UK LEGAL
The draft powers for the Commission were contained in the Criminal Justice Bill, which also provided for a range of other criminal justice reforms. Some of these other measures have proved pretty controversial, such as criminalising “nuisance” rough sleeping and compelling offenders to attend their sentencing hearing. This Bill had 130 pages of amendments left to debate at the time the election was announced, so was unable to be passed before Parliament was dissolved in late May. It now seems very unlikely to be passed in its current form, but hopefully the Gambling Commission powers will be introduced by the new Government in a revised version of this legislation, after a period of reconsideration.
before introducing secondary legislation to implement it.
Proposals for reforms for land-based gambling premises were finalised in May 2024, just a week before the general election was accounted. These include increased machine numbers for casinos, arcades and bingo premises, cashless payments on gaming machines and increases to licensing authority fees. The Government’s publication stated that these measures would be introduced by laying six sets of regulations before Parliament “following publication of this response”, however these statutory instruments did not make the cut in the legislative wash up period. Compared to the slots stake limit and statutory levy, these measures do not have an obvious safer gambling rationale. Unfortunately, for this reason, it may be that they are put on the back burner by the new Government, or even reconsidered entirely. The new powers for the Gambling Commission to tackle unlicensed gambling are also likely to suffer significant delay. The proposal was to give the regulator (along with other law enforcement and investigative agencies) the ability to obtain court orders against IP and domain name providers, requiring them to block access to websites being used for criminal purposes. It was hoped a court order would prove more compelling to such providers than correspondence from the Commission, particularly where the providers are based overseas.
In the meantime, the Commission appears to have made some progress in tackling the black market by working with payment providers and search engines. In particular, through work with Google it claims to have referred over 7,000 website urls to Google, resulting in them being removed from its search results.
26 JUNE 2024
Following the election, the State Opening of Parliament and King’s Speech will take place on 17 July. On this date we should know which, if any, gambling reforms are being prioritised by the new Government. However, with the summer recess commencing shortly after, it seems we will need to wait until at least September to see further progress on any of the anticipated legislation.
Melanie is a gambling regulatory lawyer with 13 years’ experience in the sector. Melanie advises on all aspects of gambling law including licence applications, compliance, advertising, licence reviews and changes of control. She has acted for a wide range of gambling operators including major online and land-based bookmakers and casinos, B2B game and software suppliers and start-ups. She also frequently advises operators of raffles, prize competitions, free draws and social gaming products. Melanie has a particular interest in the use of new technology for gambling products and novel product ideas.
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