Over the years, a variety of national troubles have been characterised as the British disease – among them economic stagnation, football hooliganism and nostalgia for empire. But there is a strong case for saying that the real British disease is and always has been gambling. According to the Gambling Commission, 44% of Britons today aged over 16 are gamblers of some kind, with 27% taking part in online gambling. That’s about 30 million gamblers, with the numbers concentrated in the under-50s. The truth is that we are not a nation of shopkeepers but a nation of punters.

The law was last redrawn in Labour’s 2005 Gambling Act. Its underlying intention, extraordinary though it now seems, was to promote legal but regulated gambling. Though this was itself dubious, and although the bill was improved during its passage through parliament, it reckoned altogether without two important things. The first was that many people’s real disposable income would contract, not increase, over the years, making easier gambling a significant factor in any cost of living crisis. The second was that online gambling was about to mushroom into the main form of recreational gambling.

The need to update the law in the light of the online gambling explosion is the main reason why the Conservatives have finally returned to the subject. Today, almost anyone can gamble cashlessly by smartphone from their sitting room or wherever else they happen to be, using gambling services provided by multinational tech companies, whose data analytics and advertising dominate the industry. The new white paper proposes a mandatory levy on the industry, compulsory limits on stakes and curbs on bonus offers.

Updated law is undoubtedly needed. It is also overdue. It ought not to have taken so long since the start of the online revolution for the regulation to enter the modern gambling world. Part of this is due to the instability in the government since Brexit, with four different prime ministers and no fewer than eight culture secretaries in six years. The latest of them, Lucy Frazer, who launched the white paper on Thursday, has been in the job for a mere two months.

Part of the problem is that the Conservative party remains disunited about how firmly to regulate. A section of the party is fundamentally sceptical about controls, arguing that people should always be free to do what they want with their money. A majority in all parties are in favour of controls, but want them to focus on problem gamblers and, in particular, on children. Although most forms of licensed gambling are illegal for under 18s, a 2022 survey found that 31% of 11- to 16-year-olds were spending their own money on gambling. As many as 50,000 children are problem gamblers.

The white paper moves in the right direction – but only in a limited way. The principle of the mandatory levy, which would help finance addiction treatment and research, is good, but the proposals are vague. Nor is enough being done to roll back the colonisation of football by gambling companies, which continue to advertise so defiantly on shirts, hoardings, the internet and on television. Problem gambling and child gambling are unquestionably highly serious problems, but the white paper fights shy of the challenge posed by the modern globalised gambling industry itself. The firms are good at circumventing controls, and the government’s promise of yet more consultation before the changes are implemented may encourage them to delay further.

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