Summer Special #2
We take a look at what Prime Minister Sunak might mean for UK gambling policy and ask what Entain is up to with an upcoming Parliamentary drop-in meeting.
Welcome to the second part of our Summer special focusing on the Conservative leadership election, with the last hand being dealt on September 5th.
Thank you for your feedback on the first part where we looked at those around Liz Truss, who remains the bookies’ favourite.
We turn our attention now to the self-acknowledged underdog, former Chancellor Rishi Sunak. The odds are long, but not impossible.
As before, our goal is to understand the views and interests of Sunak’s backers - the people who can expect to have influence, directly or indirectly, on gambling policy if their number comes up in a few weeks’ time. Could we be looking at a Blair/Brown type shift in attitude, or business as usual?
A day at the races
Sunak himself, unlike his opponent, has a direct constituency interest in the gambling industry with the Catterick racecourse. In March this year, whilst still Chancellor, he wrote to then Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries after being told that affordability checks would cost the racing industry £60m a year. This is in line with other briefings throughout Sunak’s time as Chancellor where he is said to have brought into the Treasury a mindset that the gambling sector is a golden egg for the Exchequer to be protected at all costs.
Of course, being Prime Minister is very different from being Chancellor, whose job is to defend the public finances and nothing else. Yet, should he win, and maintain the same position, Sunak seems more likely than Truss to oppose affordability checks and any other policies in the White Paper which can be portrayed as being more concerned with protecting people than gambling jobs and corporate balance sheets.
The Backers
Two of the most interesting backers are Jeremy Hunt and Oliver Dowden.
Dowden, who resigned as Conservative party chairman in June after a disastrous by-election and is now chairing Sunak’s campaign, is a former Culture minister and almost certainly in line for a senior role if Sunak wins. It was Dowden who launched the current review of the Gambling Act in December 2020, calling it “an analogue law in a digital age” and wanting to “help those who enjoy placing a bet to do so safely” - for which, read, “affordably”.
Generally considered a pragmatist about the gambling industry and a believer in the use of technology to solve these problems, whatever role Dowden gets in a Sunak Cabinet, he is likely to pay close attention to the fate of the White Paper.
Jeremy Hunt, former Health Secretary (and Culture Secretary during the coalition) threw his weight behind Sunak after himself losing out in the early rounds of the selection process. Although not a key member of Sunak’s inner circle, Hunt can expect somehow to come into the fold, and public health issues are his priority. If he carries with him the views he expressed as Health Secretary, preventing harm and increasing the capacity of the NHS to treat problem gamblers might lead him to engage in the white paper whatever role he has.
The Supporters
As with Truss, the declared supporters of each candidate are worth looking at even though they may not be given senior roles. They might tell us what kind of voices and opinions are likely to hold sway in a Sunak government.
Sunak has attracted some of those who are active supporters of the gambling industry and are sceptics or outright opponents of tighter regulation. These include Matt Hancock, who has written in the Racing Post against what he sees as the threat of over-regulation.
Many others, though, do not seem to be in tune with a potential PM who would prefer less regulation to more.
Amongst the most vocal are Richard Holden and James Wild. As newly-elected MPs in 2019 they sat on an inquiry into gambling harm by the Public Accounts Committee: it was this which proposed the review of the 2005 Gambling Act which has led to the White Paper.
In a July 2020 joint article in ConservativeHome, Holden and Wild lambasted the weakness of the Gambling Commission, called for “sensible regulations” to address gambling harm and concluded that “the deck is stacked against problem gamblers and in favour of the gambling companies”.
Pinchpoint view
As with Truss, Sunak has assembled a team and attracted supporters with views across the spectrum on gambling reform. There’s no clear bias one way or the other and no clear candidate for the culture minister likely to tip the scales on the White Paper.
For this reason, we can’t help thinking that, regardless of who wins next week, the White Paper process is more likely to continue as not, with limited changes happening before it sees the light of day.
Drop-in centre
Meanwhile, word has reached us that Entain is arranging a parliamentary “drop-in” entitled The Future of Responsible Gambling; the case for technological solutions where it hopes to showcase its Advanced Responsibility and Care (ARC) platform for “identifying and protecting players at risk of problem gambling”.
Efforts at outreach such as this are, of course, to be applauded and Entain’s efforts with ARC, which include partnerships with medical professionals, academics, industry specialists and data scientists, is a worthy attempt at better understanding how gambling harm takes place.
As Entain says in the invitation to potential attendees, it believes that ARC-like systems should be “mandatory across the betting and gaming industry”.
There’s always a but…
This comes, of course, just a few weeks after Entain was hit with the largest regulatory settlement in the UK Gambling Commission’s history. See the last issue of the Pinchpoint for our view on that one.
The fact Entain is promoting its own tools in this way doesn't seem to bode well for the proposed industry-wide Single Customer View solution where all operators are expected to pool their own behavioural/play data to spot at-risk players using a common algorithm.
Stand-alone solutions and proprietary analytics could cut against that.
About
The newsletter is published independently under the editorial supervision of Scott Longley of Clear Concise Media. Pinchpoint is not affiliated with any other publications. Pinchpoint is funded by Department of Trust and BetBudget.
We hope you find it useful and, as ever with these things, if you think any of your colleagues would be interested, then please feel free to share.
Contact
Charles Cohen, DoTrust: charles@dotrust.co.uk