piece of legislation ever passed” by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
The Betting, Gaming, Lotteries and Amusements (Amendment) Bill was passed in 2022, which was the first of two stages to reforming the country’s gambling laws, with a second piece of legislation expected to address online gambling more directly.
The DfC has commissioned a new gambling prevalence survey, the first of its kind in almost eight years, as it works on the next stage of reforming the country’s gambling laws.
The DfC will also provide a set of industry codes of practice for consideration “in due course”.
