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The UK government and its gambling regulator have announced plans to assess their effectiveness of the ongoing white paper reforms, including by sourcing the views of a panel of experts by experience.
Released in April 2023 after years of speculation, the “white paper” portion of the Gambling Act Review detailed more than 60 new policy measures.
On Thursday (December 5), the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) announced that it would be conducting a review of exactly how effective these gambling regulatory reforms are in practice and published an outline of what questions that review will ask.
The DCMS said it “will seek to establish, as far as possible, whether in-scope policy measures are being delivered effectively, understand if they are achieving their intended outcomes, impacts, any unintended consequences, and capture learning to inform the design and implementation of any future policy changes”.
Despite a change in government from the Conservative Party to Labour, following the general election in Summer 2024, the new administration has committed to delivering reforms that are still outstanding.
After a few months of post-election legislative silence, the review was resuscitated last week via confirmation that the government would push forward with a new 1.1 percent levy to tackle gambling harm.
The review will seek to answer seven questions for each policy change.
- In what ways, if any, did these outcomes and impacts link and interact?
- Were the proposals implemented as intended?
- What was the distinct contribution of the DCMS, Gambling Commission and independently led proposals in achieving the observed outcomes and impacts?
- What was the combined contribution of the proposals in achieving the above observed outcomes and impacts?
- What conditions were necessary for the proposals to achieve the above observed outcomes and impacts?
- What internal and external influencing contextual factors supported or impeded the proposals to achieve the above observed outcomes and impacts?
- What are the implications of the findings from the evaluation for the implementation of future gambling-related policy changes?
DCMS said it plans to use a variety of sources of data to try and answer these queries, including operator surveys, customer surveys and tracking.
It will also seek the view of a Lived Experience Panel, overseen by the Gambling Commission.
The panel is distinct from the regulator’s existing Lived Experience Advisory Group, but the commission said there will be some overlap in membership.
“The role of the Lived Experience Panel is to provide ongoing support, guidance, and input on the progress of the evaluation of the Gambling Act Review from the perspective of people with lived experience of gambling. This includes individuals with experience of gambling with no adverse effects, as well as those experiencing harm,” said Bryony Sheldon, Gambling Commission's director of policy, in a blog post.
UK gambling policy expert Dan Waugh welcomed the news of an assessment of the Gambling Act Review, but warned that the government would face challenges justifying its conclusions.
“There will be concerns about how the evaluation is conducted and the extent to which the regulatory authorities are permitted to mark their own homework,” he told Vixio GamblingCompliance.
“The Gambling Commission does not have a great track record when it comes to use of evidence, including involvement in the funding of misinformation and the suppression of inconvenient information.”
The commission was accused earlier this year of burying a 2021 survey which showed that gambling customers were overwhelmingly opposed to detailed affordability checks, which currently form part of an ongoing trial into compelling UK licence holders to conduct financial risk assessments.
“One has to consider what incentives the commission might have for admitting that some of its policy decisions have had negative consequences (which is inevitable - even where competent regulators are concerned),” said Waugh.
Independent body the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) has been engaged to carry out some of the review, DCMS said.
NatCen and the Gambling Commission said it would begin reaching out to collect evaluation data in early 2025.
“[The announcement of a review] is positive,” added Waugh, “but the devil will be in the detail.”
