Gambling

Lord Smith of Hindhead Excerpts

Thursday 7th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Unfortunately I cannot confirm that to the noble Lord today, but we are inviting evidence on the effectiveness of the regulatory regime and of what reduces problem gambling. The noble Lord shakes his head, but we do not want to pre-empt the outcome of the review. We would welcome him contributing the evidence he has, which we would consider carefully.

[Lord Smith of Hindhead (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register. The unregulated and at times unscrupulous ways in which some online and social media tipsters and affiliates operate may lead young and impressionable people to gamble in a potentially excessive way. As such, would the Minister agree that tipsters and affiliates should be licensed?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his question. He is right, and although in practice some affiliates have been fined by the Gambling Commission, many act irresponsibly, and that will be within the scope of the review.

Gambling Legislation

Lord Smith of Hindhead Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am genuinely surprised and disappointed that the right reverend Prelate reads the response in that light, because we felt that the report of the committee on which he sat was extremely helpful and constructive, and it has informed much of our thinking. There is no way that we are waiting for the outcome of the review to make gambling safer, and we have announced significant progress in the last 12 months, in particular the ban on gambling with credit cards.

[Lord Smith of Hindhead (Con)]

My Lords, I refer to my interests as set out in the register. Does the Minister agree that part of this welcome review should consider the benefits of the gambling industry in terms of employment, revenue to the Exchequer and social cohesion—for example, racecourses and lotteries? A measured, regulated industry, as proposed in recommendations by the Lords Select Committee, would avoid the increase in black market activity that has been so prevalent in, for example, Sweden.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government absolutely recognise the contribution of the industry, both in fiscal terms and in employing some 100,000 people in this country. We also acknowledge that a gap exists between what the industry says it is doing and what some people experience, and we are keen to close that.

Gambling Legislation

Lord Smith of Hindhead Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Both gambling advertising and gambling sponsorship are subject to extremely strict rules, and must never target children or vulnerable people. The whistle-to-whistle ban has actually resulted in a reduction in the number of advertisements that children are seeing.

[Lord Smith of Hindhead (Con)]

My Lords, I refer to my interests as set out in the register. There is evidence to link loot box spending and problem gambling among young adolescents. Does my noble friend the Minister agree with me that a relatively simple change in legislation could bring loot boxes into the classification of gambling and, as a result, they would become properly regulated and available only for those aged 18 years and older?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My noble friend will be aware that we committed in our manifesto to tackle issues around loot boxes. We have announced that we are launching a call for evidence to inform the next steps on this.

The Politics of Polling (Political Polling and Digital Media Committee Report)

Lord Smith of Hindhead Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Smith of Hindhead (Con)]

My Lords, it was an honour to serve on this Select Committee under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey. It is good to see him back to full strength following his illness towards the end of the committee’s deliberations.

Recent political polling, as has already been mentioned, has been problematic, with three of the last seven elections being incorrectly called. The general election in 2015 was widely considered to be an embarrassment for the polling industry, and this poor standing was not enhanced by its performance at the 2017 general election and the referendum. What became clear to me during the process of taking evidence on polling was a certain amount of blame-gaming between the polling companies and the media. Polls taken during a campaign are effectively a snapshot of a horserace. There is no real way in which these snapshots can be tested, since the election has not yet taken place; and while the polling companies do state that there are margins of error and that often the sample sizes are not significant, these health warnings do not, or rarely, translate into how a poll is reported in the media.

As a result, when the polls have been proved to be incorrect following the finishing post of an election, the media will blame the pollsters for getting it wrong, and the pollsters will blame the media for not properly reporting the polls that have been published. In fairness to both the polling companies and the media, there is a recognition of these shortcomings. I hope that during future elections there will be improved accuracy of polls, with polling companies recognising that people’s social habits have changed, and that as a result, the methods used for taking polls will be updated or, perhaps more interestingly, we will revert to the old style of knocking on doors. The media need to take more care in reporting polls, making sure that sample sizes and margins of error are clearly indicated and explained.

What is the point of polling? That is a question that I frequently asked—a question that on several occasions proved to be the most difficult one for witnesses to answer. In fact, I am still not sure that some of them have worked out what the answer should be. Many witnesses referred to the fact that the exit polls had been very accurate in recent elections, but that should not really be such a surprise: exit polls are not a snapshot of the horserace but, of course, a shot of the finishing line, when people have voted, and they are taken from a much larger and UK-wide sample. I also asked, rather waspishly, what was the point of the exit poll, apart from giving Mr Dimbleby and others something to talk about from 10 pm on election night until 6 am when the outcome is known. Again, there seemed to be some hesitation, before a falling back on the need to educate and entertain.

However, the question to which I found it most difficult to establish a definitive answer was whether polls have an effect on the way that people vote. In other words, could the outcome of future elections be affected by misleading information, potentially distorting the democratic process? My own view is that some people like to be on the winning side, and could therefore be swayed by a poll indicating a particular party’s strength, while others might be persuaded to vote against a party, if a poll were to indicate a landslide, in order to create a balance. I should point out that this is merely my gut instinct: it was shared by several witnesses but not all. What was clear, however, was that there is no grand conspiracy involving polls being deliberately wrong or deliberately misreported to create such a hypothetical scenario.

I cannot express how important I think it is that our recommendation for a proper and enforceable framework for the regulation of polling be put in place. This is the challenge for the British Polling Council, media regulators and the Electoral Commission, since if polling continues to be inaccurate then there is a risk that future elections could be affected by misleading information, potentially distorting the democratic process.

The question of the effect of digital media on polling was perhaps the most interesting part of the Committee’s work, but as our report states, the issues raised were so significant that they stretched beyond our remit and we did not have the capacity to give due attention to them all, although I am very pleased that the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, covered many of the points in her excellent address. I do, however, know a lot more about manned and unmanned bots than I did previously and there is concern, rightly, that measures should be put in place to tackle online manipulation and disinformation.

I am pleased that our recommendation to co-ordinate a strong international response to tackle any attempt to maliciously interfere with the UK’s democratic process has been supported by the Government and that work is already under way with allies and partners to promote a collective response. This is the real challenge for the future.

Online Gambling

Lord Smith of Hindhead Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Smith of Hindhead (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to keep my comments fairly brief and concentrate on the gap in regulation concerning online advertising and general activities of tipsters and affiliates, and affiliates masquerading as tipsters.

This is a topic on which I have previously spoken in the House, in my noble friend Lord Chadlington’s debate on advertising in connection with online gambling. The reason I feel it is important to raise this topic again here today is that, in many cases, the activities of tipsters and affiliates could easily undermine the aims of the multi-operator self-exclusion scheme about to be introduced.

It has been widely reported that some online gambling companies are investing proportions of their advertising spend specifically in paying tipsters and affiliates, who to all intents and purposes are totally unregulated, rather than spending their advertising budgets on traditional regulated advertising such as on sidebars of websites, on television and radio or in the press.

The problem with this stems from the intrusive and calculated way in which tipsters and affiliates work. For those who may not know, tipsters and affiliates are people behind social media profiles who prolifically post gambling tips. They use whatever attention-grabbing methods they wish to get people to place the bets that they “advise”, using methods which traditional advertisers would certainly be reprimanded for, and then continue to hound their customers, encouraging them to sign up to betting accounts and to place bets, then more bets and more bets, and so the frenzied cycle continues. One report estimated that it is not uncommon for a person to put on an average of 35 bets before a win is realised.

Tipsters and affiliates send out a constant stream of links to betting companies, free bets and offers, together with relentless messages of encouragement and so-called tips which are totally unsubstantiated, making money from signing-on fees for each person a tipster or affiliate manages to convince to sign up to a betting account. They then make money from a percentage of the revenue made by the said betting company for the life of each account. This means that a tipster or affiliate makes his or her money from bets on which a punter has lost while also being the person telling that same punter which bets to make. As they operate on social media, everyone is exposed to them. There is no watershed here and no age limit beyond which they cannot reach. Poignantly, there is no self-exclusion rule by which they must abide.

The blanket multi-operator self-exclusion measure is a sensible move by the gambling industry and could, in theory, help a lot of people who are having problems if it is properly enforced. Making a system where it is easy and quick to turn off the tap has to be a good idea, rather than having a situation where a person has to go back and revisit all the places that he or she may be finding the hardest to resist to shut down activities one by one. I hope it works, and I hope we do not continue to hear reports of companies targeting people again who have excluded themselves.

However, tipsters and affiliates undermine this earnest scheme, since they are not bound by the blanket self-exclusion policy, or by indeed any policy. There lies the problem. Many online gambling companies know that their affiliates cross those lines of responsibility or, at the very best, come close to them. Indeed, two months ago, Sky Bet entirely shut down its affiliate programme, stating that,

“the regulatory landscape in which the industry operates is developing and maturing and operators are experiencing increased obligations regarding their regulatory responsibilities and level of compliance. In order to continue to operate in a compliant manner, we feel that operating the Programme is no longer viable and that managing the output of affiliates presents a significant risk to our business from a regulatory perspective”.

Sky Bet should be commended for this, but the operations of tipsters and affiliates should at least be subject to some investigation. Could the Minister undertake to look into this within his department?

Everyone who knows me knows that I am a supporter of gambling. I like to have the occasional flutter, but I am a supporter only of responsible gambling and a responsible gambling industry. Therefore, I really hope that grey areas such as the one I have mentioned can be bridged so that a person facing problems who really wants to stop gambling when it is harming his or her well-being or lifestyle can do so swiftly and has the ongoing help and support they need.

Behind every problem gambler statistic is a man or woman, and often a family, with real problems. We should help them as much as we can and not stand by when outside influencers, motivated by their commercial and financial aims, threaten to disrupt or destroy the progress of an individual who is struggling to get their life straight. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Browne, for initiating this debate today.

Gaming Machines

Lord Smith of Hindhead Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Smith of Hindhead (Con)]

My Lords, will the Minister update the House about what the Government are doing to make online gambling safer for consumers, particularly in relation to operators based outside of the UK with British customers?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

Online gambling was brought under the regulatory regime in 2014. One of the main ways of dealing with this is to approach the payment providers. If an unlicensed gambling operator is not obeying the regulations, they will be prevented from operating with the payment providers. There is not much point in them operating if they cannot get paid.