Tomorrow, the Social Market Foundation will publish a report into online gambling. Among its recommendations will be a £100-per-month “soft cap” on online losses, tax breaks for firms that moved onshore, limits on how much could be staked online, a new ombudsman, a kitemarking system for firms that upheld standards, clearer sanctions for those which did not, and a stake limit of between one pound and five pounds on online slot machines.
All good stuff, and a welcome sign of the changing political climate. Fixed-odds betting terminals are a very recent innovation, so it is rubbish that the betting shops would go bust without them. Instead of a very modest “crackdown” on them as part of some dodgy deal, they should simply be banned outright.
We also need the empowerment of local authorities to limit the number of gambling venues, the use of that power, an end to gambling on television, an end to the advertising of gambling other than at venues such as casinos and betting shops, a ban on gambling with credit cards, and the writing into the Statute Law of the rules introduced last year by the Competitions and Markets Authority against the sharp practices of the gambling industry.
Richard Holden is very good on this.
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