Gambling Commission failing to tame industry and protect addicts

The Gambling Commission is failing to control betting companies, said the National Audit Office in a new report on Friday.

The commission is not doing enough to protect people from gambling-related harm and reduce addiction. According to the NAO, the regulator had not adjusted to technological change such as the rise of online and mobile gaming.

The commission is “constrained by factors outside its control, including inflexible funding and a lack of evidence on how developments in the industry affect consumers,” the NAO said.

It said that the regulator was “unlikely to be fully effective in addressing risks and harms to consumers within the current arrangements”.

The Gambling Commission is not big enough to tame the £11bn industry in the UK since it only has a £19m budget to tackle the dynamic sector.

The industry has grown by £4bn in real terms in the past decade, but the Commission, an industry-funded quango, can only ask for more funding every four years.

There are 340,000 problem gamblers and 55,000 children suffering with a gambling addiction. Research suggests that the economic cost could be as much as £1.2bn a year, nearly half the industry’s £3bn annual tax contribution.

Late on Thursday, Labour MP Carolyn Harris, chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on gambling, said: ‘The Government must urgently intervene to ensure that the gambling industry, particularly the online sector, parts of which seem to operate like the wild-west, is properly regulated and that consumers are protected.’

The Gambling Commission responded: ‘We agree with the report’s assessment that we face the significant challenge of regulating a dynamic and developing industry. It also underlines the constraints that our current funding arrangements presents and we are developing proposals to discuss this with DCMS [The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport].’