'Change is needed - and change is coming' - gambling minister on reform rally

The government's determination to face down the betting industry on an overhaul of gambling laws has again been laid bare by Chris Philp, the gambling minister, in a speech to reform advocates on Tuesday.

"We are going to act and act quickly," said Philp, who promised the long-awaited white paper on the subject is due to be published "very soon", although some Westminster observers have suggested it will not come before May.

"Change is needed – and change is coming," was Philp's parting shot at the end of a 1,000-word address to a rally organised by the all-party parliamentary group on gambling-related harm.

His speech was light on detail, as would be expected in the circumstances, but he emphasised "the role that technology and data can play in preventing harm from arising".

"Separate to the review, the Gambling Commission is going to publish shortly its enhanced requirements for customer interaction, so making sure gambling operators are doing proper checks, and we're going to address that in our review as well, to make sure the right protections are in place.

"There is a lot we must do through the gambling review to combat the risk of people falling into addiction."

Philp made specific mention of affordability checks and the single customer view (SCV), a data-sharing project intended to prevent at-risk gamblers from simply moving to another operator which knows nothing of their status. Concerns have been raised about the circumstances in which such data could be shared and the use to which it would be put.

"It goes without saying that any data shared as part of the SCV, or gathered to check on a customer's financial circumstances, should only be used for the purposes of harm prevention," Philp said. "Under no circumstances should it be used for commercial purposes.

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"But it's also important to make sure that this work is proportionate. It wouldn't be appropriate or proportionate to have intrusive checks for someone who is betting relatively small amounts of money on the Grand National.

"But there are definitely levels of more significant gambling losses where proper checks should be done. That is the kind of intervention we're looking at, in a way that is proportionate and balanced. Obviously there are legitimate customer concerns about privacy that need to be balanced with the imperative to prevent harm. We're going to make sure that balance is struck in a reasonable way.

"We're clear that we're not going to rely on self-regulation. The government and Gambling Commission have a range of powers to make sure our objectives for the sector can be properly delivered, and that operators behave in the right way."

Philp referred to a couple of recent cases in which the commission had penalised operators, notably the £9.4m fine levied on 888 last week, the third-biggest imposed by the regulator.

"They allowed a customer to lose £37,000 in an extremely short period of time with no checks whatsoever," Philp said. "That is simply not right, and it shouldn't take the Gambling Commission acting after the event to catch them."

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