UK Gambling Commission
It’s a fine thing As UK legislators agonize over reforms, the Gambling Commission continues to extract fines or payments in lieu of penalties at rates far beyond other regulators. Phil Savage looks at their track record and asks why and whether the industry should welcome a shakeup of the Gambling Act after all.
T he long-awaited White Paper on the reform of the UK Gambling Act 2005 is yet to be published despite a consultation having started over two years ago. the most recent delay, the fifth to date, has prompted some to suggest is may never see the light of day. Reaction to the possibility that the industry will be spared the prospect of affordability checks, stake limits and bans on sports advertising and VIP schemes has, however, been surprisingly mixed. Having spent the past months fighting a rear-guard action against regulatory tightening, it seems some are now concerned that the lack of a reset will leave too much decision-making power in the hands of the UK Gambling Commission. They worry that UKGC will itself preside over a regime of ever-tightening rules and investigations without the legitimacy of parliamentary oversight 1 . Some have even
gone so far as to accuse the regulator of having “an agenda” or of being taken hostage by the public health lobby. Regulators are always being accused of being too close to one side or another, and most consider they have the balance about right if they are criticized equally by industry and consumer bodies. So, is the Commission really just the whipping boy for point scoring politicians, or is there more to it? Gambling Commission CEO, Andrew Rhodes was speaking at a conference in Australia. He told the audience at the IAGR event that, in the first 10 months of 2022, 16 operators had paid out a total of £45m because of regulatory failures. 2 He went on to say that: “At this volume, we think the message is starting to get through.” 3 He could also have mentioned that, at £46+ million,
1 https://igamingbusiness.com/legal-compliance/truss-scrap-gambling-act-bad-news/. 2 The UK distinguishes between a fine (which is a formal regulatory sanction) and a payment in lieu of a penalty, which is not. Payments in lieu of penalties are a feature of regulatory settlements, which are a method of resolving licence reviews which do not involve the exercise of the Gambling Commission’s regulatory powers to sanction. As the data cannot be readily broken down, we have used the term settlement in this article to refers to both fines and payments in lieu of penalties. Where the term fine is used it is to provide a means of comparision with similar actions and settlements in other jurisdictions and does not necessarily refer to a legal or regulatory sanction. 3 https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/news/article/andrew-rhodes-speech-at-iagr-conference-2022.
28 • IMGL Magazine • November 2022
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